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"Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor."

-- Thomas Jefferson

News and Opinion

Wealthy Capitalist Accidentally Makes Great Argument For Revolution

Recent comments from a wealthy Australian property developer named Tim Gurner are going viral on social media right now for the unusual frankness with which he discusses the inherent conflicts of interest between the working class and employers, saying workers who’ve grown lazy and arrogant during Covid need to experience economic pain in the form of unemployment to rein them in and put them in their place.

Gurner, who with a net worth of $912 million is ranked by the Australian Financial Review as the 154th richest person in Australia, made the remarks at the Australian Financial Review Property Summit on Tuesday.

“You know, tradies [Australian slang for tradesmen] have definitely pulled back on productivity,” Gurner said. “They have been paid a lot to do not too much in the last few years. And we need to see that change. I think the problem that we’ve had is that we have people who decided they didn’t really want to work so much anymore through Covid.”

Gurner continued:

“We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. We need to see unemployment rise, unemployment has to jump 40–50 percent. In my view, we need to see pain in the economy. I mean, there’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them as opposed to the other way around.

“So it’s a dynamic that has to change. We’ve got to kill that attitude and that has to come through hurting the economy which is what the whole global world is trying to do. The governments around the world are trying to increase unemployment, to get that to some sort of normality, and we’re seeing it. I think every employer now is seeing it.

“I mean, there are definitely massive layoffs going off and people might not be talking about it, but people are definitely laying people off and we’re starting to see less arrogance in the employment market and that has to continue, because that will cascade across the cost balance.”

It’s not often that you’ll see a member of the ruling class reveal their hostile, slave-master attitude toward the working class so transparently. Perhaps Gurner got a little too careless showing off in front of his rich friends at a forum which, like most things that happen in Australia, never attracts much international attention. But it also wouldn’t be the first time Gurner drew headlines by publicly expressing his disdain for normal working people; in 2017 he became a meme for blaming the economic struggles of millennials on the idea that they spend too much of their money on avocado toast. 

Whether he intended his remarks to gain attention or not, Gurner has gone viral once again, and opponents of the status quo he thrives on are making swift use of his comments.

“I like teaching lefty theory as much as the next guy but I can rarely do better at explaining the connection between capital and social-political domination than just pointing at what the guys with the capital do and say,” reads a popular tweet by Georgetown professor Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò.

“When Marxists say that capitalism, in order to function, literally requires unemployment and homelessness to discipline wages to ensure satisfactory profitability and maintain a useful social domination of the working class don’t take it from us, take it from capitalists,” reads another popular share of the Gurner video.

marxists spend a lot of time explaining how unemployment is central to the functioning of capitalism and it can never be eliminated as long as capitalism stands. but then sometimes the ruling class just comes out and says it for us https://t.co/tkGmph1yTn

— dr pulaski defender (@t_r_i_a_n_g_l_e) June 21, 2022

Gurner’s statements are unusual in their frankness and in their admission that unemployment is a weapon of the ruling class to bludgeon workers into working harder for less pay, but his push to decrease employment is also entirely in alignment with what influential economists like Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke and Olivier Blanchard have been saying in recent months. Workers making more money is seen by the ruling class as a freakish aberrational problem that needs to be fixed via economic pain instead of a good thing that should be celebrated and normalized.

It’s important to remember these frank admissions when they happen, because they don’t happen very often. Normally the capitalist class spends its time telling workers they’re an important part of the team and we’re all family here and hey, have a slice of pizza on us every now and then. But the fact of the matter is that all they really care about is their ability to siphon off the excess value generated by your labor, and they’ll come together with remarkable class solidarity to push the state to hurt you financially in order to ensure that they can skim the largest share of that value possible.

This is completely unsustainable. We cannot continue to tolerate systems which must necessarily abuse workers with financial pain in order to keep increasing profits and quarterly statements. We must transcend these competition-based models where people are manipulated by financial pain into stepping on each other’s heads in a rat race to show the ruling class that they can generate more profit for their employer than their neighbor can. We need to move into collaboration-based systems in which we all work together for the good of everyone and toward the thriving of our biosphere. Our current status quo systems are choking us to death.

Such changes aren’t going to happen until the people start using the power of their numbers to force them to happen. And Tim Gurner just made a splendid argument outlining why this should happen sooner rather than later.

Remember: a class war is already happening. That decision has already been made for us. The only thing we have a say in is whether we fight back or not.

Millionaire Calls For Mass Unemployment 'We Need To See Pain'

Blinken: US Does Not Oppose Ukraine Targeting Russian Territory With US-Provided Missiles

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that it was up to Ukraine whether or not to target Russian territory with US-provided weapons, a policy that brings the US and Russia closer to a direct clash.

Blinken made the comments after ABC News reported that it’s likely the Biden administration will soon arm Ukraine with Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of up to 190 miles. ...

When asked about the increasing Ukrainian drone attacks inside Russia, Blinken claimed the US does not “encourage” or “enable” the operations. However, The Economist recently reported that Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia frequently use intelligence gathered by Kyiv’s Western backers.

Milley Says Time Is Running Out for Ukraine’s Counteroffensive

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said Sunday that Ukraine’s counteroffensive could only have 30-45 days left before the assault is hindered by weather.

“There’s still a reasonable amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days’ worth of fighting weather left, so the Ukrainians aren’t done,” Milley told BBC. “There’s battles not done… they haven’t finished the fighting part of what they’re trying to accomplish.”

He said it was still too early to tell if the counteroffensive had failed and claimed Ukrainian forces were “progressing at a very steady pace through the Russian front lines.” But since the assault was launched in early June, Ukraine has not regained a significant amount of territory.

Elon Musk biographer admits suggestion SpaceX head blocked Ukraine drone attack was wrong

The author of a new biography of Elon Musk has admitted that a controversial detail in an online extract of the book – which suggested that the tech magnate thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian naval base in September 2022 – is factually incorrect.

The extract from Walter Isaacson’s book, published in the Washington Post on Thursday, originally said that the SpaceX CEO “secretly” told engineers to turn off Starlink coverage within 100km of the Crimean coast to prevent a Ukrainian attack on the area. “As a result, when the Ukrainian drone subs got near the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” continued the extract.

Musk quickly disputed the story, tweeting that the Starlink regions in question “were not activated” in the first place and that the company “did not deactivate anything”. Instead, there was an “emergency request” from government authorities to activate Starlink to Sevastopol, “the obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor”, wrote Musk. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

On Friday, Isaacson tweeted a clarification, writing that “the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.”

Putin meets Kim Jong Un. US warns more sanctions

Legal action against Trump shows ‘rottenness’ of US politics, says Putin

President Vladimir Putin has described the recent indictments of Donald Trump as “political persecution” as the Russian leader waded back into a US presidential campaign for the third consecutive election cycle. Putin made the remarks during an economic forum in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, where he is also due to hold meetings with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, this week.

“Everything happening to Trump is political persecution of a political rival. That’s what it is. And this is happening before the eyes of the United States public and entire world,” Putin said during a question-and-answer session. “As for the persecution of Trump, I believe that everything happening at the moment is good. Because it demonstrates the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy.” ...

Putin said Trump’s offers to negotiate with Russia over its war in Ukraine had “pleased him”, but said he thought that US policy toward Russia would not change, regardless of whether Trump becomes president in 2024.

“Even though they accused him of having a special relationship with Russia, which is complete nonsense, he imposed sanctions on Russia more than anyone else while he was president,” Putin said. “Therefore, it is difficult to say what to expect from the future president, no matter who the president is, but it is unlikely that anything will change radically.”

US and Canadian Warships Sail Through Taiwan Strait

A US and Canadian warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Saturday, a transit condemned by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

The US Navy’s Seventh Fleet said the guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson made the transit along with the Canadian frigate HMCS Ottawa. “The ships transited through a corridor in the strait that is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal state,” the Seventh Fleet said.

US transits of the Taiwan Strait are common, but they are vehemently opposed by China. In recent years, Canada has been frequently joining the US in its Taiwan Strait provocations, and the US Coast Guard has also appeared in the sensitive waterway.

Niger says France amassing troops, equipment in ECOWAS states

Niger’s military has accused France of gathering forces and equipment in several West African countries with a view to launching a “military intervention” against Niamey. Colonel Amadou Abdramane, a spokesman for Niger’s coup leaders, made the claim on national television late on Saturday.

He said France was continuing to deploy its forces in member countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as “part of preparations for an aggression against Niger, which it is planning in collaboration with this community organisation”.

French “military cargo aircraft have enabled large quantities of war material and equipment to be unloaded in Senegal, Ivory Coast and Benin, to name but a few”, he said.

AutoWorkers To Stage BIGGEST STRIKE In Decades As AutoMakers OK BILLIONS Of Dollars To Shareholders

New federal charges filed against ex-police officers in Tyre Nichols killing

Five former Memphis police officers are now facing federal civil rights charges in the beating death of Tyre Nichols as they continue to fight second-degree murder charges in state courts arising from the killing.

Tadarrius Bean, Desmond Mills, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin and Justin Smith were indicted on Tuesday in US district court in Memphis. The four-count indictment charges each of them with deprivation of rights under the color of law through excessive force and failure to intervene, and through deliberate indifference; conspiracy to witness tampering; and obstruction of justice through witness tampering.

The new charges come nine months after the violent beating of Nichols by police officers during a 7 January traffic stop near his home in Memphis. Nichols died at a hospital three days later, and the five officers have pleaded not guilty to state charges of second-degree murder and other alleged offenses in connection with the case.

“Tyre Nichols should be alive today,” said Merrick Garland during a press conference on Tuesday announcing the federal charges. “The country watched in horror as Mr Nichols was kicked, punched, Tased and pepper sprayed. We all heard him cry out for his mother and say, ‘I’m just trying to go home.’”

Garland added that the five officers not only violated Nichols’ civil rights, but they “conspired to cover up their crimes, including by falsely stating that Mr Nichols had actively resisted arrest”. The department of justice also alleges that the officers lied to emergency responders about striking him repeatedly.

Descendants of enslaved people fight against ‘erasure’ of their historical land

For more than 230 years, a small community of Gullah-Geechee people have called Sapelo Island off the coast of Georgia home. Hogg Hammock, the area on the island where these descendants of enslaved people live, is a 427-acre coastal community of 40 residents and has been designated as a historic site since 1996. That means that the construction of houses more than 1,400 sq ft and any road paving or demolition of property are strictly prohibited to preserve the island community.

On Tuesday, McIntosh county commissioners, who preside over Sapelo, voted to remove zoning restrictions in Hogg Hammock. Gullah-Geechee residents fear that wealthy transplants who want to develop larger homes and who could force a rise of property taxes there will displace them and upend their livelihoods.

The county, which is 65% white, has voted to remove official language that acknowledges Hogg Hammock as an area with “unique needs in regard to its historic resources”. It will also strike language that states it should prevent “land value increases which could force removal of the indigenous population”.

The vote represents the latest dispute between county officials and the small historic Black community. Back in 2012, Hogg Hammock residents protested against the county’s raising of property taxes – which the county then rolled back. And in 2015, the community sued the county in federal court alleging that it had racially discriminated against residents by failing to provide them with adequate services. The island’s residents had paid county taxes for schools, police and fire departments, and trash collection services – none of which extended to Sapelo Island. The county settled the lawsuit last year, agreeing to give emergency and road services and freeze property taxes for some residents.

House speaker Kevin McCarthy announces impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden

The speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, on Tuesday announced that Republicans would open an impeachment investigation into Joe Biden over unproven allegations of corruption in his family’s business dealings.

The announcement by McCarthy kicks off what are expected to be weeks of Republican-led hearings intended to convince Americans that the president profited from the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden and other family members, but it is unclear if the GOP has the evidence to substantiate the long-running claims, or even the votes for impeachment.

The campaign comes as McCarthy tries to hang on to his position as leader of Congress’s lower chamber, despite a mere four-seat Republican majority and rising discontent among its most extreme conservative lawmakers, who are upset over a deal McCarthy reached with Biden to raise the debt ceiling while cutting some government spending, and have demanded recompense in the form of an impeachment inquiry.

“House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct. Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption,” McCarthy announced as lawmakers in Congress’s lower chamber resumed work following a month-long recess in August.

“I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. This logical next step will give our committees the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the American public. That’s exactly what we want to know – the answers. I believe the president would want to answer these questions and allegations as well,” McCarthy said.

CNN ADMITS Biden CONSTANTLY Makes FALSE Claims; IMPEACHMENT Inquiry Picks Up Steam

Minnesota lawsuit seeks to bar Trump from ballot under 14th amendment

A group of Minnesota voters filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to remove Donald Trump from the ballot in their state, escalating the effort to disqualify the former president from running based on untested constitutional language that prohibits anyone who has “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.

The voters are being represented by Free Speech for People, a left-leaning group that has aggressively been pushing to remove Trump from the ballot in several states. A similar lawsuit was filed in Colorado last week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, another watchdog group.

The petition, filed with the Minnesota supreme court, argues that Trump’s activities to overturn the election, including those on 6 January, amounted to engaging in insurrection. Section 3 of the 14th amendment says that anyone who takes an oath to the United States and then subsequently engages in “insurrection or rebellion against the same” is disqualified from holding public office.

“The events of January 6, 2021 amounted to an insurrection or a rebellion under Section 3: a violent, coordinated effort to storm the Capitol to obstruct and prevent the Vice President of the United States and the United States Congress from fulfilling their constitutional roles by certifying President Biden’s victory, and to illegally extend then-President Trump’s tenure in office,” the petition says.

Andrew Yang has ‘had conversations’ with third-party 2024 election group

The tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, has “had conversations” with No Labels, a group considering launching a third-party candidate in the 2024 election.

“I’ve had conversations with various folks who are associated with No Labels,” Yang told Politico.

Asked “repeatedly” if the group had asked him to be its candidate in an election shaping up to be a repeat of Joe Biden v Donald Trump in 2020, Yang “side-stepped a direct response”, Politico said.

“We have a lot of friends and people in common,” Yang said, while wearing a lapel pin promoting his own third-party effort, Forward, Politico noted. ...

Names linked to a No Labels candidacy have included Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, and Larry Hogan, a former Republican governor of Maryland. Neither has counted out the possibility.

‘Don’t panic!’ say leading Democrats as Biden’s age and poor polls cast pall

Democratic strategists are urging a “don’t panic” response to a series of opinion polls that reveal deep worries over Joe Biden’s age and his ability to beat Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential election.

A CNN survey conducted by SSRS caused shockwaves this week when it put Biden’s approval rating at just 39% and found two in three Democrats say the party should nominate someone else next year. In a hypothetical contest, registered voters were split between Trump (47%) and Biden (46%).

The findings echoed a Wall Street Journal poll that found 73% of voters say Biden, 80, is “too old to run for president” but just 47% of voters say the same about Trump, who is 77 and the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination. It put the two candidates neck and neck in the race for the White House, as does a polling average compiled by RealClearPolitics. ...

The latest round of polls have provoked a sharp response by senior Democratic advisers. They argue the party’s strength was underestimated in last year’s midterm elections when a so-called “red wave” failed to materialise for Republicans. They also point to the potency of abortion rights and successes in recent elections and ballot measures in Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and other states.

US behind more than a third of global oil and gas expansion plans, report finds

The US accounts for more than a third of the expansion of global oil and gas production planned by mid-century, despite its claims of climate leadership, research has found.

Canada and Russia have the next biggest expansion plans, calculated based on how much carbon dioxide is likely to be produced from new developments, followed by Iran, China and Brazil. The United Arab Emirates, which is to host the annual UN climate summit this year, Cop28 in Dubai in November, is seventh on the list.

The data, in a report from the campaign group Oil Change International, also showed that five “global north countries” – the US, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK – will be responsible for just over half of all the planned expansion from new oil and gas fields to 2050.

Greenhouse gas emissions from all of the oil and gas expansion that is planned in the next three decades would be more than enough to drive global temperatures well beyond the limit of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels that countries agreed in 2021 at Cop26 in Glasgow, the report found.

The International Energy Agency warned in 2021 that no new oil and gas exploration and development could take place if the world was to stay within the 1.5C limit. But only a handful of countries with oil and gas reserves are forswearing new exploration and drilling.

‘Beginning of the end’ of fossil fuel era approaching, says IEA

The world’s demand for oil, gas and coal will begin to decline this decade in “the beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era, according to the global energy watchdog.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has projected for the first time that fossil fuel consumption will peak before 2030 and fall into permanent decline as climate policies take effect.

However, the forecast downturn is still “nowhere near steep enough” to put the world on a path to limiting temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrialised levels, which is considered crucial to avoiding a climate catastrophe.

The IEA’s influential energy outlook report, due to be published next month, will show that oil, gas and coal are on course to hit a peak this decade under existing climate policies, earlier than many have anticipated.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

CEO Honesty About Wanting High Unemployment

Avoiding Nuclear War

The West’s Blueprint for Goading China Was Laid Out in Ukraine

Kasandras Beware - China's Economy Will Not Hit A Wall

‘Time to Exact Heavy Price’: Mossad Chief Threatens to Assassinate Iran’s Leaders

Georgia’s RICO Law Is in the News—but Its Use to Silence Protesters Gets a Pass

Women challenge abortion bans in three states after emergency care denied

Billionaires Cash In On Abusive Farm Worker Scam

CIA Paid Officials to BURY EVIDENCE of Covid Lab Leak Theory, Says Whistleblower

UAW President ATTACKS Billionaires 'We're Going To WRECK Their Economy'

A Little Night Music

Professor Longhair - Go To The Mardi Gras

Professor Longhair - Tipitina

Professor Longhair – I'm Movin' On

Professor Longhair - Rockin' Pneumonia

Professor Longhair – Tell Me Pretty Baby

Professor Longhair - In The Night

Professor Longhair - Longhair's Blues-Rhumba

Professor Longhair - How Long Has That Train Been Gone

Professor Longhair & The Meters - Big Chief