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Images Of the Day:
Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Now Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World!
Always Remember: That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he Established, in writing, the United States Capitalist Austerity Program. — The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!
Democracy?: As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%, Only the 1% Voted For Austerity! The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who, Profit From Austerity!! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.! Socialism Means True Democracy, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
Quotes 0f the Day:
Corporate America consists of totalitarian entities laser-focused on short-term greed. These corporations have become largely decoupled from reality, from humanity, from sustainability, and from the environment. Any time they take a breather from their rapacious, glutinous greed to belch out some tired exclamation of care for social justice or care for environmental rejuvenation or care for ending inequality and hate — those moments are beyond meaningless. In fact, those moments are actually harmful due to the number of people who honestly believe they mean something, who think the corporate world can ever be a force for good rather than the center of our own waltz off the cliff. If we want to end oppression, we must end inequality. If we want to end inequality, we must evolve beyond our rancid exploitative socioeconomic system and the corporations that thrive in it. — How Corporate America Supports Racism, Hatred & Exploitation (in New & Fun Ways!)
Videos of the Day:
United States:
The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Reublicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War! Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich. Rax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay!
Pentagon and Tax Cheats Already Cost Taxpayers Far More Than Biden’s Job Plan A $2.3 trillion jobs plan only seems remarkable because the federal government has grown stingy toward real investment. War Spending: $6.4 Trillion Over the past 20 years, the U.S. has spent $6.4 trillion on wars that have served only to further destabilize the Middle East, cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and enrich military contractors. If that money had been spent on infrastructure and clean energy instead of destructive and deadly wars, the U.S. could have had a fully renewable energy grid by now. The Pentagon is one of the most egregious uses of trillions of dollars. That $6.4 trillion doesn’t even include the regular, non-war Pentagon budget. President Biden’s $2.3 trillion jobs package works out to about $280 billion a year. What the $ Trillion Military Budget is For — Pax America — Occupy Peace The clear intention of the Founders was stated numerous times by them: when it comes to foreign policy, it is essential to avoid foreign entangle ments! That is quite the opposite of what we have now as the official policy of both political parties is to intervene relentlessly in the affairs of countless nations. Our “empire of bases” as described by the late Chalmers Johnson in his Blowback Trilogy entails the placement of hundreds of thousands of US troops in over 100 countries at an estimated 1,000 military insta llations spread across the entire planet.
A Billionaire-Funded Website With Ties to the Far Right Is Trying to “Cancel” University Professors Campus Reform and its publisher, the Leadership Institute, are siccing armies of trolls on professors across the country. When Pete Hatemi, a political science professor at Pennsylvania State University, got an email from a student he didn’t know asking him to become a faculty adviser for a conservative group on campus, he did some research on the organization, Young Americans for Freedom, and quickly decided that he wanted nothing to do with them. Among current and former leaders of YAF chapters across the country, he learned, were declared white supremacists, believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory, and supporters of the Ku Klux Klan and the Proud Boys.
Environment:
Capitalism: Profits First! —Global — Life Be Damned!:
Build the Ecosocialism United Front!
US Military Polluter of the World and US!: Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Ecocide in the Pacific In fact, no one will ever know the mountains of wastes that have been buried or dumped into rivers, lakes, seas and oceans in violation of the law or with the consent of local and national authorities. The EPA is still struggling to lessen the dangers of illegal pollution and burial of toxic wastes in places throughout the country. The EPA baptizes these gangster operations “superfund” sites. One such water dumping of DDT wastes came to light in late 2020 by David Valentine, a curious professor of the University of California, Santa Barbara. He discovered something like 500,000 barrels of DDT littering the ocean floor: a criminal act of pollution that turned out to be the “most infamous case of environmental destruction off the coast of Lost Angeles.” The dumping started in 1947 and continued until 1982, twelve years after the founding of the EPA in 1970. The dumping of DDT was near the Catalina Island. It could not have taken place without the tacit agreement of California and national governments. In addition to the industry burying or dumping its wastes, the largest violator of national and international environmental laws is the US military. Its gigantic arsenal of weapons and monumental amounts of munitions and wastes create a nightmare of disposal and effects on human and environmental health. By Evaggelos Vallianatos
Rich World’s Demands Fell Poorer World’s Forests Rich world’s demands fell poorer Rich world’s demands fell poorer world’s forests The tropical forests maintain global climate and nurture the riches of nature. The rich world’s demands are destroying them. The world’s great ecosystems − moderators of climate, nurseries for evolution − are still being destroyed in the service of global trade, to meet the rich world’s demands. Once again, researchers have confirmed that the wealthy nations are in effect ploughing savanna and felling tropical forests at a distance. In the first 15 years of this century, the growing demand from the well-heeled for chocolate, rubber, cotton, soy, beef and exotic timber has meant that poorer nations have actually increased their levels of deforestation. By Tim RadfordInvasive Alien Species Exact Huge Ecosystem Cost At last, a global price on invasive alien species: it runs to billions of dollars and doubles every six years. French scientists have put a value on the cost of ecosystem destruction by often almost invisible newcomers: the damage invasive alien species do, and the price of containing that damage, has already passed the US$1.28 trillion mark in less than 50 years. That’s because the annual toll imposed by cats, rats and mice, boll weevils, gipsy moths, African bees, red imported fire ants and other unwelcome migrants has averaged $26.8 billion a year from 1970 to 2017, and has been doubling every six years, and trebling every decade.Which is why the global economic losses in 2017 alone reached $162bn, and will go on rising, they warn in the journal Nature. . By Tim Radford
Nutrient Drought: The Ocean is Becoming More Stable – And That’s Not Good News A growing rift in the ocean’s metabolism disrupts circulation and starves essential organisms If you’ve ever been seasick, “stable” may be the last word you associate with the ocean. But as global temperatures rise, the world’s oceans are technically becoming more stable. When scientists talk about ocean stability, they refer to how much the different layers of the sea mix with each other. A recent study analyzed over a million samples and found that, over the past five decades, the stability of the ocean increased at a rate that was six times faster than scientists were anticipating. By Phil HosewoodCivil Rights/Black Liberation:
Protests Erupt After Police Kill Black Man During Traffic Stop Near Minneapolis “Yet another Black life was taken by those sworn to protect, and we join the community in mourning Wright’s loss,” said the ACLU of Minnesota. Police fatally shot Daunte Wright—an unarmed, 20-year-old Black man—during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota on Sunday afternoon, sparking protests in the northern Minneapolis suburb located just miles away from where George Floyd was killed by police last May. By Kenny Stancil
Labor:
Economy:
G e n e r a l He a d l i n e s
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Pandemic-Driven U.S. Economic Collapse Continues in a Hardening, Protracted “L”-Shaped Non-Recovery
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Severe Systemic Structural Damage from the Shutdown Will Forestall Meaningful Economic Rebound into 2022 or Beyond, Irrespective of Advances in Coronavirus Vaccines and Treatments
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Panicked, Unlimited Federal Reserve Money Creation and Federal Government Deficit Spending Continue and Will Expand, Triggering Major Domestic Inflation
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With Fundamental Dollar Debasement Intensifying, Holding Physical Gold and Silver Protects the Purchasing Power of One’s Assets, Irrespective of Any Near-Term Central Bank or Other Machinations to the Contrary.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell Goes on 60 Minutes to Present a False Narrative on Mega Banks He Supervises Loaning Out their Balance Sheets to Hedge Funds The CBS “investigative” program, 60 Minutes, gave Wall Street a pass again last night. This time around 60 Minutes’ host Scott Pelley interviewed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. The Fed, and by extension, Powell, are in charge of supervising the holding companies of the mega banks on Wall Street, including those involved just two weeks ago in loaning out their balance sheets to the tune of tens of billions of dollars to a hedge fund run by a man previously charged with insider trading and stock price manipulations. The man is Sung Kook (Bill) Hwang and the hedge fund is Archegos Capital Management. (Fed-supervised mega banks loaning out their balance sheets to hedge funds for nefarious purposes was previously exposed in 2014 in an in-depth report and hearing by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The practice has clearly metastasized since that time.) By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
As Rich Countries Shield Pharma Monopolies, Just 0.2% of Covid Vaccine Doses Have Gone to Poor Nations “We need the cooperation of the whole world and the elimination of all the barriers to the production and distribution of vaccines.” The head of the World Health Organization estimated in a recent address that of the more than 700 million coronavirus vaccine doses that have been administered across the globe, just 0.2% have gone to people in low-income nations—inequity that experts warn will persist unless rich countries end their obstruction of an international effort to suspend vaccine patents. By Jake JohnsonIran Says Israeli ‘Nuclear Terrorism’ Could Have Led to Catastrophic ‘Crime Against Humanity’ “If Israel is behind this while [Defense Secretary] Austin visits Israel this is shameless. Iran and the U.S. can’t let this derail diplomacy. Time to put in place a return to the JCPOA.” —Jon Rainwater, Peace Action “This is sabotage all right,” said one outside critic of the attack on Natanz, reportedly carried out by Mossad. “But the target is Biden’s diplomacy with Iran.” By Jon Queally
Northern Ireland is Back as the Most Dangerous Open Wound in British Political Life There is more to the escalating conflict than the failings of the DUP – unionists determined to keep Northern Ireland part of the UK are facing a more general crisis Reports on violence in Northern Ireland over the last week – the worst for decades according to the police – fail to understand that rioting in the province is of two types that look the same but have very different impacts. One is skirmishing with the police by setting fire to vehicles and hurling stones, petrol bottles and fireworks. Dangerous though this is, it has been practised by both communities at different times to advertise their grievances, on the correct presumption that events in Northern Ireland will be ignored by people in mainland Britain and the wider world unless there are dramatic scenes of violence to grab their attention. But there is another much more dangerous type of rioting in which one community is pitted against another and which awakens memories of past sectarian blood-letting. This is what gives that attack launched from the Protestant Shankill Road towards the Catholic Springfield Road in west Belfast this week such deadly potential.By Patrick Cockburn
Education, Health, Science, and Welfare:
The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who pass universal healthcare for themselves, but cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People Vote on Healthcare
New Zealand Law Granting Paid Leave for Miscarriage Sparks Organizing in US The win in New Zealand has fueled U.S. efforts to extend paid medical and family leave protections to all 50 states. When New Zealand’s Parliament extended three days of paid leave to workers and their partners following a miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy or stillbirth, as well as to those whose plans to welcome a child through adoption or surrogacy become derailed, it cast a spotlight on how countries throughout the world treat the aftermath of pregnancy loss. By Eleanor J. Bader
USA: Building a Mass Socialist Party – Class Independence Vs. The “Party Surrogate” Strategy There is a debate in the US left about building a mass workers’ party. Some argue for the so-called dirty break, in which left-wingers within the Democrats split off at some point in the future. Others argue that socialist candidates should remain with the Democrats and establish a surrogate “party within a party”. Our US comrades argue that the party of Wall Street is a dead end. Only a mass, independent political party of labour presents any road forward for the working class. “The first great step of importance for every country newly entering into the movement is always the organization of the workers as an independent political party, no matter how, so long as it is a distinct workers’ party.” — Friedrich Engels, 1886. The debate over “the party question” on the US left has been around since the earliest days of the labor movement. Marx and Engels always considered that the vital task of the American working class was the formation of a distinct party of its own, independent and opposed to the parties of the ruling class. It is not by chance that the debate is picking up steam again several generations later. The creation of a mass working-class party remains the most pressing task for American workers—one that will make or break the prospects for winning socialism in our lifetime. The outcome of all other battles ultimately hinges on the ability of the working class to win state and economic power, something unthinkable without a mass, class-independent political party.