#renationalize

[probablyasocialecologist]

While Marx often shows enthusiasm for the potentiality of enhanced forms of human cooperation enabled by globalizing production, already in the nineteenth century, he observed an antagonistic separation of town and country and suggested that production chains were overstretched and wasting resources. Today, lessening the spatial disjuncture between production and consumption must be an explicit feature and aim of sustainable and just transition and, in this context, calls on the left for partial deglobalization, including the shortening of commodity chains, have merit and are quite consistent with Marx’s analysis. In a process of partial deglobalization, production for local and domestic needs—rather than production for export—would again become the center of gravity of the economy. A move away from the export orientation of domestic corporations and a process of renationalization could also allow enterprises to begin to develop their own strategies, moving away from the whims of the global market and choices taken by corporate controllers. Such transformation could enable spaces for independent development in the Global South. To do so, they could focus on shifting agrarian systems, orienting their production away from agro-export (which is a source of tremendous ecological irrationality and unequal exchange) toward food sovereignty. Such shifts would need to be accompanied by simultaneous, coordinated shifts toward enhanced local and domestic food production in Global North, alongside a move from high-input agriculture to agroecology, and, in settler colonial contexts, enhanced Indigenous sovereignty. Within domestic spaces or regions, efforts must simultaneously be made to mend a rift between the city and the country. For a model of the environmentalist city, one could look to Havana for inspiration. During Cuba’s Special Period in the 1990s, organic, low-input agriculture was developed both in the countryside, as well as in the island’s capital through urban farms. Urban agriculture is here not niche or small-scale—it covers large expanses within and at the outskirts of the city, where rich land is located. In the transition to renewables, energy production should also be localized as much as possible. This is a potentiality inherent in renewable energy “flow,” in contrast to concentrated energy “stock,” or fossil fuels. While lessening the spatial disjuncture between production and consumption is part of developing ecologically rational production, this aim should be recognized to be in some tension with economic planning (at least in the longer term), insofar as expansive planning is potentiated by the socialization of production. Thus, calls for localization of production imply a diminishment in productive association across firms and regions and the potential to plan such interconnections. Practically, it is important to recognize that such a process confronts material interdependencies, as existing productive networks and infrastructural configurations support and sustain huge swaths of human life. Different regions and cities also have different specializations and different ecological capacities. In an existing world of evolved economic interdependencies, the reproductive needs of various communities require continued global resource flows. Climate change also creates severe survival and livelihood challenges on a highly uneven basis, and global trade and divisions of labor can act as safeguards against issues such as pandemics related to water-supply failures and reduced agricultural yields. More broadly, we should carefully consider Marx’s suggestion that well-organized territorial divisions of labor are collective powers and can be a part of collaboration in human affairs. This extends to territorial specialization, which, consciously organized, could involve a collaborative partitioning of resources and capacities.

[runwayrunway]

No. 47 - MALÉV Hungarian Airlines

MALÉV Hungarian Airlines (Magyar Légiközlekedési Vállalat) was the flag carrier of Hungary until its dissolution in 2012. I'm excited to talk about MALÉV for a couple of reasons. I'll get into those later, when they come up, so let's cut off the preamble and talk about an airline sadly lost to recent history after 66 years in operation, leaving in its place...

Well, nothing, actually. Hungary no longer has a flag carrier, thanks to MALÉV's rather catastrophic end, and Budapest is now primarily served by ULCCs like Ryanair and Wizz Air. It's a very tragic thing, in my opinion, for a country to lose its flag carrier, and I hope that MALÉV, or something else to replace it, will be (re)established at some point, but for the moment it's a beautiful relic of a less financially tempestuous time.

MALÉV's legacy is well-kept, with the Budapest Aeropark open-air museum containing many more preserved aircraft than a lot of extinct airlines will see. Clearly, this airline was dear to a country.

While I never got to fly on MALÉV, I'm excited to cover this airline's eclectic little fleet, which does one thing I can't pretend for a moment doesn't immediately make me eager to discuss an airline:

When MALÉV folded, Hungary lost a symbol of national pride, but the rest of us lost something too: one of the rapidly-dwindling number still fighting for the long-lost cause of the painted nose radome.

MALÉV was founded in 1946 as MASZOVLET (Magyar-Szovjet Polgári Légiforgalmi Rt.), born from the merger of a handful of similarly acronymic pre-war Hungarian airlines, plus the Hungarian branch of Aeroflot. It was renamed to MALÉV in 1954, when the Hungarian government bought out all the remaining Soviet involvement in the airline, making it a fully nationalized company. It was 'privatized' in 1993, but the majority of ownership was split between a government-owned holding company and the employees, with the government seemingly intent on privatizing it properly throughout. From 1999 to 2003 its CEO was actually József János Váradi, who is probably better known as the founder and CEO of Wizz Air. It was then sold to Russian airline-alliance-slash-joint-management-company AirBridge (later known as AiRUnion), a LATAM-without-rebranding-ish thing which existed for all of a couple years until it went under in 2008, all of its member airlines, classics like Domedovo and KrasAir also defunct. It was briefly under minority ownership by Vneshekonombank (now VEB.RF), a Russian corporation meant to invest in the development of urban infrastructure, but then renationalized by Hungary. During this period of privatization it underwent an elaborate game of CEO musical chairs, broadly struggling and being subsidized heavily by the Hungarian government. Once this happened the EU ruled that said state aid was actually illegal, and forced MALÉV to repay the years of assistance which had kept it above water - which of course promptly killed it, being more than a year of its revenue.

I dislike this pretty broadly. I'm actually of the opinion that flag carriers shouldn't be privatized at all, and it feels like it frequently makes things immediately and dramatically worse. This isn't really the place for pontification, but MALEV's downfall makes me genuinely sad. It feels almost vindictive in its drama and suddenness, and it killed something legitimately important to both infrastructure and national identity. (Also, I find it hard to wrap my head around the government's determination to privatize MALÉV when they ended up pouring so much money into it anyway.)

While other airlines eventually picked up the slack, in the immediate aftermath traffic at Budapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport immediately and drastically dropped, and now the only real choices, in a lot of cases, are Wizz Air and Ryanair. Which is broadly fine, I mean, I frequently can't afford anything else, but it's a bit uninspiring for the only option. It's just outright depressing when two airlines operate the vast majority of flights at any airport, with barely any other airlines offering even three, and those two airlines are Ryanair and Wizz Air, especially when you're just smack in the middle of Europe the way Hungary is and are a pretty easy place to route flights through. Increased range on airplanes is obviously a huge benefit to many people, but I'm getting the sense it may have been a cruel joke the universe saw fit to play on Hungarians.

There are three rows of Wizz Air destinations cut off, by the way.

But, okay, enough of that. I'm here for the livery. MALÉV has had three-ish main liveries, from their early days flying the Lisunov Li-2 (a Soviet license-built DC-3) all the way up to their final shuttering.

Yes, that's right - HA-LIX "Kármán Tódor" is in fact an airworthy Li-2![1]

I'm trying to keep my posts at a length that is manageable to both write and read, so I won't be fully covering all the MALÉV liveries. I'm going to assume any requests are for the most up-to-date version unless specified otherwise. But I do just need to mention that I really want to do a follow-up post on MALÉV's original livery, which I think is a standout from its era - just brushing over it in a general history summary doesn't do it justice. It's modeled below on the Ilyushin Il-14 registered HA-MAL, preserved at Aeropark, while the 1968-1986 livery is modeled on this period photograph of Tupolev Tu-134A HA-LBG.

This is another reason I'm very excited by the MALÉV request. Hungary was, if you will, the sort of country which purchased Tupolev airliners, which means I get to use pictures of and talk about old Soviet models! MALÉV began switching to Western planes in the 80s and withdrew their last Tu-154s in the early 2000s, so they're not necessarily the majority of examples, but I do sort of favor the Tupolevs when I can. They're just very idiosyncratic for someone used to looking at mostly Western aircraft, which is to say basically anyone born in the 90s or later. HA-LBG is a Tu-134A, which you can tell because of the glazed nose. Why the glazed nose? Well, that's the classic Soviet navigator pit!

Unfortunately, the later MALÉV Tu-134s had modern nose radomes, visually indistinct from the fuselage around them. Thankfully, I am finally getting to the actual subject of the damned post, which is that in their last-ever livery, designed by László Zsótér[2] and introduced in 1986, MALÉV remembered where they came from and decided they were going to bring back a trend that should never have gone away.

Why did airlines stop painting the noses of their planes? That's a rhetorical question, they stopped doing it because technology had improved to the point they could use other colors on the radome without interfering with the weather radar's function, but, like, why did they stop doing it? Just look at this. The painted nose adds to a feeling of weight and forward momentum, and now the plane looks like a shuttlecock being launched directly at your face during a game of badminton against someone who dislikes you and is sincerely trying to cause you physical injury. She looks like a throwing dart for giants.

Or like a crayon, maybe, also for giants, especially with the stubbier 737 models MALÉV liked to use. The dark color is also very distinctly beaklike.

For some reason, it really immediately and vividly reminds me of the signature beak thing the drag queen Abhora (of Dragula fame) does. I absolutely love it in both cases, though thankfully to the best of my knowledge MALÉV did not embody horror, filth, and glamor.

It does, however, create quite a startling effect via the contrast between white and near-black blue. I will say that this color scheme makes the plane look a bit...villainous? I like that a lot because I'm twisted in the head. The thing that comes to mind is that this plane is haglike. And I love that for her. But I get that this statement could potentially read as insulting, so just, you know, I do mean it as a compliment. I like that she's a hag. I mean, I'm a Siouxsie and the Banshees fan, I'm no stranger to the power of big dark blocks[3].

I think the choice in color here is absolutely fascinating. You see, the Hungarian flag looks like this.

For a regular three-stripe flag I quite like Hungary's dustier take on the archetype, but we can't get around the fact that green, red, and white is an incredibly common combination. Probably in large part due to this, these are also some of the most oversaturated colors in livery design.

Here are just some of the examples that came to mind - and that's not including similar but not identical schemes[5]. These color schemes can obviously still work (two of these liveries are among my favorite examples of Eurowhite done Euro-right, guess which!) but I think MALÉV made the right choice in not trying to compete with it.

It's kind of interesting, though, how instead of just rejecting it altogether (as Mexican flag carrier Aeroméxico has done, as just one example) they picked a very dark off-black shade but then incorporated the colors of the Hungarian flag. This could very easily have gone phenomenally bad but I think it worked for them. It draws interest to the tail (while the blue background keeps it from being detached), the angular use of lines goes with the similar sharpness of the wordmark, and the muted shades Hungary in particular has to work with suit the generally washed-out scheme of this livery.

And to be clear, I don't mean washed-out as an insult. You could easily be fooled into thinking I dislike desaturation based on my reviews here, but I actually really love it and my main long-term non-Runway-Runway project has stylized desaturation as a core feature of its style guide, so to speak. So let me talk about desaturation! The reason desaturation is so frequently ugly is that people use desaturated colors the same way they would use vivid ones and expect it to get the same result, which it obviously won't. The most important thing for use of desaturated colors, in my own opinion, is maintaining very strong contrast. MALÉV does this, obviously, and the flag honestly lends itself to this via the white stripe's placement in the middle, and to a lesser extent the placement of these colors to break up the dark tail. Interesting designs can be subtle, but minimalism only works when it is an active choice designed to create an impression of minimalism (Vietnam Airlines) rather than a blank space (Lufthansa).

The more similar in hue and brightness to each other desaturated colors are, the more the entire thing starts to look flat. MALÉV avoids this by using green, red, blue, and white, which are completely distinct colors. It also creates a certain staccato impression via the sectioning off of the nose, the sharp lines of the wordmark, and the just-as-sharp lines of the tail. This is the point where I have to bring up that this livery was designed for, in large part, Tu-134s and Tu-154s, and these planes are themselves very visually sharp. While they have a very streamlined appearance without question, their planform actually, to me, suits the style of MALÉV's livery better than some of the other types they used, and may explain a bit more why it was designed how it was.

The wing sweep on the Tu-134 is 35 degrees, which is very unusually aggressive even for a rear-engined t-tail plane. I find that the less swept an airplane's wing is, the less it breaks up the line of the fuselage. The Tu-134 is also a bit of a short-looking plane, vertically, relative to a lot of other models, and the straight downward line blocks off the very square tail quite nicely behind the engines, which add some visual interest where they overlap. This sort of scheme looks pretty alright on the Tu-134, even if I think it could use a bit of an adjustment to the wordmark - make it larger, or maybe add an accent color. That would add a bit more weight to the front of the plane.

Unfortunately, on a somewhat longer-looking plane like the Tu-154 the white fuselage expanse becomes quite a bit more stark. That staggering just isn't enough to avoid the desolate feeling.

It gets even worse with modern Western planes, which lack the almost violent wing sweep, sharpness, and short fuselage of the Tu-134. MALÉV operated both the 767 and the 737-800, and these just don't have enough visual interest in the center to keep the plane from being a big white sausage. Plus, Boeing noses are pointy, but they're not as pointy as Tupolev noses, which means the nose paint covers less space. This is nearing the Lufthansa Line, which is my new term for the point where a plane has so little happening anywhere except the back that it looks distinctly rear-heavy.

(As well as crossing the Lufthansa Line as a sort of event horizon, the 'Lufthansa Line' can also refer to the literal shape of the straight line downwards. The similar practice which utilizes a curve instead of a straight line is the Lufthansa Line, SAS Variation. The Lufthansa Dec-lined - no, I'll stop. I need to maintain a tiny bit of dignity so I can still make fun of jetBlue without being a hypocrite.)

Like most liveries which straddle or cross the Lufthansa Line, this looks completely fine and proportional on a plane which is sufficiently short and/or stubby to reduce the ratio of rear to full body to around one-third, and the more stretch you add the worse it looks.

A short-looking fuselage like that of the Q400 also mitigates the effect a little. Plus, they do something I keep telling operators of planes with this sort of square tail to do - extend the paint to more of the fuselage, rather than keeping it a straight line. It just unfortunately isn't quite enough, though the pointy nose, shortness, and slight extension definitely mitigates the effect enough that I think it's...very nearly acceptable.

The incredible thing is that MALÉV actually solves this problem!

I love this little green swoosh upwards. Now, I think I would have chosen a different color for it - either a slightly lighter blue or maybe a darker green. I like how it tapers and fades towards the top. I like how it overlaps the bottom of the main blue section. I think it basically entirely solves the problem in an elegant way.

Unfortunately, this feature was used only on the CRJ-200 fleet. The CRJ is already a plane that's on the Lufthansa-proof side, particularly the shortest -200 variant, so it's a shame we didn't get to see this do some real legwork on a model that desperately needed it. Still, I think that Lufthansesque design could take notes from this, as it basically solves their issue! I don't get why this isn't something you see done. It's such a simple but satisfactory solution. Why, why did MALÉV not generalize this to their other planes?

Wrapping up my thoughts is the most challenging part of this. Normally I try to judge liveries by their weakest link - Lufthansa or TAM don't get let off because their liveries look better on short planes. But there's enough about the design choices that were made by MALÉV that I keep resisting tossing them into that same pit.

Nothing about MALÉV's livery really changes things drastically enough that it fundamentally deviates from the Lufthansa Line archetype, but it feels like the tiny tweaks change just enough that I actually think it's pretty okay. The painted nose, in particular, does a lot for me. I can't help but wonder if I'm being too kind to MALÉV because they operated so many pointy, angular, square airframes that really prevent the weaknesses of the Lufthansa Line from showing, and I try not to judge based on mitigating airframe factors if the airline operates types that aren't so lucky, but I just can't help but think the nose does add something very tangible, a sense of forward motion and a feeling of character that makes me hate it distinctly less, and the color choices are also nice!

And it's this feeling of character that keeps me...not really disliking this livery even though I will freely acknowledge it's lacking. There's something compelling accomplished just by painting the nose. I almost find that bizarre.

But, honestly...mostly white or not, I think these planes have enough color to them at the tarmac at Budapest wouldn't seem completely desolate. I think they'd go well with Wizz Air too. So, I mean...I think ultimately I like MALÉV, yes.

I'm going to give them a C+.

I can't justify going higher than that. But the main impression I've taken away is that I really wish MALÉV got a chance to overhaul their livery for the 2020s. What they had in their final phase actually looks quite contemporary, but that's because it was played out before it became an actual trend - introduced 1986, it predates even FedEx. I definitely can't rule out that whatever they redesigned this into would be worse, but as long as they kept the painted nose that's at least one thing I like a lot.

I've heard the Hungarian government would like to someday resurrect MALÉV if finances allow. To be clear, I do mean that I've heard it secondhand, but I can't find the actual source on it. This may be because I don't read Hungarian, but I think it would be nice to see. Even if there's a fifteen or even twenty-year gap, that's a better thing to see for a legacy which spans three-quarters of a century than for it to end there, and it's about time Hungary had a flag carrier again.

―――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――

Footnotes are so fantastic and useful. Why haven't I been using footnotes until now? I digress so much, why haven't I been making my posts more legible? I mean, tumblr unfortunately doesn't let you link to part of a post so they're not as useful as they are on other websites, but, like, no worse than endnotes in a book, right? And I deal with those all the time with very little grumbling.

[1] You can even still take a sightseeing flight on HA-LIX, or see her at airshows, where she looks fantastic for her 74 years of age (built 1949). She is operated by the Goldtimer Foundation on behalf of her owners, the Hadtörténeti Museum, still wearing the livery of her former operator, MALÉV. She even just got a round of restoration in early 2022, and is potentially the only airworthy Li-2 in the entire world of over 5,000 built, as it's thought the only other recent user, the North Korean Air Force, has mothballed theirs. [2]: I saw multiple mentions of László Zsótér as the designer of this livery, but cannot find any mention of whether he worked for an outside agency or was in-house at MALÉV. [3]: I mean, when you think about it, all of MALÉV's airplanes are painted birds. [4]: ie, schemes that are also primarily red and green but include other color(s) like blue, yellow, or black - see Ethiopian Airlines or MEA for an example - as well as honestly color schemes that are just red and white or green and white. It's honestly as bad as red, white, and blue.

[magpiejay1234]

Kind of an interesting statistic, so far, due to COVID-19 reducing productive capabilities, the expected labour force removal through automation did not actually occur, as most of the displaced labour is simply moved to infrastructure investment, and other areas.

The exception, partially, is China, which had a brief boom of employment, and declined after that. However, China already had labour force participation much higher than global average (meaning overemployment), and declining population, which means like Japan, and South Korea, automation is a necessity, even with mass immigration.

The reason why this prediction has not yet come to pass is obvious, automation, and technological progress requires new investment, which means more automation requires more labour to displace the existing technologies, not to displace existing labour.

Overall trend of declining labour is not about automation, but the efficiencies caused by automation. We can make more precise technology with less labour costs, not that we can make more technology with less labour (since increased production means more economic growth, therefore more labour). Technological progress means, without externalities, and innovation, less growth, as eventually we can't get more efficiency, so eventually stagnation occurs. Compare the stagnation in gasoline cars, desktop computers, and smartphone sales. Law of diminishing returns, and general tendency of profit margins to decline, force new technology to replace the old, often regardless of actual efficiency.

Globally speaking, due to private, and stock-based public retirement payment systems, global GDP growth always needs to be 4-5 points higher than it should be with maximum labour efficiency, as you are not just paying currently active labour, but also future labour (ie. school attendees, ie. children, and university attendees), non-labour (ie. the investors, the underemployed, partners in home (housewives, the househusbands etc.) and the disabled), and past labour (ie. the retired, the people who are fired, and the older underemployed). This cannot happen with human labour, and it cannot happen simply by conventional technological innovation. Mass automation is necessary to allow the economy to grow higher than the labour costs, and to provide for dependent groups.

Lowering dependency on the stock market for retirement pay would help, but this will require governments to print constant money, which cannot happen with real physical cash. So, for renationalizing pension systems, central bank digital currencies would still be needed, otherwise like the parts of the old Soviet Union's system, people would have to be paid in physical items, like a government-based barter economy.

****

An interesting example of this seems to be Japan, historically above the global employment, Japan's labour force participation declined until 2012, when Japan reached peak GDP, but due to declining population, and declining GDP, labour force participation has increased, and continues to increase.

It is highly unlikely the same will occur in China, as China is trying to divest its production to other countries, largely due to geopolitical reasons (creating future markets for Chinese production to avoid further sanctions), but a similar case might occur in Europe if infrastructure investment continues to rise to adopt to new technologies.

Obviously, the issue of the quality of new labour is big (lower paying service jobs with less health benefits, but also risks vs. higher paying manufacturing jobs with more health benefits, but also risks), but that's not as urgent as other issues. It will remain a major topic obviously, though.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil rules out renationalizing Eletrobras

Brazil is not considering the renationalization of former federal power holding Eletrobras, mines and energy minister Alexandre Silveira (in photo) told a seminar on Monday. 

Silveira said the issue was closed when the government took the path of seeking proportional representation on the company's board, which is the subject of a case being heard by the federal supreme court.  

The official said that, despite owning 43% of Eletrobras’ shares, the privatization model allows the government to have just one representative on its board. 

“So, what we question is proportionality. We understand that there is a distortion in a very sensitive area for the country,” he said. 

Continue reading.

[rivaltimes]

The long French nuclear winter

The long French nuclear winter

Time is pressing, but the French nuclear park is taking longer than expected to get out of the rut. At the gates of winter, and with the cold beginning to take its toll, Electricite de France (EDF) —the electric giant about to be renationalized— has delayed the schedule for the reopening of nuclear reactors that have been stopped for months for repairs and overhauls. The inactivity of almost half…

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

req’d by @catsarehumanstoo

i dont know what that even means but i guess you can try?????

[senlinyu]

at what age did you know you wanted to write? and what age did you know you wanted to share your writing online? were there definitive moments for either? and do you have recs on how to go about finding a beta, bc i'm completely oblivious, and i'm not sure if it should just happen organically or by offer or if there's several 'ways' to find a beta, rip.

I always like writing, but I was super self-conscious and never let anyone read it, but I always told myself someday. So then, I was doing this personal challenge thing and I really wanted to force myself to write a full story, but I always burned out and gave up because I’d just doubt whether it was interesting to anyone but me, so I decided that I’d make myself do it by writing a fanfic, because I renationalized that if strangers on the internet hated my writing I’d be able to dump the pseud and move on, but if I let someone IRL read my stuff and they told me it was garbage I’d feel hurt towards them until the day I died. 

So I started out beta-less and found all my betas because they commented/messaged me to let me know about misused words/typos in my fics. Apparently this isn’t the normal way. People can ask for a beta in the various fandom fb groups, or if you join some of the fandom discord servers, and there are usually channels for pitching your fic and asking if anyone is interested in beta’ing it.

[bustedbernie]

In terms of the conservatives blaming Corbyn, there is delayed Russia report which indicated that the conservatives stopped the intelligence services from looking into possible Russian interference and instead of rightly condemning Boris, Corbyn gets doorstepped over a case that was covered ages ago (you’ve probably seen rose twitter say ‘Corbyn was right’ because there was an amendment that failed recently that would’ve protected the NHS in uk us trade deals and Corbyn’s main focus in... 1/

…the 2017 election was this happening, apparently Russia leaked it to reddit first or something). In terms of labour blaming Corbyn, a reporter of the antisemitism panorama episode got sued by the labour party for libel but instead of carrying on with the case, which labour lawyers say they would have won, the current labour leader decided to settle, opening up to a wave of opportunistic people now suing the party. The case if proceeded would’ve shed some light into what actually happened… 2/

…and could’ve vindicated Corbyn, but now we’ll never know. Because of the settlement are now also blaming Corbyn over the possibility of labour going bankrupt via settlement. In terms of the antisemitism, idk if you've read the leaked labour report into antisemitism, but if it’s to be believed then there was a select few senior members deliberately delaying the antisemitism accusations to make it seem like Corbyn tolerated it, the same members who were bullying several BAME MPs and… 3/

...misusing party funds in favour of the conservatives. Corbyn wasn't a very good leader but a lot of the reasons why labour lost wasn't fully because of him. There are probably more instances but I’m not really that involved in politics lmao, however can’t help but notice parallels in the way sanders is covered in your media vs the way Corbyn is covered in uk media. While some of the criticisms of sanders you may read in the future may be correct, some may just be pointing fingers at an... 4/

...easy target. Nuance is needed, as you say. 5/5

(I’m assuming your 2-3 messages got eaten) Corbyn is prolly a better politician than Sanders in that he actually participated in party politics and worked up his way in Labour. I guess he also gets points for wearing sweaters. Sanders is a grifting moron. and definitely an easy target for good reason

Labour’s loss was definitely multi-faceted. But we also can’t forget the antisemitism. Nor the unpopularity of some of their platform, and Corbyn’s appearance as uncompromising. Which is sad, as some of their platform (like protecting/improving the NHS and renationalizing the railways) are popular even among many tories. It’s also hard to see a way for Labour to win large again if they can’t propose a way to win in Scotland.

It’s rarely one person’s fault singularly for a party to lose. But Corbyn just didn’t seem propose a good way to get over those hurdles. His euro-scepticism also pushed at least a couple of my british friends to vote for the libdems. He really waffled on those issues until close to the end. So, just the presence of the libdems and SNP in a FPTP system makes it tricky. Similarly to Sanders, he relied too heavily on some reliance on class consciousness leading to a win. That didn’t seem to materialize in any meaningful way.  Contrary to Sanders, Corbyn is pretty harshly ripped apart in the british media (from what I often see). If anything, Sanders was boosted by the media here who really wants a horse race, even when they don’t exist. 

[addition] Well, all I’ve read about the report is it’s attacked for messages being obtained “improperly” rather than the content of messages themselves. It also fails to justify Corbyn’s stance in defending the antisemitic mural or those in the party that denied the holocaust which I’ve seen little follow-up on (and that seems like a big thing???). 

All of that aside, there was plenty of writing calling Corbyn a poor choice for a good minute, and what was said to happen, happened. The conservatives should definitely be investigated, Russia was certainly involved (as well as in Brexit), and all of that should be lead to a search for justice and it’s also true that the LibDems had some interesting issues going on in the last election. But Corbyn being a poor choice can also be true at the same time as the tories being up to some weird shit.  

[kaninchenzero]

i'm not that nice a person

i look at the (scanty) available information, note that a) patients are getting re-infected with that 'rona even after clearing the virus and should have been immune and b) at least one very stable genius decided to deliberately catch a case and, uh, lessee here...

oh, yeah

fuckin died

so yeah

those people who were planning on forcing kids back to schools and already-exploited workers back to now deadly dangerous but still uncompensated jobs

those people who made taking the smallest of possible actions to slow the spread of n-CoV-SARS-19 a shibboleth in their forever culture war

the actual capitalists -- those people who possess genuine capital and have invested most heavily in ensuring they bear a disproportionally light portion of the shared cost of having a society while taking a disproportionally large share of our collective wealth and hoarding it like so many antisemitic tolkienoid dragons

i wish them ill

i hope they die horribly, and in great number

and i won't--can't be made to--feel the slightest bit bad about it

because in deed and in word, they have proven they wish the same for us

we can't worry about the money they've stolen; it's long gone and most of it is imaginary to begin with

we need control over the means of production, as many before me have said

capitalist developers have clearly shown themselves incapable of building the homes we need, but the people who build stuff could build stuff as a cooperative rather than employees/"independent" contractors of corporations

utilities, including internet and cellular phone networks, should be nationalized and water, sewer, electricity, waste removal and processing renationalized

people have already been showing its possible to make masks and other protective wear as co-ops

so there's a working economy for this sort of thing

maybe it's not possible for a co-op to build The Next Generation Supersonic Stealth Fighter™

maybe that's a good thing

those fuckers are hellish expensive

just think of the art that could be made with even a tiny fraction of the resources

[meredoubt]

It is not a good time to be Jewish and deal with delusions and extreme paranoia. I am having increasing trouble believing the statements of the people who are supposed to be my constants.

What the fuck am I going to do if this motherfucker renationalizes me as Israeli?

[arcticdementor]

At time of writing, Boris Johnson has opened a commanding lead in the race to be Conservative Party leader and thus Prime Minister, confirming one of my father’s bits of life advice: “always bet on self-interest, Helen; it’s the only horse that’s trying”. Whether Boris will have a country to govern come July 22 is, however, something of a moot point.

Let me tell you about Brexit Britain, which is in the process of breaking the Big Electric Trainset in the Palace of Westminster.

…

The Tories are more culpable because they formed government during this period. They stuck with Theresa May, a leader who lacks every leadership quality apart from perseverance and who managed to lose a 20 per cent poll lead against an antediluvian Marxist after calling a completely unnecessary general election. This election produced a hung parliament and forced May’s Tories into a confidence and supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a Northern Irish outfit that is, to put it mildly, full of strange characters.

…

The Withdrawal Agreement—which went down to catastrophic defeat three times in the Commons and precipitated May’s resignation—was widely (and accurately) seen as a national humiliation. Yes, it’s true there’s an important distinction between withdrawal and the UK’s future economic relationship with the EU, but the “deal”—although it was meant to be temporary—was so incompetently constructed the UK may never have reached the sunlit uplands of a future economic relationship.

…

And how did this come about? Because the EU has hard borders with what EU treaties call “third countries,” and after Brexit the UK will become a third country, the logical consequence is a hard border between Eire and Northern Ireland. Except a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland is not possible, because of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The Good Friday Agreement is based on referendums in both Northern Ireland and Ireland. It’s partly an international treaty, partly an agreement between the parties. It isn’t part of UK domestic law but it binds us in so many areas it may as well be. It guarantees Northern Ireland access to the European Court of Human Rights—a major reason David Cameron couldn’t repeal the Blair-era Human Rights Act. It was drafted on the understanding both Ireland and the UK were part of the EU so it doesn’t envisage what either country’s commitments could be in relation to the border in the event of either leaving.

The Good Friday Agreement also ended a period of history known as “The Troubles.” To quote Bernard Woolley of Yes, Minister fame: “Ireland doesn’t make it any better; Ireland doesn’t make anything any better.” Nonetheless, the colonization of the Ulster Plantation and surrounding counties was a terrible and immoral mistake and the Irish border problem is our punishment for the sins of our ancestors. Northern Ireland has become the UK’s catflap of doom, simply because the EU is (rightly) concerned that importers could use it as backdoor into the customs union.

…

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour has had less opportunity to evince idiocy simply because it is the Opposition, but that doesn’t let it off the hook. Corbyn himself is a lifelong Euroskeptic forced by the Blairite wing of his party to support Remain in 2016. He was frank that his socialist policies—extensive renationalization, including the railways—could not be enacted while the UK was in the EU. Since 2016, however, Labour’s Blairites have weakened, while Corbyn’s views on renationalisation have not changed. Nonetheless, his peace-hope-anti-austerity message resonated with a lot of passionate Remain supporters in 2017.

…

What has not been widely discussed is the large number of Labour MPs who are desperate to avoid a second referendum—and for good reason. They fear it would give a huge boost to unpleasant populist politics and radically destabilize the country, particularly if the vote is a narrow one for reversing the previous result. They’ve also pointed out the elitism and classism of the second referendum campaign. This includes the tin-eared idiocy of calling it a “People’s Vote”, as though everyone who turned out in 2016 was not, ahem, human.

Corbyn is therefore trying to hold Labour’s electoral coalition together. It’s all very well people in the metropolitan media talking about how 70 per cent of Labour voters are pro-Remain. The practical point is that the other 30 per cent makes up a large part of Labour’s working-class constituency and is disproportionately concentrated in traditional Labour seats in the North of England, South Wales, and the Midlands. The 70 per cent are also often in the Southeast where Labour isn’t going to win anyway, or in London, where they’ve already won.

The effect of all this is that the Tories, the civil service, and Labour are tripping over each other and falling down separate flights of stairs while the nation looks on in baffled consternation. We used to be good at running things. That was Britain’s superpower. And yet we’ve somehow lost the knack. Why?

…

UK politicians have legislated and governed within such a constrained field for so long they are now literally out of practice. Westminster is no more than a Big Electric Trainset. The concomitant loss of capacity among civil servants is notable. It is difficult, for example, to imagine the Home Office replicating Australia’s points-based immigration system, even if it wanted to.

The vacuum on both sides of Parliament has allowed a weak government to be captured on two fronts. The EU has led it in negotiations. It has been buffeted by pressure from incompetent civil servants. Yes, Parliament has demonstrated that it ultimately has the power, which is how it should be. Parliament is however completely divided and has nothing like a clear majority to decide anything.

This last is because 2016’s vote to Leave was the first time in the full flower of British democracy—that is, since female and working-class male suffrage in 1918—where a majority of people outside Parliament demanded something that a majority of people inside Parliament didn’t want to give.

Any political party that won an absolute majority (52 per cent) of such a large turnout (72 per cent) should be in legitimacy clover. It would be able to do anything—even more than, say, Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher in their pomp—during its term of office. But this colossal fissure is between governors and governed, not Government and Opposition. As a result, the Mother of Parliaments has transformed itself into a legislative Blunderdome. Brexit is blowing up Parliament where Guy Fawkes failed.

…

In days gone by, superannuated elites refusing to accept defeat on existential questions of this type finished up with their heads on pikes. Democracy put a stop to that by doing what democracy does best: facilitating the peaceful and orderly transfer of power. But democracy means you elect a new parliament, not a new people. That, in truth, is the only deal that matters.

[indizombie]

The Macri family firm Socma, in 1997 took charge of Argentina’s privatized postal service under the free-market government of former president Carlos Menem. The postal service Correo Argentino was renationalized in 2003 after alleged mismanagement by the Macri firm and for failing to pay the concession fee for several years in a row. At the time, Socma claimed that the investments it had made in the postal service compensated for their failure to pay the agreed fee. The Macri family’s debt with the state was of 450m Argentinian pesos, which was about $128m at the 2003 exchange rate... The Socma firm was originally owned by the president’s father, Francisco Macri, who turned it over to three of his children, including Mauricio Macri, in 2007. Mauricio Macri in turn turned over his shares to three of his own children in a series of steps between 2008 and 2014. He was elected president in 2015.

Uki Goñi, 'Argentina president accused of conflict of interest after company's debt forgiven', The Guardian

[wolfliving]

Meanwhile, as Amsterdam attacks AirBnb

Amsterdam's Plan: If You Buy a Newly Built House, You Can't Rent It Out

by FEARGUS O'SULLIVAN

MAR 20, 2019

In an effort to make housing more affordable, the Dutch capital is crafting a law that says anyone who buys a newly built home must live in it themselves.

If you want to buy a new house in Amsterdam, you’ll have to actually live in it.

That’s the message from the Dutch capital as it prepares a new proposal to restrict sales of newly built housing to owner-occupiers, blocking out anyone who wants to buy the properties only to rent them out.

The plan, which is expected to be adopted into law without any great hitch this autumn, remains at proposal stage for now: It’s not yet been clarified, for example, how long an owner would have to occupy their home before being able to rent it out. It is nonetheless part of a clear push in Amsterdam to improve housing options for a group that increasingly struggles to secure affordable housing: the squeezed middle class.

Some of the reasons why this group is facing problems—ones that have a knock-on effect all the way through the housing chain—may sound familiar. The Netherlands has relatively high home-ownership rates, with 67 percent of the Dutch population living in owner-occupied housing as of 2014. Middle-income households that would have formerly expected to buy, however, are increasingly finding themselves priced out of the market, substantially by investors who then place the property on the rental market.

The challenges of investor-dominated rental markets is hardly limited to Amsterdam, and there’s a growing determination across Europe to show a tougher, more heavily regulated approach to large-scale housing investors. Barcelona, for example, is imposing massive finesfor landlords who leave properties empty, and Berlin plans to start renationalizing private housing... (((etc etc)))

[ceevee5]

“The challenges of investor-dominated rental markets is hardly limited to Amsterdam, and there’s a growing determination across Europe to show a tougher, more heavily regulated approach to large-scale housing investors. Barcelona, for example, is imposing massive fines for landlords who leave properties empty, and Berlin plans to start renationalizing private housing after investors scooped up much of its rental housing in recent decades.”

[berniesrevolution]

IN THESE TIMES

On July 18, House Democrats unveiled their new campaign slogan ahead of the 2018 midterm elections: For The People. At first glance, the message may appear similar to “For The Many, Not The Few,” the title of the manifesto put forward in 2017 by the UK’s Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn. And while both slogans place the public as the center of political action, the Democratic Party still has much further to go in comparison to Labour, which embraced a bold, redistributive agenda as a means to grow its power.

The Labour manifesto called for such policies as nationalizing rail and electric utilities, getting rid of tuition for public colleges, banning fracking, investing in clean energy, controlling rent increases and massively taxing the rich and corporations. The Democratic Party establishment, meanwhile, has so far steered clear of adopting such unabashedly left proposals.

Yet the recent primary victories of democratic socialist candidates such as Summer Lee and Sara Innamorato in Pittsburgh and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York against powerful incumbents within the Democratic machine signal that the energy and enthusiasm within the party lies on its left flank. These candidates, along with many other democratic socialists across the country, have run on platforms that are largely in line with Labour’s manifesto.

In response to the victories by candidates such as Ocasio-Cortez, many U.S. pundits and political insiders have either written off the rise of democratic socialism as marginal or warned against the Democratic Party embracing “extremism.”

Such a reaction is familiar. Soon after UK Prime Minister Theresa May called for a surprise general election to take place in June 2017, pundits across the political spectrum repeated a narrative reducing Corbyn to a scruffy, unelectable old-school socialist who would return Labour to the electoral obscurity of the 1980s rather than a viable alternative to the Conservative status quo.

The accidental leaking of the Labour Party’s manifesto during the 2017 general election seemed to give Corbyn’s critics another chance to accuse him of disorganization and incompetence. However, the leak ended up working in Labour’s favor, as the electorate was able to understand Corbyn’s vision of a progressive Labour-led Britain at face value and without spin. The manifesto proved popular: Labour’s poll ratings instantly rose, with 7 in 10 voters welcoming its pledges.

The appeal of Labour’s manifesto lay in its bold vision that decisively addressed the public’s material circumstances and needs. It was as much an implicit accounting of the violence of austerity as it was an explicit policy platform for readdressing it. Corbyn ended up receiving 40 percent of the popular vote, a swing of 10 percent from the previous election which equaled the largest increase in the vote-share by a Labour leader since 1945. Corbyn won the hearts and minds of much of the British public despite facing immense hostility from even his own MPs, laying bare the dissonance between the politics of the political establishment and that of the general population.

Indeed, as Corbyn stated in his keynote speech at the 2017 Labour party conference, “the political center of gravity isn’t fixed or unmovable, nor is it where the establishment pundits like to think it is,” before adding: “we are now the political mainstream.” Today, support for policies such as renationalization, tax increases on both corporations and higher earners, and the strengthening of workers’ rights rank high among the public regardless of divides among generations or political parties. Corbyn’s policies are popular even among those who are older and identify as conservatives, proving that progressive values can transcend the tribal nature of party politics.

As has been proven among Labour in the UK, signs show that the Democratic base in the United States is moving much further left than the party establishment anticipated, and the base has shown a yearning for candidates who actually speak to their material interests.

Ocasio-Cortez did just that, running as a democratic socialist on a platform including Medicare for All, tuition-free college and a federal jobs guarantee. She defeated Rep. Joe Crowley, a 10-term incumbent, with 57 percent of the vote. Other democratic socialists have won elections in states such as Virginia, Montana, Illinois and Tennessee. The policies Ocasio-Cortez embraced mirror that of other democratic socialists across the Unites States—and they are popular among the American public: 59 percent support Medicare for All, 52 percent support a federal jobs guarantee and 63 percent support free college.

(Continue Reading)

[alarmist-nonsense]

“On April 6 2019, the civic campaign Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen (DWE) started collecting signatures, with the aim to hold a referendum that could lead to renationalization of up to 200,000 council flats, which were previously sold to corporate landlords.

If successful, the move could provide a legal precedent for other cities to call for nationalization as a modern and legitimate solution to their housing crises. It could also prompt changes to international law, empowering legislation initiatives that see housing as a human right, as a strategic resource or as global commons.”