The Aftermath of Ghost Ship and the San Pablo Fires

This is important to hear

Media’s Grim Addiction to Perseverance Porn

Perseverance Porn.  What a instructive label for something I have always felt very uneasy with that is expecially abundant on Facebook.

    A healthy press would take these anecdotes of “can do” spirit and ask bigger questions, like why are these people forced into such absurd hardship? Who benefits from skyrocketing college costs? Why does the public transit in this person’s city not have subsidies for the poor? Why aren’t employers forced to offer time off for catastrophic accidents? But time and again, the media mindlessly tells the bootstrap human interest story, never questioning the underlying system at work..

Media’s Grim Addiction to Perseverance Porn | FAIR:

We can go way deeper in the direction of understanding the propogana of poverty in our neoliberal state.  Don’t Lie to Poor Kids About Why They’re Poor
Those at the bottom — and the top — deserve to know why their experiences are so different.
August 3, 2017 | Josh Hoxie
Originally in OtherWords

     Work hard and you’ll get ahead — that’s the mantra driven into young people across the country.
     But what happens when children born into poverty run face first into the crushing reality that the society they live in really isn’t that fair at all?
     As new research shows, they break down.  A just released study published in the journal Child Development tracked the middle school experience of a group of diverse, low-income students in Arizona. The study found that the kids who believed society was generally fair typically had high self-esteem, good classroom behavior, and less delinquent behavior outside of school when they showed up in the sixth grade.
     When those same kids left in the eighth grade, though, each of those criteria had degraded — they showed lower self-esteem and worse behavior.

With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons

This is a very important article for understanding what is in it for the neo conservatives and how the DNC and beltway democrats are playing both sides.  Also under the cloak of opposition to Trump the nation is marching to war

     There's a common misconception that neoliberalism & neoconservatism are mutually exclusive. By definition most folks in Washington are both.  The only thing that changes is the political party that  the neocons choose to align with.  Currently it's the Dems.          -- Caitlin Johnstone‏ 

The public debate in this country seems ever more simple in its clear divisions of two sides at war for the minds of the people.  It is anything but two sided once you strip away the knee jerk narrative you find a cast of characters planning and coalescing power to which the public is completely unaware.

Glenn Greenwald's article in the Intercept is full of evil doers and their connections.
With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons:



'via Blog this'

Pop Quiz -- Under what circumstance should you talk to the police?

Black? White? Young? Old? Guilty? Innocent?

Not even there? Wasn't even driving?  Was at my mother's all night?

Is there any circumstance that justifies speaking to the police?

OK, ready?  Here's the answer.  Even if you know the answer is no you should watch this video to understand how innocently wrong you could be.

Law professor James Duane is a fast talker and entertaining in this 30 min. video

A Law Professor Explains Why You Should Never Talk to Police - VICE:

Sci-Hub’s cache of pirated papers is so big, subscription journals are doomed, data analyst suggests | Science | AAAS

Sci-Hub is of course illegal but this is totally on its way and plots a course for the liberation of information that has been held hostage by gatekeepers.

     There is no doubt that Sci-Hub, the infamous—and, according to a U.S. court, illegal—online repository of pirated research papers, is enormously popular. (See Science’s investigation last year of who is downloading papers from Sci-Hub.) But just how enormous is its repository? That is the question biodata scientist Daniel Himmelstein at the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues recently set out to answer, after an assist from Sci-Hub.
     Their findings, published in a preprint on the PeerJ journal site on 20 July, indicate that Sci-Hub can instantly provide access to more than two-thirds of all scholarly articles, an amount that Himmelstein says is “even higher” than he anticipated. For research papers protected by a paywall, the study found Sci-Hub’s reach is greater still, with instant access to 85% of all papers published in subscription journals. For some major publishers, such as Elsevier, more than 97% of their catalog of journal articles is being stored on Sci-Hub’s servers—meaning they can be accessed there for free.

 Sci-Hub’s cache of pirated papers is so big, subscription journals are doomed, data analyst suggests | Science | AAAS:

Single Payer -- They say it's not possible!

Here's what happened when a Republican senator challenged a Canadian doctor on their single-payer health care system. pic.twitter.com/eT7t7pGFWR

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) August 1, 2017

Is Capitalism in Crisis? Latest Trends of a System Run Amok

C.J. Polychroniou, a political economist/political scientist here interviews David M. Kotz, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism (Harvard University Press, 2015).

      Today, the question that should haunt progressive-minded and radical scholars and activists alike is whether capitalism itself is in crisis, given that the latest trends in the system are working perfectly well for global corporations and the rich, producing new levels of wealth and increasing inequality.

 This is a long view analysis of economics and capital as a national and global system.  It could be a great place to start a discussion of the concept "small is beautiful" as it begs the question: Is a localized, sustainable social and economic order possible?  This is of course a very important question as the framework of discussions of capitalism most often does not address ecological sustainability which is so critical as we pass  400 ppm atmospheric CO2 which already guarantees climate disasters and threatens survival on the planet. This article concludes that a state centralized socialism has already proven the most effective model to address such a crisis but leaves us wondering how to best structure a stable state social order in the long run on a small planet.



This discussion continues:

     Having survived the financial meltdown of 2008, corporate capitalism and the financial masters of the universe have made a triumphant return to their "business as usual" approach: They are now savoring a new era of wealth, even as the rest of the population continues to struggle with income stagnation, job insecurity and unemployment.
     This travesty was made possible in large part by the massive US government bailout plan that essentially rescued major banks and financial institutions from bankruptcy with taxpayer money (the total commitment on the part of the government to the bank bailout plan was over $16 trillion). In the meantime, corporate capitalism has continued running recklessly to the precipice with regard to the environment, as profits take precedence not only over people but over the sustainability of the planet itself.
     Capitalism has always been a highly irrational socioeconomic system, but the constant drive for accumulation has especially run amok in the age of high finance, privatization and globalization.

The outcome of all this is not at all obvious and in fact as this article insinuates, the strongest possibility in our current political landscape is a fascist strongman and more war and oppression, rather than a new utopian renaissance.  I for one will not give up my dreams for peace and justice. In fact, such dreams may be all that can save us.

Is Capitalism in Crisis? Latest Trends of a System Run Amok: