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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 of the Day:
There was no mention in the ruling of the evidence that showed that UC Global, the Spanish security firm at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, video taped Assange, including his meetings with his attorneys, on behalf of the CIA. Nor did the ruling mention that a key witness who claimed Assange instructed him to hack into US government computers has retracted his testimony. The court also did not accept that this was a politically motivated case or address the ramifications for all who publish classified material. — Hedges: UK High Court Overturns Assange Win
Videos of the Day:
Sugar: The Bitter Truth Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough))
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 ownershipof 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! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay!
‘The Only Victors of War — War Profiteers!’: $10,000 Invested In Defense Stocks When Afghanistan War Began Now Worth Almost $100,000 If you purchased $10,000 of stock evenly divided among America’s top five defense contractors on September 18, 2001 — the day President George W. Bush signed the Authorization for Use of Military Force in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks — and faithfully reinvested all dividends, it would now be worth $97,295. This is a far greater return than was available in the overall stock market over the same period. $10,000 invested in an S&P 500 index fund on September 18, 2001, would now be worth $61,613. That is, defense stocks outperformed the stock market overall by 58 percent during the Afghanistan War. Moreover, given that the top five biggest defense contractors — Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics — are of course part of the S&P 500, the remaining firms had lower returns than the overall S&P returns. — $10,000 Invested In Defense Stocks When Afghanistan War Began Now Worth Almost $100,000
AbortionS are Legal for the 1% — Not the 99%! — The Catholic Majority Supreme Court Approves Limiting Abortion’s to Those Who Can Afford to Travel Out of State!: ‘This Is Horrific’: US Supreme Court Keeps 6-Week Abortion Ban in Place “The Supreme Court has no value of our bodies, lives, and futures,” said one advocacy group. “We need to liberate abortion.” Reproductive rights advocates on Friday expressed outrage after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Texas’ six-week abortion ban can remain in effect—a ruling that will continue to force Texans to travel out of state to obtain care at clinics which have reported surging demand, or to continue their unwanted pregnancies.
Press Freedoms Under ‘Grave Threat’ as British Court Rules Assange Can Be Extradited to US“How can it be fair, how can it be right… to extradite Julian to the very country which plotted to kill him!””This is an utterly shameful development that has alarming implications not only for Assange’s mental health, but also for journalism and press freedom around the world.”
Hedges: UK High Court Overturns Assange Win Next step for defense team after rejection of lower court ruling is likely appeal to UK Supreme Court. The British High Court in London today overturned an earlier lower court decision blocking the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States. The ruling sends the case back to Magistrate’s Court with instructions to allow the extradition to be approved or denied by the British Home Secretary Prita Patel. The ruling, which included a decision to continue to hold Assange in a high security prison, is a severe blow to the Wikileaks co-founder’s efforts to prevent his extradition to the United States to face charges under the Espionage Act. The extradition is now in the hands of Patel, unless Assange’s lawyers, as expected, file an appeal to the UK Supreme Court within two weeks.
Probe Shows Big Pharma ‘Manipulated’ Patent System and ‘Raised Prices With Abandon’ “The result of the House Oversight Committee investigation is clear: American families are suffering from outrageous drug prices, while Big Pharma rakes in record profits.” Bolstering calls for the U.S. Senate to pass the Build Back Better bill with drug pricing reforms, a House panel on Friday released a report detailing how Big Pharma has not only “raised prices with abandon,” but also “manipulated the patent system” to suppress competition.
Hedges: UK High Court Overturns Assange Win Next step for defense team after rejection of lower court ruling is likely appeal to UK Supreme Court. The British High Court in London today overturned an earlier lower court decision blocking the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States. The ruling sends the case back to Magistrate’s Court with instructions to allow the extradition to be approved or denied by the British Home Secretary Prita Patel. The ruling, which included a decision to continue to hold Assange in a high security prison, is a severe blow to the Wikileaks co-founder’s efforts to prevent his extradition to the United States to face charges under the Espionage Act. The extradition is now in the hands of Patel, unless Assange’s lawyers, as expected, file an appeal to the UK Supreme Court within two weeks.
The Conservative Club That Came To Dominate The Supreme Court In a new audiobook, Law School professor explores the rise of the Federalist Society and why its sway may be waning In a new audiobook, Law School professor explores the rise of the Federalist Society and why its sway may be waning Beginning in the early 1980s, when it was not exactly cool to be a conservative law student, a small group of students started a club, named in honor of The Federalist Papers, where they could safely discuss their right-of-center views. Fast-forward 40 years and six of the nine sitting Supreme Court Justices are current or former members of that club. In “Takeover: How a Conservative Student Club Captured the Supreme Court” (Pushkin Industries), Harvard Law School professor and “Deep Background” podcast host Noah Feldman explores the rise of the most influential legal organization in U.S. history and how it has managed to shape judicial policy over the last three decades.
Probe Shows Big Pharma ‘Manipulated’ Patent System and ‘Raised Prices With Abandon’ “The result of the House Oversight Committee investigation is clear: American families are suffering from outrageous drug prices, while Big Pharma rakes in record profits.” Bolstering calls for the U.S. Senate to pass the Build Back Better bill with drug pricing reforms, a House panel on Friday released a report detailing how Big Pharma has not only “raised prices with abandon,” but also “manipulated the patent system” to suppress competition.
Water Shut-Offs Loom for Thousands of Californians After Agencies Failed to Apply for Millions in Relief More than a half-million Californians struggling to pay their water bills during the pandemic will probably have their debt paid off by the state. The major debt-relief program, which closed to new applicants this week, is slated to dole out $303 million, according to state records. About 7,700 households and businesses in San Francisco are expected to get their unpaid bills covered, while about 10,900 customers of the East Bay Municipal Utility District can anticipate a credit. Still, even with the windfall of cash, hundreds of thousands of people are likely to continue carrying burdensome water debt — and at a particularly bad time. A California law preventing utilities from shutting off water to delinquent customers, put in place because of COVID, expires at the end of the month. It’s not expected to be renewed.
Environment:
Hemp Batteries
Natural Resources Necessary to Feed World Are at a ‘Breaking Point,’ Warns FAO “Taking care of land, water, and particularly the long-term health of soils is fundamental to accessing food in an ever-demanding food chain.” A United Nations report released Thursday detailing humanity’s degradation of natural resources warns swift and sweeping reforms are needed to keep feeding the growing global population. The new U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report argues that “a sense of urgency needs to prevail over a hitherto neglected area of public policy and human welfare, that of caring for the long-term future of land, soil, and water.” “Taking care of land, water, and particularly the long-term health of soils,” the publication explains, “is fundamental to accessing food in an ever-demanding food chain, guaranteeing nature-positive production, advancing equitable livelihoods, and building resilience to shocks and stresses arising from natural disasters and pandemics.”
A Warming World Could Add More Fuel to Tornadoes, Scientists Say While the link between global warming and disasters like wildfires and flooding are more definitive, experts say, warmer temperatures could intensify cool-season thunderstorms and tornadoes in the future. In the wake of deadly storms that ravaged parts of the South and the Midwest this weekend, scientists had a warning: While the exact link between climate change and tornadoes remains uncertain, higher temperatures could add fuel to these violent disasters. As rescuers searched Saturday amid the rubble of violent tornadoes that barreled through multiple states, killed scores of people, and leveled homes and businesses, climate scientists said people around the world needed to brace for more frequent and intense weather-driven catastrophes. “A lot of people are waking up today and seeing this damage and saying, ‘Is this the new normal?’ ” said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University, adding that key questions still remain when it comes to tornadoes because so many factors come into play. “It’ll be some time before we can say for certain what kind of role climate change played.
US Military Pollutes the World!: ‘Shut Down Red Hill’: Solidarity Action Rebukes Navy Over Toxic Water Pollutionv “Any amount of petroleum in our water is too much. 350 times the ‘safe limit’ is absolutely intolerable.”Activists with CodePink, in solidarity with Hawaii-based water protectors, on Friday projected images on a submarine tower outside the Navy museum in Washington, D.C., calling \
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Equality Cannot be Achieved Without Income Equality!: The Union/Boss Partnership’s Tiered Wage System Guarantees Unequal Pay for Equal Work!
‘Inexcusable’: Amazon Under Fire After Warehouse Collapse Kills at Least Six “How many workers must die for Amazon to have a policy for extreme weather events?””Requiring workers to work through such a major tornado warning event as this was inexcusable.” Amazon was accused Saturday of putting corporate profits above worker safety following the tornado-caused partial collapse of a St. Louis-area warehouse that left at least six people dead. “Time and time again Amazon puts its bottom line above the lives of its employees,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), in a statement. “Requiring workers to work through such a major tornado warning event as this was inexcusable.”
Economy:
Worst Inflation Since Harry Truman Was President — Consistent with the Methodologies of Pre-1980 Headline CPI Reporting, the November 2021 ShadowStats Alternate CPI Annual Inflation at 14.9% Was the Worst CPI Reading Since 17.6% in June 1947, Just Topping the 14.8% Peak of March 1980
Shadow Government Statistics Alternet Inflation Charts The CPI chart on the home page reflects our estimate of inflation for today as if it were calculated the same way it was in 1990. The CPI on the Alternate Data Series tab here reflects the CPI as if it were calculated using the methodologies in place in 1980. In general terms, methodological shifts in government reporting have depressed reported inflation, moving the concept of the CPI away from being a measure of the cost of living needed to maintain a constant standard of living.
Wall Street – How Corrupt Is It? It’s Time for the Justice Department to Finally Answer that Question On May 26 business media reported that the U.S. Department of Justice had opened a probe into the March collapse of the Archegos family office hedge fund. Archegos is believed to have leveraged $20 billion of its own capital into more than $100 billion in stocks and derivative exposure through margin loans tricked up as derivatives by some of the largest banks on Wall Street. One of the laws that the banks may have fallen afoul of is the Fed’s Regulation T. Under Reg T, broker dealers on Wall Street could not have loaned Archegos more than 50 percent to make its stock purchases. To get around this, the banks did not open a margin account for Archegos. Instead, the banks structured derivative contracts where they loaned as much as 85 percent of the money to Archegos to make the trades while claiming to retain ownership of the stock themselves.
World:
Argentina: Mass mobilization. A crowd crowded the Plaza de Mayo against the IMF and the Adjustment
Tens of thousands of people marched to the political center of the country to reject the adjustment that will come with the agreement. They were summoned by more than 100 organizations. At the end there was also a brief act of the PTS where Nicolás del Caño, Myriam Bregman and Alejandro Vilca took the floor. In addition, there were rallies and marches in the main cities of the country. An important step to face the attacks that will come against the great popular majorities. . . . In Plaza de Mayo a document agreed between all the organizations that prepared the mobilization was read. It is reproduced at the end of this note and openly expresses the contrast with the Plaza de Mayo on Friday, in which both Alberto Fernández and Cristina Kirchner showed a horizon of many years in accordance with the IMF and its adjustment plans. This goes beyond the disputes regarding how the negotiation will be, which is not yet closed. The document signed by the organizations openly denounces the adjustment policy followed to agree with the IMF and the eventual consequences of a new agreement. At the same time, it poses a demand to trade union and social organizations that say – even in the ruling party itself – to reject any adjustment measure. The demand is for them to convene to mobilize and organize actively in order to face the attacks that will come with the agreement.c
The main slogans of the document read this Saturday in Plaza de Mayo were:
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No to the pact with the IMF and the payment of the debt.
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Scams are not paid
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Down to the multi-year plan and the adjustment, not to the labor reform.
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Enough extractive environmental looting
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The debt is with the peoples and nature, not with the IMF
For a national plan to fight against the agreement
The Collapse Of The Soviet Union And The Rise Of Putin This month marks the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The most powerful deformed workers’ state was collapsing into chaos as supposed communists were looting the state and its assets, cheered on by the imperialists of the west. Capitalism reared its ugly head, and the workers of the Soviet Union had to pay the price. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the greatest event in human history. For the first time in history, the oppressed didn’t just rise up, but they rose up, took power and held on to it. Even the combined forces of all the world’s imperialist nations failed to dislodge the new workers’ state. The Russian Revolution should have been the beginning of the world revolution, but for reasons that we can’t go into here, this didn’t happen. Victory in the civil war came at a heavy cost. Russia was never a rich nation, but after a world war and a civil war, both industry and agriculture were in tatters. The isolation of the revolution in this state of economic backwardness laid the foundation for the rise of the bureaucracy. By the end of the 1920s, the workers’ state had degenerated into what Trotsky termed a deformed workers’ state. Within the party and the state machinery, the new bureaucracy, made up largely of enemies of the revolution of 1917, expropriated political power from the working class and the peasantry.
Education, Health, 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
Another Example 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!
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”, is Still True for Today’s World!
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! For Decades, Blacks Have Been Subjected to The Iron Heel! Currently, the US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply It to Everyone!
FRED: Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Purchasing Power of the Consumer Dollar in U.S. City Average