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Bernie Wins South Carolina Slugfest, Critique Of Sanders From The Left, Assange Update, Coronoavirus

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Category News & Politics

News digest brought to you by the Doomstead Diner.

• HEADLINES
• PHOTOS
• WORLD
• KLEPTOCRACY
• SCIENCE
• THE DAILY SCRUM
• DIVERSIONS
• HEALTH
• Friday, Feb. 28, 2020

Global stocks fall on virus fears after Wall Street plunge

apnews.com - Global stock markets plunged further Friday on spreading virus fears, deepening a global rout after Wall Street endured its biggest one-day drop in nine years. Germany’s DAX skidded more than 5%, Tok…

A government whistleblower alleges US health workers treated coronavirus evacuees without proper protective gear or training

businessinsider.com - According to The Times, the workers went to Travis Air Force Base and March Air Reserve Base and were ordered to go into quarantined areas without proper training in how to handle infectious diseases…

Live updates: Coronavirus pummels financial markets; Japanese island declares state of emergency

washingtonpost.com - By Adam Taylor close Adam Taylor Foreign reporter who writes about a variety of subjects Email EmailBio BioFollow Follow February 28, 2020 at 5:18 AM EST refreshRefresh for updates Fears that a coron…

Nigeria confirms first coronavirus case in sub-Saharan Africa

theguardian.com - The first confirmed case of coronavirus in sub-Saharan Africa has been reported by Nigeria, as stock market losses around the world deepened amid investor alarm over a potential global pandemic. The …

Cool: Health Officials, Scientists Banned From Speaking About Coronavirus Without Mike Pence’s Approval

vanityfair.com - On Wednesday night, in an effort to allay fears about the rapidly spreading coronavirus, Donald Trump held a press conference designed to convince the American public that he’s totally got everything…

Geneva Motor Show canceled after coronavirus causes government to ban large events

theverge.com - The 2020 Geneva Motor Show is canceled after the Swiss government banned gatherings of 1,000 people or more on Friday due to concerns over the coronavirus. The ban is effective immediately and runs a…

World Bank's $500m pandemic scheme accused of 'waiting for people to die'

theguardian.com - A flagship $500m World Bank scheme to help the poorest countries deal with a health emergency is “too little too late” for the coronavirus outbreak, say health experts. The first pandemic emergency f…

Prayers at fire-bombed mosques as India's riot toll grows

apnews.com - NEW DELHI (AP) — Muslims in a northeastern neighborhood of India’s capital returned for weekly prayers at fire-bombed mosques on Friday, two days after a 72-hour clash between Hindus and Muslims that…

Russia denies responsibility for attack in northern Syria that killed 33 Turkish soldiers

washingtonpost.com - Turkish troops patrol in the town of Atareb in the rebel-held western countryside of Syria's Aleppo province on Feb. 19. (Aref Tammawi/AFP/Getty Images) By Robyn Dixon close Robyn Dixon Moscow bureau…

Brian Kemp Seemed to Really Enjoy Suppressing Votes, Congressional Report Finds

nymag.com - The House Oversight Committee held a hearing on Wednesday to address an issue that’s stymied Democrats for more than a decade: voter suppression. The event preceded a renaming ceremony for the room o…

Clearview clients include ICE, Macy's, Best Buy, leaked data reveals

dailydot.com - Clearview AI, the controversial company that made a facial recognition app that uses scraped public-facing photos online, lists several government agencies and a number of major retailers among its c…

West Texas Fracking Boom Sputters as Apache Corp. Admits Firm Lost Billions, Cites Alpine High “Challenges”

desmogblog.com - Balmorhea, Texas – Less than four years ago, oil and gas company Apache Corp. announced an oil strike worth $80 billion in one of the most pristine reaches of west Texas — the “biggest oil find” of 2…

The Red-Baiting Attacks on Bernie Sanders Ignore His Flawed Foreign Policy Record

mintpressnews.com - Bernie Sanders has once again caused a firestorm of condemnation from America’s talking heads and political mouthpieces. What did Sanders say this time that got pundits like Republican strategist and…

Houthis Release Video Showing US Destruction of Yemen's Air Defenses Before Saudi-led War Began

mintpressnews.com - Yemen’s Houthis have accused the United States of intentionally destroying the country’s air defense systems during the reign of former Yemeni president the late Ali Abdullah Saleh in preparation for…

Coronavirus Spending Bill Could be Used to Cement Spying Authorities

theintercept.com - The Trump administration’s request for $2.5 billion to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic is likely to become an unstoppable legislative vehicle — as must-pass legislation that congressional leaders o…

How Will Trump’s Supreme Court Remake America?

nytimes.com - It appears in retrospect that Thomas was obscuring his views in order to win Senate votes. On the court, he became the justice most determined to use originalism to rip up whole fields of American la…

Top General Orders Removal of All Confederate Paraphernalia From Marine Bases

slate.com - Gen. David Berger, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, on Capitol Hill on Dec. 3. Elizabeth Warren’s Deft Approach to Male Bluster, as Seen in a Disastrous Live Chris Matthews Interview For Some Rea…

In Israel, Corruption and Political Turmoil Mark Netanyahu’s Desperate Bid to Stay in Power

mintpressnews.com - Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, must be channeling the spirit of Houdini as he continues to plot his escape from one of the most convoluted political dilemmas in Israel’s history. It is n…

The Opioid Epidemic Might Be Much Worse Than We Thought

theatlantic.com - So the researchers set out to try to determine the real causes behind those unspecified drug overdoses. In the process, they uncovered something unsettling about how deaths are tracked in the U.S.: T…

Watch: Glenn Greenwald’s Exclusive Interview With Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Who Was Deposed in a Coup

theintercept.com - We also discussed the once-notorious but now forgotten extraordinary event in 2013, when Morales’s presidential plane was forced to land in Austria as he was traveling back to Bolivia from a state vi…

You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus

theatlantic.com - Even if Lipsitch’s estimates were off by orders of magnitude, they wouldn’t likely change the overall prognosis. “Two hundred cases of a flu-like illness during flu season—when you’re not testing for…

Media Vapors Over Vaping Cloud Public Health Goals

fair.org - The “vaping-related” injuries in NPR‘s headline (12/19/19) are not caused by e-cigarettes like the one in NPR‘s photo. There’s been a moralist war on nicotine vaping for years, despite the scientific…

The End of Egyptian Cotton

newyorker.com - In 1994, Ayman Nassar, an Egyptian-American who grew up in California, briefly abandoned his studies at Colorado University and followed his older brother to Egypt. “There were so many opportunities,…

Virus epidemic growing by day hits schools, concerts, parks

apnews.com - TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s schools prepared to close for almost a month and entertainers, topped by K-pop superstars BTS, canceled events as a virus epidemic extended its spread through Asia into Europe an…

Could the Covid-19 Pandemic Collapse the U.S. Healthcare System?

charleshughsmith.blogspot.com - Observers have noted that the number of available beds in U.S. hospitals is modest compared to the potential demands of a pandemic, and others have wondered who will pay the astronomical bills that w…

Rush Limbaugh So Mad Rod Rosenstein Invented Coronavirus With The Deep State And His Sister

wonkette.com - Bad news, y'all. Rush Limbaugh, the well-known Nobel-Prize-winning epidemiologist, has figured out what is going on with this whole coronavirus thing. Actually, we should say good news, because knowi…

Editor's note

February 28, 2020

SNIPPET:

Update (1100ET): Kudlow says "no higher priority" than the "health of the American people"
Agelbert NOTE: What 😈 Kudlow just said is actually true. Let me explain. For Kudlow and Mulvaney, both loyal 🦀 Trump lackeys, the definition of "American people" is a bit different than what they want you to believe it is. "American people" is a term defined by Trump's wrecking crew as those, including first of all Trump, who support 🦀 Trump. EVERYBODY ELSE IS EXPENDABLE to the 🐍 profit over people and planet BASTARDS. Yes, this is old news to most people who can add and subtract. But it is not that simple.

What you need to realize is that, even as these crooks and liars mouth mendacious platitudes to help Wall Street, they are ALSO planning, in typical fascist malice aforethought, to obtain MORE FASCIST POWER and make TONS OF MONEY out of the MISERY that COVID-19 will visit on we-the-people.

DON'T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH THIS SKULLDUGGERY! GET OUT OF THE STOCK MARKET AND ELECT PRESIDENT SANDERS WITH A PROGRESSIVE MAJORITY IN THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE.   

Full article:

News digest brought to you by the Doomstead Diner.

• HEADLINES
• PHOTOS
• SCIENCE
• WORLD
• KLEPTOCRACY
• DIVERSIONS
• THE DAILY SCRUM
• TECHNOLOGY
• Saturday, Feb. 29, 2020

Live updates: New coronavirus cases of unknown origin indicate virus is spreading in U.S.

washingtonpost.com - Workers wearing protective gears spray disinfectant as a precaution against the new coronavirus at a subway station in Seoul on Friday. (Ahn Young-Joon/AP) By Gerry Shih and close Gerry Shih China Co…

Trump barred a top health expert from speaking freely about the coronavirus. It's one of many ways the administration has muzzled scientists.

businessinsider.com - Anthony Fauci has been the director of the US' National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for 36 years. He guided the US through the AIDS and Ebola epidemics, and is now helping to…

Coronavirus latest: South Korea reports 'critical moment' after 594 new cases – live

theguardian.com - Health officials in the US have identified four “presumptive” coronavirus cases believed to have been infected within the country, in a turning point in efforts to contain Covid-19 there, Reuters is …

Trump administration tries to play down the health and economic risks of the coronavirus

washingtonpost.com - President Trump speaks to the press on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding Marine One en route to North Charleston, S.C., on Friday. (Amanda Voisard/for The Washington Post) By Anne Gea…

People can't stop touching their faces–and the CDC really wants them to

dailydot.com - People are painfully aware that they can’t stop touching their faces since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its coronavirus prevention methods. The prevention guidelines tell p…

S&P 500 posts worst week since the financial crisis as coronavirus fears flare | Markets Insider

businessinsider.com - The historically deep sell-off in US stocks showed no signs of recovery on Friday. All major US stock indexes tanked on Friday as investors continued fleeing highly volatile equities. The S&P 500 san…

Months After Supporting a Deadly Coup, WaPo Admits Bolivia's Elections Were Clean

mintpressnews.com - The Washington Post published an op-ed yesterday from a research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showing that there was no fraud in the October elections in Bolivia after all. The P…

Sam Husseini: Media Promote Militaristic Foreign Policy in Democratic Debates

mintpressnews.com - On Tuesday, CBS News hosted the latest Democratic debate in South Carolina. Described by mainstream media outlets as both “feisty” and “chaotic,” the debate was largely characterized by efforts by ot…

The Media’s Deafening Silence on Mike Bloomberg's Ties to Epstein and Other Criminals

mintpressnews.com - After his late jump into the Democratic primary and, as critics argue, purchasing his way into the primary debates, former Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg has received mixed coverage from co…

Pence Hates Science. Tasking Him With Coronavirus Response Could Cost Lives.

truthout.org - The world has been watching the encroachment of the coronavirus closely ever since it emerged from Wuhan, China. Tens of thousands have been infected in 56 countries and counting, some of them lethal…

Media's coronavirus stories trying to hurt Trump, Mick Mulvaney says as he urges public to turn off TV

cnbc.com - The Office of Management and Budget referred CNBC's request for comment on Mulvaney's remarks to the White House, which did not immediately provide a response. The Trump administration imposed travel…

Coronavirus Could Affect Availability of THESE Products from China

theorganicprepper.com - If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! The effects of the Wuhan coronavirus could end up being far more widespread than the illness itself. It is already a…

Once Saudi Allies, Tribes in Eastern Yemen's Al-Mahrah Are Now Battling Saudi Forces

mintpressnews.com - AL-MAHRAH, YEMEN — Saudi Arabia’s continued efforts to occupy Yemen’s province of al-Mahrah, which lies on the country’s border with Oman, appear only to have emboldened al-Mahrah tribes, who have re…

US Military Building Presence in Saudi Arabia for First Time in 17 Years

mintpressnews.com - Amid rising tensions with Iran, the United States is increasing its military presence in Saudi Arabia- separated from the Islamic Republic by only the Persian Gulf. Some 2,500 troops have arrived at …

Greece blocks migrants on border with Turkey

news.yahoo.com - Kastanies (Greece) (AFP) - Greece blocked hundreds of migrants trying to enter the country on Friday, hours after Turkey said it would no longer prevent them from going to Europe. At a border crossin…

Cognitive Dissonance and Outright Lies at the Edge of Extinction

kevinhester.live - In recent weeks and months I have been amazed at the general public and most scientists ability to ignore the blatant evidence that we are in early stage, non-linear runaway warming. From individual …

This is What a Society Without a Future Looks Like

eand.co - I wake every day and watch their implosion with a combination of fascination, horror, and disbelief. Like you do, perhaps. “Our societies” means Anglo ones: America, Britain, Australia perhaps. You c…

Trump Will Not Be the Churchill of the Coronavirus

nymag.com - As a private germophobe and very public xenophobe, Donald Trump has the intuitive disposition to grasp the severity of a global epidemic that originated in China. And yet in the early stages of what …

Will Spring Temperatures Stop Coronavirus?

forbes.com - Like everyone else, I am watching the Coronavirus. It has become a world-wide threat and governments are scrambling for a response. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention released a su…

The case that America’s in decline

vox.com - Is Trump a symptom or a disease? And if he’s a symptom, what’s the underlying sickness? Decadence is one possible answer. This is very close to the argument New York Times columnist Ross Douthat make…

How to Think About the Plummeting Stock Market

theatlantic.com - What investors think the public is thinking is therefore crucial. Whether the costs of the outbreak turn out to be historically large or not, there is a risk that investors’ worries will snowball dur…

Spooky 'blood snow' invades Antarctic island

livescience.com - It's summer in Antarctica, which means record-high temperatures, jarring glacial melt and — in a very metal symbol of our changing climate — a bit of blood-red snow spattered across the Antarctic Pen…

Guess who’s hiding again? Oregon Republicans hoping to squash a climate bill.

grist.org - When it came time to vote on a bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions in the Oregon Senate on Monday, the Republican state senators’ chairs were empty. All of them except state Senator Tim Knopp of B…

JP Morgan warns of end to human life in climate report

telegraph.co.uk - The human race could cease to exist without massive worldwide action to tackle global warming, economists at JP Morgan have warned in a hard-hitting report on the "catastrophic" potential of climate …

The vengeful, lawless, corporate toady Trump explodes

intrepidreport.com - The day after his acquittal by the Republican Party in a trial that banned witnesses, the unhinged Donald Trump gloated for over an hour on all the television networks. Trump flattered his courtiers,…

Uber and Lyft generate 70 percent more pollution than trips they displace: study

theverge.com - Uber and Lyft have weathered criticism about pollution and traffic congestion for years, but it’s been difficult to get an exact gauge about how much ride-hailing contributes to daily emissions. A ne…

Naomi Seibt: 'anti-Greta' activist called white nationalist an inspiration

theguardian.com - A young campaigner who has been hailed by climate sceptics as the right’s answer to Greta Thunberg has previously described a white nationalist who appeared to promote “white genocide” theories as on…

World’s most polluted cities are mostly in India: Report

hindustantimes.com - Several Chinese cities, including Beijing, have dramatically improved their air quality in recent years, while Indian metropolises remain some of the world’s worst polluted, according to a new report.

Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US - Resilience

resilience.org - Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am not an expert or a scholar or an activist. I am more of an eye-witness. I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and I have tried to put my observations into a co…

Opinion - Even NATO is unwilling to touch Turkey’s Idlib mess with a ten-foot pole

informationclearinghouse.info - February 28, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - Having been hit by the Syrian Air Force in Idlib, Turkey has called on NATO’s protection, but as much as the alliance would like a fight with Assad an…

Editor's note

Hat tip to Surly for posting a link to this EXCELLENT article by Umair Haque .

SNIPPETS:

When I look at our societies, I see three obvious patterns. They tell me our societies aren’t going to make it. Not just because, well, those patterns are there…but also because as societies we don’t seem capable of understanding or acknowledging they’re there…we won’t own up, confront, recognize, admit them. All that put together is the stuff of something very much like an inevitable social collapse. How do you treat a patient who won’t admit how sick he really is? My patterns link the hard stuff to the soft stuff — economics, politics, society, to values, priorities, what we genuinely consider worthy. They are subtle things. They’re about why we make and go on making the astonishingly foolish choices we do.

The first thing I see when I look at our societies is a pattern of staggering economic mismanagement. How is it that we had endless money for wars, for aggression, for intelligence agencies to launch covert plots to install dictators (I’m not making that up), for rage, for violence? For bank bailout? But none to bail out…the working class, the middle class, the average family? How is it that hedge funds get endless free money from the government, every single nanosecond of every single day — but literally a full half of American work “low-wage jobs”? What the? You see what I mean by staggering economic mismanagement.

And yet elites, as a whole, refuse to own up to this. Just today I saw Barack Obama tweeting how successful his economic policies were. Sorry, reality says the opposite: 75% of Americans struggle to pay the bills, 80% can’t raise a tiny amount for an emergency, incomes have stagnated for decades. Hardly the stuff of an economic miracle. But when Barack says it, you probably believe it. I get it. He’s a nice guy. His heart is in the right place. But that’s not enough to create a working society, much less economy. Every pattern I’ll speak about is a hidden one — we refuse, as a society, to own up to it. And so what can we do about it?

Underlying that pattern of staggering economic mismanagement is a set of values. We value, as a society, violence, cruelty, aggression, hostility, over and above everything else, especially their opposites: kindness, decency, gentleness. What kind of society do those values build? Can they yield anything but the dystopia we live in? ... ...

So we go on dehumanizing ourselves, and everyone around us, as a necessary consequence. We buy into the systems of our own undoing. Sorry, you aren’t good enough, pretty enough, tough enough, mean enough, selfish enough. You’re just not competitive enough to make it, son. We don’t value things like gentleness and humanity and decency — not really. They’re a sure way to get fired or demeaned or picked on or bullied, if you dare to show them, really. The story’s the same, from grade school to working life.

Full article:

News digest brought to you by the Doomstead Diner.

• HEADLINES
• PHOTOS
• WORLD
• THE DAILY SCRUM
• DIVERSIONS
• KLEPTOCRACY
• SCIENCE
• HEALTH
• Sunday, Mar. 01, 2020

Trump, on 1st death from virus in US: 'No reason to panic"

apnews.com - WASHINGTON (AP) — Seeking to reassure the American public, President Donald Trump said there was “no reason to panic” as the new coronavirus claimed its first victim inside the U.S. The White House a…

Joe Biden wins South Carolina primary, reshaping the Democratic race

washingtonpost.com - By Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and close Cleve R. Wootson Jr. National political reporter covering the 2020 presidential campaign. Email EmailBio BioFollow Follow Michael Scherer close Michael Scherer Natio…

Coughing pope cancels participating in Lenten retreat

apnews.com - VATICAN CITY (AP) — A coughing Pope Francis told pilgrims gathered for the traditional Sunday blessing that he is canceling his participation at a week-long spiritual retreat in the Roman countryside…

Inside Trump’s frantic attempts to minimize the coronavirus crisis

washingtonpost.com - By Yasmeen Abutaleb, close Yasmeen Abutaleb National reporter focusing on health policy Email EmailBio BioFollow Follow Ashley Parker and close Ashley Parker White House reporter Email EmailBio BioFo…

Clowns in the Time of Coronavirus

rollingstone.com - The president opened his response to a looming pandemic with a lie about a vaccine. The United States is “rapidly developing” a remedy to COVID-19, or the coronavirus, President Trump said, seeming m…

Coronavirus: US, Australia and Thailand report first deaths

theguardian.com - The US, Australia and Thailand have reported their first deaths from coronavirus as two frontline doctors in China died and more countries put in place bans on large gatherings and travel restriction…

Politics Trumped the Coronavirus at CPAC

nymag.com - The specter of communism, and along with that, socialism, Bernie Sanders, Chinese expansionism, big tech corporations, the national popular vote compact and a host of other conservative hobgoblins ha…

Nearly 700 vacancies at CDC because of Trump administration’s hiring freeze

washingtonpost.com - A scientist measures a deadly bird flu virus grown in a lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Atlanta headquarters. (James Gathany/CDC) By Lena H. Sun close Lena H. Sun National rep…

Cronyism and Conflicts of Interest in Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force

theintercept.com - Alex Azar, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, admitted Wednesday that a vaccine for the coronavirus might not be affordable for all Americans. “We can’t control that price,” Azar told Rep. J…

Donald Trump’s Anti-Globalist Response to a Global Coronavirus

newyorker.com - Donald Trump may be the most erratic and intemperate man ever to occupy the Presidency, but, when it comes to protecting the public health of Americans, his actions have been unfailingly consistent. …

Sunday Reading: The Coronavirus and Combatting Global Pandemics

newyorker.com - Two years ago, under a directive from the Trump Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pulled back from thirty-nine of the forty-nine countries where it had been working to pr…

Opinion | We Don’t Really Know How Many People Have Coronavirus

nytimes.com - There were, of course, some genuine barriers to understanding what exactly was happening in Wuhan: Pneumonias are not unusual in winter, and there was no way to know that there was a novel virus. (Dr…

Iran dismisses 'rumours' as virus deaths jump to 43

news.yahoo.com - Tehran (AFP) - Iran Saturday dismissed as "rumours" a report that coronavirus has killed more than 200 people in the country, one of the hardest hit by the disease, with senior officials among those …

Thousands gather at Turkish border to cross into Greece

theguardian.com - The UN has said 13,000 people have gathered to cross into Greece from Turkey following President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s vow to keep open his western borders for migrants and refugees seeking to trave…

The ‘Puppet Master’ of Putin’s Kremlin Is Out, but His Sinister Policies Are Still In

thedailybeast.com - MOSCOW—Historians of Vladimir Putin’s reign used to write volumes about the man who stood behind him, directing and manipulating, like the éminence grise of old. Kremlinologists described Vladislav S…

Trump’s Pick for Top Intelligence Job Bragged of Experience as Terror Prosecutor — But He Doesn’t Have Any

theintercept.com - Update: August 2, 2019 After this story was published, President Donald Trump announced that John Ratcliffe was withdrawing from consideration for director of national intelligence. “Our great Republ…

Anti-graft party wins Slovakia vote haunted by journalist murder

news.yahoo.com - Bratislava (AFP) - Slovak voters handed a resounding victory to the centre-right, anti-graft OLaNO opposition party in Saturday's general election, dominated by an angry backlash over the 2018 murder…

Who is 'patient zero' in the coronavirus outbreak?

bbc.com - Chinese authorities and experts are at odds about the origin of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. More specifically, who is "patient zero" for the outbreak. Also known as an index case, patient zero …

Coronavirus 'battle plan' role for retired doctors

bbc.com - Newly-retired doctors and nurses could be asked to return to the NHS as part of a UK "battle plan" to combat a possible further spread of coronavirus. If the outbreak worsens, people could also be ur…

The United States badly bungled coronavirus testing—but things may soon improve

sciencemag.org - A faulty reagent in a test kit distributed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has hampered efforts to find and confirm COVID-19 cases. By Jon CohenFeb. 28, 2020 , 5:45 PM Speed is…

William Gibson on the apocalypse: “it’s been happening for at least 100 years”

newstatesman.com - Science fiction writers are made to seem prescient by confirmation bias: with time, almost any imagined future can be said to have come true. Take the pulp space opera Agent of Chaos by Norman Spinra…

The case that America’s in decline

vox.com - Is Trump a symptom or a disease? And if he’s a symptom, what’s the underlying sickness? Decadence is one possible answer. This is very close to the argument New York Times columnist Ross Douthat make…

You Can’t Buy Memes

theatlantic.com - People who care about meme culture tend to think of making and sharing memes as amoral but somehow pure: A meme can be a package for vulgar or stupid ideas, but it almost always moves through a netwo…

Book Review: A Starry-Eyed Vision of the Future

undark.org - Having prognosticated and pontificated their way through the past decade, Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler have come to dominate the robust market in predicting the future. Diamandis, a scientist…

Opinion | Bernie Sanders Can Beat Trump. Here’s the Math.

nytimes.com - To fully harness the energy from the demographic revolution, Mr. Sanders will need to strengthen his support among African-American voters who were more resistant to his candidacy when he faced Mrs. …

Debate Moderators Frame Questions to Define Acceptable Politics

fair.org - With Super Tuesday around the corner, the Democratic presidential debates are coming to a close. The debates are ostensibly an exercise in democracy, a chance for voters to evaluate candidates’ posit…

Attacks on Indian reporters highlight growing intolerance

apnews.com - NEW DELHI (AP) — Reporting in India has never been without its risks, but journalists say attacks on the press during last week’s deadly communal riots between Hindus and Muslims in New Delhi show th…

Everybody’s Chum

currentaffairs.org - In 1948, South Carolina segregationist Strom Thurmond ran for president on the breakaway Dixiecrat ticket. Thurmond was furious that President Truman had proposed anti-lynching legislation, the elimi…

Syrian journalist corrects the record on mainstream media’s absurd Idlib coverage

thegrayzone.com - Bashari criticizes international media’s coverage of the Syrian military’s efforts to retake Idlib province, the last territory in the country controlled by al-Qaeda affiliated extremist groups. He a…

Polanski’s ‘Oscar’ divides elite world of French cinema

theguardian.com - The elite world of French cinema, one of the pillars of the country’s exception culturelle, was bitterly divided after Roman Polanski was named best director at France’s equivalent of the Oscars. Sev…

Forever-Chemicals Tap Water 

counterpunch.org - Throughout the history of Western Civilization there are times, but only on rare occasions, when people en masse feel compelled to run into the streets, similar to the storming of the Bastille 1789, …

Stock markets are headed for a 40 percent plunge, says economist who predicted financial crisis

theweek.com - The end of a very rough week for U.S. markets brought a worrying prediction. While one expert warned fallout from the global coronavirus outbreak could be "worse than the financial crisis" of 2008, t…

Coronavirus time bomb: America’s uninsured and brutal work culture

rawstory.com - Like many Americans, bartender Danjale Williams is worried about the growing threat of the novel coronavirus. What makes the 22-year-old in Washington even more frightened: The thought of medical bil…