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9/1/24
Guardian: More Than 10,000 US Hotel Workers Strike on Labor Day Weekend
8/28/24
Common Dreams: Striking UAW Workers at Cornell Win Tentative Deal - Unions in America are steadily becoming more powerful, allowing workers to control their own destiny.
8/19/24
Common Dreams: Global Wealth Tax Could Raise $2.1 Trillion Annually for Climate Action and More
8/5/24
Guardian: Google Broke Law to Maintain Online Search Monopoly, US Judge Rules - Judge Amit Mehta: "Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly"
7/19/24
Verge: CrowdStrike and Microsoft: Latest News on Global IT Outage -
<Begin Editorial comment>
Windows sucks and always has. Nobody should be using it. It is cheap for a reason.
'Reboot up to 15 times'? Seriously?
'Starbucks mobile ordering fails' Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of folks.
<End Editorial comment>
Wired: How One Bad CrowdStrike Update Crashed the World's Computers
7/12/24
Malwarebytes: "Nearly All" AT&T Customers Had Phone Records Stolen in New Data Breach Disclosure
6/25/24
Guardian: Injured Amazon Workers Turn to GoFundMe to Pay Bills
6/12/24
6/11/24
Intercept: Apple Matches Worker Donations to IDF and Illegal Settlements, Employees Allege
6/10/24
Intercept: Whore Court Justice Samuel Alito Caught on Secret Audio - Alito admits that the current membership of the WC is deciding cases based on ideology, not the law or precdent. Whatever is best for 'our side'; Zero credibility.
6/8/24
ProPublica: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax - The top 20 wealthiest Americans are collectively worth $2T.
5/12/24
CNN: Apple Store Workers in Maryland Vote to Authorize Strike
5/6/24
Guardian: US Workers' Share of the Pie Dwindles - Per US Bureau of Labor Statistics: The income share that non-farm labor receives, compared to the productivity their labor generates has declined about 13% since 2001. Good examples are Starbucks and Amazon which nominally pay $15/hour, but enforce a very erratic work schedule which almost never amounts to a 40 hour week.
NPR: Authorities Say 'Outside Agitators' Are at Gaza War Protests We've Heard This Before - Watch as the GA Patrol arrests one of the so-called 'outside agitators at about 1:24 of this video, who was in fact a faculty member. Under pressure, the NYC Mayor identifies a grandmother as an 'outside agitator.' Listen as GA Governor Kemp calls the 'outside agitators' "radicals, terrorists and extremists" essentially code language giving the state patrol instruction to treat what a peaceful protestors with extreme force.
5/3/24
Intercept: NYC Mayor Smeared A Grandmother As An "Outside Agitator" to Justify NYPD Assault on Columbia - I can remember when LBJ and Nixon claimed that Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations were riddled with 'outside agitators' and 'communists.' Just like demonstrations in this era, the demonstrations were peaceful until the police turned violent.
4/27/24
Guardian: Workers Accuse Google of 'Tantrum' After 50 Fired Over Israel Contract Protest
4/26/24
Guardian: Atlanta Police Use Rubber Bullets, Stun Guns and Teargas on Peaceful Protestors at Emory University - Gov. Brian Kemp labeled them 'terrorists' which then gave Atl police and state troopers the go-ahead to brutalize Emory Univ. students and faculty. The demonstrators were not violent. They were peacefully exercising their Constitutional rights. The police violently grabbed them and threw them to the ground and then sat on them while they were handcuffed. Any attempt by the victimized students/faculty to take legal action (assuming they have the funds to do so) will simply be appealed to the Supreme Court which is now owned by the major corporations. This country is now a corpora-fascist police state. It is by no means a democracy.
Democracy-NOW: Atlanta Police Violently Arrest Emory Students & Faculty to Clear Gaza Solidarity Encampment - Specifically see at 1:24 of this video. Note that it took two 'brave' GA troopers to fully restrain this female ’terrorist.'
4/16/24
Guardian: The Corporation Cashing in on America's Drought
4/8/24
Guardian: Human Rights Groups Call for Investigation Into Police Killing of Cop City Protestor - See entries of 11/6 and 10/6/23 below.
3/29/24
NBC News: OpenAI Previews Voice Generator - Scary!
3/20/24
3/4/24
Yes!: Cop City is a Disability Issue Too
2/20/24
In These Times: Starbucks Just Saw the Largest Single-Day Union Drive in the Company's History
2/10/24
Guardian: Georgia Police and FBI Conduct SWAT-Style Raids on 'Cop City' Activists Homes - Corporate Police State - See entry below of 10/6
2/3/24
Time: East Palestine, Ohio: 1 Year After One Year After Toxic Train Derailment
1/31/24
Vox: How Boeing Put Profits Over Planes
1/19/24
Guardian: Half of Recent US Inflation Due to High Corporate Profits Report Finds - Check out: Groundwork Collaborative
1/11/24
The Verge: How SEO Killed the Internet
12/6/23
Guardian: Federal Agencies Pushed Extreme View of Cop City Protestors - See entries below of 10/6, 11/6
11/17/23
Yahoo: Red Cup Rebellion: Starbucks Workers Stage Strike, Walkout - A very long list of court losses show that SB is attempting to illegally bust the union using all sorts of intimidation, and Here. Howard Schultz has tried to slink out of view, but Bernie says NO!
11/10/23
Guardian: Moody's Cuts Outlook on US Government to Negative - From the article: “In the context of higher interest rates, without effective fiscal policy measures to reduce government spending or increase revenues, Moody’s expects that the US’s fiscal deficits will remain very large, significantly weakening debt affordability”
11/6/23
Guardian: Fifty-Seven 'Cop City' Protesters Arraigned on Racketeering Charges
10/6/23
Guardian: Georgia DA Will Not Charge Police Who Murdered 'Cop City' Activist - The autopsy showed that Teran was sitting up with his hands raised when he was shot 57 times. There were no gunpowder stains on his hands. “Did they shoot their own man?”
See entries below of 6/6, 4/20, 3/15, 3/10, 2/9, 2/3, 2/2, 1/28/23.
Also see entry of 3/22 - 25/23 discussing private equity funds Roark and Silver Lake Mgt. which sit on the board of the Alanta Police Fund and who own Motorola. They facilitate sales of surveillance equipment to the APD. They have acquired ownership of 40 acres of Intrenchment Creek Park in Cop City. Other activities/revenue gained from this cooperation remain secret because of a lack of reporting requirements for these funds.
The City of Atlanta first approved this project on 9/8/21.
10/3/23
Forbes: The 400 Wealthiest Americans
7/5/23
Malwarebytes: Google Plans to Scrape Everything You Post Online to Train its AI
USA Today: Richest People Add $852 Billion To Their Collective Wealth During First Half of 2023
6/6/23
Democracy-Now: Atlanta City Council OKs $67M for Cop City Despite Mass Protests and Armed Raid on Atlanta Solidarity Fund - The people in charge of the fund to bail out protestors were over-charged with money laundering and charity fraud. Most of the protestors in jail have been over-charged with domestic terrorism. Over-charging protestors is a typical tactic employed by the state to cause those charged to bankrupt themselves on lawyer fees and thus discourage further protests. In the end, the charges will either be greatly reduced or dropped after the main purpose for them has been accomplished.
"...and after Atlanta police shot dead the environmental activist Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán in January. An autopsy shows they were sitting with their hands raised up in front of their body when police shot them 57 times."
See entry below of 4/20.
5/22/23
CNBC: META Fined a Record $1.3B Over EU User Data Transfers to the US - Collecting user data and using it to target consumer advertising (and for who knows other purposes) is just fine in the USA - despite the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution. But the EU specifically prohibits that.
5/18/23
Guardian: US Supreme? Court Backs Big Corps Over Injured People
5/4/23
Alternet: Memorial Day Massacre: Remembering Union Workers Deadly Clash With Chicago Cops
4/28/23
Portside: Private Equity is Gutting America - And Getting Away With It and NYTimes and NYorker: When Private Equity Takes Over a Nursing Home and NYTimes: What Layoffs? Top Wall Street Traders Score Giant Paydays
4/20/23
Greenmatters: What's to Know About 'Cop City'? - A good historical narrative. The Dekalb Co. Medical Examiners Office ruled the death a homicide.
Common Dreams: Autopsy Shows Forest Defender Murdered by Police Never Fired Weapon - See entries 3/25, 3/22, 3/15, 3/10, 2/9, 2/3, 2/2, 1/28
4/14/23
CNBC: JPMorgan Chase Posts Record Reveue on Higher Interest Rates - Together with Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, these banks and their CEOs make $10s of Billions while regular working people struggle to feed and house their familes. These institutions, along with hedge funds like BlackRock (almost $10B in assets) fund most of development and infrastructure of big oil drilling and pipeline projects. They are also the entities that fund the wars in Ukraine and make $Billions more from inflation caused by wars.
3/29/23
NPR: Why Scrutiny of Starbucks' Alleged Union Violations is Boiling Over Now
3/25/23
3/22/23
Guardian: Investment Fund Link to Atlanta Police and 'Cop City' Project Revealed - From the article: Roark Capital and Silver Lake Mgt. are private equity funds which have almost no financial disclosure rules. Their relationship with APD and the Atlanta Police Fund is all being done behind closed doors.
Company reps sit on the board of Atlanta Police Fund. They have a history of providing advanced surveillance equipment to the APD from Motorola. Several European trust funds divested from Motorola when the company was listed on a UN report detailing companies “that had raised particular human rights concerns” by providing surveillance tools and other services to the Israeli government...Motorola has sold more than $22m worth of products and services to the Atlanta police department since 2016."
"In 2022, Silver Lake added Shadowbox Studios (formerly Blackhall Studios), a television and film studio company, to its portfolio with a $500m investment. The studios are located south of the Cop City site."
The two companies are working on a land swap whereby they gain control of 40 acres of Intrenchment Creek Park. Other activities involving these 4 groups are totally secret despite the fact that taxpayer funds are used to support the APD. The 2023 budget for the APD totalled $754M.
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini
3/16/23
Salt Lake Tribune: America is in a Disgraced Class of its Own - From the article: "A recent study estimates that collecting all unpaid federal income taxes from the top 1 percent — not raising their taxes, mind you, just putting an end to their tax evasion — would add $175 billion a year to the public purse...an additional $175 billion a year is almost enough to lift everyone out of poverty altogether."
3/15/23
Guardian: Tents Slashed and Supplies Destroyed: 'Cop City' Activists Describe Police Intimidation
3/10/23
Yahoo News: Protestor Killed at Atlanta's 'Cop City' Had Hands Raised When State Patrol Shot Him: Autopsy - See entries of 2/3, 2/2.
Intercept: Cop City Body Cam Footage Suggests Fellow Cop Was Shot by Friendly Fire
3/7/23
NYTimes: What is 'Cop City?' The Atlanta Police Center Protests Explained
2/8/23
The Lever: Rail Companies Blocked Safety Rules Before Ohio Derailment
2/6/23
MSNBC: We Don't Need Any New Ideas to Fix the Supreme Court. Just One Very Old One - From the article: "At least 5 members of the Supreme Court are comfortable ignoring the court's past decisions and manipulating the law to achieve more conservative goals."
The Whore Court has shown by numerous recent decisions, having thrown stare decisis to the wind, that the it lacks integrity, validity, credibility and legitimacy. These 5 members are incompetent political hacks. They are a reflection of the fascist corporate state in which we live. They rule only from the barrel of a gun.
See entry of 1/11 below.
2/3/23
Guardian: 'Cop City' Protestor Shot 13 Times by Police - no body cam footage despite the scores of police officers that were present - corporate stenographers (they're not reporters anymore) dutifully transcribe every word of the police state - undercover FBI clad in all black destroy infrastructure giving the governor the excuse to declare an emergency and invoke the equivalent of martial law - so what if the victim's family sues for $millions and wins; neither the city council nor the police enforcers will pay the fine, that will be left to the citizens of Atlanta - this is an old story; people of color routinely face this kind of violence and it never gets reported by the corporate stenographers - if it weren't for the progressive media like Guardian, Democracy-NOW, Socialist Alternative and Common Dreams, etc. we would never even be aware that this had happened
2/2/23
1/31/23
Guardian: 'It Can be Scary': How Corporate American is Hitting Back against Unions
Democracy-Now: Economist Richard Wolff How the Debt Ceiling is Used to Benefit the Rich and Powerful - A very short and succinct explanation of why this repeating issue is nothing more than '99% theatre.'
"If the government borrows instead of taxing, this is really good news for corporations and the rich, particularly. And here’s why. If they can succeed in cutting their taxes, as they did under Mr. Trump, for example, then the government has to borrow. You know who the government borrows from? Them. It borrows mostly from corporations and the rich. The average people of America do not lend to the government, because they don’t have the money. So, the irony is there’s an imbalance. For corporations and the rich, they can get out of the taxes they might have to pay, and instead the government comes to them and borrows from them the money they otherwise would have had to pay in taxes. They have to pay that money back to those people, plus interest for the time that they hold this debt. So you can see that when corporate America pushes for tax cuts, it’s looking at two benefits: It doesn’t have to pay taxes, and instead it gets to have a loan to the government."
"...over the last year, we’ve been told that the government, the Federal Reserve, has to raise interest rates. And the logic of hurting all the people whose credit card bills, whose college payment bills and whose car payments are all going up as interest rates rise, we are told this is necessary, because if interest rates rise, it becomes more expensive to borrow, and therefore people will do less of that, and they’ll have less to spend. And with less to spend, we will be slowing our inflation.
At the same time, the government is spending tens of billions of dollars on a new program — namely, the war in Ukraine — which has exactly the opposite effect. But the rules of our politics seem to mean we have to talk about Ukraine only in terms that are carefully cleansed from the inflationary impact such a plan has. It’s a kind of split consciousness that goes together with the theatrics of Biden and McCarthy, because they’re not facing the hard realities."
1/28/23
MSN: Georgia is Trying to Kill Protests With Terrorism Charges. Activists Are Not Impressed. - This is such a familiar tale. Police murder a protestor who stands in their way, and then plant a gun on him and take a picture. Undercover FBI agents dressed in black begin to smash windows and other infrastructure. Authorities label these protestors as 'terrorists'. The stenographic press eats it up without any questions. The fake protestors (FBI undercover) are loaded up in the paddy weapon, escorted to the front door of the police station and then walk out the back door - with or without charges which will later be dropped without explantion, jump in their vehicles and head for home. It's the standard MO for the fascist corporate-police state.
The next step will be an emergency declaration which will lay the legal justification for any level of shoot on sight martial law that Gov. Kemp pleases to use.
1/24/23
1/23/23
New Yorker: The Getty Family's Trust Issues - Japanese saying: "The third generation ruins the house."
"Between 1983 and 2020, the net worth of the Kochs, who prospered in fossil fuels and became right-wing mega-donors, grew twenty-five-fold, from $3.9 billion to $100 billion. The Mars-family fortune, which began in the candy business, grew by a factor of thirty-six, to $94 billion. The Waltons, of Walmart, expanded their fortune forty-four-fold, to $247 billion. The financial triumph of such clans helps explain how the imbalance of wealth in the United States has risen to levels unseen in a century. In 1978, the top 0.1 per cent of Americans owned about seven per cent of the nation’s wealth; today, according to the World Inequality Database, it owns eighteen per cent."
In 2021 the US Treasury Department issued a report stating that the top 1% of taxpayers are responsible for 28% of the nation's unpaid taxes; over $160 Billion. Most of that money is hidden in Panama, and Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, and Here.
Corporate Domination
Progress?
