I picked this up from a share of Tulsi Gabbard Locals that had the title The truth about Idlib in Syria: it is al-Qaeda’s largest safe haven in the world. I have no idea how or if this is really connected to Tulsi Gabbard.

The featured YouTube video is Former Hostage of Al Qaeda in Syria Rejects Jolani’s PBS Makeover: “They Are Lunatics with Guns”.

To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek is joined by Theo Padnos, who was held as a hostage of Jabhat Al Nusra for two years, enduring day after day of torture and getting unique insight into the group. He’s also the author of the recently published book Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture, and Enlightenment.

Of course I have no idea where the truth lies in any of this. If I believe any of this, it is the fact that you can be an eyewitness to something and still not understand what you are seeing.

So how can I even judge this video?

The Institute for New Economic Thinking as an article Standard Inflation Theory Leaves Out Social Conflict and Costs.

Pontification about inflation of prices of goods and services is on a rampage. Almost all the noise is based on inadequate inflation theory.

Politically it is unlikely, but labor’s share of GDP could grow with changes of tax laws, changes in regulation, and enforcement of anti-monopoly laws. “free” trade that concentrated on trade, labor, and environment instead of intellectual property protection could also be significant. Decreases in conventional war and economic war could also be important. This article is way too narrowly focused. Also economics is a balance of forces. Some forces are so small they have little impact compared to the bigger forces, but what is a big force and what is a small force change with times. Models that simplify by ignoring small forces at the time the model is formulated become obsolete models when the assumed balance of forces change.

Also economic activity depends not only on how much money the government pumps into the private sector, it also depends on who in the private sector gets that money. As more of that money gets distributed to the people who buy consumer goods, we can see higher consumer price inflation compared to stock and asset price inflation. Changes from a home ownership model to a home rental model can have a profound impact on wealth distribution and other economic behavior. Student debt has already had a profound affect on the economy.

Considering the number of people who do not want to go to work under current conditions, many of their number may be among the 600,000 people who died from Covid-19. Those people cannot come back to work no matter what wage is offered.

The Realignment Podcast has an interview with Frank DiStefano.

Frank DiStefano, author of The Next Realignment: Why America’s Parties Are Crumbling and What Happens Next, returns to The Realignment to define what realignments are (and aren’t), how either political party could collapse, and why our system isn’t ready to face the 21^st century.

Some very interesting ways to think about our current political/social situation. There may be some seeds of how to think about the problem in a different way. I am surprised that they don’t think about Bernie Sanders. Maybe they think Bernie Sanders is too 20th century. In my view the problem with Sanders is that he talks too 20th century, but I think he is able to think beyond that.

There is a Frank Distefano YouTube Channel

The Federal Reserve Bank has posted an article Central Bank Digital Currency: A Literature Review.

Technological advances in recent years have led to a growing number of fast, electronic means of payment available to consumers for everyday transactions, raising questions for policymakers about the role of the public sector in providing a digital payment instrument for the modern economy.

I used to think about this more simply as the Federal Reserve providing accounts directly to consumers instead of through private banks. I thought of the Federal Reserve Bank a the wholesaler, and the private banks as the retailer. I think this article more or less confirms my view of it. I don’t think of central bank digital currency as inventing some kind of new currency. I think of it as just a change in the central bank’s business model.

YouTube has the video Killing Gaza: Documentary by Dan Cohen & Max Blumenthal shows life under Israel’s bombs and siege.

(To see the translations of the Arabic-language interviews, turn on the CC captions.) In the feature-length documentary film “Killing Gaza,” journalists Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal documented Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza.

YouTube may limit the viewing of this video to being on the YouTube page itself.

Notice Age-restricted video (based on Community Guidelines)

This movie is just too powerful to let people see this freely. It is going to be hard to face an Israeli Jew that supports this kind of behavior. I am glad that people I know who come closest to this description have already unfriended me.

The Grayzone web site has this under the headline Killing Gaza: Dan Cohen & Max Blumenthal’s documentary shows life under Israel’s bombs and siege. Even here they don’t provide a means of escaping YouTube’s restrictions.

Posted on YouTube is the recording of the a webinar Labor and the Jobs Guarantee Webinar 4/1

April 1, 2021 the first session of our Labor and Jobs Guarantee Webinar series with Fadhel Kaboub, Sandy Darity, Sydney Ghazarian, and Kari Thompson.

Since this video does not give you full access to the Zoom meeting with it’s chat room and Q & A, I am going to post a few items here that were mentioned in the video.

The Job Guarantee Resolution

The Living New Deal

There were just s few minutes near the beginning that I had trouble listening to. Since you have control of the video, you can skip the parts you don’t find interesting. Except for the few minutes around the beginning, I found the rest of the presentation very enjoyable.

There is an article in the UE Newsletter about the webinar What Is a “Jobs Guarantee,” and Why Should Labor Fight for It?

Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity – GISP on Twitter.

Labor and the Jobs Guarantee Session Two – 8 April 2021.

Images from the webinars on Google.

Labor Jobs Guarantee Session 3 Report Backs and Conclusion

YouTube has this segment from the show Rising, Author: How Financial Interests Influence News Making Decisions. (Skip the ads if you can).

Author, Ashely Rindsberg, discusses his book “The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times’s Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History.”

Long ago, I coined the phrase “The Dreaded New York Times“. Perhaps this is a vindication of what I finally figured out for myself.

The Grayzone has a video Economist Michael Hudson on new cold war, Super Imperialism, China & Russia, dedollarization.

Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton of Moderate Rebels discuss with world-renowned economist Michael Hudson his concept of US “Super Imperialism,” the new cold war on China and Russia, and the potential end to the dollar as the global reserve currency.

Naked Capitalism includes this in their post Michael Hudson on American as Absentee Landlord on The Greyzone[sic]: Biden Administration, New Cold War, Super Imperialism, Dollar Weaponization. They have a slight dissent before the link to the video.

I commented on Naked Capitalism:

Grayzone with an “a”.

Max Keiser is so insistent on selling bitcoin, that I finally could not stand it anymore. I seldom watch the Keiser Report unless someone brings a particular episode to my attention.

What the video talked about China’s methodology at the end is what I have labelled “What Worksism”. I call myself a “what worksist”. If there is a niche in our society where a particular ism would work to make life better, I am for it. Industrial Capitalism in its proper place, Government Socialism in its proper place, and whatever other ism can be thought up.

What the Grayzone does not understand about Modern Money Theory could fill an ocean. Michael Hudson didn’t spend a lot of time trying to straighten them out. Modern Money Theory does not limit itself to governments with sovereign currency. It does explain the additional economic options that come with having a Sovereign currency and debts denominated in that currency. It is worth listening to Fadhel Kaboub talk about the range of sovereignty a country can have.

On Facebook I commented:

Great discussion. At the end they talk about my favorite ism “what worksism”, but they don’t use that term. What the Gray Zone does not understand about Modern Money Theory could fill an ocean, but Michael Hudson doesn’t waste too much time trying to correct them. Michael Hudson’s discussion about Max Keiser was very enlightening even if it went way over the heads of Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal.

Democracy at Work has the podcast LEFT OUT: David Harvey on Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason.

In this episode, we speak with David Harvey about his latest book, Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason, as well as what the Left must focus on to effectively organize for a better economy and society.

This may be the beginning of the next major step in my education. David Harvey has been been a big part of what the Democracy at Work internet presence has provided. I just did not realize until now what a valuable part of that offering was that is embodied in David Harvey.

The Tribune has the interview with David Harvey Why Marx Still Matters. This is from March 05, 2020.

On the second centenary of Karl Marx’s birth, global capitalism is stumbling from crisis to crisis. In the wake of the financial crash, interest in Marx’s ideas has blossomed once again. This should come as no surprise: they remain vital to understanding not only the dynamics of capitalism itself but the manner in which it structures our modern world.

I was glad I read this article. It gives me a better understanding of what I should seek to learn.

Before I read the article, I had these thoughts about people commenting on it. These thoughts are still valid, but there was so much more in the article than I imagined.

The Communist Manifesto is not the great economic criticism that gets people to study what Karl Marx said. Read Das Kapital, and tell me what you think.

It is hard enough to identify and describe what is wrong with a system. It is much, much harder to figure out how to fix what is wrong. I have learned to forgive people who accomplish the first task, but fail at the second.

I admire people who concentrate on the successful part of someone’s work, and then try to do a better job on the part that was not successful.

I think I am a victim of what the interviewee had to say about Marx’s three volumes.

Dan Denvir: You differ with other Marx scholars in that you pay a lot of attention to volumes two and three, in addition to volume one. Why is that?

David Harvey: It’s clear that in Marx’s mind, he had an idea of the totality of the circulation of capital. His plan was to break it down into these three component parts in the three volumes. So I just follow what Marx says he’s doing. Now, the problem of course, is that volumes two and three were never completed, and they aren’t as satisfactory as volume one, which is a literary masterpiece. So I can understand why, if people want to read Marx with a certain sense of joy and fun, that they would stick with volume one. But I’m saying, ‘No, if you really want to understand what his conception of capital is, then you can’t understand it as just being about production. It’s about circulation. It’s about getting it to market and selling it, then it’s about distributing the profits.’

This is certainly something I didn’t know. My initial remarks to the comments on the post on Facebook about not having solutions might have been moderated a little.