robbo203
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More on the deal from the Washington Post
And I avoid anything that looks like it’s print on demand. I do research first into the publisher. I’m furious when I end up with a shoddy excuse for a book.
I’ve had some stick from some comrades for using Amazon to publish my book series. That’s print on demand. To my mind, it’s a bit like the debate in the Party a few years ago about investing funds
The thing is, though Amazon has a bad reputation for various (well-founded) reasons, from the point of view of a writer wanting to self-publish and not having the funds to publish, Amazon was the only realistic option. As a writer, you don’t pay anything. Although by the same token you earn very little in royalties (although that doesn’t bother me because that is not why I wrote)
However, I would reject the suggestion that the quality is poor. It’s a paperback (so you will like that), but I was very surprised by the quality of the cover and the print. Much better than I expected, and it was done by a printing firm in Italy
Sorry to be cheeky (and doing a plug LOL), but you can get some idea from the front cover of the book (vol 2), which is reproduced in this thread
The USA Congress knows about Boeing’s criminality, but many of them are getting money from Boeing and its executives. They do not care about the death of human beings; they only care about getting rich. Brainless; call them their representatives, probably their representatives at the cemetery
What was remarkable about the film was how it showed that, every time Boeing was called out for being negligent, there was a lot of huffing and puffing by the lawmakers, followed by a mild slap on the wrist and then things just went back to normal. The pressure to “produce product” and make money led to still more mistakes
One CEO was replaced by another promising a fresh start and to take seriously what the workforce was telling the management, but it never happened. There was a succession of CEOs at Boeing, each raking in millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars.
The expression on the face of one of them who was being grilled at a hearing was priceless. He was asked to justify the huge pay increase he awarded himself while the reputation of Boeing was in tatters, and he couldn’t.
In my opinion, this is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen on the stupidity and sheer inhumanity of the profit system. It would be well worth seeing. Perhaps the SPGB could revive the old practice of having film nights followed by discussion. This film would be an excellent candidate for that
What’s lacking is a third voice — in-kind-calculationist, critiquing them both. In years past Robbo203 would have taken up this task with great relish.
ZJW
Well, actually, I have written reams of stuff on calculation-in-kind versus universalistic accounting metrics (like money or labour time values) in this little work which was published last month….
Do you have a link I can click on to enable me to contribute to the debate?
“In other words we don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Every month that goes by we are further and farther away from Utopia. The Internet is proving to be their greatest tool. Just like TV was 75 years ago. A.I might finally give them exactly what they want. The unlimited power to gorge themselves on as much jerky as they desire”.
This post that I came across today puts a somewhat different slant on things. I dont think any of us has a crystal ball. When circumstances seem to be most bleak, changes can unexpectedly happen under our very feet that we had no inkling whatsoever.
Stay positive. The future is not predetermined
Jonathan Cook
@Jonathan_K_Cook
The Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci famously wrote in 1930 of the moment we are currently in: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek popularised these “morbid symptoms” as a “time of monsters”. But our monsters aren’t a Cyclops, a Hannibal Lecter or even an Adolf Hitler. Our morbid symptoms are Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, the exemplars of a dying western capitalism, the men who can tap directly into our minds and those of our children.
The greatest danger is that, with climate chaos accelerating, Gramsci’s new world will not be born at all. It will be stillborn. It may turn out that the proof needed to incentivise change comes too late to affect the outcome.
But if some of us do make it through the next decades, if survival is possible, one thing is certain: the society that emerges will look nothing like the one that worshipped jeans and iPhones.
It will draw on other, older trends in our history. It will prioritise community over the individual, cooperation over competition, mutuality over ownership – the very principles capitalism seeks to eradicate.
Nation-states, the incubators of capitalism, will have to be dissolved. Organised religions, competing over whose God is supreme, will need to be replaced by more ancient, spiritual ideas rooted in living with nature, not seeking to conquer or subdue it.
If all that sounds implausible or impossible, remember this. Your disbelief may only be the noise of capitalism speaking through you. It may be that the problem is yours, for being unable to imagine more than a new iPhone or pair of jeans.
If you believe this, you will believe anything
Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is building a future where billions of people could have a 24/7 AI agent that understands their goals, habits, relationships and personal lives.
In a lengthy essay titled The Future Is for Everyone, published on Meta’s official website on 10 August, Zuckerberg argued that superintelligence should not be controlled by a small group of companies, governments or experts. He also shared the essay on X, writing: ‘I believe everyone should have access to superintelligence, and I wrote a long piece about Meta’s philosophy and values for building a positive future for everyone.’
It looks like the US/Israel war against Iran is having knock-on consequences for the Russo-Ukrainian war. Iran had earlier threatened to fire missiles at selected targets in Ukraine in response to the latter destroying a ship (with military supplies?) en route to Iran.
Ukraine apparently backed down and promised not to do that again. However, it now faces a bigger threat because of the situation in Iran, which has resulted in a shortage of interceptor systems such as the Patriot system. It is now much more vulnerable to Russian missiles than ever before.
You have to wonder if this is indeed a “turning point”, as this article suggests, and whether the end of this stupid, pointless war might finally be in sight
“Witnesses and experts have suggested that an easing of controls by Morocco in the border area of Ceuta contributed to the recent mass influx of migrants into the Spanish enclave. Others are pointing the finger at American and Israeli involvement”.
It seems that the majority of the 60,000 who entered Cueta returned to Morocco – 48,000. There has been some suggestion that this was a case of the Moroccan government wilfully playing political games by allowing this to happen to spite Spain becuase of the latter´s rapprochement with Algeria (Algeria supplies Spain with natural gas). Algeria is opposed to Morocco on the question of the Spanish Sahara (what is now called Western Sahara) and supports the Polisario Front there.
At any rate, it does seem to be the case that the border guards and police on the Moroccan side might have been instructed from above to be more lax in their approach to preventing this sort of incident. France and Italy have tightened up on movements between them and Spain. This is where the grim logic of nationalist thinking leads you to
A socialist world without borders couldn’t come too soon
https://www.thelocal.es/20260731/spain-says-49000-migrants-stormed-ceuta-border-in-24-hours
The commercialisation of football sinks to a new low
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/world-cup-infantino-donald-trump-37486609
Came across this today. A few paragraphs in and it’s already looking a bit iffy. The Soviet Union was not socialist but also not capitalist either, cos there were no markets. (Really? What did your average punter do in a Moscow supermarket if not engage in a market transaction?)
There is also something further on alluding to the concept of a social fund from which various deductions are made (an idea that appears in the Gotha Critique). To me, that’s a nonsensical idea and implies the existence of a universal unit of accounting (otherwise, how could you make these aforementioned deductions?). We dont need a universal unit of account in a post-capitalist society. Only calculation in kind
Still, the text makes some interesting points nevertheless
Burnham is already spelling out his priorities. Nothing is going to change under the (Anti) Labour government
Streeting says Burnham government will prioritise military over other spending
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/22/increased-defence-spending-uk-economic-growth-wes-streeting-military-andy-burnham?shem=dsdf,sharefoc,agadiscoversdl,,sh/x/discover/m1/4
Burnham is already spelling out his priorities. Nothing is going to change under the (Anti) Labour government
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/22/increased-defence-spending-uk-economic-growth-wes-streeting-military-andy-burnham?shem=dsdf,sharefoc,agadiscoversdl,,sh/x/discover/m1/4
