https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/israeli-defence-firm-elbit-q3-profit-up-ramps-up-production-war-2023-11-28/

good news folks: more genocide means line go up

More news from the ASS:

Summary of meeting between foreign ministers, including a desire for a common currency: https://nitter.cz/marcus_herve/status/1730801387880022434

The Burkinabè government shuts down all distribution media of the French newspaper Le Monde: https://nitter.cz/marcus_herve/status/1731090053131030893

A “leaner” government? The effect of China's anti-corruption campaign on the body weight and health of public sector employees

German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall is planning to start production of armoured vehicles in Ukraine next year.At first vehicles of the type Lynx and Fuchs are going to be produced. The manufacturer is not concerned about the security of the plant as they are renting existing facilities that "looks like they're pretty well-protected".

Michael Roberts' latest piece, taking us through the Historical Materialism conference. He talks about the responses he got from various people there about his book, including a comparison between China and Nazi Germany.

He also defends the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall from various radlibs.

...

SJ was pleased that we did not swallow the idea of capitalist stages ie. ‘monopoly capitalism’ or ‘state monopoly capitalism’, which have become popular again recently, but instead stuck to using value theory to explain changes in capitalism, as such. But SJ did not agree with the view in our book that China was not capitalist, let alone imperialist. RV also argued that China was capitalist – yes, the state played a big role, but so did it play such a role in countries like Japan and Korea in their development. Indeed, China’s economy was similar in some ways to Nazi Germany in fusing the state with big business to exploit wage labour. I do not agree that a fascist state has the same class character or economic foundation as the modern Chinese state, but there is no space to develop that argument here.

This critique was echoed from the floor in discussion. Indeed, I suspect that I was the only one in the session that did not accept that China was capitalist (or state capitalist?). My defence of that position has been outlined in many posts and papers. Simply, yes the law of value still operates in China, capitalists operate in China; workers are exploited and wage labour exists. But something happened in 1949: capitalists and landlords were expropriated and a new state machine was installed. Yes, there is no workers democracy in China; it’s a one-party dictatorship (says Biden!).

But when we consider the economic foundation of the Chinese economy, the size of the state sector is immense compared to any other (major) economy in the world; and the commanding heights of the economy are in the hands of the state and CPC. Capitalists operate in China and there are billionaires,but they do not control the state machine or its policies, and instead often they must do the state’s bidding.

And here is the theoretical rub: if China is capitalist like any other capitalist state, how can we explain China’s phenomenal economic growth and rise in prosperity? I thought capitalism could no longer develop the productive forces for the world’s periphery – are they not held back by imperialism and the contradictions of capitalist production? No other peripheral capitalist economy, not even India, has grown like China – none of the other BRICS have done so. So does China’s (capitalist?) success mean that we must revise Marxist theory on capitalism; or is China not capitalist after all?

...

Several speakers attacked the chapter on imperialism; first, because the book rejected the theory that the main cause of surplus value transfer from the peripheral counties to the imperialist bloc was through ‘super-exploitation’ ie where wages levels in poor countries are forced below even the basic needs of people ie below the value of the labour power. Our research on the economics of modern imperialism does not rule out super-exploitation, but we reckon value transfer takes place mainly because of the technological superiority of the imperialist companies over the periphery, not because of low wages. Through the process of what Marx called ‘unequal exchange’ in trade, the imperialist countries can gain extra surplus value from the periphery. So imperialist exploitation is not because wages are forced lower in the poor countries.

Later, on tech companies, and the magical invention of AI that is soon to cure all ills:

The big issue of 21st century capitalism apart from global warming is the advent of AI and ‘generalised intelligence’, as expressed through language learning machines (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Bard. There was an excellent session on the tech ‘monopolies’ and how they would prosper over the next few decades. In his presentation, Harry Halpin from the American University of Beirut (and a top ‘techi’, I am told), quickly dismissed the nonsense promoted by the likes of Yanis Varoufakis that ‘ordinary capitalism’ is dead and been taken over by ‘feudal monopolies’ like the ‘famous seven’ media and tech monsters.

Halpin reckoned that the tech companies faced the same contradictions of other capitalist companies – over time, their profitability would fall and push them into crisis. Their bloated stock prices bore little relation to their underlying profitability and would prove to be so much fiction. As AI reduced marginal costs of production towards zero, it would lead to high average costs in infrastructure and facilities that had to be paid for by ever great profits. That wasn’t going to be found in the sectors each tech was in and so they would be forced to compete with each other and look for ‘unproductive’ but lucrative business such as military and corporate surveillance where government funding would be available.

Folks, would anyone object if we changed the law so my company’s CEO is imprisoned for life?

late slammer post

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/28/charlie-munger-investing-sage-and-warren-buffetts-confidant-dies.html no light in the coffin eh shithead?

From 4h ago

08.48 EST

More than 100 people killed in Gaza, Hamas claims

The death toll since the resumption of fighting has increased again – now standing at 109, Reuters quotes the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry as saying.

It comes as the World Health Organization (WHO) warns Gaza’s health system was on its knees even before the ceasefire ended, with hospitals resembling a “horror movie”.

WHO officials inside Gaza have said the healthcare situation there was already “catastrophic”. Richard Peeperkorn, its representative there, has told reporters: “We are extremely concerned about the resumption of violence.” Already, he said, “the health system in Gaza has been crippled by the ongoing hostilities. It cannot afford to lose more hospitals”.

- The Guardian

"Biden is a humanitarian desk officer."

Administrator Samantha Power with MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace | November 2, 2023 | U.S. Agency for International Development

ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: ...And now we see mothers digging their kids out of rubble, and a desperate need for food and water that we, at USAID, are trying to meet with our partners on the ground. We see President Biden, who's becoming almost a humanitarian desk officer in pushing for trucks, and water, and fuel, and respect for international humanitarian law, and distinguishing between Hamas and civilians – as hard as that is when Hamas is willing to cause its own civilians to pay the price and willing to set up shop in places where civilians are gathered, including refugee camps and so forth.

Norm tweet

The inexecrable, bootlicking, sadistic Samantha Power (Obama loved her "crinkly" eyes) just described Biden as a "humanitarian desk officer from the beginning" of the Gaza genocide. It seems this dim bulb borrowed from but misrendered the description of Eichmann: "desk murderer."

Nitter

If you're like me and you don't particularly give a shit about COP28 or various thinkpieces on Israel-Gaza by the same type of people who used to (and sometimes still do) believe that Ukraine was handily winning against Russia and that the US/NATO could defeat China/Russia with both arms tied behind their backs, then there has been almost no news over the past couple days. Certainly nothing to fill a briefing with, yesterday or today.

So, instead, I offer this article, featuring somebody so comically wrong that I wonder if they're doing a bit or if they're actually this detached from reality. Do you think that your quality of life and monetary situation has gotten notably worse over the past few years? You are wrong, you complete fucking moron, and this guy will prove it to you with statistics.

Financial Times: Should we believe Americans when they say the economy is bad?

Something weird is happening in America. GDP growth for Q3 was just revised up from an already scorching 4.9 per cent to 5.2 per cent, more Americans have jobs than at any time in history, but the public is up in arms about economic conditions, with consumer confidence dropping to a six-month low. There really is no pleasing some people.

With headline indicators in such rude health, we would expect the number of Americans who think they’re better off than this time last year to outnumber those who say they’re worse off by about 25 percentage points. Instead, the reportedly worse-offs outnumber the better-offs by ten points in the latest University of Michigan’s index of Current Economic Conditions.

I know what you’re thinking: inflation explains all of this. People really hate rising prices, and are reminded of them every time they buy something. Inflation’s salience drowns out other more distant or intangible gains. It’s certainly a good theory, but countries all around the world have faced steep inflation. Many steeper than the US. Presumably their consumers are also much more pessimistic than we would expect?

Well, no actually. Extending an original analysis by X user Quantian1, I have calculated expected consumer sentiment for a set of countries based on their underlying economic indicators, and compared it to actual sentiment. Relative to the eve of the pandemic, US consumers now appear gloomier than the French, the Germans and even the British. The Europeans all feel about as confident as one might expect based on how their economies are performing. Disproportionate doom seems to be a new American affliction.

So what’s going on? Last weekend FocalData ran a poll for me, asking a representative sample of 2,000 US adults whether they thought economic circumstances had improved or deteriorated over recent years. The results were startling: Americans are consistently wrong in the negative direction on almost every measure we polled. By huge margins, they believe inflation is still rising (it’s falling), that it has outstripped wage growth (wages have outpaced prices), and that they have become less wealthy (they’ve become much wealthier).

Attempts to justify this sense of gloom often emphasise the challenges faced by less prosperous groups, but this also goes counter to the evidence. One explanation I heard is that the despondency comes from young people struggling with runaway rents. But wages have risen faster for them than the old, outpacing rents. Plus young consumers are the most positive, per the Michigan survey.

Similarly, wages have risen faster for those on the lowest incomes, reversing more than a third of the increase in wage inequality over the past four decades. Wealth has risen for the least and most wealthy alike.

The most striking response from our survey concerned the sense of longer-term progress. Large majorities of Americans think the median income today pays for a worse lifestyle than 30 years ago (demonstrably false), and that poverty is higher than it was a generation ago (it has plummeted). One particularly revealing statistic is that Americans’ assessment of their own financial situation has barely budged over the past five years, but their rating of the national economy has worsened steeply. It seems they have decided that the vibes are bad, so things must be going badly for most other people, even if not for themselves.

...

It seems US consumer sentiment is becoming the latest victim of expressive responding, where people give incorrect answers to questions to signal wider tribal political or social affiliations. My advice: if you want to know what Americans really think of economic conditions, look at their spending patterns. Unlike cautious Europeans, US consumers are back on the pre-pandemic trendline and buying more stuff than ever.

Another kkkracka down - Sandra Day O'Connor, 1930-2023

Greetings to Palestinian FM

Pyongyang, November 30 (KCNA) -- DPRK Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui sent a message of greeting to Riad Al Malki, minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates of the State of Palestine, on November 29 on the occasion of the Day of World's Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

The message wished the Palestinian people success in their just struggle to found an independent state with Eastern Kuds as its capital, strongly censuring thrice-cursed unethical and anti-humanitarian atrocities of Israel, which is indiscriminately killing innocent Palestinian people despite the unanimous protest and denunciation of the peace-loving people of the world, and the one-sided policy toward Israel of the U.S. which patronizes its atrocities. -0-

www.kcna.kp (Juche112.11.30.)

http://kcna.kp/en/article/q/5b42ca8de564e69ab0b3bf1703e23bec.kcmsf

This Christmas I’m going straight to hell

A French youtuber got a hold of a fired Javelin guidance unit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11_5TB0-lNw

International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People was yesterday, on the 29th. Spotify Wrapped was also released yesterday. Usually it is released on December 1st.

Al Mayadeen English temporarily banned on X for 12 hours: https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/al-mayadeen-english-temporarily-banned-on-x-for-12-hours

They really need to set up a Telegram account yesterday. And they have no excuse since the Arabic version already has a Telegram account.

Well looks like the israli elon meeting didn't have the affect they where hoping to

george santos' war against the US congress may have been cut short, but i will not let you refer to george without adding the title 'coronél' in front

Brazil's Lula: Biden has no 'sensitivity' to stop war on Gaza.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Lula calls Netanyahu an extremist leader with no human sensitivity towards the Palestinians

Brazil, renowned for its cultural diversity and vast rainforests, is experiencing significant political transformation.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s return to power marked a departure from Jair Bolsonaro’s conservative government. This shift heralds a renewed focus on social welfare, poverty reduction, and inclusive growth, mirroring Lula’s previous term in the 2000s.

However, Brazil’s journey is mired in global challenges, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the war on Gaza. These issues raise important questions about Brazil’s role and position as a major global economy.

Interview