The bottom line is that, for 20 years or more, including the months prior to the election, voter perception was more reflective of reality than the incumbent statistics. Our research revealed that the data collected by the various agencies is largely accurate. Moreover, the people staffing those agencies are talented and well-intentioned. But the filters used to compute the headline statistics are flawed. As a result, they paint a much rosier picture of reality than bears out on the ground.

Take, as a particularly egregious example, what is perhaps the most widely reported economic indicator: unemployment. Known to experts as the U-3, the number misleads in several ways. First, it counts as employed the millions of people who are unwillingly under-employed — that is, people who, for example, work only a few hours each week while searching for a full-time job. Second, it does not take into account many Americans who have been so discouraged that they are no longer trying to get a job. Finally, the prevailing statistic does not account for the meagerness of any individual’s income. Thus you could be homeless on the streets, making an intermittent income and functionally incapable of keeping your family fed, and the government would still count you as “employed.”

I don’t believe those who went into this past election taking pride in the unemployment numbers understood that the near-record low unemployment figures — the figure was a mere 4.2 percent in November — counted homeless people doing occasional work as “employed.” But the implications are powerful. If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today — hardly something to celebrate.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/democrats-tricked-strong-economy-00203464

- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.” This is a reference invoking the Biblical story of the total destruction of the Amalek by the Israelites, which Biblical passage reads in the relevant part: “Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses.”
- President Isaac Herzog: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved. It’s absolutely not true. … and we will fight until we break their backbone.”

Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant:
- Israel is “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
- “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything. If it doesn’t take one day, it will take a week. It will take weeks or even months, we will reach all places.”

- Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir: “[t]o be clear, when we say that Hamas should be destroyed, it also means those who celebrate, those who support, and those who hand out candy — they’re all terrorists, and they should also be destroyed.”

- Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Israel Katz: “All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”

- Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich: “We need to deal a blow that hasn’t been seen in 50 years and take down Gaza.”

- Minister of Amihai Eliyahu: “The north of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes … We must talk about the day after. In my mind, we will hand over lots to all those who fought for Gaza over the years and to those evicted from Gush Katif” [a former Israeli settlement]. “There is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza.”

- Minister of Agriculture Avi Dichter: “We are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba.” [This term, “Nakba,” is a reference to the forced expulsion of around 750,000 Palestinians during the war that established Israel as an independent state. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe refers to it as The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.]

- Knesset Deputy Speaker and Foreign Affairs and Security Committee Member Nissim Vaturi: “Now we all have one common goal — erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.”

- Israeli Reservist Major General and adviser to the Defense Minister Giora Eiland:
- "The people should be told that they have two choices; to stay and to starve, or to leave. If Egypt and other countries prefer that these people will perish in Gaza, this is their choice.”
- “Israel has no interest in the Gaza Strip being rehabilitated and this is an important point that needs to be made clear to the Americans.”
- “The State of Israel has no choice but to make Gaza a place that is temporarily, or permanently, impossible to live in.”
- “Who are the ‘poor’ women of Gaza? They are all the mothers, sisters or wives of Hamas murderers. . . . The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer . . . It is precisely its civil collapse that will bring the end of the war closer. When senior Israeli figures say in the media ‘It’s either us or them’ we should clarify the question of who is ‘them’. ‘They’ are not only Hamas fighters with weapons, but also all the ‘civilian’ officials, including hospital administrators and school administrators, and also the entire Gaza population who enthusiastically supported Hamas and cheered on its atrocities on October 7th.”

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2024/01/israel-has-no-defense

Kim Lane Scheppele argues that Trump is following Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian model, consolidating power in the executive branch, bypassing checks and balances, and attacking democratic institutions. She highlights Trump’s ties to Orbán, including through Project 2025, which was influenced by Hungarian think tanks. Orbán has used similar tactics in Europe, strengthening far-right movements and undermining democratic norms. Trump’s rapid executive actions aim to reshape government before opposition can respond, mirroring Orbán’s strategy of breaking institutions before courts or political resistance can intervene.

https://truthout.org/video/trump-embraces-authoritarian-playbook-of-hungarian-dictator-viktor-orban/

Dall’inizio del XX secolo fino al 2008, l’aumento del Pil pro capite è stato più o meno lo stesso per gli Stati uniti e l’Eurozona. Da allora, tuttavia, il divario è aumentato in modo significativo. È avvenuto quando le economie dell’eurozona hanno scelto di attuare dure politiche di austerità, con un conseguente forte calo relativo. Anche in questo caso, dopo la pandemia da Covid 19, le politiche espansive in Europa sono state meno incisive che negli Stati uniti, il che ha determinato un’altra divergenza. Se l’Europa si sta allontanando dagli Stati uniti in termini di Pil pro capite, non è perché ci stiamo muovendo verso nuovi indicatori di ricchezza o nuove ambizioni ecologiche. È semplicemente perché siamo meno coerenti dal punto di vista della gestione macroeconomica. Riconoscere questo problema, come fa il rapporto di Draghi, è un passo importante. Identifica la necessità di maggiori spese e investimenti. Tuttavia, quando si entra nei dettagli di ciò che il rapporto propone, dubito che si possa arrivare a esiti positivi. Per esempio, sostiene che l’Europa manca di competitività, ma non è così. In realtà, l’Europa è molto competitiva: nel complesso, ha un’eccedenza commerciale. Quindi, nel confronto con gli Stati uniti, il problema dell’Europa non è che ha bisogno di una maggiore competitività, ma piuttosto di una maggiore produttività, che non è la stessa cosa. Questo è legato alle politiche di innovazione e allo sviluppo delle imprese. È molto importante sottolineare questa differenza.

Un’altra questione fondamentale è che molti paesi europei hanno adottato standard neoliberali più rigidi rispetto agli Stati uniti, soprattutto in materia di politica fiscale. In Germania c’è il «freno al debito», che fa parte della Costituzione e che blocca un approccio fiscale più attivo. Ciò contribuisce alla mancanza di dinamismo dell’economia tedesca. Anche la politica europea della concorrenza rappresenta un ostacolo a qualsiasi tipo di solida politica industriale. Sebbene ci siano stati alcuni cambiamenti a livello di discorso pubblico, ci vorrà tempo per abbandonare il paradigma che si è instaurato nel corso dei decenni. La relazione di Draghi non affronta gli aspetti legati al quadro dell’integrazione europea e non si intravede un percorso chiaro verso la trasformazione di tale quadro, il che è molto preoccupante.

Draghi osserva come l’Europa abbia mancato la trasformazione digitale. Non solo negli Stati uniti, ma anche in Cina e persino in Russia, ci sono forti imprese tecnologiche nazionali che forniscono servizi di tipo nuovo. In Europa non ci sono aziende che forniscono questi servizi, il che significa che gli Stati, le aziende e i cittadini europei sono sottomessi a interessi aziendali di difficile regolamentazione perché hanno sede all’estero. L’approccio adottato finora dall’Ue, incentrato sulla protezione dei dati a livello individuale, non è all’altezza di questa sfida, che richiede un ambizioso progetto pubblico per fornire servizi digitali di base a livello locale e proteggere la sovranità degli Stati europei. A un livello più fondamentale, le politiche economiche su entrambe le sponde dell’Atlantico non dovrebbero puntare ad accelerare la spirale produttivista-consumistica, ma promuovere una trasformazione degli stili di vita, con servizi pubblici più forti e garantendo una rete di sicurezza per la popolazione e un riequilibrio del nostro rapporto con la natura.

https://jacobinitalia.it/che-ce-dopo-il-neoliberismo/

A new report from World Weather Attribution links the recent Los Angeles wildfires to climate change, stating that rising global temperatures have increased the likelihood of such fires by 35% and their severity by 6%. Vulnerable populations were disproportionately affected. The report coincides with California lawmakers introducing Senate Bill 222, which would allow individuals and insurers to sue fossil fuel companies for wildfire damages. The bill’s author, State Sen. Scott Wiener, argues that the industry must pay for disasters fueled by its products. The proposal mirrors New York’s “Superfund” law and could serve as a model for federal legislation.

https://truthout.org/articles/report-climate-crisis-significantly-increased-likelihood-of-los-angeles-fires/

For my American friends

https://projects.propublica.org/claimfile/

"I won’t beat around the bush. Microsoft Office doesn’t make it easy to opt out of this new AI privacy agreement, as the feature is hidden through a series of popup menus in your settings:On a Windows computer, follow these steps to turn off “Connected Experiences”:

File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > Privacy Settings > Optional Connected Experiences > Uncheck box: “Turn on optional connected experiences”"

https://medium.com/illumination/ms-word-is-using-you-to-train-ai-86d6a4d87021

"These enduring, midcentury systems aren’t worthwhile because they’re old—they’re worthwhile because they work. The bureaucracies that Trump-Musk-Vought are working so aggressively to dismantle deliver money to institutions that provide food and shelter, prevent corporations from exploiting workers, restrain financial institutions from operating with complete impunity, and on and on. They undergird civil society. The people harmed by Trump’s and DOGE’s assaults represent a group of people far larger than the handful of goons trying to bring everything down. For any of this to matter, that group of people will need to assert itself."

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/doge-nation/

According to reports, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that “the goal for 2025 is to demolish more than the Palestinians build in the West Bank.” This comes as the Israeli government is reportedly building almost 1,000 additional housing units in the Efrat settlement close to Jerusalem.

The additional units built for settlers in Efrat would increase the settlement’s size by 40% and block development in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. The roughly 100 existing settlements in the West Bank host around 500,000 Israeli settlers and are considered illegal under international law.

Sunday’s comments from Smotrich reflect his longstanding hopes for Israeli absorption of the West Bank and the nixing of a two-state solution. He published a lengthy plan in 2017 in this regard entitled “One Hope.”

“We need to and can go back to the post-1948 days, regarding both Israeli Arabs and the Arabs of Judea and Samaria,” he outlined in the plan, the first phase of which is called “Victory Through Settlement.” This, he explained, ”will be realized via a political-legal act of imposing sovereignty on all Judea and Samaria, and with concurrent acts of settlement: the establishment of cities and towns, the laying down of infrastructure as is customary in ‘little’ Israel and the encouragement of tens and hundreds of thousands of residents to come live in Judea and Samaria. In this way, we will be able to create a clear and irreversible reality on the ground.”

"The Arabs of Judea and Samaria will be able to conduct their daily life in freedom and peace, but not to vote for the Israeli Knesset at the first stage” as a way to “preserve the Jewish majority in decision-making in the state of Israel.” He vehemently denies that this system resembles apartheid.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/smotrich-calls-for-more-settlements/

Over the weekend, the Trump administration appeared to begin the process of rolling back enforcement of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the “Magna Carta” of federal environmental law. In a filing submitted February 16, administration officials announced an interim rule titled “Removal of National Environmental Policy Act Implementing Regulations.”

NEPA requires all federal agencies to consider the environmental impact of their work, including by submitting new contracts and permits to rigorous environmental assessments and public comment. Signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970 amid growing pollution concerns, NEPA was the nation’s first major environmental law, predating the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Project 2025 — the conservative policy agenda authored by Trump’s former aides — said that the government is “abusing” NEPA, and has called for severely limiting the law.

https://jacobin.com/2025/02/nepa-federal-environment-law-trump/