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davel

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davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Free download of her latest book: Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy

Capitalism, Coronavirus and War investigates the decay of neoliberal financialised capitalism as revealed in the crisis the novel coronavirus triggered but did not cause, a crisis that has been deepened by the conflict over Ukraine and its repercussions across the globe.

Leading domestically to economic and political breakdown, the pandemic accelerated the decline of the US-led capitalist world’s imperial power, intensifying the tendency to lash out with aggression and militarism, as seen in the US-led West’s New Cold War against China and the proxy war against Russia over Ukraine. The geopolitical economy of the decay and crisis of this form of capitalism suggests that the struggle with socialism that has long shaped the fate of capitalism has reached a tipping point. The author argues that mainstream and even many progressive forces take capitalism’s longevity for granted, misunderstand its historical dynamics and deny its formative bond with imperialism. Only a theoretically and historically accurate account of capitalism’s dynamics and historical trajectory, which this book provides, can explain its current failures and predicament. It also reveals why, though the pandemic—by revealing capitalism’s obscene inequality and shocking debility—prompted the most serious critiques of capitalism to emerge in decades, hopes of ‘building back better’ were so quickly dashed. This book sheds searching light on the dominant narratives that have normalised the neoliberal financialised capitalism and the dollar creditocracy dominating the world economy, with even critics unable to link capitalism’s neoliberal turn to its financialisations, historical decay, productive debility and international decline. It contends that only by appreciating the seriousness of the crisis and rectifying our understanding of capitalism can progressive forces thwart a future of chaos and/or authoritarianism and begin the long task of building socialism.

This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and researchers of international relations, international political economy, comparative politics and global political sociology.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Perfect re-entry: Contracts at same company to maintain same code at 3x salary.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

The mortgage tax advantage is just one component of it.

After WWII we made (mostly suburban) homes be retirement investment vehicles for (almost exclusively white) working class people. That was a terrible choice for all future generations of the working class. Now most people (white or not) are priced out. It’s been great for the boomers and the real estate & finance industries, though, thanks to asset price inflation.

From Michael Hudson’s https://wallstreetonparade.com/2015/08/michael-hudsons-new-book-wall-street-parasites-have-devoured-their-hosts-your-retirement-plan-and-the-u-s-economy/ (PDF):

The Bubble Economy vs classical industrial growth

The stock market is not the largest part of the economy whose prices are inflated by bank credit. As the biggest asset category, real estate is by far the largest market for debt. The Federal Reserve’s quarterly Flow of Funds statistics show that by 2007-08, about 80 percent of new bank loans were real estate mortgages. Most such loans are to buy property already in place, just as most stock market transactions are for shares long since issued.

The effect is twofold: it inflates asset prices ranging from real estate to entire companies, and yields banks interest that imposes a carrying charge on buyers. That is what makes bubble economies high-cost. Housing prices are inflated, requiring mortgage debtors to pay more. Companies borrow to buy other companies, increasing the volume of corporate debt simply to finance ownership changes. And education is financialized, enabling students to afford higher tuition costs by committing to pay monthly debt service out of what they earn after they graduate.

The resulting financial overhead consists of claims on the economy’s actual means of production. Yet most people think of these bonds, bank loans and stocks and creditor claims as wealth, not its antithesis on the debit side of the balance sheet. This inside-out doublethink is a precondition for the bubble economy to be applauded by the mass media, keeping its corrosive momentum expanding.

From the corporate sphere and real estate to personal budgets, the distinguishing feature over the past half-century has been the rise in debt/ equity and debt/income ratios. Just as debt leveraging has hiked corporate break-even costs of doing business, so the cost of living has been increased as homes and office buildings have been bid up on mortgage credit. “Creating wealth” in a debt-financed way makes economies high-cost, exacerbated by the tax shift onto labor and consumers instead of capital gains and “free lunch” rent. These financial and fiscal policies have enabled financial managers to siphon off the industrial profits that were expected to fund capital formation to increase productivity and living standards.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

The Juice is out of juice 🤷 What a waste of our collective time and attention that piece of shit was.

that ain't legal either (lemmy.ml)

transcriptScreenshot of github showing part of the commit message of this commit with this text: Remove the backdoor found in 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 (CVE-2024-3094). While the backdoor was inactive (and thus harmless) without inserting a small trigger code into the build system when the source package was created, it’s good to...

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/0597e652-3d6e-4c51-8912-169f4a13dcf1.jpeg

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

You don’t kidnap extremely highly skilled internet malware developers and force them to code for you, you just pay them appropriately.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

I was going to make a joke about this being a trick question, as caffeine is poisonous to lemmings, but my preliminary research suggests that rodents and humans have a similar tolerance.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

gui-better porky-scared

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Whether the death penalty should exist at all is a separate question, but Marxists generally recognize Engels’ conception of social murder.

When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Learn to give some fucks or don’t come back to lemmy.ml.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Thanks, it has pockets!

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Scratch a liberal and a fascist downvotes.

davel , (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

It’s never too late to learn the difference between a people and a state.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

The government’s job is to represent me.

If you work for a living like the vast majority of us do, it isn’t the government’s job to represent you, and it never was. The US was born of a bourgeois revolution, and the Founding Fathers formed a bourgeois democracy, which was never meant to represent the working class, and never has. Princeton University Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

davel , (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

it was a hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-America content.

Welcome to a hotbed of anti-imperial, anti-colonial, and anti-settler content 😂 If you’re looking for pro-imperial core content, you’ve come to the wrong place.

davel , (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: Genocide denial

We do in fact deny genocides that are made up bullshit, yes. Copypasta time.

The US’s “Uyghur genocide” (“cultural” or otherwise) disinformation campaign has already been debunked several times over.

We see here for example the evolution of public opinion in regards to China. In 2019, the ‘Uyghur genocide’ was broken by the media (Buzzfeed, of all outlets). In this story, we saw the machine I described up until now move in real time. Suddenly, newspapers, TV, websites were all flooded with stories about the ‘genocide’, all day, every day. People whom we’d never heard of before were brought in as experts — Adrian Zenz, to name just one; a man who does not even speak a word of Chinese.

Organizations were suddenly becoming very active and important. The World Uyghur Congress, a very serious-sounding NGO, is actually an NED Front operating out of Germany […]. From their official website, they declare themselves to be the sole legitimate representative of all Uyghurs — presumably not having asked Uyghurs in Xinjiang what they thought about that.

The WUC also has ties to the Grey Wolves, a fascist paramilitary group in Turkey, through the father of their founder, Isa Yusuf Alptekin.

Documents came out from NGOs to further legitimize the media reporting. This is how a report from the very professional-sounding China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) came to exist. They claimed ‘up to 1.3 million’ Uyghurs were imprisoned in camps. What they didn’t say was how they got this number: they interviewed a total of 10 people from rural Xinjiang and asked them to estimate how many people might have been taken away. They then extrapolated the guesstimates they got and arrived at the 1.3 million figure.

Sanctions were enacted against China — Xinjiang cotton for example had trouble finding buyers after Western companies were pressured into boycotting it. Instead of helping fight against the purported genocide, this act actually made life more difficult for the people of Xinjiang who depend on this trade for their livelihood (as we all do depend on our skills to make a livelihood).

Any attempt China made to defend itself was met with more suspicion. They invited a UN delegation which was blocked by the US. The delegation eventually made it there, but three years later. The Arab League also visited Xinjiang and actually commended China on their policies — aimed at reducing terrorism through education and social integration, not through bombing like we tend to do in the West.

https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/11da4f3e-9f83-45e4-88db-826ee0c5b1c6.jpeg

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

It’s bold of the US to fund & organize terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and then fabricate a genocide narrative around it lemmy.ml/comment/10145782

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Why do you hate them less than the CPC?

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

The relationship they had with the country I grew up in was not like that, it was more like pay off corrupt politicians, so China can economically exploit it.

[Citation needed]

There is a difference between an imperialist state like the US and an anti-imperialist — and until recently imperialized — state like China.

The US has over 750 overseas military bases around the world, and is building more to further encircle China. Meanwhile China has one anti-piracy base in Djibouti.

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/9952370b-6e3d-4535-b64a-4d055b6c4195.webp

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

I don’t know what those are, but do you mean this video? [REUPLOAD READ DESCRIPTION] American DEBUNKS All Major Western Propaganda on Uyghurs and Xinjiang

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

They hate us for our freedoms no-oil

davel , (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Are you implicitly admitting their critiques are 100% correct?

I am not.

They are actively genociding people and don’t believe in freedom.

They are doing no such thing. I’ve already covered these in my other comments in this post.

davel , (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

You say you don’t like authoritarianism and that China is authoritarian, but you haven’t defined what authoritarianism is or why you don’t like it or why China is it. You prefer the US’s dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (which research shows to be an oligarchy and hardly democratic at all) over China’s dictatorship of the proletariat, which practices democratic centralism.

Domenico Losurdo, 2004: Towards a Critique of the Category of Totalitarianism

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: Calling for people to be killed

Reporter, please learn the difference between a people and a state.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Biblically accurate programming language.

davel , (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

LetMeArchive.TodayThatForYou

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Yellen works for the capitalist class, and they don’t like someone eating their lunch.

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/19cb64c5-b966-4977-97d1-bc9e65fbbc8c.jpeg

Step back for a moment, and the suggested policy change is remarkable. One of the most distinguished living economists is rejecting what’s been one of the most fundamental principles of economics for more than 200 years: comparative advantage. If a country can manufacture goods at lower costs than you can, you shouldn’t raise tariff barriers. Instead, you should import the goods, and send back something in return where your industry is more efficient.

The US has less and less to offer. The neoliberal capitalists deindustrialized the country, and our production costs are burdened by their financialization of everything.

Geopolitical Economy Hour:

davel , (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

aggressive Russian or Chinese navy

Is this a joke? The US has over 750 overseas military bases around the world, and is building more to further encircle China. Meanwhile China has one anti-piracy base in Djibouti.

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/9952370b-6e3d-4535-b64a-4d055b6c4195.webp

If Ukraine falls, Europe is next.

🙄 I’m getting too old for this shit chomsky-yes-honey Is Russia calling for a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum of the European Union? No. Is it capable of doing it? Also no.

davel , (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

I decided to never own a car again, and that was the tiebreaker.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Hard to say China doesn’t do genocide when you consider the Uighurs and Tibet.

Because of the Tibetan Freedom Concert and Adrian Zenz?

twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/…/1309518541163581443

The Tibetan Freedom Concert was run by groups funded by the US govt’s regime-change arm the NED (a CIA cutout created by Reagan)

So many musicians fell for this US govt op, including Beastie Boys, RHCP, Tribe Called Quest, No Doubt, Björk, Yoko Ono, even Rage Against the Machine

Uyghur copypasta:

The US’s “Uyghur genocide” (“cultural” or otherwise) disinformation campaign has already been debunked several times over.

We see here for example the evolution of public opinion in regards to China. In 2019, the ‘Uyghur genocide’ was broken by the media (Buzzfeed, of all outlets). In this story, we saw the machine I described up until now move in real time. Suddenly, newspapers, TV, websites were all flooded with stories about the ‘genocide’, all day, every day. People whom we’d never heard of before were brought in as experts — Adrian Zenz, to name just one; a man who does not even speak a word of Chinese.

Organizations were suddenly becoming very active and important. The World Uyghur Congress, a very serious-sounding NGO, is actually an NED Front operating out of Germany […]. From their official website, they declare themselves to be the sole legitimate representative of all Uyghurs — presumably not having asked Uyghurs in Xinjiang what they thought about that.

The WUC also has ties to the Grey Wolves, a fascist paramilitary group in Turkey, through the father of their founder, Isa Yusuf Alptekin.

Documents came out from NGOs to further legitimize the media reporting. This is how a report from the very professional-sounding China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) came to exist. They claimed ‘up to 1.3 million’ Uyghurs were imprisoned in camps. What they didn’t say was how they got this number: they interviewed a total of 10 people from rural Xinjiang and asked them to estimate how many people might have been taken away. They then extrapolated the guesstimates they got and arrived at the 1.3 million figure.

Sanctions were enacted against China — Xinjiang cotton for example had trouble finding buyers after Western companies were pressured into boycotting it. Instead of helping fight against the purported genocide, this act actually made life more difficult for the people of Xinjiang who depend on this trade for their livelihood (as we all do depend on our skills to make a livelihood).

Any attempt China made to defend itself was met with more suspicion. They invited a UN delegation which was blocked by the US. The delegation eventually made it there, but three years later. The Arab League also visited Xinjiang and actually commended China on their policies — aimed at reducing terrorism through education and social integration, not through bombing like we tend to do in the West.

https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/11da4f3e-9f83-45e4-88db-826ee0c5b1c6.jpeg

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

What a strange factoid to choose to highlight.

I wonder if this “war” hasn’t proportionately killed more children than any in history.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Yup, hence the scare quotes.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

I swear you are like a box of chocolates, Cablemonster. You contain multitudes.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Do you work for the Atlantic Council or the Council on Foreign Relations or something? 🤡

amerikkka nato-cool eu-cool france-cool

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

I wouldn’t put it that way exactly. Ukraine was a constituent part of the USSR, and eastern Ukraine was a major industrial hub. I don’t know the history of it, but perhaps giving the nukes to Russia was part of the deal made in the Post-Soviet transition in Ukraine.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Ukraine=Palestine and Israel=Russia is peak Marvel brain.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

I don’t know why people keep bring up Dugin:

His right-hand man is Aleksandr Dugin

Bullshit. Dugin is a Western chauvinist fascist who is ideologically aligned with the Ukrainian coup government and the Ukrainian Nazis who terrorized the Donbas for almost a decade before Russia intervened two years ago. In what universe is he Putin’s “right-hand man”?

The US would absolutely love to have a regime change that put Dugin in power, because he would invite the American shock therapists back in to finish the plundering that they started in the ’90s under Yeltsin, and that Putin put an end to.

davel , (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

The echo chamber/bubble trope is hilarious because we’re exposed to exactly the same media they are. They’re working with a subset of the information we are and then say we’re in a bubble.

davel , (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

The CIA gives his book away for free: cia.gov/…/36669B7894E857AC4F3445EA646BFFE1_Zbigni…

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

It would be a grave mistake to stop aid to Ukraine while they are still willing and able to fight.

While who is still willing to fight? The conscripted who are forced to fight or the neonazis who volunteered to fight?

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

What’s tators, Precious? Whatever the Atlantic Council and the Council on Foreign Relations and the rules-based international order say they are.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

The free world 😂 Okay boomer 🇺🇸 🦅

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/a560f499-0a7b-4b39-a244-4853cb075054.jpeg

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

severe injuries to our countrymen

You mean this fender bender?

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Three formerly fascist states join Ukraine thonk

davel , (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Idealist, cartoonish, black & white, good vs. evil thinking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_are_either_with_us%2C_or_against_us thinking.

Imperial core governments and the corporate media present to us a cartoonish, Marvel Cinematic Universe version of the world that serves the capitalist class’ interests, particularly their imperialist interests. Inventing Reality and Manufacturing Consent laid this out almost 40 years ago.

Ukraine=good=democracy, Russia=bad=authoritarian. Russia’s invasion was unprovoked because history began on Feb. 24, 2022. Russia is doing genocide (bullshit), never mind the previous decade of Ukraine-backed neonazis genociding the people of the Donbas; or that, for 30 years, people from Noam Chomsky to Jeffrey Sachs to Henry Kissinger warned against breaking our promise not to expand NATO eastward toward Russia. Russia is an oligarchy, never mind Ukraine’s oligarchic coup government that the US installed a decade ago. Ukraine is a democracy, never mind that it has suspended opposition parties and cancelled elections.

davel , (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

My agenda is (1) to save the lives & livelihoods of working class people and (2) anti-imperialism. My agenda is not to carry water for Ukraine’s neoliberal government, which has allowed Global North capitalists to neocolonize it to the detriment of its people.

You mean the Donbas where Ukraine was fighting Russia after they annexed Crimea?

The Donbas is not Crimea; they don’t even touch.

In 2014 the US facilitated a coup, installing a far-right comprador government, because the democratically elected government was insufficiently subservient to US interests. In response, Russia annexed Crimea, a region whose history and people were more aligned with Russia. There wasn’t much fighting involved because the people of Crimea largely welcomed this.

But getting back to the Donbas: how is bombing apartment complexes in one’s own country for nearly a decade “fighting Russia”? That was a neonazi ethnic cleansing project with the support of their own government and the CIA.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Liberals understanding fascism challenge (impossible) en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Fascism

Meanwhile, in Ukraine…

.
Fascism didn’t suddenly appear in 2014, either, it’s been there this whole time.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Preliminarily: For better or worse, !memes doesn’t exclude politics, and it has been that way since before I even created my Lemmy user account. As far as I’m concerned, the comm is what it is. It’s been here since Lemmy’s inception, and !nonpolitical_memes was created three years later (also before my time).

I believe that people who upvote it do it not because they laughed, but because they agree with the political message. And I don’t think memes should be like that.

I agree with you that many people (up/down) vote on political memes not for the quality of the meme but for agreement in the politics. I was on Reddit for over 15 years and made the same observation as you. I, too, am not a fan of low quality memes bubbling to the top on account of their political message, and I personally don’t upvote them. One could try to argue that this behavior is a Reddit holdover, but I suspect that it’s human nature. Just look at how low-quality political cartoons often are in newspapers.

If someone wants to create a political meme community (of whatever political stripe), where the mods aggressively remove low quality memes, they certainly can, and I wish them the best of luck.

I understand that you don’t like the politics of !memes, and I do sympathize with your frustration with the low-quality memes. We can’t police people’s voting motivations, so—unfortunately for you and me—the low-quality memes are not going away. The politics reflect the community, and if the politics don’t reflect you, then it might not be your community. Just block/unsubscribe and move on.

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