Duncan Lindo

mostly banking and finance on here, occasionally cricket, football, politics & permaculture, all mixed up in a bucket. views my own, retweets not endorsements.

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

All the takes are correct and yet they also miss the point.

Yes, it was insane for the Democrats to think they could win by running a soulless candidate, without a shred of progressive policy vision, pursuing endorsements from neocon war-hawks everybody hates, while arming and funding a genocide, and belittling and crushing those who have enough morality to protest it.  It is enraging that the Democrats are so smug and blind to this.

But these are all just symptoms.  The deeper reality is that liberalism has failed, liberalism is dead, and people urgently need to wake up to this fact and respond accordingly. It is a defunct ideology that cannot offer any meaningful solutions to our social and ecological crises and it must be abandoned.

Democrats have proven over and over again that they cannot accept even *basic* steps like public healthcare, affordable housing, and a public job guarantee - things that would dramatically improve the material, social and political conditions of the working classes. And they cannot accept a public finance strategy that would steer production away from fossil fuels and toward green transition to give us a shot at a liveable future.

Why? Because these things run against the objectives of capital accumulation. And for liberals capital is sacrosanct. They will do whatever it takes to ensure elite accumulation, it is their only consistent commitment.  At home, they suppress and demonize progressive and socialist tendencies. Abroad, they engage in endless wars and violence to suppress input prices in the global South and prevent any possibility of sovereign economic development.

The Democrats have done all this purposefully and knowingly, for my whole life, not as some kind of "mistake" but in full consciousness that it is in the interests of capital.

And because liberalism cannot address our crises, and because it crushes socialist alternatives, it inevitably paves the way for right-wing populism.  They know this pattern, and yet they risk it every time - this election being only the most recent example. They did it in 2016, when they actively crushed the Sanders campaign and sent Trump to the White House. They do it because ultimately they (and I mean the liberal ruling class here) don't really mind if fascists take power, so long as the latter too ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. They 100% prefer this to the possibility of a socialist alternative.

So, progressives have to face reality. The dream of "converting" the Democratic party is dead. This is now a fact and it must be accepted. The only option is to build a mass-based movement that can reclaim the working classes and mobilize a political vehicle that can integrate disparate progressive struggles into a unified and formidable political force and achieve substantive transformation. This will take real work, actual organizing, but it must be done and that process must begin now.

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

In this new paper we calculate the unequal exchange of labour between the global North and global South. The results are quite staggering. You'll want to look at this... 🧵

https://t.co/fEbCmRZuyJ

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

Today's ICJ ruling is truly historic. For many years, legal scholars and NGOs have accused Israel of the crime of apartheid. People were attacked for saying this and even cancelled. Today the accusation comes from the international court itself: Israel is an apartheid regime.

[Kerry Burgess @KerryBurgess]

Excellent work by Sinn Fein.....

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

When I vote in Parliament, I do not vote alone. I vote with my community — and we believe in a kinder, better world.

If you live in Islington North, please pledge your support at https://t.co/PelsYAbKrf

[Duncan Lindo @lindod1972]

@paulmasonnews Why would you do that??!?

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

"It's the worst thing I've seen in my lifetime."

British broadcaster & football legend @garylineker talks Gaza with me on #MehdiUnfiltered and reveals: "I cry on a regular basis when I see certain images on social media."

Full show: https://t.co/Pk6BzTJQnx

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

What the present moment reveals, once again, is that Western aggression during the "Cold War" was never about destroying socialism, as such. It was about destroying movements and governments in the periphery that sought economic sovereignty. Why? Because economic sovereignty in the periphery threatens capital accumulation in the core.

This remains the primary objective of Western aggression today. And it is the single greatest source of violence, war and instability in the world system.

The reason Western powers went after socialist movements across the global South during the "Cold War" (Cuba, China, the incineration of Vietnam and North Korea, etc) was because they knew socialism would enable the South to regain control over their own productive capacities - their labour and resources and factories - and organize them around local needs and national development.

When this happens - when people in the global South start producing and consuming for themselves - it means that those resources are no longer cheaply available to service consumption and accumulation in the core, thus disrupting the imperial arrangement on which Western capitalism has always relied (cheap labour, cheap resources, control over productive capacities, markets on tap). Remember, roughly 50% of all material consumption in the core is net-appropriated from the global South. This is what they are trying to defend.

But it wasn't only socialist governments that pursued economic sovereignty. After political decolonization, a wide range of movements and states across the South also sought economic liberation and sovereign industrial development. And Western powers attacked them with equal brutality (Indonesia, Brazil, Guatemala, the DRC...).

This is the key reason that Western powers supported the apartheid regime in South Africa, and it is why they support the Israeli regime today... as Western settler-colonial outposts that can be used to attack and destabilize regional movements seeking socialism or any form of real economic sovereignty, whether in Angola or Mozambique or Zimbabwe or any of the Arab nationalist or socialist movements in North Africa and the Middle East.

Iran has always been central to this story. Western states orchestrated a coup against the extremely popular prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. He was a left-leaning nationalist, not a socialist. But he wanted Iran to have control over its own resources (notably, oil), and for the US and Britain this was unacceptable. Mossadegh was replaced by a brutal Western-backed dictatorship. The revolution that finally overthrew the dictatorship in 1979 - and constituted the current government - wasn't even left-leaning, much less socialist. But they want national economic self-determination and that is sin enough. They are a target for the exact same reasons that Iraq and Libya were targets.

The same goes for China. China's path toward sovereign industrialization - whether socialist or not - means that it is no longer an easy source of cheap labour for Western capital. And as the supply price increases so too does the sabre-rattling from Western states and media.

So this is the situation we are in. The Western ruling classes are backing obscene violence and plausible genocide in Gaza, against overwhelming international condemnation, because they must shore up their regional outpost at virtually any cost. The vast majority of the world supports Palestinian liberation, but Palestinian liberation would constrain Israeli power and open the way to regional liberation movements, and this is strongly antithetical to the interests of Western capital. And now they are provoking war with Iran, risking regional conflagration, while at the same time encircling China with military bases, ramping up sanctions on Cuba, trying to contain progressive governments in Latin America, threatening invasion of the Sahel states...

It is intolerable and it cannot continue. The violence they perpetrate, the instability, the constant wars against a long historical procession of peoples and movements in the global South who yearn for freedom and self-determination... the whole world is dragged into this horrifying nightmare. They are willing to inflict enormous suffering and misery on hundreds of millions of people in order to preserve existing dynamics of capital accumulation. We will not have peace until this arrangement is overcome and post-capitalist transformations are achieved.

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

It turns out that, since German police decreed that Ghassan Abu Sittah would have broken the law if he dared post a video of the speech they did not let him deliver at our Congress, the same applies to me. Glad to have broken their pathetic law by posting my speech - see below.

[Pelham @Resist_05]

📍Iran isn’t bombing hospitals

📍Iran isn’t bombing refugee camps

📍Iran isn’t attacking WCK aid workers

📍Iran hasn’t killed 15,000 Israeli children

📍Iran isn’t targeting UN workers

📍Iran isn’t bombing schools

ISRAEL IS NOT THE VICTIM…🇵🇸💔

[sarah @sahouraxo]

BREAKING: The West Bank is under attack.

Armed Israeli settlers are burning entire Palestinian villages to the ground.

This is not self-defense. It’s terrorism.

[Jason W. Moore @oikeios]

Nothing to see here. Just a Germany in the thick of rearmament and the suppression of political speech.

[Clare Daly @ClareDalyIRL]

German democracy combusting before our eyes. Full scale repression of legitimate assembly & political expression. Raiding meetings & extraterritorially banning online speeches! Another example of Europe willing to throw rights, law, everything, on the bonfire to defend genocide.

[Prof Julia Steinberger @JKSteinberger]

Not only did Germany physically deport him, after hours of interrogation, they told him that if he connected by videoconf, he'd be breaking German law and face jail term????

[Pelham @Resist_05]

Israeli Gideon Levy delivers one of the greatest speeches in modern history…🇮🇱🇵🇸

[sarah @sahouraxo]

New Irish Prime Minister slaps Netanyahu:

“Netanyahu, let me say this to you this evening: The Irish people could not be clearer. We are repulsed by your actions. Ceasefire now and let the aid flow safely.”

[Duncan Lindo @lindod1972]

@PRoufos @ProfessorWolan2 @unipotsdam Looks good. Could I get a copy of the syllabus too please?

[UN Human Rights Council @UN_HRC]

“Following nearly 6 months of unrelenting Israeli assault on occupied #Gaza, it is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of & to present my findings: 'the Anatomy of a Genocide'.”

— Special Rapporteur @FranceskAlbs at @UN Human Rights Council.

#HRC55

[Duncan Lindo @lindod1972]

@graceblakeley @zeithistoriker @reijerhendrikse