Tag: Exploitation

Inflation and financial risk

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Is inflation coming back in the major capitalist economies? As the US economy (in particular) and other major economies begin to rebound from the COVID slump of 2020, the talk among mainstream economists is whether inflation in the prices for goods and services in those economies is going to accelerate to the point where central banks have to tighten monetary policy (ie stop injecting credit into the banking system and raise interest rates). And if that were to happen, would it cause a collapse in the stock and bond markets and bankruptcies for many weaker companies as the cost of servicing corporate debt rises?

Inflation and financial risk

Marx on technology

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The longest chapter in Capital is the fifteenth, on “Machinery and Large-Scale Industry.” At almost 150-pages, it’s really a book in itself, a staggeringly dense and expansive discussion that could easily standalone—not only as a brilliant exegesis of capitalist machinery, but also as a sweeping social history of technology. At its broadest reach, the chapter is a vivid demonstration of historical materialism in action, of Marx’s method put through its dialectical paces. As ever with Marx, his footnotes aren’t to be passed over glibly: they’re worth studying, pondering over for the nuggets of insight they contain.

Marx on technology

Philip Agee and Edward Snowden: A comparision.

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Philip Agee and Edward Snowden: A comparision.

Links to articles (Wired one is behind a paywall):

CIA Diary – Inside the Company (Excerpt)

Snowden – I Left the NSA Clues, But They Couldn’t Find Them (Full Interview)

Related:

Snowden and the Ethics of Whistleblowing

Snowden also explained to Greenwald how his leaks differed from those he had previously criticized. “When you leak the CIA’s secrets, you can harm people,” he explains, as Julian Assange’s more indiscriminate Wikileaks had, perhaps, demonstrated. Blowing the whistle about NSA surveillance supposedly would not harm anyone: “when you leak the NSA’s secrets, you only harm abusive systems.” As Snowden has repeatedly emphasized, he meticulously sorted the secret materials he released with an eye toward minimizing danger to others: “I have carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was in the public interest.” Snowden encouraged Greenwald to filter the leaked materials so that they could reach the public “without harm to any innocent people.” Rather than place classified materials online in bulk as Assange has, Snowden urged a more cautious approach. “If I wanted the documents just put on the Internet en masse, I could have done that myself,” he tells Greenwald.