“When We Talk About Neoliberalism”
Romeu Peitinho:
“A interesting piece on a constantly shifting and morphing political and ideological framework, that resembles more a virus than a intellectual construct.
“In such a situation, there will clearly never be a definitive answer to the simple question of whether neoliberalism is dead or dying, or the related question of whether certain trends should be seen as a break from it. For those who think of neoliberalism as a certain set of beliefs about the world that legitimise and obscure underlying social relations, then it made sense to claim, as many did, that the global financial crisis of 2008 sounded its death knell. With the bailing out of the banks, and essentially the entire economic system, the myth of the free market was exposed for all to see. However, for those who see neoliberalism as a system of governance producing certain forms of political subjectivity, only a much more profound political and cultural shift could ever break its hold.””
“The current debates over neoliberalism’s possible futures risk losing sight of what’s most important: understanding a changing capitalist system in order to resist it.”
Acadian hairstreak (Satyrium acadica)
Ice Age National Scientific Reserve Unit, Wisconsin, USA
2020-07-06 _F2A0333aaa
“UK Doctor Accused of Hurting Big Pharma Profits by Curing People from Cancer Released from Prison in France”
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Monstrous Defense Budgets are always approved, but then we have this:
“Navy Abandons Victims of Red Hill Fuel Leak”
“The US Navy's Red Hill disaster has left thousands of homes uninhabitable; but only military families are receiving help. Countless forgotten civilians are living with dangerous water, with no acknowledgment from the military or their landlords. Empire Files producer Mike Prysner sat down with Native Hawaiian Aedyn-Rhys King and his family to discuss.”
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“This year’s Arctic Report Card is filled with predictable trends and new obstacles “
“Highlights from this year's Arctic Report Card include updates on shrinking sea ice, rain on the Greenland ice sheet, ship noise in the Bering Strait and trash on the Bering Sea coast, writes science columnist Ned Rozell.”
“2021 was Arctic’s 7th Warmest year on record”
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“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.” Hannah Arendt, “The origins of totalitarianism (1951)
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“The world’s 4th richest man, Bill Gates, demands governments censor speech on social media that fosters mistrust in the institutions and pharmaceutical products he’s invested in”
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“The Soviet Union: goes from a backwards agrarian society to the space age in 50 years, while almost single-handedly defeating the Nazis.
The American educational system: “communism doesn’t work because people will be lazy and not bother to accomplish anything.”
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“Who is Gabriel Boric? The radical student leader who will be Chile’s next president”
“Boric is the driving force behind Chile’s abrupt changing of the guard. He belongs to a radical generation of student leaders who are grimly determined to bury dictator Augusto Pinochet’s bitter legacy once and for all.................‘Chile was the birthplace of neoliberalism, and it shall also be its grave!’ he shouted from a stage the night of his primary win, his forearm tattoo peeking out from beneath a rolled-up sleeve...................General Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship bestowed Chile with its extreme economic model, and Boric and his influential cohort of student leaders have taken it upon themselves to dispose of it.”
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“This news report by Glen Greenwald refutes all the lies MSNBC and other corporate media spreads about Julian Assange.
Please pay attention how you and I are being misled by corporate/government controled media when it comes to important issues such as Freedom of the Press.”
“The Real Disinformation Agents: Watch as NBC Tells 4 Lies in a Two-Minute Clip”
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The message Cruz is sending is a familiar one used to manipulate Republican voters:
From: Chicano History: Revisited.
“Ted Cruz's new e-book on Critical Race Theory argues that seeking equity in the US is really calling for 'discrimination' against white people.”
Business Insider
“Ted Cruz's new e-book on Critical Race Theory argues that seeking equity in the US is really calling for 'discrimination' against white people”
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“Joe Biden @JoeBiden: 220,000 deaths. If you hear anything else I say tonight, hear this: Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain President of the United States.”
“End Stage Capitalism: So when are you stepping down?”
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Ah yes, the theater. Sell it Dems! “Oh gosh darn that cursed manchin” (now where’s my check$$? When do I get my check$$?):
“White House lights up Manchin after he crushes Biden's megabill”
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“Obama had 60 votes in the Senate for the first 2 years after he was swept into the White House.”
Saikat Chakrabarti:
“If Dems got 10 more seats, we’d find 11 Joe Manchins to kill our priorities and the pundits would say “well stop complaining we just need to win some seats in Mississippi next.
There’s no way THESE Democrats would ever support something so progressive (but actually so popular)!”
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Lynn Eyer: “I really hope that people will look at Biden, & Manchin, and realize that they are Establishment Dems doing what Establishment Dems are paid to do.”
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“I’m So Tired Of Joe Manchin”
According to the article Manchin is – and who would have guessed it – an important reason why People need to vote for Democrats now more than ever! Increasing the numbers of Democrats in the Senate to a greater majority of something like 53-47 would solve all our problems. Yeah, I don’t think so.
All that means is that we’d have more joe manchins doing the establishment’s bidding in a party that revealed it’s true identity when it sank Bernie Sanders bid for president (to name but one of many examples)
No, manchin isn’t the problem. The problem is the party. A similar problem would occur if Democrats increased their majority. Always a sufficient amount of people will be "tanking" Democrats plans for helping the non-rich
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G. Elliott Morris:
“Here is my piece on our YouGov/Economist data showing a huge dropoff in support for Biden among young people. The decrease really is quite stunning: -50 points on net approval”
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“Occupied West Bank witnesses painful wave of Israel's settler attacks”
“Israeli human rights group B'Tselem stated:
"Israeli security forces routinely enable settler violence against Palestinians and their property. As a rule, the military prefers to remove Palestinians from their own farmland or pastureland rather than confront settlers."”
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“So, those academics and political economic watchers are seeing some version of this thinking emerging from the background, were it has incubated from the beginning. Listening to the mainstream propagandistic and hard line factions of government and economics rail against others using crimes they are all guilty of has lost it’s potency and now serves to highlight the reality that was there all along.”
“Martin Jacques: Western concept of democracy lacks historical context”
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“USPS HAS CHEATED MAIL CARRIERS FOR YEARS”
Dems still haven’t done what it takes to get rid of DeJoy - castrating the pvt equity representatives that sit on the postal board
“The Postal Service regularly cheats mail carriers out of their pay, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation. Managers at hundreds of post offices around the country have illegally underpaid hourly workers for years, arbitrators and federal investigators have found.
Private arbitration records tell part of the story. From 2010 to 2019, at least 250 managers in 60 post offices were caught changing mail carriers’ time cards to show them working fewer hours, resulting in unpaid wages, according to a batch of arbitration award summaries obtained by Public Integrity for cases filed by one of the three major postal unions.”
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“The disarming case to act right now on climate change | Greta Thunberg”
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“The Democrats Are Trying to Lose”
“Democrats are going beyond refusing to give Americans an affirmative reason to vote for them: in sabotaging their own purported agenda around Biden’s Build Back Better bill, they seem to be trying to lose to the authoritarians in the GOP they claim to oppose.”
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“Global debt is fast approaching record $300 trillion – IIF”
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“Years later, restored wetlands remain a shadow of their old selves”
Not just wetlands.
Government regulation requiring restoration of natural areas has failed the People:
Xavier Rosseel
“However, a study led by a University of Copenhagen doctoral student demonstrates that even after up to 17 years of recovery, the wetlands studied stay botanically poor. There is no difference between the wetlands with restoration age of 7 and 17 years.
"There has been incredibly little development, in terms of biodiversity, since the wetlands were restored. This applies regardless of whether the areas were restored seven or seventeen years ago – they all have very low plant diversity, and the few plants found are so common that they are of little interest in terms of biodiversity," explains Marta Baumane, a biologist and PhD fellow at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Biology. Baumane is the lead author of the study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.
Fewer species
The researchers studied ten wetlands in the Kratholm catchment of the River Odense, all restored between 2001 and 2011. The primary purpose of their restoration was to mitigate the leaching of nitrogen and phosphorus from surrounding farmland. The restoration consisted of removing or disconnecting tile drains (and ditches) and re-meandering streams that had been straightened decades prior.
The investigated wetlands had in average 9.5 species per four square meters, whereas natural wetlands in Denmark contain approximately four times more plant species.
The researchers suspect that the main reason for this low biodiversity is that high nutrient input from agriculture continues to spill into wetlands. Annually, these areas receive up to 400 kilos of nitrogen per hectare.
The study also points to another significant barrier to increased biodiversity – the very limited availability and dispersal of native wetland species. As a consequence of the areas being used by – or their proximity to – agriculture for many years, most of the wetland species have vanished from the entire stream catchment and are unlikely to immigrate from seed sources far away.
At least 100 years, unless we do something
"The study demonstrates that it may take many years for restored wetlands to achieve significant plant diversity if we rely solely on spontaneous biological processes. If nutrients continue to leach into the wetlands from fields nearby, the nature restoration efforts may turn out to be futile. Even if nutrient influx to wetlands is cut off, our estimate is that it will take at least a hundred years for wetlands to resemble natural wetlands with regards to species diversity, due to the slow immigration of species," says Marta Baumane.
Baumane points out that additional efforts are required if native-like wetlands are hoped for.
"Now that we are equipped with this knowledge, I hope that the authorities will use it to try to improve already-restored wetlands so that we can get more out of them. Besides reducing the amount of nutrients being discharged into wetlands, one could try to seed these areas to see if new plants survive, as well as test methods of different management methods such as mowing and grazing," concludes Marta Baumane.”
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A rising tide, raises all boats:
“Unions lift wages for non-union members by creating a higher prevailing wage.
Even if you aren’t a union member, your pay is influenced by the strength or weakness of organized labor. The presence of unions sets off a wage race to the top. The absence sets off a race to the bottom.” Eric Liu
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Raising interest rates to combat today’s greed driven inflation will merely allow the financial industry to participate in the monopolies feeding frenzy - causing consumers to increase their cash outlays for debt:
“If We Don't Get Inflation Under Control, It Could Unleash Some Dramatic Consequences”
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“What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.” Samual Gompers
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Sam Green from Labor and Politics on facebook:
“$.95 out of every dollar made on the stock market is stolen from workers…”
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A disturbing illustrated map of the earth,…from the top down:
The candle of earth is burning at both ends,.. ...killer heat is spreading from the poles toward the equator. This is not going to end well for humanity
From: Tarik Mehmedika Novi in Arctic News
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Live from the Democrats echo chamber:
“Leo Varadkar warns introducing a rent freeze could create a ‘nightmare scenario’, where landlords would be forced to sell their extra house, which would then drive house prices down, allowing low-income people to get on the property ladder.”
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“More native plants mean more insects, especially bees and butterflies, many of which are highly specialized to live on a particular plant.”
“The Tide: Native plants bring more birds
Author, researcher encourages native plantings for homeowners to lure insects, feed more birds.”
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“Noise increased by disrupted Earth balance?”
“USING THE EARTH’S NOISE TO SEE BENEATH THE GREENLAND ICE SHEET – NEW RESEARCH GIVES MOST DETAILED PICTURE YET”
“'The noise created by the Earth's movements has been used to build up a detailed picture of the geological conditions beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet and the impact on ice flow, in new research. The team studied Rayleigh waves -- seismic waves generated by movements such as earthquakes -- to produce high-resolution images of the rocks underneath the ice sheet, helping to identify which areas are most susceptible to faster ice flow. It will give us a better understanding of the processes that contribute to accelerated ice discharge into the ocean and the consequent sea level rise.'”
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“A Paradise Bult in Hell”
“Who We Really Are... When Everything Goes Wrong”
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“Start a homegrown National park”
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“I check this site
The deep red in the US southeast (which means temps well above normal) looks quite spooky. I've also never seen all of Antarctica in the red like this until today.
It's making me nervous.”
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“15,000-year-old viruses discovered in Tibetan glacier ice”
“Most of the viruses were previously unknown to humans, study finds”
“Glacier ice archives nearly 15,000-year-old microbes and phages” - by Zhi-Ping Zhong et al. https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-021-01106-w?fbclid=IwAR0zaC7Bb71FiPtDgFsPCGdXZA8aHG90NHPmD4Q97ANGXb7tK_NlWZnFtL8
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“Antarctica with concern
Cracks and fissures stoke fears of breakup that could lead to half-metre rise in global sea levels – or more”
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“7 killed and more than 50,000 displaced in #Malaysia
More than 50,000 people have been forced from their homes in Malaysia and at least seven are dead after the country faced some of its worst #floods for years, officials said on Monday (Dec 20).
Read more....”
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Kevin Hester:
“For me this is one of the worst, predictable outcomes that I have been dreading.
I mistakenly have been saying that the next El Nino would be the death knell for the Great Barrier Reef.
If a bleaching event is possible in a La Nina phase that means there will be no respite for the largest living organism on the planet.
I once did a 6 week, 800 mile sail down the GBR diving every day. Reading this is like a stab in the heart.”
“Great Barrier Reef could face another mass bleaching by end of January, forecast says”
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“The callous exploitations of corporations that place people in harm’s way and increase the possibility of premature death during a pandemic are not only moral crimes, but should also be considered legal crimes punishable by law to discourage such negligence. From inflationary price-gouging that causes people to sacrifice essential needs to forcing people out of the homes through evictions, corporate negligence must be penalized harshly enough that it can’t be absorbed as a mere cost of doing business. Michal J. Sandel writes in his book, “Justice: What’s the Right Thing To Do?”
“Greed is a vice, a bad way of being, especially when it makes people oblivious to the suffering of others. More than a personal vice, it is at odds with civic virtue. In times of trouble, a good society pulls together. Rather than press for maximum advantage, people look out for one another. A society in which people exploit their neighbors for financial gain in times of crisis is not a good society. Excessive greed is therefore a vice that a good society should discourage if it can. Laws cannot banish greed, but they can at least restrain its most brazen expression, and signal society’s disapproval of it. By punishing greedy behavior rather than rewarding it, society affirms the civic virtue of shared sacrifice for the common good.”
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“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” Voltaire
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“Groceries don’t have to be expensive if you just plan ahead, make a list, and shop the sales/discount stores” is a prime example of how it’s been normalized for it to just inherently require a lot more time and effort to SURVIVE as a poor person.”
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“Soil is an antidepresent. The smell of mycobacterium vacii, a microorganism found in soil, compost and leaf mold, lights up neurotransmitters that release serotonin (a mood-lifting hormone)
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“TELL EPA: FINALIZE STRONG METHANE REGULATIONS’
“TAKE ACTION: ADD YOUR VOICE
Methane pollution is responsible for 25% of the global warming we're experiencing today. Cutting methane is one of the fastest ways to reduce the impacts of climate change worldwide and also improve air quality and public health in our own communities.”
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“Global leaders must take urgent action to reduce meat consumption. Around the world, livestock alone produce more greenhouse gases than the direct emissions of all planes, trains, and cars combined.”
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“The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax”
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The rich are destroying all levels of America’s education system:
“The “Dark Academia” Subculture Offers a Fantasy Alternative to the Neoliberal University”
“At the center of the “dark academia” aesthetic is the fantasy of uninterrupted personal time and deep scholarly concentration in an elite campus setting. It couldn’t differ more from the reality of the hyper-capitalist modern university.”
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America’s Judiciary is an abomination:’
“Elizabeth Warren calls for expansion of Supreme Court, saying current court is a threat to democracy”
“Warren is right about expanding court. The United States' right wing has been long been at packing the Supreme Court as part of its attack on our constitutional democratic republic. The Congress set the number of judges on the Supreme Court, and can amend that number any time it likes; just as the Congress can do way with the sixty percent majority to pass a bill in the Senate and the filibuster that takes advantage of it.”
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Human Reform Politics on FB \ From Douglas Dunn
December 2, 2021
All of the six Republican-appointed ”justices” are illegitimate. All were either appointed by an illegitimate “president” who did not win the popular vote and only “won” the electoral college by massive cheating and voter suppression, OR lied under oath about sexual violence during their confirmation hearings, OR only got their nominations or confirmations because of illegitimate manipulation of the confirmation process in ways never envisioned by the Founders.
1. Clarence Thomas — committed perjury during confirmation hearings lying about sexual assaults.
2. John Roberts — appointed by an unelected president who took office without getting the most votes and only “won” the Electoral College solely because of cheating and voter suppression in Florida.
3. Samuel Alito — appointed by an unelected president who took office without getting the most votes and solely because of cheating and voter suppression.
4. Neil Gorsuch — appointed by an unelected president who took office without getting the most votes and solely because of cheating via CONspiracy with Russia and vote suppression in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Also occupies a seat that should have been filled by Obama who was obstructed by racist Mitch McConnell.
5. Brett Kavanaugh — appointed by an unelected president who took office without getting the most votes and only “won” the Electoral College solely because of cheating via CONspiracy with Russia and voter suppression AND committed perjury during confirmation hearings and sexual assaults, including rape.
6. Amy Coney Barrett — appointed by an unelected president who took office without getting the most votes and solely because of cheating and voter suppression AND whose appointment was illegally rushed through in an unprecedented violation of the Senate’s own rules after voting in a presidential election was already under way.
Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh both lied under oath about sexual harassment of women, who they seem to think are their personal playthings. They are hardly the right people to be making judgments about women’s rights.
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“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln
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Sam Carana:
“UNM scientists find climate-driven tree mortality and fuel aridity increase wildfire fuel availability
Research suggests dead fuels lead to bigger, more intense wildfires”
“Climate-driven tree mortality and fuel aridity increase wildfire’s potential heat flux”- by Marissa Goodwin et al.
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“In 2020, top CEOs earned 351 times more than the typical worker”
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“How Is Arctic Sea Ice Linked to Worsening Wildfires?”
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