“Nearly all of our problems are rooted in the massively unequal ownership of land, wealth, and power that exists among the over-7 billion human beings on earth. More specifically, these problems are rooted in the majority of the planet’s population being stripped of its ability to satisfy the most basic of human needs. This predicament did not happen overnight, and it is far from natural. Rather, it is the product of centuries of immoral, illegitimate, and unwarranted human activity carried out by a miniscule section of the world’s people.”
Highly privileged American teenagers: “The material conditions under capitalism contribute greatly to my anxiety on a daily basis! Communism is the way to go!!!”
People that have actually lived–or are currently living–under Communism (or Marxist leaders):
Cuba–
Poland–
China–
Zimbabwe–
What a load of reactionary misinformation. Rush Limbaugh would be proud.
Those are Cubans, but they are Cuban Americans living in Florida for several generations. Most of them are descended from members of Cuba’s elites and henchmen of Batista and his American masters.
The Pols, that’s a bit more understandable, but it also reflects centuries of Ethnocentric Nationalism and Ethnic conflict between the Pols and the Russians. So much so that they reacted against communism with its polar opposite: Ultra Right-Wing Nationalism tinged with racist and anti-immigrant sentiment.
That is in Hong Kong. Hong Kong should consider itself lucky to have the level of autonomy it has under the One State-Two Systems policy of the PRC. Since being handed over to China by the British, Hong Kong still has millionaires and billionaires, maybe more now that trade restrictions with the mainland have virtually disappeared.
Finally, Mugabe is not a socialist or a communist. He is a sell out that betrayed the people or Zimbabwe for his own ends. And his concepts of “Black Supremacy” and racism are antithetical to any Marxist, communist or socialist precepts. Calling him a socialist is like calling Adolf Hitler a semitophile.
Its disgusting that you are considered “privileged” for despising a system as one-sided, unfair and unsustainable as capitalism. And one, who is not a member of the power elite, can’t help but have anxiety when the next time you get sick you have a choice between suffering and possibly dying or going completely broke. Knowing that in order to better yourself with an education you have to take on crippling debt. Or the crushing despair that no matter how hard you work, you get nowhere because wages are stagnant and the cost of living keeps rising.
Yet not bothering to consider that some of the most authoritarian regimes that have ever existed embraced and protected capitalism with a passion.
You had a choice between coke and pepsi under Francisco Franco but that was about it.
In short, fuck capitalism. You are privileged if you benefit from it and hold those who dare question it’s might and wisdom. For the rest of us, it does not work.
“What would Cuba be like today if the Cuban Revolution hadn’t happened? Sweden of the Caribbean? Hardly. It would be no different from Haiti, one suspects. An American plantation with an exiled ring of death-squad mercenaries ready to discipline the population as and when required. Constant US interventions, the repeated crushing of popular dreams, virtual slave labor, life expectancy and poverty worse than that found in parts of the southeastern United States, hardly any public sector. A ruling class of… bumpkin billionaire oligarchs, and gangster capitalists.” – Richard Seymour
Navinder Singh Sarao pleads guilty in flash crash case
The British financial trader accused of manipulating markets and causing the 2010 “flash crash” in US stocks has pleaded guilty in a Chicago court to fraud charges, according to authorities.
Navinder Singh Sarao, a 37-year-old working out of a modest suburban home in Hounslow in west London, allegedly made tens of millions of dollars with a computer programme that could automatically manipulate prices.
He was due to be released on a $750,000 bond after pleading guilty.
Sarao was extradited to the US on Tuesday and entered the guilty plea on Wednesday to one count of wire fraud and one count of “spoofing”, an illegal stock manipulation technique, in the Chicago federal district court, the Justice Department said.
“Navinder Sarao abused sophisticated technology to make a quick profit, and jeopardised the integrity of US financial markets,” said Assistant Attorney-General Leslie Caldwell.
“By flooding the marketplace with bogus orders, his scheme victimised countless individuals.”
Sarao agreed to forfeit nearly $13m in gains and faces up to 30 years in prison, Erica Lacy, a
spokesperson,
said.
Meanwhile, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced that it was seeking monetary sanctions of $38m in the case against Sarao.
A grand jury indicted Sarao last year, accusing him of earning $40m through “spoofing” the market with fake orders between 2010 and 2014 to move the prices of securities.
The indictment detailed how he built a system with the help of programmers specifically designed to help him repeatedly issue and cancel simultaneous sell-and-buy orders in key securities to make the prices go in the direction he wanted.
E-mails cited in the indictment made clear he knew what he was doing.
His activities were blamed for the sudden market crash of May 6, 2010, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 600 points in a matter of minutes, wiping hundreds of billions of dollars from share values.
Sarao was arrested in London in April 2015 and was granted bail after months in jail after admitting he had parked $31m in assets in Switzerland, according to Bloomberg.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
