The structures of financialized capitalism like tax havens benefit organized crime, and the imperial bourgeois state needs and uses both for its covert operations and accumulation strategies. Epstein is a notable outgrowth of this system because he and the elites involved are in the imperial core

If only there was a framework that would help make sense of this and predicted it... Written in 2011 when liberals and big tech still basked in their honeymoon www.aljazeera.com/opinions/201...

The tragedy of the imperial boomerang. In a way it's a good thing that Trump makes this bipartisan cancer obvious, rather than silent. But this is not just about Trump.

This is good acceleration. Meanwhile EU exempted US big tech from binding regulations and is busy devising new sanctions on Iran. Given such cuckoldry I understand why Kallas wants to hit the bottle

Iran is certainly not liberal, but it is no less a democracy than the US parliamentary republic. In both cases people can vote for candidates vetted by the regime, and in both cases laws are set so that the regime doesn't lose control over sandbox democracy. Iran is just less subtle about it.

Liberals in meltdown about the world they co-created. They would be taken more seriously if they looked seriously at the main structural force shaping that world. But it would threaten bourgeois capitalism, so instead they'll keep yelling psychotically "Liberalism is about reason! Let's lie!"

Macron has so far been funding insurgents and terrorists in West Africa, but he dreams of doing in Mali, Niger & Burkina what Trump did in Venezuela. Anyway EU are vassalized client states, international law died in Palestine, fear of Russia is a convenient pretense. Whole liberal order is rotten.

Animal farm fable would make more sense to younger generations with an updated plot. Sheeps bleating "horsehoe!", "strong floor no ceiling!" give the farm keys to suited up wolves consultants, and bred to slaughter in fancier barns. Starring Piglesias, Wolfrich Hayek and Gluton Conman.

This is about capitalism prison, undemocratic liberalism and uselessness of idealism. But also why EU whining about its mistreatment by the US is so grating. The EU peacocks arrogantly in the morning, whine and wail impotently in the evening, and act mendaciously at night.

The awfully convenient rules of the liberal rule based order. www.reuters.com/business/ene...

Fractal of neoliberalism decay. FIFA became commercially focused in the 70-80s. Wealth accumulation is now a virtue in itself. No such a thing as society. Self identifying center-left liberals play blind. Anyway, the game is getting better, faster. And now they are left to play the naive virgin.

Gunpowder hastened the demise of feudalism by changing balance of power between state and fiefs. Bourgeois liberalism with democratic aspiration will go the same way as AI pushes capitalism contradictions toward oligarchic fascism. Lest people imagine the end of capitalism before that of the world

US energy and weapon industry already benefited, stockpiles running low and it appears the gas station with nukes is winning, threatening investments, time to disengage. But EU defense industry now wants in on the bonanza. War will continue, until the last Ukrainian www.reuters.com/business/aer...

"l'Empire n'a jamais pris fin" from @blast-info.fr is easily one of the best documentary series of the century and should be part of popular education. This episode on Louise Michel, Elisee Reclus and the Paris commune is poetic, erudite, illuminating, authentic, spontaneous and funny all at once.

A well kept secret of electoral bourgeois liberal democracy: the voter is not the real customer, it is the supplier.

As Epstein case made clear, the wealth elite is a literal mafia. No chance they let go of their grip on the political economy, or Mamdani substantially improving people lives, until this mafia is destroyed. For that the broader middle class needs to realize the impasse of bourgeois capitalism.

Liberal idiots like stancil are a lost cause, but since the GOP just got shellhacked on the economy let's look at some more graphs to remember that the map is not the territory.

Liberals calling a nazi nazi, impossible challenge. MAGA: we love nazis, we are nazis MAGA: does nazi shit Liberals: that's maoist! www.nytimes.com/1940/08/25/a...

contradictions in the ruling class signal the end of the old order www.marxists.org/archive/leni...

Apart from its usual fantasy propaganda, it's good to have the Atlantic on record stating that, (1) contrary to the genocidal West, Russia doesn't target civilians and (2) Ukraine doesn't abide by Geneva convention and uses human shields. Next time we hear Russia targets homes, we know why.

This is idealization and myth. As long as you were not criticizing the regime dominated by a few wealthy families, yes; otherwise legal rights were absolutely not guaranteed or consistent. Same with antebellum south. Settler colonial societies are protofascist. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Fi...

Is it a surprise institutions are folding so easily when the culture has been infused so deeply with leadership development books? Equivalent to performative corporate wokeness: Vapid, superficial, and utterly ignorant of history/history of ideas. But makes convincing neolib entrepreneurs of self

Poetic windpunk

What a bunch of liberal nonsense, the deluded lengths they are going through to make themselves feel good and superior. This racket sounds like Al Capone soup kitchen

The silver lining, among the frenzied howling of the liberal cold warriors in the West is that, with the G7 being down to ~30% of world GDP, they don't have the means to wage that war anymore. Rest of the world has moved on, wants multipolarity and international law, not "rule based liberal order".

Making progress on realizing liberal capitalism is an ideological variation of authoritarian psychology

what an absolute nightmare

Liberals are quite on edge

250 years later, we're still in the same place. Robespierre dunking on the liberal establishment of his time is still landing

I found this history fascinating, especially how the US under Bush I a) pushed to create the IPCC to center government representatives, not scientists, in UN climate action; b) used the IPCC to block binding emission targets and carbon taxes on rich countries, which seemed imminent in 1988.

Has Kristol acknowledged the error in Iraq and project for new american century yet? Or is it another case of "good when we do it, bad when they do" Venezuela is a very minor production and transit hub for drugs in US, but neocons have been dreaming of "liberating" Venezuela for years

When you're running out of sanctions and have to reach for the nuclear option

"cultivating financial systems that provides longer runways for young firms, and an ideational commitment to modernization and rationalization as critical to organizing economic activities"

One can't tell Starmer from Trump, Zionists from SS Nazi, capitalist liberals from fascists... Goebbels wrote in his diary in July 22 1932 after Altona Bloody Sunday: "We are many who worry that this (Papen) government does so much that we (nazis) won't have anything left to do"

Could be a synopsis for the latest book from Chapoutot, historian specialist of nazism, if decades were years

Great piece that pairs delightfully well with a good yamazaki whiskey

The luddites were right, unironically. There might be AI implementation designs that mitigate these issues, but they will be ignored for the cheapest, easiest profit avenues. Everything that can be commodified will be.

Absolutely, when it comes to democracy, all the talk about expertise, consensus etc... is moot. What matters is the social building of trust. That is what is crucial. Liberals utterly failed through lies during covid Part of why the neoliberal technocrat project is collapsing in authoritarianism

"What we want from the butcher, the brewer & the baker are beef, beer & bread, not for them to be fabulously wealthy shop owners. What China wants from BYD & Jinko Solar are affordable EVs & solar panels, not Trillion-Dollar Market-cap stocks." asiatimes.com/2024/07/chin... bsky.app/profile/did:...

A social organization that relies on moral choices and values to be achieved regardless of material conditions is doomed. As long as liberals are stuck with capitalism, they will swim against the current. Great illustration through materialist analysis of traditional Inuit seasonal organization.

Interesting series of reflexions on agentic AI, variable capital vs dead capital, how to define value when the human labour required to create goods rapidly approaches zero, how do relations of production change?

"Machines do not liberate when they are governed by capital. They reinforce its logic. They repackage its domination as convenience" AIMarx trained on the Gundrisse and Das Kapital

The long term decline in the rate of profits drives politics and economy In the same way climate change drives long term weather patterns.

Another not so marvelous thing is how Americans chose to accept such insane levels of gun violence over the years, on the absurd delusion that it was a policy insurance to save democracy from a tyrant.

The great tragedy of democratic liberalism is that its committed love for capitalism is unrequited

As if there were an invisible hand but not acting in the way it is usually described