New or Noteworthy

Meeting Sundays 3-5 pm During COVID-19 shutdown we will meet on-line. E-mail josh@altbanking.net if you want to join us.

Ways to help: Volunteer, share, help neighbors, donate blood, observe social distancing, make sure everyone is counted in #census2020, support musicians and artists

Current topics

Max Blumenthal: Why Are Progressives Voting For Ultimate Screwing Of America?

Health Premiums May Jump 40%, But Biden Still Not Interested in Medicare For All

1. Black Garbage Workers Go on Wildcat Strike in Pittsburgh as General Strike Wave Spreads
2. Anne Boyer: this virus, masks
3. Our Political System Is Hostile to Real Reform
4. Dissent:
   • Belabored Stories
   • Naomi Klein: Left politics in the age of climate change (and COVID-19)
5. Mike Davis on Coronavirus Politics
6. Organizer Mariame Kaba: We Need a People’s Bailout to Confront Coronavirus
7. Coronavirus Economics with Grace Blakeley
8. Debt Collection Industry Deems Itself Essential to “Financial Health” of Consumers, Fights Covid-19 Shutdown
9. How the Pandemic Will End
10. Coronavirus in South America: How it became a class issue
11. Brazil’s Bolsonaro threatens dictatorship over COVID-19 crisis
12. Over 900 Florida Healthcare Workers Sign Petition Asking Governor to Order People to Shelter in Place Amid COVID-19
13. Anne Boyer: this virus, masks
14. Instacart workers plan to strike Monday to demand safety gear and hazard pay during COVID-19
15. The Workers Who Face the Greatest Coronavirus Risk
16. The Digital Divide: Researching the Challenges of Online Learning for Many Students
17. When a Pandemic Strikes Americans Who Are Already Suffering
18. AOC angrily slams ‘crumbs for our families’ in a fiery speech about coronavirus stimulus on House floor
19. The Coronavirus Stimulus Bill Is a $2 Trillion Slush Fund for Washington Cronies
20. Four Ways You Can Take Caring Action Around Coronavirus – Even if You’re Overwhelmed

March 8 to 14, 2020

1. Data and Race:
   • Yeshimebeit Milner: Abolish big data
   • Ruha Benjamin: Race after technology
2. Coronavirus:
   • Poverty Amidst Pandemic: A Moral Response to COVID-19 ‘when you lift from the bottom, everybody rises’
   • A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
   • John Oliver: Coronavirus II If you want, skip the first 11:20 of complaints about Trump the last 10 minutes of humor and useful advice.
     • We should have sympathy for Liverpool and John Oliver: COVID-19 is putting a damper on a truly extraordinary season
   • NYPD endangering themselves and us. See 3rd paragraph
     • ‘An NYPD bulletin sent to officers says officers who have had close contact — less than 6 feet for more than a few minutes — with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 “can keep working.” The NYPD recommends officers call the medical division and call out sick only if they start to develop symptoms such as coughing or a fever.
   • Socialist VA health system could help in crisis but Department of Health hasn’t asked, says VA Secretary (the socialist part is an editorial comment Secretary did not say)
   • If the Defense Production Act can be used for the “war” on the “chinese virus” could be it used in war on poverty?
   • Freedom Rider: COVID-19 Covers Up War and Financial Collapse
   • COVID-19: Africa told to prepare for worst. What’s the response?
   • Prisons and the COVID-19 Pandemic: What Must Be Done NOW to Prevent Catastrophe
   • Pandemic Journal: This running series of brief dispatches by New York Review writers will document the coronavirus outbreak with regular updates from around the world.
3. Politics and Coronavirus:
   • The Democratic party’s leadership is failing the test posed by the coronavirus
   • While mainstream Democrats fumble, Bernie Sanders is modeling a serious response to COVID-19
4. Politics
   • Progressive Democrat unseats tgoglodyte Congressman
     • Rep. Dan Lipinski’s upset has symbolic ramifications for the Democratic caucus
   • Biden won the Democratic presidential nomination by cheating
5. Severe blood shortage due to blood drives cancelled for COVID-19
6. Not really about coronavirus, just exploiting a pandemic to advance agenda:
   • Trump accused of exploiting coronavirus pandemic to advance ‘truly disgraceful’ union-busting effort
   • Trump is considering a fossil fuel bailout, amid coronavirus worries
   • EPA Proposes Broad Science Restrictions in Midst of Coronavirus Pandemic
7. The EARN IT bill is the government’s plan to scan every message on-line
8. Public health experts: Single-payer systems coping with coronavirus more effectively than for-profit model
9. NASA fixes Mars lander by having it hit itself with a shovel

February 23 to March 7, 2020

1. Chile: Despite Harsh Repression Of Thousands In Dignity Square Protesters Prevail
2. End of the Corporation? It’s time to make profit-making, shareholder controlled, corporations a thing of the past
3. Reposting because it should not be missed: Suresh Naidu on Capitalism, Labor Power, and Inequality 90 minute Sean Carroll Mindscape podcast
4. How Many Times Do the Drug Companies Have to be Paid for Their Research?
5. Meet the Trump Fan Accused of Registering Democrats as Republicans
6. The Political Elite vs Bernie
7. Lee Camp: The Exxxit Polls Are Way Off! 
8. MASSACHUSETTS 2020 DEMOCRATIC PARTY PRIMARY Exit Poll Versus Reported Vote Count
9. No ballot box is safe: Volunteers hacked into all 100 voting machine types they went after
10. Elite Media Dismiss Voter Suppression on Grounds That It’s ‘Complicated’
11. Krystal Ball: New York Times clownishly misunderstands the left
12. Coronavirus was produced in a US/Israeli laboratory: Former CIA intel officer
13. ‘Where was your patient zero?’ Chinese official speculates AMERICANS may have infected Wuhan at army games & calls to ‘come clean’
14. US Summons Chinese Envoy Over Claims That American Military Brought Coronavirus to Wuhan – Report
15. Donald Trump to declare a national state of emergency – as Brazilian leader he shook hands with claims test shows he does NOT have coronavirus after his own son said he did
16. Warmonger Tom Cotton Openly Threatens China, Claims Beijing ‘Inflicted’ Coronavirus on the World
17. Trump linked to company making covid-19 tests
18. U.S. coronavirus testing threatened by lab materials shortage
19. Sick People Across the U.S. Say They Are Being Denied the Coronavirus Test
20. Coronavirus will bankrupt more people than it kills — and that’s the real global emergency
21. Coronavirus inevitable in prison-like US immigration centers, doctors say
22. Michigan workers got screwed out of sick time by Snyder, GOP. Now coronavirus is here.
23. “Tear Gas Can’t Stop Us”: Police Fire Projectiles At Ohio Students After School Moves To Close Due To Coronavirus
24. Government Fails at COVID-19 Test Distribution But Has $1.5 TRILLION for Wall St.
    • Fed to Inject $1.5 Trillion in Bid to Prevent ‘Unusual Disruptions’ in Markets
    • The Fed’s $1.5 trillion intervention, explained
25. Biden vows to bring back Obamacare’s individual mandate penalty for not having insurance
26. Joe Biden Threatens to Slap Detroit Autoworker in the Face
27. Obama administration was corrupt, more and more evidence reveals daily
28. Woman who grew up in Oregon faces deportation
29. EPA scientists found a toxic chemical damages fetal hearts. The Trump White House rewrote their assessment.
30. 8 Heartbreaking Cases Where Land Was Stolen From Black Americans Through Racism, Violence and Murder
    • Prosperity Made Blacks a Target for Land Grabs
    • Torn from the Land
31. Israel drags Palestinian boy away from his mother
    • Palestinian Boy Shot by Israeli Policeman Loses his Eye
    • Israel cop filmed firing at Palestinian children through school gate
    • Gaza: Murdering Children for Sport
    • ‘Damning Evidence’ of War Crimes in Gaza: Israeli Soldiers Compete to Break Legs of Palestinian Protesters
32. Trump Bans Unions at Defense Department
33. US now openly admits its goal in Syria is to make it ‘difficult’ for Moscow and Damascus to defeat terrorists
34. Public Benches In Iowa City Replaced So That Homeless People Can Lie Down Across Them
35. Judge orders Chelsea Manning released from jail

February 23 to March 7, 2020

1. Energy Corporation releases despicable sexual image with Greta Thunberg’s face
2. Coronavirus Cancellations: Every Film, TV Show, and Event Affected by the Outbreak
3. Psychiatrist: Trump Needs Urgent MRI, Obvious Dementia Symptoms
4. Robert Reich: Mitch McConnell’s Do Nothing Republicans
5. ICE’s NY Office used rigged algorithm to keep virtually all arrestees in detention. ACLU thinks its unconstitutional
6. Karl Taylor Died in a New York Prison. Now the State Has Agreed to Pay Millions.
7. Video Shows NYPD Officers Violently Arresting Young Black Man For Allegedly Smoking Marijuana In Park
   • NYPD investigates use of force during arrest
8. Campaign news: Not endorsements
   • Warren Lying About Bernie & Superdelegates
   • Compilation Of Biden’s Public Lies & Plagiarism
   • Kim Iverson thinks Super Tuesday: Joe Biden Actually Had A BAD Night
   • Democracy Now! takes apart Biden’s past the way mainstream media fails to
   • More Democracy Now! on Biden, other election news
   • You might not hear much about them, but there are other elections going on in 2020, including the return of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions

We are thinking of organizing an event on something in the connections between race, technology and data. These posts are food for thought.

• Work of :
  • Ruha Benjamin
  • Yeshi Milner
  • Will Frey
  • Matale Nkonde
  • Danya Glabau
  • Cathy O’Neil: Comments to Congress regarding AI tools and housing discrimination
• Technology and Social Justice Initiatives
• Data for Black Lives
• Technology for Social Justice
• More than Code
• Tech workers coalition
  • Open Letter to Zuckerberg from Data for Black Lives
  • Amazon workers demand Jeff Bezos cancel facial recognition work
• Robots as slaves: Article from 1950s Part 1, 2, 3
• Equitable Internet Initiative

February 16 to 22, 2020

1. The Free Market Isn’t Up to the Coronavirus Challenge
2. Suresh Naidu on Capitalism, Monopsony, and Inequality 90 minute Sean Carroll Mindscape podcast
3. Only a Green New Deal can douse the fires of Eco-Fascism
4. Not Cleaning Up the Wreckage Left by Innovation
5. Irish election results:
   • Mary Lou McDonald could take Sinn Féin into the political mainstream
   • This Month’s Elections in Ireland Are a Historic Opportunity
   • The end of Irish history? Reflections on the Celtic Tiger
6. Amazon:
   • Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos | FRONTLINE full 2 hour film
   • Filmmaker Tracks Bezos’ ‘Rise And Reign’ And How Amazon Became Inescapable half-hour interview
7. Ilhan Omar under fire for saying benefits of G.I. Bill should be applied ‘to everybody’
8. Activist arrested for calling Xi Jinping ’clueless’ on coronavirus crisis
9. Austerity’s Impact
10. George Washington was a ‘liar who wore dentures made from hippo ivory and who once slapped a slave’, new biography claims
11. Bernie Sanders will be good for American economy, top economist says after Goldman Sachs attack
12. George Zimmerman sues Warren, Buttigieg for tweets marking Trayvon Martin’s birthday
13. ‘Bury them alive!’: White South Africans fear for their future as horrific farm attacks escalate
14. Fighting mounts as Washington backs Turkish attack on Syria, Russia
15. Bloomberg Files:
    • Guardian in 2011 Michael Bloomberg: Occupy Wall Street is trying to destroy jobs
    • Krugman: Have Zombies Eaten Bloomberg’s and Buttigieg’s Brains?
    • CNN in 2010: Bloomberg: Obamacare is a ‘disgrace’
    • His stop and frisk “apology” even makes it worse. He ‘sort of regrets’ it. ‘When I realized it got out of hand I cut it back.’ Translation, after a decade and a lawsuit, he ‘realized’ it was ‘out of hand’.
    • Guy tricks Bloomberg Into Saying Stop And Frisk During Selfie
    • Bloomberg’s Billions: How the Candidate Built an Empire of Influence
    • Mike Bloomberg ran Stasi-style police and surveillance operations against Muslim-Americans
    • Bloomberg quietly plotting brokered convention strategy

February 9 to 15, 2020

1. Campaign news: Not endorsements
   • Racist Bloomberg audio emerges, Trump calls him out
   • Warren skewers Bloomberg for blaming financial crisis on end of ‘redlining’
   • Here they come again: the kind of Neoliberal Democrats who prefer Trump to Sanders
   • Media Caught Repeatedly Lying To Boost Buttigieg
2. Take it from an activist who was there: Stop and frisk cost New Yorkers their lives
3. Fires and floods: maps of Europe predict scale of climate catastrophe
4. Left wing Sinn Féin victory reshapes Ireland’s political landscape
5. Grow, not grow, or degrow?
6. Trump’s War Budget Slashes Support for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid
7. United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture on the Julian Assange Case
8. El Salvador’s President Militarizes Legislature to Strengthen Police Force
9. ‘Parasite’ Is a Class-Conscious Climate Parable
10. #MenToo: The hidden tragedy of male sexual abuse in the military
11. Neo-Nazi group membership will not get you booted from army, military tells Congress
12. Turning up the pressure for integration, NYC students plan citywide school boycott

February 2 to February 8, 2020

1. Climate Change Needs To Be on the Balance Sheet
2. Rashida Tlaib Booed Hillary at Bernie Rally, Mass Pearl Clutching Ensued
3. Some DNC Members Want to Outright STEAL the Nomination from Bernie Sanders if He Wins
4. MSNBC’s Anti-Bernie Bias Is HILARIOUS
5. ‘Uninsurable and Unhedgeable’: Central Banks Warn of Financial Crisis from Climate Change
6. Risk of ‘stranded assets’ from 2025, new oil report warns
7. The Pandemic of Xenophobia and Scapegoating
8. Iowa Caucus:
   Chaos Continues in Iowa as Democrats Mistakenly Award Delegates for Bernie Sanders to Deval Patrick
   Pete Buttigieg Tries to Guaidó the Iowa Caucus
   What REALLY happened in Iowa? Was it caucus corruption? Part 1
9. Democrats Cheered For Regime Change During State Of The Union Address
   (older article, relevant here):
   Venezuela’s Election System Holds Up As A Model For The World
10. DNA exonerates man who spent 25 years in prison for 1985 rape he did not commit
11. Ben Carson mocked for being the one Black face in a sea of white Trumpers
12. Bloomberg’s Housing Policies Are a Joke. Why Is Matthew Desmond Cosigning Them?
13. How NYC’s homeless ‘charities’ cash in — ruthlessly
14. Bernie Sanders Vows to Reverse ‘Every single thing’ Trump has done on Immigration as he surge to first in New Hampshire Poll
15. Police Responding to Man Having a Seizure, Shoot and Kill His Service Dog
16. ICE agents, while arresting undocumented Mexican immigrant, wind up shooting second man in wild Brooklyn street brawl
17. The Aristocracy of Finance: History of liberalism through eyes of “The Economist” A better interview of Alexander Zevin than the one posted a few weeks ago.
18. On the Media: Cancel This
19. Jeff Bezos
    • ‘Impressive and a little scary’: How Amazon and Jeff Bezos made Washington a second home
    • Why Are Billionaires Like Jeff Bezos So Interested in Space?

26 January to 02022020

1. Brexit is actually here, sort of
2. The U.S. Is Recycling Its Big Lie About Iraq To Target Iran
3. An American capitalist seeing the bright side of plague … Commerce Secretary Ross Says Coronavirus May Help ‘Accelerate Return of Jobs
4. Crisis, what crisis? Wall Street Venture-Fund Curbs to Be Eased in Volcker Revamp
5. Endless War is a Disastrous (But Profitable) Enterprise
6. 1619 Project debated:
   • How we think about the term ‘enslaved’ matters
   • The Hidden Stakes of the 1619 Controversy
7. Trump and Netanyahu Dictate Terms of Palestinian Surrender to Israel and Call It Peace
8. Alan Dershowitz’s latest defense of Trump would let presidents get away with almost anything Senate Republicans endorse it
9. Michael Hudson on the History of Debt Cancellation, Austerity in Europe, January 2020
10. Supreme Court’s ‘public charge’ decision sows confusion among immigrants using public benefits
11. Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet by Tim Jackson
12. ‘Everything Is Not Fine’: Nobel Economist Calls on Humanity to End Obsession With GDP

January 19 to 25, 2020

1. Review Of 22 Studies All Agree Medicare For All Less Expensive Than Insurance-System
2. Biden Makes His Most Deceitful, Trumpian Accusation About Sanders’ Campaign Yet
3. Joe Biden Has the Same Ignorant Stance on Video games as Trump Does
4. Ocasio-Cortez’s Reality Check About the Democratic Party: They’re “Not a Left Party”
5. Zephyr Teachout: Why Bernie Sanders Should NOT Give Joe Biden a Pass for His Corruption
6. The 1619 Project and the falsification of history: An analysis of the New York Times’ reply to five historians
7. Replant the American Dream. “Your USA today is the world’s most hated nation”. Why?
8. The Refined Sociopathy of ‘The Economist‘
9. Media resurrects debunked “Bernie Bro” myth as desperation to beat Bernie grows
10. French “yellow vests” protest for Assange
11. How new creative actions are fueling Chile’s uprising
    • The Challenge for Chile and the World
12. The Housing Crisis is intentional and Black communities are fighting back
    • Mothers who occupied vacant Oakland house will be allowed to buy it
13. Donald Trump vs The Presidency

January 12 to 18, 2020

1. Poverty Is the New Draft: Truthdig or Real News Network
2. Mothers 4 Housing and the Legacy of Black Anti-Growth Politics
3. Propaganda Machine: The Military Roots of Cambridge Analytica’s Psychological Manipulation of Voters
4. Harry & Meghan and Marx
5. 25 ideas that will shape the 2020s
6. Financial Times: Forecasting the world in 2020
7. “The Great Hack”: Big Data Firms Helped Sway the 2016 Election. Could It Happen Again in 2020?
8. There should be clear warnings’: hair dye cancer risk stokes fear in black women
9. Rent Control Brings Big Crowd to Massachusetts State House
10. Report Sees de Blasio’s ‘Mandatory Inclusionary Housing’ Falling Short
11. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says Dow’s record high is meaningless for many Americans
12. Stiglitz: The Truth About the Trump Economy
13. Heastie drills down on homelessness, affordable housing
14. George Zimmerman Says He Lives In Fear Because Of Rappers
15. Emotional Currency: How money shapes human relationships
16. Martin Luther King, Jr: Three Evils of Society speech
17. Not endorsements but giving attention to presidential candidates and media coverage of them
    • CNN Reveals Bernie Sanders Running For President Of Country With History Of Sexism
    • Progressive Destroys CNN’s Garbage Bernie/Warren Reporting
    • WATCH: Petty Elizabeth Warren REJECTS Bernie Sanders’ Handshake, HEATED Exchange Follows
    • Audio Confirms Warren’s Attack On Bernie As Predicted!
    • Krystal Ball: The polls are in, Warren’s ploy backfires spectacularly
18. Israeli troops killed British photographer in Gaza (old incident, new story)
19. 14 states sue to block Trump administration’s food stamp cuts
20. The National Archives Says ‘We Made A Mistake’ After Erasing Criticism Of Trump From Photo

January 5 to 11, 2020

1. NYC Public Advocate Holds Rally To Dispel Myths About New Bail Reform Law
   • Williams dispels bail reform myths
2. Fresh Calls to #RaiseTheWage After Study Shows $1 Increase Could Prevent Thousands of Suicides
3. U.S. Anti-War Protesters Demonstrate
4. U.S. Anti-War movement is fired up
5. A Report Card On The American Project
6. Iran:
   • Iranian Blood Is on Our Hands, Too
   • Trump Has a Bizarre Idea of Winning
   • Iraq votes to expel U.S. troops after Iran Gen. Qasem Soleimani’s killing
   • We Really Must Stop Starting Wars
   • Iran and the need for Black activism
7. Trump is a criminal but Dem
8. World Bank warns of coming global debt crisis (but probably not imminent)
9. France strikes: nurses, teachers and lawyers join pension protests
10. How the oil industry has spent billions to control the climate change conversation

Dec. 29 2019 to Jan. 4, 2020

1. Happy New Year! Hoping it is better than 2019
   • Though not starting out very well …
   • “A nasty, brutal fight”: what a US-Iran war would look like
   • The Law and Consequences of the Recent Airstrikes in Iraq
   • Congress Was Not Notified Ahead Of Soleimani Air Strike
   • Anti-war movement must adapt to changing imperial wars
   • ‘Right Now Is the Moment to Decide If You Are Pro-Peace or Not’: Ocasio-Cortez Joins Progressive Chorus Against War With Iran
   • The Trump Administration Just Killed Iran’s Most Famous Military Commander. We’re Not Ready for What’s Next.
   • ‘Our President Will Start a War With Iran Because He Has Absolutely No Ability to Negotiate’ says Donald Trump
   • Corporate Media Turns to Warhawks, Including Former Bush Officials, to Beat Drums of War on Iran Nothing has been learned from 2003. Nothing.
2. Smile-to-pay: Chinese shoppers turn to facial payment technology
3. Starship Technologies Raises $40 Million To Expand Its Food-Delivery Robots On College Campuses
4. U.S. War on Black and Brown
5. ‘A New Age of Pogroms’
6. A national movement for community control of police
7. New Bail and Discovery Laws in New York
8. Beyond GDP
9. “Don’t Shoot the Messengers”: Amazon Accused of Threatening to Fire Climate Activists
10. ‘Just the Beginning’: Illinois Gov. Pardons Over 11,000 on Eve of Recreational Cannabis Legalization
    

Earlier Posts

July – Dec. 2019
Jan. – June 2019

July – Dec. 2018
Jan. – June 2018
July – Dec. 2017
Jan. – June 2017
July – Dec. 2016
Jan. – June 2016