CAPITALIST SYSTEMIC POVERTY

MICHAEL HUDSON—If China had been crazy enough to have student loans and leave its graduates impoverished instead of providing free universities, China’s central bank could simply write off the student loans. No investors would lose, because the banks are owned by the government. Its position is, “If you’re a factory, we don’t want you to have to close down and unemploy your labor. We’ll just write down the debt. And if your employees are having a really hard time, we’ll just write down their debts, so that they can spend their money on goods and services to help expand our internal market.”

America’s banks are owned by the stockholders and bondholders, who would never let Chase Manhattan or Citibank or Wells Fargo just forgive their various categories of loans. That’s why public banking is so much more efficient from an economy-wide level than private banks. It’s why banking should be a public utility, not privatized.

MoA—Such ships pay $700.000 to pass through the Suez canal. Smaller ones pay less. But the average is some $450,000 and at 50+ ships per day the losses for Egypt add up. The hundreds of ships which are currently blockaded and the owners of their cargoes may also ask for compensation.

The ship is insured for probably up to 140 million. That will not be enough to pay for this incident. Many court claims will be made.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—”The most significant thing happening in the world right now is the fact that the global capitalist order which is destroying our ecosystem is held in place by a US-centralized power alliance whose aggressions are putting our planet at increasing risk of nuclear war. There is nothing more urgent or newsworthy than the fact that multiple forms of human insanity are imperiling the entire human species, and indeed the life of every terrestrial organism. The fact that this isn’t at the forefront of our attention shows how propagandized we are…”

BILLY BOB—Why China Leads the World​ demolishes the fake, anti-China narratives that have become unavoidable in the West and obligatory components of every Western newscast. I can’t count the times I’ve seen a particular anti-China story and thought to myself “I wonder what the truth on this is?” before googling the topic together with Godfree’s name. In my mind and in the minds of countless others, Roberts’ name is synonymous with truth and insight regarding China.

Red Lines host Anya Parampil speaks with Prasanth Radhakrishnan, a New Delhi based journalist with Newclick.in and People’s Dispatch, about the historic farmer strike currently sweeping India. Radhakrishnan explains why farmers are rising up, how they are organized, and how the neoliberal government of Narendra Modi has responded to the movement. Just one day after this interview, the Modi government raided the offices of Newsclick.in and detained its editors in what has been denounced as an act of intimidation against critical media.