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Over a Hundred Years Ago. Rosa Luxemburg Raised the Slogan: Socialism or Barbarism! The Slogan for 2021 is Ecosocialism or Ecocide!!!!
Labor DayMay Day/ Labor Day
I celebrate May Day, but I don’t celebrate Labor Day — I just observe it. To me, Labor Day means the codification of the labor bureaucracy’s subservience to the capitalist class. That was the original purpose for the United States capitalist class when it made labor day a holiday. It was organized as such in opposition to the Labor Day that was/is celebrated everywhere else in the world — a demonstration class solidarity! — May Day! May Day was celebrated, in memory of the martyrs of the Haymarket Massacre in 1886 Chicago and the unending struggle of the world working class for their “unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Images of the Day:
Another Example of Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years Ago and Did Nothing!: Under Capitalism — Human Lives Don’t Matter Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading Racism, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
The future of Humanity Is Now At stake!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 the Banner Headline: “There Is No Peace”
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 of the Day:
To understand flood disadvantage, three core metrics are considered: the number of people exposed to frequent flooding (one in 75-year return period or more frequent), the residential expected annual damage (direct contents and structural damage), and the Relative Economic Pain (the uninsured loss as a ratio of income, Sayers et al, 2016). The analysis highlights three key messages. First, it reinforces and emphasizes the importance of using social vulnerability to inform our understanding of flood risk and in formulating a fair management response. Second, it shows that the most socially vulnerable of all ethnicities experience systemic flood disadvantage (experiencing risk that is greater than the average), with Black Ethnic Groups particularly disadvantaged. Third, it reinforces previous findings that those living in rural towns, smaller urban settlements, and at the coast often experience more frequent flooding than others. In summary, the findings strengthen the case for the ‘levelling up’ agenda and the need for joined up development planning that addresses issues of deprivation alongside flood risk as a pre-requisite for resilience. Flood disadvantage Socially Vulnerable and Ethnic Minorities
Systems don’t black out for lack of power generated but for failure of the transmission grid (as in losing 2,000 miles of high-voltage line). Nevertheless, the wacko gas plant was approved by the City Council after hearings were packed with citizens supporting Entergy’s scheme. Turns out, they weren’t “citizens,“ they were paid actors, some reciting testimony secretly written for the actors by Entergy’s flaks. Today, a million Entergy customers still lack power. Yet, even as Louisiana counts its mounting dead from heat stroke, Entergy simply can’t stop jacking the truth. As the great investigative New Orleans newsletter Gambit discovered, Entergy’s map of neighborhoods where the lights had supposedly come on was belied by the simple visits to those neighborhoods, still broiling in the dark. — Louisiana Black-out: Not an Act of God, an Act of Entergy
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, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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! Every ‘Tax. Reform’ From President Kennedy has Been an incrase in taxes from the Poor,the Woking Class, and the Middle Class, to the Rich! —The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay!
My life has recently intersected, in a most personal way, two of Mark Twain’s famous quips. One I shall defer to the end of this essay. The other (sometimes attributed to Disraeli), identifies three species of mendacity, each worse than the one before – lies, lies, and statistics. — Stephen Jay Gould
Obama’s Mendacity: Glen Greenwald: Lies, and His Own, About Edward Snowden and Russia It is hard to overstate the sociopathy of U.S. national security officials: their casual willingness to blatantly lie about the gravest matters is limitless. Ever since Edward Snowden received asylum from Russia in 2013, Obama officials have repeatedly maligned his motives and patriotism by citing his “choice” to take up residence there. It has long been clear that this narrative was a lie: Snowden, after meeting with journalists in Hong Kong, intended only to transit through Moscow and then Havana on his way to seek asylum in Latin America. He was purposely prevented from leaving Russia — trapped in the Moscow airport — by the very Obama officials who then cynically weaponized his presence there to imply he was a civil-liberties hypocrite for “choosing” to live in such a repressive country or, even worse, a Kremlin agent or Russian spy.
With its SCOTUS-approved act of “reproductive terrorism,” Texas is ominously, inexorably mutating into Margaret Atwood’s dystopian Gilead, with a barbaric touch of Taliban. Its new law effectively banning abortion is what Justice Sotomayor in her blistering dissent called “a breathtaking act of defiance – of the Constitution, of this Court’s precedents, and of the rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas,” all while simultaneously deputizing religious zealots as pro-life-only-till-they’re-born bounty-hunters to enforce it. What could possibly go wrong? For starters, the grievous loss of RBG, the ignoble assembling of a bargain-basement, right-wing Court – may Susan Collins have no rest, ever – and the unsurprising eagerness of said court to condone, as one sage put it, putting reproductive rights “not just on the chopping block, but on the auction block.” The law, which bans abortion after only six weeks – when few women even know they’re pregnant – will render illegal up to 90% of abortions. Its lack of exceptions even for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest adds a tasty, fascist flavor to it; hence, the bitter, trending hashtags #TexasTaliban, #TexasShariaLaw, and #TexasIsGilead. The final horror is the Texas legislature’s singularly devious trick of outsourcing enforcement of state-sanctioned misogyny to extremist citizen vigilantes, much like the decades-old “Spies For Life,” who’ll get paid $10,000 a head to rat out any pregnant women seeking abortions – or, in The Onion’s words, “for names of anyone they heard is a slut” – in a Stasi-flavored Ponzi scheme eerily reminiscent of the Fugitive Slave Act. — Texas GOP To Taliban: Hold My Beer and See Privatized Fascism At Fervent Work
Michael Moore and Chris Hedges on American Empire at Its Breaking Point Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore is preparing for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks—or more specifically, for the barrage of mainstream media coverage and commemoration soon to dominate screens big and small. For the latest episode of his podcast, “Rumble With Michael Moore,” he picked just the right guest to take on “the collapse of the American empire and to pre-empt the propaganda onslaught we’re about to be hit with,” as Moore put it in his show notes. That would be author, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and ScheerPost columnist Chris Hedges. Moore and Hedges’ unflinching discussion ranges from a preview of Hedges’ newest book, “Our Class Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison,” to the “creeping fascism” that didn’t start (or end) with Trump, the war in Afghanistan, and the calamitous threat to millions of Americans posed by the imminent ending of pandemic-era unemployment benefits. And that’s just for starters. They also weigh in about President Joe Biden’s role in perpetuating both empire abroad and “creeping fascism” at home, the lack of meaningful push-back from figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders, and the relentless influence of the Christian right in U.S. politics. Press play in the window above to catch their whole conversation, and listen for Moore’s enthusiastic signal boost of ScheerPost starting around the 8:35 mark.
Environment:
Spewing More Carcinogens in ‘Cancer Alley’!: Louisiana Refineries, Chemical Plants Flaring At Full Blast; 15 Air Monitors Knocked Out ‘There shouldn’t be any cause for alarm,’ state environmental official says Oil refineries and petrochemical plants have been flaring at full blast in Louisiana’s “chemical corridor” along the Mississippi River since Hurricane Ida, and the 15 of the state Department of Environmental Quality‘s air monitoring stations are out of service.
Louisiana Activists Mobilize to Prevent “Shock Doctrine” Policies in Wake of Ida coordinating their relief response in the wake of Hurricane Ida, and linking the immediate survival needs of people with a coherent set of political demands expressed in a petition to lawmakers including President Biden, calling for a humanitarian approach to evacuation and evacuees. Both initiatives draw on lessons learned from past disasters like Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
New Climate Study: Arctic Heat Fueled Deadly February Texas Freeze “The results highlight another reason to rapidly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving global warming and at the same time the need to develop better strategies for managing extreme weather.”
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Fugitive Slave Act Redux: On the Run in Texas … and America The Lone Star State paves the way for America’s political crackup Mike the editorial cartoonist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, made an astute observation this week about Texas’ draconian abortion law. A recent cartoon features two fully veiled Afghan women meeting in a remote province with mountains in the distance. “Pray for Texas women …” one woman says to the other. The reversal of fortune and sentiment is stinging if you’re used to pity being a one-way street.
Your Zip Code Should Not Impede Your Right to Clean Air and Water Unfortunately, all the hard work and family support in the world won’t protect you from pollution when it’s pumped right into the air you breathe and the water you drink. Deep inequities that allow whole zip codes to stay impoverished and polluted have to change. . . . Memphis is a majority-Black city—and a ground zero for environmental racism. Unfortunately, all the hard work and family support in the world won’t protect you from pollution when it’s pumped right into the air you breathe and the water you drink.The cancer rate in southwest Memphis is four times the national average—a result of industrial benzene and formaldehyde pollution in our air and arsenic in our water. My grandmothers, who made it possible for my family to escape environmental racism, lost their own lives to it
Labor:
Wealth Does Not ‘Trickle Down’! While the 1% Prosper, The Working Class Has Been in thr State of Depression:
‘Catastrophe’ Feared as 35 Million People Are Set to Lose Jobless Aid in 3 Days Millions will suffer as they lose this critical source of income and the loss of spending will suppress job growth.” Millions of jobless workers are set to lose critical unemployment benefits in roughly 72 hours—and neither Congress nor the Biden administration seem prepared to do anything about it.
Since June 2009 Americans have lived in the false reality of a recovering economy. Various fake news and manipulated statistics have been used to create this false impression. However, indicators that really count have not supported the false picture and were ignored. For example, it is normal in a recovering or expanding economy for the labor force participation rate to rise as people enter the workforce to take advantage of the job opportunities. During the decade of the long recovery, from June 2009 through August 20121, the labor force participation rate consistently fell from 65.7 to 61.7 percent in In Septemer 2021. —Paul Craig Roberts
Shadpw Government Statistics Alternate Unemployment Charts The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.
August 2021 ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment is 25.4%
Economy:
Nathan Gardels: Is China Serious About Its ‘Socialist Market’? Robert Scheer discusses the paradoxical past, present and future of the rising superpower’s economic model with a fellow veteran Beijing watcher. In this week’s Scheer Intelligence podcast, host Robert Scheer discusses the paradoxical past, present and future of China’s “socialist market” economic model with Nathan Gardels, author of “It Is No Longer Glorious to Get Rich in China,” published this week by Noema, a magazine of the Berggruen Institute. Observers of the rising Asian superpower should “stop drinking the neoliberal Kool-Aid and drink the party tea” if they want to understand it, says Gardels, highlighting the longstanding tension between the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology and the fantastic capitalistic energy unleashed since Deng Xiaoping infamously promulgated the slogan “to get rich is glorious” in the 1980s. Today, Gardels notes, “China has more billionaires than the US, the top 1% owns 31% of the wealth of the whole country,” and China’s current leader Xi Jinping is now announcing that the rich need to start sharing the wealth in what he is calling the “third distribution.”
Keynes: Capitalism’s Utopian And Impotent Oracle of Doom The 2008 crash and coronavirus crisis have revived interest in the theories of J.M. Keynes, the liberal English economist. But a look at Keynes’ life and ideas show that he was no friend of the working class. We need socialism, not Keynesianism. “We are all Keynesians now!” So President Richard Nixon is alleged to have said in 1971, as his Republican government of the time intervened to rescue the American economy. Unemployment and inflation were both on the rise, something that mainstream economic models said could not happen. The strength and stability of the dollar was being called into question. And the Bretton Woods system that had underpinned the postwar boom and US imperialist hegemony was on the verge of collapse.
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Monetary Base – No Suggestion of Tapering Here – Preliminary August 2021 Showed Continuing Surge
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MONEY SUPPLY –July 2021 “Basic M1” Soared to an Historic-High 91.7% Above Its Pre-Pandemic Peak, Up from the Prior-Record 87.6% in June Tab (Above)]
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July FOMC Policies Were Unchanged [See the SYSTEMIC RISK and MONETARY DATA for Details]
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How Can the Economy (GDP) Be Recovered With No Full Recovery in Employment?
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Against Its Pre-Recession Peak, the Percent Contraction in August 2021 Payrolls Remained Deeper than Anything Seen in the Last Seven Recessions, Back to 1957, Outside of the Great Recession
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July 2021 Numbers Indicated the Real Merchandise Trade Deficit Holding at a Record Shortfall
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With July Details in Hand, Third-Quarter 2021 Construction and Housing Sectors Continued in Early Trend for at Least a Second Consecutive Quarterly Decline, with Some Sectors Headed for Their Fourth Straight Drop
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Inflation Continues to Explode at or near Historic or 40-Plus Year Highs
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Combined Impact: Reflecting the Surge in Money, Inflation Has Exploded, While Business Activity Has Begun to Pull Back Anew, at an Intensifying Pace
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http://www.shadowstats.com/
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!
Shadow Governemt Statistics Daily Update (September 3rd to 7th)
World: