Daily Ghion Water ~

Today’s Ghion Water is dedicated to all the victims of the institutional greed and capital larceny that is stifling hope and lives globally. There is a further explanation of why the picture of the Titanic was chosen to highlight this article, but I want to note from the outset that the “breaking news” the morally bankrupt mainstream media is broadcasting about the global markets tanking is not a surprise to anyone. Even though opinion leaders, politicians and pundits are pretending to be perplexed and trying to convince you to remain calm, they have known for years that the economy was based on voodoo and irrational exuberance.

I pray we are not in the process of winding down like we did in 2008 because the next Great Recession will make the one from 10 years ago look like child’s play. So keep in mind, as the mainstream media is trying to keep you calm, they just might be doing to us what the crew of the Titanic did to second and third class passengers. That story is told at the bottom but first let me dispense news and notes from independent journalists and non-corporate voices about the panic gripping Wall Street and what awaits us in the economic future.

The Bankruptcy of Corporatism

Corporate capitalism is supranational. It owes no loyalty to any nation-state. It uses the projection of military power by the United States to protect and advance its economic interests but at the same time cannibalizes the U.S., dismantling its democratic institutions, allowing its infrastructure to decay and deindustrializing its factory centers to ship manufacturing abroad to regions where workers are treated as serfs.

Resistance to this global cabal of corporate oligarchs must also be supranational. It must build alliances with workers around the globe. It must defy the liberal institutions, including the Democratic Party, which betray workers. It is this betrayal that has given rise to fascist and protofascist movements in Europe and other countries. Donald Trump would never have been elected but for this betrayal. We will build a global movement powerful enough to bring down corporate capitalism or witness the rise of a new, supranational totalitarianism. [from Chris Hedges of Truthdig]

Wall Street means Ghetto Roads

Often, the harm a giant corporation or big-box store does to a community doesn’t seem to be measured using traditional indicators. Box stores will use what’s known as the “dark store tactic” to reduce or eliminate their tax responsibility, LaVecchia explains. Since the big-box chain-store business model is to build a purpose-built store that has no resale value, the store, they argue, should be compared with stores that are closed, so a brand new Lowe’s might be valued as closed and compared to other closed stores. With this tactic, big-box stores “are winning big slashes in what they owe in property tax, and in some cases cities have to refund back property tax,” LaVecchia says. Not only is the company not paying tax into the community, the company is extracting ever more resources from the community. [from Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism]

Bleeding US on Purpose

Democrats and Republicans are not oppositions at all; they are factions working in accord to demolish hope and deliver us into the shackles of debt and insolvency. Right there next to them are corporate media pundits and faux-journalists. Instead of speaking truth to power, mainstream media—they are really yellow journalists—are currying favor from the very authorities they are supposed to be checking. On a day that witnessed one of the biggest selloffs in the history of Wall Street, the Washington Post was breaking news about some Hollywood mogul. Corporate media outlets peddle sensationalism to obfuscate the pyramid scheme that is bleeding our nation and cannibalizing humanity. [from Ghion Journal]

Penitentiary and Neo-Slavery

The United States has the largest incarcerated population in the world, climbing from 600,000 to over 2 million in just a few decades. We also have the highest percentage of our population behind bars of any country. The people most likely to languish behind bars are Black, Latino, Native American, and poor. It’s a legacy rooted in Jim Crow-era policies that continues in the thinly veiled racism of the war on drugs, as lawyer Michelle Alexander points out in her book The New Jim Crow…One of the most chilling reasons for being sent back to prison is failure to pay a fine or court or supervision fees, payments that can be out of reach for the low-income people most likely to be caught up in the criminal justice system. [from Sarah van Gelder of Truthout]

Bipartisanship Means Getting Screwed Twice

It was Reagan who was able to really codify this economic worldview into laws, but in order to do so he needed Democratic help in the House—and he unfortunately got a lot of it. Driven by fears of high inflation, Democrats became fixated on lowering prices for the American consumer. Subsequently, Lynn notes “the party leaders became increasingly open to the idea that concentration, efficiency, and privatization (under the guise of deregulation) were the best way to serve the nation’s populace.” [from Nick Cassella of Civic Skunk Works]

WTF Are We Allowing??

WTF?! Without owning a single room, Airbnb has more rooms on offer than some of the largest hotel groups in the world. Airbnb has 800 employees, while Hilton has 152,000. WTF?! Top Kickstarters raise tens of millions of dollars from tens of thousands of individual backers, amounts of capital that once required top-tier investment firms. WTF?! What happens to all those Uber drivers when the cars start driving themselves? AIs are flying planes, driving cars, advising doctors on the best treatments, writing sports and financial news, and telling us all, in real time, the fastest way to get to work. They are also telling human workers when to show up and when to go home, based on real-time measurement of demand. The algorithm is the new shift boss. [from Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media]

What Comes Next Was Not an Accident

This Day in History

1945 - Bob Marley was born Nine Mile Jamaica. He would go on to popularize reggae and revolutionize music as we know it. Bob Marley was a prophet with a guitar, he spoke out for justice and love and spoke against consolidated wickedness that bleeds humanity. The official narrative was that he died from cancer caused by an infected toe, but we know that throughout history, people who speak out against greed and evil have a way of meeting their demise. Prophets are murdered to protect profits.

Quote of the Day

“How long will they kill our prophets?” ~ Bob Marley

Profiled this Day

I chose the picture of the Titanic for a reason because there is a heavy correlation between the way our economy keeps being intentionally imploded and the way the Titanic met its fate. We all know about the fateful journey of the largest ship ever built and how an iceberg gashed the hull which led to the sinking of the RMS Titanic. This narrative is told in a way that presents the tragic events of that to warn against hubris and the negligence of the captain and the owner.

Rarely though do we talk about what actually happened once the crew realized the ship was going to sink. Instead of saving women and children and giving passengers a fighting chance, they locked them in place in order to let the first class passengers disembark off the ship. As people were begging to be let out, the rich and powerful were calmly boarding their lifeboats and rowing away with half-empty vessels. Out of the countless lives lost, JJ Aston’s name is splashed on the front pages to relay the tragedy. Because you know, the loss of a rich man is tragic but thousands perishing is “regrettable”.

This is the mendacity of the aristocracy, they see the rest of humanity as disposable assets. 2,224 passengers became a “collateral damage” of the moneyed gentry’s mendacity that day. Upwards of 800 people would have fit on the half empty lifeboats that the first class passengers boarded and saved their lives with. I’ve written in more detail about this in the past, be careful when the intelligence use big words to sooth your anxieties, they are just trying to make you complacent.

How does this relate to today’s news of the markets selling off and the near stampede of investors exiting their positions? Go over to your favorite mainstream media outlet and you will see “journalists” on the dole of Wall Street trying to calm us and distracting us the same way the orchestra played music in order to lull the panicking 2nd and 3rd class passengers. As we are busy bickering about politics and hash-tagging the latest outrage, the aristocracy are calmly heading for their lifeboats. The abyss awaits us.

Closing note, remember how I said in the video above that today was most likely going to be a “dead cat bounce” day on the markets and that there might be an uptick? Pay attention to the after-hours markets as institutional traders buy and sell shares after the markets are closed to the broader public. If another selloff ensues once the markets close today, you can see this as second and third class passengers yet again getting locked in place as the aristocracy make off with our money. Tomorrow will not be a pretty day…

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