A Palestinian family is defying an Israeli order to demolish its own house.

The mainstream media are congratulating Biden for leading attention away from real issues and replacing them with vacuous feel-good patriotism.

It reminds me of Obama's vacuous slogans of "hope" and "change".

Biden's transition team leader says that, if elected, Biden will cancel promises to help Americans in the name of deficit reduction.

Another way to reduce the deficit would be to tax the rich to grab back this year's enormous handouts. Or transferring spending from the military. But those wouldn't please the plutocrats,

Modern monetary theory explains that the whole idea that "there is no money available to spend" is misguided. Creating more money is fine if it activates idle capacity. If it exceeds the idle capacity, it can cause inflation.

A US company bought a gold mine in Guatemala. Later, under public pressure, Guatemala shut the mine down. Now the company is using the ISDS clause in a business-supremacy treaty with the US to make Guatemala 400 million dollars in hypothetical future profits.

Mines tend to be toxic; I expect the reason for shutting the mine was to put an end to the poisoning of people, ecosystems and/or water supplies. But the business-supremacy treaties don't value people, ecosystems or water supplies.

*Antarctica: 60% of ice shelves at risk of fracture, research suggests. Collapse of shelves would accelerate loss of Antarctic ice sheet and increase sea-level rise.*