#Branko Marcetic

[eelhound]

"Washington’s unstated rule is that military spending can never be cut, even a little, no matter how ludicrously colossal it is, meaning almost every single new budget must be bigger than the last. So, it wasn’t long ago that Donald Trump’s $750-billion military budget request for FY 2020 was the largest ever, only to be immediately outdone by the mammoth $778-billion budget Biden signed into law in 2021, which itself was $25 billion more than what he’d initially asked for.

More than even the obscene wastefulness of all this, it reflects a misunderstanding of US interests. The most dire threats to ordinary Americans don’t come from the designs of foreign governments, as terrible as those sometimes are, but from the panoply of domestic crises that leave them poorer, less healthy, and with lower life expectancies than other developed countries — with an impending global recession set to make all this even worse, the latest in a series of recent economic crises that have battered working Americans. It’s these crises, and US political institutions’ struggle to adequately respond to them, that exact far more damage to democracy in the United States and elsewhere than the comparatively feeble militaries of despotic foreign regimes.

Meanwhile, a crude overreliance on military supremacy can have the exact opposite effect on other governments’ behavior than what’s intended. Politicians think of this massive military investment and the global footprint it underwrites as a deterrent, but it can just as easily lead other states to feel less secure and take drastic, reckless steps out of a foolhardy cost-benefit analysis. This is why more than a few experts have warned that, for instance, recent aggressive US signals on Taiwan and China could wind up provoking the very war it’s meant to deter, something that is, on rare occasions, acknowledged even by hawkish US politicians.

All this is compounded by the chronic underfunding of the US diplomatic corps: if all you have is the world’s largest military, every problem looks like it can be solved via military means.

Tragically, while the establishment hand-wrings about its precious military budget, the most likely actual outcome of the deal between McCarthy and the Freedom Caucus is cutbacks in the domestic programs Americans rely on for health, housing, education, and more. The GOP had planned an attack on entitlements like Medicare and Social Security before the midterms, and Republicans — including Representative Roy, the McCarthy holdout who vehemently insisted military spending wouldn’t be touched — have already signaled these would be on the table as a result of this deal. 'I’m all for a balanced budget, but we’re not going to do it on the backs of our troops and our military,' Representative Michael Waltz (R-FL) told Fox. 'If we really want to talk about the debt and spending, it’s the entitlements programs.'

In other words, it’ll be the economic security of working Americans that’s sacrificed yet again."

- Branko Marcetic, from "A Tiny Cut in the Military Budget That Probably Won’t Happen Is Causing Panic in Washington." Jacobin, 11 January 2023.

[russianreader]

Simon Pirani: No Path to Peace in Ukraine Through This Fantasy World

The Russian army’s meagre successes in Ukraine – such as taking the ruined town of Avdiivka, at horrendous human cost – have produced a new round of western politicians’ statements and commentators’ articles about possible peace negotiations. Hopes are not high, because the Kremlin shows no appetite for such talks. Its actions, such as nightly bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure,…

[arthropooda]

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Isn't "humanitarian Pause" just another way of saying "Ceasefire"?

Both sides put their weapons down long enough for the wounded to be moved off the battlefield, for everyone to perform religious/cultural rites, for soldiers to write to their loved ones, for civilians to get relief, and for journalists to report on the situation (possibly other things too, like if the battlefield is the habitat of an endangered species, the ceasefire might allow conservationists to go in with tranq rifles and extract the creatures to a temporary safezone). Why does it matter what this period of time is called?

Yea, this is an understandable confusion that the expression is clearly trying its best to instill! Which is why I think it’s important to put out clear activist messaging to demystify it. Based king and heart throb Branko marcetic at jacobin had a useful rundown:

In short: a “humanitarian pause” as suggested by the current administration would be greatly reduced in scope as compared w a ceasefire in space, time, and kinds of conflict affected, and would be imposed to facilitate a “humane” prosecution of the war rather than look for a path to an actual cessation of hostilities. If there were no meaningful difference, the administration would not be so emphatic about drawing one! The only ceasefire is a ceasefire, this is just mass murder in a funny little hat

[newfiesforpeace]

WHO WE ARE AND WHY WE SUPPORT A CEASE FIRE IN GAZA

We are members of the Newfoundland Community who are concerned with the on-going violence in Gaza, Palestine who feel a cease fire is a moral imperative as soon as possible.

According to UNICEF over 13,000 children have been killed in Gaza since October 7th. We agree with Amnesty International and fifteen other human rights organizations that the only way to prevent further loss of life is to begin a cease fire immediately.

If Israel refuses to begin a cease fire then the international community, including Canada should apply whatever political pressure necessary to encourage them to do so. Canada describes itself as having a "steadfast" relationship with Israel but this should end if the humanitarian crisis continues.

Our Newfoundland representative Yvonne Jones recently visited Israel and has yet to call for a cease fire. We do not believe she is representing the Newfie community and we would like her to call for a cease fire to end the needless loss of life.

If you would like to learn more here are some relevant information and links:

Articles

If You Care About the Hostages, Demand a Cease Fire - Branko Marcetic

What a Palestinian-American Wants You To Know About Dehumanization - Hala Alyan

We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other - Arielle Angel

People to Contact

Newfoundland MP Yvonne Jones

Look up your Canadian MP

Facts and Figures

Gaza's Population of 1.6 million is mostly children

38% of Gazans live in poverty

54% of Gazans are food insecure

Israeli military policy has prevented access to 35% of farmland

Over 90% of the water is undrinkable

The United Nations has called the blockade a human rights violation

Source

Charities Supporting Gaza

Palestine Children's Relief Fund

Doctors Without Borders

Oxfam

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society

[darkmaga-retard]

Scott interviews James Carden about two articles he wrote recently. The first looks back at the war in Afghanistan. He and Scott talk about how Obama immediately went the wrong direction with the war, how Trump had some good instincts but was ignored by his subordinates and why the disastrous withdrawal really was Biden’s fault. They then talk about all the neoconservatives and neoliberals who make up the foreign policy establishment rallying behind their new candidate — Kamala Harris.

Discussed on the show:

“The Real Tragedy of Afghanistan” (The American Conservative)

“Looser rules, more civilian deaths, a Taliban takeover: Inside America’s failed Afghan drone campaign” (Audacy)

“The Foreign Policy Establishment Licks Its Chops for Harris” (The American Conservative)

“Video of Joe Biden Warning of Russian Hostility if NATO Expands Resurfaces” (Newsweek)

Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden by Branko Marcetic

Bill Hicks on JFK

James Carden is a columnist and senior advisor to the American Committee for US-Russia Accord (ACURA) and a former adviser on Russia policy at the US State Department. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd, The National Interest, Quartz, The Los Angeles Times, and American Affairs.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott.

Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack.

[fifihunterbakariafrocentric]

Branko Marcetic: Joe Biden Is No Al Franken | Writer's Voice

[thefree-online]

Blood Money: Top Ten US Politicians Taking Most Israel Lobby Cash to okay Genocide and Apartheid of Palestinians

from thefreeonline  on December 25 2023 by Mint Press The largest recipient of Israel lobby money is President Joe Biden. #1 Joe Biden, $4,346,264 The largest recipient of Israel lobby money is President Joe Biden. From the beginning of his political career, Biden, according to his biographer Branko Marcetic, “established himself as an implacable friend of Israel,” spending his Senate career…

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Kim and I had the grandkids overnight so they’re worn out and we’re worn out. Heck, even our pups are worn out. The house is really quiet, just how I like it. I’m sitting here in the dark, sipping coffee, composing today’s post.

This week work was mostly about onboarding a couple new iOS Devs who’ll be working with me on our project to add React Native support to existing native apps. I’m really enjoying it. 😀

Caitlin Harrington • WIRED

Last month, Grindr gave its all-remote staff two weeks to pledge to work from an office two days a week starting in October or lose their jobs come August 31. Many declined to return: 82 out of 178 employees—46 percent of the staff—were let go after rejecting the mandate, according to the Grindr union, which went public two weeks before the ultimatum.

Wow. That’s about all I had to say when I read this piece. I have a friend who took a job there — as a remote test engineer — only to have this mandate cross his desk two weeks later. Needless to say he didn’t move and is now looking for a new gig. It’s a real head scratcher.

Ron Amadeo • Ars Technica

The Federated Learning of Cohorts and now the Topics API are part of a plan to pitch an “alternative” tracking platform, and Google argues that there has to be a tracking alternative—you can’t just not be spied on.

Emphasis is mine. At least they admit what they’re doing and it’s pathetic. 😳

You know what’s worse? People won’t switch away from Chrome.

thehackernews.com

Apple on Thursday released emergency security updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS to address two zero-day flaws that have been exploited in the wild to deliver NSO Group’s Pegasus mercenary spyware.

Update your devices right away. The talent possessed to do this type of ferreting around an OS looking for holes is both impressive and terrifying all at the same time.

Branko Marcetic • jacobin.com

The inflation rate — that is, the pace at which prices are going up — might be slowing down, but that doesn’t mean prices are lower. In fact, they are much, much higher for all kinds of goods and services than they were three years ago.

I’ve definitely noticed this when we go to our favorite Mexican restaurant here in Charlottesville.

It’s really becoming apparent in the streaming business. I just received email saying our Hulu subscription is going up to $81.99/month. We currently pay $64/month. That’s close to a 25% increase. 🤬

Taegan Goddard • politicalwire.com

Pence Calls Trump’s Populism a ‘Road to Ruin’

Wow. Pence finally figured it out. Took long enough.

I know folks have praised him for what he did January 6 — myself included — but the truth is he could’ve done a lot more prior to the sixth to avert this, like call the FBI.

MSRC • msrc.microsoft.com

Upon identifying that the threat actor had acquired the consumer key, Microsoft performed a comprehensive technical investigation into the acquisition of the Microsoft account consumer signing key, including how it was used to access enterprise email. Our technical investigation has concluded. As part of our commitment to transparency and trust, we are releasing our investigation findings.

Reading these reports is fascinating. I love seeing them own up to mistakes and solve the problems that lead them there. I personally like to focus on the problem and not point fingers. These reports come across like that to me.

Greg Jones • enginebuildermag.com

As a kid, Dan Keenan loved fixing things, tearing things apart, and figuring out a way to build something new. But he never dreamed his skills would one day lead to being a key player in designing a brand-new race engine for NASCAR.

This is an older piece but is a great little read if you’re at all interested in engine building. I most definitely am and would love to see some deep dives of all the motors used in the NASCAR Cup Series. The teams use a new motor each week! It’s amazing to me how consistent the builds are from week to week.

They do see the occasional failure but those are rare. It would be amazing to see reports from engine builders outlining the failures and the steps taken to mitigate them, just like that Microsoft Security piece linked above.

Michael Meng • eng.lyft.com

Lyft runs hundreds of microservices to power the company’s offerings. Our team, the Developer Infrastructure team, aims to build the best tools to enable microservice owners (our “customers”) to reliably and quickly test changes in a local and/or end-to-end environment.

When we crossed that line from desktop focused computing on local networks to service based computing on the open web software development became infinitely more complicated. I know a lot of folks who’ll disagree with that assessment and that’s fine. It’s how it feels to me. I’m a simpleton and prefer my little self contained IDE and platform. 😃

GMS Racing • legacymotorclub.com

LEGACY MOTOR CLUB™ Signs John Hunter Nemechek to Drive the No. 42 in 2024

It’s fun to watch NASCAR teams make lineup changes for next season. How many more changes will we see between now and next season? Who knows.

It’ll also be nice to see where the Stewart Haas Racing rumors land. Do they run two or four cars next year? Do they have charters for sale? If so, who picks them up?

Oh, right, when is Dodge coming back! 🤣 Yes, I really do want to see it.

Lane Brown • Vulture

The Ophelia affair is a useful microcosm for understanding how Rotten Tomatoes, which turned 25 in August, has come to function. The site was conceived in the early days of the web as a Hot or Not for movies. Now, it can make or break them — with implications for how films are perceived, released, marketed, and possibly even green-lit. The Tomatometer may be the most important metric in entertainment, yet it’s also erratic, reductive, and easily hacked.

I’d not heard of folks gamifying Rotten Tomatoes scores but it makes sense it would happen. Gotta keep those scores fresh so folks will watch your movie and put money in your pocket. 🍅

[agreenroad]

Are US officials signaling a new ‘forever war’ in Ukraine? By Branko Marcetic

Are US officials signaling a new ‘forever war’ in Ukraine? By Branko Marcetic

[liberty1776]

The consistently insightful Branko Marcetic has a new article out with Jacobin titled “After the Ukraine Documents Leak, Mainstream Media Is Missing the Story” about the way imperial narrative managers have been manipulating the discourse about the information released in the Pentagon leaks by Jack Teixeira. Marcetic criticizes the way mass media outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times (who actually hunted down and outed Teixeira before the FBI even brought him in) have been dragging the conversation kicking and screaming away from the contents of the leaks into discussions about how bad leaks are and what a bad, bad … Continue reading →

[christinamac1]

Diplomatic Cables Show Russia Saw NATO Expansion as a Red Line

Ukraine was the “line of last resort” that would complete Russia’s encirclement, said one defense expert, and its entry into NATO was universally viewed by the Russian political elite as an “unfriendly act.”  ACURA VIEWPOINT, Branko Marcetic, January 16, 2023 Nearly a year in, the war in Ukraine has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and brought the world to the brink of, in President Joe…

[mrwho609]

#Listening to 11/11/22 Branko Marcetic on the DHS’s Role in Online Censorship traffic.megaphone.fm/SCHM3341835033.mp3?updated=1668647581 from the FREE TruthSeeeker app truthseekerapp.com

[eelhound]

"[Branko Marcetic:] You make the case that our modern relationship with and understanding of debt is unique when you look at the full scope of human history. What was ancient societies’ relationship to debt and how did they keep it in check?

[Michael Hudson:] Almost all debt, in really ancient society, was interpersonal, what the Europeans called weregild-type debt. If you injured somebody, if you break an arm, or if you kill them, there are two choices ancient society had: either you had a feud, and your family would fight his family, or he’d make restitution, and you would settle the conflict. Gradually, the payment of the weregild, whether it was in money — or if it was really serious, it would be in slave girls or cattle — came to be the word for debt, and for the offense, or the word for 'sin.' So the original meaning of the Lord’s Prayer in Hebrew and Greek was, 'Forgive us our debts.'

In Mesopotamia, an agrarian economy, most debts began to be owed to the palace or the temples. Obligations were paid throughout the year. In the third millennium Sumer, or second millennium Babylonia, if you go to a bar during the crop year, you’d run up a tab to the alehouse, and to the palace for advances of animals, water, or agricultural inputs, and everything was done by credit. The debts would all be paid on the threshing floor, in grain, and a unit of grain was equal to a unit of silver.

But sometimes, you would have a crop failure, or war, or drought, and you couldn’t pay. And at that time, like in the laws of Hammurabi, you’d say, 'If the storm god, Hadad, comes and ruins the crops, then the debts don’t have to be paid.' This is how society worked, basically, in the third, second, and even into the first millennium. When a new ruler took the throne, or when there were other reasons — a war was over, or there was any reason for a debt cancellation — you’d cancel the debts, you’d liberate the debt servants to go back to their families, you’d give them back the pledges that they’d made. Because what would happen if you hadn’t wiped out the debts? All of a sudden all these people that owed debts would become the servants of the person who they owed them to, a wealthy person.

BM: You also make the case that this matter is at the heart of the Biblical stories we think we’re familiar with.

MH: That was what the first sermon of Jesus was all about. When he went to the synagogue and unrolled the scroll of Isaiah the prophet and said, 'I’ve come to proclaim the year of the Lord,' which was the debt cancellation — the Jubilee year — that was brought in from Babylonia into Judaism, as it was done all through the Near East. People who translated the Bible didn’t really know what these words meant. What does it mean, 'year of the Lord?' What does it mean, 'deror?,' which was debt cancellation.

It was only after Assyriologists began to find out how all of Near Eastern society had debt cancellation, just like anthropologists were finding that all the way from the Native American Indians to European realms, you’d have this practice of restoring balance. The idea was, how do we prevent society from destabilizing and polarizing? You cancel the debts...

The whole fight of every early society was: How do you prevent the population from falling into bondage? The palaces had a reason for doing this. If you would have the taxpaying small cultivators owing their crop to the creditor and having to go to work on the creditor’s land instead of working as a corvee, building palace walls and digging ditches for irrigation — if you would have these people fall in debt to the creditors, they wouldn’t be able to pay this crop surplus and labor surplus to the palace anymore. The creditors would take over.

Rulers throughout the Near East, all the way into probably the early kings of Rome, said, 'The one thing we’ve got to do is prevent the creditor class from becoming an independent oligarchy. Because if it becomes independent of us, and it gets the economic surplus, they’re going to use this labor to hire an army, they’re going to overthrow us, and they’re going to become the state.'

So you always had a struggle between the state protecting society from the creditor class — the oligarchy — and the oligarchy wanting to be independent, wanting not to have a debt cancellation. And this was a fight that went on for four centuries before Jesus’s time. The early Christians were basically advocates of the Jubilee year, trying to cancel debt...

Every economy is going to be planned by someone. The question is, is it going to be planned by the creditors, as it has happened today? Or are you going to have a government, a ruler, that is going to say, 'My job is to keep society stable, and to prevent it from polarizing so that we can survive and be resilient and go forward?' The creditors don’t care about resilience. Their time frame is rather short."...

BM: What are the implications of this for the post-pandemic recovery, given we live in such highly indebted societies?

MH: The tendency of any economy that has an interest-bearing debt is the debt growing faster than the economy as a whole. You have exponential debt doubling every so many years and economies have never been able to keep up with it. The tendency of debt for any family, any corporation, any economy, is to grow faster than the ability to pay, until there’s a crash. And when you can’t pay, either you lose the property, or you become in one way or another, a servant to your creditor, in terms of having to pay labor, having to pay whatever you produce. You have a concentration of property ownership in the hands of the creditors, if you don’t write off the debts, which ancient society did, and which used to be the core of ancient religion.

Every economy that has interest-bearing debt has to restructure at some point, or else all of the economy will end up being owned by just a teeny group of people at the top, like you had in Rome. That’s how the Roman Republic ended up in the Roman Empire. It becomes centralized. The tendency of any financialized economy is to centralize. Not only wealth, but by centralizing wealth, you centralize political power, and decision-making, and ultimately, military force in the hands of the financial class."

- Branko Marcetic interviewing Michael Hudson, from "When Debts Become Unpayable, They Should Be Forgiven." Jacobin, 23 December 2021.

[indiestreet]

The three best books of 2020:

The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins (PublicAffairs)

Yesterday’s Man by Branko Marcetic (Verso)

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)

[ferrolano-blog]

El ataque de Israel a Gaza no se parece a ninguna guerra reciente Por Branko Marcetic Desde el ritmo y la escala de la matanza de civiles hasta la matanza de grupos protegidos y el tipo de municiones, la guerra de Israel contra Gaza es una campaña excepcionalmente brutal que no se parece a casi nada que hayamos visto... "Siento que se me están acabando las formas de describir los horrores que afectan a los niños aquí", dijo el portavoz de UNICEF, James Elder... Josep Borrell, también ha calificado la situación en Gaza de “catastrófica, apocalíptica”, con una escala de destrucción “incluso mayor que la destrucción sufrida por las ciudades alemanas durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial”... Además, aproximadamente el 70 por ciento de los palestinos asesinados hasta ahora han sido mujeres y niños. Se trata de una proporción asombrosa que distingue a Gaza de algunas de las peores guerras de este siglo... Lo que se necesita para detener esto no es otra guerra desastrosa o un cambio de régimen, sino simplemente privar al ejército israelí de la armas que necesita para llevar a cabo esta matanza masiva. Lamentablemente, la administración Biden se niega a hacerlo. Al ritmo que las fuerzas israelíes están matando gente, y con las enfermedades y el hambre a punto de empezar a cobrar muchas más vidas en Gaza, permitir que continúe esta carnicería sólo convertirá lo que ya es una campaña militar excepcionalmente salvaje en algo aún más indescriptible (Branko Marcetic)