In 2009, the University of the West of England published the results of a ten-year study of the BBC’s coverage of Venezuela. Of 304 broadcast reports, only three mentioned any of the positive policies introduced by the government of Hugo
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“Melancholy suicide. —This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract;”
― Suicide: A Study in Sociology
― Suicide: A Study in Sociology
“A false alarm is sounded that government budget deficits will increase consumer prices — with no discussion of how private-sector credit deflates economies. The problem is that credit is debt — and paying debt service to bankers and bondholders (and various grades of loan sharks) leaves less income available to spend on goods and services. So debt deflation is today’s major problem, not inflation.”
― The Bubble and Beyond
― The Bubble and Beyond
“Social democracy as we now know it underwent its moment of speciation when Eduard Bernstein began to question the orthodoxy of revolution. His essential postulate was the absence of crises. The Steven Pinker of socialism, he pointed to the empirical fact that no serious crisis had rocked the capitalist economy for the past two or three decades, which invalidated the Marxian prophecy of a system trending towards collapse. Since it was not prone to malfunctioning, the idea of seizing power, smashing decrepit capitalism and installing a completely different order had become redundant; instead social democracy could continue to grow in strength, extract piecemeal reforms and gradually lift the working class out of the mire. Rosa Luxemburg very famously objected that the crisis tendencies had merely been postponed. In the near future, they would burst forth with even more dreadful violence. Ignoring her prognosis, the social democrats in the making went ahead and presently gave their first demonstration of how they dealt with catastrophe: by expediting it through consent.”
― Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century
― Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century
“Hypocrisy has its place in the ages of strong belief: in which even when one is compelled to exhibit a different belief one does not abandon the belief on already has.”
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“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”
― War and Peace
― War and Peace
Marx's Capital Volumes I, II, III (Study Group - 2020 and beyond)
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We see symptoms of crises all around us, from the immediate "public health" pandemic of COVID19 to repeated "financial" crises to escalating "environm ...more
John’s 2025 Year in Books
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