Freelance aerospace, defence and tech writer, sceptical observer of economics. #MMT, #JobGuarantee, #ModernJubilee, #JC4PM2019, #BlackLivesMatter, he/him

UK
Peter Donaldson retweeted
It's pivotal to the disaster that the Eurozone has been for Europe, and the core source of the discontent behind the youth rebellion across Europe today.
The algorithm now shows me a lot of the German economists' pearl clutching at @IsabellaMWeber price controls and dear God, how I've underestimated the dark powers of ordoliberalism.
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Peter Donaldson retweeted
.@CllrNickSmall you really need to talk to the VICTIMS of Zionism before making this statement You would not have done so in relation to apartheid South Africa without consulting the oppressed Black population, would you? The NAKBA was the purest example of why Zionism is racism
I've signed the Zionism is not racism pledge..... zionismisnotracism.co.uk/cou…
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Peter Donaldson retweeted
Dear friends, This is a family with six children and two injured or seriously ill parents in Gaza. I can vouch for them that they are completely legitimate and truly meeting your compassion. The youngest child has bleeding in her inner ear after there was a blast close to their tent. She needs to see a doctor. Her older sister has severe dental pain and needs a root canal. They need to find food every single day to feed their family because there is no refrigerator to store food and there is no food. They are truly fearful of a famine. I am helping this family as much as I can, but I really need help please please please if you know me and trust me and have the ability to help even with five dollars it would make a huge difference for this family. They need $40 per day to feed their family of eight. I have chosen to sponsor this family and I’m doing everything I can to help these children receive medical care and food. The two oldest girls are in online school for their university and they are trying so hard to continue their studies. I have been able to help them with some of this, but I need more help please if you can help me to help them please do. I can’t tell you how rewarding it is to know this beautiful family. They are so grateful for everything they receive, and they are so humble and loving people. I feel so fortunate to have met them. You can make a huge difference. You can save a family. Please help if you possibly can. 🙏🤲💜
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Peter Donaldson retweeted
In Gaza, children are being born with congenital deformities amid pollution caused by bombings, gunpowder, and dust, raising concerns about the effects on the health of mothers and unborn babies This is one of the consequences of the genocide in Gaza
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Peter Donaldson retweeted
If we can’t teach our children what a genocide looks like then we have well and truly lost our moral compass.
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Peter Donaldson retweeted
You stay silent because he is not your child, don't you? You stay silent because your home has not been destroyed! But humanity must not remain silent in the face of injustice. A true human being speaks up, takes a stand, and shows a reaction when others are suffering. Silence in the face of injustice is not neutrality. Speak up. Show the world that you care. 💔🇵🇸
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GAZA IS DYING OF HUNGER IN FRONT OF THE WORLD 💔🍽️ Where is humanity? 😢 At least participate 🇵🇸🔁 To donate 👇👇 gofund.me/017c79c6e
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Peter Donaldson retweeted
"Schools should recognise antisemitism as distinct form of harm, review says" Are you fed up with this bull-shit?
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Peter Donaldson retweeted
The most persecuted and discriminated against people in the UK are literally EVERYONE BUT white privileged middle class British Jews. Why do you think we’ve had an Orwellian thought crime punishment dumped on us? Could it be for Israel?
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Peter Donaldson retweeted
If there is a "public debt" crisis in France, it is because the @ECB is not fulfilling its role as dealer of last resort. The Transmission Protection Instrument is ready to do "whatever it takes". Yields will converge and spreads will close when the ECB says so.
"As long as the ECB acts as dealer of last resort in government bonds, ... governments will not lose access to their NCBs which make payments for and on behalf of the governments by crediting the reserves of banks that then credit accounts of recipients." tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.…
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The £3 trillion @griffitha refers to, is of course the net savings in the UK economy parked with the Treasury to earn £120 billion a year interest. When the MP talks of cutting the deficit, he doesn’t mean the £130 billion paid to banks, he means welfare.
🚨 Government borrowing of more than £3 trillion – the highest in history – and rising inflation show Labour has lost control of the economy. Healey’s Budget must take urgent action to tackle the deficit, reduce red tape and net zero costs that are driving up the cost of living.
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Peter Donaldson retweeted
There was once a historical European hatred of Jews which led to a holocaust of Jews in Europe. But despite what you are being told, there is no sudden rising crisis of a hatred of Jews in the world right now. What we do have a rising crisis of is a hatred of Zionism - the political ideology of the state of Israel. A state that is made up of majority white European settlers and rests on an ideology that is born of white supremacy and Jewish supremacy. In fact, contrary to being a targeted minority group, Jewish identity hijacked and repackaged by Zionists has been proven in the last two years to be THE most protected identity by/in the West. Due to the Zionist co-opting of Jewishness and weaponisation of Jewish suffering, paired with the enforced societal guilt of the Jewish holocaust (which is really just one of MANY historical atrocities yet given the most air time), Israel has not only been allowed to commit a genocide, but the self-proclaimed “Jewish state”, as well as Jewish-zionists who are advocating for the genocide, are continuously shielded from any moral backlash. If you’re not new here, you already know the basics. The intentional conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism has served to distort reality, distract from the colonial goals of Israel, and manufacture consent for the genocide of Palestinians who are framed as “Muslim barbarians” fuelled by supposed “Jew-hatred”. At the same time, racialised Palestinian lives have been systematically devalued with the carefully curated imperialist “war on terror” narrative and Jewish lives have been valued by their proximity to Europeanism and whiteness. The part that many are still unsure and uncomfortable about, though, is how ‘Jewish exceptonalism’ and ‘Jewish supremacy’ tie into it all. Jewish exceptionalism is the belief that Jewish people as a demographic are eternally and ontologically oppressed (the “eternal Jewish victimhood” argument), no matter the circumstances, and as such should be treated differently- and by differently, they mean special. This is because Jewish exceptionalists refer to antisemitism as the “oldest hatred,” treating it as though it’s the ONLY kind of hatred powerful enough to make its targets a PERMANENTLY marginalized group. No matter how much power or safety they otherwise acquire. This incorrect analysis fails to take into account the status of Jewish people in Canada, America, the U.K and Western Europe,and elsewhere over at least the past few decades. “While Jews claim to remain the targets of alleged hate crimes (though reports on the issue vastly overstate the reality), they actually face no systemic discrimination and generally fare exceptionally well in Canada and elsewhere on all other markers used to measure oppression.” And then, there is the Jewish exceptionalism that plays out in the employment sector, where one can criticise any group, any country, any war, any genocide, and their livelihood is likely to be relatively safe. But if one dares to criticise Israel (conflated as all “Jews”), they’re instantly accused of antisemitism, and their career is most likely finished.

Jewish supremacy can be defined as the structural and ideological hierarchies favouring Jews over non-Jews. For example, the Israeli Jewish human rights group B'Tselem in 2021 referred to Israel as ‘a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea’. From its late-19th-century origins, the Zionist project embedded an ethno-nationalist logic favouring Jews. The term has also been used to describe the way Jewish-Zionist rights, safety, and feelings are favoured above those of other groups in Western societies. Jewish exceptionalists believe that Jews are eternal victims, and therefore Israel and anyone supporting Israel can’t be bad because it’s a “Jewish state.” And Jewish supremacists believe that Jewish people are superior to others, “the chosen ones” and therefore deserve special treatment and concessions…
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Peter Donaldson retweeted
TEACH British children the TRUTH A GENOCIDE is taking place in Gaza The British Government is supporting & enabling it The TRUTH matters - even if it is offensive You cannot two-sides a GENOCIDE You SHOULD not ignore it TEACH British children the TRUTH
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Peter Donaldson retweeted
Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, was the grandson of an enslaved Black woman in French colonial Saint-Domingue. Omar Sy was born in a Parisian suburb to Senegalese and Mauritanian parents. He became the first Black actor to win the César for Best Actor. Zinedine Zidane, affectionately known as Zizou and arguably the greatest French footballer in history, was born in Marseille to Algerian parents. France has never had difficulty claiming the products of its relationship with Africa when those products were useful. The novelist. The screen icon. The World Cup trophy. These were French. The teenager in Saint-Denis is a problem to be managed. The same history. The same connection. The same people. What changed is the economic utility. When France needed labor, Africans were welcomed as workers. When the postindustrial economy reduced the need for that labor, the same communities became a social question, a security concern, a civilizational challenge. The civilization discourse arrived precisely when the economic usefulness ended. That timing is not a coincidence. That is the relationship, visible in its actual form.
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Peter Donaldson retweeted
He claims heterodox economics is a 'political project', yet fails to recognise the 'political project' behind the Econ 'Nobels': "created by the Swedish central bank, emerged from a conflict between central bank orthodoxy and Sweden’s social democracy." press.princeton.edu/books/pa…
The fatal challenge to heterodox economics is that there isn't actually orthodox economics. Just take a few recent Nobels: behavioral, information failure, institutions, bubbles, financial fragility, labor monopsony (sort of), Schumpeterian creative destruction, etc. Not to mention RCTs which are emblematic of how much economic research is empirical and only lightly if at all structural. The real difference is methods. Heterodox economics is an avowedly political project not a social scientific effort to better understand the world. And I have nothing against political projects just shouldn't confuse the two.
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Do you support Palestine? ○ Yes ○ No If yes, turn your support into action. Help my family 💔🙏 chuffed.org/project/nermeen
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For half a century, UK governments have denied the importance state investment in economic growth. While China invested in its people and industry, we cut spending on education, health and ‘disciplined’ those on lowest pay. But there is this. 👇🏻
🚨BREAKING: Andy Burnham has announced that drivers will get new rights to challenge unfair private parking charges.
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Peter Donaldson retweeted
Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist An open letter to the government from leading authors, artists and public figures Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist. Her books must be available to the public. Their withdrawal from sale, on the basis of ill-conceived and draconian anti-terror legislation, is an affront to basic principles of free speech and expression so long taken for granted in this country. We categorically reject censorship – whether direct or indirect – and urge the government to change course, amending the legislation which has led us to this point of repressive absurdity. Signed by over 150 from Adam Tooze to Zadie Smith newstatesman.com/cover-story… @DefendOurJuries #LiftTheBan
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Peter Donaldson retweeted
If I am nobody, why do you bother to respond to my post? you with your 10 followers? Today, I took action as part of a group of Canadian citizens to stop the sale of Israeli settlement properties in Canada. globalecho.law/settlement-re…
Replying to @RabbiMivasair
You. Are. Nobody
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