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Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and The Iron Heel.
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.
Images of the Day:
Quotes of the Day:
The mass media has played into this character assassination while both Manning and Assange are in jail, and instead of refusing to treat this as one of the most egregious assaults on press freedom, it has largely turned their back on the victims. Now, the media’s reporting has been revealed to have done something even more damaging than destroy Assange’s reputation—it has served to torture him. That is the conclusion Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and two medical experts who examined the WikiLeaks founder came to, according to a recent piece by Melzer published on Medium titled “Demasking the Torture of Julian Assange.” While initially hesitant to meet with Assange after he was detained in the United Kingdom where he had been living in the Ecuadorian Embassy for several years, Melzer ultimately decided to do so, despite having formed negative opinions about Assange based on widespread media coverage of the man.— U.N. Report Condemns Torture of Assange
Orangutans are usually solitary. However, occasionally aggregations are formed, especially in large fruiting fig trees. Individuals in these aggregations may experience scramble or contest competition for food. We investigated the type and strength of food competition in large figs among wild Sumatran orangutans. Adult males foraged more efficiently than adult females and subadult males did. The availability of ripe fruit is positively related to the number of orangutans visiting a fig tree and their foraging efficiency. The number of orangutans in a fig tree did not affect patch residence time and foraging behavior, though orangutans spent more time feeding when aggregation size increased in a fig tree. Dominance relationships could be measured in a number of dyads. Differences in dominance did not affect foraging behavior. The patch residence time of subordinate individuals was reduced on days that a dominant individual also visited the fig. In conclusion, orangutans seem to adjust aggregation size to the number of available ripe fruits in a fig tree in such a way that scramble competition was absent. Contest competition determined access to large fig trees. — Food Competition Between Wild Orangutans in Large Fig Trees
Videos of the Day:
Citizenship Question Won’t be on Census, But Is Trump Proposing Something Worse? Trump has been forced to retreat from trying to add a citizenship question to the Census questionnaire. But the alternative he has proposed looks like a national citizenship registry. We discuss the implications with Keshia Morris of Common Cause
U.S.:
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 Republicrats 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!
Epstein Scandal — Wine, Politics, Connectioins, and Child Sex Breed Insider Information:
The public’s right to know how Epstein made his money is essential to understanding just how much he has gotten away with under the nose of the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice and a full listing of just whom his co-conspirators are. Powerful men flew on his private planes, one of which was called the Lolita Express, and stayed at his private mansions. Were they paying him to secure young women for them or getting him access to hot IPOs? The Miami Herald investigative reporter, Julie K. Brown, who may have forced New York prosecutors into revisiting the case against Epstein through her in-depth series of articles in November of last year, stated this recently on television: “We don’t know how much, how deep this went, how far-reaching it went in government, but there have been a lot of names that I could see on these message pads [listing clients] on a regular basis as part of the evidence. These message pads where they would call and leave Epstein messages, such as, ‘I’m at this hotel.’ Why do you do that, unless you’re expecting him to send you a girl to visit you at your hotel? So there are probably quite a few important people, powerful people, who are sweating it out right now. We’ll have to wait and see whether Epstein is going to name names.” — Tax Filing Suggests Child Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein Made His Wealth Flipping Hot IPOs on Wall Street
The Us is a Lot More Corrupt Than Americans Realize, And the Problem Goes Much Deeper Than Trump If they’ve been paying attention, Americans have received some rude wake-up calls in recent years. What unpleasant news do these messages convey? The country is a lot more corrupt than Americans realized
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The Trump administration has attracted attention for allegations of corruption.
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But Trump has only been president since 2016, and recent scandals show the taint runs much deeper.
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Corruption is relatively low in the US, but its growing prevalence threatens its reputation and the political stability Americans have so long enjoyed, argues Harvard professor Stephen M. Walt.
The “Pro-Life” Movement Is Silent About Children Dying at the Border I have learned of the demonstrations and other ways Americans are mobilizing to protest the mistreatment of children seeking asylum at U.S. borders from a number of organizations and outlets, but none of them include so-called pro-life organizations. Nothing on the homepage of National Right to Life, which spent $270,000 lobbying against abortion in 2018, would suggest the containment of children in cages on U.S. soil is among its most pressing concerns. Its Instagram feed does not feature any images of migrant jails nor of migrant children — some of whom are infants — separated from their asylum-seeking parents. By Kendra Stanton Lee
Hurricane Barry Proves Terrorist Threat Is A Hoax: What Hurricane Barry tells us as it floods an already flooded New Orleans is that the “terrorist threat” that the US allegedly faces is a hoax. What do I mean? Think about it this way. Terrorists, if such exist, have had ample warning about New Orleans’ precarious position with the swollen Mississippi river in flood stage for the longest period in recorded history. What would terrorists be doing as I write? They would be setting off explosives to breach one of the levees and watch the Mississippi river wash New Orleans away. This is simple child’s play for terrorists who, if you believe the US government, are so clever that they outwitted airport security four times in one hour on the same morning, hijacked 4 airliners, and brought down three World Trade Center skyscrapers and part of the Pentagon. This is simple child’s play for terrorists who, if you believe the US government, are so clever that they outwitted airport security four times in one hour on the same morning, hijacked 4 airliners, and brought down three World Trade Center skyscrapers and part of the Pentagon. By Paul Craig Roberts
Environment:
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. … If money … comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek, capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.— Karl Marx, Capital”, Volume One, Part VIII, Chapter 31, (the) “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist
99% Invisible Podcast: Why Sand Scarcity Threatens the Building Industry In this second episode in the partnership series, Mars explores sand scarcity in construction. The notion that the planet is running out of sand might come as a shock. After all, it’s the most abundant resource next to water and air. But it’s also a major ingredient in concrete, asphalt, and glass, and since reinforced concrete became a building material of choice in the 20th century, the demand for sand has increased exponentially. Add to that demand the reality of increasing global urbanization (and need for an average of 13,000 new buildings every day through 2050), and the sand shortage becomes real. So real, in fact, that it’s attracting organized crime. People are being murdered—for sand. By Kylee Swenson
We were already over 350ppm when I was born The climate crisis is such an overwhelming problem that many people understandably want to keep it separate from other issues. After all, the task seems daunting enough already. To avoid catastrophic climate disruption, global emissions of greenhouse gases must be slashed by 45% by 2030, requiring unprecedented transformations in energy, agriculture and other key economic sectors, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declared last October. But treating the climate crisis as a stand-alone problem is a mistake. Issues of justice – economic justice, racial justice, gender justice and intergenerational justice – lie at the heart of this crisis, and these injustices must be addressed if the fight for a livable future is to succeed. We can’t simply slap solar panels everywhere and call it a day. We have to dismantle the systems of oppression that gave rise to and perpetuate the climate crisis, including colonialism, racism and patriarchy. Many people trace the origins of today’s climate crisis to the Industrial Revolution, when humans first began to burn large amounts of coal, but the crisis’s true roots extend further back to the onset of colonialism. When European colonizers ventured to Africa, Asia, North and South America, they invariably plundered the local natural resources, damaged habitats, hunted species to extinction and often forced human inhabitants into slavery. By Jamie Margolin
‘Act Now. Our Lives Are in Your Hands’: Demanding Climate Action, Extinction Rebellion Shuts Down Traffic in Five UK Cities “We’ve all read the science, we know the story, the whole phase of denial is over, and if it takes civil disobedience to make a difference, then so be it.” Kicking off a summer-long campaign of civil disobedience and grassroots activism, thousands of campaigners with the Extinction Rebellion movement shut down traffic in five U.K. cities on Monday to demand that the government take immediate and sweeping action to combat the climate crisis and ensure a sustainable future. By Jake Johnson
Week 129: Interior Secretary David Bernhardt Chooses a Pseudo-Italianate Urban Planning Nightmare Over an Endangered Bird By Brian Palmer
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I Know What You Did Last Summer, David Bernhardt In the fall of 2016, Mike Ingram had a problem: His plan to build a massive, pseudo-Tuscan planned community with “literally limitless” amenities near Tucson was on hold. A scientist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) had determined that the proposed 28,000-unit exurban behemoth would drain so much groundwater that it could threaten the existence of an endangered bird, the southwestern willow flycatcher, of which only about 3,000 remain.
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Bee Crisis? What Bee Crisis?: Speaking of cutting scientific research, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced this week that it would temporarily suspendits honeybee census, which for decades has been tracking how these important pollinators are faring. The agency blames a budget shortfall for the cut, but CNN reports that it would not say just how much money it was saving by suspending the bee research. Regardless, it’s troubling that the USDA would deprioritize these invaluable insects, given their current plight.
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Not Quite, Rick: Energy Secretary Rick Perry (remember him?) tweeted this weekthat “America continues to lead the world in reducing our carbon footprint and overall energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, with every one of the Paris signatories lagging behind us.” That’s a major stretch. Since 1990, the United Kingdom has cut energy-related carbon emissions by 38 percent. For the European Union as a whole, emissions dropped 31 percent. Meanwhile, U.S. emissions have been practically flat over that same period.
The ‘Historical Jigsaw of Climate Deception’: Private Notes Show How Big Oil Spread Climate Science Denial We’ve all heard the dodgy arguments: ‘the science is uncertain’, ‘climate change is natural, not down to humans’, ‘science has been hijacked by politics’… Now a new cache of documents sheds light on the origins of the disinformation. In another verse of a now familiar refrain, a fossil fuel industry group in the 1990s publicly promoted arguments to undermine confidence in climate science while internally acknowledging their products were driving up temperatures. By Mat Hope
‘Ignorance is Strength’—The Media Monopoly’s Mission is to Promote Ignorance: 87 Percent of Americans Unaware There’s Scientific Consensus on Climate Change community that human-caused climate change is real and threatens the planet, a new report says. According to the report published last week by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, only 13 percent of Americans were able to correctly identify that more than 90 percent of all climate scientists have concluded that climate change is real.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. … If money … comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek, capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.— Karl Marx, “Capital”, Volume One, Part VIII, Chapter 31, (the) “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist”
Labor:
Economy:
Tax Filing Suggests Child Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein Made His Wealth Flipping Hot IPOs on Wall Street Jeffrey Epstein is variously called a “billionaire,” a “hedge fund manager,” or a “financier” in the hundreds of articles that have appeared in print this month. But no one can say with any certainty how Epstein obtained his wealth or exactly how much wealth he actually has. We’ve located a highly interesting ledger from one of his nonprofit tax filings which shows he was able to get his hands on highly preferential hot IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) and flipped them on their first day of trading. We’ll explore that in detail shortly, but first some background. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Health, Education, 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 ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!
‘We Cannot Overstate the Harm This Decision Will Have’: Oklahoma Judge Upholds Ban on Common Abortion Procedure “We will keep fighting this unconstitutional ban to make sure Oklahomans have access to the best medical treatment.” The Center for Reproductive Rights on Friday announced its intention to keep fighting after an Oklahoma court upheld a ban on a common abortion procedure. “We cannot overstate the harm this decision will have on women in Oklahoma,” said Julie Rikelman, litigation director at the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), in a statement. CRR filed the suit on behalf of Tulsa Women’s Clinic to have the law stricken down. By Andrea Germanos
How Cannabis Can Help Older Generations Work Longer And Boost Their Well-beingA recent study focused on cannabis usage amongst older adults revealed noteworthy findings — mostly because the largest increase in cannabis usage was the older adult generation (baby boomers). Essentially, it was discovered that cannabis consumption rates amongst adults aged 65 and older had the largest increase, suggesting that adult generations may be able to work longer and experience a well-being boost due to cannabis consumption. Last June, a gerontology and geriatric medicine review was conducted that revealed some interesting findings. For starters, out of all age groups that consume cannabis, recently, cannabis usage increased the most amongst individuals aged 65 and above. It was even found that older cannabis consumers used the alternative medicine at least one hundred days out of the whole year. Whereas, over 26 percent of older cannabis users reported consuming cannabis 1-4 times per week.
