Category: Capitalism

Global warming: planning not pricing

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22 July 2021 — Michael Roberts Blog

by michael roberts

Carbon pricing and carbon taxes are now proposed by international institutions and mainstream economics as the main solutions to ending global warming and destructive climate change.  For some time, the IMF has been pushing for carbon pricing as ‘a necessary if not sufficient’ part of a climate policy package that also includes investment in ‘green technology’ and redistribution of income to help the worst-off cope with the financial burden.  The IMF is now proposing a global minimum carbon price — along the lines of the global minimum floor on corporate taxes which has recently secured agreement.

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Our Rulers Have All The Power And None Of The Responsibility

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14 July 2021 — Caitlin Johnson

by Caitlin Johnstone

Listen to a reading of this article:

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As the world burns, as ecosystems die off, as the insects vanish, as the forests disappear, as soil becomes rapidly less fertile, as extinction takes over, as the oceans gasp for air and become lifeless deserts while continents of plastic form in their waters, it is interesting how often you hear the sentiment that this is the result of some flaw in humanity for which we all share equal guilt.

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Sicko UK

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14 July 2021 — Consortium News

Bob Gill describes how an admired public health service is secretly being changed to for-profit American-style “managed care.”

Boris Johnson chairs daily Covid-19 press conference at 10 Downing Street, April 2020. (No. 10/Flickr)

By Dr. Bob Gill
in London
Special to Consortium News

On the 73rd birthday of the National Health Service, the queen awarded the beloved NHS the George Cross for the valor of its staff during the Covid-19 pandemic.

No one doubts the dedication of NHS staff, and its worthiness for the highest honor, but this medal now serves to cover the insidious dismantlement of the NHS.

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Capitalism: has the leopard changed its spots?

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11 July 2021 — Michael Roberts Blog

by michael roberts

“Let me be clear: capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism. It’s exploitation.”, US President Biden tweeted when signing an executive order to expand competition across the economy and crack down on monopolistic practices, describing a misguided 40-year “experiment” in letting US corporations consolidate with little regulation that he said has hurt ordinary Americans.  “The heart of American capitalism is a simple idea: open and fair competition,” Biden said in a speech before signing the measure. He called himself a “proud capitalist” but said that he wants to “ensure our economy isn’t about people working for capitalism, it’s about capitalism working for people.”

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Is AltE Truly the Best Solution to Climate Catastrophe?

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5 July 2021 — The New Dark Age

By Don Fitz

Bulldozer

“Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!… Accumulation for the sake of accumulation, production for the sake of production: this was the historical mission of the bourgeoisie in the period of its domination …” Karl Marx, Capital, Vol 1, Ch 25

The world is threatened with environmental disaster and capitalists hope to make a killing off of it. Fossil fuel (FF) companies claim they are “environmentally friendly.” Other corporations promote nuclear energy, hydro-power (dams), and solar and wind power as the best energy alternatives.

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The Gates Foundation’s “Corporate Merry-go-round”: Spearheading the Neo-liberal Plunder of African Agriculture

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2 July 2021 — Global Research

By Colin Todhunter

This important article by Colin Todhunter published more than five years ago (on January 21, 2016)  analyses how the Gates Foundation had contributed to exacerbating social inequalities and “uprooting indigenous agriculture for the benefit of global agribusiness”.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is dangerously and unaccountably distorting the direction of international development, according to a new report by the campaign group Global Justice Now. With assets of $43.5 billion, the BMGF is the largest charitable foundation in the world. It actually distributes more aid for global health than any government. As a result, it has a major influence on issues of global health and agriculture.

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“Capitalism must die to protect the sacred”

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16 June 2021 — MROnline

“Capitalism must die to protect the sacred” “Capitalism must die to protect the sacred”

Originally published: “Capitalism must die to protect the sacred” by Susan Rosenthal (June 17, 2021 )

Book Review: The Red Nation (2021). The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save our Earth. Common Notions. 176 pages.

Indigenous people have been fighting to survive for centuries. Recently, their struggles have become more militant, more global, and less isolated, aligning with other anti-racist and anti-colonial movements, and leading the environmental movement.

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The Spirit of Carabobo Will Overcome the Stench of Monroe: The Twenty-Fifth Newsletter (2021)

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24 June 2021 — Tricontinental

Kael Abello Utopix Venezuela Batalla de Carabobo Battle of Carabobo 2021Kael Abello, Utopix (Venezuela), Batalla de Carabobo (‘Battle of Carabobo’), 2021.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, this week from Carabobo, Venezuela.

Two hundred years ago, on 24 June 1821, the forces of Simón Bolívar trounced the Spanish royalists at the Battle of Carabobo, a few hundred kilometres west of Caracas, Venezuela. Five days later, Bolívar entered Caracas in triumph; the Spanish fortresses of Cartagena and Puerto Cabello had been seized by the Liberator’s armies, making a return to power for Spain impossible. In Cúcuta, a congress assembled to draft a new constitution and to elect Bolívar as the president.

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Corporate Watch: 18,000 new prison places coming soon

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24 June 2021 — Corporate Watch

In this newsletter:

New mega-prison in Lancashire – Deportation Drive – Glasgow Housing Association rent hikes – Resistance to dams in Georgia 

New mega-prison in Lancashire

The government has announced plans to build a new mega prison in Chorley, Lancashire. It will be huge, locking up more than 1715 people. It is part of a wave of prison expansion which has been reported on by Corporate Watch since 2017.  It is part of the government’s ‘New Prisons Programme‘, where they are spending £4 billion to create 18,000 additional prison places by the mid 2020s. Campaigners are asking people to object to the prison. Read more here: https://corporatewatch.org/chorleyprison/
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1% own 45% of the world’s personal wealth while nearly 3bn people have little or no wealth at all

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24 June 2021 — Michael Roberts Blog

Just 56m or 1% of adults out of 5.3bn globally are millionaires in net wealth terms.  And they own 45% of all global personal wealth.  The other 99% own the rest and there are nearly 3bn people in the world that have little or no wealth at all (after debts are deducted).

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On Paul Kingsnorth and Unruly Nature

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7 May 2021 — MROnline

Real England by Paul Kingsnorth
by Anthony Galluzzo

In a 2010 essay entitled “Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist,” the English émigré environmental writer Paul Kingsnorth recounts his journey into and out of the environmental movement. The essay appeared in the inaugural issue of Dark Mountain, the journal attached to the Dark Mountain group—inaugurated by Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine in 2009—a literary-philosophical project dedicated to uncivilization. What is uncivilization? Coauthors Kingsnorth and Dougald Stewart introduce their manifesto with a telling excerpt from Robinson Jeffers, in which the poet urges readers to “unhumanize our views a little.” Our Dark Mountaineers elaborate how “our whole way of living is already passing into history,” while urging their readers to “face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.” Whose way of life exactly? It presumably refers to the inhabitants of the Global North who represent the primary driver of the ecological crisis now ravaging the planet. While this sort of rough political economy is implicit in the remaining Dark Mountain principles, they notably eschew political solutions; they, for instance, “reject the faith that holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of ‘problems’ in need of technological or political ‘solutions.’”1

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The Double Deformation

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18 June 2021 — Origin: Climate & Capitalism

Capital vs Nature and Humanity

Economic exploitation is only one aspect of capitalism. The crisis of humanity and the crisis of the earth system are inseparable

Michael A. Lebowitz is professor emeritus of economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His books include The Socialist Imperative, The Contradictions of Real Socialism, and Between Capitalism and Community, all published by Monthly Review Press. This article is excerpted, with permission, from “Know Your Enemy: How to Defeat Capitalism,” published this month in LINKS: International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

by Michael A. Lebowitz

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