If anyone wants a great economy resource in simple terms, check out keds.
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Hey everyone,
I wanted to pull together key insights from this thread:
- Economics & Ecology: Focus on sustainability through food sovereignty, renewable energy, and degrowth.
- Equity: Address global inequality and power imbalances.
- Practical Wins: Balance big ideas with achievable steps.
- Cultural Shifts: Redefine societal values around sustainability.
Next steps: Let’s build a resource hub, dive deeper into key topics, and create engaging, shareable content? Thoughts?
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Howdy again 
I’ve been busy with some family health issues. (And I’m sorry I’ve missed out on the book club so far; a people’s history of the US has been a good read).
So, I saw the following segment with Cenk reporting on Ukraine, and I had to add a comment: the US war with Russia in Ukraine has been mostly about our economic control of, (ie our systems of concentrating financial exploitation of,) natural resources; that, the entire time. From an ecological geopolitical economist perspective, that has been obvious the entire time. Of course there are also other factors but, out of say 10 factors, the natural resource control is numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
… In this segment, @cenkuygur appears to report that it is only now clear that the US interest is in the natural resources, and perhaps only for Trump’s shadow president Elon specifically. I understand Cenk frames and presents information in certain (digestible) ways to meet his (at times indirect and multifaceted) ends, but, his segment here seems to me to be doing so in a bit of a misleading way, as if this moment is a lot to do about Trump and Elon. That said, I tend to assume Cenk is in general well informed on many things, such as geopolitics; but perhaps he has just been skeptical of the significance of controlling global geopolitically critical natural resources for our US/oligarch grand strategy.
Other than those thoughts and observations, I’m not sure what else I’m trying to say. Perhaps I wonder about how others are seeing this issue, and how they see it reported in this segment. I would have our politics well informed on the subject, and I suppose I’m skeptical that that was or was not the best way to frame the moment.
So, I’d greatly welcome some feedback. I’ll make more time soon to get more involved with our book club and forums. And @mggbwmn8, I intend to reply later regarding compiling key insights from this thread.
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Oh no, I hope everyone is okay! No worries about the book club; everyone got so busy with holidays, family, work, school, politics, etc., that it’s been put on hold. Even if it hadn’t, your family is (obviously!) way more important to all of us. 
I saw the live show last night but rewatched the clip.
(I want to quickly add that we may have given them money, but almost all of it went right back into the US military or private military companies.) I was thinking along the same lines about Ukraine. I mean, it’s not a coincidence that “all of a sudden,” the US is openly after substantial land grabs and hostile takeovers of allies while simultaneously obliterating every environmental policy we had. Our country is land brutally stolen from a people who we then committed genocide on, which was then built up by people who were kidnapped, tortured, and enslaved to do so. Our Colonized White Supremacist roots grew from raping and pillaging land and people in the name of power, greed, and Manifest Destiny. Now, these Christian Nationalists and MAGA lunatics want to take part two around the world. We’ve become one of the Axis Powers, making alliances with other psychopaths to create spheres of influence that would make Hitler blush. I, for one, am sick of people pooh-poohing and sane-washing the malignant actions of King Trump and his crooked court. It’s time to call a spade a fucking spade and fight back!
Anyway, it’s great to hear from you, and I hope you’re doing well! 
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Thank you, I appreciate your support!
In honesty I don’t mean to be too critical of Cenk (he is still exceptional for media), but as he’s using Trump and Elon to highlight our moment in history, I guess I would intellectually and morally rather Cenk not make this moment about the individuals (as if others like Biden were not also enabling the US to claim the resources)… but perhaps it is useful to use them (ie Trump and Elon) as an example in this way for our political mobilization or coalition building (?). Yet as it is, Cenk’s presentation of this moment rang to me like meaningless partisanship, like when stereotypical politicians scapegoat issues onto the other party, as if the issue isn’t what it is, (which is deeper than that).
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I get what you’re saying. It’s important to acknowledge that this has been going on far longer than a month if we’re to take meaningful steps to understand it. Only by acknowledging and understanding this destructive and exploitative system can we even begin to dismantle it.
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Howdy 
You asked about key concepts from this thread. I’ve started another thread on MMT informed inflation and geopolitics, which essentially summarizes some of my main points from this thread.
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