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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! And Now the Total Caronavirs Deaths in the United States are Over 20% of the Total Death in the Entire World!
Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat 4 Years Ago and Did Nothing!
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: 1.Austerity, 2.Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 3. The Iron Heel! 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!
Image of the Day:
The Total Owed to Bank Usury Loans For Credit Card and Student Is Now Over $2,000,000,000!: In 2020, the amount of outstanding student loan debt in the United States has reached $1.6 trillion, owed by a collective 44.7 million borrowers: — Student Loan Debt Statistics
Credit card debt statistics speak to the financial health of American households. They can also foreshadow over-borrowing bubbles, changes to lending standards, and other trends with the potential to impact our wallets. In the case of Q1 2020, credit card debt statistics also give us a tantalizing glimpse at what could have been had the coronavirus not come to town. Americans began 2020 owing more than $1 trillion in credit card debt after a $76.7 billion net increase during 2019. Consumers quickly changed course, however, posting the biggest first-quarter credit card debt paydown ever, at $60 billion. That indicates U.S. consumers were on pace for one of their best years before the COVID-19 pandemic turned it into one of the worst. WalletHub now projects that U.S. consumers will rack up more than $140 billion throughout the rest of 2020, ending the year with a net increase of $80 billion in credit card debt. — Credit Card Debt Study
Videos of the Day:
A Blueprint For Violence: Police Training Manual Reveals Disturbing Methods A training manual obtained by PAR raises questions about what cops are being taught and how they handle encounters with civilians. PAR speaks with Jaelyn Cedillo of Pueblo, CO, whose brother was gunned down by Pueblo sheriffs.
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.
Big Phama’s ‘Joey’: Biden Sides With Big Pharma Against Plan That Could Make Coronavirus Vaccine Affordable In contrast with Sanders and other Democrats, Biden has not embraced a key executive authority for driving down the cost of pharmaceuticals developed with federally-funded research, like the coronavirus vaccine that is currently being tested. The pharmaceutical lobby scored a major win earlier this month when it stopped House Democrats from adding language to the emergency coronavirus funding bill that would have pressured drug companies to make coronavirus vaccines affordable. Instead, the industry secured language in the bill that prevents the government from taking any action to address vaccine prices that could delay their development. By Donald Shaw
And the latest UN survey shows opium was grown on 263,000 hectares in 2018 – 20% down from 2017. But that decline wasn’t because of military action. The UN says poppy production has fallen because of a severe drought in the north of the country and significantly lower prices after 2017’s record crop. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), John Sopko, does not mince words, labelling Afghanistan a “narco-state”. He hopes the current talks between US official and the Taliban will lead to some kind of peace settlement but believes the growth of this vast opium economy has made Afghanistan increasingly unstable. — How the US military’s opium war in Afghanistan was lost
Scuzzy Crook Frees Scuzzy Crook Mob Boss Strikes Again: In another gobsmackingly venal but entirely unsurprising move, Trump just commuted – even better than pardon! – the sentence of longtime henchman and Nixon fanboy Roger Stone, because even though Stone was convicted by a jury on seven counts of lying to Congress, witness tampering, obstruction and otherwise hiding the lamentable fact that Russia owns us now, what really matters is he knows where the bodies are and was coyly hinting he might spill. The Friday night horror show came after Stone, who was scheduled to start serving a 40-month sentence in a few days, told NBC News Trump knew “I was under enormous pressure to turn on him – it would have eased my situation considerably,” but, hey, crooks of a feather. Stone was startlingly specific in his online order: He’d like the blue one please, and oh yes he didn’t want a pardon, which implies guilt, but a commutation of his sentence. Ask and you shall receive, at least if you’re not that nasty truth-telling Lt. Col. Vindman. By Abby Zimet
Columbus and the Beginning of the American Way of Life: A Message to Indoctrinate Our Children As a Marxist agitator and lowlife who wants to, as Trump puts it in a recent teleprompted fascist address, “tear down our statues, erase our history, and indoctrinate our children” I feel obliged to make some remarks—to all the impressionable children of the world—about the moron president’s ringingly stupid statement last week under Mt. Rushmore: “We will teach our children to cherish and adore their country so that they can build its future. Together, we will fight for the American Dream, and we will defend, protect, and preserve American way of life, which began in 1492 when Columbus discovered America.” Comments (10): 1. Any kid now knows that the ancestors of native people discovered this hemisphere when they crossed the Bering Strait around 20,000 years ago. There were advanced civilizations in the Americas before any Europeans arrived. To talk about Columbus “discovering” America is beyond Eurocentric, it’s offensive and ignorant. 2. Columbus didn’t even “discover” America for Europeans. Earlier, Basques, Irish and Scandinavians had visited and some had even briefly settled (in Newfoundland). Greenland, considered part of North America (and coveted by Trump) was settled by Scandinavians in the 10th century. . . . By Gary Leupp
Free Speech Fantasies: the Harper’s Letter and the Myth of American Liberalism Harper’s Magazine’s July 7th “Letter on Justice and Open Debate” is making its rounds in popular political discourse, and takes aim at the “PC” “cancel culture” we are told is being fueled by the most recent round of Black Lives Matter protests. This cancel culture, we are warned, is quickly and perniciously taking over American discourse, and will severely limit the free exploration of competing viewpoints. By Anthony Dimaggio
What Coronavirus Teaches Us About Inequality, Discrimination and the Importance of Caring They say coronavirus doesn’t discriminate, that it puts us all at risk, that it dictates an equally threatening future for all humankind. But the measures that have been implemented in Central America to deal with the pandemic are proof of the monumental, pre-existing inequality of our societies, and how quickly the neoliberal capitalist system takes advantage of sexism, misogyny, racism and all phobias against the “other” to reproduce and strengthen its dominion over the vast majority of beings on this planet and the planet itself. Pre-existing inequality for women–the largest group of people discriminated against–ensures that the virus does discriminate. Note the dramatic rise in violence against women, many of whom are confined with their aggressors. Or the proliferation of barriers to access to health services, especially related to pregnancy and birth, and the deepening of extreme poverty that has always been predominantly female. Glaring inequalities have emerged between people who have the opportunity to survive by sheltering at home and those who have no choice but to endanger their lives, because they have to go out to feed themselves and their families or to provide services that their governments now deem “essential”, or simply because they have no place to take shelter. The list of horrors caused, but more than that deepened, by this novel coronavirus scourge is endless. But so is the list of lessons it’s leaving us. By Alda Facio
Environment:
Deep Sea Mining Threatens More Than the Seafloor The damage caused by proposed deep sea mining projects can extend hundreds to thousands of feet up A previous C&C article, Capitalism’s growing assault on the oceans, argued that the world is entering “a new phase in humanity’s relationship with the biosphere, where the ocean is not only crucial but is being fundamentally changed.” It cited research that described and graphed capital’s growing drive to industrialize the oceans and sea beds — a process that some scientists have dubbed the Blue Acceleration. A paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences adds more urgency, showing that deep-ocean mining poses significant risks to the vast mid-water ecosystems that lie far above the sea bed sites where mining is planned. The following summary is based on materials provided by the University of Hawaiʻi.
Watchdog Accuses Trump’s NOAA of ‘Choosing Extinction’ for Critically Threatened Right Whales by Hiding Scientific Evidence As the North Atlantic right whale was placed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s list of critically endangered species Thursday, environmental protection groups accusing the U.S. government of bowing to fishing and fossil fuel industry pressure to downplay the threat and failing to enact common-sense restrictions to protect the animals. By Julia Conley
Press Release: More Than 1 in 4 Evaluated Species Facing Extinction — Urgent Action Needed to Save Life on Earth! An updated assessment released today by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature found that 27% of evaluated species of plants and animals around the globe are threatened with extinction. The new update to the “Red List of Threatened Species” identifies 32,441 species as threatened with extinction out of 120,372 for which there is enough information to determine their conservation status. “This assessment shows that 1 in 4 mammals are facing extinction, and although we don’t prefer to think of ourselves as animals, we humans are mammals,” said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We have to take bold and rapid action to reduce the huge damage we’re doing to the planet if we’re going to save whales, frogs, lemurs and ultimately ourselves.” Last year the United Nations estimated that 1 million species worldwide face extinction if humans don’t act quickly to save them. Scientists around the globe are calling for countries to preserve 30% of lands and waters by 2030 and half by 2050 to abate the extinction crisis. “We know what we need to do to end extinction,” said Curry. “At this point it’s a matter of political will to rapidly move away from fossil fuels, stamp out the wildlife trade and overhaul the toxic ways we produce food. We really can do all of these things, but we need world leaders to stand up and do them.” By Center for Biological Diversity
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
There is no democracy in the United States! — Just democracy for the 1%! When the order in the United States is economic and social inequality. The slogan ‘Law and Order’ means the maintenance of that order— Rich 1% First and the poorest of the 99% last!. Real democracy means that we all share the wealth equally! —Roland Sheppard
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. — Karle Marx, “Capital”, Volume One, Part VIII, Chapter 31, (the) “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist”
Book Review: The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century August 2019 saw numerous commemorations of the year 1619, when what was said to be the first arrival of enslaved Africans occurred in North America. Yet in the 1520s, the Spanish, from their imperial perch in Santo Domingo, had already brought enslaved Africans to what was to become South Carolina. The enslaved people here quickly defected to local Indigenous populations, and compelled their captors to flee. Deploying illuminating research, The Dawning of the Apocalypse is a riveting revision of the “creation myth” of settler colonialism and how the United States was formed. Here, Gerald Horne argues forcefully that, in order to understand the arrival of colonists from the British Isles in the early seventeenth century, one must first understand the “long sixteenth century”—from 1492 until the arrival of settlers in Virginia in 1607. During this prolonged century, Horne contends, “whiteness” morphed into “white supremacy,” and allowed England to co-opt not only religious minorities but also various nationalities throughout Europe, thus forging a muscular bloc that was needed to confront rambunctious Indigenes and Africans. In retelling the bloodthirsty story of the invasion of the Americas, Horne recounts how the fierce resistance by Africans and their Indigenous allies weakened Spain and enabled London to dispatch settlers to Virginia in 1607. These settlers laid the groundwork for the British Empire and its revolting spawn that became the United States of America.
Labor:
Economy:
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Soaring Gold and Silver Prices Reflect Intensifying Investor Concerns for Inflation Risk and Systemic Instabilities
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Rising Gold Prices Suggest Central Banks and Treasury Departments Are Not Doing Their Jobs; Any Related Market-Dampening Interventions Should Prove to Be Short-Lived
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Annual Growth in June 2020 Money Supply Measures Set Record Highs; Consider That June Money Supply M1 Year-to-Year Growth Hit 37%
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June 2020 Financial-Weighted U.S. Dollar Just Turned Negative Year-to-Year
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July 30th Second-Quarter 2020 Gross Domestic Product Initial Reporting Should Show Unprecedented, Annualized Real Contraction of About 50% (-50%)
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Consensus Forecasts Are Centering on a More-Modest Record Plunge of 35% (-35%), Yet, Bottom Bouncing Headlines for Some April and May Numbers Were Not Reliable
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June and July Reopening Instabilities Threaten Hopes for a Meaningful, Nascent Upturn; Protracted Recovery Likely Will Be L-Shaped, Not V-Shaped
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First Full Second-Quarter 2020 Headline Reporting: Household Survey Employed Plunged at an Annualized Quarterly Pace of 49.1% (-49.1%), as Corrected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Continuing Misclassification Errors
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May 2020 U.S. Trade Deficit Deepened Sharply, Signaling Second-Quarter GDP Trouble Both Collapsing May Exports and Imports Signaled a Collapsing Global Economy
Impact on Headline Unemployment Rate of Continuing Unemployed Misclassified as ―Employed
Impact on Headline Unemployment Rate of Continuing Unemployed Misclassified as Employed BLS-Corrected Headline U.S. Unemployment Rates U.3 and U.6 versus the ShadowStats Alternate 1994 to June 2020, Seasonally Adjusted [Shadow Government Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics]
The ‘American Way’: Banks Get Their Money For Free — And Charge Us 20+%For Credit Card and Student Loan Usuruy! — R.S.
(Shhh! Don’t Tell Wall Street that the Fed is Tightening.) Repo Loans Hit Zero; Fed Balance Sheet Shrinks by $248 Billion in a Month Beginning on September 17 of last year, months before the first COVID-19 case had been discovered anywhere in the world, the Federal Reserve – for the first time since the financial crisis of 2008 – jumped into the repo loan market, where financial firms borrow from each other overnight, and began making tens of billions of dollars in loans a week to the trading houses of Wall Street. The Fed calls these 24 trading houses its “primary dealers.” For the vast majority of the Fed’s 107-year existence, it was limited to making loans to only commercial banks, which would assist the general U.S. economy by passing on those loans to businesses and consumers. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the Fed has become a money spigot to the Wall Street casino, based solely on its own interpretation of what it’s allowed to do. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Health, Science, 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 ‘governn’, 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 to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People Vote on Healthcare
Trump: Reopen Schools (or Else) “Stable genius” Donald Trump knows as much about schools as he does about epidemiology. The man who reportedly is said by his niece to have paid someone to take a college entrance exam when he was in high school suddenly has become an education expert and has urged that schools reopen physically at their scheduled times, regardless of the severity of the coronavirus epidemic raging through the United States that has killed more than 130,000 people and infected more than 3 million. By Richard C. Gross
Is Your State Doing Enough Coronavirus Testing? The number of daily coronavirus tests conducted in the United States is only 39 percent of the level considered necessary to mitigate the spread of the virus, as many states struggle to ramp up testing to outpace the record number of cases in recent weeks. By Keith Collins
After Falling For Months, U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Per Day Are Ticking Up Again The country is slated for a “much longer, slower burn” than what it experienced in the spring, says one researcher. By The country is slated for a “much longer, slower burn” than what it experienced in the spring, says one researcher. By Mike Stobbe and Nicky Forster
As Pandemic Toll Rises, Science Deniers in Louisiana Shun Masks, Comparing Health Measures to Nazi Germany Science denial in America didn’t begin with the Trump administration, but under the leadership of President Trump, it has blossomed. From the climate crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic, this rejection of scientific authority has become a hallmark of and cultural signal among many in conservative circles. This phenomenon has been on recent display in Louisiana, where a clear anti-mask sentiment has emerged in the streets and online even as COVID-19 cases rise. “Are you a masker or a free breather?” Pastor Tony Spell asked the crowd while speaking from the bed of a pickup truck at a July 4 “Save America” rally in Baton Rouge. At the end of March Spell gained international attention for his refusal to stop his church’s services despite Gov. John Bel Edwards’ stay-at-home order, which was issued to slow the Louisiana’s rapid rise in COVID-19 cases. “It has never been about a virus — it is about destroying America,” Spell claimed, before equating a government whose public health measures restrict church gatherings and require protective face coverings in public to Germany under Hitler. A crowd of less than 200 roared in agreement at the rally that was held across from the governor’s mansion. By Julie Dermansky
Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the Banner Headline: “There Is No Peace”
Quotes of the Day:
