Did You Know
Did You Know
The Plan Is to Save Capital and Let the People Die
Hamilton Nolan: Whether Americans know it or not, their government is not working for them. Their government is working on behalf of capital. Humans are now a mere second-order, instrumental factor to be considered based on how it affects capital. In this perilous time, capital must be protected and nurtured, and we must draw resources from our entire society in order to help capital survive, in the same way that the body will draw blood from other organs to save the brain. ... People can be sacrificed—capital is irreplaceable. ... The true heroes of this crisis, from the perspective of those in charge, will be the private equity firms that rush in to buy up distressed businesses...
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Apr 6, 2020, 2:05pm
Did You Know
The profit system is sabotaging the struggle against the coronavirus
Patrick Martin: The New York Times detailed Sunday how financial operations in the medical equipment market blocked an initiative by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to build a stockpile of ventilators, which are now in short supply throughout the United States. ... There are similar factors behind the shortage of N95 masks ... There has been mounting criticism of 3M and other providers of N95 masks for withholding supplies of materials and finished masks from the market, and for permitting price-gouging by their distributors. ... Two other critical components needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic—mass testing and the development of a vaccine—have also been constrained by the profit motive and the division of the world into competing nation-states...
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Mar 31, 2020, 12:11pm
Did You Know
The Coronavirus Pandemic Makes the Case for Criminal Justice Reform
Akela Lacy: The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus in the United States is expediting criminal justice reforms that advocates have pushed for decades. At least nine prosecutors are now fast-tracking reforms to reduce the number of incarcerated people kept in conditions that can speed the rate of infection, and to stop new prosecutions of low level nonviolent offenses. ... A 2016 report showed that just under 40 percent of people in state and federal prisons were behind bars with no compelling public safety rationale, meaning they could be released while still keeping communities safe ... “We need to think of our jails and our prisons as part of our community” ...
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Mar 28, 2020, 2:32pm
Did You Know
Is the DNC Once Again Orchestrating the Defeat of a Socialist Candidate?
Marjorie Cohn: In 1944, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) ensured that socialist Henry Wallace would not succeed Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) as president. Is history repeating itself in 2020? ... Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders received the most votes in the first three primary elections. After centrist Joe Biden scored his first primary win, the DNC consolidated the Democratic Party establishment around him. ... Sanders: Where is the power in America? ... “Who owns the media? Who owns the economy? Who owns the legislative process? Why do we give tax breaks to billionaires and not raise the minimum wage? Why do we pump up the oil industry while a half a million people are homeless in America?”...
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Mar 17, 2020, 3:30pm
Did You Know
Big Pharma Prepares to Profit From the Coronavirus
Sharon Lerner: “Pharmaceutical companies view Covid-19 as a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity” ... “the worse the pandemic gets, the higher their eventual profit.” ... During the current crisis, pharmaceutical makers may have even more leeway than usual because of language industry lobbyists inserted into an $8.3 billion coronavirus spending package, passed last week, to maximize their profits from the pandemic ... The final aid package not only omitted language that would have limited drug makers’ intellectual property rights, it specifically prohibited the federal government from taking any action if it has concerns that the treatments or vaccines developed with public funds are priced too high...
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Mar 13, 2020, 3:38pm
Did You Know
Cookie Monster: the Nuts and Bolts of Online Tracking
Rob Larson: Big Tech has become notorious for its hoarding of its users’ personal data, collected with great breadth and down to minute details. ... But Google is inarguably the greediest of these companies in its data collection, to an extent that can surprise even jaded users. ... But the real turning point was the acquisition of the major display ad agency DoubleClick, which brought pivotal changes to the company’s “cookies.” ... the company gained “an omniscient cookie that no other company could match.” As a user browses, the cookie: develops into a rather lengthy log that provides a fully fleshed out profile of the user’s interests…virtually all of it compiled by stealth. ... beside using the mega-cookie to record our browsing history, combined with our search logs and Gmail contents, Google “Now Tracks Your Credit Card Purchases and Connects Them to Its Online Profile of You”...
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Mar 9, 2020, 3:28pm
Did You Know
Corporations are Human Creations. We Can't Let Them Threaten Our Survival.
David Korten: Most large corporations are captives of financial markets that drive the pursuit of short-term financial gain with no concern for the social or environmental consequences. Not only do they fail to serve the common good, but they are also driving us all toward civilizational collapse. Indeed, they are driving us toward human self-extinction. ... These conditions create an imperative for urgent structural change. ... Current rules governing corporate conduct encourage and reward what should be treated as criminal behavior. ... They allow corporations to reap the rewards of their decisions without bearing the full costs. For example, when they evade paying taxes, they evade paying their fair share of the costs of infrastructure, education, or other essentials of doing business...
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Mar 7, 2020, 12:10pm
Did You Know
Rebellion against the Elites may be Just Around the Corner
Vladimir Odintsov: These days we’re witnessing more and more articles published both by leftist and independent media sources as well as larger sites that state that global inequality is “out of control” owed to the inherent injustice of modern economies allowing billionaires to accumulate huge fortunes at the expense of the rest of society. ... Today, everyone understands that the rapidly increasing number of billionaires can be largely attributed to the detrimental effects of the globalized market economy. ... In recent years, the dynamics of elitophobia has increased remarkably ... Among the leading reasons is the inability of the political and financial elite of the most powerful Western states to properly manage difficult economic and social processes, while being unable to present a convincing long-term development strategy...
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Feb 29, 2020, 1:56pm
Did You Know
California Cops Are Collecting Info on Millions of Drivers Who Have Done Nothing Wrong
Daniel Moattar: Law enforcement in four of California’s most populous counties is storing, searching, and sharing detailed records on millions of random drivers ... and possible lawbreaking—in police use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in the California counties of Los Angeles, Fresno, Marin, and Sacramento. ... The technology is frighteningly simple: cameras on police cars or roadsides can scan up to 2,000 license plates per minute, storing the plate number, the location, and the time the car was spotted. ... From there, an officer can easily pull other identifying information, like the driver’s name, address, and criminal history, all without a warrant—or even a supervisor’s sign-off. ... The result is that drivers are being tracked and recorded by the police, whether or not they’ve done anything wrong...
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Feb 21, 2020, 2:08pm
Did You Know
Geofencing Is Team Trump’s High-Tech Invasive Targeting of Swing State Catholics, Even in Church
Bill Berkowitz: “Political marketers are using cellphone data from churchgoers to target the GOP base, especially white Catholic and evangelicals in key states for the 2020 presidential election.” ... “Politically-minded geofencers capture data from the cellphones of churchgoers, and then purchase ads targeting those devices,” ... geofencing -- “a location-based service in which an app or other software uses GPS, RFID, Wi-Fi or cellular data to trigger a pre-programmed action when a mobile device or RFID tag enters or exits a virtual boundary set up around a geographical location, known as a geofence ... Businesses can also use geofencing to monitor employees in the field, automate time cards and keep track of company property..
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Feb 18, 2020, 2:17pm
Did You Know
How the oil industry pumped Americans full of fake news
Kate Yoder: The world has known about the dangers of climate change for decades — so why are oil and gas companies still drilling for crude as if there’s no tomorrow? ... any explanation would have to give some credit to the wizards of public relations. For more than a century, these spinmasters downplayed misdeeds, twisted facts, and cajoled the media into mimicking their talking points. ... Creating a cloud of confusion around established science is one of their well-known tactics ... “People are largely unaware that there’s a massive system running underneath everything,” ... Some Strategies : Fake news ... Corporate philanthropy ... Astroturfing (fake grassroots group) ... False equivalence...
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Feb 13, 2020, 4:35pm
Did You Know
Mexico Is Showing the World How to Defeat Neoliberalism
Ellen Brown: While U.S. advocates and local politicians struggle to get their first public banks chartered, Mexico’s new president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) has begun construction on 2,700 branches of a government-owned bank to be completed in 2021, when it will be the largest bank in the country. ... In 2019, his first year in office, he did what Donald Trump pledged to do — “drain the swamp” — purging the government of technocrats and institutions he considered corrupt ... substantially increasing the minimum wage while cutting top government salaries and oversize pensions; making small loans and grants directly to farmers; guaranteeing crop prices for key agricultural crops; launching programs to benefit youth, the disabled and the elderly; and initiating a $44 billion infrastructure plan...
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Feb 7, 2020, 2:44pm
Did You Know
Indigenous tribes are at the forefront of climate change planning in the U.S.
Naveena Sadasivam : Temperatures in Idaho’s Columbia, Snake, and Salmon rivers were so warm in 2015 that they cooked millions of salmon and steelhead to death. ... Tribal members living on the Nez Perce reservation are preparing for this new normal. ... As other North American tribes have begun to experience the effects of climate change over the past decade, they too have started to adopt climate resilience and adaptation plans. ... The process often begins with a community assessment to estimate the natural and cultural resources at risk from climate hazards. Following the assessment, consultants or in-house tribal staff can develop a specific plan to protect these resources. ... Indigenous ecological knowledge is a key component of many adaptation plans, and conversations with tribal elders and other community members often inform the assessments....
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Feb 5, 2020, 4:12pm
Did You Know
How the Environmental Lawyer Who Won a Massive Judgment Against Chevron Lost Everything
Sharon Lerner: Last August, during the second-hottest year on record ... an attorney who has been battling Chevron for more than a decade over environmental devastation in South America was put on house arrest. ... Steven Donziger, ... won a multibillion-dollar judgment in Ecuador against Chevron over the massive contamination in the Lago Agrio region ... As he was arguing the case against Chevron in Ecuador back in 2009, the company expressly said its long-term strategy was to demonize him. And since then, Chevron has continued its all-out assault on Donziger in what’s become one of the most bitter and drawn-out cases in the history of environmental law. ... “They are afraid of the precedent. Not only is Chevron afraid, the entire extraction industry is afraid of the precedent,” said Weyler. “They do not want to be held responsible for the pollution of their industry.”...
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Jan 29, 2020, 3:46pm
Did You Know
Another Date That Will Live in Infamy: 10 Years After Citizens United
James C. Nelson: On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down one of its worst and most activist decisions ever ... likely, the most pernicious Supreme Court decision ever issued in our nation’s history. ... the wolf of money, dressed up in the sheep’s clothing of corporate political free speech is driving and corrupting our elections, our political processes, our public officials, and our courts; it is drowning out the voices of ordinary citizens; it is responsible for the flood of false information and misleading media; and it is devaluing and diluting the franchise of ordinary voters....
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Jan 21, 2020, 12:38pm
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