The Weekly Watch

Workers of the World Unite!

Fight Neofeudalism
Open Thread Image.jpg

Throughout our lives, the nature of work has evolved. Comparing the US in 1920 to 2020 provides some interesting contrasts as people leave the farm and move to more urban areas. (How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm once they've seen gay Paree?)

The 1920s is the decade when America's economy grew 42%. Mass production spread new consumer goods into every household. The modern auto and airline industries were born. The U.S. victory in World War I gave the country its first experience of being a global power. Soldiers returning home from Europe brought with them a new perspective, energy, and skills. Everyone became an investor thanks to easy access to credit. That hidden weakness helped cause the Great Depression.
...
Farming declined from 18% to 12.4% of the economy. Taxes per acre rose 40%, while farm income fell 21%. At the same time, new inventions sent the manufacturing of consumer goods soaring. https://www.thebalance.com/roaring-twenties-4060511

As people moved, so did their employment options and it hasn't stopped, nor has inequality...in fact it is as high as ever. Stagnant wages for most, alongside soaring profits and wages for those at the top, will continue to mean that the 0.1 to 1 percent accumulate more and more income and wealth.

back to the 20s.png

Rick Wolff talks about the economic impact of forcing millions of undocumented, hard-working immigrants to leave the US. As he suggests, the undocumented face the worst of the US labor market. (8 min)

He got the history on the Haymarket link to Labor Day correct, and I do think we should consider joining the rest of the world celebrating Labor on May 1. However, the September date was determined a couple of years before the Haymarket revolt... June 28, 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday.
https://www.dol.gov/general/laborday/history
In the US, Labor Day has been celebrated in September since the 1880s. Efforts have been made to move the day to May to align with the international celebration, but TPTB are not interested in people understanding labor history and unity.

On May 1, 1886, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, which later changed its name to the American Federation of Labor, called on its members to strike for an eight-hour workday. In Chicago, workers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company participated in a strike to encourage leadership to implement the workday change. More than four hundred police officers guarded the factory to prevent the entrance of the workers on strike. On the third day of the strike, a few protestors tried to break through the police line to confront the strikebreakers, and they were shot upon. Local anarchist groups quickly released a pamphlet detailing the event and encouraged workers to join a rally at Haymarket Square the following day... Towards the end of the day, police moved into the area to disburse the protestors, and before they reached the crowd, a bomb was thrown in the direction of the police. The officers quickly began shooting, creating a stampede and chaos that left six officers dead and sixty wounded. As for the protestors, two deaths were confirmed, but the total death and injury count was never released.

The very nature of labor has been in flux throughout the century. The size and nature of various businesses are displayed below.

In 1954, 11.6 percent of the population lived on farms. Today less than 2 percent does. The amount of land devoted to agriculture has also declined, from 1.16 billion acres in 1954 to 941 million in 2001. In 1954, 82 million acres were planted in corn; in 2002 the number was down to 79 million. Yet corn production went from close to 3 billion bushels to 9 billion. Wheat acreage has held steady at about 60 million, but production has gone from 984 million bushels in 1954 to 1.6 billion in 2002.

farm size and number.png

None of the biggest changes in business in the last 50 years would have been possible—or would have evolved as they did- had it not been for the computer.

Among the ten largest employers in 1955 were GM, Chrysler, US Steel (NYSE: X), Standard Oil of New Jersey, Amoco, Goodyear (NYSE: GT), and Firestone. ...
Today, four of the ten largest companies by total employees are Walmart (NYSE: WMT), Target (NYSE: TGT), Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD), and Kroger (NYSE: KR). Americans are drawn in huge numbers to retailers with low prices. The industry is dominated by companies which can source cheap goods, run them though efficient supply chains, and market them at low prices. Two of companies on the list from this year are IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ). They are the tip of an iceberg comprised of dozens of large tech companies with high margins, rapidly growing sales, and well-paid work forces. This group includes Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO, and Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL). With almost no exceptions, these companies did not exist five decades ago.

https://247wallst.com/investing/2010/09/21/americas-biggest-companies-th...

The Internet is a communications medium and very much part of the communications revolution. ... As the railroad was to the steam engine, so the Internet is to the microprocessor, the most important spinoff of the basic technology. What is perhaps most impressive about it is that it erupted into existence almost spontaneously.

Globalization is another change...

Automobile companies no longer have nationalities, except perhaps in terms of the locations of their corporate headquarters and greatest concentration of stockholders. Ford now owns Sweden’s Volvo and Britain’s Land Rover; GM owns Saab; Chrysler is part of the German Daimler. Every major automobile company manufactures parts or assembles vehicles in many countries. General Motors, with 15 percent of the global vehicle market, manufactures in 32 countries and sells in 192. The other great auto companies are equally dispersed.

That is increasingly true of companies in other lines of business, such as electronics and computers. It is also becoming true of retail companies. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest company in terms of gross revenues (if it were a sovereign nation, it would have the world’s thirtieth-largest economy), sells in 10 countries and buys products in many more. McDonald’s and KFC peddle their wares from Bangor to Bangalore, from Peoria to Paraguay, while American shopping malls are full of foreign products and foreign companies selling them.

Really it is corporatization of the world. I was trained as a soil scientist and really appreciate the perspective of Clifford D. Conner who is author of the new book "The Tragedy of American Science: From Truman to Trump". He affirms my observations as a young scientist. Chris Hedges discusses the corporatization and corruption of American science with the author Clifford D. Conner. (26 min)

Science in the United States almost exclusively serves the interest of corporate and military power. Science historian Clifford Conner writes that the corruption of science exploded with the 1942-1945 Manhattan Project, the first “big science” project in which the government spent massively on developing the atom bomb. Science, from this point forward, became big business. Scientists are employed in “hypothesis-driven” research to promote the interests of the food industry, the tobacco industry, and the fossil fuel industry, attacking or silencing scientific studies that cast doubt on the claims of these industries. The result is a society awash in lies, many of them buttressed by bogus scientific studies carried out to reach the conclusion demanded by those who pay for the studies. This corruption is now endemic in think tanks, scientific institutes, and universities, which accept corporate money to do corporate bidding. The public is provided with industry-sponsored hype rather than truth. Objective scientific research has all but vanished. The consequences for our health and our planet are catastrophic. ExxonMobile and Koch Industries fund climate-change denial studies. Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds produce findings minimizing the link between smoking and lung cancer. Purdue Pharma and Pfizer peddle highly addictive opioids as routine pain killers, triggering an opioid epidemic that since 1999 has seen 500,000 Americans die from an overdose involving an opioid. Coca-Cola and Kellogg hire nutrition scientists to tout the benefits of junk food. Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft pump billions into creating “machine intelligence.” This artificial intelligence is designed to serve private and military interests, not those of the public.

Finance is another factor...

In 1951 a Long Island banker named William Boyle invented the credit card. It was a classic capitalist win-win-win situation: Credit cards allowed merchants to avoid the expense and risk of maintaining charge accounts; they gave banks handsome profits on unpaid balances; and they spread credit, formerly reserved largely to the affluent, to a whole new class of consumers. By the 1960s credit cards were common. Today they are ubiquitous, with 1.2 billion in use in the United States in 2002 by 190 million cardholders. Thanks to credit cards—and their latter-day descendants debit cards—cash is rapidly disappearing from American retailing.

BREAKING! UNCHARTED TERRITORY WORLD RESERVE CURRENCY (12 min)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QYGWFuGExQ]

Union changes also had effects...

The loss of unions also contribute to the changing employment sector...In 1954 more than a third of all American workers belonged to unions, mostly of the old-fashioned blue-collar variety. In 2002 only about 14 percent did. But that doesn’t tell the whole story, for nearly half of today’s union members are government employees, such as teachers and hospital workers, virtually none of whom were unionized in 1954.

Meanwhile, the number of strikes has greatly diminished. In 1960 there were 222 work stoppages involving more than 1,000 workers, with 13,260,000 workdays lost. In 2002 there were only 9 such strikes, with 660,000 lost workdays, although the size of the American work force has doubled in the last 50 years.

Part of the reason for the decline of the labor movement is the shift from manufacturing to services as the major source of jobs in the American economy. The United States has not stopped making things (total manufacturing output grew by more than a third between 1990 and 2001) but is becoming ever more efficient at it, thanks to the rapidly increasing use of computers in the process...
Antitrust was one of the big political issues 100 years ago, but it has nearly disappeared in the half-century since. One reason, to be sure, is that mere bigness is no longer perceived as inherently bad, especially as more and more Americans have become stockholders and thus more inclined to see things from the capitalist point of view.

Workforce demographics (Women in the workforce) have also been in flux...

In 1954 the typical American woman was a housewife. That is certainly no longer the case, with more than 60 percent of American women in the work force... In 1967 Muriel Siebert became the first woman to own a seat on that ultimate male bastion the New York Stock Exchange. All major corporations now have female executives, half the Forbes 500 companies have female corporate officers, and eight have female CEOs

And of course there's been increasing inequality...

Charles E. Wilson, the chief executive of General Motors before becoming Secretary of Defense in 1953, was paid $652,000 a year, plus some stock options (he took a $580,000 pay cut when he left GM to head the Pentagon). That was a tidy sum in the economic universe of the early 1950s, even though 91 percent of it was taxed away by the federal government. In 2002 the CEO of General Motors was paid more than $12 million in total compensation. He gave over a maximum of 35 percent in taxes, but because much of that compensation came in the form of stock options, he actually paid far less tax than that. Many CEOs did a lot better.

https://www.americanheritage.com/50-biggest-changes-last-50-years

CEO pay.png

In a nation of increasing inequality, the most extreme wage disparities are between the heads of large American corporations and typical workers. This figure tracks the ratio of pay of CEOs at the 350 largest public U.S. firms to the pay of typical workers in those firms’ industries. In 1965, these CEOs made 20 times what typical workers made. As of 2013, they make just under 300 times typical workers’ pay. This higher pay for CEOs does not reflect any increased contribution to corporate output: Other data show that CEO pay grew three times faster than the pay of the top 0.1 percent of wage earners and twice as fast as corporate profits. Moreover, the rising pay of executives was the largest factor in the doubling of the top 0.1 percent and top 1.0 percent share of overall household income growth. CEO pay gains help explain the growing divergence between pay and productivity.

https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

When taking into account stocks, which now make up more than 80% of the average CEO’s compensation package, the report found that chief-executive pay has risen by an astounding 1,322% since 1978. That’s more than six times more than the top 0.1% of wage earners and more than 73 times higher than the growth of the typical worker’s pay, which grew by only 18% in the same time period. Most remarkable, however, is the 18.9% increase in CEO compensation between 2019 and 2020 alone.

American CEOs make 351 times more than workers. In 1965 it was 15 to one

pay 1 vs 99 percent.png

The ability of those at the very top to claim an ever-larger share of overall wages is evident in this figure. Two things stand out. First is the extraordinarily rapid growth of annual wages for the top 1 percent compared with everybody else: Top 1 percent wages grew 138 percent, while wages of the bottom 90 percent grew just 15 percent. If the wages of the bottom 90 percent had grown at the average pace over this period—meaning that wages grew equally across-the-board—then the bottom 90 percent’s wages would have grown by 32 percent, more than double the actual growth.

Workers have increased productivity as their wages have declined.

productivity vs pay.png

As the figure shows, pay for these workers climbed together with productivity from 1948 until the late 1970s. But that didn’t happen by accident. It happened because specific policies were adopted with the intentional goal of spreading the benefits of growth broadly across income classes. When this intentional policy target was abandoned in the late 1970s and afterward, pay and productivity diverged. Relinking pay and productivity so that workers share in the fruits of their labor will require another pronounced shift in policy.

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

At least on labor day perhaps we should reward labor? Ya think? But no the new mantra is:
"You will have nothing and be happy".

Workers are spied upon, tracked, and not allowed to organize. It is neofuedalism. Welcome to the "the great reset" you serfs.


Union busting and automation: workers say “anti-union” practices have remained constant.

The new corporation, GXO Logistics, officially went public on the New York Stock Exchange on Aug. 2 with 94,000 employees at 869 locations around the world.

Even though many have not heard the name before, some of the largest and most high-profile brands outsource their warehouse and logistics needs to GXO, including Amazon, Home Depot, IKEA, Nestle, Peloton, Starbucks, Target, Verizon, and Walmart.

GXO executives claim the new company is leaving behind the “Dickensian warehouse” of the past through a reliance on technology and automation.

We saw the Amazon union failure in Alabama this year. Why? Well, as a teacher I belonged to my union, AEA and NEA (Alabama and National Education Association). I fought for many years for site based school management...schools designed for and by communities...tailored to fit unique needs. My own union sided with school board rather than school based management. They didn't seem to have my interests nor the student interests at heart. At least some of the unions themselves have been captured by personal profit rather than worker interests.

ATR-WFU_Womenleadership.jpg

So do workers even have an option to find and hold a satisfying and rewarding occupation? The only avenue I see is cooperatives and worker owned businesses.

Perhaps organizing worker owned business is a better approach than remaining in corrupt corporations determined to maximize the profit from every worker?
There are many corporations than have at least some degree of worker ownership.
https://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100

However, true worker owned coops seem to me labors best hope.
https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/directory-worker-cooperatives-worker-ow...

Lots of barriers remain to the growth and advancement of worker cooperatives, including and especially access to finance. Many small business lenders still balk at the thought of lending to worker cooperatives.

Back before retirement, we would gather Friday nights after work and play music. This was a common song in those days.

The pandemic and now its delta variant have put the hurt on these music gatherings. But I'm sure we'll be back with weekly sessions at some point.

I hope you're all having a great holiday weekend, and are able to cook something good, and enjoy a meal with your family and friends. As described, the world has changed in our lifetime and is destined to continue to change even more rapidly as we pass through time. Those of you still in the workplace, I hope you have a meaningful and rewarding job and are able to enjoy the production you create (whatever that might be).

labor.jpg

Please feel free to chime in with whatever is on your mind today...

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lotlizard's picture

https://twitter.com/lwoodhouse/status/1434380619472011266

This is amazing. The media literally has no vetting process, it's just straight from someone talking shit to national news. The same vaunted voices trying to shut everyone down for misinformation, just gushing it out like they're Occupy Democrats or Gateway Pundit.

Okay, but genuine news sites like the BBC are more serious and reliable, right? — Oh.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58449876

https://nhssequoyah.com/

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Lookout's picture

@lotlizard

So the doctor claiming to see so many IVM overdoses doesn't even work at the hospital?
I appreciate the info. It is as I suspected. Thanks!

Surprise surprise the press isn't reliable. Chuck Todd only has an honorary degree and essentially no journalistic training. Blue blood Anderson Cooper was a CIA intern before becoming a correspondent. Hell now they just use retired CIA and MIC correspondents blatantly to report on the US war machine.

Part of our larger problem is that no one can believe anything they read or hear. Just select the point of view you find appealing.

Onward through the fog.

Have a good one!

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15 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

ggersh's picture

@lotlizard are wearing winter clothing in the middle of summer! You just can't make this shit up.

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12 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Lookout's picture

@ggersh

That line is waiting to get vaxed.

Boy they are pulling out all the stops.

Take care!

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7 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

snoopydawg's picture

@ggersh

I watched this saga unfold on the Twit last night and boy was it funny. No matter how many times it was debunked people kept insulting the horsey-pasters and said that they deserve to die. Seems many people are easily shedding their humanity for fellow humans and it's being encouraged at the highest levels. Why in heaven would they go with that picture in the first place since it is so out of place of gunshot victims?

Rachel of course jumped on the bandwagon as did the shitlibs. LMAO over the comments.

"SO many people were shot because the shooters went blind from horsey-paste" was one of my favorites.

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8 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

ggersh's picture

@snoopydawg

Rachel of course jumped on the bandwagon as did the shitlibs. LMAO over the comments.

Rachel is the perfect example of this Sinclair quote

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9 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

snoopydawg's picture

@ggersh

9752F485-72B0-4D17-9C75-F074EC21D8D7.jpeg

Oops. Rollingstone offered an update to the story by including the hospital statement instead of doing a retraction. Haven’t heard from Rachel though. Smile

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7 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

My uncle posted this.

F8F76DF9-A79F-45B8-B330-3BD6FDB7EF9F.jpeg

He believes that Putin put Trump in office and everything Rachel tells him including the ivermectin gun shot story.

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9 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Lookout's picture

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg

It works for TPTB to divide...masks- no masks, vaxed- antivax, IVM- it will kill you, and on and on.

Interesting that ALL the MSM is prowar as are both parties. That's where all agree as the dimwits add another few billion to the already bloated MIC budget...
Democrats Who Joined Republicans to Increase Military Budget Have Strong Defense Ties
The lawmakers crossed party lines to add $24 billion to Biden’s fiscal year 2022 defense budget.
https://theintercept.com/2021/09/03/democrats-defense-industry-military-...

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

CB's picture

@ggersh

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ggersh's picture

@CB or were they cold as ice?

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKgysK3GCfM]

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4 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

CB's picture

@lotlizard
that affirm the use of ivermectin. Even when linking to legitimate medical research sites such as the European Journal of Medical and Health Sciences.

Ivermectin as Pre-exposure Prophylaxis for COVID-19 among Healthcare Providers in a Selected Tertiary Hospital in Dhaka –An Observational Study
...
ABSTRACT

Introduction: While multiple vaccines are undergoing clinical trial across the globe, we yearn for an FDA approved drug to protect us from the devastating pandemic for the time being. This study aims to determine the effectiveness of Ivermectin when administered as pre-exposure prophylaxis for COVID-19.
...
Result: 73.3% (44 out of 60) subjects in control group were positive for COVID-19, whereas only 6.9% (4 out of 58) of the experimental group were diagnosed with COVID-19 (p-value less than 0.05).

Conclusion: Ivermectin, an FDA-approved, safe, cheap and widely available drug, should be subjected to large-scale trials all over the world to ascertain its effectiveness as pre-exposure prophylaxis for COVID-19
...

There's a reason for the ban. If the FDA were to approve any drug for treatment of Covid-19 it would jeopardize the new vaccines’ emergency use authorization - which requires there be no safe/approved treatments for a disease before a vaccine can be deployed on an emergency basis. Unfortunately this leaves America with no recourse to any medication that would ameliorate the disease at the beginning of infection. You simply have to wait till the disease either cures by itself or worsens to the point where you have to get hospitalized.

The ONLY prophylactic allowed are vaccines that actually DO NOT vaccinate in any normative sense of the word.

Here are the populations and death rate vs. vaccination rate for the US in comparison to Bangladesh and India, both of which use ivermectin.
US 331,000,000
Bangladesh 161,000,000
India 1,352,000,000
covid-vaccinations-vs-covid-death-rate.png

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9 users have voted.

@lotlizard Sorta the same situation last year. One guy claimed local hospital ERs were overflowing with covid patients when the virus was receding. Some others claimed that they were at the local hospital and saw no such thing. (Now of course, the hospitals are in it deep with latest outbreak.) The mass media gains from the shock/click value of the claims. And then various interests amplify whatever crazy claim fits their agenda.

Of course, this doctor talking shit is not limited to some random guy, but his equivalent exists entrenched in the mass and major media outlets where the lies are deliberate.

The problem with information about the pandemic is that events are happening in real time all over the world, and it is difficult to discern the truth with media so entrenched as propaganda outlets.

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Lookout's picture

@MrWebster

...just as I can and we all can be. Data not only changes...it is manipulated. I highly recommend the On Contact episode with Chris in the essay this week...just to get a glimmer of how captured "science" has become.

I think John weighs the evidence to the best of his ability. I've cued this to his discussion of how this may end. gjohn also had an interesting essay on the topic looking at the 1918 pandemic data. (6 min)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL8QnUM81Wo&t=14m43s]

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6 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

stolen from some movie long ago.

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[video:https://youtu.be/MmwsQ_dHrFM]

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[video:https://youtu.be/lcIK3akktLU]

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[video:https://youtu.be/-m6qDVyr3Rs]

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Would celebrate Labor Day, but us gig workers gotta pay the bills Wink

.

Have a great one!

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7 users have voted.
Lookout's picture

@QMS

but you can't cover it all in a single essay. We usually labor in the garden on labor day.

However do plan on cooking pork ribs to enjoy. Life's little pleasures are to be treasured.

Thanks for the working songs! Have you seen Gandy dancers. There were a few older men who worked the folk festival circuit back in the day. (2 min)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=025QQwTwzdU]
Here's a 3o min film about them if anyone has an interest (made by a fiddler friend).
http://www.folkstreams.net/film-detail.php?id=101

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9 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

enhydra lutris's picture

@Lookout

be well and have a good one

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6 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

ggersh's picture

How's this for america the great, one cannot help but notice that while back in 1917 all the top 10 corporations actually produced products that the ordinary american might need to live with, only one of the top 10 corps in 2017 produced anything that might be considered needed.

We've gone from the land of the people to the land of the corporations. From Raygun to Joementia it didn't take long for this takeover to happen

up
12 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Lookout's picture

@ggersh

I'm recommending trades as professions to my young friends...electricians, plumbers, solar techs, welders, mechanics, and so on can't be out sourced and trades provide opportunity for developing your own business.

I thought that graphic was quite interesting and spoke volumes about our shifting labor and business cycles.

Enjoy the holiday (if you can!)

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14 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout when the fancy tech goes down, what will matter is people who have skills that keep things going.

Mechanics in Havana have kept old American cars without electrical systems going for 50 years.
It is still a good idea to keep an old non-grid vehicle in working order.

This was an outstanding piece of work, lookout. It's clear which way we are going and what we are when we arrive, will determine our survival, or not.

In Weather news: NYC rain totals for the past 30 days are in---17.51 inches.

Normal for this 30 day period. 4.31 inches.

Houston, we have a problem.

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NYCVG

Lookout's picture

@NYCVG

We had 14" in August, bringing our year to date total to 60 inches with about a third of the year to go. So bizarre as the west is burning and the Colorado River dries up.

Glad you "weathered" the storm, but regret the loss of life there. Looks like another tropical system is working across the Yucatan to the gulf, but they "think" it will remain a storm rather than hurricane. It is expected to hug the coast and exit to the Atlantic south of us. However another hurricane may be in the offing for the following week in the gulf with an expected track similar to Ida, but moving up the Mississippi rather than going to NY. That's out there in voodoo land so we'll have to wait and see.

Take care in the big apple. I hope some sense of normal has returned there.

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9 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout
I would not be surprised.

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8 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

lotlizard's picture

@ggersh  
Companies at least used to make goods linked to societal infrastructure upgrade or, in 1917 for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, a meat diet.

Nowadays so much profit is earned via questionable intangible “services” such as delivery of personalized propaganda ads and “entertainment.”

Asperger’s syndrome nitpick: using the present-day AT&T logo for 1917 and 1967 feels gratingly anachronistic. The correct match for the respective year can be seen here:


— from the blog of someone who used to work at Western Electric

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Lookout's picture

@lotlizard

interesting as well.

Americans are drawn in huge numbers to retailers with low prices. The industry is dominated by companies which can source cheap goods, run them though efficient supply chains, and market them at low prices.

All we manufacture these days in the US are weapons systems and GMO crops.

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14 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout @Lookout
is mostly assembling off shore components.

Even our military, as they rattle sabers at China, is dependent on Chinese chips in their weapon systems!

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11 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Lookout's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness

We've lost all sense of nationality. Corporations may be based in a country, but they are multinational in reality. My '92 GEO tracker was assembled in Canada from parts from around the globe...and it is pushing 30 years old. So today the web is even larger.

Together, assembly plants operated by Mercedes, Honda and Hyundai have propelled Alabama to a Top 5 ranking among the states for the production of cars and light trucks.

not to mention the Kia plant on the AL/GA border.

Beginning in 2006, Kia made one of the biggest single foreign investments in the history of Georgia by establishing a state-of-the-art production facility in West Point. Since then, we, along with our suppliers, have helped create more than 14,000 jobs and produced more than 2.7 million vehicles.

We have the right to (abuse) work(ers) law in both states.

Take care and be well!

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11 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

ggersh's picture

@lotlizard this comment can speak to every modern day corporation, except for that one word Wink as they've all been financialized to create shareholder value rather than products that work.

Don't ever confuse a company's engineering talent (which, in the case of AT&T are some of the best there is) with its management (which, for any corporation larger than about 100 people, is probablydefinitely going to be dumber than a box of hair.)

up
12 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

magiamma's picture

morning LO. Thanks for the WW.

I am recommending this book I just read to everyone: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

She says…

Here the intention is to utilize the plants as an engineering solution …

This kind of fix is at the core of the mechanistic view of nature, in which land is a machine and humans are the drivers [of a reductionist, materialistic paradigm].

But what if we look at the indigenous worldview? The ecosystem is not a machine but a community of sovereign beings, subjects rather than objects. What if those beings were the drivers?

Restoration is imperative for healing the Earth, but reciprocity is imperative for long-lasting successful restoration. Like other mindful practices, ecological restoration can be viewed as an act of reciprocity in which human beings exercise their caregiving responsibility for the ecosystems that sustain them.

.
I thought once the reality of the Climate Crisis was apparent to people, that they would want to change. When I started my Climate Crisis blog here on c99 in November of 2018 there were no articles about Global Heating.

None. No articles. End of 2018.

And look at where we are now. Many articles and no action. Not to mention the climatic fires, floods, and freezing weather of the past years. No action.

That leaves me with the clarity of mind that homo sapiens sapiens do not have the capacity to ‘think forward’, let alone to understand exponential change. It leaves me with the certainty that the Weathermen and Black Panthers had the right idea. That radical change can only happen through radical action. The likely hood of this occurring is slim for numerous reasons. I’ll just leave it at that.

Have a good one...

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Lookout's picture

@magiamma
Here it is in pdf for those who have an interest.
https://www.pdforall.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Braiding-Sweetgrass-...

Yes, even the ipcc report offers no solutions to the dire nature of our situation. No one will say that fuel extraction must be stopped because TPTB are too invested. I miss your column, but have resolved to recognizing and accepting the acceleration of climate chaos.

I recently wrote a piece about first nations and climate justice...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/thursday-thoughts

Hope you're doing well and are not suffering from smoke every where every day.

All the best!

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11 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

magiamma's picture

@Lookout

I can only take so much of this and then only in small doses but...

here are a couple more re CC:

Climate change blamed for havoc in northeast US floods
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-climate-spotlight-northeast.html

Hurricane Ida: Two reasons for its record-shattering rainfall in NYC and the Northeast long after the winds weakened
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-hurricane-ida-record-shattering-rainfall-n...

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@magiamma @magiamma @magiamma
I recently pointed out in a private communication, that telling people it's gotten 1.5 degrees hotter and five degrees is the End of Life, is guaranteed to get hoots of laughter. What makes those few degrees important is not the absolute levels but the wild swings caused by the increasing energy content. Not "warming" so much as "more energetic". Here in Chicago we had one of our coldest winters (not THE coldest, but close) followed by a record broiling dry summer. Air, being the lightest substance, gets really really fast with a big influx of energy, much much more than ground,
That's what causes the Tornadoes and Hurricanes. Recently we had five foot waves in Lake Michigan, and while that's nowhere near the recrd for the Atlantic, Lake Michigan is freshwater (salinity makes a difference) and landlocked.

It's the variabilty, not the absolute values.

EDIT: Humans live at the equator and at the North pole. But they can't adapt to living in both simultaneously.

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13 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Lookout's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness

And in our part of the world driven primarily by the changes in the arctic.
https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/rest-of-the-world-news/climate-...

This time of year...stay cool. It is here...62 this AM. Hope y'all have cooled off too.

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5 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout
Drier though, grass and plants drying up.

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4 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness on this one.

NYC's average temps have gone up by 1.8 degrees in the recent years.

I am flummoxed by the changes in growing seasons. And the rainfall totals.

Out in the streets, nobody is talking about this. If not this, then what, exactly is important? do not ask me.

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8 users have voted.

NYCVG

magiamma's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness

New Climate Study: Arctic Heat Fueled Deadly February Texas Freeze

New research published Friday suggests that melting Arctic sea ice caused by global heating may be responsible for the deadly deep freeze that devastated much of North America and plunged millions of Texans into darkness in February.

"Large changes in the Arctic are not just a local concern—they also have wide-ranging impacts across North America and parts of Asia."
—Judah Cohen and Mathew Barlow, study researchers

While climate researchers have previously connected the phenomena of polar heating and mid-latitute freezes, a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Science is the first to link Arctic warming and February's cold snap.

https://caucus99percent.com/content/weekly-watch-246#comment-542422

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Dawn's Meta's picture

@magiamma It is excellent.
Robyn Wall Kimmerer

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A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.

Lookout's picture

@Dawn's Meta We have it, but I've not read it yet.

I'm currently reading an interesting tale of science, Ravenous.

Ravenous
Sam Apple looked at the life and research of biochemist Otto Warburg, openly gay and Jewish, who was encouraged by the Nazi Party to continue his research on cancer during World War II.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?512274-1/ravenous

Enjoy the day! All the best.

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5 users have voted.

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magiamma's picture

@Dawn's Meta
I really didn't want to finish this one. She is a poet as well as a scientist as well as...

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@magiamma A recent book review I read said something like: "A good book is hard to put down, a great book one must put down again and again to properly savor it." I felt that way about Kimmerer's books as well as "Underland" by Robert Macfarlane. They are treasures.

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3 users have voted.
Lookout's picture

@peachcreek

First I've learned of "Underland"
https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/08/16/underland-robert-macfarlane/

Thanks for the rec!

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2 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

ggersh's picture

@magiamma Mother Earth will revitalize itself once it's rid of the western civilization, capitalism/neoliberalism that only wants to destroy and profit from it, not to live in harmony with it.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/greenland-ice-sheet-melt

Ghostly Satellite Image Captures the Arctic ‘Losing Its Soul’

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9 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

magiamma's picture

@ggersh
hi gg

I saw this and texted it to myself but don't remember where I saw it

Air “holds” about 4% more moisture for every 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.55 Celsius) increase in temperature. Air above the oceans has about 10% more moisture compared to 1970 because of the increase in global temperatures. This extra moisture leads to about a 10% increase in heavy rain as storms gather the excess moisture.

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lotlizard's picture

like societies with a proper socialist pillar should.

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Lookout's picture

@lotlizard
..and for that reason must be sidelined and ignored. Thanks again for the links in your first comment here!

I would like to better understand how German unions are represented on corporate boards. On the surface that seems a sensible arrangement to the benefit of workers and management.

Arrangements for employee representation at board level in the 28 EU countries plus Norway can be divided into three groups. There is a group of ten countries where there is no board level representation and a further group of six, where board level representation is limited to state-owned or privatised companies. However, the biggest group of 13 states provides for employees to be represented on the boards of private companies, once they have reached a certain size. These thresholds vary greatly as do other elements of the national arrangements.

https://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Relations/Across...

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9 users have voted.

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lotlizard's picture

@Lookout  
which sounds so clunky, one could almost believe the Powers That Be somehow rigged the accepted translation to prevent it being called something catchy that could easily be worked into songs, slogans, and chants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-determination

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9 users have voted.
Lookout's picture

@lotlizard

...codetermination (also "copartnership" or "worker participation") is a practice where workers of an enterprise have the right to vote for representatives on the board of directors in a company. It also refers to staff having binding rights in work councils on issues in their workplace.

Thanks for the info!

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8 users have voted.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@Lookout

Mussolini's rhetoric and theoretical model, had the owners and workers in a particular industry organized into a unit with all working together on running the show and solving problems. These were the "corporates" of Musolini's idealization of Fascism, though, of course, the implementation was nothing remotely like that.

In the US, we have a corporatism which is simply an oligarchy wherein the corporations, which represent and are run by fananciers with no participation by or input from labor, run the show. This is far more fascist than fascism because under the theory of fascism, labor had a voice and a prominent role.

be well and have a good one

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10 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Lookout's picture

@enhydra lutris

This is far more fascist than fascism because under the theory of fascism, labor had a voice and a prominent role.

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6 users have voted.

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Azazello's picture

@lotlizard
I read in my local paper that our university has a new volleyball player: Puk Stubbe. How should we pronounce her name ?

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4 users have voted.

We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

lotlizard's picture

@Azazello  

451: Unavailable due to legal reasons

We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact jspitz@tucson.com or call 800-695-4492.

Looks like a Dutch name, so the “u” sounds are pronounced IPA /ʏ/, like French “u” or German “ü” (with umlaut). The “st” is the same as in English. (It’s only in German that the “s” in “st” at the beginning of a word element is pronounced “sh”.)

Alternatively, I see the Wildcats’ website is simply Americanizing it, going with “puck stub-bah”:

https://arizonawildcats.com/news/2021/7/7/arizona-volleyball-adds-puk-st...

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4 users have voted.
Azazello's picture

@lotlizard
I don't like "Puck" so I'm going with "Pook". I was hoping it wasn't "Puke".

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5 users have voted.

We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

enhydra lutris's picture

the great Pelosi succinctly exlpained years ago, "This is a Capitalist country". Under Capitalism, labor has no value, it is simply a cost. Capital alone has value, for it enables creation and production, which is why any surplus generated by any economic activity rightly belongs to and is properly allocated and distributed to Capital. This is, of course, not only the model under which we allocate resources and gains, but also an eternal economic verity which is why other models that presume to treat labor as if it had value, such as so called socialism, are invariably doomed to failure. Think about it, would she lie? Could she err? Of course not.

/snark

Happy Gig Day (ht ggersh)

be well and have a good one

up
16 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Lookout's picture

@enhydra lutris

Under Capitalism, labor has no value, it is simply a cost. Capital alone has value, for it enables creation and production, which is why any surplus generated by any economic activity rightly belongs to and is properly allocated and distributed to Capital

Screenshot 2021-09-05 at 09-58-45 Anti Capitalism T-Shirts TeePublic UK.png

Capitalism is a forest fire that is never extinguished, only contained.

Bryan Appleyard

Enjoy the long weekend no matter. Eat, drink, and be merry!

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14 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@enhydra lutris but tears seem more appropriate.

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7 users have voted.

NYCVG

Raggedy Ann's picture

We must learn to survive the tyranny that is being thrust upon us. In that vein, I suggest that it would behoove all people to begin using cash on a regular basis. I use cash for all my transactions - except paying bills, of course. Use cash as much as possible. This reduces credit card fees for vendors and forces cash into the system. Using cash gives other parties options in reducing their tax footprint (starve the beast). If you own a small business consider giving a small discount to customers that pay cash, not only will they appreciate it you will rob the credit card companies of their fees.

I am fighting tyranny in my workplace. Many of you saw this already, but I will paste it here again so that we may all have the confidence and authority to stand up and speak truth to power:

Response to President Stokes Proposed Processes for Noncompliance to Covid Mandates by Loyola, UNM staff

Not allowing people access to buildings is discrimination and segregation. This is a way of dividing people - pitting vaccinated people against unvaccinated people. This is similar to carrying out the blue eyed vs. brown eyed experiment in real life. This harms people. The university should not be in the business of harming human beings. However, your actions and policies are contributing to the divisions we are seeing in our world, which makes you complicit in those divisions that are taking place among our citizens by singling out and denying access to the unvaccinated. This is a slippery slope that the university needs to consider very carefully.

The university should also be concerned with the vaccinated, as they are contracting COVID and passing it on to the unvaccinated. The university is not protecting either population - the vaccinated nor the unvaccinated by any of these actions or policies.

Please don’t fall into this trap of divisiveness. Every single one of us can contract and spread the disease - vaccinated or not. As a university community, we should be promoting compassion, love, and care for our fellow human. You will get a plethora of comments. The ones who are the most fearful will want the divisions. Let’s try and keep our pack intact.

Enjoy the day! Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

Lookout's picture

@Raggedy Ann

I meant to comment on it when you posted it earlier. People have not wrapped their heads around the idea that vaccinated people are spreading COVID.

We almost always use cash. When we were young, we liked using cash to hold us to our budget goals. Using a card always felt like buying things twice. I do use a card for online orders. My routine is to get cash from the ATM.

If you have the where with all, having a stash of cash at home isn't a bad idea. At any point TPTB could no longer issue cash but some form of digitized "FedCoin", either on a card or smart phone, and remove cash from the system. I'm not saying it will happen, but it could. What control they would have knowing every transaction citizens make...plus they could market you and your purchasing habits.

Well let's hope we don't travel down that dystopian path.

Have a wonderful day off tomorrow and enjoy the long weekend!

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15 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout is inevitable. As are cards or chips that replace your house keys and car keys.

Total control. Zero privacy.

The Last Enemy on BBC showed me the future in 2008. I believed it then and see it now growing ever closer.

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6 users have voted.

NYCVG

Lookout's picture

@NYCVG

many people didn't upgrade to cars nor tractors. My 90 YO Mom refuses to get a computer. However, I think you are correct about a cashless society, just as it is rare for a horse or mule to be used for transportation or plowing.

I must admit to being a bit of a Luddite - I don't have a cell phone much less a smart phone. All our cars are old enough to vote. old truck 36 YO my little car 30 YO newest cars in their 20's. However there my be a day where I'll have to modernize. Crossing that bridge when I get there.

Till then let's make our lives what WE want.

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8 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout one of your elderly vehicles that does not depend on an electrical system, and will take any gas or oil you pour into it, will make you mobile when many people have no wheels..

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7 users have voted.

NYCVG

@Lookout

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8 users have voted.

NYCVG

Lookout's picture

@NYCVG

Just in time delivery...of more profit for me? Or so it seems.

Easy to see if you just look.

Global Billionaire Pandemic Wealth Gains Surge to $5.5 Trillion

The world’s billionaires have seen their wealth surge by over $5.5 trillion since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, a gain of over 68 percent. The world’s 2,690 global billionaires saw their combined wealth rise from $8 trillion on March 20, 2020 to $13.5 trillion as of July 31, 2021, drawing on data from Forbes.

Global billionaire total wealth has increased more over the past 17 months of the pandemic than it did in the 15 years prior to the pandemic.

Was it by design or just taking advantage of a pandemic crisis?

Wade our way through the water...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRpzEnq14Hs]

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4 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout [video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzq5kX6OT_s]

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1 user has voted.

NYCVG

CB's picture

@NYCVG
You can gain entry to home and work, travel on buses and trains and buy goods.
[video:https://youtu.be/4RxIw23ul00?t=80]

It will be coming to a town near you sooner than you realize.

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8 users have voted.
Lookout's picture

@CB

It will be coming to a town near you sooner than you realize.

perhaps yesterday?

along with your "social credit score"

"Adapt or die" as ag sec Earl Butz often said.

Thanks as always for your insights!

up
6 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Azazello's picture

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10 users have voted.

We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Lookout's picture

@Azazello

with Fox, and specifically with Tucker.

Glenn, Jimmy, Tulsi, and almost any anti-war voice is never seen on the (ironically labeled) liberal news channels. Kinda like calling paylowsee liberal.

Hope y'all are drying out a bit. Every time I see a national weather map y'all look like you're getting rain.

We've been drying since Ida passed. Got my roads pulled back into shape and have mowed some too.

Have a great Labor Day!

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11 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Azazello's picture

@Lookout
The TeeVee weatherman keeps teasing us, 20% chance, 15% chance etc. but we haven't had much rain so far this month. I grilled our burgers in the fireplace last night just in case, but it didn't rain. The big Labor Day Picnic we always used to go to has been cancelled again because of Covid so I guess I'll smoke a rack of ribs on the back porch tomorrow.
This just came up, it's probably pretty good, original article here: Grayzone
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgTu7MC3gVc width:500 height:300]

up
6 users have voted.

We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Lookout's picture

@Azazello

on both Rokfin and YouTube, as is Max. Interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJCY7dS7StU
On Foreign Agents, Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton expose the biggest frauds recruited as defectors and dissidents to lie about Official Enemies by the US regime.

Those 2 hour formats I have to take in smaller bites.

Enjoy your ribs, that is on our menu tomorrow too!

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10 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

including the MIC.

That doesn't include the talking heads on cable news who are paid well for their misinformation.

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9 users have voted.
Lookout's picture

@humphrey

Hell the head/sec. of the DoD is General Raytheon. They all do it...as well as becoming "expert" news analysts. No wonder citizens are so ill informed about the nature of their aggressive nation.

I predict a week of cheerleading the US war on terror as the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaches next Saturday. More on that next week.

Thanks for the Tweet. The few posted here at c99 is the extent of my foray into the twittersphere. I appreciate hearing about the chats there.

Have a good one!

up
10 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Lookout's picture

These two are such good musicians and quite versatile across an array of genre. Here they are in the Sunday AM livecast...
Trampled by Turtles - Come Back Home cover
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuIx9mCekes]

Hey! I'm Reina del Cid. I've posting music to this YouTube channel since 2007. For the last few years, I've been posting a new video every Sunday, and I call it "Sunday Mornings with Reina del Cid." I invite you to pour yourself a cup of coffee/tea/whiskey and join us each week as my friends and I discover new music, cover the classics, and share our own original music with you.

Currently based in Los Angeles, CA and sometimes Minneapolis, MN.

Toni Lindgren describes herself as "A guitar player from Fond du Lac, WI."
I would add she's good harmony singer too.

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7 users have voted.

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Azazello's picture

@Lookout
Seems like there's a lot of good, young flat-pickers out there.
These two, Molly Tuttle and, my favorite, Billy Strings.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJzz-Nuo-QQ width:500 height:300]

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3 users have voted.

We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Lookout's picture

@Azazello

Super musicians!

adding:
My buddy says there's more good musicians out there than you can shake a stick at.

And indeed there are...some probably around your corner...at least around here. I've never found it difficult to find musicians where ever I go.

up
3 users have voted.

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Azazello's picture

@Lookout
She has been showing up in my feed for awhile now, just never clicked on one.
Love the electric fills on this one and this one.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR-T2qTLF6o width:500 height:300]

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3 users have voted.

We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Lookout's picture

@Azazello

old and new.

Been working a writing a song for a decade or so now...
"Their Songs, they Echo Through Me"
But have not ever got it where I want it. Some gush out...others drip. So it goes.

All the best!

up
4 users have voted.

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Lookout's picture

https://actionnetwork.org/events/join-the-peoples-party-to-occupycongress

occupycongressFinalSquareANFinal.png

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcCnaghYjKc]
30 min

Today the #PeoplesParty membership voted to #OccupyCongress. Millions more could lose their homes. Millions more could lose unemployment benefits when benefits expire on Labor Day. The Squad took the steps of the Capitol Building to call to extend the eviction moratorium but left when Biden offered a band-aid solution that has now been struck down by the Supreme Court. They could have done more. It’s not enough!

We the people have the power to effect change! Join us on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building starting at 3:00 p.m. on Labor Day to begin to demand housing for all, good-paying jobs for all, and rent forgiveness. Come help us #OccupyCongress and demand immediate action.

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Lookout's picture

Labor has seemingly been suppressed forever?

After several days of heavy fighting along the mountain ridge, the miners were ready to move into Logan County when the federal government stepped in, dispatching troops, planes, and munitions to the area. This intervention effectively ended the miners’ march before they could enter into full battle with Chafin’s army. The miners willingly surrendered to the federal troops because they were not rebelling against the federal government, but rather against the local and state governments that catered to mining interests to the extent of denying citizens their constitutional rights. In fact, miners viewed the intervention of the military as a victory, seeing it as a signal that the rule of law would return to the region, even though they did not succeed in freeing the jailed miners in Mingo or ridding Logan County of its corrupt sheriff. The fighting of the West Virginia mine wars officially ended on September 4, 1921. Due to the size, length, and violence involved, the legacy of this short battle has loomed large in American labor history, and continues to be a symbol of workers’ struggles in the past—many of which continue to resonate today.

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-battle-of-blair-mountain.htm

The true lesson of Blair Mountain is that when people come together in a way that genuinely attempts to integrate different struggles, one of the most powerful social forces for change can be formed. When poor white, Black, and immigrant people work together, that is what truly scares people in power. As stated above, this mix of racial, ethnic, and class solidarities was not perfect. But it was something unique for the time, and its effect can best be summed up a by a white miner who fought in the battle: “I call it a darn solid mass of different colors and tribes, blended together, woven together, bound, interlocked, tongued and grooved together in one body.”

https://www.redneckrevolt.org/single-post/2016/07/24/BATTLE-OF-BLAIR-MOU...
3.3 min of silent footage of the event
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBAKGvOV6_k]

up
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Lookout's picture

It is a wrap for tonight. See you tomorrow!

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMIJwDtuXT4]

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3 users have voted.

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snoopydawg's picture

Even after people in the comments said it was fake another one popped up today with everyone buying into it. More comments saying it’s fake but someone found a way to unfake it. Total mind pretzelization. But it’s the unvaxxed that are the covidiots? Yes that’s what they are called.

Fun thread. Drew has fun with every person who retweeted the fake story.

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5 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Lookout's picture

@snoopydawg

IVM a black eye. Should make thinking people suspicious.

Thanks for the propaganda tweet.

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From Science Daily. Who is going to question a pub called Science Daily? Thought criminals?

RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

...
He and Guifang Jia, a former UChicago postdoctoral researcher who is now an associate professor at Peking University, began to wonder how it affected plant biology.

They focused on a protein called FTO, the first known protein that erases chemical marks on RNA, which Jia found as a postdoctoral researcher in He's group at UChicago. The scientists knew it worked on RNA to affect cell growth in humans and other animals, so they tried inserting the gene for it into rice plants -- and then watched in amazement as the plants took off.

"I think right then was when all of us realized we were doing something special," He said.

The rice plants grew three times more rice under laboratory conditions. When they tried it out in real field tests, the plants grew 50% more mass and yielded 50% more rice. They grew longer roots, photosynthesized more efficiently, and could better withstand stress from drought.

I read that linked from HN, here's my fave comment in the thread about it:

eplanit 2 days ago [–]
I predict that mRNA is going to be an obnoxious fad, where every marketer on the planet tries to leverage the concept/acronym/terminology into their product packaging (regardless of whether it's a medicine, a car part, a floor polish, ...) -- like how Blockchain became such a darling for several years.

LOL WAT. And if I were a yute I'd say "100%!" to that, I think? Please do read the discussment amongst nerds about dirt over there, it made me cry. The future so fucked all I can say is I'm sorry, so sorry. I am very sad, it hurts real deep. More than ever. Whatever. Probably just my uber-local wine-cave ecology depressing me all to hell, no need for red-hot pokers.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/

“All those eyes intent on me. Devouring me. What? Only two of you? I thought there were more; many more. So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE!”

...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTO_gene

As one homolog in the AlkB family proteins, it is the first mRNA demethylase that has been identified.[5] Certain alleles of the FTO gene appear to be correlated with obesity in humans.[6][7]

WAT
The package of pita bread I purchased the other day has tiny writing on the back that says "Derived from bioengineering". And it is from Buffalo NY, that's how fucking efficient the wine cave supply chains flow through here, like oil they are the same thoughts and feelings. Just go on and trade, drill, dam, mine, pump, extract, exploit, and overpopulate mother earth until extinction just like the plastic shampoo bottle directs: Wash, rinse, repeat.
repeat
repeat
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good luck

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Lookout's picture

@eyo

To my mind purposely making people chronically ill to max out profit. Literally creating addictive foods they know are unhealthy and then buying their way the a healthy heart label...cereal is a good example as is most bread. Plays into big pharma's hands too...sick people = money!

We've had our day, but like you, I'm sad for the young folks.

Despite it all I hope you have a nice holiday and can find some simple pleasures to offset the sorry state of things. Wishing you all the best!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”