Category: Capitalism

US IMPERIALISM, THE GULF AND CHINA – A BROKEN WORLD ECONOMY

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28 January 2020 — theplanningmotive.com

MARX: SO OFTEN READ, SO SELDOM UNDERSTOOD. Finance Capital, Monopoly Capital and Imperialism

Iranian General Qasem Soleimani’s assassination by the USA brings the issue of imperialism back to the fore. The General was not assassinated because he was planning future attacks. His fate was sealed on December 27th a week before his death. December 27th marked the beginning of the first joint naval manoeuvres between Iran, Russia and China, called “Indian Ocean Security Belt”. After the 4 days of war games, Iran declared an end to US hegemony in the region. No hegemonic imperial power, especially one in decline, can ignore such a challenge, especially after it warned Iran to “think twice” before conducting these drills. Its response was to project its power by killing the Iranian Chief of Staff in an international airport in a foreign country.

imperialism-and-its-many-myths.pdf

The value in GDP

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27 January 2020 — Michael Roberts Blog

At the recent ASSA 2020 conference there was a session on whether Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the ubiquitous measure of national output, was adequate as a gauge of “well-being or social welfare”. Various proposals have been put forward for attempting to measure social welfare, including “dashboards” of economic and social indicators as well as approaches that are more explicitly tied to economic theory.  The US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) initiated a discussion at ASSA to consider the pros and cons of alternative approaches.

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2020 is hot, and it’s going to get much hotter

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24 January 2020 — Climate & Capitalism

Climate crisis

Emissions are rising. Each decade is warmer than the last. The oceans are heating up. Australia is burning. And that’s just January.

by Tim Radford, Climate News Network

(London: January 24, 2020) The year is less than four weeks old, but scientists already know that carbon dioxide emissions will continue to head upwards – as they have every year since measurements began – leading to a continuation of the Earth’s rising heat. And they warn that the rise will be steeper than usual, partly because of the devastating bush fires in Australia.

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One Hundred Years: The Proletariat In Search of A Class

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24 January 2020 — Counter Currents

The super-indoctrinated, Trump-voting American working class, dulled by the mass media and the “American dream”,has changed very little since the crushing of the great textile strikes that swept The United States in the 1920s. Not an iota of class-consciousness has it absorbed. (Nor has it been explained and offered to all wage earners in sufficient doses.) For also the middle classes, crushed by an ever more desperate, an “end of times” form of capitalism, has not yet grasped that they too are now part of the American proletariat. In that respect it seems that the old, often criticized word proletariatis still quite adequate.

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Selected Articles: Focus on the Davos World Economic Forum (2017-2020)

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23 January 2020 — Global Research

Trump Parties in Davos While Ordinary Americans Struggle to Make Ends Meet

By Stephen Lendman, January 23 2020

The annual Davos billionaire’s ball — aka World Economic Forum — continues until Friday. Countless millions of US households face unacceptable choices between paying rent or servicing mortgages, seeking high-cost medical care when needed, heating homes in winter, feeding family members, and juggling other expenses — a disturbing reality far removed from Trump’s luxury lifestyle. A massive disconnect exists between soaring equity prices and dismal economic conditions for most Americans. Read more…

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Review: “One World Digital Dictatorship” by Soren Korsgaard – Digital Nightmare

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23 January 2020 — Counter Currents

 by

Danish writer Soren Korsgaard (editor of Crime & Power) has written a very long and detailed account entitled “One World Digital Dictatorship” that describes the accelerating movement  by both Western-style democracies and one-party states (notably China) towards world-wide Digital Dictatorship (Digital Imprisonment) involving mass data collection on everyone, mass surveillance, facial recognition-based tracking, crypotocurrency-based cashless societies, and social credit-based disempowerment.

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When Will The Winter Come to An End?: The Fourth Newsletter (2020)

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23 January 2020 — Tri-Continental

Hangameh Golestan

When Will The Winter Come to An End?: The Fourth Newsletter (2020)

Dear Friends,

Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On 17 January, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led the Friday prayers for the first time in eight years. He mocked the ‘American clowns’ who threatened Iran and said that Iran’s response to the US assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani was a ‘slap in the face’ of US power. Tensions between Washington, DC, and Tehran seem to have gone from a boil to a simmer, but they nonetheless remain. There is reason to believe that US President Donald Trump – reckless by nature – will launch an attack on Iran in the next few months. He might do so to distract from the impeachment trial he faces in the US Senate or to hasten his chances of re-election in November 2020.

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World’s Super Rich Meet in Davos to Discuss the Climate Change Problem they Created

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22 January 2020 — Mint Press

Research has shown that the people most responsible for a warming planet were disproportionately the same people attending the summit and an increasing number of observers see climate change, inequality and capitalism as bound together.

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Can GM crops really “feed the world”? Challenging the Flawed Premise Behind Pushing GMOs into Indian Agriculture

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22 January 2020 — Colin Todhunter

Colin Todhunter

A common claim is that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are essential to agriculture if we are to feed an ever-growing global population. Supporters of genetically engineered (GE) crops argue that by increasing productivity and yields, this technology will also help boost farmers’ incomes and lift many out of poverty.

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