The Socialist Program with Brian Becker

On today's episode Brian and Prof. Richard Wolff discuss the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, among others, that has caused widespread panic. The federal government has bailed out these banks, which will make hard-felt U.S. inflation even worse. Are we headed for another economic crisis?

Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. You can find his work at rdwolff.com.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

Collapsing Banks & A Weakening U.S. Empire

NATO leaders met in Lithuania this week, and Finland and Sweden are now joining NATO, continuing the vast expansion of the military alliance. Ukraine was promised a path to NATO membership — despite the risk of further widening the war in Ukraine. Where is the newly emerging world order headed? How will the increasing contradictions resolve? And how can we better understand this historical moment to bring about an end to the scourge of imperialist war?

Brian Becker is joined by Vijay Prashad, the Executive Director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, Chief Editor of LeftWord Books, and a prolific author, most recently with Noam Chomsky of “The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.”

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at https://patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

NATO Expands, Again. Will the Ukraine War Spread? w/ Vijay Prashad

On today's episode Walter Smolarek and Prof. Richard Wolff discuss the historic strike of SAG-AFTRA actors and WGA writers and what's at stake. 160,000 actors are now joining the Writers Guild on strike. They're challenging who gets to decide how to install artificial intelligence in the entertainment industry.

Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. You can find his work at rdwolff.com.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

Showdown Over AI: SAG-AFTRA Actors Join WGA Writers on Strike

The United States is the largest historic contributor to climate change, yet Washington is condemning Beijing for supposedly not doing enough. In reality, China is leading the world in the transition to renewable energy technology.

VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=pJ3ItSYBaJs

US hypocritically attacks China on climate change, while Beijing leads world in renewable energy

On today's episode Brian Becker and Prof. Richard Wolff discuss the new study showing that elite schools enroll wealthy students far more than the rest of us. 

Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. You can find his work at rdwolff.com, and more about this discussion in his article The World Economy Is Changing—the People Know, But Their Leaders Don’t.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

Affirmative Action for Lazy, Bored Rich Kids

US government documents admit that the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not necessary to end WWII. Japan was on the verge of surrendering. The nuclear attack was the first strike in Washington's Cold War on the Soviet Union.

VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5vMEgneKF10

Links to sources and more information here: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/08/07/atomic-bombing-japan-not-necessary

US-backed fascism in Japan - How Shinzo Abe whitewashed genocidal imperial crimes: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/07/09/fascism-japan-shinzo-abe-empire

After nuking Japan, US gov’t lied about radioactive fallout as civilians died: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/08/16/japan-us-lied-radioactive-fallout

Atomic bombing of Japan was NOT necessary to end WWII. US gov't documents admit it

The US constantly claims to uphold the so-called "rules-based international order" (which it never clearly defines), but China released a devastating report detailing Washington's hypocrisy on economic policies and "free trade".

VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=x8dJ1iiXLbI

EU admits new cold war is not ‘democracy vs autocracy’: Many 'authoritarian regimes on our side': https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/10/27/eu-cold-war-democracy-authoritarian

China condemns ‘US hegemony’, war crimes, CIA coups, 400 foreign interventions: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/02/22/china-report-us-hegemony-wars-coups-intervention

China blasts US hypocrisy in violating 'rules-based order'

As world leaders from the Global South convene in South Africa for the BRICS Summit this week, the West is watching closely. 23 countries have applied to join Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa in the grouping, which is focused on trade and development in their regions — typically dominated by colonizing powers in Europe and the United States. Where is BRICS headed and what unifies the grouping?

Brian Becker is joined by Mikaela Nhondo Erskog, member of secretariat of Pan Africanism Today, researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, member of No Cold War, and host of the podcast The Crane: An Africa-China podcast coming from the DongSheng News collective.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/TheSocialistProgram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

BRICS Summit: China, Africa, Russia and the 23 New Applicants

In its South Africa summit, BRICS invited six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The bloc now represents 37% of global GDP (PPP), over 40% of global oil production, and 1/3rd of global gas production, challenging the US petrodollar system. Ben Norton analyzes the importance of the meeting.

VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1SIfrWkQXeE

BRICS debates mission at summit: Challenge West's G7 or be neutral?: https://youtube.com/watch?v=wQN7Uh_XMbA

How a US debt trap in Argentina is fueling inflation, dollarization, far right: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1BRx90DhYWM

US pressures Saudi Arabia to sell oil in dollars, not Chinese yuan: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/08/10/us-saudi-arabia-sell-oil-dollars-chinese-yuan

Topics:
0:00 Introduction
3:21 Petrodollar under threat
7:51 BRICS+ makes up 40% of global oil production
9:00 BRICS+ makes up 1/3rd of global gas production
10:48 BRICS' massive economic weight
12:09 Will Argentina join?
18:29 De-dollarization
20:46 Saudi-Iran peace
23:35 BRICS vs. G7
30:17 Xi's speech
35:18 Putin's speech
41:06 Lula's speech
42:17 Lula calls for new BRICS currency
44:36 Lula warns of "green neocolonialism"
45:26 Africa-Latin America cooperation
47:42 Ramaphosa's speech
52:50 Venezuela
54:34 Cuba
55:37 Conclusion

BRICS expanding into economic powerhouse: Petrodollar under threat

Around the world, debt is skyrocketing - and rising interest rates are making it unsustainable. In this first part, Ben Norton discusses the impending crisis in the United States, before explaining in part two how Wall Street traps the Global South in debt.

VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ib3QOBbQR2g

US government bailout of Silicon Valley and banks is $300B gift to rich oligarchs: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/03/19/fed-bailout-silicon-valley-banks

4 US banks crash in 2 months: Banking crisis explained by economist Michael Hudson: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/05/05/first-republic-bank-crisis-michael-hudson

A huge debt crisis is coming

Hands Off Disquiet0614

Disquiet Junto Project 0614: Alternate Route
The Assignment: Do something you often do, but differently.

Playing acoustic instruments into a system of effects is a thing I’ve been doing a lot. Usually I do this in an improvisational, exploratory way: having only a rough idea of what I want to start off with, and then just seeing (actually: listening) where the music will take me.
Something I’ve been thinking about is using this way of playing in a context where at least some of the material is composed, thought out before hand.
So I used the prompt to do a bit of experimenting in this area.

The piece I made uses Erik Satie’s Gnossienne 2 as its main material. 
My idea was to dissect that piece into its component parts, then play and explore around those separate parts and in the end stitch the recordings together into something that would stay true to the original score. A sort of rearrangement.
In the end I had to abandon that idea. Lack of time mostly. And also, I thought it worked better to give some of the non-melody parts a bit more space.

The instruments used are piano (actually: sampled piano), kalimba, duduk, zither. And I used mainly three effects chains: one centred around saturation (on the duduk), one around using lfo’d panning - and a bit of distortion - as a sort of tremolo effect (on the zither), and one around using reverb with varying room size - giving a sort of tape warble feel - (on the whole mix).

I can see some potential for this way of working with composed material (also using my own compositions), though using composed material while still retaining the notion of the music arising in the moment of playing (that is: without requiring a lot of editing), is a different matter.

More on this 614th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Alternate Route (The Assignment: Do something you often do, but differently), at: https://disquiet.com/0614/

Gnossiennesque - after Satie Gnossienne 2 (disquiet0614)

More on this 617th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Haunt Scape (The Assignment: Halloween is coming up. Do your thing), at: https://disquiet.com/0617/

The cover image (enlarged, type added) is from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull#/media/File:3d_CT_scan_animation.gif

That image is credited to Arielinson and used thanks to a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/ 1

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0617-haunt-scape/

Disquiet0617 - The Uninvited

Seramind - Tanzende Seepferdchen (naviarhaiku516) [Ambient, Electronic, New Age]

naviarhaiku516 – two seahorses

two seahorses
dancing in seagrass
slivers of sunlight

Corine is an author, haiku poet, publisher, visual artist, designer, and animal lover who’s been participating in our Haiku challenges for the last three years. You can find more about her poetry and music on her Soundcloud and Facebook profiles.

Haiku by: Corine Timmer www.bicadeideias.com (first published on BHS Members’ Anthology in 2022)

Visit my other pages:

Official: http://www.seramind.de
Artcore: https://artcore.com/seramind
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/22xH66OU00shKM5kcwbAeKa
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/seramind
Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/artist/4709745-Seramind
Bandcamp: https://seramind.bandcamp.com
MixCloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/seramind
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSVk1v75Cpzc7Bf-KVsrUUg

Tanzende Seepferdchen (naviarhaiku516)

News and views about the world for those who want to change it, with Brian Becker

NATO Expands, Again. Will the Ukraine War Spread? w/ Vijay Prashad

The Socialist Program with Brian Becker

Related tracks