This who-knows-for-how-long, I have been mostly reading:

• To Defeat Fascism, We Must Recognize It’s a Failed Response to Capitalist Crisis — William I. Robinson in Truthout: Yet many white members of the working class have been experiencing social and economic destabilization, downward mobility, heightened insecurity, an uncertain future and accelerated precariatization — that is, ever more precarious work and life conditions. This sector has historically enjoyed the ethnic-racial privileges that come from white supremacy vis-à-vis other sectors of the working class, but it has been losing these privileges in the face of capitalist globalization. The escalation of veiled and also openly racist discourse from above is aimed at ushering the members of this white working-class sector into a racist and a neo-fascist understanding of their condition. Racism and the appeal to fascism offer workers from the dominant racial or ethnic group an imaginary solution to real contradictions; recognition of the existence of suffering and oppression, even though its solution is a false one. The parties and movements associated with such projects have put forth a racist discourse, less coded and less mediated than that of mainstream politicians, targeting the racially oppressed, ethnic or religious minorities, immigrants and refugees in particular as scapegoats. Yet in this age of globalized capitalism, there is little possibility in the United States or elsewhere of providing such benefits, so that the “wages of fascism” now appear to be entirely psychological. The ideology of 21st-century fascism rests on irrationality — a promise to deliver security and restore stability that is emotive, not rational. It is a project that does not and need not distinguish between the truth and the lie.
• Joe Biden’s drive for diversity in top political jobs is only an illusion of change — Nesrine Malik in the Guardian: Biden’s diverse picks, the “very best of the nation”, are not representatives of the people who put them into office as much as they are figureheads. They are ambassadors with no brief other than to stand as proof of meritocracy – if you work hard and are “the very best”, you too can get a great gig. Diversity in government isn’t about solidarity, it’s used as proof of the soundness of the system: the elevation of women in particular as “girl boss feminists” who will not be interrupted, the reduction of the deeply serious business of government to inspiration politics. […] When people are hired to make a government “look” a certain way, by governing parties with conservative politics, it’s usually a way of making change so everything stays the same – or gets worse. Little demonstrates that more than the “most diverse parliament in history” that came to Westminster in 2019. The election of a number of female and black and minority ethnic MPs to the Conservative party, and their rise in the ranks of the cabinet, has produced a government that feels more comfortable in doubling down on policies such as the hostile environment, and where senior BAME ministers have been recruited to the task of denying structural racism.
• What would a state-owned Amazon look like? Ask Argentina — Cecilia Rikap in openDemocracy: Last October, Argentina announced the creation of an online marketplace called “Correo Compras”. The platform is to be run by a state-owned company, Correo Argentino, which is also the country’s official postal service. Argentina has been severely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, and its lockdown has been among the longest. Even before the pandemic internet penetration in Argentina was already high (74%), and since the lockdown e-commerce and other digital services thrived in the country. Through its publicly owned option, the government aims to offer an alternative to Latin America’s current e-commerce private octopus.
• Before — Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weinersmith:
  
• Australia’s spy agencies caught collecting COVID-19 app data — Zack Whittaker at TechCrunch could have knocked me down with a feather: Australia’s intelligence agencies have been caught “incidentally” collecting data from the country’s COVIDSafe contact-tracing app during the first six months of its launch, a government watchdog has found. The report, published Monday by the Australian government’s inspector general for the intelligence community, which oversees the government’s spy and eavesdropping agencies, said the app data was scooped up “in the course of the lawful collection of other data.” […] The report did not say when the incidental collection stopped, but noted that the agencies were “taking active steps to ensure compliance” with the law, and that the data would be “deleted as soon as practicable,” without setting a firm date.
• Do You Know Your Microsoft Productivity Score? — Jacob Silverman in the New Republic: The tech giant recently announced the wide availability of Productivity Score, declaring, “As leaders, it’s our job to make sure people have the tools they need to do their best work. But tools alone are not enough—you also need to help everyone in your organization build the habits that harness the true power of those tools. Until now, it’s been difficult for leaders to get insight into these habits and understand how to help people make the most of the technology they invest in.” (Their emphasis, of course.) The score is a feature within Microsoft 365’s Workplace Analytics, which the company advertises as a way for employers to “harmonize productivity and well being,” “enhance organizational resiliency,” “transform meeting culture,” and “increase customer focus.” Critics and labor advocates say this all amounts to an invasive method of monitoring and cataloging worker behavior, producing inscrutable metrics and forming databases that may be used for union-busting or to tilt the playing field toward employers during annual reviews.
• Non Sequitur — by Wiley Miller:
  
• Mythbuster: What is quantitative easing and how does it work? — Richard Murphy provides more detail than most people want or need to know. The punchline is this: Politically it has suited the government’s narrative to maintain this pretence that interest is owing on these [BoE-held] gilts. As a consequence of this pretence, successive governments have been able to claim that the cost of government debt servicing has been more onerous than has actually been the case, and have claimed that this has prevented it from undertaking other forms of spending. This claim has been disingenuous. In practice, the income received by the APF as a result of the payment of this interest belongs to the Treasury as a consequence of the management agreement reached between it and the Bank of England, previously noted. The result has been that the income in question has been returned to HM Treasury, as a matter of fact. The accounts of the APF make this clear. The refund has not, however, been used to cancel the interest charge recorded in the government’s own accounts: it does, instead, appear to be shown as part of the ‘other income’ of the government. In accounting terms this might be called a misrepresentation. The two sums should be offset to present a true and fair view of the interest cost that the government actually incurs. The only possible explanation for this misrepresentation has been that it has suited government purposes to make it.
• The Purging of Jeremy Corbyn - The Truth — Esha Krishnaswamy at Historic.ly: In March of this year, we reviewed leaks from an internal report commissioned by the Labour Party ahead of the EHRC report. I have thoroughly read the report and instead of finding instances of anti-semitism amongst Corbyn supporters, the report found instances of sabotage, leaks, and betrayal by the staff of the Labour Party to their constituency: the working class of Britain. Governance and Legal Unit (GLU) was responsible for handling complaints from members regarding anti-semitism, racism and sexism within the ranks. Instead of handling such complaints, the GLU was more interested in attacking and purging Corbyn supporters. […] On April, 2017, when Theresa May called for a general snap election, instead of working to make sure that labour wins as many seats as possible, the staffers intentionally sabotaged Corbyn, his campaign and some members of the Labour Party. In February, they already talked about sabotaging the election in hopes of electing a new leader.
• Secret Amazon Reports Expose the Company’s Surveillance of Labor and Environmental Groups — Lauren Kaori Gurley at Vice: A trove of more than two dozen internal Amazon reports reveal in stark detail the company's obsessive monitoring of organized labor and social and environmental movements in Europe, particularly during Amazon's “peak season” between Black Friday and Christmas. The reports, obtained by Motherboard, were written in 2019 by Amazon intelligence analysts who work for the Global Security Operations Center, the company's security division tasked with protecting Amazon employees, vendors, and assets at Amazon facilities around the world. The documents show Amazon analysts closely monitor the labor and union-organizing activity of their workers throughout Europe, as well as environmentalist and social justice groups on Facebook and Instagram. They also indicate, and an Amazon spokesperson confirmed, that Amazon has hired Pinkerton operatives—from the notorious spy agency known for its union-busting activities—to gather intelligence on warehouse workers.
• Bizarro — by Wayno and Piraro: