Wolff Responds: Capitalism on Life Support

If you liked this short response, you can also check the followings:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3a19Jgj5fM



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGNjniz5zzU

چه باید کرد

پس از سالیان دراز که ایرانیان با حکومت ملاها مدارا کرده اند، نه تنها این حکومت منحوس عقب نشینی نکرده است، بلکه با توجه به نادانی عده قلیلی، بر شقاوت و ستمگری خود افزوده است. متاسفانه گروهی آنچنان به غرب وابسته شده اند که به سختی میتوانند تفاوتها را تشخیص دهند. بر کسی پوشیده نیست که حکومت آخوندی هیچگاه مطابق میل ایرانیان نبوده است و طرفداری گروههای سیاسی ان زمان از خمینی به عنوان کسی که میتوانست گروههای مخالف رژیم شاهی را موتلف کند، به دلیل حمایت از رژیم جدیدی به رهبری این آخوند به ظاهر ساده، نبود. ولی چنانکه در نهاد هر رهبر مذهبی اینرا میتوان جست، سو استفاده از شوق انقلابی توده برای استفاده شخصی، در مورد خمینی نیز مصداق داشت. کسانی که در زمان انقلاب حضور نداشتند، به عنوان نمونه نسل پس از انقلاب، جوانان آن زمان را ناآگاه، و تشخیص آنها را از حکومت شاهی گمراه میدانند. در اینکه انقلابیون خمینی را آنچنان که بایست نمیشناختند و او را به غلط شخصی مصلح به مصالح عموم انگاشته بودند، شکی نیست. البته او در همان یکسال نخست با  خشونتی که در مقابله با مخالفینش نشان داد، مانند اعدام و کشتار و جنگ و تبعیضات جنسی، فطرتش را شناسانده بود. لیکن قدرت نظامی و خشونت او آنچنان پیشرفته بود که مقابله با آن بسیار دشوار مینمود، و پس از چهار دهه، بی عدالتی و خشونت و دزدی و پستی به عنوان سیاست حکومت از ان کوچک مرد همچنان جاری است، و میراث او به نیکی نگاهبانی میشود.

چرا چین از طریق دوستی با غرب قدرتمند شد، اما ما نه

 

 Source: Virgool

بعد از جنگ تحمیلی، تقریبا همان زمانی که صنایع آمریکایی ناگهان به چین سرازیر شدند و رشد سریع و بی سابقه چین شروع شد، ایران هم تقریبا اهداف مشابهی را دنبال می کرد. دوران ریاست جمهوری آیت الله رفسنجانی بود و اولویت کشور توسعه اقتصادی بود، آن هم از طریق گسترش روابط تجاری با غرب. سی سال جلوتر، یعنی امروز، چین اولین قدرت اقتصادی جهان است و اخیرا حتی از آمریکا هم سبقت گرفته است. اما ایران درگیر مشکلات عدیده اقتصادی است که عمدتا ناشی از وابستگی اقتصادی به غرب و نتیجتا آسیب پذیری در مقابل تحریمهای اقتصادی غرب است. چه تفاوتی میان مدل توسعه چین و ایران وجود داشته که نتایجی تا این اندازه متفاوت بدست آمده است؟

Only Medicare For All Can Beat Covid

 AUGUST 21, 2020

by EVE OTTENBERG

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/21/only-medicare-for-all-can-beat-covid/

The U.S. has coped with Covid-19 far worse than any other country on the globe. Though much, much of this catastrophe of over 170,000 dead can be laid at Trump’s door, some of it has to do with the uniquely awful American system of for-profit health care. Those words, “for profit,” mean that the U.S. public health infrastructure, always stunted, had completely shriveled by the time the plague struck. Other countries dealt better with covid because they have different health care systems – single payer or Medicare for All systems, in other words, ones that are, to varying degrees, socialized.

Two clicks to midnight

 By: Ken Leslie    August 21, 2020

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55482.htm

While I was absent from this esteemed blog focusing on other things, an extremely dangerous situation started to develop and I found myself reaching for the keyboard again. If some of my previous writings were a bit alarmist, the tone was motivated by a genuine angst before an unfeeling and unstoppable machine of conquest and destruction the likes of which the world had never seen. And angst it is—anybody with an ounce of common sense can see that the World is hurtling towards some kind of catastrophe. Whether this occurs in a year or five is less relevant. The point is that we are witnessing a process of rapid implosion of the current global system and are not able to see what will replace it. There is no compelling vision of the future—a universal vessel of hope that would transport us across the turbulent waters of fundamental change. This time I am not anxious but resigned. Resignation does not imply learned helplessness—unlike most people around me I am grateful for the ability to be aware of the danger and to articulate what I see as the truth without fear or self-censorship.

Oh, and if the post sounds like a rant, that’s because it is one.

Lights! Camera! Kill! Hollywood, the Pentagon and Imperial Ambitions

AUGUST 14, 2020
by MATTHEW HOH

Link: https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/14/lights-camera-kill-hollywood-the-pentagon-and-imperial-ambitions/

There’s a sickness that comes with the certainty of those who view the world in so black and white, so good and bad, so us versus them terms, that killing is often a morally defensible act. More so, such killing often goes beyond just simple self defense, to a level of retributive necessity, a preventive act that makes the act of killing practically an act of altruism. “If I hadn’t killed the bad guy, the bad guy would have killed other people” so the reasoning goes. The myth of redemptive violence, is clearly espoused and expressed in our explanations of American history: we had to kill the British to be free; in America’s majority Christian religion: Jesus had to die in the most painful way possible, on the cross, for mankind to be saved; and in the United State’s greatest popular culture: Luke had to destroy the Death Star to save the galaxy…

Cornel West and Tricia Rose Talk AOC

 Link: https://therealnews.com/stories/cornel-west-and-tricia-rose-talk-aoc-racial-justice-and-more

Story Transcript

This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Kim Brown: Welcome to The Real News. I’m Kim Brown. As we stand here at the midpoint of 2020 of what has already been a tumultuous year, it’s so important that we take moments to memorialize, observe, reflect, and analyze all of the things that have our society, and by extension, our world in a state of flux right now. And that is exactly what The Tight Rope hopes to achieve. It’s the brand new podcast hosted by professors and doctors Tricia Rose and Cornel West, and their inaugural episode features an in-depth and revealing conversation with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Let’s take a look.

تعریف امپرياليسم

When Iran Welcomed Jewish Refugees

In the middle of World War II, Tehran became a haven for both Jewish and Catholic Polish refugees who were welcomed as they arrived from Soviet Central Asia.

Polish refugees, recently released from Russian concentration camps, in an Iranian camp, circa 1945. Photo from Three Lions / Getty Images.

در رابطه با قرارداد ۲۵ساله ایران و چین

ایران و چین

© Fotolia / Curioso Photography

سیاسی

12:19 09.07.2020دریافت لینک کوتاه

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قاسم محب‌علی، کارشناس سیاست خارجی و دیپلمات سابق ایرانی اظهار داشت در رابطه با انعقاد قرارداد ۲۵ساله با چین، نگرانی اساسی آن است که روابط ایران و چین متوازن نیست و ایران به سبب تحریم‌ها، انتخاب‌های جایگزین ندارد. همین امر سبب می‌شود تا کفه ترازو به نفع امتیازگیری چین سنگین‌تر شود.

به گزارش اسپوتنیک به نقل از شرق، برنامه همکاری‌های جامع (۲۵ساله) ایران و چین بار دیگر تبدیل به نگرانی عمومی در سطح جامعه شده است. ابعاد مختلفی که در پیش‌نویس نهایی آن به نگارش درآمده و به بیرون درز کرده است، نگرانی‌هایی جدی در مورد شیوه همکاری ایران و چین ایجاد کرده است و کارشناسان و متخصصان هشدار می‌دهند که اگر نسبت به مواردی که در این پیش‌نویس آمده (این پیش‌نویس را ایران تهیه کرده و هنوز به تأیید چین نرسیده است، بنابراین نمی‌توان آن را نهایی قلمداد کرد) اصلاحات جدی صورت نگیرد و دقت کافی به کار گرفته نشود، می‌تواند به زیان ایران تمام شود.

Opinion The Neoliberal Looting of America

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/opinion/private-equity-inequality.html?searchResultPosition=2

7/2/2020
By: Mehrsa Baradaran
The private equity industry, which has led to more than 1.3 million job losses over the last decade, reveals the truth about free markets.

“It’s hard to separate what’s good for the United States and what’s good for Bank of America,” said its former chief executive, Ken Lewis, in 2009. That was hardly true at the time, but the current crisis has revealed that the health of the finance industry and stock market is completely disconnected from the actual financial health of the American people. As inequality, unemployment and evictions climb, the Dow Jones surges right alongside them — one line compounding suffering, the other compounding returns for investors.

طول عمر

خوشحال باش که امروز زندگی میکنی. پیش از انقلاب صنعتی  طول عمر بین 30 تا 40 سال بود. امروزه متوسط سن 72 سال است. گرچه این افزایش زمان زندگی در تمام دنیا صورت گرفته است ولی نه به یک نسبت. فردی که در موناکو زندگی میکند میتواند انتظار داشته باشد که 90 سالگی اش را جشن بگیرد ولی کسی که در کشورهای افریقایی  مثلا چاد  زندگی میکند به سختی ممکن است که زندگی پس از 50 سال را تجربه کند. با تمام ثروتی که کشور امریکا دارد و صرفا  به دلیل عدم تقسیم عادلانه این ثروت و تفاوت 

فاحشی که فقیر از نظر مادی با غنی دارد  متوسط سن همچنان زیر 79 سال است.

The World Builds a Wall to Keep America Out

July 1, 2020
Farhad Manjoo
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/opinion/us-travel-ban-europe.html?searchResultPosition=1

 

You might call it poetic, if it weren’t so painful. Donald Trump won the White House largely on a campaign of shutting America’s borders to pretty much everyone other than people of European descent. “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” he once asked, about Haitians, Salvadorans and Africans. “We should have more people from places like Norway.” So what should one conclude about America’s own proximity to Trump’s global latrine now that “places like Norway” have decided to keep their borders indefinitely closed to us? Among the list of nations to which Norway and the rest of Europe will soon reopen for travel are three from the continent that Trump flushed down the toilet: Algeria, Morocco and Rwanda. Canada is also on the list. So is China, assuming it reciprocates. But Trump’s America is not, because we are nowhere close to meeting Europe’s criteria for reducing the spread of the coronavirus. How successfully a society can fight a pandemic is as objective a measure of national capacity, not to mention “greatness,” as one is likely to find — and on this, like so much else these days, America ranks near the bottom.

The Jobs We Need

By The Editorial Board 

June 24, 2020

Link:  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/opinion/income-wealth-inequality-america.html?searchResultPosition=1

Over the past four decades, American workers have suffered a devastating loss of economic power, manifest in their wages, benefits and working conditions. The annual economic output of the United States has almost tripled, but, with the help of policymakers from both political parties, the wealthy hoarded the fruits. In the nation’s slaughterhouses, the average worker in 1982 made $24 an hour in inflation-adjusted dollars, or $50,000 a year. Today the average meatpacker processes significantly more meat — and makes less than $14 an hour.

How the World Missed Covid-19's Silent Spread

Symptomless transmission makes the coronavirus far harder to fight. But health officials dismissed the risk for months, pushing misleading and contradictory claims in the face of mounting evidence. 

By Matt Apuzzo, Selam Gebrekidan and David D. Kirkpatrick

June 27, 2020

The Worst Worst Case

Link:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/coronavirus-banks-collapse/612247/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

After months of living with the coronavirus pandemic, American citizens are well aware of the toll it has taken on the economy: broken supply chains, record unemployment, failing small businesses. All of these factors are serious and could mire the United States in a deep, prolonged recession. But there’s another threat to the economy, too. It lurks on the balance sheets of the big banks, and it could be cataclysmic. Imagine if, in addition to all the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, you woke up one morning to find that the financial sector had collapsed.

You may think that such a crisis is unlikely, with memories of the 2008 crash still so fresh. But banks learned few lessons from that calamity, and new laws intended to keep them from taking on too much risk have failed to do so. As a result, we could be on the precipice of another crash, one different from 2008 less in kind than in degree. This one could be worse.

Interesting Youtube Clips

Human Zoos: America's Forgotten History of Scientific Racism

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY6Zrol5QEk

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FULL DOCUMENTARY: Mississippi's War: Slavery and Secession | MPB

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3CFD2RRF80

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Enslavement to Emancipation

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFwG7jAeyrU

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Valuetainment

Dr. Richard Wolff has received his undergraduate, graduate, and PHD from three most famous American universities. His field of study and the subject he teaches is economics, which may not seem to be out of ordinary at first. However, considering his studies in Marxist economy and communism in which he believes also, a taboo subject in any educational system in the United States, especially in economics department where only capitalist economy should be discussed, makes him very different, and one could imagine what a hard professional life he has been going through. Having great interest in his thoughts and vision, I follow his weekly discussion, along with his speeches and interviews. Yesterday, I saw an interview of him on the youtube, and when the interviewer claimed to be originally from Iran, I became more interested to watch it.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj-zFgxCUnY

What if There Were No George Floyd Video?

By: Nicholas Kristof
6/6/2020
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/opinion/sunday/george-floyd-structural-racism.html?searchResultPosition=2

Imagine that no one had shot video of George Floyd being killed by the police in Minneapolis. There would have been a bland statement that he had died resisting arrest, and none of us would have heard of him.

Instead, the horror of that video has ignited protests around the world. Racism in that video is as visceral as a lynching.

Count Your Blessings!

On my daily walk, this morning on noticed a sign in front of a house that said: “count your blessings”. What came to my mind in an instance was that I would count our years of humanity, up to half millennia ago and since we, as Homo-sapiens, started walking upright on earth and learned not only to think about ourselves but also about the public at large. According to Wikipedia “Humans (Homo sapiens) are the only extant members of the subtribe Hominina. Together with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, they are part of the family Hominidae (the great apes, or hominids). Humans are terrestrial animals, characterized by their erect posture and bipedal locomotion; high manual dexterity and heavy tool use compared to other animals; open-ended and complex language use compared to other animal communications; larger, more complex brains than other animals; and highly advanced and organized societies.”  We learned to be selfless after we invented ways and means to conquer hunger and provide shelter for ourselves. That is when we realized that earth was our home at large, and we must protect our home for our own survival.