16 May 2021 — Good Law Project
On Tuesday, our legal challenge to the PPE procurement scandal will be heard in the High Court. It’s the first day of a mammoth five day hearing.
Category: Capitalism
Modern Marxist Monetary Theory or MMMT
14 May 2021 — theplanningmotivedotcom
MMMT has to solve two issues. Firstly, how can token money, that is money without any intrinsic value, circulate valuable commodities. Secondly, why do prices not fall in line with the cheapening of production in terms of labour time when circulated by this symbolic money. This article briefly addresses these two questions.
mmmt-part-1.pdf
Some notes on the world economy now
14 May 2021 — Michael Roberts Blog
These notes were based on an interview with me by Swiss-based journalist Thomas Schneider in German in early May.
https://www.facebook.com/klaus.klamm.9235/
A sugar rush or economic recovery?
The IMF foresees a strong economic recovery. The assumption is that the virus can be controlled to such an extent that lockdowns and social distancing are no longer necessary. This is mainly due to the vaccination campaigns.
G7 or failed colonial powers telling the world what to do
9 May 2021 — Peoples Dispatch
G7 are a bunch of western countries—the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada—who believe that they have the “civilizational” mandate to tell the world how it should be run
The Foreign Ministers of G7 countries met in London this week and issued a communique painting Russia as a “malicious actor” and China as a “bully”. It had little substance apart from ticking all the “right” boxes in its anti-China and anti-Russia campaign: Uyghurs, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Crimea, Ukraine, etc. It ended with arrogating to itself the mantle of being the “rules-based international order”, distinct from what the real, lawful international order is, the United Nations and its Security Council.
South Africa: Blame for May Day’s bare whimper
11 May, 2021 — Terry Bell Writes
News & Views by Terry Bell
May Day 2021 has come and gone, without much of a whimper, let alone a bang. And it is the novel coronavirus that is only marginally responsible. Because there would not have been much of a bang even without the pandemic.
UK Crony Capitalism: It never stops
13 May 2021 — Good Law Project
Good Law Project has uncovered remarkable evidence that a Tory Minister brought a former Chair of the Tory Party, a man who now runs a lobbying firm, into the heart of Government to work on the massive multi-billion PPE procurement process. Having got his feet under the table that former Chair lobbied to win PPE contracts for at least one, and possibly a number, of clients of his lobbying firm.
Dr. Romeo F. Quijano [series]: Covid-19: Militarism & Big Money Trampling Humanity [Part 3]
12 May 2021 — Wrong Kind of Green
By Romeo F. Quijano, M.D., Professor (Ret.), Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Medicine, University of the Philippines Manila
Romeo F. Quijano, M.D.
“The Covid-19 spectre, vaccine mania, deceptive remedial schemes and brutal, anti-people pandemic responses created by militarism and big money have shoved by the wayside pro-people, more sensible and a wider range of prevention and treatment strategies to address the pandemic. Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the militarist regimes and agencies, with the complicity of the WHO and others in the status quo successfully convinced practically the entire world that a vaccine and submission to authoritarian measures are the only things that will allow the people to “return to normal”. The clear scientific, empirical and historical evidence that the experimental vaccines being pushed are fraught with dangers of severe adverse reactions have been ignored. The criminal and unethical behaviour history of the major vaccine manufacturing companies, the blatant conflicts of interest of mainstream “experts” pushing for mass vaccination and the clearly ineffective militaristic measures that run roughshod over basic human rights are all swept under the rug. Indeed, with this Covid-19 calamity, militarism and big money has been trampling humanity.”
Download paper:
Covid_19_Militarism_and_Big_Money_Trampl
https://www.academia.edu/46641943/Covid_19_Militarism_and_Big_Money_Trampling_Humanity
[Romeo F. Quijano, M.D. is a retired professor of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Medicine, University of the Philippines Manila. He is president of Pesticide Action Network (PAN) – Philippines. He served as the co-chair of the International POPs Elimination Network, bureau member of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, and as a standing committee member of the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety. He is regarded as one of the country’s leading toxicologists.]
Dr. Romeo F. Quijano [series]: Should We Take the Vaccine Against Covid-19 [Part 2]
12 May 2021 — Wrong Kind of Green
By Romeo F. Quijano, M.D., Professor (Ret.), Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Medicine, University of the Philippines Manila
Romeo F. Quijano, M.D.
“The credibility of the CDC, WHO, public health authorities and mainstream health professionals have been seriously eroded because of corporatization, conflicts of interests, dishonesty, corruption and misrepresentation. People have good reasons to be wary of vaccines. Too much reliance on vaccines to address infectious diseases is not congruent with the current body of scientific knowledge about the immune system, microbial ecology and the intimate relationship of humans with the environment.”
Download paper:
Should_We_Take_the_Vaccine_Against_Covid
[https://www.academia.edu/45058943/Should_We_Take_the_Vaccine_Against_Covid_19]
[Romeo F. Quijano, M.D. is a retired professor of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Medicine, University of the Philippines Manila. He is president of Pesticide Action Network (PAN) – Philippines. He served as the co-chair of the International POPs Elimination Network, bureau member of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, and as a standing committee member of the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety. He is regarded as one of the country’s leading toxicologists.]
Dr. Romeo F. Quijano [series]: Beware the Vaccine for Covid-19 [Part 1]
12 May 2021 — The Wrong Kind of Green
By Romeo F. Quijano, M.D. Professor (Ret.), Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Medicine, University of the Philippines Manila
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein
TIME double issue, January, 2021
There seems to be a strong presumption that the ultimate answer to the Covid-19 pandemic is a vaccine. People are made to believe that a magical vaccine is in the offing and the world will be saved from the pandemic. Bill Gates and Big Pharma push hard to hasten vaccine development. The WHO and most governments easily agree. Rapid clinical trials have started and several companies are in the race to put their candidate products on the market. The mainstream media is all hype and bombards the public with glowing pro-vaccine messages, conditioning them to accept vaccination with no questions asked.
Identity politics is blind to property relations
11 May 2021 — theplanningmotivedotcom
A minority can only rule a majority using two conscious levers. To co-opt and corrupt the leadership and thinkers of the working class. To divide the working class. What is breath taking over the last thirty years is how this corruption and these divisions have fused together in the form of the pervasive ideology of post-modernism, intersectionality and identity politics. In short not so much the end of history as the end of class politics.
identity-politics.pdf
Marx on technology
7 May 2021 — MROnline
Originally published: Andy Merrifield Blog (September 29, 2019)
The longest chapter in Capital is the fifteenth, on “Machinery and Large-Scale Industry.” At almost 150-pages, it’s really a book in itself, a staggeringly dense and expansive discussion that could easily standalone—not only as a brilliant exegesis of capitalist machinery, but also as a sweeping social history of technology. At its broadest reach, the chapter is a vivid demonstration of historical materialism in action, of Marx’s method put through its dialectical paces. As ever with Marx, his footnotes aren’t to be passed over glibly: they’re worth studying, pondering over for the nuggets of insight they contain.
Inflation and financial risk
9 May 2021 — Michael Roberts Blog
Is inflation coming back in the major capitalist economies? As the US economy (in particular) and other major economies begin to rebound from the COVID slump of 2020, the talk among mainstream economists is whether inflation in the prices for goods and services in those economies is going to accelerate to the point where central banks have to tighten monetary policy (ie stop injecting credit into the banking system and raise interest rates). And if that were to happen, would it cause a collapse in the stock and bond markets and bankruptcies for many weaker companies as the cost of servicing corporate debt rises?
