LUMPENPROLETARIAT—[Monday, 20 MAR 2023] Greetings, fellow readers. Here are some of today’s media/press notes to help us track and make sense of this plandemic dystopia we all find ourselves living through in the 2020s, including inverted totalitarianism, medical authoritarianism, medical apartheid, police state surveillance, repression, and lockdowns, COVID-19 psyop, post-COVID-19 controlled demolition of the global economy, looming food crisis, the rise of neo-feudalism, houseless encampments of the neo-peasantry, nuclear danger, creeping WWIII provoked by US/NATO/AUKUS imperialism against the BRICS nations and the global south, military pollution, petrol pollution, corporate pollution, chemical pollution, geoengineering, chemical cloud seeding, endocrine disrupting chemicals in the food and water, a worsening global fertility crisis, and industry-induced and/or geoengineering-induced climate change leading to a climate crisis of melting ice caps, record heatwaves, tornadoes, floods, drought, drying rivers, and other extreme weather events, which threaten life on Earth.
Let’s learn together; and find solutions together. Let’s build working-class solidarity. Let’s build human solidarity. Let’s form groups and “act for justice”, as Ralph Nader has long advised. “[There’s] power anywhere where there’s people,” as Fred Hampton said. Siempre hay esperanza. (Please see below for samples of today’s news cycle.)
“The stock market is not a game,” said Marc Cohodes, as he spat fiery truth about the “stock manipulators, like Zero Hedge“, who mess with regular capitalist companies for profit, and CEOs, like Mr. Shay, who are “praising Gordon Gekko” and chanting “greed is good”, and money laundering banks, who use crypto as “a foil” to cover-up for criminals, human traffickers, and terrorists, in the interview he provided today for Jack Farley, host of the Forward Guidance podcast, accessible (among other places) on the Blockworks Macro YouTube channel. This is the first encounter, which your author has had with the perspectives, analysis, and philosophy of “Marc Cohodes, accomplished short-seller [i.e., bond vigilante?] and financial bloodhound,” who according to Forward Guidance, “is on the ultimate hot-streak. Over the past six months, he has been the sternest critic of FTX, Silvergate, and Signature Bank, all of which either have ceased operations as a corporate entity or will do so shortly. He shares what led him to call out FTX in the summer of 2022 (months before its bankruptcy in the fall) and why he shorted the stocks of Silvergate ($SI) and Signature Bank ($SBNY), which have both collapsed in value (a share of Silvergate trades at less than two dollars and shares of Signature Bank no longer trade after it was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on March 12).”
Thus, it appears Marc Cohodes’ short-selling—bond vigilanteism?—or shorting of Signature Bank and Silvergate Bank may have been a significant factor, if not the primary factor, in the collapses of those two banks, which, along with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, led to the Banking Crisis of March 2023, led to the toppling of the house of cards, which is the systematically fragile banking system in the U.S. And, of course, the global nature of capital flows means the U.S. banking system is interwoven with the global banking system, or at least the North Atlantic Banking System of the global north. The too-big-to-fail argument (cf. Investopedia; Wikipedia) must not be an excuse for protecting corrupt institutions, though. If it’s too big to fail, then it probably is too big to exist, or at least too big to exist without democratic governance in the hands of democratically-elected government. But, hey, your author is only a working-class layperson. Perhaps, you, fellow reader, can see the big picture better than your author can, especially if you’re an expert on these topics. Layperson or expert, your reasoned opinion is valuable. Please share it in the comments section below, so that, together, we can make sense of the world around us. Then, we can help make the world better, such that it provides shelter and safety, rather than insecurity, stifling danger, and harm. There’s always going to be some degree of danger; but humanity will be far better off with cooperation, exposing the selfish, the wicked, the evil, and the greedy.
To that end, Marc Cohodes is definitely someone to pay attention to, especially when it comes to the world of bond trading, investing, and banking. Mr. Cohodes provides us with a much grittier, detailed, and realistic portrait of what’s really behind the Banking Crisis of March 2023 than we typically find. Check out Marc Cohodes’ Forward Guidance interview. (Link and additional notes are below.)
I think our priority should not be electoral politics. I think our priority should be building disciplined, organized, militant popular movements. And electoral politics can be a part of that movement, but shouldn’t be the primary focus. We have to rebuild those organizations because the only strength we have is in our numbers. And, if we use those numbers correctly, we can pit power against power. But that requires organization.
Chris Hedges (quoted from a 2021 talk at Brooklyn College)
OTHER SALIENT OBSERVATIONS:
- “LIVE / En direct: Paris / France – Protest takes place following no-confidence votes – 20.03.2023” by demonstration_live [via YouTube], 20 MAR 2023. [3hrs 29min 48sec] | NOTES: […] (11:27 PDT) ‘started 34 min ago’ … (1132 PDT) [channel/station change (CC)]
- “How Marc Cohodes Predicted The Bank Collapse | Silvergate, Signature Bank, & FTX” by Blockworks Macro [via YouTube], 20 MAR 2023. [1hr 16min 02sec] (Additional notes on this interview below.)
- “San Francisco Has Fallen” by TheDC Shorts [via YouTube], 20 MAR 2023. [5min 51sec] | This is a video collage of petty crime, break-ins of cars parked on streets or stuck in traffic congestion and muggings of people out in public, such as photographers at touristy spots, such as the Embarcadero or the Palace of Fine Arts. (Additional notes on this video below.)
- “TLAV Fundraising Event” by TLAVagabond [via Rokfin], 20 MAR 2023. [5hrs 35min 34sec] | [08:35 PDT] NOTES: […] ‘Started 3hrs ago’ (1131 PDT) livestream just ended, it seems, a fundraising event… (1hr 02min 00sec) Whitney Webb: ‘this reminds me of how the 9/11 Truth movement torpedoed itself by nitpicking over details…’
- FINANCE 101:
- “Bonds 101 (DETAILED EXPLANATION FOR BEGINNERS)” by Rose Han [via YouTube], 23 SEP 2020. [12min 25sec] (Additional notes on this presentation below.)
- “Bond Investing 101–A Beginner’s Guide to Bonds” by Rob Berger [via YouTube], 18 JUL 2021. [45min 00sec] (Additional notes on this presentation below.)
- “Bonds Explained Simply | Presentation and Q&A with Michael Lebowitz” by Wealthion [via YouTube], 22 NOV 2022. [1hr 18min 05sec] [L5]
- MINING MEMORY HOLES:
- “The CIA, Contras, Gangs, and Crack: Based on a year-long investigation, reporter Gary Webb wrote that during the 1980s the CIA helped finance its covert war against Nicaragua’s leftist government through sales of cut-rate cocaine to South Central L.A. drug dealer, Ricky Ross.” by William Blum, Institute for Policy Studies, 1 NOV 1996. [R0] #AbolishTheCIA
- “WHAT DRIVES GENTRIFICATION?: Residents of big cities everywhere face the effects of gentrification, as long-time residents are pushed out of neighborhoods they called home by rising rents and housing costs and other changes. In this article based on a speech at a recent ISO forum in Brooklyn, Ronnie Almonte looks at the roots of gentrification–and how we should respond.” by Ronnie Almonte, Socialist Worker, 15 JAN 2014. [R0]
- “‘NO MORE CRYING’: THE STORY BEHIND AIMEE MANN’S HEARTBREAKING SONG ABOUT AL JOURGENSEN OF MINISTRY” posted by Cherrybomb (probably written by Christopher Bickel), Dangerous Minds, “02.11.2019“
- “Social Economics & Its Relationship to Other Heterodox Schools of Economic Thought” by Steven Pressman, American Review of Political Economy, 31 DEC 2019.
- “The untold story of the inmate who helped shape Malcolm X’s future: To Malcolm, he was Bimbi. To me he was John Elton Bembry, my uncle.” by Jerry Bembry, Andscape, 20 FEB 2020. [R0]
- “Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government” by Readara [via YouTube], 19 JUN 2020. [49min 50sec] | [L14] This is an interview with David Talbot, author of the 2016 book, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, which your scribe has noted previously. #AbolishTheCIA (Additional notes on this interview below.)
- “Introduction to MMT with Professor L. Randall Wray” by Rethinking Economics [via YouTube], 30 MAR 2021. [37min 23sec] | COMMENTS: If you don’t know about MMT yet, it’s modern monetary theory (or modern money theory), which is kind of like a brand name for a body of scholarship, which most accurately describes the way modern monetary systems function and what exactly modern-day money is. (Comments continued below.)
@LumpenProles, last modified/edited/updated on 29 MAR 2023 at 08:47 PDT.
MEDIA NOTES, NEWS, VIEWS, WORKING CLASS BLUES, INFORMATION, INSPIRATION, PERSPIRATION, AND AGITATION FROM A WORKING CLASS PERSPECTIVE*
[Ideally, your author would have included links to all programs listed below. Programs listed without an embeded link or listener notes are based on past scheduling and have not yet been verified. Please check relevant websites for actual programming. / Notes will be modified/edited/updated as time and labor constraints allow. Working class solidarity. ✊🏽✊🏼✊🏿✊]
Monday, 20 March 2023
*The opinions expressed by the hosts, guests, journalists, authors, and other speakers in today’s sampling of news and information are not necessarily the views of Lumpenproletariat.
The free speech Pacifica Radio Network, perhaps the world’s oldest listener-sponsored, definitely the world’s first and only listener-owned radio network, includes KPFA (the first Pacifica Radio station; Berkeley, CA), WBAI (NYC), KPFK (Los Angeles), WPFW (D.C.), and KPFT (Houston), and has many other affiliate stations. The U.S. government, having undergone a corporate coup d’état in slow motion (if not a military coup on 22 NOV 1963), and being inimical to the Bill of Rights, is opposed to free speech radio. After the 1999 KPFA Lockouts, listeners won democratic governance of the Pacifica Radio Network. Unfortunately, since then, a liberal (i.e., pro-capitalist or non-anti-capitalist) faction, including KPFA news bosses (Aileen Alfandary, Mark Mericle, et al.), have colluded to undermine democratic governance and to NPR-ize Pacifica Radio. Free speech Pacifica Radio is your radio network, built to broadcast news and information, which the establishment tries to distort or hide from you. We cannot hope for a democratic society without an informed citizenry. Please support free speech Pacifica Radio. Become a member with full voting rights for as little as $25 per year. Then, hold your Pacifica Radio stations accountable and keep Pacifica Radio true to the Pacifica Mission Statement. Then, help expand free speech radio and digital media. Most media/press is state-corporate propaganda. The airwaves belong to the people. Don’t let Democrat partisans colonize free speech radio. Don’t let Democrat partisans keep the working-class imaginary confined within the false left-right paradigm, within the false opposition party that is the Democrat Party, within the corporate two-party dictatorship. The working-class needs institutional power to build political power, not just cultural awareness or cultural celebration, not just “identity politics”, which are mostly cultural, not political, concerns. Political education is as necessary for working-class liberation, as it is central to the Pacifica Mission Statement. Unfortunately, the Democrat Party, the two-party system, the establishment is dumbing down America. And this process of depoliticization and demobilization is being advanced within Pacifica Radio by certain people, apparently connected to the Democrat Party and/or the U.S. government. Please support free speech Pacifica Radio, then hold it accountable to its Mission Statement. Oust the sophists. Lift up the truth-seekers. This daily column is dedicated to the Pacifica Mission Statement, dedicated to exposing sophistry and deception, dedicated to the liberation of the working-class through communication, dia logos, encouraging mindful action within and between wisdom-cultivating communities. As Einstein suggested, like Socrates before him, the important thing is to not stop questioning.
04:00 PST / 06:00 CST, KPFT [HD2] [Houston, TX] > Flashpoints
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: This program, Flashpoints, is one of the most honest, compassionate, and hard-hitting shows on the free speech Pacifica Radio Network, or anywhere for that matter. This program is easily as important, as the best of them: Project Censored; The Gary Null Show; On The Ground: Voices of Resistance From the Nation’s Capitol; Covid, Race & Democracy, Guns and Butter, et al.
04:00 PDT / 06:00 CST, KPFT [Houston, TX] > The Thom Hartmann Program
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
04:00 PST / 07:00 EST, WBAI [NYC] > What’s Going On? Labor Monday with Bob Hennelly
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
05:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] & 07:00 CST, KPFK [Los Angeles, CA] (simulcast) > Letters and Politics
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: This 05:00 timeslot wastes a one-hour block on repeating the previous day’s show, as if this show was worthy of such repetition. Not even Democracy Now! is worthy of being aired twice per day on the same station. But Letters and Politics reruns are an example of the way liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists) colonize and monopolize the free speech radio airwaves and prevent voices to the left of them from having a fair opportunity to be heard.
05:00 PST / 07:00 CST / 08:00 EST, WBAI [NYC] & WPFW [D.C.] & KPFT [Houston, TX] [simulcast] > Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman and company
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: Democracy Now! used to be a hard-hitting, adversarial newscast. Now, Amy Goodman is a millionaire and Democracy Now! is no longer willing to be honest about various things, including the two-party dictatorship, 9/11, COVID-19, and US/NATO imperialism. As Danny Haiphong wrote in 2021, “[Democracy Now!] has become a reliable platform for uncritical regime change propaganda, demonizing targets of US empire from Syria to Nicaragua.” [ 1 ]
06:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman and company
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: [also see comments above for earlier broadcast of this same daily episode]
06:00 PST / 09:00 EST, WBAI [NYC] > Law and Disorder with Heidi Boghosian, Michael Smith Producer: Geoff Brady
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
07:00 PST / 10:00 EST, WBAI [NYC] > Project Censored
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: This program, Project Censored, is one of the most honest, compassionate, and hard-hitting shows on the free speech Pacifica Radio Network, or anywhere for that matter. This program is easily as important, as the best of them: Flashpoints; The Gary Null Show; On The Ground: Voices of Resistance From the Nation’s Capitol; Guns and Butter; Covid, Race & Democracy, et al.
07:00 PST / 09:00 CST, KPFT [HD2] [Houston, TX] > The People’s News
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
07:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > UpFront
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: UpFront is some of the worst Machiavellian perception management, which will never inform the working class, which is oppressed by the power elite, nor help them connect the dots between issues to help the public see the larger truths to be able to learn from past experience. This is liberal [i.e., pro-capitalist or non-anti-capitalist] entertainment masquerading as critical leftist [i.e., anti-capitalist] journalism and analysis. But you don’t have to take your author’s word for it. Listen for yourself. [ 2 ]
08:00 PST / 10:00 CST, KPFT [Houston, TX] > Covid, Race & Democracy
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: This program, Covid, Race & Democracy, is one of the most honest, hard-hitting, yet compassionate, programs on the free speech Pacifica Radio Network, or anywhere for that matter. This program is easily as important, as the best of them: Project Censored; Flashpoints; The Gary Null Show; On The Ground: Voices of Resistance From the Nation’s Capitol; Guns and Butter; Clearing the FOG; Covid, Race & Democracy, et al.
08:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Law & Disorder with Cat Brooks
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
09:00 PST / 12:00 EST, WBAI [NYC](simulcast) & PRN.Live [NYC] > The Gary Null Show
NOTES (The Gary Null Show for Monday, 20 MAR 2023, PRN.Live Livestream): […] (09:02 PDT) Commentary: ‘…we have more issues facing us all than ever before…yet, there are fewer sources of honest information to help us make reasoned decisions…’ [TW] (09:04 PDT) [channel/station change (CC)]
NOTES (The Gary Null Show for Monday, 20 MAR 2023, WBAI Livestream): […] (09:04 PDT) Commentary: ‘…we have more issues facing us all than ever before…yet, there are fewer sources of honest information to help us make reasoned decisions…’ [TW] [Sounds like a simulcast coming from PRN.Live, identical broadcast.] … (09:11 PDT) Dr. Null talked about AI replacing teachers. [It just occurred to your author, who recently enrolled in some college courses for career retraining purposes. There were only online courses offered. And your author has actually never met his instructor in person before. With only online classes being offered in many cases, and the advent of ChatGPT AI technology, it is becoming foreseeable how human teachers very well could be completely eliminated. And that’s saying nothing about the lack or humanity we already see in many of our human educators, who go along with the phony status quo, rather than teaching critical thinking skills or critical media literacy or critical citizenship skills. Many of these human educators are already about as inhuman as ChatGPT. ] … (09:16 PDT) … Challenging Tucker Carlson’s cherrypicking critiques and lying by omission, COVID-19 psyop, and the French people’s protests to defend their pensions (a million protested’), and the farmers in Denmark defending their family farms. Meanwhile, the average American seems to be blissfully ignorant of the myriad issues threatening us all, in denial or frozen with fear. … (09:20 PDT) … Healthy actor (Lance Reddick) in good shape suddenly died of a heart attack, yet no autopsy to rule out the COVID-19 injectable drug products or find the true cause… [Indeed, your author thought the same thing when he was informed by word-of-mouth yesterday.] … | Important healing information to heal from COVID-19 infections and injections… (09:40 PDT) ‘natto kin-ase(sp?)’, a bacteria-fermented soybean food popular among Japanese people, which is known to help break down bloodcots. Bloodcots have been associated with SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 injectable drug products. ‘Prof. Resse Pretorius(sp?) and Prof. [?] Patel(sp?) | 0943 on how to get rid of the spike protein from the body … Dr. Michael [?]…’ inhibits [?], which leads to fibroneliscence(?), break down of fibrosis…’ | 0946 Null…’the French have done research we, in the US, haven’t. They have health information, which we don’t… These are orthodox doctors and peer-reviewed science…’ 0947 ‘they can block the infiltration of self-organizing lipid nanoparticles…embalmers have been unable to embalm bodies, which have blood vessels filled with these lipid nanoparticles that look like rubber bands’ … 0948 ‘itro-genetic(?)’, or dying from medical malpractice or maltreatment…medical errors, or British medical journal, is in huge numbers … 0949 ‘440,000 dead from heart attacks, stroke is #2, but medical errors is the #3 leading cause of death…some 140,000….’ 0950 An update on Dr. Null’s anti-aging studies.
COMMENTS: This program, The Gary Null Show, is one of the most honest, compassionate, and hard-hitting shows on Pacifica Radio, or anywhere for that matter. Your author doesn’t agree with everything Dr. Null says. But, when it comes to health and healing information, Dr. Null is one of the most important voices around today. This program is easily as important, as the best of them: Flashpoints; Project Censored; On The Ground: Voices of Resistance From the Nation’s Capitol; Covid, Race & Democracy, Guns and Butter, et al.
09:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Democracy Now!
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: [see comments above for 06:00 broadcast]
10:00 PDT / 13:00 EDT, PRN.Live [NYC] > Leid Stories with Utrice Leid
NOTES: […] 1004 music: Le Freak by Chic … jazz … | 1008 begin UL, ‘Today, I’m going to put u in the role of reporter or analyst on the topic of Donald Trump’s imminent arrest. From ur perspective, what is the fallout likely to be if he is, in fact, indicted on charges of paying Stormy Daniels(sp?) thru his lawyer hush money about $130,000…’ 1010 … [some technical difficulties] … | 1. ‘Gwen from New York’ ‘Trump might get arrested, but any attention is good attention for him. Plus, this deflects away from Biden… The important issue today is the banking crisis…’ | 1025 PDT 2. ‘Jackie from Brooklyn’, a regular caller, a good representative of working-class common sense. … I do agree w/Gwen that this is a deflection away from the bigger issue of the banking crisis…. 1027. ‘I feel it’s interesting when Hillary Clinton was under scrutiny, he was chanting lock her up, but now he’s crying victimhood or persecution… 1028 | 1031. 3. ‘Dylan(?) from the Bronx’ ‘I agree with Gwen and Jackie there are bigger problems | 1033 ur author called in but was too late, UL only doing a half show due to doctor’s appointment… | 1035 rerun, ‘Ed from Queens’ | ‘Jeremiah from Harlem’ [TW] … on using the ‘gentle art of jujitsu to diffuse a violent situation…’ UL argues lawyers may still use their legal martial arts to railroad a good Samaritan… 1043 offline, back to the rat race…
COMMENTS: This program, Leid Stories, is dedicated to free speech, but free speech with common sense, courtesy, and focus. Listeners are invited to call in to speak freely about a particular question posed by the host, Utrice Leid. Unlike other call-in shows, like Thom Hartmann, Kris Welch, Mitch Jeserich, and many others on free speech Pacifica Radio, on Leid Stories, callers aren’t screened or filtered, dissonant voices aren’t cut short, or otherwise handled to control the narrative. Instead, the host, Utrice Leid, helps callers make their point, as long as it’s a cogent argument. Utrice Leid encourages critical thinking. On Fridays, the discussion theme is “Free Your Mind Fridays”, where listeners are invited to call in to articulate an opinion on any topic they wish. KPFA listeners deserve a radio host, like Utrice Leid, during weekdays, instead of Democrat Party apologist hosts, such as Kris Welch, who perpetuate phony establishment narratives, and stifle call-ins. | Leid Stories is one of the most honest, hard-hitting, yet compassionate, programs on the free speech Progressive Radio Network, or anywhere for that matter. This program is easily as important, as the best of them: Project Censored; Flashpoints; The Gary Null Show; On The Ground: Voices of Resistance From the Nation’s Capitol; Guns and Butter; Clearing the FOG; Covid, Race & Democracy; et al.
10:00 PST / 12:00 CST, KPFT [HD2] [Houston, TX] > Code Pink
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
10:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] & KPFT [Houston, TX] (simulcast) > Letters and Politics
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: This program suffers from the same “liberal bias”, as UpFront, Democracy Now!, Letters and Politics, Lopate at Large, Talkies, et al. Democrat Party apologism and a refusal to critique or interrogate the two-party dictatorship is the common thread…
10:00 PDT / 13:00 EDT, WBAI [NYC] > Leonard Lopate at Large (pre-empted) > Take Charge of Your Health with Corrine Funari(sp?)
NOTES: Lopate pre-empted, ‘will return next week,’ according to board operator Tony Bates … On the benefits of olive oil … 1003 [fund drive mode…] interview with Despina Wilson(sp?) … 1004 CC
COMMENTS: This program suffers from the same “liberal bias”, as UpFront, Democracy Now!, Letters and Politics, Talkies, et al. Democrat Party apologism and a refusal to critique or interrogate the two-party dictatorship is the common thread…
11:00 PST / 14:00 CST, WBAI [NYC] > Trauma Code with
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
11:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > The Ralph Nader Radio Hour
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
11:00 PST / 13:00 CST, KPFT [Houston, TX] > Thom Hartmann
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet] [N.B.: No podcast link provided. No download link provided. However, audio is accessible at the KPFT-FM, Houston Archive by manually searching for this program by searching the archive. As of 3 OCT 2022, it appears the KPFT archive only goes back to 22 JAN 2019.]
12:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Against the Grain
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
12:00 PST / 15:00 EST, WPFW [D.C.] > Jazz and Justice- African Deep Thought with Brother Ka’Ba’
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
12:00 PST / 15:00 EST, PRN.Live [NYC] > Ask Beatty with Beatty Cohan
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: This radio program is new to your author. The 27 FEB 2023 broadcast is the first your author actually noticed. But your author is looking forward to listening again. Hopefully, PRN.Live can archive the programs. That way listeners can listen afterwards, if they miss the live broadcast due to work or other responsibilities, which prevent listening to the live broadcast, or webcast, as the case may be.
12:00 PST / 15:00 EST, WBAI [NYC] > Vantage Point
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
13:00 PST / 16:00 EST, WBAI [NYC] > Covid, Race & Democracy with PNB Covid Taskforce
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: This is a good show. Your author is acquainted with at least two contributors. [ 3 ]
13:00 PST / 15:00 CST, KPFT [Houston, TX] > Hard Knock Radio
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
13:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Women’s Magazine
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: For the most part, this program suffers from the same “liberal bias”, as UpFront, Democracy Now!, Letters and Politics, Lopate at Large, Talkies, et al. Democrat Party apologism and a refusal to critique or interrogate the two-party dictatorship is the common thread…
13:00 PST / 15:00 EST, PRN.Live [NYC] > Exploration with Dr. Michio Kaku
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: Your author is a long-time listener of Exploration, a science program, with Dr. Michio Kaku, first listening on free speech KPFA (Pacifica Radio) years ago, perhaps, decades ago, at least since the early 2000s, if not earlier. Notably, Dr. Michio Kaku’s official website links his Exploration radio program description to the KPFA radio archives. Apparently, he and his team haven’t noticed that the last archive for Exploration on the KPFA archives website is dated 3 MAR 2020. It seems KPFA has betrayed Dr. Michio Kaku. But, apparently, he doesn’t know it because his website is still linking people to an archive page, which has stopped airing and stopped archiving his radio program. Yet, many other stations and audio streaming services, more dedicated to free speech, continue to broadcast Exploration. Your author recalls the corrupt liberal faction at KPFA, which has been gaslighting people about the COVID-19 psyop, was pushing the zoonotic origins theory of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. For example, C.S. Soong (host of Against the Grain) broadcast an interview with a guest pushing that implausible and false narrative. To this day, Against the Grain and other liberal (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalist) programs politically allied with that same liberal (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalist) faction, continue to push the false establishment narratives around the COVID-19 psyop. Yet, early on, Dr. Michio Kaku stated on Exploration that the zoonotic origins theory of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was still inconclusive. His authoritative perspective contradicted the non-scientist types at KPFA pushing the establishment narrative without compelling evidence. It seems the liberal (i.e., pro-capitalist or non-anti-capitalist) faction decided to stop airing Exploration at that point. And, it appears, the gaslighting liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists) at KPFA even went so far as to remove all Exploration archives back to 3 MAR 2020. Lockdowns and the COVID-19 psyop began later that month. Your author’s employer sent all of the workers home to go into lockdown on Friday, 20 MAR 2020. Another good program, which seems to have been cut, or purged, by the establishment liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists) colonizing free speech KPFA, is Your Own Health and Fitness with Layna Berman. (Free speech KPFA is being turned into controlled speech KPFA. And listeners are turning away, which is a shame. Your author encourages listeners not to turn away because working-class people need a people’s radio. We must hold the listener-sponsored, listener-owned Pacifica Radio stations accountable, rather than abandon the only free speech terrestrial radio network in the nation.) Your author can’t remember the last time he heard Your Own Health and Fitness with Layna Berman on KPFA. But her website indicates their final broadcast on KPFA was 30 APR 2019, almost a year before the COVID-19 psyop began. Layna Berman and he co-host Dr. Jeffry Fawcett tended to speak honestly about controversial health topics, such as fluoride and electromagnetic pollution. So, your author suspects, Layna Berman would have been critical of the COVID-19 psyop. Dr. Kaku seems to be a liberal (i.e., pro-capitalist or non-anti-capitalist). He seems to be honest; but he doesn’t seem willing to engage in science topics, which intersect with deep politics. Is that an example of intellectual dishonesty? You decide. Please let us know in the comments section. And Dr. Michio Kaku doesn’t seem to be an anti-imperialist. But, at the very least, he has been known to be an anti-nuclear war activist. So, that’s good. Nobody is perfect. Your author often longs for brilliant thinkers, like Dr. Michio Kaku, to be more political, or at least be more outspoken about his political perspectives and/or concerns. But, sometimes, people are specialists; and we just have to be grateful for the good things they do in their particular field and leave it at that. We take what makes sense, and leave behind the rest. The bottom line: Explorations is worthy of your time and attention, in your author’s humble opinion.
14:00 PST / 17:00 EST, WBAI [NYC] > Sojourner Truth
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: This program is usually revolutionary, but has been known to be soft on the corporate Democrat Party, prone to “liberal bias”, when it comes to the two-party dictatorship, which can clearly see the corruption of the Republican Party, but has a blindspot for the corruption of the Democrat Party.
14:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > About Health
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
“How Marc Cohodes Predicted The Bank Collapse | Silvergate, Signature Bank, & FTX” by Blockworks Macro [via YouTube], 20 MAR 2023. [1hr 16min 02sec]
NOTES: [TW]
COMMENTS: Where does one begin, a layperson such as your author? Your author is brimming with energy and inspiration to reflect and contemplate and articulate some of the thoughts, which are bubbling around after listening to this riveting interview. Marc Cohodes really seems like a stand-up guy. Your author would love to ask him for his perspective on labor, since he is so indignant about the disrespectful nature of malicious short-sellers and/or bond vigilantes. Like Julian Assange, Marc Cohodes truly seems to enjoy, as Julian Assange famously put it, “crushing bastards.” And his moral compass appears to be tip-top. So, surely, his ethical concerns would extend to the plight of labor vis-à-vis capital. Internalizing some of his spirit, what little one can pick up from a single interview, perhaps, one could intimate a sketch of a possible response. Indeed, Mr. Cohodes seemed to have some degree of concern for the working class, as evidenced by his remarks about the exorbitant cost of living in the USA. But, unfortunately, your author doesn’t have time for that, nor for proper editing. Your author only has time for the rat race. Everyone has to make a living. And until one finds and sustains gainful employment, one has no leisure time, no time for self-directed activity, not whilst avoiding foolishness. To be responsible is to have one’s retirement set up. Until then, one has little to no time to think, nor reflect upon reality, much less think about all of the sin (i.e., foolishness) going on in the world. Or, so, they say. There is no time to play. But, then, again, as Prof. John Vervaeke teaches us: play is how organisms develop. What’s the old adage: All work and no play…? So, we must steal away a few moments here and there to try and expand our minds, our consciousness, our capacities, and our abilities.
If you’ve read this blog before, then you know your author is nothing more than a working-class bloke. Truth be told, he’s a ditch-digger by trade, born into hard labor and destined for the rough trades until the grave, as the son of immigrants. Usually, the sons and daughters of immigrants don’t have the privilege of graduating from college. And, with all the Starbucks workers with college degrees, it’s becoming less and less clear what the hell the point of a college degree is anymore, anyhow. Your author is of the opinion, however, that higher learning is best when it’s transformative, when it affords the student greater capacities for critical thinking and sense-making, for civic engagement and political participation, for leaving the world better than we found it, or at least not making it worse or trashing it. Rote memorization or being trained to follow orders is for the birds. That’s why your author, like many others, could relate to Marc Cohodes, a man, who values truth-seeking and independent thought, which is why your author was hooked into this interview from the outset.
As the Forward Guidance podcast said: “Cohodes also explains the immense difficulties that short-sellers frequently face, and he shares his opinion on turmoil swirling around the U.S. regional banking system.” That opinion was fierce and admirable. This is one of the most interesting and compelling analytical perspectives from the vantage point of bond traders, financial analysts, and financial strategists, which your author has encountered since the banking crisis of March 2023 began. Your author is a layperson, of course, just a working-class bloke, who first heard of bond vigilantes from Prof. Stephanie Kelton on Guns and Butter with Bonnie Faulkner back in 2012, when Bonnie traveled to Rimini, Italy to report on the 2012 MMT Summit. Since then, your author has paid little to no attention to bond vigilantes or short-sellers, for that matter. But, now, bond trading has become ever more salient. So, political types are hereby encouraged to learn what they can about economics and the world of finance and the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate), so they may sharpen their political analyses.
What you author can gather thus far (with extremely limited reading) is this. The so-called secondary market was ostensibly created after the Great Depression to provide more loan funds to help working-class families escape the predation of the rentier class, to become homeowners. But the parasitic rentier class soon captured the so-called secondary market. And it soon became a major part of the stock market, another casino for people with surplus income. But working-class people don’t often think of real estate in the same context as the stock market. But that’s what the secondary market is, increasingly based on real estate mortgage loans and mortgage-backed securities.
Anyway, people, who believe in the free market, as Marc Cohodes does, have an admirable sense of justice when they call out corruption and corporate crime or unscrupulous activity in the financial and banking sectors. And Marc Cohodes is particularly interesting to your author because of his penchant for calling out unscrupulous people. Cohodes is not afraid to be unpopular, as he says in the interview (c. 1min 53sec).
Marc Cohodes: “I go after companies and people, who I think the world would be better off, if they’re not around. I’ve put numerous people into prison. Harvard has written two case studies about some of my work. Spoken at all the places that there are to speak. But there’s a lack of calling people out. People are scared to speak the truth. People are scared to think. People are scared to think freely. But I have no problem with that. And I use my own name. I don’t hide under a moniker. I only have one Twitter account. And, if you use Twitter properly, you get some tremendous information from that. So, I’m a long-term guy. If I’m gonna throw it, and if I say something, there’s a basis for what I say.
“So, I try to make the world better. I try to make money doing it. Sometimes, I lose my ass, which is a miserable feeling. I mean I hate to lose, hate it. And, as long as the feeling of winning is better than the horrific feeling of losing, I’ll keep doing it. But I know I only have so many years left before your marbles begin to go. And this is highly risky stuff. And I have great lawyers. […]”
Your author immediately became enamored with this “financial bloodhound.” Again, Marc Cohodes really seems like a stand-up guy. Your author would love to ask him for his perspective on labor. Like Julian Assange, Marc Cohodes truly seems to enjoy, as Julian Assange famously put it, “crushing bastards.” And Marc Cohodes’ moral compass appears to be tip-top. Since he is not afraid to speak the truth, your author, as a low-wage worker for most of his life, was dying to hear macro research journalist Jack Farley ask Mr. Cohodes for his perspective on labor.
Notably, Mr. Cohodes seems to be striving towards taking some form of a leadership position, like a modern-day Robin Hood, for example, by helping upstarts also make money via ethical bond investing and trading. Yet, he calls himself “a market guy.” But ‘free markets’ always seem to need bailouts and socialized safety nets. Where’s the safety net for labor? Where’s the MMT-based job guarantee? Instead, ‘the markets’ (i.e., big investors) are always allowed to abuse labor. ‘Markets’ invariably end up imposing capitalist ‘discipline’ on the working class, whilst bestowing socialist bailouts on the banksters and big investors. Your author doubts Mr. Cohodes, even as ‘free market’ guy, if asked publicly, would support imposing free market ‘discipline’ upon labor, commodifying labor, treating labor like livestock.
The neoclassical economist types want us, working-class types (as well as the PMCs), to believe NAIRU (the non-accelerating rate of unemployment) makes sense, to believe that we need more unemployment in order to fight inflation, that the Federal Reserve truly needed to jack up interest rates this past year, like a Volcker Shock 2.0, in order to lay off more workers to supposedly ‘cool off demand’ when there’s plenty of evidence to suggest most of the inflation in question has been mostly supply-driven, not demand-driven, not to mention the result of price-gouging, as Dr. Jack Rasmus, Dr. Stephanie Kelton, and other courageous people have admitted publicly.
No, fellow readers, the NAIRU doesn’t make sense, nor does the prioritization of capital over labor. Granted, your author is only a layperson, who still longs to complete graduate school someday. So, your author admits; he doesn’t know much. But one thing is clear. Prioritizing capital over labor is all wrong.
The whole time, listening to this, your author was growing fonder of Marc Cohodes’ philosophy towards finance and bond trading. But the role of labor was being ignored. What would Marc Cohodes advise labor to do? He seemed to express concern for labor when he complained about the high cost of living. And, obviously, Forward Guidance is focused on interviewing “the brightest minds in finance about which asset classes they think will thrive in the financial future that they envision.” So, labor is not exactly on the agenda on a podcast about, by, and for investors, people with so much money they can actually afford to save and invest, to generate capital gains. But the fact that they were discussing the overall health of the banking system and bond trading and corruption in the system begs the question about the role of labor in all of this.
Marc Cohodes’ motto appears to be: There is no greater motivator than disrespect. Well, what’s more disrespectful than the eternal prioritization of capital over labor?
15:00 PST / 18:00 EST, WBAI [NYC] > WBAI Evening News
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
15:00 PST / 17:00 CST, KPFT [Houston, TX] > Code Pink Radio
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
15:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > UpFront PM
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: This is a rerun of content from the morning broadcast, which automatically makes this broadcast offensive, especially when there are so many censored, dissenting voices out there, which deserve airtime. Instead, we get duplication of the worst Machiavellian perception management, which will never inform the working class, which is oppressed by the power elite, nor help them connect the dots between issues to help the public see the larger truths to be able to learn from past experience. (See comments above for UpFront.)
15:30 PST / 18:30 EST, WBAI [NYC] > CounterSpin
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: Your author used to dig this show back in the day, when it was on KPFA. In recent years, it seems disappointing. It’s unclear whether the program became less hard-hitting, or if my perception is less susceptible than before to “the liberal bias”, deceptions, and wishful thinking. Maybe it’s a combination of both elements. But this program seems disappointing nowadays.
16:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Hard Knock Radio
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
17:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] & KPFK [simulcast] > Flashpoints
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
18:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] & KPFK [simulcast] > The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
COMMENTS: Usually, honest on basic social justice issues, but KPFA newscast bosses tend to gaslight listeners on COVID-19 (never mention VAERS data, VAERS deaths, assaults on informed consent, assaults on parental consent, no mention of litigation in India against the World Health Organization, etc.) and also gaslight listeners regarding establishment Democrat Party politics (i.e., usually engaging in Democrat Party apologia and perception management to keep people within the Democrat Party imaginary and away from the third-party politics imaginary, in the sociology sense of the term, ‘imaginary’). I.e., in other words, ‘it’s all good, just don’t question 9/11, COVID-19, nor establishment electoral politics.’ Having said all that, this is still a better nightly newscast than most. I’m hard-pressed to think of a better one, especially since the demise of Free Speech Radio News (FSRN), particularly regarding local news coverage. But that doesn’t excuse the KPFA news bosses’ intellectual dishonesty, lying by omission, and other deficiencies of journalistic integrity. WION is pretty good on global news; but there, too, one can detect the liberal bias, which Dr. Noam Chomsky has warned about since at least the 1990s.
19:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Africa Today
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
20:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Transitions On Traditions
NOTES: [notes pending; scribe hasn’t listened yet]
“Shout Out” by Sekou Sundiata (1997)
“Here’s to the best words
In the right place
At the perfect time to the human mind
Blown-up and refined.
“To long conversations and the
Philosophical ramifications of a beautiful day.
“To the twelve-steppers
At the thirteenth step
May they never forget
The first step.
“To the increase, to the decrease
To the do, to the do
To the did, to the did
To the do, to the did
To the done, done
To the lonely.
“To the brokenhearted.
To the new, blue haiku.
“Here’s to all or nothing at all.
“Here’s to the sick, and the shut-in.
“Here’s to the was you been, to the is you in
To what’s deep and deep, to what’s down and down
To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.
“To the crazy
The lazy
The bored
The ignored
The beginners
The sinners
The losers
The winners.
To the smooth
And the cool
And even to the fools.
Here’s to your ex-best-friend.
“To the rule-benders and the repeat offenders.
To the lovers and the troublers
The engaging
The enraging
To the healers and the feelers
And the fixers and the tricksters
To a star falling from a dream.
To a dream, when you know what it means.
“To the bottom
To the root
To the bass, uh, boom!
To the drum
To the was you been to the is you in
To what’s deep and deep to what’s down and down
To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.
“Here’s to somebody within the sound of your voice this morning.
Here’s to somebody who can’t be within the sound of your voice tonight.
To a low-cholesterol pig sandwich smothered in swine without the pork.
To a light buzz in your head
And a soundtrack in your mind
Going on and on and on and on and on like a good time.
“Here’s to promises that break by themselves
Here’s to the breaks with great promise.
To people who don’t wait in the car when you tell them to wait in the car.
“Here’s to what you forgot and who you forgot.
Here’s to the unforgettable.
Here’s to the was you been to the is you in
To what’s deep and deep to what’s down and down
To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.
“Here’s to the hip-hoppers
The don’t stoppers
Heads nodding in the digital glow
Of their beloved studios.
To the incredible, indelible impressions made by the gaze as you gaze in the faces of strangers.
To yourself you ask: Could this be God? Straight up!
Or is it a mask?
“Here’s to the tribe of the hyper-cyber
Trippin’ at the virtual-most outpost at the edge on the tip
Believin’ that what they hear is the mothership
Drawing near.
Here’s to the was you been to the is you in
To what’s deep and deep to what’s down and down
To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.”
“Shout Out” by Sekou Sundiata, from The Blue Oneness of Dreams (1997)
“San Francisco Has Fallen” by TheDC Shorts [via YouTube], 20 MAR 2023. [5min 51sec]
QUOTATION FROM VIDEO DESCRIPTION: “What happened to San Francisco?”
NOTES: This is a video collage of recent petty crime, break-ins of cars parked on streets or stuck in traffic congestion and muggings of people out in public, such as photographers at touristy spots, such as the Embarcadero or the Palace of Fine Arts.
COMMENTS: This rash of petty crime is tragic, for all parties involved, including the lumpenproletarians resorting to petty crime on the streets in the 2020s. Your author isn’t trying to make excuses for petty criminals. And it is important to empathize with the victims/survivors of petty crime. However, it is important to keep some perspective by contrasting petty crime with white-collar crime or corporate crime and control fraud, such as the criminals, who swindle millions or billions by crashing banks and bailing out banks, for example, or otherwise cashing in on all the chaos by hedging, as we’ve recently seen in the huge transfers of wealth in the FIRE sector, the secondary market, and/or stock market during the recent 2023 banking crisis. But it’s as easy to vilify petty criminals and felons, as it is to whitewash corporate criminals and banksters.
The video description asks, “What happened to San Francisco?”
The shorter answer is: capitalism. A slightly longer answer is: the financialization of capitalism, leading to neoliberalism.
But, from a slightly fuller response, from the perspective of lived experience, from someone, who grew up in San Mateo in the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s with family and friends up and down the San Francisco Peninsula to the South Bay/Silicon Valley and East Bay and beyond, out to the Central Valley and Southern California, common sense can answer the question posed in the video description rather adequately.
The socioeconomic degeneration of San Francisco was predictable since the rise of gentrification in San Francisco, Oakland, and throughout the Bay Area/Silicon Valley, especially during the 1990s. Similar trends occurred across the USA. Along with that wave of gentrification, there was also a tightening of the police state. There has always been crime, of course. But what this video shows is new, dystopian, a symptom of American psychosis, of economic collapse and totalitarianism, as articulated and predicted by Chris Hedges and others years ago.
Ironically, the increasing fascism and militarization of the police state, which has accompanied gentrification, has done, and can do, nothing about petty crime in the streets. And, of course, the increasing fascism of the ineffectual police state in the 1990s (with its apparent rise of killer cops and police abuse of power), occupying working-class and low-income neighborhoods, which has proven incapable of doing anything to help mitigate petty crime on the streets, has coincided in the 1990s with President Clinton’s Reinventing Government initiatives, which decreased financial regulation of white-collar crime (i.e., corporate crime). So, whilst the state was increasing police state controls over the working-class, the state was decreasing the policing of corporate criminals. And the power of capital was eviscerating, gutting, the last remaining shreds of any kind of social safety net in society. Growing up in San Mateo during the 1970s and early ’80s, social workers used to come around our humble working-class house at the end of 5th Avenue, beside Highway 101, and check on us. Such a thing became unheard of by the 1990s. Rugged individualism became the order of the day, as Sister Souljah testified at an early 1990s speech at San Francisco State University. There was, undoubtedly, a culture of soft violence in the Bay Area suburbs, as actor Sean Penn once described of his youth, growing up in the Southern California suburbs. And, with the CIA facilitating cocaine shipment into the U.S., there was more intense violence in the urban centers, as turf wars flared. But there was liberty. There was freedom. There was street life. One could walk around town and see people, greet people, meet people on almost every block, not unlike Bob Marley sang in “Natty Dread”. As a youth, your author would much prefer taking his chances, with a switchblade in pocket, walking through the Shoreview neighborhood and possibly getting jumped by Tongans or a rival gang any day of the week, over living in the sterile, dystopian police state nightmare, which would later become of San Mateo and the Bay Area. Back in the day, you could chill out, park by the calming bayshore near Coyote Point by the Burlingame Drive-In movies without being harassed by cops. In the 1980s, cops would only tend to stop, if it looked like there was a fight going on. Later, in the early 1990s, cops tend to stop, if there was a group of people congregating, especially non-whites, with cops always looking for some weed in somebody’s pockets or open containers of alcohol, anything to throw the book at you, so to speak. And, eventually, cops would pull over and harass you, even if you were just sitting in your car listening to music, trying to find some peace of mind. And, by the 2000s, the street life was forced indoors; and it was a dog-eat-dog world in terms of the cost of living. Like Bob Marley sang, in “Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)”: “Cost of living gets so high / Rich and poor they start to cry / Now, the weak must get strong / They say, “Oh, what a tribulation!” / Them belly full, but we hungry / A hungry mob is a angry mob / A rain a-fall, but the dirt it tough / A pot a-cook, but the food no’ ‘nough” But with all of the trauma and pain in the working class, only so many people were resilient enough to shake it off, to keep their mouths shut about all the bullshit in society and on the job, and conform and adapt to neoliberalism. The rest fell through the cracks, got caught up in the system, or were marginalized by the capitalist economic system. And the problem is only intensifying as capital is prioritized over labor.
Well, now, the rich, like the poor, are starting to cry. And they’re asking themselves, like this video description does: “What happened to San Francisco?” Well, it’s happening all over the USA, and most of the so-called western world or global north. It’s called late-stage capitalism, financialized capitalism, deindustrialized capitalism. Do the capitalist social engineers truly expect everyone to find a spot in the tech sector? Even a college degree doesn’t guarantee graduates a job, who end up at places like Starbucks and Home Depot, organizing themselves and fighting for their human right to unionize to defend their right to gainful employment, but are being denied those rights by the abuses of capital, of mega-corporations with legal eagles, who can crush almost any legal comers. Do the capitalist social engineers truly expect all the lumpenproletarians and proletarians to join the tech sector to be upstanding members of society, as it shrinks, as big cheese, like “Peter Thiel causes bank run and tips his pals” to pull their money out of tech-focused regional banks, like Silicon Valley Bank, because the tech sector is no longer profitable? Do the capitalist social engineers expect everyone to find a cushy job in the tech sector, as the economy crashes in the wake of another banking collapse? Do the capitalist social engineers expect the working class to find their place in the tech sector because there are no manufacturing jobs anymore, which once provided gainful employment to the working class, because neoliberalism has driven corporations to offshore manufacturing jobs? The only thing the capitalist social engineers offer the working-class is part-time work with no benefits and low-wage work with poverty wages. In the Bay Area, like most of the nation, just to make ends meet, the working class needs $20 to $25 dollars per hour of full-time employment. And that’s just to scrape by with no hope for retirement someday, just a bleak future of working ’til death. Yet, the California minimum wage in 2023 is $15.50. “The federal minimum wage for covered nonexempt employees is $7.25 per hour.” No, fellow readers, the capitalist social engineers do not care about the working class. They prioritize capital over labor.
We could have an MMT-based job guarantee, which could end involuntary unemployment, as we know it. There are no financial constraints preventing the federal government from doing so, as evidenced by the obscene bankster bailouts and giveaways to big pharma, the military-industrial-congressional-complex (MICC), and other corporate interests. But the capitalists don’t want full employment. They have nothing but contempt for labor, as expected from Malthusians and neo-Malthusians. Your author was blown away by modern monetary theory (MMT) and its #1 policy proposal, the job guarantee, after first hearing about it on Guns and Butter with Bonnie Faulkner in 2012, then enrolling at UMKC in 2013 to study under some of MMT’s leading proponents, Prof. Stephanie Kelton, Prof. L. Randall Wray, et al., only to return to the Bay Area, try to inform his beloved free speech radio KPFA, and find that the liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists), like Brian Edwards-Tiekert and Mitch Jeserich, et al., who monopolized airtime had no intention of informing the working-class listeners of this important information. To this day, the job guarantee policy proposal is being suppressed, even on free speech KPFA. Prof. Kelton even worked as economic advisor to Bernie Sanders during his presidential campaign. So, we know Bernie Sanders was informed about the job guarantee policy proposal and, yet, he refused to inform the American people, which he supposedly cares about. He sold out, fellow readers. Bernie could have used that as his winning campaign platform centerpiece. Yet, he refused. How can we explain the behavior of synthetic socialists, the synthetic left, the liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists), like Bernie Sanders and the liberals at free speech radio KPFA and other similar types across the national free speech Pacifica Radio Network? Such liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists) must be on some payroll, which is dependent upon condition of preserving the status quo because preserving the status quo for nothing more than ideological or moral turpitude is even more pathetic, than being a class traitor for money.
We could have an MMT-based job guarantee, which could end involuntary unemployment, as we know it. But they don’t want full employment. The power elite want neofuedalism. They want to criminalize the casualties of technological unemployment. The power elite know they’re bringing this 21st century dystopia, this American psychosis, which we see evidenced in the video above, on themselves. But they don’t care, feeling insulated by their wealth.
So, the global power elite, of which the Silicon Valley power elite are a significant factor and likely playing an important role in the developments at the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization, are developing their S.M.A.R.T. cities of total surveillance with AI algorithmic policing, like Carbyne911, “intelligence-backed surveillance and pre-crime systems being rolled out under a guise of helping/protecting the people,” as Ryan Cristian and Whitney Webb have recently reported on The Last American Vagabond. Ryan Cristian and Whitney Webb describe a CIA-Mossad connected surveillance system, which “is already being used in different aspects of infrastructure and public services.” They raise valid questions: “Is this a fast-track to a technocratic panopticon?” Instead of creating jobs with a job guarantee program, or admitting that technological unemployment necessitates a basic income for the underemployed, unemployed, and the poor, the capitalist social engineers are increasing the power of the police state. In Oxford, the working class has been up in arms against an even scarier version of the S.M.A.R.T. cities, which Rosa Koire and others have been warning about for decades. The people of Oxford have been sounding the alarm against 15-minute cities, which also threaten to confine people within a 15-mile radius of their homes. All of this is being driven by capitalism, by capitalist modes of production, which prioritize capital over labor, and capitalist social relations, which prefer neo-Malthusian depopulation over human liberation. If 15-minute cities are brought to northern and central California, for example, it will mean maximum economic pain for the working class. Currently, there are little to no jobs in the Central Valley. And, since capitalists have off-shored manufacturing jobs, most jobs are service sector jobs. Unfortunately, the extreme shortage of jobs in the California central valley means an army of workers must commute one to three counties away, averaging a two-hour commute each way. And that’s without traffic congestion. Central valley workers must spend a total average of four hours per day on their daily commute. If 15-minute cities are implemented in the commute corridors connecting the central valley labor force to the Bay Area/Silicon Valley, small businesses and the self-employed will almost certainly be put out of business, finishing off the assault on small businesses and the self-employed, which was dramatically advanced by the unnecessary 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, under an inverted quarantine. Quarantines are supposed to quarantine the sick, not the whole society. But these overlapping agendas of the WEF and WHO, of the digital IDs, lockdowns, and 15-minute cities are examples of class warfare from above, driven by capitalist priorities, despite its opponents characterizing the dystopian agendas as “socialist” tyranny. Because of corporate propaganda, opponents of state tyranny conflate socialism (an economic system, which prioritizes democracy at work, which prioritizes labor over capital) with authoritarianism (a political/government system, which is favored by capitalists because it reflects the absence of democracy in the workplace).
After the dot-com bubble burst in the late 1990s, after that boom and bust cycle, the cost of living in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley went through the roof. Local workers were discarded, many were economically displaced eastward, as a global brain-drain funneled into the Bay Area/Silicon Valley the most competitive tech sector workers and other computer-based workers. Rent control became increasingly unheard of in the Bay Area of the 1990s. And the real estate industry was allowed to jack up rents as high as they wanted, presuming gentrification and displacement of working-class families replaced by tech sector workers and other highly-paid sectors would surely make for a better San Francisco, a better Oakland, a better Bay Area/Silicon Valley. Well, it didn’t, as we are now seeing in 2023. Your author can tell you from first-hand experience, as he still has family and friends in Silicon Valley, and still visits his old stomping grounds. It’s not just San Francisco or Oakland, which are looking dystopian, the whole Bay Area looks dystopian in the 2020s, even formerly idyllic places, like Sunnyvale and Mountain View, look ghostly nowadays. The decaying streets with desiccated landscapes are empty, except for the people in their cars rushing in the rat race.
Your author recalls growing up with an experience of youth, much like American Graffiti (set in Modesto, California), or the TV show Happy Days with Richie Cunningham and the Fonz (set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin). Class dynamics were ever present, but there was still some interaction between lower ends of the working class and the more comfortable ends of the working class. Lived experience was still reflected in the popular culture to some extent on TV shows, like Good Times and What’s Happening!! (There were TV shows with predominantly Euroamerican casts, like Seinfeld, for example, but your author didn’t watch those as much, unable to relate the same way he could relate to the black and brown and non-white casts. Cheers was good, though.) At any rate, 21st century U.S. TV show producers, along with film producers, seemed determined to erase reality and actual lived experience from TV and film, replacing it with generic characters, like Friends or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and erasing meaningful signs of poverty, class dynamics, and economic hardship. Ironically, in this erasure, Cops, which lionized police abuse, and “reality TV” increasingly took over the collective consciousness of TV viewers.
American life was still somewhat seemingly innocent during the 1980s and early 1990s in San Mateo and the Bay Area, certainly for a working-class kid growing up, ignorant or unaware of his parents’ economic hardships. Instead of hanging out at Al’s, like in Happy Days, for some reason we hung out and congregated at 3rd and Delaware in San Mateo, which had a Jack In The Box kitty-corner to a small corner-lot strip mall, with a 7-11 convenience store. Cars with massive sound systems and mini trucks and lowriders crowded the parking lots, especially on Friday nights. DJ Pam the Funkstress from The Coup might be seen around the King Center in San Mateo. There was a youth culture. Some of us starting throwing DJ parties since middle school. There were hip hop heads, stoners, rockers, long-hairs, preppies, jocks, and High-NRG types with pompadours, mullets, and pegged pants, trying to look like DJ Cameron Paul (who your author would occasionally spot at Star Records in downtown San Mateo). Davey D was on KMEL’s Street Soldiers. (Thankfully, Davey D’s still around on KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio.) Sway and Tech’s Wake Up Show was also on KMEL. We loved to listen to the freestyling and world-class hip hop artists, which were regularly heard on the the Wake Up Show, which somewhat ironically aired at night, presumably meaning ‘wake up’, as at the end of Spike Lee’s School Daze, meaning wake up to reality, to be ‘conscious’, as we used to say. College radio was awesome. Their was nightlife everywhere. The Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco still had some of the 1960s vibe. Live 105 played good music, modern rock, with actual human beings connected to the Bay Area communities, like Steve Masters and Roland West. Corporations, capitalists, killed radio, as Tom Petty lamented once. There was life pulsing through the Bay Area. Post-COVID-19 psyop, the last remnants of cultural lifeblood appear to have been drained from the Bay Area. It’s probably a similar experience for other regions throughout the USA. Post-COVID, people walk around like nutters in public with werid masks on their faces or driving alone in their cars, as if that serves some sort of medical purpose, or as if that will prevent respiratory diseases. It’s bizarre, and sad.
Until the end of the 20th century, there was great pathos, passion, pain, and consciousness expressed in the music and cultural life of the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, from the golden age of hip hop, ‘conscious rap,’ to alternative rock. Nirvana was incredibly subversive, for example, despite the undercurrent of nihilism. We were just kids, trying to make sense of the world.
And there was still some night life in the Bay Area. Your author was quite politically ignorant as a child of the 1970s and ‘80s, yet intuitively aware of the class dynamics, growing up at the intersections of the lower- and upper-working-class neighborhoods, and going to school with the kids of the professional managerial class and the millionaires (who might be billionaires today, adjusting for inflation) and the wealthiest families with mansions in Hillsborough, for example. By the late 1980s and 1990s, growing up with NWA, Public Enemy, and Boogie Down Productions it was increasingly apparent something was going terribly wrong in the Bay Area and throughout U.S. society. My family and friends, who grew up in Oakland and San Jose suffered much more, seeing much more violence, some of them being murdered. But it takes a lot for the lumpenproletariat to develop class consciousness. And, even much of the proletariat lacks class consciousness, as evidenced by the abysmally low union density, which hovers at around 6% in 2023, having fallen from a peak of 30% to 40% during the 1960s. The 1999 KPFA lockouts, followed by the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle (the Battle in Seattle) started to really wake us up, getting us asking, What’s going on?, like Marvin Gaye. That was soon followed by stolen U.S. presidential election of 2000, and then the 9/11 psyop in 2001. Society really started to look dystopian in the 21st century. The global power elite play the long game.
But free speech radio KPFA had always been a lifeline. Making friends, as a teenager with Chuy “El Tecolote” Varela and Miguel “El Gavilan” Molina, who your author met through some of his homies, who were friends with some older intellectual vato, who lived in a small quad-plex in Berkeley, but loved to come hang out with us in the Bay Area nightlife, and who also introduced us to the crew of La Onda Bajita at the hole-in-the-wall KPFA radio station back when it was on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley.
Your author tested out of high school at 15 and moved out by 17, way too soon. So, despite being blessed with the privilege of being able to listen to the consciousness-raising free speech radio KPFA, it took many more years before being motivated to political action, eventually mostly motivated by the impassioned radio broadcasts of Dennis Bernstein on Flashpoints. But working-class life is hard, as you doubtless know. So, there’s no time for self-directed activity. And, if there is, there is rarely enough income to get around the increasingly expensive Bay Area. Yet, during the 1990s, your author recalls participating in many huge protest marches and demonstrations. It was amazing. It was healthy for the lumpenproletarians (in need of class consciousness) and the proletarians (often, also, in need of class consciousness). A lot of those democratizing tendencies were cultivated within the culture of grassroots activism emanating from, or coalescing around, free speech radio KPFA in Berkeley. The 2003 mass demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq appeared to be humanity’s last gasp, before becoming sedated and compliant with the aimless War On Terror and Orwellian forever wars. What was left of the labor movement, after the Red Scares and McCarthyistic red-baiting, sold out and exchanged labor militancy for proximity to the Democrat Party. The 21st century looked bleak for democratizing tendencies. Of course, the Republican Party never gave a damn about labor. What had the Republican Party ever done for labor or worker’s rights in the 20th century?
But, again, neoliberalism during the Clinton 1990s went into overdrive, having actually begun during the Reaganomics of the 1980s. But your author was too young and too ignorant to be aware of that fact at the time. Without a college education, or training in a skilled trade, your author, like many people, was subject to the vicissitudes of the capitalist economy, which prioritizes capital over labor. Working for CellNet Data Systems in late-1990s San Carlos, California was a somewhat positive experience with corporate America, for a while, getting in on the ground floor through the logistics department (i.e., the warehouse). As the logistics department expanded, your author was able to stay atop the department hierarchy, for what that’s worth. And the company seemed to treat us proletarians decently. The liberal corporate culture was never snobbish. Your author shared a small apartment with a childhood friend, who is like a brother to this day. But P,G,&E prevented CellNet Data Systems from rolling out their technology, the company experienced losses, and was ultimately bought out by the ancient corporation, Schlumberger, which then became Schlumberger/Sema. CellNet Data Systems failed and was eaten by a killer whale, as the dot com bubble burst. Soon, operations were moved to Georgia. And your author, unwilling to leave family and friends and his beloved Bay Area to follow Schlumberger/Sema to Georgia for an uncertain future, didn’t fight for a position in Georgia. Instead, he took a severance pay package and fell back down to the bottom of the economic ladder. At the same time, gentrification, which one could hear a great deal about on free speech radio KPFA was raging by the late 1990s. Rent in San Mateo had jumped up by about 50% in a few years. And your author became an economic refugee, migrating out the Central Valley, where a family support network prevented him from becoming the type of lumpenproletarian we see in the video above showing a rash of break-ins in San Francisco. But not everyone was so lucky. Occasionally, visiting San Mateo, your author would run into some of the old mates from the ‘hood, by the mid-2000s, houseless and lost.
Your author supposes this anecdotal experience is probably typical of many working-class people, who grew up in the Bay Area during the late 20th century, or throughout the USA, and suspects most readers will agree. What else can we deduce by the rise of the neo-feudal encampments of the houseless throughout the USA? What else can we deduce by the scourge of petty crime across the USA?
But all of this was predicted and is to be expected from capitalist social relations and capitalist modes of production.
“Introduction to MMT with Professor L. Randall Wray” by Rethinking Economics [via YouTube], 30 MAR 2021. [37min 23sec]
NOTES: [Your author has only listened to 1 minute thus far, but is a former student of Prof. Wray, so…pretty sure he remembers this intro info, but will refresh asap, anyhow (L1)] [TW]
COMMENTS: If you don’t know about MMT yet, it’s modern monetary theory or modern money theory, which is kind of like a brand name for a body of scholarship, which most accurately describes the way modern monetary systems function and what exactly modern-day money is. Money used to represent gold or some other commodity. But, ever since the USA abandoned the gold standard in 1971, that set a new standard, by which money was nothing more than fiat currency. Basically, the only thing backing the US dollar was its military and police, which force you, as a citizen, to pay your taxes in U.S. dollars. Try not paying your taxes; and see what happens. Just look at Al Capone, for example, who was ultimately brought down by, of all things, tax evasion. So, taxes force the U.S. people to use dollars, if for nothing else, at least to settle your tax bill. But there are many other complex reasons why we all end up using U.S. dollars, rather than some other currency, to pay for everything else, too. But it’s not like there aren’t people out there trying to pay for things with something other than U.S. dollars. As we see, there are many cryptocurrency fans out there, who see hope in a decentralized currency, which might some day be used to escape the U.S. dollar and its centralized state control, especially its government’s penchant for surveillance and invasion of privacy. And we can’t forget the fact that, as Marc Cohodes explained in the interview cited above that crypto was just a foil to cover-up illegal activity, from human trafficking to drug dealing and terrorism, by Signature bank, for example, which was the second bank to collapse in banking crisis of March 2023. Of course, now the U.S. government is gearing up to hijack that cryptocurrency concept by moving towards its own centralized version of crypto—the totalitarian CBDC (central bank digital currency), a programmable money, which will be able to be totally controlled by the state, if you ‘misbehave’ or demand human rights or whatnot. Look at China’s CBDC with ‘expiration dates’, a use-it-or-lose-it currency, or Nigerian’s inability to access enough of their own money to take care of their families, for some examples of the nightmarish dystopia CBDC promises to provide us all with. And, of course, there’s the fact that the government will be able to track your every purchase and every move. Are you concerned yet? If not, read on; do some more research on CBDC. And you will be…
Surveillance capitalism is no joke. The conformists say childish things, like, Well, if you’ve done nothing wrong, then you should have nothing to hide. But that’s just absurd. Glenn Greenwald has made some of the most brilliant arguments against that silly notion, also Edward Snowden. (Your author doesn’t have time to reiterate all of that here and now. For now, consider this Wikipedia article, about the nothing to hide argument, which as of the time of this writing makes some sense, which was “last edited on 17 March 2023, at 12:19 (UTC).” So, check the “last edited date” at the bottom of the Wikipedia article to see if you’re reading the same version or some newly edited version. Yes, Wikipedia censors a lot of topics and behaves quite maliciously a lot of the time. But please use your own critical thinking skills when reading publications by imperfect outlets, which is pretty much everyone. But, no matter what the outlet is, if the reasoning makes sense and/or if there are sources cited, then that’s the value right there. If a Wikipedia article is making fact-claims, however, without citing sources, then, obviously, that shouldn’t be taken at face value. Your author is saying this mainly for younger readers, who he has encountered, who say things, like, ‘According to Google…’, or ‘According to Wikipedia…’ Your author has to remind them those are not sources, but portals through which outlets and sources are shared. We must remember there are primary sources, secondary sources, tertiary sources, and so on. And we must corroborate sources and so on. We must consider the credibility of the source and so on. Older readers, or more critical readers, will know this. But we have to constantly remind newer readers or younger readers and ourselves, lest we forget. Teachers aren’t always teaching young people critical media literacy, as they should, so we need to constantly remind our young people about critical media literacy, and remind each other. Of course, there are good people out there, like Mickey Huff at Project Censored, who are sincerely doing good work, unlike similar sounding establishment think tanks hijacking the concept and watering down the concept.)
But back to modern money theory, the U.S. dollar in a time of dedollarization, and the Federal Reserve’s response with schemes for a U.S. CBDC or ‘digital dollar’…
CBDCs are based on blockchain technology, originally, but central bankers, obviously, are trying to find a work-around to avoid the distributed ledger decentralization aspect of cryptocurrency, as far as your author can discern with extremely limited reading. Let us know in the comments section, if you know more information on how central banks, like the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England, are trying to hijack the cryptocurrency concept, whilst getting around the distributed ledger decentralization to create a total control (i.e., totalitarian), programmable and centralized currency, hence the first “C” in CBDC, central bank digital currency.
At any rate, MMT was/is good to know, as long as the trade relations between nations, which manufacture real goods (i.e., smartphones, TVs, cars, coffee, petrol, etc.), such as China, were/are willing to accept U.S. dollars as payment. Eventually, the world realized that the US government could, basically, create U.S. dollars with computer keystrokes, with which US merchants/retailers could buy all those goodies from other nations. Probably, China knew all along it was only a matter of time before they pulled themselves out of poverty by working harder than everyone else and the day would come when their economy would eclipse the U.S. economy, and they would no longer need to price everything in dollars, when they would be able to price their trade in their own currency. And with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, brokering bilateral diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia, China is getting closer and closer to the day when oil is no longer priced in U.S. dollars. As we know, pricing global oil trade in U.S. dollars is among a key basket of commodities priced in U.S. dollars, which has been how the U.S. has managed to secure the U.S. dollar’s privileged position as international reserve currency. But because of the belligerence of the U.S. military, the Obama-era ‘Asia-Pacific Pivot’, US/NATO/AUKUS imperialist encirclement of the Russian Federation and China, the US imperialists have forced the BRICS alliance to deepen and grow.
Since 1971, basically, the US didn’t have to produce anything for other nations. During that time, the US deindustrialized, stopped manufacturing goods, for the most part. The U.S. economy increasingly, predominantly, became a service sector economy after 1971. It sucked for Americans, who wondered why their gainful employment jobs were being shipped overseas. But it was good for corporate executives and the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate), for people, who have money and want to rent it out. It was good for people, who want to make money off of money, who probably don’t give a damn about labor. Never mind the working class, who actually have to work for a living, the capitalists said. (Now, your author isn’t trying to disrespect small businesses nor the self-employed nor the small capitalists with, I dunno, 50 employees or less. But the bigger companies, especially the corporations, especially the corporations who ‘went public’, corporations on the stock market, those capitalists are poison for labor, for the working class, for people, who actually have to work for a living, people who don’t try to live off of capital gains.) Your author is not saying serious stockbrokers, or righteous bond vigilantes, or activist short-sellers don’t work their asses off, like Marc Cohodes cited above. But it’s one thing to live a life of manual labor, whereby your body is seriously broken down and unable to enjoy a meaningful retirement some day, if ever; and it’s another thing entirely to work a desk job, which pays you enough to hit the gym after work and take care of your body for the long run. Those are two very different life experiences. It’s true, as Marc Cohodes said in the interview cited above, the stock market is NOT a joke; but, then, neither is manual labor, neither is wage labor, neither is wage slavery. Choices can be manipulated by the powerful, as can free will, like those, who only see shadows in Plato’s cave. So, your author sides with the defenders, with labor and the working-class. After all, he was born and raised as a day laborer.
Okay, your author is out of time. All we get for now is a bit of stream-of-consciousness. Your author doesn’t even have time to edit these comments because he has to get back to the rat race, fighting to avoid houselessness, fighting to provide for his family, struggling to do something for his community and our world, fighting for some kind of retirement fund, like some of you, fellow readers, out there. So, all apologies, if he’s erred. Please provide corrections, thoughts, concerns, words of encouragement in the comment section. Whether here, or elsewhere, please keep raising up your voice. The world needs more truth-seekers and less bullshitters. Your comments will help us all paint a clearer picture of reality than any one of us can ever paint in isolation. Your author promises to read your comments, if not daily, at least weekly. And, as long as your comments are respectful, they will be posted publicly. As March Cohodes said in the interview cited above: One thing I will not tolerate is disrespect.
“Bonds 101 (DETAILED EXPLANATION FOR BEGINNERS)” by Rose Han [via YouTube], 23 SEP 2020. [12min 25sec]
NOTES: ‘Bonds are legal contracts for loans secured with liens, which is why bonds are considered safer investments than stocks. Unlike with bonds, one only makes money on stocks if the stock value goes up…[i.e., buy low, sell high]’ … ‘With bonds, bondholders can usually recoup some of their investment by the foreclosure on, and selling off of, the assets. But with stocks, if a company goes bankrupt, stockholders can lose all of their investment…’ ‘On the other hand, if a stock goes up really high, stockholders can gain a big profit. But a bondholder will only get their interest payments, nothing more, nothing less.’ … ‘E.g., Apple issues stock shares and bonds…’ | (c. 3min 40sec) ‘If looking to invest in bonds, two things are important: creditworthiness and yield. 1. creditworthiness assures payment of interest and principal. Credit ratings are used to measure creditworthiness. Credit ratings are published by third-party agencies (e.g., Moody’s; Standard and Poor’s; Fitch’s) … ‘AAA rating is the highest rating for a bond…’ ‘C rating is the lowest rating for a bond’ ‘BBB and up is investment-worthy’ ‘Below BBB is considered a junk bond’ … (c. 7min 00sec) ‘two ways to invest in bonds: (1) buy a bond fund, (2) buy individual bond. Either way, you’ll need some sort of investment account or a brokerage account (e.g., Fidelity; Schwab; Vanguard). …. Bond funds are safer investments because risk is diversified, e.g., over 2,000 bonds. So, of one defaults, it doesn’t impact the overall bond fund much.’ ‘safety in numbers’ and convenient to invest in. By comparison, to buy an individual bond, minimum investment is usually about $1,000 plus fees and commissions. So, unless one is an advanced investor with a lot of money, who knows how to pick bonds, it’s usually better to stick with bond funds.’ (c. 9min 09sec) … two main categories: government bonds and corporate bonds. Examples of government bonds are city, state, or federal, like U.S. Treasury bonds.
“Bond Investing 101–A Beginner’s Guide to Bonds” by Rob Berger [via YouTube], 18 JUL 2021. [45min 00sec]
NOTES: … (c. 2min 20sec) ‘For the most part, interest on a bond is paid twice a year.’ For example, if a bond pays 2%, that’s called the coupon rate. So, for example, a $1,000 bond will pay the 2% every six months until the end of the time period. And, at the end of the time period, you’ll also get back the amount you invested. In this example, the $1000. When the bond time period ends, that’s called “maturity”. ‘The $1,000 amount paid back is called the principal.’ … (c. 4min 10sec) ‘Also, for the most part, bonds can be bought and sold. The amount of the bond is called the par value.’ … ‘The value of a bond fluctuates.’ This presents “two risks”: “credit risk” and “interest rate risk”. (c. 5min 20sec) ‘Credit risk means you might not get paid an interest payment or you might not get all or any of your money back at the end, at maturity.’ ‘US government bonds, like US Treasury bonds, are the safest because they can simply create the dollars into existence.’ … (c. 6min 20sec) On interest rate risk. … (c. 14min 10sec) ‘Is there a way to get a better estimate of how an increase in interest rates will affect a bond’s value? Yes, it’s called duration.’ | (c. 14min 25sec) On “duration.” … … (c. 38min 40sec) ‘Three approaches to bonds…’
“Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government” by Readara [via YouTube], 19 JUN 2020. [49min 50sec]
QUOTATIONS FROM VIDEO DESCRIPTION: “Journalist and Salon.com founder David Talbot interviewed by Readara.com on his book The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (published by Harper Perennial)
“Allen Welch Dulles, the distinguished Wall Street lawyer and son of a prominent family, rose to the helm of the Central Intelligence Agency at a very young age. With the help of John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State and Allen Dulles’ brother, the longest-serving chief of the CIA molded the secretive organization in a way that often led to secret wars, overthrowing of foreign governments and occasional spying on its own people, all with the support of the U.S. Congress and mostly behind the backs of three presidents. David Talbot, nonfiction book author and founder of the San Francisco-based web magazine Salon, combs through various government archives and draws from numerous first-hand interviews and sources to build a vivid portrayal of Dulles and the CIA under his leadership.
“AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: David Talbot is the author of the New York Times bestseller Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years and the acclaimed national bestseller Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love. He is the founder and former editor in chief of Salon, and was a senior editor at Mother Jones and the features editor at the San Francisco Examiner. He has written for The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Time, The Guardian, and other major publications. Talbot lives in San Francisco, California.”
NOTES: [L14]
COMMENTS: This is an interview with David Talbot, author of the 2016 book, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, which your scribe has noted previously. After decades of being an observer of U.S. state power, as a favorite pastime as a way to relax or take a break from the rat race, your author’s attention gradually shifted away from the culture wars to political science and, then, towards economics, and more recently towards the world of finance. Listening to the first 14 minutes or so of this interview, plus recalling other studies of Allen Welch Dulles and the history of the CIA, it’s evident that the CIA’s mission has always been to protect Wall Street and the U.S. financial sector, the secret army of U.S. capitalist imperialism. But, at the heart of it all, appears to be the world of U.S. finance. The U.S. legal system is, likewise, geared to protect the status quo, especially the further one goes back in history. In the early days, the wickedness and evil was barely hidden. Absurd legal arguments have been plain to see for all, such as invoking the archaic doctrine of discovery to dispossess the First Nations of the the American Continent, Native Americans, or to perpetuate slavery as long as possible, or to perpetuate Jim Crow Laws. As Dr. Noam Chomsky has emphasized in Requiem for the American Dream and elsewhere: “It’s important to understand that privileged and powerful sectors have never liked democracy and for very good reasons. Democracy puts power into the hands of the general population and takes it away from them. It’s kind of a principle of concentration of wealth and power.” Dr. Chomsky speaks about “democratizing tendencies” of black, brown, poor, and working-class people, which are the primary problems for the “privileged and powerful sectors”. To give a clearer picture of this somewhat amorphous “privileged and powerful sectors”, a couple of useful books are The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills and Giants: The Global Power Elite by Dr. Peter Phillips. Peter Dale Scott is also an excellent source on deep politics, including the history of the CIA. There are many others, but, for sure, your author can vouch for these books as excellent starting points. And, of course, David Talbot’s writings are excellent.
Anyway, getting back to the point—the financial sector. It’s becoming clearer and clearer to your author that the greatest enemy to what Dr. Chomsky calls “democratizing tendencies” is the financial sector, the banks, and the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate). Dr. Michael Hudson and Dr. Radhika Desai lay this out quite comprehensively in their video series, The Geopolitical Economy Hour, particularly their most recent episode, “Did big banks take over the Treasury? Bank crisis exposes public realities of private banking” by Geopolitical Economy Report [via YouTube], 25 MAR 2023. Your author has been trying to make sense of Dr. Michael Hudson’s analysis for years, or decades, but without the adequate training in economics. After studying at UMKC and getting a bachelor’s in economics a lot of his analysis makes much more sense. And, more recently, studying a bit of finance, everything Dr. Michael Hudson has been trying to teach the world for decades is becoming perfectly clear, especially how neoliberalism, deindustrialization, financial deregulation, the financialization of the U.S. economy, regulatory capture, and how the Federal Reserve has refused to play fair with other nations and the American people, how the Federal Reserve has shirked its responsibility of its dual mandate: price stability (i.e., control inflation) and full employment (make sure there are enough jobs for a healthy economy). It’s the banks! It’s the banksters! Of course it is. Your author has been hearing researchers point to the Rothschilds and the bankers going back to Europe before the United States. And, it seems, they are all still interwoven, and controlling economies from behind the scenes. Anyway, your author is out of time for now. Check out this interview with David Talbot by Readara. And keep reading! The audio is for doing chores or manual labor, that way we can keep learning, even when we have to do mundane tasks and whatnot. Peace be unto you. Working-Class Solidarity. #AbolishTheCIA
[ 1 ] Your author will never forget the day Amy Goodman interviewed former President Bill Clinton. He got his comeuppance. And we got to hear Mr. Clinton’s true personality, his bullying nature. I never understood people, who interview people in positions of power, but then ask softball questions. People called it an ambush interview. Pfft. After 9/11, many of us were disappointed by the dishonesty of Democracy Now!, the lying by omission, the gaslighting. After COVID-19, it was clearer than ever that Democracy Now! (DN!) has been compromised, or has sold out. As Lewis Lapham said about reading The New York Times, ‘I still read it,’ he said, ‘But, when I do, I know they’re lying to me.’ The same thing goes for DN! Like the KPFA news bosses and most of the Pacifica Radio news bosses, DN! suffers from what Dr. Noam Chomsky called the “liberal bias” back in the day, when he was critiquing corporate media. Now, Dr. Chomsky’s critique also applies to most of the Pacifica Radio Network newscast bosses, who must make U.S. spooks proud for providing synthetic left programming, if the news bosses aren’t in fact on some spook payroll.
[ 2 ] UpFront is some of the worst kind of Machiavellian gaslighting in radio. This type of Machiavellian talk radio hides its lack of concern for the suffering of others behind a veneer of journalistic objectivity or journalistic professionalism—professionalism, the journalistic refuge of scoundrels. Liberals (i.e., pro-capitalists or non-anti-capitalists), like this host, appear to be professional amnesiacs, conveniently forgetting lessons from their own past interviews, if such lessons threaten the status quo, not to mention other common sense lessons from the broader society. There are so many examples of when listeners can remember a key piece of information, which can help an interview reach deeper conclusions or attain new insights, but the liberal host feigns ignorance or simply failed to make the connection. And listeners are given the mushroom treatment, as Nicole Sawaya used to say (former KPFA manager, described the long-standing culture behind the scenes at Pacifica Radio): ‘keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.’ At any rate, the listeners, who listen because they care about social justice, are the losers because these liberal hosts force each conversation to start at square one. Important insights culled from interview A will never show up on interview B or C. Sure, such liberals will go into meticulous and sophisticated detail. But only when it doesn’t impact the status quo. Of course, there are exceptions at Pacifica Radio, such as Flashpoints and Guns and Butter (which was forced off the air at KPFA), but they are viewed as the black sheep by the bosses, not supported or embraced as allies. Oddly, during the first quarter of 2022, Mickey Huff was on Letters and Politics. I’ll have to relisten, if possible. It’s plausible Mickey Huff is open to collaboration and cooperation. But it’s not plausible entertainers, like Mitch Jeserich, would ever do anything with sincere educators and truth-seekers, like Mickey Huff, without an ulterior motive, such as reputational rehabilitation. Examples of established ideas and conclusions, which can help liberate the working class, but which are marginalized or ignored by such liberals, as the hosts of UpFront, Letters and Politics, Talkies, etc., include modern monetary theory, the job guarantee program, the two-party dictatorship, the fact that two-party systems are polarizing, benefits of ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, the incompatibility between democracy and capitalism, and so on. And these are not partisan issues. They’re only partisan issues, if you’re an antidemocratic partisan, a fascist, or an authoritarian. Otherwise, we all have the common sense to identify basic democratizing features of a healthy democracy. These are undisputable conclusions about a healthy democracy versus a diseased democracy, which have been accumulated after listening to voices advocating for social justice for decades. When you listen to voices for peace and justice for years and decades, it’s hard not to learn basic truths over time. Yet, somehow, some people never learn anything. They still haven’t grasped the fundamental contradictions within capitalism, for example. Only willful ignorance seems adequate to explain this. The underlying presuppositions of such liberals deny all of these realities and begin with the false left-right paradigm, in which the Democrat Party is assumed to be a sincere opposition party, when, in fact, as Chris Hedges, Ralph Nader, et al, have long admitted, we have a two-party dictatorship because America has undergone a corporate coup d’etat decades ago. But you’d never know any of this from listening to liberals, such as this particular host.
[ 3 ] Covid, Race & Democracy is a good radio program. Your author is acquainted with at least two contributors. Yet, regarding the COVID-19 issue, he disagrees most with the contributor he knows best. Your author disagrees with the so-called Zero Covid approach because human history has proven it’s impossible for humans to ever be free of seasonal respiratory diseases such as coronaviruses or rhinoviruses. Also, the scientific consensus is clear: coronaviruses, when first introduced to a species, are more harmful, but less contagious; then, they become more contagious, but less harmful. Of course, this is what happened with Omicron. Age stratification means the older one is, the more vulnerable one is to any and all respiratory diseases. But this program has aired conflicting perspectives on COVID-19, which is fine. The problem is some of those fact-claims are easily verifiable falsehoods. Debates or panels with opposing perspectives could help resolve, or at least address some of the contradictions of occasionally allowing dissenting views, such as the Great Barrington Declaration, but mostly amplifying establishment assumptions, such as citing “case rates”, rather than truly sick and infected or hospitalized people. Most COVID-19 statistics cite PCR test results, which are prone to error, depending on the cycle threshold used to magnify samples. At any rate, the PCR test’s inventor, Dr. Kary Mullis, has stated categorically that the PCR test is not a diagnostic test. Then, there’s the VAERS data, which is usually occulted, and the official statistical models have been occulted, and the 17,000 doctors speaking out in dissent, and the doctors being persecuted, targeted, smeared, for refusing to be coerced into pushing an absurd agenda. The Gary Null Show addresses most, if not all, common sense concerns and critiques about the police state psyop response to COVID-19, which is threatening to close the open society, to force ‘COVID passports’ on everyone, to mandate jabs for kids without parental consent, to impose unscientific ‘social distancing’, to abolish cash and impose a central bank digital currency (CBDC), which threatens to be programmable by an authoritarian state (to be cut off faster than the Canadian truckers’ money got cut off, if you disagree with government policy, protest, or petition the Government for a redress of grievances), to make most people fearful of everyone else, to further alienate people and atomize society, in short, to incrementally impose inverted totalitarianism.
[20 MAR 1023]
[Last modified/edited/updated on 29 MAR 2023 at 09:59 PDT]
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