Author: rsheppard

Daily News Digest December 2020

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Daily News Digest September 2020

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Daily News Digest June 2020

Daily News Digest May 2020

Daily  News Digest April 2020

Daily New Digest March 2020

Daily New Digest February 2020

Daily New Digest January 2020

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: (1) Austerity, (2) Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and (3)  The Iron Heel

Always Remember That Obama Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature, Established, in writing,  the United States Capitalist Austerity Program  — The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!

Democracy?:  As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day:

Stokely Carmichael: ‘If You Work Hard!’

Quotes of the Day:

At a rally in Hersey, Pa., last week, multiple Trump supporters threatened violence if their leader was removed from power, with one man invoking his “.357 Magnum,” and another predicting a second civil war. One woman explained, “As a Trump supporter, I believe in him.” Do such statements not sound like those of cult members? How else to explain the fact that Trump has convinced millions of Americans that he stands up for them even while his policies have disproportionately benefited wealthy corporations? How else to make sense of how he spews lies at a record-breaking pace while at the same time claiming he is the only one telling the truth? — To Understand Trump, You Must Understand His Cult

Videos Of the Day:

“The First Cell”: Dr. Azra Raza on Why the “Slash-Poison-Burn Approach” to Cancer Has Failed

How to Save the World from Financialization

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.

Amid Impeachment Vote, Congress Passes Record Military Budget And Funds Trump’s Border Wall Three pieces of legislation passed Tuesday demonstrate the bipartisan support for war, austerity and attacks on democratic rights within the American political establishment.First, the Senate voted to approve the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by the lopsided margin of 86–8, sending the record $738 billion military bill to President Trump to sign into law. Later the same day, the Democratic-controlled House of epresentatives approved two appropriations bills totaling nearly $1.4 trillion to provide funding to the military and other federal government agencies through September 2020. The right-wing basis on which the Democrats have impeached Trump is underscored by the bipartisan support for the fascistic president’s political agenda demonstrated in these budget measures. The military appropriations bill includes $1.375 billion to fund Trump’s border wall, while removing a provision in an earlier version that would have barred him from transferring money from other Pentagon accounts for his wall project. By Evan Blake

Why the Hell Did Democrats Just Extend the Patriot Act? House leadership included the measure in a government funding bill—and even members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus went along with it. By tucking the measure into a must-pass bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi forced many members who oppose the Patriot Act to vote in favor of its extension. “Although I do have serious concerns with reauthorizing Section 215,” Representative Bobby Rush of Illinois told The Hill, “we must focus on the bigger picture here.” In late October, Rush signed a letter co-authored by Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Earl Blumenauer, which read, “We will not support any legislation that extends Section 215’s sunset date if it fails to contain robust reforms that protect innocent people from unjust surveillance.” Ultimately, the funding bill passed 231-192, mostly on party lines. Some advocates have questioned whether the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), which includes the Squad, should have done more to combat—or, at least, register its dissatisfaction with—the last-minute maneuver by Democratic leadership. On Wednesday morning, leaders of the CPC and the libertarian House Freedom Caucus circulated a joint letter on Capitol Hill calling for extensive reforms to the Patriot Act before it is reauthorized. But when it came time for the floor vote, CPC co-chairs Pramila Jayapal and Mark Pocan voted in favor of the funding measure. So did most of the caucus’s members. The only person in CPC leadership to vote against the bill was Omar. By Sam Adler-BellImpeachment: The Road To Nowhere Leads To . . . Nowhere Capping months of mind-numbingly repetitive “debates,” the Democrats in the House of Representatives voted on Dec. 17 to impeach President Donald Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The votes on each charge were nearly identical and almost entirely along party lines. The Democrats’ impeachment case against the despicable Trump regime had nothing to do with what actually makes it despicable. Trump is openly racist, sexist, anti-environment, anti-labor, homophobic, anti-poor, anti-homeless, anti-Palestinian and more. But the Democratic party leaders’ impeachment strategy deliberately ignored all of that and instead revolved around the ludicrous charge that Trump weakened “our national security” by delaying a shipment of anti-tank missiles, sniper rifles, and other military equipment to Ukraine for war against Russia. No mention was made in the whole impeachment process of immigrant children held in cages, massive attacks on the environment, huge cuts in food stamps, the seven U.S. wars currently underway, the viciously anti-people sanctions on Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea and many other countries.  By Richard Becker Federal Study on Racial Biases in Facial Recognition Technology Confirms Warnings of Civil Liberties Groups African American and Asian American men were misidentified 100 times as often as white men. The U.S. government’s first major federal study of facial recognition surveillance, released Thursday, shows the technology’s extreme racial and gender biases, confirming what privacy and civil rights groups have warned about for years. In a study of 189 algorithms used by law enforcement agencies to match facial recognition images with names in state and federal databases, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found that Asian American and African American men were misidentified 100 times as often as white men. By Julia ConleyEnvironment:

Week 152: Houston, You Might Have a Problem With Your Air. But We Can’t Be Sure. The Trump administration failed to monitor air pollution in the toxic aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. Also: Trump is taking a chainsaw to our protections, and the EPA can’t count to 20. By Brian Palmer

The Fracking Industry’s Methane Problem Is a Climate Problem While carbon dioxide — deservedly — gets a bad rap when it comes to climate change, about 40 percent of global warming actually can be attributed to the powerful greenhouse gas methane, according to the 2013 IPCC report. This makes addressing methane emissions critical to stopping additional warming, especially in the near future. Methane is shorter-lived in the atmosphere but 85 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period. Atmospheric levels of methane stopped increasing around the year 2000 and at the time were expected to decrease in the future. However, they began increasing again in the last 10 years, spurring researchers to explore why. Robert Howarth, a biogeochemist at Cornell University, recently presented his latest research linking the increase in methane to fossil fuel production, with fracking for natural gas, which is mostly methane, likely a major source. By Justin Mikulka

CO2 and Climate Change, Old and NewHow long has science known about CO2-induced climate change, and are we clever enough today to geo-engineer our way out of cooking ourselves to extinction? — In brief: a long time, and most likely no. — Clive Thompson has written engagingly about the 19th century scientists — Joseph Fourier (1768-1830), Eunice Newton Foote (1819-1888), John Tyndall (1820-1893), Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927), Arvid Högbom (1857-1940), and Samuel Pierpont Langley (1834-1906) — whose work in aggregate pieced together the essential facts about CO2-induced global warming. [1] By Manuel García, Jr.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation: 

Exonerate the Innocent; Incarcerate the Guilty The U.S. “justice” system, first and foremost, protects police and prosecutors.  The Supreme Court has held that while cops have only limited immunity from lawsuits, prosecutors enjoy what’s known as absolute immunity for their conduct under most circumstances.  Only in the most extreme cases of abuse — including killings and with bodycam videos as evidence – do police get arrested and prosecuted.  Still less are prosecutors prosecuted for questionable, if not illegal, practices. Three innocent men — Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins and Andrew Stewart – were recently fully exonerated and released from a Maryland prison after spending 36 years in jail for a murder they did not commit. On Thanksgiving, 1983, the-then teenagers were accused of killing a 14-year-old boy in the hallway of a Baltimore junior high school over his jacket.  The incident was part of what was then known in Baltimore as “clothing murders” because city youth were being attached over sneakers or sports apparel. When the now-grown men were released, Baltimore States’ Attorney Marilyn Mosby admitted, “These three men were convicted, as children, because of police and prosecutorial misconduct. What the state, my office, did to them is wrong. There is no way we can ever repair the damage done to them. We can’t be scared of that and we must confront it.” By David Rosen

The Innocence Project provides the following alarming statistics as of 2018 exonerations based on DNA information:

• 367 DNA exonerees to date;

• 28 percent of those exonerated were convicted based on false confessions;

• 37 states where exonerations have been won;

• 14 is the average number of years served;

• 5,097.5 years is the total of years served;

• +  26.5 years is the average age at the time of wrongful conviction;

• 21 of the 367 people exonerated served time on death row;

• 41 of 367 people exonerated pled guilty to crimes they did not commit.

Black Agenda Radio for Week of December 23, 2019 With Nellie Bailey And Glen Ford

• BAR Co-Founder Book Exposes “Sham” of US Democracy: Democrats Largely Silent on Bolivia Coup / McCarthy Era Laid Groundwork for Sixties Repression / The US has failed in its purported mission to forge a society based on human equality, said Margaret Kimberley, co-founder of Black Agenda Report and author of the new book, “Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents.” “The experiment is done,” said Kimberley, whose book will be released in February by Steerborth Press. “This country is true to its roots of settler colonialism, conquest and enslavement,” she said

• Democrats Largely Silent on Bolivia Coup: “We’ve seen very little pushback from the Democratic Party” to the military coup that deposed Evo Morales’ Native American government, said Jake Johnston, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington. Johnston said US law prohibits assistance to coup governments. He wrote a report detailing how the Organization of American States was wrong in claiming that the election won by Morales was flawed.

• McCarthy Era Laid Groundwork for Sixties Repression:Charisse Burden Stelly, professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Carleton College, said the long US history of red-b

Labor:

Half of the jobs in America currently pay less than $18 an hour, according to Labor Department data. That’s about $37,000 a year if someone works full-time. Forty percent of jobs in the country pay less than $15.50, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. There’s always debate about what constitutes a “good-paying job,” but it’s notable that manufacturing jobs, which President Trump campaigned on bringing back, pay over $20.50 an hour, on average. — Half the jobs in America pay less than $18 an hour. Can Trump help?

Over 1,500 Steelworkers To Lose Their Jobs As US Steel Announces Idling Of Great Lakes Works Outside Of Detroit US Steel announced Friday, just days before the Christmas holiday, that it is issuing layoff notices to 1,545 workers at its Great Lakes Works facility south of Detroit. Next year it will idle most of the mill and shift production to Gary Works in Gary, Indiana, pitting workers in the same region against one another for a dwindling supply of jobs.Company spokesmen told the Northwest Indiana Times that US Steel’s goal is to make the remaining jobs “more secure and sustainable” and “help the company reach its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2030.” In other words, the new jobs will likely pay lower wages with fewer benefits. By Jessica Goldstein

Economy:

World:

Cuba To Spend Over Half Of Its Budget To Social Programs In 2020 The projected budget for 2020 in Cuba, approved this Friday in the ordinary session of the 9th Legislature of the National Assembly of People´s Power, has a strong social character, prioritizing, with more than 50 percent of the resources, basic services and the implementation of approved social policies such as salary increases and pensions, Meisi Bolaños, Minister of Finance and Prices, assured. Bolaños informed the Cuban legislators that 8.6 billion pesos will be allocated to ensure the salary increase that began in July this year, and that 52 percent of the budget will be  used for education and health services.Whither Corbynism? The recent UK election represented a massive set-back for the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn. What this defeat proves is that socialism will not be achieved through electoralism and we need true, radical solutions to the pressing issues of our day. No politician, no election, and no one fight defines the struggle for socialism. It is an international project and one that cannot be accomplished or defeated in a single moment.Exclusive: Canada Police Prepared To Shoot Indigenous Activists, Documents Show Notes from strategy session for raid on Wet’suwet’en nation’s ancestral lands show commanders argued for ‘lethal overwatch’ Canadian police were prepared to shoot Indigenous land defenders blockading construction of a natural gas pipeline in northern British Columbia, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Notes from a strategy session for a militarized raid on ancestral lands of the Wet’suwet’en nation show that commanders of Canada’s national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), argued that “lethal overwatch is req’d” – a term for deploying snipers. By Jaskiran Dhillon and Will Parrish

Education, Health, Science, and Welfare:

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: (1) Austerity, (2) Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and (3)  The Iron Heel

Always Remember That Obama Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature, Established, in writing,  the United States Capitalist Austerity Program  — The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!

emocracy?:  As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day:

Bendib: Teapot vs. Kettle

Quotes of the Day:

It’s becoming clear that the reason so many Americans have their pockets picked by Wall Street scam artists year after year is that mainstream media simply won’t put the dangers of dealing with the mega Wall Street banks on their front pages. Yesterday’s Senate Banking hearing is yet one more example of mainstream media failing the interests of the American people. — Pam Martens and Russ Martens

After the Disclosure of the Afghanistan Papers: Progressives Rebel as House Hands Trump War Spending Package The House voted 377-48 to advance a $738 billion military spending authorization package on Wednesday despite a rebellion among progressive Democrats angered by the loss of provisions that would have curtailed endless wars and put President Trump’s most violent foreign policy ambitions in check. BY Mike Ludwig

Videos Of the Day:

Inspector General Report Unveils Systemic Problems at FBI

Support the Workers of Iran, but Oppose US Sanctions 

US Arms Companies Use Trump’s Militarism to Dominate the Global Arms Trade

Boris Johnson: Your Words

Madeleine Albright – The Deaths Of 500,000 Iraqi Children Was Worth It For Iraq’s Non Existent WMD’s

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.

 ​​​​​​​The Issue-Less Impeachment: The Corporate Democrats Stand for Nothing, So They Impeach for Nothing The corporate Democrats are effectively exonerating themselves and their Republican brethren of the full spectrum of lawlessness that is everyday politics in the belly of the racist, imperial beast. “The Democrats have used the vile, childishly compulsive and overtly racist Trump as a straw man ever since he announced for the 2016 presidential race.” The impeachment of Donald Trump has nothing to do with social justice at home and abroad, global environmental stability, or the rule of law anywhere on the planet. Rather, the corporate Democrats have methodically narrowed the scope of the indictment to exclude all the actual crimes of this president against humanity, peace, the environment and the rule of law – for the obvious reason that both corporate parties and all modern U.S. presidents are collectively and individually guilty. In limiting the indictment to Trump’s attempted political extortion of Ukraine for the purpose of influencing a U.S. election – a laughable charge, since the Kiev regime is the creature of the U.S. (Democratic) engineered overthrow of the previous, elected Ukraine government – the Democrats are effectively exonerating themselves and their Republican brethren of the full spectrum of lawlessness that is everyday politics in the belly of the racist, imperial beast. By Glen Ford , Black Agenda  Report Executive editor

The Media Monopoly Promotes Wars: The U.S. Government Lied about the Afghanistan War, They Couldn’t Have Done It Without Media Lapdogs “In ten years or so, we’ll leak the truth,” the Dead Kennedys sang. “But by then it’s only so much paper.” But it might just score you a Pulitzer Prize.Award bait and bragging rights are no doubt the principal goals of The Washington Post’s self-congratulatory data dump, “The Afghanistan Papers.” As the headline implies, the 2000 pages that a court-ordered the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction to release to Jeff Bezos’ newspaper paints a Robert McNamara-esque portrait of not-so-best-or-bright Bush and Obama Administration bozos privately admitting what they knew all along—that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was always an unwinnable, counterproductive mistake—at the same time they were telling the American people that victory in the post-9/11 “good war” was right around the corner. All we had to win was win Afghan hearts and minds. By Ted Rall

30+ Groups Condemn ‘Obscene’ $738 Billion Pentagon Bill as Blank Check for War and ‘Gift to Donald Trump’ “Further inflating the Pentagon’s overstuffed coffers does not make us safer—it perpetuates a system that treats military intervention as the solution to all world problems.” —coalition “Every dollar spent by the Pentagon is a dollar not spent on education, healthcare, or climate. When critics attack social spending by asking ‘how will you pay for it?’ this will be our answer.” A diverse coalition of more than 30 progressive advocacy groups on Tuesday condemned the bipartisan, $738 billion National Defense Authorization Act as a “blank check” to the military-industrial complex that does nothing to restrain President Donald Trump’s reckless foreign policy.By Jake Johnson

‘Let’s Bring Rumsfeld In’: Khanna Calls for Hearings on US Officials Who Lied to American People About Endless Afghan War “The bottom line is that top military officials and civilian officials have known that the Afghan war has been has been unwinnable and have been misleading the American public for 20 years.” Rep. Ro Khanna on Wednesday said that The Washington Post‘s explosive investigation the “Afghanistan Papers” showed the need for a congressional hearing and that former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld should be among the current and former top officials called in for a reckoning before the American public. By Andrea Germanos

Environment:

Experts Warn Chevron’s $11 Billion Write-Down Portends ‘Greater Troubles to Come’ for Fossil Fuel Industry “Business as usual, even efficient business as usual is wholly insufficient in a market that is, and must, fundamentally change.” “Two words: stranded assets.” That was  the reaction Wednesday from sustainability professional Jessica Davis after oil giant Chevron announced that it was writing down at least $10 billion and as much as $11 billion in assets. By Andrea Germanos

PG&E Profiting From Deferred Maintenance: PG&E Diverted Millions From Putting Lines Underground, Audit Finds Over the course of 10 years, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. “consistently and significantly” shifted money away from efforts to bury power lines underground, likely causing such projects to take longer and cost more than they would have otherwise, according to a recently completed audit. PG&E diverted $123 million from 2007 through 2016 from a major program intended to help bury overhead electric lines, the review conducted for the California Public Utilities Commission found. The lower spending was not because the company found cheaper or more efficient ways of completing the efforts: Auditors concluded that PG&E was using the money for other things it deemed more important. By J.D. Morris 

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Labor:

France: The ‘Socialist’ Labor Bureaucracy in Support of Captial: ‘The Government Presented Exactly The Same Reform That They Would Have Put Forward If None Of The “Talks” And “Consultations” Had Taken Place.”    

France: The Conditions Of Victory: The speech delivered by Edouard Philippe (the Prime Minister) yesterday concluded over 18 months of “talks” and “consultations” with the leaders of the trade unions. Hundreds of hours of negotiation meetings culminated in this enlightening result: the government presented exactly the same reform that they would have put forward if none of the “talks” and “consultations” had taken place. For 18 months, the trade union leaders have been playing the role assigned to them by the government, in this circus of so-called social democracy. Their task has been to deceive the people, to convince the workers that the government is listening to them and taking their concerns into account, in order to reach a compromise. Instead of boycotting these negotiations and turning towards the workers to prepare for a massive struggle, the trade union leaders have played along with the circus. Philippe Martinez (the General Secretary of the CGT) has now declared that “the government has ridiculed the people”. But it is above all Martinez himself who is being ridiculed: after 23 consultation meetings, the government is accusing him of “not wanting to talk”. But who is to blame? The government, for organising this farce and defending the interests of the ruling class? Or the head of the CGT, for accepting to be complicit in it?

Economy:

Book Review: The Lie of Global Prosperity: How Neoliberals Distort Data to Mask Poverty and Exploitation “We’re making headway on global poverty,” trills billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates. “Decline of Global Extreme Poverty Continues,” reports the World Bank. And “How did the global poverty rate halve in 20 years?” inquires The Economist magazine. Seth Donnelly answers: “It didn’t!” In fact, according to Donnelly’s The Lie of Global Prosperity, virtually nothing about these glad tidings proclaiming plummeting global poverty rates is true. It’s just that trend-setting neoliberal experts and institutions need us to believe that global capitalism, now unfettered in the wake of the Cold War and bolstered by Information Technology, has ushered in a new phase of international human prosperity.  This short book deconstructs the assumption that global poverty has fallen dramatically, and lays bare the spurious methods of poverty measurement and data on which the dominant prosperity narrative depends. Here is carefully researched documentation that global poverty—and the inequalities and misery that flourish within it—remains massive, afflicting the majority of the world’s population. Donnelly goes further to analyze just how global poverty, rather than being reduced, is actually reproduced by the imperatives of capital accumulation on a global scale. Just as the global, environmental catastrophe cannot be resolved within capitalism, rooted as it is in contemporary mechanisms of exploitation and plunder, neither can human poverty be effectively eliminated by neoliberal “advances.”The Cost of Living Raise That You Did Not Get — See How Much The Government Is Cheating Ecery Year By Their ‘Figureimg’ Of The Cost of LivingShadow Government StatistsAlternate Inflation Charts The CPI chart on the home page reflects our estimate of inflation for today as if it were calculated the same way it was in 1990. The CPI on the Alternate Data Series tab here reflects the CPI as if it were calculated using the methodologies in place in 1980. In general terms, methodological shifts in government reporting have depressed reported inflation, moving the concept of the CPI away from being a measure of the cost of living needed to maintain a constant standard of living.

Senators Give Explosive Critique of Wall Street’s Top Cop as Mainstream Media Yawns It’s becoming clear that the reason so many Americans have their pockets picked by Wall Street scam artists year after year is that mainstream media simply won’t put the dangers of dealing with the mega Wall Street banks on their front pages. Yesterday’s Senate Banking hearing is yet one more example of mainstream media failing the interests of the American people.At yesterday’s hearing, Senator after Senator probed the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, on what were clearly intentional failings to hold Wall Street accountable. The scathing rebukes of the SEC came from both Republican and Democrats on the Senate panel. But you will find no reports about that hearing on the front pages of newspapers today — or in any section of leading newspapers. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

This Will Go Down As A Dark Day For British Democracy Tonight’s result sets a precedent that you can lie, cheat and evade scrutiny and get away with it. This evening’s exit poll, revealed to the despair of many at 10pm, paints a disastrous picture of the British political landscape. If the projections are proved correct it will see Boris Johnson take a majority of 86 in the House of Commons, the biggest since Margaret Thatcher’s third victory leaving Labour with one of their worst results in modern times. It will see major issues such as climate change, the NHS and welfare swept under the carpet in exchange for a simple pledge to ‘Get Brexit Done’. It could also bring about significant boundary and constitutional changes that will keep the Conservatives in power for the foreseeable future. This evening’s exit poll, revealed to the despair of many at 10pm, paints a disastrous picture of the British political landscape. If the projections are proved correct it will see Boris Johnson take a majority of 86 in the House of Commons, the biggest since Margaret Thatcher’s third victory leaving Labour with one of their worst results in modern times. It will see major issues such as climate change, the NHS and welfare swept under the carpet in exchange for a simple pledge to ‘Get Brexit Done’. It could also bring about significant boundary and constitutional changes that will keep the Conservatives in power for the foreseeable future. By  Jack Peat

“It’s Happening,” Declares Jeremy Corbyn as Early UK Election Reports Suggest “Longest Queues Ever” “These images of people queuing to vote will scare the death out of the Tories. Get up, get out, and let’s make history.” As Britons headed to the polls Thursday for the much-anticipated and highly consequential general election, U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sounded a note of optimism in response to early reports of big crowds and long lines at polling stations across the country. By Jake JohnsonBritain Could Be the First Domino in a Left-Wing Revolution Just like that, we’re hours away from the Dec. 12 U.K. general election that will decide the nation’s direction at a crucial time in its history and in the wider global context, what with the rise of the far-right in the West and the worsening climate crisis. Although U.K. political campaigns are happily much shorter than those in America, a lot has transpired over the course of the past month since a snap election was called by Boris Johnson. Several debates have taken place, one entirely dedicated to climate change in which an absent Johnson was replaced with a melting block of ice; an attack on London Bridge left several dead, including the attacker, and raised questions about the underfunding of police forces under conservative rule; and world leaders convened in London for a NATO meeting that led to more than a few embarrassing moments for Johnson, Donald Trump and others. By Natasha Hakimi Zapata

Education, Health, Science, and Welfare:

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: (1) Austerity, (2) Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and (3)  The Iron Heel

Always Remember That Obama Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature, Established, in writing,  the United States Capitalist Austerity Program  — The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!

emocracy?:  As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day:

Bristol Waiting To See Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn: They’re Never Going To Keep Us Down!Quotes of the Day:

In the past 30 years, many laws have been written incorporating some of these concepts. Yet despite these laws, environmental destruction has been allowed to proceed because these regulations have always been compromised by the incorporation of the concept of economic feasibility. ‘Economic feasibility’ means that the profitability of an economic enterprise cannot be subordinated to environmental needs. Therefore, environmental and safety laws, under capitalism, have always been a compromise between science and business. In fact, environmental destruction, pestilence, and death are factored into production the same as casualties of war are factored into military battles. — Roland Sheppard. Whither Humanity? The Environmental Crisis of Capitalism

In yesterday’s speech, McDonnell asserted that Labour will waste no time in implementing the manifesto’s commitments. These include providing billions extra for the NHS; bringing in a £10 per hour living wage; and offering a 5% pay rise for public sector workers after years of pay freezes. All of this would be outlined in a Budget presented before Parliament on 5 February 2020, McDonnell stated. On top of that, the shadow chancellor confirmed that he has “draft plans to hand to the civil servants on Friday”, in the event of a Labour win. These include blueprints for a whole new array of institutions, such as a ‘National Transformation Unit’ tasked with coming up with a decade-long strategy of public investment; and a ‘National Investment Bank’ to channel money into where it is needed most: from renewable energy to large-scale infrastructure.“Our Green Industrial Revolution will deliver the changes we need to avert climate catastrophe,” McDonnell assured. “And it will put British industry back on the map, bringing prosperity to every part of our country. It will give every community something to be proud of.” — Britain: Promises And Warnings For Labour’s First 100 Days In Power

Videos Of the Day:

Britain: all out for a Labour victory! Vote for Corbyn, fight for socialism! Speaking on the eve of the most important general election of a generation, Alan Woods (editor of marxist.com) discusses how the Tories and the capitalist establishment are resorting to a torrent of lies and smears in order to prevent a Labour victory. But an unprecendented mass political movement of workers and youth has mobilised to combat the attacks and carry Corbyn into Number 10. Vote for Corbyn! Fight for socialism!Trump Impeachment: A Misguided Move? The Democrats claim their articles of impeachment against Trump are a solid case. The Nation and Grayzone contributor Aaron Maté argues that they are actually quite weak, and only serve corporate Democrats’ interest in feeding Russiagate paranoia.

Economic Update: Competition and Monopoly in Capitalism Capitalism’s growing problems (inequalities, instabilities, unsustainability etc.) lead some defenders to argue that the cause is monopoly displacing competition in many industries. We disagree: Capitalism’s history is oscillations between competition and monopoly, each causing the other. Capitalism is the problem, not its oscillating forms.U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.

Lies They Told Us: A Long History Of Being Manipulated Into War

• James K. Polk and the Mexican War

• Woodrow Wilson and World War I

• Franklin Roosevelt and World War II

• Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam war

• George W. Bush and the Iraq war

The leaflet ‘Rearmament and the Far East’ explains very briefly how the Korean War broke out. There is overwhelming evidence that Syngman Rhee and his American supporters started the civil war on 25 June 1950, and it was in order to prevent this evidence being produced and sifted that the United States Government insisted that a Security Council resolution condemning the North Koreans should be adopted the same day. The war was not manufactured, as some people make out, to safeguard British and American interests. That is the sort of stupid charge that often spoils a good case. The war had its origin in the hysterical fear that the mere word Communism produces in America and in the crime rackets and witch-hunts which are a normal feature of American political life and which are now employed to achieve American aims in world affairs. — Korea: The Lie that Led to War

The Gulf of Tonkin incident (Vietnamese: Sự kiện Vịnh Bắc Bộ), also known as the USS Maddox incident, was an international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. It involved one real and one falsely claimed confrontation between ships of North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. The original American report blamed North Vietnam for both incidents, but the Pentagon Papers, the memoirs of Robert McNamara, and NSA publications from 2005, proved material misrepresentation by the US government to justify a war against Vietnam

What we do know for sure is that the rationale for going to war was based on lies. There is a second picture associated with the Iraq War that is also ingrained in our collective memory: US Secretary of State Colin Powell giving his speech to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003. Six weeks before the war began, Powell spent 76 minutes influencing international public opinion in favor of war. The core of his speech was that Saddam Hussein possessed biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, that his regime was supporting international terrorism, and that it aimed to build nuclear weapons. — The Iraq War: In The Beginning Was The Lie

That’s according to Paul Kawika Martin, senior director of policy and political affairs at Peace Action, replying to “The Afghanistan Papers.” The report exposes how top officials spanning the George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations waged a deliberate misinformation campaign to conceal the total failures of the 18-year war in Afghanistan. — That’s according to Paul Kawika Martin, senior director of policy and political affairs at Peace Action, replying to “The Afghanistan Papers.” The report exposes how top officials spanning the George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations waged a deliberate misinformation campaign to conceal the total failures of the 18-year war in Afghanistan.— ‘Read Every Word of This’: WaPo Investigation Reveals US Officials’ Public Deception Campaign on Afghan War

Trump vs. Democracy The US House of Representatives marked a milestone on November 6, 2019, as it decided to report out articles of impeachment on Trump. But there’s a bigger picture to consider. The impeachment represents a new stage in the political ‘food fight’ between the two wings of the political-economic elite in the USA. It also represents a further escalation in the crisis and decline of American Democracy–a decline that’s been going on since at least the early 1990s, when Newt Gingrich and the radical right took over the House of Representatives and declared publicly that their objective was to create a dysfunctional US  overnment. In retrospect, Gingrich certainly succeeded. But it’s not just since Newt. US Democracy has been in decline on a number of fronts since the late 1970s, which corresponds to the rise of Neoliberal economic policies in the US. Late stage Neoliberalism today, 2019, is in crisis. Since the 2008 crash political elites and policy makers have been attempting to restore its pre-2008 momentum but have failed. Obama failed throughout his eight year term in office. And Trump’s regime should be viewed as an attempt to restore it in a new, virulent aggressive Neoliberalism 2.0 form. By Jack RasmusEnvironment:

‘We Are Unstoppable, Another World Is Possible!’: Young Climate Activists Storm COP 25 Stage Protesters with Fridays for Future demand world leaders at the global climate summit urgent address the planetary emergency. By Andrea GermanosDeep Trouble for Arctic and Beyond: NOAA Climate Report Warns of Feedback Loop That ‘May Already Be Underway’ The Arctic marine ecosystem and the communities that depend upon it continue to experience unprecedented changes as a result of warming air temperatures, declining sea ice, and warming waters “If this were an annual health check-up, I think we’d have to say that the Arctic is chronically sick and getting worse.” In addition to warning that “the feedback to accelerating climate change may already be underway,” the U.S. government’s latest report on conditions in the Arctic reveals that temperatures in the region are persistently warming, leading to land and sea ice melting, permafrost thawing, species being threatened with extinction, and putting Native communities at risk.  By Jessica CorbettCapitalist And Their Politicians Knowingly Poisoned Black and Minority Community in Flint Michigan — Flint Water Crisis: Revealed: Water Company And City Officials Knew About Flint Poison Risk  Exclusive: Email exchanges show senior employees knew Michigan residents might risk being poisoned by tap water months before city admitted to problem. . . Five years later, the people of Flint continue to demand accountability for the water crisis, which exposed residents to high levels of lead, a potent neurotoxin. Children and infants who consumed the water are likely to suffer lifelong learning disabilities. Flint residents are still advised to either drink bottled water or filter it from the tap. By Emily Holden, Ron Fonger and Jessica Glenza

Citing Climate Crisis as Top Concern for Future of Humanity, Young Adults Say They Are Living in ‘Failed System’ “This is a wake-up call to world leaders that they must take far more decisive action to tackle the climate emergency or risk betraying younger generations further.” As rights groups around the world marked Human Rights Day on Tuesday, Amnesty International released the results of a survey of 10,000 young adults regarding their top global concerns heading into a new decade, reporting that the climate crisis is what a majority of young people see as a major threat to their human rights. By Julia Conley‘This Isn’t the End,’ Vow Climate Campaigners After New York Court Sides With Exxon in Fraud Trial “Despite this ruling, the crucial work to hold the likes of Exxon accountable for climate crimes goes on,” said 350.org. “This is just the tip of the accountability iceberg.” Climate campaigners bemoaned a judge’s ruling in New York on Tuesday which sided with ExxonMobil in a lawsuit that charged the oil giant defrauded investors by concealing for decades what it understood about how carbon pollution was contributing to global warming even as it publicly denied scientific warnings and worked against efforts to limit emissions. The lawsuit, stated Judge Barry Ostrager of the trial-level state Supreme Court in his ruling, “failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that ExxonMobil made any material misstatements or omissions about its practices and procedures that misled any reasonable investor.” By Jon QueallyCivil Rights/Black Liberation:

From The Lessons of the Montgomery Bus Boycott: Why the Boycott Was SuccessfulBy Roland SheppardThe boycott was successful, in my opinion, for several reasons:

1. It had mass support and it strength developed from the unity of the Black masses to boycott the buses.

2. In order to sustain the boycott, the MIA had organized an alternative transportation system, which gave the masses the ability to get to work for over a year, something that was crucial to the success of the boycott.

3. The democratically organized Montgomery Improvement Association had regular weekly mass meetings of thousands to decide the strategy and tactics of the movement. The people in the struggle had control and the final say — not the leaders from on high. This helped to insured the power of the movement, for the masses saw the MIA as theirorganization and were committed by theirvotes to implement theirdecisions.The tactics of both mass civil disobedience (the boycott) and self defense by the MIA was key to the success of the struggle.

4. The power of independent mass action, independent of the politicians, was demonstrated by the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This is the power that inspired and garnered support from throughout the nation and the world. 

Self-Defense in the Civil Rights Movement: the Lessons of Birmingham, 1963 Hope is the fuel upon which working-class movements for social change draw their core strength. But hope divorced from solid organizing leads no-where. So, if we are to continue to propel our class forward it is vital that we learn the full lessons of how our sweetest victories are seized from the hands of our oppressors. Birmingham, 1963, represents one such success story, an inspiring tale that pitched Martin Luther King’s determined civil rights activists against the steel town’s white supremacists who, as folk singer Phil Ochs tells it, literally fed their dogs on civil rights. A pivotal struggle against the evils of segregation that achieved its crowning glory shortly after thousands of children peacefully stood-up to the seething racist violence of Bull Connor. But while Connor became world-famous for allowing his police dogs to tear flesh off the bodies of peaceful protestors, what is often overlooked in sanitized narratives of this story of good versus evil is the full context in which King’s nonviolent victory was obtained. Digging beneath this peaceful patina is however critical if we are to comprehend the important role that violent self-defense fulfilled within Birmingham’s black community in opposing the horrors of segregation. By Michael BarkerThe Birth of a Nation: Race and Power in Amerika White supremacy is just as much a social reality as it is an ideology. “What is essential is that the relationship of power between whites and non-whites be changed.” It is widely believed that white supremacy is a racist ideology of hatred promoted by marginal extremist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nations. Often overlooked and neglected in this view are the structural inequalities that ensure the continued supremacy of whites over non-whites in all facets of social life. Also conveniently disregarded are the more subtle, yet frequent and numerous, manifestations of white supremacy that are woven into the fabric of Amerikan culture. In this sense, white supremacy is just as much of a social reality as it is an ideology. Indeed the two often go hand in hand, although this isn’t always the case. There are many white people who hold supreme positions in the social hierarchy, over and above the masses of non-white people, without consciously adhering to any white supremacist ideology. This essay will explore the complex reality of white supremacy in Amerika, examining its existence in the social structure, analyzing its cultural expressions, considering some of its ideological forms, and finally investigating its causes. By Prince KaponeFreedom Rider: Abolish the Police Trump’s attorney general threatened to withdraw police “protection” from Black communities – but, of course, no such thing exists. “The cops they do not deserve respect or support.” Attorney General William Barr created quite a controversy  with his comments about community support for police departments. “And they have to start showing, more than they do, the respect and support that law enforcement deserves. And if communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need.” His words were condemned but unfortunately most of his critics were angry for the wrong reasons. By Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnistThe Capitalist Crisis Has Made the U.S. a Pariah State U.S. imperialism has nothing left to offer humanity but ecological destruction, endless war, and a decline in living standards domestically and globally. “There would be no endless wars for profit without the enslavement of Africans.” Capitalism, even of the U.S.’ so-called “exceptional” variety, is characterized by cyclical crises that occur every ten or so years. Marxist theorists attribute the emergence of capitalist crises to the always sharpening contradiction between labor and capital. The more profit that capitalists extract from labor, the more impoverished labor becomes. Eventually, workers become so impoverished that entire sectors of capitalist production ground to a halt. This process is generally called over-production but is better termed under-consumption. In a frenzy to shed costs and maintain profits, capitalists engineer massive layoffs, wage freezes, and other measures that intensify the precariousness of the masses. By Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing EditorShould UN Peacekeepers Leave the Democratic Republic of Congo? There was no peace to keep in the Kivu and Ituri provinces when the UN force arrived nearly 20 years ago, and there’s been none since. “Since 1996, the history of these provinces has been that of perpetual Rwandan and Ugandan invasion, occupation, and resource plunder.”The UN has a long, storied history in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission (MONUSCO ) was created by the UN Security Council nearly 20 years ago. It is headquartered in Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province, which sits on the Congolese side of the Rwandan and Congolese border. It is primarily involved in the conflicts in the North and South Kivu Provinces and in Ituri Province. North Kivu borders Rwanda and Uganda, South Kivu borders Rwanda and Burundi, and Ituri borders Uganda. Since 1996, the history of these provinces has been that of perpetual Rwandan and Ugandan invasion, occupation, and resource plunder, and MONUSCO has failed to protect the people or the peace. I spoke to Jean-Claude Maswana about why and whether anything can be done. Maswana is a Congolese native and economics professor at Ritsumeikan University, Japan. By Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor

Black Friday Blues By BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner                                                                                                                     With a whole lotta street heat
just to keep it real… Here come Cyber Monday,
but I want some Single-Payer
Here come Cyber Monday,
but I want some Single-Payer—
You can pay for it—
You’re the “greatest purveyor!”                                     Here come Giving Tuesday,
I want affordable homes for all
Here comes Giving Tuesday,
I want affordable homes for all—
We’d be half way there,
Weren’t for Boss Tweet’s wall!Rap Brown Law Today The law holds that just one person, crossing a state line with the intent to do or participate in mischief, can be prosecuted. “Its formal title was ‘The Civil Obedience Act of 1968.’”A right-wing publication quotes sources from the Department that calls itself Justice. The “Rap Brown Law” will probably be used against anti-fascist activists. Well, this brings back memories: this was the “law” on which the Chicago 8 and Seattle 8 trials of 1969 were based. The “Law” was part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Other parts of that Act outlawed, among other things, discrimination in housing. But in 1968, the imperial state was worried about other matters as well. The law was popularly named for African-American leader H. “Rap” Brown; its formal title was “The Civil Obedience Act of 1968.” By Michael E. TigarRacial Terror & Totalitarianism Rasberry asks how the history of totalitarianism looks from the vantage point of the colonized and the racially subjugated. “Colonial violence and modern racial terrorist regimes must be read as forms of totalitarianism.” Race and the Totalitarian Century
Geopolitics in the Black Literary Imagination Vaughn Rasberry Harvard University Press ISBN 9780674971080 By Mary Helen Washington Many Blacks Would Welcome Police Exit from Their Communities “The whole battlefield array of weapons is now deployed in Black and brown communities.” Donald Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, is a comedian. He must have been joking when he warned certain communities that they better start showing more “respect and support” for the police. Otherwise, said Barr, these communities “may find themselves without the police protection they need.” Well, there are lots of people in Black communities that would like nothing better than to see the cops withdraw back to their suburban enclaves and never return. Black folks know that calling the police to help with a family problem is rolling the dice with death. Attorney General Barr has got to be joking, when he pretends that the cops just might withdraw their so-called “protection” from the Black community if folks don’t start giving them proper respect. But, why should anyone respect an occupation army whose mission is to incarcerate and terrorize the community. We need protection from THEM, and will ultimately have to provide that, ourselves. By Glen Ford , BAR executive editorLabor:

FRONTLINE investigates the role of state governments and Wall Street in driving America’s public pensions into a multi-trillion-dollar hole. Marcela Gaviria, Martin Smith, and Nick Verbitsky go inside the volatile fight over pensions playing out in Kentucky, and examine the broader consequences for teachers, police, firefighters and other public employees everywhere. The Pension Gamble

From: Pensions of Union Workers Cut in Federal Budget (Video Interview with Michael Hudson):And the ironic thing is the Democrats led this fight against labor a year ago, this special ruling was put in, and people who were supposed to be Democratic liberals, like Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, decided to have something also radical in the new budget. They weren’t going to report which representatives voted yes or no for these amendments. So the Democrats covered up their tracks, and you can’t see that they were really behind the Wall Street constituency in saying, we’re going to cut back the pensions.  And you can see what’s on the mind, basically. The government said, look, we’ve got to balance the budget in the face of Obama’s sort of escalating the military confrontation with Russia and China. And on the face of an increased bailout for the banks, there’s just not going to be enough money to guarantee the pension funds. So we can’t do for the pensioners what we did for the bankers in 2008.

Economy:

For example, it is normal in a recovering or expanding economy for the labor force participation rate to rise as people enter the work force to take advantage of the job opportunities.  During the decade of the long recovery, from June 2009 through May 2019, the labor force participation rate consistently fell from 65.7 to 62.8 percent. — The Diminishing American Economy

The Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate For November Is 63.3%

U.6 and Shadow Government Statistics  Alternate  U.S. Unemployment Rates Headline (U.3 and U.6) versus ShadowStats Alternate 1994 to November 2019, Seasonally-Adjusted [ShadowStats, Bureau of Labor Statistics]

World:

Britain: Promises And Warnings For Labour’s First 100 Days In Power The most important election of a generation is almost upon us. Boris Johnson, the Tories, and their friends in the capitalist press are doing their best to thwart Corbyn’s chances of making it into Number 10. But with a mass movement taking to the streets and onto social media, everything is up for grabs. Whilst securing a Labour victory is clearly the focus, many in the Corbyn movement are already thinking beyond polling day, discussing the challenges that a left Labour government will face once in power. It was this key question that shadow chancellor John McDonnell addressed yesterday, in a speech about the main priorities for the first 100 days of a Labour government. McDonnell’s announcements add flesh to the bones of an already-radical manifesto of bold policies. In his speech, the shadow chancellor confirmed that Labour will take immediate action to end austerity, bring key utilities into public ownership, and begin a ‘Green Industrial Revolution’. By Adam Booth

France: a million on the street as strikes continue Yesterday’s interprofessional strike against Macron’s pension reform brought between 800,000 and 1,000,000 workers and youth onto the streets of France, according to the CGT. While this is a drop from the mobilisation last Thursday (which was possibly the biggest since 1995), the turnout was still high, with strong participation by transport workers, teachers, health workers and students. By Joe Attard

A Troubled Family: NATO Turns 70 Summit anniversaries are not usually this abysmally interesting. While those paying visits to Watford, England on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation are supposedly signatories to the same agreement, a casual glance would have suggested otherwise. This was a show of some bickering. By Binoy Kampmark

Education, Health, Science, and Welfare:

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: (1) Austerity, (2) Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and (3)  The Iron Heel

Always Remember That Obama Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature, Established, in writing,  the United States Capitalist Austerity Program  — The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!

Democracy?:  As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day:

There Are  Laws

Quotes of the Day:

While carbon dioxide is typically painted as the bad boy of greenhouse gases, methane is roughly 30 times more potent as a heat-trapping gas. New research in the journal Nature indicates that for each degree that  Earth’s temperature rises, the amount of methane entering the atmosphere from microorganisms dwelling in lake sediment and freshwater wetlands — the primary sources of the gas — will increase several times. As temperatures rise, the relative increase of methane emissions will outpace that of carbon dioxide from these sources, the researchers report. — A More Potent Greenhouse Gas Than Carbon Dioxide, Methane Emissions Will Leap As Earth Warms

PLASTIC IS everywhere. It is not merely that the material, rarely used in consumer products before 1950, has become ubiquitous in the homes, cars and offices Americans inhabit. Scientists using remotely operated submersibles announced last month that they had found plastic microparticles in the deep ocean off California’s idyllic Monterey Bay, with, surprisingly, the highest concentrations in the middle of the water column. Researchers have found the stuff on isolated Alpine peaks, in animals’ digestive tracts and in human stools. Some effects on the ecosystem, such as animals getting tangled in or choking on plastic waste, are obvious. It is alarmingly unclear what all the tiny microparticles ending up in the environment — and human bodies — is doing. — Washington Post  Editorial Board, Plastic is everywhere. We can no longer ignore that.

Videos Of the Day:

Great Employment Numbers: 44% of Fully Employed Make $18,000 a Year or Less

New Climate Model Predicts Alarming Levels of Global Heating

Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party: A Comprehensive Study of Nothing

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.

‘Read Every Word of This’: WaPo Investigation Reveals US Officials’ Public Deception Campaign on Afghan War Officials repeatedly told the public “progress” was being made, but new documents show they knew that wasn’t true.  A major Washington Post investigation released Monday is a confirmation of the peace movement’s message that “there’s no military solution in Afghanistan.” That’s according to Paul Kawika Martin, senior director of policy and political affairs at Peace Action, replying to “The Afghanistan Papers.” The report exposes how top officials spanning the George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations waged a deliberate misinformation campaign to conceal the total failures of the 18-year war in Afghanistan.The bombshell from investigative reporter Craig Whitlock “broadly resembles the Pentagon Papers,” and it is based on over 2,000 pages of notes from interviews with a federal agency that “bring into sharp relief the core failings of the war that persist to this day” and belie comments by officials  “who assured Americans year after year” of progress made in the war.By Andrea GermanosWhy Not Also Go With “The Kitchen Table” Impeachable Offenses for Removal? Will the Democrats move to impeach Trump for a narrow brace of violations and accept that the Senate Republicans will keep this outlaw in the White House? Or will they present the Senate with the President’s many proven impeachable offenses, thereby requiring the Senate Republicans, before live national television, in a public trial to defend Trump’s indefensible behavior?Let’s start with the signal statement by Trump: “Then I have Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.” For almost three years, he has proceeded to engage in monarchical unconstitutional behavior in far more repeated, brazen ways than any preceding president. It is not even close. By Ralph Nader

The Great American Shakedown The Democratic Party and its liberal supporters are perplexed. They presented hours of evidence of an impeachable offense, although they studiously avoided charging Donald Trump with impeachable offenses also carried out by Democratic presidents, including the continuation or expansion of presidential wars not declared by Congress, exercising line-item veto power, playing prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner to kill individuals, including U.S. citizens, anywhere on the planet, violating due process and misusing executive orders. Because civics is no longer taught in most American schools, they devoted a day to constitutional scholars who provided the Civics 101 case for impeachment. The liberal press, cheerleading the impeachment process, saturated the media landscape with live coverage, interminable analysis, constant character assassination of Trump and giddy speculation. And yet, it has made no difference. Public opinion remains largely unaffected. By Chris Hedges

Bloomberg Condoned Sexual Assault by NYPD New York must be the ugliest and the dirtiest city in the world. It must have the ugliest buildings and the nastiest people. It’s got to have the worst cops.– James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk Sunday, Nov. 24, I watched some white media women led by Stephanie Ruhle, a former Bloomberg employee, gush all over Bloomberg’s announcement that he was running for president. When the interviewer asked about Bloomberg’s condoning Stop and Frisk, Ms. Ruhle said that it brought down the crime rate. She probably had black and Latinx men in mind, whom bourgeois feminists regard as disposable because they’re in no position to advance their careers.Hundreds of thousands were stopped and frisked with the approval of Michael Bloomberg and others. Some of those assigned to the task have psychological issues. When I read that one of the cops, Dan Pantaleo, stripped two black men and fondled their genitals, I figured he must have had an orgasm while choking Eric Garner to death. By Ishmael Reed

Can a Coal Town Reinvent Itself? A coal town in southwestern Virginia has been trying for years. Hope is running thin. GRUNDY, Va. — Jay Rife surveys the landscape — hundreds of flat, grassy acres reclaimed from a spent mountaintop mine once operated by the Paramont Coal Company. A few handsome homes stand on one end of the project. An 80,000-square-foot shell, to house some future manufacturing operation, is being built on another. For the intrepid, there are trails for all-terrain vehicles. There’s an R.V. park. The whole site has been wired for broadband. Elk have been imported from Kentucky for tourists to look at. Buchanan County, where Grundy sits, has spent $35 million to $40 million on the development, called Southern Gap, some seven miles from town along U.S. 460. Mr. Rife, the head of the county’s Industrial Development Authority, says the project “is going to be the salvation of Buchanan County.  By Eduardo Porter Coal and the Regions Left Behind The NYT had an article that focused on Buchanan County, Virginia as an example of a left behind area in the United States. The county’s economy had centered on coal. While the discussion implies that its downturn is a recent story, the data presented in the piece shows that most of the decline occurred more than two decades ago. The county had more than 5,000 coal mining jobs in the early 1980s. This had fallen to just over 1,000 by the late 1990s. While there was some uptick in coal jobs from 2009 to 2013, the current level is not very different from the level of twenty years ago. By Dean Baker

Environment:

Week 150: Trump Is Pro-Fence When It Comes to Immigration, Anti-Fence When It Comes to Protecting Kids’ Health Plus, the solar industry pleads for mercy, and the president says he thinks about climate change “all the time.” Hmm. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday proposed changes to fencing guidelines around power plants. The existing rule requires utilities to build fences to make clear the division between public land, where the law requires that air quality be measured, and private spaces, where it does not. The new proposal spares companies the trouble of building a fence. Instead, Trump’s EPA says a “no trespassing” sign would suffice. By Brian Palmer

East Siberian Sea Is Boiling With Methane Russian scientists on an Arctic expedition have discovered, for the first time, methane “boiling” on the surface of the water that is visible to the naked eye. Forget high-tech detection devices, the methane is so pronounced that it can be scooped from the water in buckets, as Newsweek reported.  The research team from Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) found the methane leak east of Bennett Island in the East Siberian Sea. The methane bubbles, which create a boiling appearance, spanned an area over 50 feet, as the Telegraph reported. The concentration of atmospheric methane in that spot was 16 parts per million, more than nine times higher than the atmospheric average. By  Jordan Davidson

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Black Agenda Radio for Week of December 9, 2019 With Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford

• Lawless Judges and Prosecutors Block Mumia’s Road to Freedom Linn Washington, the Philadelphia-based legal scholar, told a New York City teach-in in support of Mumia Abu Jamal that the nation’s best known political prisoner would be free already if not for massive prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. “If these judges ever follow the law Mumia will be out immediately – but they don’t follow the law,” said Washington.

• Support for Medicare for All is a “National Consensus” “When an issue gets to the point where it has a national consensus behind it,” as does Medicare for All, “the people who profit from the system will do all they can to stop it,” said Kevin Zeese, of Popular Resistance. Democratic presidential candidate “Elizabeth Warren’s popularity dropped like a rock,” said Zeese, when she watered down her support for Medicare for All.

• Black Alliance for Peace: It’s Good That NATO is in Disarray Although Democrats and militarists bemoan President Trump’s tattered relations with other NATO heads of state, Black Alliance for Peace national organizer Ajamu Baraka says the disarray in the western alliance is a “good thing.” NATO “now serves as a deployment force in every part of the world to extend and expand and deepen” the alliances military control. NATO has “proven itself to be an enemy of collective humanity,” said Baraka.

Labor:

Economy:

Congress Held a Hearing on the Fed’s Bailout of the Repo Market: Here’s Why You Haven’t Heard About ItLast Thursday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was the sole witness called before the House Financial Services Committee to answer questions on the state of financial stability in the U.S. Under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010, the U.S. Treasury Secretary also heads the Financial Stability Oversight Council (F-SOC) which is charged with monitoring any threats to the stability of the U.S. financial system in order to prevent a replay of the epic financial crash of 2008 and attendant devastation to the U.S. economy. During the hearing, Mnuchin was grilled time and again by numerous Republicans and Democrats on what is necessitating the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Fed) to be pumping out hundreds of billions of dollars per week to Wall Street trading houses via the repurchase agreement (repo loan) market. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

Thirst For Radical Change On Display As Corbyn Visits Wales With just days until voters go to the polls, Corbyn is touring the country in one last push for a Labour victory. His visit to Wales last weekend highlights the enormous enthusiasm that exists amongst workers and youth everywhere.As we have noted previously, the most important – and yet the most under-reported – story of this election has been the mass movement around Jeremy Corbyn and Labour’s bold manifesto to change society. Swathes of supporters have flooded the streets, participating in canvassing and rallies. This is no less true in Wales, which is experiencing a massive revival in support for the Labour Party.

Education, Health, Science, and Welfare:

Daily News Digest November 28, 2019           Genocide Day! (Thanksgiving)

Daily News Digest Archives

As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99% — Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!

ORIGINS OF THANKSGIVING

AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT GRAND GOVERNING COUNCILMINISTRY FOR INFORMATION
P.O. Box 13521
Minneapolis MN 55414
612/ 721-3914 . fax 612/ 721-7826
Email: aimggc@worldnet.att.net
Web Address: www.aimovement.org

The year was 1637…..700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe, gathered for their “Annual Green Corn Dance” in the area that is now known as Groton, Conn.                                                                While they were gathered in this place of meeting, they were surrounded and attacked by mercernaries of the English and Dutch. The Indians were ordered from the building and as they came forth, they were shot down. The rest were burned alive in the building.                                                              The next day, the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared : “A day of Thanksgiving, thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children.

For the next 100 years, every “Thanksgiving Day” ordained by a Governor or President was to honor that victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.

Newell based his research on studies of Holland Documents and the 13 volume Colonial Documentary History, both thick sets of letters and reports from colonial officials to their superiors and the king in England, and the private papers of Sir William Johnson, British Indian agent for the New York colony for 30 years in the mid-1600s.

“My research is authentic because it is documentary,” Newell said. “You can’t get anything more accurate than that because it is first hand. It is not hearsay.”

Newell said the next 100 Thanksgivings commemorated the killing of the Indians at what is now Groton, Connecticut [home of a nuclear submarine base] rather than a celebration with them. He said the image of Indians and Pilgrims sitting around a large table to celebrate Thanksgiving Day was “fictitious” although Indians did share food with the first settlers. — http://www.aimovement.org/moipr/thanksgiv.html

Source: Documents of Holland, 13 Volume Colonial Documentary. History, letters and reports from colonial officials to their superiors and the King in England and the private papers of Sir William Johnson, Britsh Indian agent for the New York colony for 30 years.

Researched by William B. Newell (Penobscot Tribe) Former Chairman of the University of Connecticut Anthropology Department.

Images of the Day:

This mural, “Reconcile,” was produced by Gregg Deal in 2014 in Washington, DC. While offering commentary on the local professional football team, the mural also puts indigenous stereotype, identity and appropriation in a historical context. (Credit: Gregg Deal)

No Thanks: How Thanksgiving Narratives            Erase the Genocide of Native PeoplesThe English commander John Mason declared that the attack against the Pequot was the act of a God who “laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to scorn making [the Pequot] as a fiery Oven . . . Thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling [Mystic] with dead Bodies.” The Narragansett and Mohegan warriors with the English were horrified by the actions and “manner of the Englishmen’s fight . . . because it is too furious, and slays too many men.” The Narragansett returned home and no longer participated in the war. This image is courtesy of forquignon.com. The rest of the white folks thought so, too. This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots, read Massachusetts Bay Governor John Winthrop’s proclamation. The authentic proclaimed Thanksgiving Day was born. Few Pequots survived.

Genocide and The Thanksgiving Myth

Native American GenocideThe American Indian Holocaust, known as the “500 year war” and the “World’s Longest Holocaust In The History Of Mankind And Loss Of Human Lives.”  Genocide and Denying It: Why We Are Not Taught that the Natives of the United States and Canada were Exterminated

Death Toll: 95,000,000 to 114,000,000

American Holocaust: D. Stannard (Oxford Press, 1992) – “over 100 million killed” “[Christopher] Columbus personally murdered half a million Natives”

“Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination – by starvation and uneven combat – of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.” — P. 202, “Adolph Hitler” by John Toland

Native Americans have the highest mortality rate of any U.S. minority because of U.S. action and policy. The biggest killers though were smallpox, measles, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhus, bubonic plague, cholera, and scarlet fever. All imported by the Europeans colonists.

Smallpox was instrumental in killing the American Indians

Genocide Of Native Americans:Sociological View

The term Genocide derives from the Latin (genos=race, tribe; cide=killing) and means literally the killing or murder of an entire tribe or people. The Oxford English Dictionary defines genocide as “the deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group” and cites the first usage of the term as R. Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, (1944) p.79. “By ‘genocide’ we mean the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group.”

The U.N. General Assembly adopted this term and defended it in 1946 as “….a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups.” Most people tend to associate genocide with wholesale slaughter of a specific people. However, “the 1994 U.N. Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, describes genocide beyond outright murder of people as the destruction and extermination of culture.” Article II of the convention lists five categories of activity as genocidal when directed against a specific “national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.” Read More

 No More American Thanksgivings  The core ideological content of the holiday serves to validate all that has since occurred on these shores – a national consecration of the unspeakable, a balm and benediction for the victors, a blessing of the fruits of murder and kidnapping, and an implicit obligation to continue the seamless historical project in the present day. By Glen  Ford

The Thanksgiving Myth: Reflecting on Land Theft, Betrayal and Genocide By Sarah Sunshine Manning, The Hampton Institute | Op-Ed

“First Thanksgiving”, Rolled Ink Texture, Cracked Texture via Shutterstock; Edited: LW / TOAs Thanksgiving approaches, many schools throughout the U.S. are making preparations for the standard, and all too cliché, Thanksgiving Day lessons, and fairy tale-esque Thanksgiving plays. And more often than not, the school Thanksgiving activities are largely based on what ultimately amounts to myth, created to serve the imaginations of the dominant society, and simultaneously functioning to erase the tragedies of Indigenous nations. The myth usually goes a little something like this: Pilgrims came to America, in order to escape religious persecution in England. Living conditions proved difficult in the New World, but thanks to the friendly Indian, Squanto, the pilgrims learned to grow corn, and survive in unfamiliar lands. It wasn’t long before the Indians and the pilgrims became good friends. To celebrate their friendship and abundant harvest, Indians in feathered headbands joined together with the pilgrims and shared in a friendly feast of turkey and togetherness. Happy Thanksgiving. The End. From this account, the unsuspecting child might assume a number of things.                                                                                Firstly, they may assume that pilgrims merely settled the New World, innocently, and as a persecuted people, they arrived to America with pure and altruistic intentions.                                    Secondly, children might assume, and rightfully so, that Indians and pilgrims were friends, and that this friendship must have laid the framework for this “great American nation.”                                                                          So, what exactly is the harm in this school-sanctioned account of history? Understandably, the untrained eye may not notice the harm in such a myth, as most Americans are victim to the same whitewashed lie as the rest, and dismantling a centuries-old myth certainly does prove challenging.                                                                              But the first lesson for educators and adults to digest is the fact that this narrative is egregiously whitewashed and Eurocentric on many levels. Moreover, it is a lie, which serves to rob American children of valuable historical lessons. Read More

Thanksgiving: The National Day of Mourning Text of 1970 speech by Wampsutta An Aquinnah Wampanoag Elder

(When Frank James (1923 – February 20, 2001), known to the Wampanoag people as Wampsutta, was invited to speak by the Commonwealth of Massachusettsat the 1970 annual Thanksgiving feast at Plymouth. When the text of Mr. James’ speech, a powerful statement of anger at the history of oppression of the Native people of America, became known before the event, the Commonwealth “disinvited” him. Wampsutta was not prepared to have his speech revised by the Pilgrims. He left the dinner and the ceremonies and went to the hill near the statue of the Massasoit, who as the leader of the Wampanoags when the Pilgrims landed in their territory. There overlooking Plymouth Harbor, he looked at the replica of the Mayflower. It was there that he gave his speech that was to be given to the Pilgrims and their guests. There eight or ten Indians and their supporters listened in indignation as Frank talked of the takeover of the Wampanoag tradition, culture, religion, and land. That silencing of a strong and honest Native voice led to the convening of the National Day of Mourning. The following is the text of 1970 speech by Wampsutta, an Aquinnah Wampanoag elder and Native American activist.)

I speak to you as a man — a Wampanoag Man. I am a proud man, proud of my ancestry, my accomplishments won by a strict parental direction (“You must succeed – your face is a different color in this small Cape Cod community!”). I am a product of poverty and discrimination from these two social and economic diseases. I, and my brothers and sisters, have painfully overcome, and to some extent we have earned the respect of our community. We are Indians first – but we are termed “good citizens.” Sometimes we are arrogant but only because society has pressured us to be so.

It is with mixed emotion that I stand here to share my thoughts. This is a time of celebration for you – celebrating an anniversary of a beginning for the white man in America. A time of looking back, of reflection. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People.

Even before the Pilgrims landed it was common practice for explorers to capture Indians, take them to Europe and sell them as slaves for 220 shillings apiece. The Pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of Cape Cod for four days before they had robbed the graves of my ancestors and stolen their corn and beans. Mourt’s Relation describes a searching party of sixteen men. Mourt goes on to say that this party took as much of the Indians’ winter provisions as they were able to carry.

Massasoit, the great Sachem of the Wampanoag, knew these facts, yet he and his People welcomed and befriended the settlers of the Plymouth Plantation. Perhaps he did this because his Tribe had been depleted by an epidemic. Or his knowledge of the harsh oncoming winter was the reason for his peaceful acceptance of these acts. This action by Massasoit was perhaps our biggest mistake. We, the Wampanoag, welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people.

Although the Puritans were harsh to members of their own society, the Indian was pressed between stone slabs and hanged asquickly as any other “witch.”

What happened in those short 50 years? What has happened in the last 300 years? History gives us facts and there were atrocities; there were broken promises – and most of these centered around land ownership. Among ourselves we understood that there were boundaries, but never before had we had to deal with fences and stone walls. But the white man had a need to prove his worth by the amount of land that he owned. Only ten years later, when the Puritans came, they treated the Wampanoag with even less kindness in converting the souls of the so-called “savages.”

Although the Puritans were harsh to members of their own society, the Indian was pressed between stone slabs and hanged as quickly as any other “witch.”

And so down through the years there is record after record of Indian lands taken and, in token, reservations set up for him upon which to live. The Indian, having been stripped of his power, could only stand by and watch while the white man took his land and used it for his personal gain. This the Indian could not understand; for to him, land was survival, to farm, to hunt, to be enjoyed. It was not to be abused. We see incident after incident, where the white man sought to tame the “savage” and convert him to the Christian ways of life. The early Pilgrim settlers led the Indian to believe that if he did not behave, they would dig up the ground and unleash the great epidemic again.

The white man used the Indian’s nautical skills and abilities. They let him be only a seaman — but never a captain. Time and time again, in the white man’s society, we Indians have been termed “low man on the totem pole.”

Has the Wampanoag really disappeared? There is still an aura of mystery. We know there was an epidemic that took many Indian lives – some Wampanoags moved west and joined the Cherokee and Cheyenne. They were forced to move. Some even went north to Canada! Many Wampanoag put aside their Indian heritage and accepted the white man’s way for their own survival. There are some Wampanoag who do not wish it known they are Indian for social or economic reasons.

What happened to those Wampanoags who chose to remain and live among the early settlers? What kind of existence did they live as “civilized” people? True, living was not as complex as life today, but they dealt with the confusion and the change. Honesty, trust, concern, pride, and politics wove themselves in and out of their [the Wampanoags’] daily living. Hence, he was termed crafty, cunning, rapacious, and dirty.

History wants us to believe that the Indian was a savage, illiterate, uncivilized animal. A history that was written by an organized, disciplined people, to expose us as an unorganized and undisciplined entity. Two distinctly different cultures met. One thought they must control life; the other believed life was to be enjoyed, because nature decreed it. Let us remember, the Indian is and was just as human as the white man. The Indian feels pain, gets hurt, and becomes defensive, has dreams, bears tragedy and failure, suffers from loneliness, needs to cry as well as laugh. He, too, is often misunderstood.

The white man in the presence of the Indian is still mystified by his uncanny ability to make him feel uncomfortable. This may be the image the white man has created of the Indian; his “savageness” has boomeranged and isn’t a mystery; it is fear; fear of the Indian’s temperament!

Even before the Pilgrims landed it wascommon practice for explorers to capture Indians, take them to Europe andsell them as slaves for 220 shillings apiece.

High on a hill, overlooking the famed Plymouth Rock, stands the statue of our great Sachem, Massasoit. Massasoit has stood there many years in silence. We the descendants of this great Sachem have been a silent people. The necessity of making a living in this materialistic society of the white man caused us to be silent. Today, I and many of my people are choosing to face the truth. We ARE Indians!

Although time has drained our culture, and our language is almost extinct, we the Wampanoags still walk the lands of Massachusetts. We may be fragmented, we may be confused. Many years have passed since we have been a people together. Our lands were invaded. We fought as hard to keep our land as you the whites did to take our land away from us. We were conquered, we became the American prisoners of war in many cases, and wards of the United States Government, until only recently.

Our spirit refuses to die. Yesterday we walked the woodland paths and sandy trails. Today we must walk the macadam highways and roads. We are uniting We’re standing not in our wigwams but in your concrete tent. We stand tall and proud, and before too many moons pass we’ll right the wrongs we have allowed to happen to us.

We forfeited our country. Our lands have fallen into the hands of the aggressor. We have allowed the white man to keep us on our knees. What has happened cannot be changed, but today we must work towards a more humane America, a more Indian America, where men and nature once again are important; where the Indian values of honor, truth, and brotherhood prevail.

You the white man are celebrating an anniversary. We the Wampanoags will help you celebrate in the concept of a beginning. It was the beginning of a new life for the Pilgrims. Now, 350 years later it is a beginning of a new determination for the original American: the American Indian.

There are some factors concerning the Wampanoags and other Indians across this vast nation. We now have 350 years of experience living amongst the white man. We can now speak his language. We can now think as a white man thinks. We can now compete with him for the top jobs. We’re being heard; we are now being listened to. The important point is that along with these necessities of everyday living, we still have the spirit, we still have the unique culture, we still have the will and, most important of all, the determination to remain as Indians. We are determined, and our presence here this evening is living testimony that this is only the beginning of the American Indian, particularly the Wampanoag, to regain the position in this country that is rightfully ours.

Daily News Digest November 11, 2019 Veternas Day

Veterans Day Was Supposed to Mark the End of the ‘War to End AllWars’! Instead, it Marks the begining of  United States Imperialism’s Permanent World War for Permanent Word Peace!

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!

During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

Always Remember That Obamba Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature, Started the United States Capitalist Austerity Program  — The Race to the Botom or the Pauperization of the 99%!

Democracy?:  As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day:

Uncle Sam: Will Destroy the World For MoneyQuotes of the Day:

Due to  Capitalism’s Drive Towards Environment Genocide, The Slogan From The Manifesto Of The Communist Party, “Workers Of The World, Unite. You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains!”   We should edit it, to read, Workers Of The World, Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains and the Survivial of Humanity to Gain! — Roland Sheppard

Consumers shouldn’t have to be toxicologists to be able to grab something at the grocery store that doesn’t contain dangerous ingredients. —There Are 2,000 Untested Chemicals in Packaged Foods — and It’s Legal

Never the less, the constitution was written to allow only white males of property to vote, legalized slavery, and stated that Black People were only 4/5 human.  As Noam Chomsky stated in his interview on American History and Democracy: . . . If you go back to the record of the Constitutional Convention, which took place in 1787, almost immediately after the end of the war, you see that they are already moving in another direction. James Madison — who was the main framer, and one of the Founding Fathers who was most libertarian — makes it very clear that the new constitutional system must be designed so as to ensure that the government will, in his words, “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority” and bar the way to anything like agrarian reform. The determination was made that America could not allow functioning democracy, since people would use their political power to attack the wealth of the minority of the opulent. Therefore, Madison argues, the country should be placed in the hands of the wealthier set of men, as he put it. . . . To this day, we have a government and state apparatus that is designed to “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority” — there is no Democracy! It has been endemic to this society to expand westward which included the genocide of the Native Americans. ­­— My Forefathers and The 1%’s Forefathers

Videos Of the Day:

‘Massacre’ of Indigenous Leaders in Colombia Is Result of Broken Peace Agreement

Private Equity Firms are Modern Day Vampires Sucking the Lifeblood Out of Our Society

30 Years After Berlin Wall Fell, Germany’s Divide Persists

How Cops Avoid Mandatory Minimum Sentences That Would Put Anyone Else In JailU.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.

Hey Bernie! Workers Need Power, Not A Seat At The Table Proposals that are gimmicks aren’t the answer Bernie Sanders claims he has uncovered the secret to making things better for the working class. Let’s get on the board of directors of corporations and workers can change this thing from the inside! Some are calling it socialism. But Marxists would disagree. Does this plan really help working people? The nature of capitalism. These proposals are, in the end, just gimmicks. They face certain defeat, and they retain the capitalist system. This is not socialism because owners still have control and profit still rules. Under capitalism, exploitation only gets worse and worse. In this age of advanced technology, robotics and artificial intelligence, labor is steadily eliminated or reduced to the most mundane tasks. The constant drive for “productivity” exhausts workers and pits them against each other. By Dennis Sanders

A Historic Document: A Bill of Rights for Working People (This document need only be updated. It has stood the test of history!)

. . . Not only is it necessary to fight back and reassert our rights, but we need to broaden these rights to protect working people on the economic level and against the threat of new wars, racism, and antilabor drives. We need a new bill of rights to meet the present-day needs of the majority.

The Socialist Workers Party proposes the following:

• Right to a job;

• Right to an adequate income;

• Right to free education;

• Right to free medical care;

• Right to secure retirement;

• Right to know the truth about economic and political policies that affect our lives;

• Right of oppressed national minorities to control their own affairs;

• Right to decide economic and political policy. (More)

Middle East Oil Wars — The US Capitalists’ Permanent Quest for Control of Oil:  Mandate to Defeat ISIS Gives US Authority to Control Syrian Oil Fields, Shoot Syrian Govt Official Who Would Want That Control, Says Pentagon “This is not a new mission.” Pentagon officials asserted Thursday U.S. military authority over Syrian oil fields because U.S. forces are acting under the goal of “protecting Americans from terrorist activity” and would be within their rights to shoot a representative of the Syrian government who attempted to retake control over that country’s national resource. By Andrea Germanos Left is the New Right, or Why Marx Matters The American obsession with electoral politics is odd in that ‘the people’ have so little say in electoral outcomes and that the outcomes only dance around the edges of most people’s lives. It isn’t so much that the actions of elected leaders are inconsequential as that other factors— economic, historical, structural and institutional, do more to determine ‘politics.’ To use an agrarian metaphor, it’s as if the miller was put forward as determining the harvest. The American left has had an outsider role in this politics from the inception of the nation as a capitalist oligarchy to the improbable cobbling together of the idea that popular democracy can exist alongside concentrated wealth. If the powers that be wanted popular democracy, they could stop impeding its creation. The ‘first mover’ advantage, that once gained, power is used to close the door behind it, has be understood for centuries in the realms of commerce and politics. By Rob Urie Environment:

My Friend Was Murdered for Trying to Save the Amazon “They’re watching us,” the Guardians whispered, as we walked in the dark. “But we’re watching them, and this is our forest. We know it inside out. We’ll catch them.” We were heading deeper into the forest, towards an illegal logging hotspot. I was on an operation with the Guardians of the Amazon, indigenous people from the Guajajara tribe with one clear objective: to protect their land. They do this not only for their own families, but also to protect their uncontacted neighbors, people from the Awá tribe, who share this territory. I was invited to join them as part of my work for Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples, who support the Guardians’ work and help amplify their voices on the global stage. By Sarah Shenker

PG&E Spent Millions On Lobbying Following Bankruptcy, Wining And Dining Lawmakers Who Sponsored Bailout The Decision By Pacific Gas & Electric to declare bankruptcy in January did not prevent the utility giant from continuing to spend big on political influence in California’s Statehouse. The investor-owned utility’s transmission lines have been blamed for multiple wildfires, including the Tubbs fire in October 2017 and the Camp Fire wildfire in November 2018, the two most destructive and deadly wildfires in California history. The company infamously neglected necessary safety upgrades on infrastructure known to be a fire hazard, instead choosing to spend its ratepayers’ money on executive compensation, billions of dollars of investor dividends, and on buying political influence.The company’s plunge into Chapter 11, widely viewed as maneuver to avoid legal liability for wildfire victims, has temporarily suspended dividend payments to investors, but it hasn’t stopped the company from showering the political system with money in an attempt to secure a preferential bond that could leave customers picking up the tab to cover the company’s negligent behavior. By Lee Fang As New York Takes Exxon to Court, Big Oil’s Strategy Against Climate Lawsuits Is Slowly Unveiled Last week, in a historic first, the former CEO of a major oil company took the witness stand in a New York City courtroom and spent four hours defending his company against charges that it misled investors about the potential impact of global warming on its viability as a business.   Rex Tillerson, who led ExxonMobil from 2006 until the end of 2016 when he became U.S. secretary of state, was grilled by an attorney for the New York State attorney general for allegedly participating in a “longstanding fraudulent scheme” by Exxon to fool investors. More specifically, the company is charged with exaggerating the stringency of its financial safeguards in pricing risks from regulations restricting greenhouse gas emissions, according to the complaint filed last year in New York state court.   But Tillerson’s appearance was just one of several recent watershed moments for efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its dominant role in causing climate change. These included a former Exxon scientist giving first-ever oil industry whistleblower testimony before Congress, a Senate hearing on how dark money blocks climate change action, the Supreme Court allowing three major climate liability suits to proceed, Maui and Honolulu announcing they will sue the fossil fuel industry, and, perhaps most significant, the Massachusetts attorney general filing suit against Exxon.  By Dan Zegart

 The Feds are Paying Big Oil to Pollute The one thing you never want to hear your dentist say is “oops!” It’s also alarming to hear from a former U.S. senator — 25 years after he passed a temporary oil subsidy for Big Oil. With world petroleum prices low at the time, Senator J. Bennett Johnston (D-LA) pushed through a special break in 1995, temporarily exempting the giants from paying federal royalty fees for the publicly owned crude they take from the Gulf of Mexico. The idea was to give a brief reprieve on royalties to encourage oil corporations to drill here. But — oops! — our lawmakers made a costly slip up: They forgot to specify that the exemption was temporary. Once market prices recovered, the corporations were supposed to resume payments to us taxpayers. “It was never the intent that everybody would get a free ride forever,” says one official. By Jim Hightower

Eating the Amazon Catastrophic fires have been burning all over the world, not just in Amazonia, but also in Siberia, Indonesia, and the Congo basin. These fires are ecological weapons of mass destruction and displacement resulting in habitat destruction and extermination of other species, violent land grabs from Indigenous peoples, murder of forest protectors, and climate refugees. Most of the disastrous fires in the Amazon are the result of clearing forests for cattle pasture or for crops to feed the cattle. In response to the intentional conflagrations in the Amazon, the actor Leonardo DiCaprio was chided recently for daring to suggest a way to significantly deal with the destruction: People can simply stop eating cattle.  By Steven KrichbaumThere Are 2,000 Untested Chemicals in Packaged Foods — and It’s Legal A major but largely glossed over report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), an environmental and public health nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., shows that thousands of untested chemicals (an estimated 2,000, to be exact) are found in conventional packaged foods purchasable in U.S. supermarkets. And yes, all of them are legal.  The extensive collection of permissible additives includes several known or suspected carcinogens, such as synthetic sodium nitrate, found in processed meats and considered probably carcinogenic by the World Health Organization, and butylated hydroxyanisole, also known as BHA, a chemical listed as a cancer-causing chemical by the state of Californiaand found in commonplace items like frozen pepperoni pizza. Other unappealing chemicals are commonly found in our food packaging, such as polypropylene, sulfuric acid and bisphenol A — all of which can have impacts on human health and the environment. Byy Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner Deforestation in Brazil Jumped by 80% in One Year: Study Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon region increased by 80 percent in September compared to the same month last year, according to a private study released on Wednesday stating that 802 square kilometers of forest was lost in the zone. The Amazon Institute of People and the Environment (Imazon), which has been analyzing the planet’s largest tropical forest for the past three decades, said in its report that the largest portion of the deforestation (48 percent of the total) occurred on private lands. Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has hit the highest August level since the current monitoring system began in 2015, underscoring concerns about the weakening of forest protection under President Jair Bolsonaro. The world’s biggest terrestrial carbon sink lost 1,114.8 sq km (430 sq miles) – equivalent to the area of Hong Kong – in the first 26 days of this month, according to preliminary data from the government’s satellite monitoring agency. The data does not include damage caused by fires currently sweeping parts of the Amazon.

Sierra Club Takes a Commendable Turn on Population, Climate Change, and Inequality The Sierra Club – long a retrograde proponent of saving the planet by driving a Tesla, eating wild caught salmon, and voting blue – took positive environmental leadership with their end of the year issue of the Sierra magazine. Stating it is “time to fix the population fixation,” they examine the interactions of population, climate change, and inequality. This commendable development from bourgeois lifestyle environmentalism to a more genuine red-green understanding, though, has a way to go.   The ideology of over-population diverts criticisms of capitalist social relations of unequal distribution. It serves to justify a system, capitalism, which creates needs for the many while satisfying them only for the very few. The Sierra Club, in a bold turn, now argues that the problem is not the fertility of women but “overconsumption” and the “outsized contribution of the wealthiest few to the climate crisis and the extinction emergency.” By Roger Harris

 A Renewed Call For Feminist Resistance To Population Control We call for integrated responses to climate change, environmental racism and toxicity that promote health, including sexual and reproductive health, through social, reproductive and climate justice frameworks. As part of this web of actions, we demand that governments, international agencies and other social institutions:

1. Hold those most responsible for climate change accountable and systematically address environmental racism as temperatures and waters rise.

2. Question the expansive and highly unequal growth logic of capitalist relations of production and consumption.

3. Avoid or reject “solutions” to climate change that are based on individual, consumer decision-making, such as “eating green” (rather than on green production and distribution) or not having babies. These solutions can be superficial, let the biggest polluters off the hook, and further exacerbate inequalities. As do “solutions” stemming from privatization of land and water which deepen inequalities by benefiting corporations instead of small-scale farmers.

4. Reject policies that rely on fertility control and engineering population size to serve development agendas or to counter climate change.

5. Fight nationalism, racism and the heightening of borders. Recognize the right of peoples to move freely and safely.

6. Reject militarized conservationism, the incorporation of family planning into conservation initiatives and other such policies which seek to shift responsibility for loss of biodiversity and destruction of wildlife from global corporate actors to local communities.

7. Protect the full informed consent and rights of trial participants and reject exploitation in scientific experimentation.

8. Promote reproductive justice and a comprehensive vision for sexual and reproductive health within a framework of universal access to holistic health care services that includes a robust conversation about conceptive and contraceptive methods, access and safety; parental, child and elder health care; education on sexuality, gender and healthy relationships; abortion services; HIV testing, prevention and treatment; and actively uproots racist, ableist and anti-LGBTQI biases in healthcare.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

The United States Capitalists Rapers and Pedophiles Protected  by The Media Mononopoly: NBC, ABC and CBS Now Appear to Have Run Cover For World’s Most Powerful Rape Rings NBC, ABC and CBS News have all now appeared to run cover for some of the world’s most powerful rape rings, allegedly killing stories and firing employees who tried to expose the outlets. As three of America’s biggest networks, these outlets have each become embroiled in controversy in 2019 following multiple separate reports that they have played a part in covering up some of the world’s most powerful rape and pedophile rings.The allegations range from killing entire stories outing disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, shutting down an interview detailing accusations against alleged child sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and firing an employee who might have tried to hold an outlet responsible. By Shelby Talcott

Labor:

Economy:

This Is a Horror Story: How Private Equity Vampires Are Killing Everything Corporate plundering did not start and will not stop with Deadspin. here are many, many different versions of the vampire’s tale, but in its most timeworn Eurocentric telling, vampires are evil’s upper crust: beautiful, blue-blooded aristocrats draped in velvet, exuding idle menace. Dracula and his cursed kin are the undead 1 percent and act accordingly: terrorizing villages, murdering peasants, siphoning off others’ lifeblood, and turning up their aquiline noses at the slightest hint of dissent. By Kim Kelly

This Federal Agency Is Investigating Why the Fed Is Bailing Out Wall Street Again  Jelena McWilliams is a Trump appointee who currently serves as the Chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the federal agency responsible for insuring the deposits of commercial banks and savings associations in the United States. McWilliams also knows her way around Wall Street. Her resume at the FDIC states that “Before entering public service, she practiced corporate and securities law at Morrison & Foerster LLP in Palo Alto, California, and Hogan & Hartson LLP (now Hogan Lovells LLP) in Washington, D.C.” As a corporate lawyer, McWilliams “represented publicly and privately-held companies in mergers and acquisitions, securities offerings, strategic business ventures, venture capital investments, and general corporate matters.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

Argentina: 2019 elections – prepare for the future! Mauricio Macri has been defeated at the ballot box. Undoubtedly, these elections have demonstrated the willingness of the workers, students and youth to put an end to Argentina’s structural adjustment policies.Yet, in the absence of a Left alternative that could defeat Juntos por el Cambio(Together for Change), the tool that the masses found to strike at Macrismo was voting for the Frente de Todos (A Front for All) of Alberto Fernández. This marks the beginning of a new political phase in the country. Britain: Tom Watson departure leaves Blairites in disarray Labour members were delivered an enormous shock by the sudden resignation of Tom Watson. He was a stalwart of the party’s right wing. Nobody expected him to leave the party like this. His unexpected departure has effectively decapitated the right wing of the party. Throughout the course of Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, Tom Watson has been the undisputed leader of the right wing and their attempts to remove the twice-elected Labour leader.At times it seemed that others, such as Hilary Benn, might become their champion. But Tom Watson’s position as deputy leader of the party proved decisive, giving the right wing’s attacks on Corbyn the appearance of legitimacy. By Daniel Morley

Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!  

Daily News Digest November 6, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!

During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

Always Remember That Obamba Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature, Started the United States Capitalist Austerity Program  — The Race to the Botom or the Pauperization of the 99%!

Democracy?:  As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day:

United States Cost PrioritiesQuotes of the Day:

Due to  Capitalism’s Drive Towards Environment Genocide, The Slogan From The Manifesto Of The Communist Party, “Workers Of The World, Unite. You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains!”   We should edit it, to read, Workers Of The World, Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains and the Survivial of Humanity to Gain! — Roland Sheppard

When 26 billionaire have the same wealth as half the world population. It’s clear the system is broken. It’s time for real change. — Jeremy Corbyn

Now is the time to throw off all hesitation, open up new fronts of struggle and to launch every protest, demonstration, and anti-imperialist action – from the ballot box to the barricades – as an act to deepen the crisis of imperialism. Every protest against police and white civilian murder of our people, every mass mobilization to demand the end to the cruel, bloody economic war against Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Iran, Korea and Russia must be seen as our part in turning the imperialist wars into wars against imperialism!” — Omali Yeshitela, Chair of the Black is Back Coalition.

In the decade since the governments of Mexico and the U.S. launched their joint war on drug trafficking, scores of high-level traffickers have been killed or captured by authorities. Along the way, a staggering number of lives have been shattered. At times, the rate of killing in Mexico has outpaced Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Researchers have documented drops in the life expectancy of Mexican men as a result of the violence. On top of the deaths, the epidemic of disappearances in Mexico stemming from organized crime and criminalized security forces has been described as the worst in recent Latin American history. All the while, the more than $1.5 billion Washington has directed to Mexican counternarcotics and the estimated $79 billion put up by the Mexican government for safety and public security have made little meaningful impact on the amount of drugs flowing north. Mexican cartels, according to the DEA’s most recent annual assessment, continue to represent the most significant criminal threat to the U.S. — though, the DEA points out, the drugs primarily responsible for killing Americans don’t come from Mexico at all; they’re produced legally and locally in the form of prescription opioids. — The Hot Land: After an Uprising in Mexico, the Return of the Narco Warlords

Videos Of the Day:

Brexit Can Happen Without ‘Trashing’ UK Economy Or NHS, Jeremy Corbyn To Claim

Julian Assange’s Extradition Process Is ‘A Charade’ Filmmaker John Pilger attended Julian Assange’s last court hearing and observed not only that Assange is visibly suffering from prison mistreatment, but his defense is not being given a fair chance to make its case against his extradition to the US.

Protesters in Chile Have Been ‘Murdered, Tortured, and Disappeared’ Chile’s President Piñera says foreign intervention and a conspiracy are behind the recent protests. But protesters say what’s happening is an explosion of long-contained rage against poverty, inequality, and oppression.

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.

Bernie Sanders Says Apple’s $2.5 Billion Home Loan Program a Distraction From Hundreds of Billions in Tax Avoidance That Created California Housing Crisis “We cannot rely on corporate tax evaders to solve California’s housing crisis.” Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday sharply criticized an announcement from tech giant Apple that the company would invest $2.5 billion in helping to asssuage the effects of California’s housing crisis—a crisis that Apple has contributed to by driving prices up as the company has expanded in the San Francisco area.  “Apple’s announcement that it is entering the real estate lending business is an effort to distract from the fact that it has helped create California’s housing crisis—all while raking in $800 million of taxpayer subsidies, and keeping a quarter trillion dollars of profit offshore, in order to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes,” Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, said in a statement By Eoin Higgins

Wealth and All That Glitters The generation of baby boomers gave rise to a stable of cultural heroes who became multimillionaires. They were actors, writers, musicians and some of those took part in protest. There was one major difference about this stable that set them apart from the rest of us during that era of protest, and that was they became very, very rich, often on the left’s dime, to where they had more in common with the few and the wealthy than the rest of us who had to pay bills and make ends meet. We didn’t have a choice of whether to show up to work. We were free in a Dickensian way, in that we were free to starve if we chose. Someone on the left noted a few years ago, making an observation of one celebrity (a movie star) from the stable, that a person of extreme wealth could show up at a protest, possibly get arrested, and leave as that person had come, in a limousine. Very few who went to the barricades during the civil rights and antiwar movements got to come and go via limousine. It’s not that the left didn’t benefit by the largess of wealthy donors and celebrities, it’s just that most of those on the left didn’t have much in common with them besides principles, but principles are easy to defend in extreme comfort. By Howard Lisnoff Mark Zuckerberg is a Rich Jerk Zuckerberg is not a political philosopher concerned about the public good. There is a zero evidence he is a deep thinker of any sort. He is a Harvard boy who stumbled into a good idea and had the necessary connections to get very rich from it: end of story. It is bizarre that so many people look to the country’s billionaires to tell us how the world should be constructed or think that these people have any great insight into such matters. Being a billionaire means that you were successful at getting very rich. There is no reason to believe that billionaires have any more insight into major policy issues than anyone else. By Dean Baker

Environment:

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Largest Sentence Commutation in US History: Nearly 500 Inmates Walk Free After Oklahoma Voters Demand Reform “That this is largely flying under the radar is probably good—a sign of how far criminal justice reform has come. Oklahoma voters’ approval of a referendum in 2016 allowed for nearly 500 inmates to walk free on Monday from the state’s massive prison system—the largest single-day commutation in U.S. history. Four hundred and sixty-two people had their sentences commuted as a result of Question 780, which asked voters if they approved of recategorizing many felonies, including drug possession and minor property crimes, as misdemeanors. The referendum passed by a 16 percent margin. By Julia Conley

Black Agenda Radio for Week of November 4, 2019  With Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford

• Black Voters Won’t Save the Democrats  If the Democrats continue to behave as if the working class is white, they won’t be able to count on huge Black turnouts at the polls, said activist and public interest attorney Malaika Jabali. Many Blacks in the economically depressed Midwest opted out of voting in the last presidential election, believing the Democrats “don’t care about me, so why should I care about them,” said Jabali

• Black Voters Won’t Save the Democrats  If the Democrats continue to behave as if the working class is white, they won’t be able to count on huge Black turnouts at the polls, said activist and public interest attorney Malaika Jabali. Many Blacks in the economically depressed Midwest opted out of voting in the last presidential election, believing the Democrats “don’t care about me, so why should I care about them,” said Jabali.

• Fundamental Black and Native Opposition to White Setller State  Blacks and Native Americans continue to pose a threat to the “conquistador white settler nation,” agues Tiffany King, author of “The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies.” King is a professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Georgia. “There are impulses within both Black abolition and Native decolonization that are fundamentally about ending the US,” said King.

• Green New Deal vs White Supremacy  The fight for a Green New Deal is bringing together a “multiracial, multiclass coalition” that is meeting their environmental, economic and psychological needs “in a far more efficient and better way than it ever was under white supremacist capitalist capitalism,” said activist and State University of New York English professor Nicholas Powers. Powers is author of “The Ground Below

•  Mumia: Even Angela Davis Shocked by US Mass Incarceration Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, notes that even trailblazing prison abolition scholar Angela Davis, herself a former political prisoner, underestimated Americans’ willingness to incarcerate millions of their fellows. Abu Jamal quoted Davis, who wrote that, back in the late Sixties she could not fathom that the US prison population would increase ten-fold in the next few decades. “No, this will never happen,” she wrote. “Not unless this country plunges into fascism.”

Labor:

Economy:

World:

Calling War ‘Irrational,’ President of Mexico Rejects Trump Offer to Send US Army to Wipe Drug Gangs ‘Off Face of the Earth’ “We have to act independently and according to our constitution, and in line with our tradition of independence and sovereignty,” said Andrés Manuel López Obrador. By Jake Johnson

Crushing Anti-Mining Protest in Australia The Prime Minister of Australia is fuming. Having made his mark on Australian politics by being the mining sector’s most avid defender, Scott Morrison was disturbed by the week’s events in Melbourne that saw clashes between police and protesters outside the sixth annual international mining and resources conference. It made sense for the protesters to kick up a fuss at the big ticket event. IMARC, as the site states, “is where the global mining leaders connect with technology, finance and the future. It is Australia’s largest mining event bringing together over 7,000 decision makers, mining leaders, policy makers, investors, commodity buyers, technical experts, innovators and educators from over 100 countries to Melbourne for four days of learning, deal-making and unparalleled networking.” By Binoy Kampmark

Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!  

China Opens A New University Every Week It is part of a silent revolution that is causing a huge shift in the composition of the world’s population of graduates. By Andreas Schleicher

Daily News Digest November, 2019

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Daily News Digest November 4, 2019

Contradictions of the UAW GM Strike

The GM workers are on strike to end the multitiered wage and temporary workers wage system — ‘For Equal Pay for Equal Work’.)  This unequal wage system was brokered by the UAW bureaucracy and General Motors ‘Partnership’ in the 1980s.  The UAW Bureaucrats, at that time, sold the wage tier system in exchange for a wage increase for the UAW and selling out future GM workers (their sons and daughters) with the lower wage two-tier system.

Basically, the UAW Bureaucracy/GM and the National AFL-CIO Union/Boss partnership is opposed to equal pay for equal work and for unequal pay for equal work. The GM Workers need our full support and the support of all in this battle for equality!In the 1980s, after the defeat of the PATCO strike, the AFL-CIO misleadership announced that their new program would be to form a Partnership with Management. (When I was a union official I termed this a Domestic Partnership.) Some of them, also agreed in writing, to police local areas that opposed this ‘partnership’.

The Graph Below is a Graphic Example of the Decline in Standard of Living of the Working Class, Since the Trade Union Bureaucracy Declared Itself to Be ‘In a (Domestic) Partnership With the Boss’! Starting in the mid-1980s, This ‘partnership’ gave birth to the one, two, three, three ect. .. wage tier system! Selling out the futures of future young workers entering the labor force. And, since the lowest union wage is immediately the highest non-union wage, this wage tier system cut the wages of the entire working class!   When I was a union official, I called this system labors rush to the bottom!  As in graphically shown in this: Shadow Government Statistics Graph.  Leon Trotsky foretold the ‘Partnership’ Between the Trade Bureaucracy and the Boss:  From Leon Trotsky and the Iron Heel: 

One must accentuate especially the role which Jack London attributes to the labor bureaucracy and to the labor aristocracy in the further fate of mankind. Thanks to their support, the American plutocracy not only succeeds in defeating the workers’ insurrection but also in keeping its iron dictatorship during the following three centuries. We will not dispute with the poet the delay which can but seem to us too long. However, it is not a question of Jack London’s pessimism, but of his passionate effort to shake those who are lulled by routine, to force them to open their eyes and to see what is and what approaches. The artist is audaciously utilizing the methods of hyperbole. He is bringing the tendencies rooted in capitalism: of oppression, cruelty, bestiality, betrayal, to their extreme expression. He is operating with centuries in order to measure the tyrannical will of the exploiters and the treacherous rôle of the labor bureaucracy. But his most “romantic” hyperboles are finally much more realistic than the bookkeeper-like calculations of the so-called “sober politicians.” It is easy to imagine with what a condescending perplexity the official socialist thinking of that time met Jack London’s menacing prophecies. If one took the trouble to look over the reviews of The Iron Heel at that time in the German Neue Zeit and Vorwärts, in the Austrian Kampf and Arbeiterzeitung, as well as in the other socialist publications of Europe and America, he could easily convince himself that the thirty-year-old “romanticist” saw incomparably more clearly and farther than all the social-democratic leaders of that time taken together. But Jack London bears comparison in this domain not only with the reformists. One can say with assurance that in 1907 not one of the revolutionary Marxists, not excluding Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, imagined so fully the ominous perspective of the alliance between finance capital and labor aristocracy. This suffices in itself to determine the specific weight of the novel.

There Are No ‘Safe Radiation’ Levels!

As we continue to learn at such a huge cost, there can never be a “perfectly safe” nuclear reactor, any more than there can be a “perfectly harmless” dose of radiation. “Impossible” accidents continue to happen, one after the other, each of them successively worse. What we fear most about TMI, then Chernobyl and now Fukushima, is not what has happened—but what is yet to come, there, and at the next inevitable reactor disaster. We are a pro-life movement. — There’s No “Safe” Dose of Radiation

Before 1945, cancer mortality was very rare. Large increases in cancer mortality in the past 100 years begin with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. A Japanese government map of the major causes of death in Japan from 1899 to 2004 shows that cancer mortality increased rapidly after 1945. With the introduction of each new nuclear technology since 1945 — atmospheric testing, nuclear power plants, depleted uranium — it is obvious that ionizing radiation is a major cause of cancer globally, and uranium is a major radioactive component of nuclear weapons, including depleted uranium weapons systems introduced to the battlefield in 1991 in Gulf War I.  This breast cancer map from Centers for Disease Control data (see below illustration) identifies that within a 100-mile radius of nuclear reactors is where two-thirds of all U.S. breast cancer deaths occurred between 1985 and 1989. The map (see below illustration) of nuclear power plants in the U.S. identifies them as the major cause of breast cancer in the U.S., as well as nuclear weapons labs in New Mexico, Idaho, Washington and California. This is further confirmed by the breast cancer clusters identified in Japan and California, which occurred where it rained the day the Chernobyl radiation cloud passed over and the rain deposited the fission products in the environment. — Leuren Moret

This ‘spike’ in cancer mortality is due to the introduction of manmade nuclear power radiation is proven by below graph.

Background Radiation Has Increased 600 Percent – 1 mSv In 1950 To over 6 mSv Today; Where Is This Coming From? Physicist Dr. Paolo Scampa And Dr Busby Weigh In On The Evidence And Root Causes: Background Radiation Has Increased 600 Percent – 1 mSv In 1950 To over 6 mSv Today; Where Is This Coming From? Physicist Dr. Paolo Scampa And Dr Busby Weigh In On The Evidence And Root Causes “Eisenbud points out that the world Inventory of radioactive materials prior to World War II, both in the environment and in the laboratory, was confined to those which occurred in nature, with the exception of a relatively few millicuries of radioactivity produced in cyclotrons during the late 1930’s. Construction of large nuclear reactors during the war and the associated operations for extracting plutonium from irradiated uranium resulted in the first extensive occasions for contaminating the environment with radioactive substances.”

When you are told that a radioactive substance is a small percentage of ‘Natural  Background Radiation,’ remember that, before WWII, ‘Natural Background Radiation’ was close to zero. (See the Above Graph)

Since the Dawning of the Atomic Age to 1970, ‘Natural Background Radiation’ had Increased Over 600%!:  And when you think of the nuclear testing that has been done, since 1970, Gernoble,  Fukushima, and of today’s wars and the use of depleted Uranium it has kept increasing.

For example, this quote From, The Queen’s Death Star Depleted Uranium Measured in British Atmosphere  from Battlefields in the Middle East, shows how depleted uranium spread worldwide after the “Shock & Awe” bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq:

The Sunday Times Online, February 19, 2006, reported on a shocking scientific study authored by British scientists Dr. Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan: “Did the use of Uranium weapons in Gulf War 2 result in contamination of Europe? Evidence from the measurements of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Aldermaston, Berkshire, UK”. The highest levels of depleted uranium ever measured in the atmosphere in Britain, were transported on air currents from the Middle East and Central Asia; of special significance were those from the Tora Bora bombing in Afghanistan in 2001, and the “Shock & Awe” bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq in 2003. Out of concern for the public, the official British government air monitoring facility, known as the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), at Aldermaston was established years ago, to measure radioactive emissions from British nuclear power plants and atomic weapons facilities.

This quote from my essay Nuclear Power: What Have They Done to the Rain?: In the early 1960s, Joan Baez sang the following protest song  about ‘The gentle rain (nuclear fallout) that falls for years:’

In the 50’s, nuclear fallout from atom bomb testing was determined to be “Just a Gentle Rain,” non lethal to humans. Although recent government revelations show that, the government had a high priority to tell Kodak that nuclear fallout was dangerous to film and to lie to the public and state that the radioactivity from the fallout was safe! The Natural Resources Defense Council has now estimated that it had exploded the equivalent of 40,000 aboveground Hiroshima bombs from 1945 to 1963. And, in 1997, the National Cancer Institute reported that perhaps 10,000 to 75,000 thyroid cancers could have resulted, particularly among children drinking contaminated milk in the Mountain states closest to the test sites! (“Just a little rain.”)

The Radiation and Public Health Project (http://www.radiation.org/) published an article titled: “Why Nuclear Fallout Caused 20 Million Premature U.S. Deaths since 1950” by Jay M. Gould. The article gives a very strong argument that the “gentle rain” did indeed cause approximately 20 million premature deaths. In fact the rapid rise in cancer after World War II can be attributed to the rise in chemical and nuclear pollution, which started with the bombing of Hiroshima.

The two images below show how Fujushima Radiation has also spread around the World

2013 Radiation Fukushima2015 Fukushima Has Now Contaminated 1/3 of the World’s Oceans

The gentle rain (‘Natural Background Radiation’ ) has fallen for over 80 years and will continues for millions of year, unless humanity stops making it fall!

Daily News Digest October 11, 2019

Daily News Digest October 7, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!

During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

The Capitalist Austerity Program = It’s Become the Race to the Botom! The Pauperization of the 99%!

Democracy?:  As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

The Lies of Capitalism Neoliberals love to quote the World Bank’s rosy statistics about capitalism lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. Unfortunately, those statistics are skewed and manipulated to the point of outright prevarication, as Seth Donnelly demonstrates in his new book, “The Lie of Global Prosperity.” He quotes a breathless World Bank press release, “soon 90 percent of the world’s population will live on $1.90 a day or more.” No matter that translated into local currency at local prices, in many places that $1.90 per day purchases the equivalent of 30 cents a day or that $1.90 per day means the pauperization of billions – for as Donnelly shows, a truer metric of avoiding desperate poverty is over $5 per day. If that far more honest measure is applied, 80 percent of South Asians and sub-Saharan Africans are, Donnelly explains, horribly impoverished. Even more disturbing, achieving a 70-year life expectancy requires $7.40 a day, something the world’s cold and pampered capitalists will certainly not shell out or even allow for the billions of wretchedly poor. By Eve Ottenberg

Images of the Day:

Capitlalist Robber Barons at the TroughTrump Plan to Allow New Fracking on California Coast, Central Valley Moves Forward

Quotes of the Day:

‘Drill Baby Drill’ —  Capitalism’s Greed and Wanton Disregard For Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness.:    As Reuters reported, the BLM “has not held a lease sale in California since 2013, when a judge ruled that the agency illegally issued leases without analyzing the environmental impact of drilling called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.” Clare Lakewood, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued BLM to stop the lease sales, said the agency’s “reckless move” on Friday represents “the toxic convergence of Trump’s climate denial, loyalty to the oil industry, and grudge against California.” — Merging ‘Loyalty to the Oil Industry’ and ‘Grudge Against California,’ Trump Opens 725,000 Acres to Fossil Fuel Drilling

Sticking to a basic script for leaders of both major parties, Pelosi has vehemently denied the systematic violations of the Fourth Amendment that Snowden exposed. Such denial is routine, while sometimes going over-the-top to blame the messenger for the accurate news. “Edward Snowden is a coward,” the Obama administration’s top diplomat, Secretary of State John Kerry, said in a TV interview one year after Snowden’s revelations. “He is a traitor. And he has betrayed his country. — Pelosi Wants to Prosecute Snowden But Protect Trump Whistleblower

Videos Of the Day: 

 U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.

The Media Monopoly Keeps Consolidating: Wall Street Is Killing Local Newspapers Though lacking the size and prestige of The New York Times or The Washington Post, The Storm Lake Times is arguably just as important. Two years ago, the small, bi-weekly Iowa paper (circulation: 3,000) won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for taking on agricultural water pollution in the state. If it weren’t for vibrant local papers, stories like these might never come to light. Unfortunately, all over the country, private equity and hedge funds have been scooping up these cash-strapped papers — and looting them into irrelevance or bankruptcy. Here’s how it works. Investors put down a fraction of the purchase price and borrow the rest — and then saddle the company with that debt. Layoffs and cutbacks follow, which leads to a shabbier product. Circulation and revenue decline, then more cuts, and the cycle accelerates. Eventually the paper is a shadow of its former self, or turned to ashes completely. Wall Street wins, the public loses. By Olivia Snow SmithHow the U.S. Military Undermines the American Economy Now, nearly six decades later, Eisenhower’s warning has become institutionalized.  Military spending not only strongly influences, if not shapes, corporate capitalism but might well pose a threat to the future of the nation’s economic development. Eisenhower surly must be spinning in grave given how much influence the military industrial complex wields today.  In 1960, the military budget stood at $344 billion; today, the military complex, including the ever-growing intelligence apparatus, cost taxpayers over $1 trillion. Military spending for the period October 1, 2019, through September 30, 2020, is at $989 billion and covers the Dept. of Defense, veterans’ benefits, international military assistance, nuclear weapons spending and military intelligence. By David RosenThe United States of Bribery and Sanctioning The democratrepublicans are now confidently toying with the idea that Trump could be impeached because there seems to be a possibility that Trump tried to use some of the US’ institutionalized, bipartisanly supported bribery of a foreign government to try to insure his own political advantage. The entrapment into privately profitable insurance ventures through the use of bribes and sanctions has long been widely and very highly regarded in Washington. By Clark T. Scott

We Meddle Too: Trump, Empire, and “The National Interest” Never underestimate the power of the United States’ American Exeptionalist and imperial doctrine. Look at the recent Washington Post revelation regarding wannabe fascist strongman Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Lavrov in the White House in 2017. Trump told Lavrov and another high-ranking Russian official that he wasn’t concerned about Russia meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election because the United States does the same thing in other countries. By Paul StreetEnvironment:

England Applies The Iron Heel!:  ‘Not What Democracy Looks Like’: Outrage as UK Police Use Battering Ram to Raid Extinction Rebellion Building  “These tactics are very questionable and are arguably infringing on our rights to peaceful protest, and indeed our efforts to preserve people’s right to life.” London police on Saturday raided a building Extinction Rebellion activists were using to store supplies ahead of a climate demonstration planned for Monday, a preemptive action environmentalists condemned as an unlawful crackdown on a peaceful protesters. By Jake Johnson

Our Global Gas Chamber   One of the great (mostly) untold stories of the Age Of Oil is the array of toxic chemicals in hydrocarbon exhaust and the accumulation of exhaust-borne particulates in the bloodstream and brain. We are largely indifferent to these byproducts of our industrial-grade obsession with hydrocarbons, but our willful ignorance cannot hide the facts the way catalytic converters hide the odors they produce.

• A particularly daunting informational pdffrom the State of New Hampshire details the chemical miasma we find ourselves in:

• Gasoline emitsethanol, benzene, toluene, xylene and toxic air pollutants (TAPs) such as formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, 1,3-butadiene, diesel particulate matter, acrolein, cadmium, chromium, and lead.

• Diesel engines emitunburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, NOx, sulfur oxides, PM, black carbon, VOCs and carbon dioxide.

• Lawn and garden equipment emit carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, VOCs, NOx. Factsheet ARD-22: Lawn and Garden Equipment

• Additionally, the Google summary for the pdf notes that:

• Natural gas emitscarbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides.

• Oil emitscarbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, arsenic, and benzene.

• Coal emitscarbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, arsenic, and benzene.

We are pumping megatons of this crap into the air that we breathe. It is also the air that the disappearing birds and dying insects depend upon. In fact, I was thinking about this intersection on Saturday when I was tending to the familial fig tree … and realized there weren’t any birds around. By Jp Sottile

Millions of Years of Low CO2 … Until Now  In Facing the Anthropocene, I showed that CO2 levels are higher than they have been for 800,000 years. New research extends that to 2.6 million years  Earth System scientists describe the Anthropocene as a “no-analog state,” a time when conditions on Earth have changed in unprecedented ways. A new study confirms and extends that conclusion, showing not only that humans have never before experienced carbon dioxide levels this high, but that our ancestors didn’t either. The Battles Now One real battle we are in now – human caused global warming – is a battle we realized very belatedly we are in. The other – the political one – is, in a President Trump retweet, heading toward “a Civil War like fracture in this nation” and is a Mad Hatter sort of battle in which both sides see the other through a shattered looking glass, and hear each other through a madhouse Twitter echo chamber. The battle in which we are fighting for survival on this planet is a battle with ourselves, though the economics we have constructed now seems to lie outside ourselves as an unimpeachable reality. By Joseph Natoli

 Biosolids: Mix Human Waste With Toxic Chemicals, Then Spread On CropsResidual sludge from treating waste water has been turned into a money-spinner but what are the costs to health of ‘the most pollutant-rich manmade substance on Earth’?  chemicals and biological wastes from water, only to spread them on soil everywhere we live, work and play defies common sense,”

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Labor:

 Worldwide Austerity’s ‘Race to the Bottom’:   Capitalism’s Triumph: Labor Rights Violated in Every Country on Earth In what country are labor rights fully respected? The sad answer is: none. Labor rights are routinely violated around the world, and the trend is only getting worse. The International Trade Union Confederation has again issued its annual Global Rights Index and the result is no better than in past years. It’s worse. For example, the number of countries that exclude workers from the right to establish or join a union increased from 92 in 2018 to 107 in 2019. Even in Europe, the region with the (relatively) best conditions for working people, half the countries exclude at least some groups of workers from freely associating by allowing “non-standard” forms of work such as zero-hour contracts, temp work or misclassifying people working through online platforms as “self-employed.” By Pete Dolack

Economy:

The Silence, of the House Democrats, Is Deafening:  There’s Nothing Normal About the Fed Pumping Hundreds of Billions Weekly to Unnamed Banks on Wall Street: “Somebody’s Got a Problem” Yesterday, the House Financial Services Committee released its hearing schedule for October. There is not a peep about holding a hearing on the unprecedented hundreds of billions of dollars that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is pumping into unnamed banks on Wall Street at a time when there is no public acknowledgement of any kind of financial crisis taking place. Congressional committees should have been instantly on top of the Fed’s actions when they first started on September 17 because the Fed had gone completely rogue from 2007 to 2010 in funneling an unfathomable $29 trillionin revolving loans to Wall Street and global banks without authority or even awareness from Congress. The Fed also fought a multi-year court battle with the media in an effort to keep its giant money funnel a secret. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Obama/Trump Working Class Austerity: The Pauperization of the Working Class!Shadow Government Statistucs Alternate Unemployment Charts The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment. The ShadowGovernment Statistics Alternate Unemployment Rate for September 2019 is 20.9%.World:

Ecuador: government’s austerity package sparks mass uprising The announcement by the government of Lenín Moreno of a US$2.2bn package of economic counter-reforms on 1 October has led to mass demonstrations and strikes. The government, which fears losing control of the situation, has responded with brutal police repression and yesterday, 3 October, declared a state of emergency for 60 days. By Jorge MartinBritain in turmoil: Let us rise to the challenge Boris Johnson is preparing to fight an election on the lines of “the People vs Parliament”. Labour must meet this demagoguery with mass mobilisation of workers and youth, organised around a bold class programme of socialist policies.Bureaucracy undermines MP selections: boot out the Blairites! Over the past several weeks, three Blairite MPs have been successfully “triggered” by grassroots activists: Diana Johnson in Hull, Margaret Hodge in Barking, and Roger Godsiff in Birmingham. The latter has the distinction of being Britain’s “laziest MP” (with the fewest parliamentary appearances), and notoriously gave his backing to the protests against LGBT teaching in schools. Byjoe Attard

Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!   

Daily News Digest October 1, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!

During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

Democracy?:  As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day:

Big Strikes and Protests In New Zealand Kick Off Day of Action Over Climate ChangeBig Strikes and Protests In New Zealand Kick Off Day of Action Over Climate Change A huge climate strike has hit New Zealand, where 170,000 people have walked out to demand climate justice. It’s part of the latest wave of the global climate strike, and more walkouts were due to take place later today. Action is also taking place in 27 other countries including Italy, Chile, Morocco, the Netherlands and India. In  Canada, demonstrations are set to be massive, with leader Greta Thunberg attending the Montreal rally. Over 80,000 activists marched in Auckland and 40,000 people were reported on the Wellington mobilisation. It’s the third New Zealand strike and by far the biggest to date—initial reports suggest 3.5 percent of the population took to the streets. Striking workers joined the action. By Sarah Bates

Quotes of the Day:

The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems only decent. — Dr John Kenneth Galbraith

Anyone who cares for someone with a developmental disability, as well as for disabled people themselves [lives] every day in fear that their behavior will be misconstrued as suspicious, intoxicated or hostile by law enforcement. — Steve Silberman

Videos Of the Day: 

Jeremy Corbyn We’ll Scrap Universal Credit

Trump’s Attack on LA Homelessness Ignores the Causes

Laura Flanders Show: Reporting on Economic Hardship Roughly 40 million people live in poverty in the USA. Can you imagine living under $24,000 a year for a family of four? If you can’t, why not? Surely the media should help. This week, why mainstream media are so poor at covering poverty – and what one organization, The Economic Hardship Reporting Project,  is doing about it

The Only War That The Democratic (War) Party Did not Support Was the War Against the Confederacy! — The Democratic Party Remains a Party of War, Not Peace Green Party Candidate Madelyn Hoffman Says That Even The Progressive Democratic Presidential Candidates Remain Unwilling to Challenge The Pentagon.

 U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.

Human Trafficing is as ‘American as Apple Pie’: How Widespread is Human Trafficking in the US? The United States is no exception to the practice of modern day slavery—a crime for which it is rarely held accountable at the United Nations. A rash of hidden crimes widespread in US inner cities and border towns include forced migrant labour, human trafficking, sexploitation of minors and domestic servitude. In its 2018 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, the US State Department said that despite its global reach, human trafficking takes place locally — “in a favorite nail salon or restaurant; in a neighborhood home or popular hotel; on a city street or rural farm” But four recent high profiles cases of human trafficking and commercialized sex have laid bare the growing problem in big cities and far corners of the US.Robbing Pensions that Workers/99%  Earned—The Beginning of US Pension Cuts/Austerity:   Puerto Rico’s Roadmap for Bankrupcy Rejected by Pensioners The proposal won the support of Puerto Rico’s new governor even though it calls for pension cuts for about 40 percent of the island’s government retirees. Puerto Rico would reduce a major portion of its debt by more than 60 percent under a long-awaited restructuring proposal the bankrupt U.S. commonwealth’s federally created financial oversight board filed in court on Friday. The so-called plan of adjustment covering US$35 billion of bonds and claims and more than US$50 billion of pension liabilities would allow Puerto Rico to exit a form of bankruptcy that commenced in May 2017 if it wins U.S. District Court approval.Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez Call for Reversal Of Puerto Rico Austerity Measures When hundreds of thousands of people poured onto the streets of San Juan, Puerto Rico, last July, it wasn’t just the resignation of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló they wanted. “Ricky renuncia y llévate la junta,” many of them cried — “Ricky resign, and take the junta with you.” For three years, a federally imposed Financial Oversight and Management Board, known as the junta or the FOMB, had imposed severe austerity measures on Puerto Ricans, ostensibly in an effort to get a handle on the soaring debt. Like Rosselló’s administration, the junta’s members and consultants were riddled with conflicts of interest. The people had had enough. Rosselló did resign, but the junta is still in place and pushing punishing austerity in the form of cuts to health care, public pensions, and the public university. The people have not stopped fighting. In dozens of municipalities across the island, newly formed public assemblies are meeting weekly to discuss how to carry forward the energy of the protests. In many of them, fighting debt management policies involving crippling cuts to public services has become a key focus. By Kate Aronoff and Alleen Brown

 The New Evil Empire The US seems to have decided that it can’t take on China and Russia at the same time, so its principal geopolitical rival in the coming decades will be China. Trump’s Republican administration and the Democrats agree on this, though they are campaigning vigorously against each other ahead of next year’s presidential election. China has replaced the ‘evil empire’ of the Soviet Union and ‘Islamic terrorism’ as the US’s main adversary. But China, unlike the Soviet Union, has a dynamic economy, with which the US has an enormous trade deficit. And China’s strength is far more impressive than that of a few tens of thousands of Islamic fundamentalist fighters wandering the deserts of ancient Mesopotamia or the mountains of Afghanistan. By Serge Halimi

Whistleblower’s Lawyers Say Trump Has Endangered Their Client as President Publicly Threatens ‘Big Consequences’ “Threats against a whistleblower are not only illegal, but also indicative of a cover-up.” Bakaj cited Trump’s suggestion behind closed doors last week that the people who informed the whistleblower should be executed as an example of the president endangering the safety of his client. By Jake Johnson

The Wounds of War in Afghanistan Recovering from a broken hip, peace activist Kathy Kelly reflects on her experiences with people disabled and traumatized by war. Its economy gutted by war, Afghanistan’s largest cash crop remains opium. Yet farmers there do grow other crops for export. Villagers in the Wazir Tangi area of Nangarhar province, for example, cultivate pine nuts. As a precaution, this year at harvest time, village elders notified the governor of the province that they would be bringing in migrant workers to help them collect the nuts. Hired laborers, including children, would camp out in the pine nut forests, they informed the officials. They hoped their letter could persuade U.S. and ISIS forces, which had been fighting in or near their villages, not to attack.  On September 17, 2019, exhausted from a long day of work, the migrant workers reached their rest spot for the night, and began building fires and making camp. In the early hours of the following morning, a U.S. drone attacked, killing at least thirty-two people. More than forty others were wounded. The U.S. military claims that ISIS fighters were hiding among the farmers who were killed. By Kathy KellyEnvironment:

When it Comes to Mortgages, Banks and Bankers are Not in Global Warming Denial.                       Climate Risk in the Housing Market Has Echoes of Subprime Crisis, Study Finds Banks are shielding themselves from climate change at taxpayers’ expense by shifting riskier mortgages — such as those in coastal areas — off their books and over to the federal government, new research suggests. The findings echo the subprime lending crisis of 2008, when unexpected drops in home values cascaded through the economy and triggered recession. One difference this time is that those values would be less likely to rebound, because many of the homes literally would be underwater. In a paper to be released Monday, the researchers say their findings show “a potential threat to the stability of financial institutions.” They warn that the threat will grow as global warming leads to more frequent and more severe disasters, forcing more loans to go into default as homeowners cannot or would not make mortgage payments. By Christopher FlavelleClean-Air Scientists Fired by EPA to Reconvene in Snub to Trump Panel of researchers plans to continue reviewing studies, as at least 21 million Americans said to live with unacceptable air pollution An advisory panel of air pollution scientists disbanded by the Trump administration plans to continue their work with or without the US government. The researchers – from a group that reviewed the latest studies about how tiny particles of air pollution from fossil fuels make people sick – will assemble next month, a year from the day they were fired. They’ll gather in the same hotel in Washington DC and even have the same former staffer running the public meeting. By Emily Holden Week 140: Trump Ignored Climate Change’s Role in the Migration of Guatemalans—and Then Cut Off Aid Plus, the BLM’s new location will be next door to Big Oil, and it just issued a hilarious new bit of climate change denial (something about Vikings and grapes). By Brian Palmer

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

When Welfare Checks Turn Deadly Think twice before you call the cops to carry out a welfare check on a loved one. Especially if that person is autistic, hearing impaired, mentally ill, elderly, suffering from dementia, disabled or might have a condition that hinders their ability to understand, communicate or immediately comply with an order. By John W. Whitehead

Labor:

Bitter ‘Fruits’ The UAW/GM Partnership— The Union Allowed the Tier System, Concessions, Layoffs And Plant Closings.:                                       Striking GM Workers On Picket Line Discuss What is At Stake in Their Battle More than 82 years ago, the Flint sit-down strike, which lasted 44 days, forced GM, then the largest industrial enterprise on the planet, to recognize the UAW. Several months ago, retirees marched in front of the memorial to demand the removal of Norwood Jewell’s name from the plaque after the UAW vice president and former regional director pleaded guilty to taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from Fiat Chrysler. The present strike is reviving memories and interest in the history of “the strike heard around the world,” as the sit-down strike was called. On the picket line, Brenda, a veteran autoworker of 46 years told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter, “The conditions that exist today would make the sit-downers roll over in their graves! I came up from Arkansas to work in the plant. It used to be you could make a decent living working for General Motors, but that all went away. The union allowed the tier system, concessions, layoffs and plant closings. The temps, for instance, barely get by. They can’t even buy a car or pay for car insurance. I want the younger people to have a good life. What the union is doing is allowing GM to take us back to before the sit-down strikes.”

Economy:The Repo Loan Crisis, Dead Bankers, and Deutsche Bank: Timeline of Events Last week, as the Fed was carrying out hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency loan operations on Wall Street for the second week in a row – the first such operations since the financial crisis – Deutsche Bank’s headquarters office in Frankfurt, Germany was being raided by police for the second time in less than a year. That’s not the sort of thing that inspires confidence among depositors to keep their money in your bank. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

Haiti on Brink of Revolution to Overthrow US-Backed Regime government officials, and burned a jail and courts to the ground in different parts of Haiti on Friday. Insurgents are fighting to overthrow the corrupt right-wing regime of Jovenel Moise, who is backed by the US. Four people died in clashes in recent days, with many reports of injuries.In June, judges of Haiti’s High Court of Auditors said in a report that Moise was at the center of an “embezzlement scheme” that had siphoned off Venezuelan aid money intended for road repairs, laying out a litany of examples of corruption and mismanagement.

Thomas Cook’s chief executive and directors gave themselves £29 million in bonuses despite plummeting profits. And now their staff won’t be paid tomorrow and are having to use food banks. It’s truly shameful. — Jeremy Corbyn

Britain: Thomas Cook —Another Victim of a Cut-Throat System Travel company Thomas Cook is no more. Another iconic cornerstone of the British high street has gone into liquidation and 9,000 workers in the UK are out of a job. Many of these went through the same horrible experience just two years ago when Monarch Airlines collapsed. The current collapse is arguably an even-greater social disaster and hits 20,000 workers worldwide, with wider knock-on effects throughout the travel industry. By  Martin Swayne

Documentary Exposes Wall Street Power Behind Global Gentrification Boom Since the global financial crisis in 2008, urban housing prices have skyrocketed and luxury apartments continue to spread, forcing people out of their homes as multigenerational communities unravel. But rather than critique gentrification, PUSH sets its sights on a lesser known culprit: the modern marriage of private equity and real estate, a ruthless enterprise that too often leads to housing insecurity, homelessness and human rights violations. Such devastating consequences have been inspiring local social movements and, increasingly, responsible government action. By Yosef Brody

Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!  

Daily News Digest September 30, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!

During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

Democracy?:  As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day:

Wealth Inequality In The United StatesQuotes of the Day:

The next Labour government will turn this failed approach on its head with a Green Industrial Revolution to tackle the climate emergency, create hundreds of thousands of good green jobs in every region and nation of our country and save millions of households money on their bills.   From the mass installation of solar panels, insulating homes, building the Swansea Tidal Lagoon, expanding solar and wind energy and bringing the National Grid into public ownership, Labour’s Green Industrial Revolution will benefit working-class people by cutting energy bills, creating good jobs in new, green industries and fighting the climate emergency,” he continued. “Social justice and climate justice are inseparable. Labour will tackle inequality and environmental destruction together. — Jeremy Corbyn Promises ‘Green Industrial Revolution’

Videos Of the Day:

Edward Snowden Condemns Trump’s Mistreatment of Whistleblower Who Exposed Ukraine Scandal

“Financial Censorship Is Still Censorship”: Edward Snowden Slams Justice Dept. Lawsuit Against Him

Brazilian Students Take Protest to Next Level, Launch Strike Against Bolsonaro Education Cuts

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.

The Problem With Impeachment Impeaching Donald Trump would do nothing to halt the deep decay that has beset the American republic. It would not magically restore democratic institutions. It would not return us to the rule of law. It would not curb the predatory appetites of the big banks, the war industry and corporations. It would not get corporate money out of politics or end our system of legalized bribery. It would not halt the wholesale surveillance and monitoring of the public by the security services. It would not end the reigns of terror practiced by paramilitary police in impoverished neighborhoods or the mass incarceration of 2.3 million citizens. It would not impede ICE from hunting down the undocumented and ripping children from their arms to pen them in cages. It would not halt the extraction of fossil fuels and the looming ecocide. It would not give us a press freed from the corporate mandate to turn news into burlesque for profit. It would not end our endless and futile wars. It would not ameliorate the hatred between the nation’s warring tribes—indeed would only exacerbate these hatreds. By Chris Hedges

Income Inequality In America Is The Highest It’s Been Since Census Started Tracking It, Data Shows In The Midst Of The Nation’s Longest Economic Expansion, The Separation Between Rich And Poor Is At A Five-Decade High Income inequality in the United States has hit its highest level since the Census Bureau started tracking it more than five decades ago, according to data released Thursday, even as the nation’s poverty and unemployment rates are at historic lows. The gulf is starkest in wealthy regions along both coasts such as New York, Connecticut, California and Washington, D.C., as well as in areas with widespread poverty, such as Puerto Rico and Louisiana. Equality was highest in Utah, Alaska and Iowa.

Environment:

New Research Warns Severe Climate-Related Droughts Could Threaten 60% of Global Wheat Crop by 2100 Even with ambitious global efforts to limit emissions, the study warns, “the increase in the frequency and extent of adverse weather extremes and related shocks on the production side would be unprecedented.” By Jessica Corbett10 Ways that the Climate Crisis and Militarism are Intertwined By Medea Benjamin

1. The US military protects Big Oil and other extractive industries.. We can’t get off the fossil fuel treadmill until we stop our military from acting as the world’s protector of Big Oil.

2. The Pentagon is the single largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels in the world.

3. The Pentagon monopolizes the funding we need to seriously address the climate crisis.of the 2019 military budget of $716 billion would beenough to fund 128,879 green infrastructure jobs instead.

4. Military operations leave a toxic legacy in their wake.$11.5 billion on environmental cleanup of closed bases and estimates $3.4 billion more will be needed.

5. Wars ravage fragile ecosystems that are crucial to sustaining human health and climate resiliency.

6. Climate change is a “threat multiplier” that makes already dangerous social and political situations even worse.

7. US sabotages international agreements addressing climate change and war.

8. Mass migration is fueled by both climate change and conflict, with migrants often facing militarized repression.

9. Militarized state violence is leveled against communities resisting corporate-led environmental destruction.

10. Climate change and nuclear war are both existential threats to the planet.

We Must Have a Green Industrial Revolution. And Labour Will Lead It I remember thinking: if this is how far we’ve come in 200 years, what’s the future going to look like? But the future is no longer such a rosy place, as those who saw David Attenborough’s Climate Change: The Facts earlier this month will have realised. If you see a scientist on TV these days, they’re probably talking about the perilous state of our climate and the threat to our planet’s living systems. From the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the Met Office to Nasa, some of the greatest minds of our generation are modelling the future, and their conclusions are stark. By Rebecca Long-Bailey

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Labor:

The Has Been No Recovery For the Working Class!

From The Condition of the United States Working Class —  Where Do We Go From Here?: When I was a union official, I called this system labors’ rush to the bottom!    The Graph Below is a Graphic Example of the Decline in Standard of Living of the Working Class, Since the Trade Union Bureaucracy Declared Itself to Be ‘In a (Domestic) Partnership With the Boss’(Class Cooperation)! Through the 1980s and 1990s they even included this ‘partnership’ into their work agreements and the partnership was fully established!  Starting in the mid-1980s, This ‘partnership’ gave birth to the one, two, three, three,  ect.  wage tier system! Selling out the futures of future young workers entering the labor force. And, since the lowest union wage is immediately the highest non-union wage, this wage tier system cut the wages of the entire working class!   When I was a union official, I called this system labors rush to the bottom!  As in graphically shown in this: Shadow Government Statistics Graph. At the same time, Real Wages have Fallen Since the Wage Price Freeze of 1972  (Shadow Government Statistics):  Graph 3 plots the seasonally-adjusted earnings as officially deflated by the BLS (red-line), and as adjusted for the ShadowStats-Alternate CPI Measure, 1990-Base (blue-line). When inflation-depressing methodologies of the 1990s began to kick-in, the artificially-weakened CPI-W (also used in calculating Social Security cost-of-living adjustments) helped to prop up the reported real earnings. Official real earnings today still have not recovered their inflation-adjusted levels of the early-1970s, and, at best, have been in a minimal uptrend for the last two decades (albeit spiked recently by negative headline inflation). Deflated by the ShadowStats (1990-Based) measure, real earnings have been in fairly-regular decline for the last four decades, which is much closer to common experience than the pattern suggested by the CPI-W. See the Public Commentary on Inflation Measurement for further detail. This process has led to a greater productivity and windfall profits for the capitalist, without more value being added to society.

Bureaucrats Treat the Rank&File Like Mushrooms. — They Keep Them In The Dark And Feed Them Bullshit!:                                                                                      UAW Keeping Workers In The Dark As It Works To Shut Down Strike Against GM With the strike by 48,000 General Motors workers in the US entering its 11th day, the United Auto Workers is continuing to keep striking workers in the dark by refusing to reveal the content of its “negotiations” with GM. The nationwide walkout is the longest in the auto industry since the 21-day Ford strike in 1976 and the 67-day walkout at GM in 1970. It is part of a global eruption of class struggle, including the resumption of strikes by autoworkers in Korea yesterday. In perfunctory letter to GM workers released Tuesday, UAW Vice President Terry Dittes said, “All unsettled proposals are now at the Main Table and have been presented to General Motors, and we are awaiting their response. This back and forth will continue until negotiations are complete.” The letter did not say what the content of the “back and forth” is. From the start of official “negotiations” in mid-July, the UAW has not revealed any of the details of its demands. That’s because they don’t have any. Like every other contract over the last 40 years, the terms have been set by corporate management, with discussion centered on how to force workers to accept a new round of concessions. By Jerry White

Under Pressure From Labor Leaders and Striking Workers, GM Agrees to Fund Health Coverage During Walkout Workers’ rights supporters celebrated Thursday after General Motors caved to pressure and agreed to continue paying healthcare premiums for thousands of striking workers. The company moved to fund its employees’ benefits after its earlier announcement that United Auto Workers (UAW) would have to fund workers’ healthcare during the strike was met with scorn from labor leaders and lawmakers.  By Julia ConleyGM Restores Health Care to Strikers in Maneuver to Smooth Path For UAW Sellout GM announced that it would restore shut-off healthcare benefits to 48,000 striking workers in the United States in an effort to smooth the way for the United Auto Workers union to end the strike and impose the company’s dictates. The company cut off healthcare shortly after the strike began on September 16, after the United Auto Workers had assured workers that it had reached an agreement for GM to continue coverage through the end of the month. By Tom Hall

Economy:

The Fed Is Offering $100 Billion a Day in Emergency Loans to Unnamed Banks and Congress Is Not Curious Enough to Hold a Hearing The Federal Reserve Bank of New York first initiated its emergency overnight loans to Wall Street this year on Tuesday, September 17, starting off at the rate of $75 billion daily. It then increased its loans by adding, in addition to the $75 billion daily, 14-day term loans in the amount of $30 billion to be offered three times this past week. But after the demand for the first 14-day loan was more than double the $30 billion offered, the New York Fed boosted the next term loans to $60 billion and increased its overnight loans to $100 billion. What will next week bring? When Wall Street can get super cheap loans from the Fed in the tens of billions of dollars with no questions asked by Congress, it will continue upping its demands until the Fed is once again secretly shelling out trillions of dollars while Congress willfully remains in the dark – in other words, a replay of the 2007-2010 financial crisis. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

Demonstrators in Lima Protest Against Water Privatization “Water is a right, not a privilege” protesters in Peru’s capital chanted throughout the city’s main avenues Thursday, claiming their human right to have access to the natural resource. Residents of Lima, Peru, marched against the privatization of the pubic Lima Drinking Water and Sewerage Service (Sedapal) Thursday as they headed towards the Ministry of Housing Construction and Sanitation.Saudi Crown Prince Takes Responsibility for Khashoggi Murder “It happened under my watch. I get all the responsibility, because it happened under my watch.” Saudi Arabia’s crown prince said he bears responsibility for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year by Saudi operatives “because it happened under my watch,” according to a PBS documentary to be broadcast next week. It is the first time that Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, has publicly indicated personal accountability for the killing inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by operatives seen as close to him. The CIA and some Western governments have said they believe he ordered it, but Saudi officials say he had no role.

Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!  

How The Credit Card Usury/Loan Shark Interest Rates Became Legal:

Have you ever noticed that all your credit card bills seem to get mailed to South Dakota, Nevada or Delaware? Have you ever wondered why national credit card issuers would want to run their businesses in South Dakota, a state where the average temperature in January is 5 degrees? More importantly, have you wondered why credit card companies can ignore your state’s usury law, which limits the amount of interest that can be charged on a loan, and charge whatever rate they want? . . . The answer lies in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling, Marquette National Bank of Minneapolis vs. First of Omaha Service Corp. The case not only changed the law, but also became a light-bulb moment for the industry, setting it on a 30-year path that deeply affected state economies and Americans’ debt levels. “There have been a few seminal events in the industry; this was one of them,” says Scott Crawford, a former analyst in the Congressional Budget Office and for credit card issuer HSBC. He is now CEO of DebtGoal.com. “There was a premium for being in states with lax usury laws. It gave you a strong advantage over operators in other states.” The ruling provided a transitionary moment for both the banking industry and a handful of entrepreneurial states — most notably South Dakota and Delaware. The states saw an opportunity to dramatically expand their job bases during a deep recession by luring credit card companies to relocate into their borders. The ruling let credit card issuers “export” nationally whatever interest rate was allowed in the state in which they were headquartered. To induce the companies to relocate, some states simply dropped their usury laws. Several large issuers bit on the deal, relocated and it became anything goes for credit card rates. — How A Supreme Court Ruling Killed Off Usury Laws For Credit Card Rates

Daily News Digest September 5, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!

During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

Democracy?:  As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day:

One Nation Under SurveillanceQuotes of the Day: 

An important biological species is in danger of disappearing due to the fast and progressive destruction of its natural living conditions: mankind. We have now become aware of this problem when it is almost too late to stop it.   It is necessary to point out that consumer societies are fundamentally responsible for the brutal destruction of the environment. They arose from the old colonial powers and from imperialist policies which in turn engendered the backwardness and poverty, which today afflicts the vast majority of mankind.   With only 20 percent of the world’s population, these societies consume two-thirds of the metals and three-fourths of the energy produced in the world. They have poisoned the seas and rivers, polluted the air, weakened and punctured the ozone layer, saturated the atmosphere with gases which are changing weather conditions with a catastrophic effect we are already beginning to experience.   The forests are disappearing. The deserts are expanding.  Every year thousands of millions of tons of fertile soil end up in the sea. Numerous species are becoming extinct. Population pressures and poverty trigger frenzied efforts to survive even when it is at the expense of the environment. It is not possible to blame the Third World countries for this. Yesterday, they were colonies; today, they are nations exploited and pillaged by an unjust international economic order. The solution cannot be to prevent the development of those who need it most. The reality is that anything that nowadays contributes to underdevelopment and poverty constitutes a flagrant violation of ecology. Tens of millions of men, women, and children die every year in the Third World as a result of this, more than in each of the two world wars.   Unequal terms of trade, protectionism, and the foreign debt assault the ecology and promote the destruction of the environment. If we want to save mankind from this self-destruction, we have to better distribute the wealth and technologies available in the world. Less luxury and less waste by a few countries is needed so there is less poverty and less hunger on a large part of the Earth. We do not need any more transferring to the Third World of lifestyles and consumption habits that ruin the environment. Let human life become more rational. Let us implement a just international economic order. Let us use all the science necessary for pollution-free, sustained development. Let us pay the ecological debt, and not the foreign debt. Let hunger disappear, and not mankind.   Now that the alleged threat of communism has disappeared and there are no longer any more excuses for cold wars, arms races, and military spending, what is blocking the immediate use of these resources to promote the development of the Third World and fight the threat of the ecological destruction of the planet? Let selfishness end. Let hegemonies end. Let insensitivity, irresponsibility, and deceit end. Tomorrow it will be too late to do what we should have done a long time ago. — Fidel Castro, Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro in 1992.

Videos of the Day:

Abby Martin & Richard Wolff Discuss Socialism in 2019

Extinction Rebellion Stages Liverpool Protest for Climate Action

Leading Israeli Journalists Launch Racist Rants about Palestinians

Aging Isn’t a Problem Ageism Is

Chomsky Says US is World’s Biggest Terrorist In the global scene we are racing towards a precipice which we are determined to fall over which will sharply reduce the prospects for decent survival. …There are actually two, one is environmental catastrophe which is imminent and we don’t have a lot of time to deal with it and we are going the wrong way, and the other has been around for 70 years, the threat of nuclear war, which is in fact increasing. If you look at the record it is a miracle we have survived.

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich

‘Always About the Con’: Ocasio-Cortez Says ‘Virtually Every’ Trump Policy Designed to Loot Public Coffers and Enrich His Cronies “Since corruption isn’t popular policy, racism works as the cover for the con. That’s why addressing racism isn’t a ‘distraction’—it’s key to understanding the hustle against working people.” By Jake JohnsonEnvironment:

Leaked IPCC Report Warns of the Future Of Oceans in Climate Change Devastating Storms, Loss of Freshwater And Fish Stocks Threatened                  The world’s vast oceans, glacial ice sheets and northern permafrost are poised to unleash disaster, including drought, floods, hunger and destruction, unless dramatic action is taken against human-caused carbon pollution and climate change, warns a leaked draft of a major U.N. report.                                                                              The Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) sounds alarm bells over declines in fish stocks, plus “a hundred-fold or more increase in the damages caused by superstorms, and hundreds of millions of people displaced by rising seas,” according to news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), which obtained a copy of the 900-page draft report. Freshwater supplies for billions of people, including the world’s mountain dwellers, will be hit by melting glaciers that will first release far too much water, and then not enough, according to the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a scientific body of the U.N. mandated to report the state of climate change. Melting permafrost in northern regions will also release billions of tons of carbon, adding to global warming, reports AFP, citing the IPCC report. By Sandra Cordon

Alaska’s Sea Ice Completely Melted for First Time in Recorded History“Even if we can’t escape its consequences, it is not too late to escape the mindset that brought us here.” —Alice O’Keeffe, reviewing This Is Not a DrillThe country of Iceland has held a funeral for its first glacier lost to the climate crisis. The once massive Okjökull glacier, now completely gone, has been commemorated with a plaque that reads: “A letter to the future. Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.” By  Dahr JamailCivil Rights/Black Liberation:Bernie Wants to Seize the Means of Electricity Production Bernie Sanders wants to take private profit out of the energy grid as part of his comprehensive Green New Deal plan. “’We will end greed in our energy system,’ says Sanders.” A year after a neglected Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) power line sparked a wildfire that tore through northern California, presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday visited Chico, Calif., where many who fled the fire made a new home. He held a town hall the same day he released a new climate plan, in which he declared that the days of investor-owned utilities—with their profit incentives to underinvest in the electric grid and double down on fossil fuels—have to end. He’s right: It is time for a massive public takeover of the nation’s electric grid. By Johanna BozuwaForeign Aid for Rwanda, Suffering for Rwandans and Congolese Rwanda is treated as a showcase of US-allied Africa, but even western capitalists don’t believe dictator Paul Kagame’s economic numbers, and the real money comes from looting the Congo. “Kagame is the Clintons’ darling — which is a no-no with Trump.” Rwanda received roughly “$1.22 billion” in development aid in 2016-2017 , the most recent year for which Official Development Aid (ODA) numbers are available on the website of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The US was Rwanda’s top bilateral donor that year, giving $177.6 million, but Trump drastically reduced aid to the tiny East African nation. By Ann Garrison , BAR contributor How Race Made the Opioid Crisis The fundamental division between “dope” and medicine has always been the race and class of users. “The success of OxyContin hinged on racially bifurcated understandings of addiction.” In March 2018, President Donald Trump delivered a forty-minute speech about the crisis of addiction and overdose in New Hampshire. Standing before a wall tiled with the words “Opioids: The Crisis Next Door,” Trump blankly recited the many contributors to the current drug epidemic, including doctors, dealers, and manufacturers. Trump droned on mechanically until he reached a venomous crescendo about Customs and Border Protection’s seizure of 1,500 pounds of fentanyl. He brightened as he shifted focus to three of his most hated enemies, first blaming China and Mexico for saturating the United States with deadly synthetic opioids, then moving seamlessly to what he considered one of the great internal threats: “My administration is also confronting things called ‘sanctuary cities,’” Trump declared. “Ending sanctuary cities is crucial to stopping the drug addiction crisis.” By Donna MurchDissent Is Being Criminalized Right Under Our Noses If you painted “Black Lives Matter” on a wall to advocate against police violence, that could be prosecuted as terrorism. “Federal prosecutors could charge terrorism if actions might ‘affect’ or ‘influence’ a government policy.” Many of us are deeply concerned about the recent wave of mass shootings and hate crimes that have taken place across the United States. As the Department of Justice reported , in 2018 alone there were 25 race-based terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, each committed by an alleged white supremacist. Immediate action is needed to address this crisis and tragedies like the Aug. 3 shooting in El Paso, Texas. By Mike SiegelReality Check: Bank of England Governor Criticizes the Petrodollar! When a capitalist governor of an imperialist nation’s central bank says alternatives to the US dollar are necessary, big change is afoot. “European-American capitalists are determined to retain their supremacy by any means necessary without regard for friend or foe.” It is remarkable that Bank of England Governor Mark Carney recently spoke publicly about “the U.S. dollar’s “destabilizing” role in the world economy,” going on to suggest that “central banks might need to join together to create their own replacement reserve currency.” This is very significant because in his capacity as Bank of England Governor, Carney serves as Chairman of the Monetary Policy Committee, giving him a major role in directing national economic and monetary policy. By Cheikh Amma DiopAnthem 4 Rappers Wrapped in The Flag                     By Louis JeffersonOh Jay Can U C
By the dawn of Imperialist greed
They will eat u 2
After they fatten u up to deceive
U took the bait
So they call u great
The white man’s oldest trick in the book (More)

The Black Misleadership Class Shuffles Along and Rides Again The president of predominantly Black Hampton University debased himself by speaking at Liberty University, founded by the Christian racist Jerry Falwell. “Black misleaders have convinced the masses that neo-colonialism is the reasonable and viable replacement for colonialism.” “…Jomo Kenyatta formed an excellent revolution without education and all he did as the end thing was tell the people…I’m your brother, I helped you lead the revolution now I’m going to oppress you… Papa Doc in Haiti…he moved all of the White people out and he took over being the oppressor because of no education…Jomo Kenyatta is not called a never revolutionary but an ex-revolutionary…so is Papa Doc… Without education you have neo-colonialism instead of colonialism…you might get people caught up in the emotionalist movement…and because they are poor they’ll want more and before we know it we will have capitalist and before you know it we’ll have Negro imperialist…”  Fred Hampton – “The Importance of Education Prior To Action” By AnonymousJussie Smollett, the Chicago Police Department, and the Appearing/Disappearing Video Footage Trick  The cops “investigating” the Smollett case have long records of racist brutality, evidence tampering and lying – facts the corporate media ignored. “The nation heard a daily, jarring cacophony: CPD bragging about how great its detective work is.” They say tell it like is, so… It’s 2019. Trump is president.  Racist and general hate speech has become common.  Jussie Smollett is attacked in such a hate crime.  The corporate media, Chicago media, Trump, Mayor Rahm Coverup Emanuel, and the Chicago Police Department all say Smollett is a damn liar.
Standing at literal podiums, they shared opinions about Jussie and concluded by declaring him guilty — before the trial. CPD agrees, Trump agrees, corporate media agrees, Chicago city officials who-never-address-rampant-CPD-corruption agree, Mayor Emanuel agrees.  Case closed. By Chelli Stanley Gambians Glued to YouTube as President’s Hit Squad Confesses Deposed Gambian President Jahya Jammeh, a strong ally of the US, was a mass killer whose henchmen are now confessing on streaming media. “Jammeh is in exile in Equatorial Guinea, where he has been granted refuge.” Truth is stranger than fiction and in the west African nation of Gambia, the truth has galvanized citizens with former members of the exiled president’s hit squad admit to murder and other atrocities. Gambians are watching the confessions, given in a highly public truth and reconciliation commission hearing, that are being streamed live on a YouTube channel. By Global Information Network

The People Who Think Bernie Is Moderate  To socialist candidates, even the left-most Democrat isn’t left enough. “Third parties argue that the Democratic Party is irredeemably compromised and that voters deserve true alternatives.” Senator Elizabeth Warren wants new taxes on wealth. Senator Bernie Sanders wants Medicare for All. Senator Cory Booker wants guaranteed jobs. Jeff Mackler wants the elimination of the military budget, the nationalization of the energy and banking industries, open borders, the creation of a state-run health-care system, and the end of capitalism in the United States. A member of the Trotskyist party Socialist Action, Mackler is one of a handful of true, full-fat, no-joke socialist candidates running or considering running for president in 2020. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell looks at the Democratic primary and sees the proposed Cubafication of the country; Mackler looks at it and sees neoliberal accommodationism. “Bernie gets a little attention when he says things like, ‘Three people in the United States control half the wealth in the country,’” he told me with a chuckle. “He has no proposal to change that in any way!” By Annie Lowrey Israel’s Scramble for Africa: Selling Water, Weapons and Lies Many African governments are giving Israel exactly what it wants – a way to break out of its isolation and legitimize its Apartheid. “Israel has won the support of some of Africa’s ruling classes, but it has failed to win the African people.” For years, Kenya has served as Israel’s gateway to Africa. Israel has been using the strong political, economic and security relations between the two states as a way to expand its influence on the continent and turn other African nations against Palestine. Unfortunately, Israel’s strategy seems, at least on the surface, to be succeeding – Africa’s historically vocal support for the Palestinian struggle on the international arena is dwindling. By Ramzy Baroud My Wise Country Cousin: de Low-leeta Xpress a Bi-Party-sin Flight  By Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residenceHumph, an’ to think dey made “Birth ob de Nation“
spreadin’ dat filth— dat rotten disinformation—
I bet dis what shrinks mean wit dey word, “projekshun?”
(but Boss Tweet big shoe show mosly mis-direkshun…)
White boy-Terris, lak de real rapists, is homegrown—
ax me, it’s bred-in-de-bone—lak testosterone! (More)

Labor:

Economy:Shadow Government Statistics Daily Update (September 3rd to 4th) – (Updated Details)

• Government-Shutdown Distorted And Delayed Data Have Begun To Surface;

• Reporting Delays Artificially Boosted The Headline Benchmarked Gdp /The Shutdown-Delayed;

• September 3rd Annual Benchmark Revisions to Construction Spending Showed Much Weaker Activity Second-Quarter 2018 to Date;

• Benchmark Revised GDP Has Been Overstated;

• Recent History Would Be Weaker Had the Construction Detail Been Available When Scheduled;

• Consider that Revised Nominal Year-to-Year Construction Spending Turned Negative in 4q2018 and After, Previously Holding Positive Until 2q2019;

• Last Time Annual Growth Turned Negative Was 1q2008, at Onset of the Great Recession / Prior to the Construction Benchmarking, a Negligible First Revision of Second-Quarter GDP to 2.04% (Initially 2.06%) Annualized Real Growth, Accompanied Initial Estimates of GDI at 2.11% and GNP at 3.18% ;

• Benchmark-Revised Patterns of Rapidly Slowing Real Annual Growth Continued

• New Recession Remains in Play;

• Payroll Employment Growth Was Hit by Massive Preliminary Downside Benchmark Revision of 501,000 (-501,000) Jobs

• Major Implications for FOMC Easing and Next Round of GDP Benchmarking

Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Gross Domestic Product Chart The SGS-Alternate GDP reflects the inflation-adjusted, or real, year-to-year GDP change, adjusted for distortions in government inflation usage and methodological changes that have resulted in a built-in upside bias to official reporting.

Wall Street’s Trading Secrets: This U.S. Senator Wants to Keep You in the Dark  On July 29, those savvy market watchers at Themis Trading posted a report on their blog about how a Republican Senator from Louisiana (about 1400 miles from Wall Street) had taken a peculiar interest in the long-delayed system that would shine a bright light on who might be rigging stock trading on any particular day. The system is called the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) and the Securities and Exchange Commission has been stalling its creation for the entire 85 years the SEC has existed and been charged with investor protection. The idea of the CAT is to spot illegal and manipulative trading and pinpoint exactly what firms and individuals are placing the trades by looking at real-time data. A stock market without a CAT is nothing more than a thinly disguised wealth transfer system for the one percent and, apparently, Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) wants to keep it that way. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World: 

Britain heads for a general election: mobilise for a Corbyn victory!  His government is just two days old, but Boris Johnson has already managed to lose his majority and rack up two defeats in the House of Commons. No government in history has faced such an immediate losing streak. This demonstrates how weak the Tory leader and his regime are.  Everything is balanced on a knife edge. The situation is changing by the hour. Events could rapidly swing in either direction. This reflects the instability and volatility that is inherent within this deep crisis of Britain’s entire political and constitutional system.British Lawmakers Win Vote to Debate Bill Authorising Brexit Delay MPs voted Tuesday evening to take control of parliament’s business and pursue the passage of a cross-party bill to prevent the Conservative government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson from leaving the European Union (EU) without a trade and customs deal. MPs backed the motion to allow a debate on the bill today by 328 votes to 301, a majority of 27. Twenty-one Tory MPs rebelled despite threats to withdraw the party whip and prevent them from standing for re-election for the party. Responding to the defeat, Johnson said he would table a motion Wednesday for a vote on holding a general election before October 17—the final date that European Union (EU) leaders are able to agree a deal with the UK on its exit terms. By Robert Stevens

Hong Kong: extradition bill withdrawn – class struggle must continue! The mass movement in Hong Kong has just won its key demand – the withdrawal of the hated extradition bill that would allow anyone the Beijing government suspects of criminality to be extradited to the mainland. But none of the other four demands, such as for an independent investigation into police brutality, have been won. Daniel Morley and Parson YoungFollowing Months of Protests and Outrage, Hong Kong Leader Withdraws Extradition Bill “We all hope to find a way out of the current impasse and unsettling times,” said Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam By Jake JohnsonApartheid Had Always Been the Plan What do wealthy capitalists do in response to the ever present threat of nuclear annihilation or a biosphere teetering on the edge of collapse? Why they build enormous, fortified bunkers deep underground, of course. Here they can live like the descendants of the mammals that survived the extinction of the dinosaurs in the late Cretaceous and early Paleocene around 65 to 100 million years ago. The long deceased necrolestes patagonensis, whose shockingly appropriate meaning for this comparison is “grave robber,” are the descendants of the cronopio who narrowly escaped the dinosaurs’ fate by burrowing deep under the earth’s soil. By Kenn Orphan

Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare! 

Replacing Ideology With Class “The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable.” —Andrea Dworkin  There is something very peculiar about how politics is talked about. The things that are true and proven to work are called “left” while the things that are false and are proven to fail are called “right”. This is why upon education most everyone becomes left, barring a greater force than truth itself in one’s interest in education. This is an unprecedented dynamic. Take any other field. In mathematics, in science, in language, truth is proven and then more or less accepted. In politics this isn’t the case. Despite things such as socialism, peace, education, regulation, housing and equality always working, there remains a debate about whether or not these things work. By Nick Pemberton

Daily News Digest August 30, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!

During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

Democracy?:  As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day:

A Top Financier of Trump And Mcconnell is a Driving Force Behind Amazon DeforestationQuotes of the Day:

“If Boris Johnson thinks he can suspend parliament and force through no deal he has another think coming. We will build a mass movement to save democracy, and everyone who wants to stop this travesty must get ready to mobilize, demonstrate and resist.” —Clive Lewis, UK Labour Party MP — ‘Just the Beginning’: Massive Protests in UK as Thousands Flood Streets to #StoptheCoupBrazil has gotten a huge amount of bad press with the fires in the Amazon with the emphasis on the harm its development policies are doing to efforts to limit global warming. While the policies of Brazil’s right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, are disastrous, there is an important part of the story that is being left out of most discussions.The reason that we are worried about global warming is because rich countries, most importantly the United States, have been spewing huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for well over a century, while destroying the native forests on their lands. They also have paid to have forests in other countries destroyed in order to meet their resource needs. This is the context in which the destruction of the Amazon is a worldwide problem of enormous proportions. (The Amazon is treasure which should be preserved even if global warming was not a crisis, but that is a different matter.) — Brazil, the Amazon, and Global WarmingIn the case of rubber tires, the problem is more complex than mere latex allergy, although this may well turn out to be a serious public health problem by itself. The high dollar cost of truck freight, private automobile commuting, and maintenance of our highway infrastructure must be counted as major sacrifices to our rubber-tired transportation system. Furthermore, fine particle air pollution now kills an estimated 60,000 Americans in cities each year. [7]And global warming is a serious threat to many nations from many viewpoints. (See REHW #429, #430.) However, from the viewpoint of our most important national treasure — our self-governing democracy — the systematic sabotage of the nation’s electric/rail mass transit systems by automobile corporations points up a most serious problem: the ability of “private” corporations to effect sweeping changes in our public life and culture, without public accountability or even debate. If we ever hope to achieve a sustainable environment, and re-establish a fair economy and a working democracy, this is a key problem we will have to acknowledge and address. — Peter Montague, TIRE DUST

The raid by federal agents of the home of one of the most prominent national union officials, coming on the eve of the expiration of contracts for over 155,000 General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler workers, is virtually unprecedented. Coming on the heels of the expansion of the corruption indictments to officials from the UAW-GM department—including Michael Grimes, the top aide of former UAW Vice President Joe Ashton (who has also been implicated)—the raids underscore what the vast majority of autoworkers know: that the UAW is a criminal syndicate, completely hostile to workers’ interests. — Breaking: FBI raids UAW President Gary Jones’ home, as workers vote to strike at GM, Ford and Chrysler

Videos of the Day:

Thousands March in London Demanding New Brexit Referendum

Climate Activist Greta Thunberg Arrives in NYCto Fight “Biggest Crisis Humanity Has Ever Faced”

Residents Outraged City Won’t Commit to 100% Affordable Housing

Johnson Shuts Down Parliament to Help Ensure No-Deal Brexit

CEO Compensation Increased 940% Between 1978 and 2018, Workers’ Only by 12%

‘It is not letting me vote for who I want’: Video shows electronic machine changing ballot in Mississippi

“We’re in a Crisis of Deaths”: Migrant Death Toll Tops 900 in Mediterranean as 40 Die Off Libya

How Bolsonaro’s Climate Change Denial & Anti-Indigenous Policies Led to Massive Fires in the Amazon

Airstrikes in Lebanon, Syria & Iraq Mark Dangerous Escalation in Decades-Long Israeli Aggression

Watch Richard Sackler Deny His Family’s Role in the Opioid Crisis Sackler testified in 2015 in a lawsuit brought by Kentucky against his family’s company, Purdue Pharma, which makes the painkiller OxyContin. We published the transcript in February. Now you can see the video.

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich

Environment:

Sociopathic Disregard for the Future’: Trump EPA Set to Gut Restrictions on Planet-Warming Methane Emissions  “At a time when the federal government’s job should be to help localities and states move faster toward cleaner energy and a cleaner economy, the government is walking off the field.” By Jake Johnson

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Is Warren Talented Enough to Betray the People as Masterfully as Obama?  Elizabeth Warren is seen as a counter Bernie Sanders, but she will melt (like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris) if she stops raising Democrats’ expectations to bust corporate power. “The Democrats cannot beat Trump unless they run on a program of austerity-busting.”If BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon had not passed away in June, he would be having a field day with Monday’s New York Times article  describing Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s assiduous “courting” of big-wig Democrats, assuring them of her rock-hard loyalty to the party, in supposed contrast to Bernie Sanders’ call  for “a mass movement, a political revolution in this country.” The Times makes a convincing case that Warren – now in a three-way tie  with Sanders and Joe Biden, according to a new Monmouth Poll – is craftily courting the super-delegates that will cast decisive votes on the second ballot of a brokered convention. Bruce would call it the barking of rival sheep dogs, both of whom are committed to keeping left-leaning voters safely within the Democratic herd. By Glen Ford, Black Agend Report executive editor

At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Preserving the Reputations of Sexual HarassersAn administrator resigned amid sexual harassment accusations. Another college hired him. A professor was found to have stalked a coworker. She agreed to retire, then won a Fulbright grant. Campus leaders vow reforms, but many say it’s a long road. By Rachel Otwell, and Alex Mierjeski

Labor:

Breaking: FBI raids UAW President Gary Jones’ home, as workers vote to strike at GM, Ford and ChryslerAccording to reports in the Detroit media, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Internal Revenue Service raided the home of United Auto Workers President Gary Jones, the California home of former UAW President Dennis Williams, and a number of other UAW locations Wednesday morning, marking a major escalation of the years-long US federal investigation into corruption and bribery of UAW leaders. By Marcus Day

Pensions Are Not Guaranteed!

The idea that Social Security has to be funded by its beneficiaries has been a setup for the wealthy to claim that the government budget doesn’t have enough money to keep paying. Social Security may begin to run a budget deficit. After having run a surplus since 1933, for 70 years, now we have to begin paying some of this savings out. That’s called a deficit, as if it’s a disaster and we have to begin cutting back Social Security. The implication is that wage earners will have to starve in the street after they retire.

The Federal Reserve has just published statistics saying the average American family, 55 and 60 years old, only has about $14,000 worth of savings. This isn’t nearly enough to retire on. There’s also been a vast looting of pension funds, largely by Wall Street. That’s why the investment banks have had to pay tens of billions of dollars of penalties for cheating pension funds and other investors. The current risk-free rate of return is 0.1% on government bonds, so the pension funds don’t have enough money to pay pensions at the rate that their junk economics advisors forecast. The money that people thought was going to be available for their retirement, all of a sudden isn’t. The pretense is that nobody could have forecast this!

There are so many corporate pension funds that are going bankrupt that the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation doesn’t have enough money to bail them out. The PBGC is in deficit. If you’re going to be a corporate raider, if you’re going to be a Governor Romney or whatever and you take over a company, you do what Sam Zell did with the Chicago Tribune: You loot the pension fund, you empty it out to pay the bondholders that have lent you the money to buy out the company. You then tell the workers, “I’m sorry there is nothing there. It’s wiped out.” Half of the employee stock ownership programs go bankrupt. That was already a critique made in the 1950s and ‘60s.  — Michael Hudson, Stock Market Investing: Good Enough for Public Employee and Union Pension Funds

Economy:

The Federal Debt has Gone Up 400% Since the War on Terror Began! (See Chart Below)

The Bizarre Action in U.S. Treasuries Is Linked to the U.S. National Debt and the Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 258 points but the yield on the 10-Year U.S. Treasury fell below 1.50 percent. In a normal market, if stocks are rallying that means there is confidence in the trajectory of economic growth in the U.S. When yields are collapsing on U.S. Treasuries, that means there is no confidence of sustained growth in the economy. So you can see why yesterday’s market activity is a serious contradiction of norms. We believe the Treasury market is already discounting (looking ahead and factoring in) what the next recession is going to look like because of constraints on how much fiscal spending the Federal government can deploy. By Pam Martens And Russ Martens

The Extortion Economy: How Insurance Companies Are Fueling a Rise in Ransomware AttacksEven when public agencies and companies hit by ransomware could recover their files on their own, insurers prefer to pay the ransom. Why? The attacks are good for business. by Renee Dudley

World:

The Commonwealth of Britain Bill Proposed by Tony Benn And Seconded By Jeremy Corbyn In 1991 Is Even More Urgent Today I think anyone who considers themselves a radical democratic should support this bill — Tariq Ali:

• The monarchy would be abolished and the constitutional status of the Crown ended;

• The Church of England would be disestablished;

• The head of state would be a president, elected by a joint sitting of both Houses of the Commonwealth Parliament

• The functions of the royal prerogative would be transferred to Parliament;

• The Privy Council would be abolished, and replaced by a Council of State;

• The House of Lords would be replaced by an elected House of the People, with equal representation of men and women;

• The House of Commons would similarly have equal representation of men and women;

• England, Scotland and Wales would have their own devolved National Parliaments with responsibility for devolved matters as agreed;

• County Court judges and magistrates would be elected; and

• British jurisdiction over Northern Ireland would be ended.

• The judiciary would be reformed and a National Legal Service would be created

Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare! 

Daily News Digest August 29, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!

During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

Democracy?:  As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day:

Capitalism Ignores Its’ Environmental Destruction As the Earth Burns — Signe Wilkinson: Political Cartoon: Kids! Have we got a hot potato world for you!

Quotes of the Day:

The World Capitalist ruling class, the 1%, has followed the advice of James Madison in their implementation of austerity. .  Madison  once stated: . . . I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments, by those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations. On a candid examination of history, we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power by the majority trampling on the rights of the minority, have produced factions and commotions, which in republics, have more frequently than any other cause produced despotism. If we go over the whole history of the ancient and modern republics, we shall find their destruction to have generally resulted from those causes. . . The have been slowly undermining democratic forms, until now we are now confronted by the spectre of naked capitalist class executive rule of the world — Roland Sheppard

The proposed bill would create a broad definition of “domestic terrorism” to include any attempt to “affect” or “influence” government policy or actions. And it would include property damage—even attempted property damage—as a terrorist act subject to a 25-year prison sentence.  In other words, if you opposed the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock and wanted the government to revoke the pipeline permit, you might be considered a terrorist.   If you painted “Black Lives Matter” on a wall to advocate against police violence, that could be terrorism, too.   And if you threw a rock at a bank window to take a stand against the 1% —even if you missed—you could spend half your life in a federal prison. — Dissent Is Being Criminalized Right Under Our Noses

Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities — Voltair

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.— Voltaire

Videos of the Day:

Orwellian Surveillance of Tohono O’odham Nation – A Test Case for Entire US Border?

Racial Inequality Is Rooted in Denial of Home and Land Ownership

The Homeless in Mortal Danger During Southwest Heatwave

Jeremy Corby: We Must Find Common Ground and a Practical Way to Stop This Disastrous No Deal Brexit

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich!

Washington invokes “domestic terrorism” to justify police state ruleBehind the backs of the population, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers, military leaders and intelligence agents are engaged in a secret operation to endow the executive branch with dictatorial powers to suppress social opposition in the United States. On July 27, Donald Trump offered a glimpse of this movement within the state apparatus, tweeting, “Consideration is being given to declaring ANTIFA … a major Organization of Terror (along with MS-13 & others). Would make it easier for police to do their job!” On August 17, Trump repeated the same threat. . . . Trump is not merely expressing a personal opinion. In the face of growing strikes and protests and mounting social unrest internationally, the American ruling class is acknowledging that maintaining the flow of corporate profits and defending unprecedented levels of social inequality against the opposition of the broad masses of people requires dictatorial forms of rule. Under conditions in which three US billionaires control as much wealth as half the US population, even the worn-out forms of democratic rule have become untenable.Dissent Is Being Criminalized Right Under Our Noses Many of us are deeply concerned about the recent wave of mass shootings and hate crimes that have taken place across the United States. As the Department of Justice reported, in 2018 alone there were 25 race-based terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, each committed by an alleged white supremacist. Immediate action is needed to address this crisis and tragedies like the Aug. 3 shooting in El Paso, Texas. So I read with interest a recent press release of Rep. Michael McCaul—the Republican incumbent in the Texas 10th Congressional District and my opponent in the 2018 election—in which he announced a new bill to respond to domestic terrorism. My hopes for reasonable legislation were quickly dashed, however, and replaced by deep concern. By Michael SiegelAs Tropical Storm Dorian Barrels Toward Puerto Rico, Trump Shifting $155 Million in Disaster Aid Funds to Migrant Detention “The money that could be used to help Puerto Rico will instead be used to detain more children and parents in concentration camps.” By Jake JohnsonThe U.S. Border Patrol and an Israeli Military Contractor are Putting a Native American Reservation Under “Persistent Surveillance” On the southwestern end of the Tohono O’odham Nation’s reservation, roughly 1 mile from a barbed-wire barricade marking Arizona’s border with the Mexican state of Sonora, Ofelia Rivas leads me to the base of a hill overlooking her home. A U.S. Border Patrol truck is parked roughly 200 yards upslope. A small black mast mounted with cameras and sensors is positioned on a trailer hitched to the truck. For Rivas, the Border Patrol’s monitoring of the reservation has been a grim aspect of everyday life. And that surveillance is about to become far more intrusive. By Will ParrishEnvironment:

With Amazon in Flames, Trump Moves to Open 16.7 Million-Acre Alaskan Rainforest to Corporate Exploitation “If the planet could talk, it would be screaming in agony or weeping in despair. Maybe both.”  By Jake JohnsonBolsonaro Fiddles While the Amazon Burns Of course, my title conjures up images of the Emperor Nero (37-68 A.D.) fiddling while ancient Rome burned, and for many reasons, this mythwas a historical falsehood. Fiddles did not exist in 64 A.D. when a great fire ravaged ancient Rome, but stringed instruments did nonetheless, like the citharaand lyre. Moreover, Nero himself was not responsible for the conflagration. He was away at his villa but quickly returned to Rome to deal with the crisis. Even so, the myth supports the notion that Nero was an idle and an incompetent governor. Regardless of whether or not he was responsible for Rome’s burning, to many, Emperor Nero, was incapable of leading the empire. Nero was overly self-indulgent and had more thespian ambitions than political ones. By J.P. Linstroth

Glyphosate Sprayed on GMO Crops Linked to Lake Erie’s Toxic Algae BloomGlyphosate, the controversial main ingredient in Monsanto‘s Roundup and other herbicides, is being connected to Lake Erie’s troubling algae blooms, which has fouled drinking water and suffocated and killed marine life in recent years. Phosphorus—attributed to farm runoff carried by the Maumee River—has long been identified as a leading culprit feeding the excessive blooms in the western Lake Erie basin. Now, according to a new study from chemistry professor Christopher Spiese, a significant correlation has been established between the increased use of glyphosate to the percentage of dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP) in the runoff. By Lorraine ChowIn BP’s Final $20 Billion Gulf Settlement, U.S. Taxpayers Subsidize $15.3 Billion2010 gulf oil spill, it is appropriate to look at the overall societal costs, as well as the bottom line to BP. And at tax time, people understandably think about their own taxes, too. The government struck a $20 billion settlement with BP, which is a big number. Yet BP should be able to deduct the vast majority, a whopping $15.3 billion, on its U.S. tax return. That means American taxpayers are contributing quite a lot to this settlement, whether they know it or not. By  Robert W. WoodCivil Rights/Black Liberation:

Jeffery Epstein, Jay-Z, and the Miserable World Created by the Billionaire Ruling ClassJeffery Epstein and Jay-Z are not the same, but they have the same class interests. These interests have been the subject of much debate in recent weeks, with Epstein’s reported death and Jay-Z’s lucrative collaboration with the National Football League (NFL) dominating headlines. Epstein’s supposed suicide in a Manhattan cell served as a catalyst for heightened suspicions about foul play and whether his connections to prominent ruling elites such as the Clinton family, Donald Trump, and Israeli intelligence rendered him vulnerable to murder. Jay-Z’s deal with the NFL inserted Colin Kaepernick’s protest of racist policing back into the political conversation. What isn’t being talked about is how Epstein and Jay-Z are much more than mere “bad actors.” They are representatives of the billionaire ruling class responsible for much of the misery that exists on this planet.  By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor Slick Willy Rides Again! By Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence                                                                    Don’t know if it was the Bible
That said it, or if it was Confucius—
Or, if I just made this shit up:
“Beware of the one riding in
Bareback, facing backwards on
An ol’ mule, for he is an impostor!”
Lo and behold, The Great White
Foundation Father, Vice-
Roy of Haiti and Harlem, nurse-
Maid of NAFTA, demon of de-
Regulation, did it with class in
Tobacco country stables, Offal
Office of the DNC dog and pony show (More)

California Lawmakers Consider Ethnic Studies Mandate For Nation’s Largest University System The mandate would affect a system of almost half a million students, 74 percent of them minorities.” “The White male administrators who run the CSU are trying to kill the bill.”California lawmakers are considering a bill that would mandate students enrolled in the nation’s largest four-year public university system  take a qualifying Ethnic Studies course in order to graduate. The requirement would apply to the schools that comprise California State University (CSU), which collectively educate approximately 481,000 students. According  to CBS News’ Sacramento affiliate, “all 23 campuses in the system are pushing back on the proposed legislation.” Still, the measure passed the state Assembly in May and is currently being considered by the Senate. By Jeffrey CawoodThe Great Land Robbery  A war waged by deed of title has dispossessed 98 percent of black agricultural landowners in America. “Any conversation about reparations must consider the land.”  I. Wiped Out “You ever chop before?” Willena Scott-White was testing me. I sat with her in the cab of a Chevy Silverado pickup truck, swatting at the squadrons of giant, fluttering mosquitoes that had invaded the interior the last time she opened a window. I was spending the day with her family as they worked their fields just outside Ruleville, in Mississippi’s Leflore County. With her weathered brown hands, Scott-White gave me a pork sandwich wrapped in a grease-stained paper towel. I slapped my leg. Mosquitoes can bite through denim, it turns out. By Vann R. Newkirk IINeoliberal Capitalism at a Dead End  Donald Trump’s resort to protectionism is recognition of having reached this cul-de-sac. “Neoliberal capitalism has no vision for reinventing itself.” Harry Magdoff’s The Age of Imperialism is a classic work that shows how postwar political decolonization does not negate the phenomenon of imperialism. The book has two distinct aspects. On the one hand, it follows in V. I. Lenin’s footsteps in providing a comprehensive account of how capitalism at the time operated globally. On the other hand, it raises a question that is less frequently discussed in Marxist literature—namely, the need for imperialism. Here, Magdoff not only highlighted the crucial importance, among other things, of the third world’s raw materials for metropolitan capital, but also refuted the argument that the declining share of raw-material value in gross manufacturing output somehow reduced this importance, making the simple point that there can be no manufacturing at all without raw materials.1 By Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat PatnaikThe Quiet Death of the “White Bernie Bro” Attack  The Quiet Death of the “White Bernie Bro” Attack A majority of Sanders supporters are non-white, in contrast to all the other top tier candidates, including Kamala Harris. “Enthusiasm for another Sanders run has been remarkably inflected by race.”Bernie Sanders faced ferocious criticism in the media throughout the 2016 primaries — and central to that critique was what the Washington Post called Bernie Sanders’s big black-voter problem . Black voters, we were told, decisively rejected Sanders’s politics — and, by extension, left flank challenges to the Democratic establishment. And the proof was in the polls: overwhelming majorities of black voters preferred Hillary Clinton.  By Carl BeijerAn Axis of Hope, Dignity and Defiance stands up to the Triumvirate of Evil  The Quiet Death of the “White Bernie Bro” Attack A majority of Sanders supporters are non-white, in contrast to all the other top tier candidates, including Kamala Harris. “Enthusiasm for another Sanders run has been remarkably inflected by race.”Bernie Sanders faced ferocious criticism in the media throughout the 2016 primaries — and central to that critique was what the Washington Post called Bernie Sanders’s big black-voter problem .  Black voters, we were told, decisively rejected Sanders’s politics — and, by extension, left flank challenges to the Democratic establishment. And the proof was in the polls: overwhelming majorities of black voters preferred Hillary Clinton.  By Gerald A. PerreiraPerpetual Debt in the Silicon Savannah  Kenya’s poor were among the first to benefit from digital lending apps; now they call it slavery. “The emergent regimes of indebtedness have been called ‘catastrophic,’ a ‘crisis,’ and a major ‘social problem.’” Across conversations in Kenya’s pubs and WhatsApp groups, debt is on everyone’s mind. The speed and ease of access to credit through new mobile apps delivers cash to millions of Kenyans in need, but many struggle to repay. Despite their small size, the loans come with a big cost—sometimes as much as 100 percent annualized.As one Nairobian told us, these apps “give you money gently, and then they come for your neck.” He is not alone in his assessment of “fintech,” the ballooning financial technology industry that provides loans through mobile apps. During our research, we heard these emergent regimes of indebtedness called “catastrophic,” a “crisis,” and a major “social problem.” Newspapers report that mobile lending underlays a wave of domestic disarray, violence, and even suicide. One young man in Meru described it as a “can of worries.” His monthly salary was not enough to cover ordinary expenses such as rent and necessary contributions to extended kin networks—let alone leisure or investments in his own future. So, like millions of others, he turned to phone-based loans, at one point toggling between five different apps. Reeling as the costs added up, he struggled to repay, deleting the apps so he would not be tempted by repeated offers of dangerous debt. By Kevin P. Donovan and Emma ParkThe Precarity of Black Motherhood  Jordan Peele’s “Us” depicts the terros face by Black mothers in a way that owes as much to Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” as it does to classic Hollywood horror. “This is America, a human chain of murderers, stretched from sea to shining sea, a fulfillment of Manifest Destiny.” In Jordan Peele’s latest film Us, which follows on the success of his 2017 hit Get Out, an affluent black family has its home invaded by sinister doppelgängers—a sort of literalization of W.E.B. Du Bois’s noion of black “double consciousness.” Perhaps Peele even had in mind Du Bois’s famous sentence: “One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” By Tao Leigh Goffe“Dirtbag,” “Savages,” “Subhuman”: A Border Agent’s Hateful Career and the Crime That Finally Ended It  The agent joked about how tasty Guatemalan migrants can be if they are properly “fried” through the use of Tasers.  “Border Patrol agent Matthew Bowen had been investigated for years before he used his 4,000-pound truck to assault a fleeing migrant.”  It was late November 2017, and Matthew Bowen, a veteran Border Patrol agent, was seething. A fellow Border Patrol agent in Texas had just been found dead in the field, and Bowen was certain someone who’d been crossing the border illegally was responsible for murdering him.  “Snuffed out by some dirtbag,” Bowen, stationed in Nogales, Arizona, said in a text later obtained by federal authorities.  Bowen, if lacking in evidence, wasn’t alone in his anger and suspicion. President Donald Trump, nearing the end of his first year in office and already frustrated in his bid to construct a wall on the southern border, had promised to “seek out and bring to justice those responsible ” for the Texas agent’s death. Brandon Judd, the head of the union that represents Border Patrol ag ents, declared to Fox News and other media outlets that the Texas agent had been “ambushed .”By A.C. ThompsonLabor:

Economy:The Justice Department Has Had the Epstein Case Since July 2006 – It’s Time to Arrest Accomplices More than two dozen women who have accused Jeffrey Epstein of sexually assaulting them, most when they were underage girls, appeared in Federal Court in Manhattan yesterday. Some had their lawyers read their statement but 16 spoke on their own behalf. The theme consistent throughout their testimony is that the Justice Department must prosecute Epstein’s accomplices – anything less is a failure of justice. Two names were repeatedly mentioned by the women: Ghislaine Maxwell and Sarah Kellen. But the powerful royalty, lawyers and Wall Street titans who have been accused of being part of Epstein’s ring and participating in sexual assaults of underage girls must also be charged by the perpetually recalcitrant U.S. Justice Department. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

Coup-Like Suspension of Parliament Sends UK Hurtling Toward BrexitBritish Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “do-or-die” October 31 deadline for Britain to leave the EU is fast approaching. And, as it does so, the political battles — both within the U.K. and between those hoping to shape post-Brexit Britain’s international role — are intensifying. This morning, Johnson took the constitutionally extraordinary step of asking Queen Elizabeth II — the U.K.’s official head of state — to suspend Parliament from mid-September to mid-October. The queen approved the request, which will be the longest suspension of Parliament since 1945. BY  Sasha Abramsky

Britain: Boris’ Brexit bombshell leaves Westminster in disarray as parliament is prorogued Not since Oliver Cromwell’s dismissal of the Rump Parliament – with the words “In the name of God, go!” – has Britain been plunged into such a deep national and constitutional crisis. Lacking a written constitution, the British establishment relies on a web of convention and precedent. Now Boris Johnson has pushed this informal system to its limits, using ‘convention’ to request that the Queen suspend Parliament for over a month, in an effort to prevent opposition MPs from blocking a no-deal Brexit.They’re not wildfires: it’s “Bolivian-style” capitalism The Chiquitania region of Bolivia has been on fire since early August. The wildfires started on 2 August both west and east from San José de Chiquitos in woodland areas and dry woods, reaching Roboré later on. Prime Minister Quintana accused the right-wing of provoking the fires for political and electoral purposes. Until he can prove this, we’ll have to take his statement as an assumption that the wildfires did not spread from Brazil, as the government initially claimed. Rather, the cause of this disaster is to be found inside Bolivia’s borders. The truth is that Quintana’s allegations, similar to those made by the far-right Bolsonaro, can’t by any means hide the government’s accountability. For years, the bourgeoisie from the eastern regions has benefited from a number of laws legalising forest clearing, burnings and human expansion into forest areas under the pretext of “expanding land borders” to achieve “food sovereignty”, or giving some respite to an economy hampered by the drop of gas and mineral exports by producing bioethanol and GM food. Deforestation and burning contribute to global warming: as stated by experts and MAS (Morales’ party) itself in all climate summits, even in Cochabamba, where they are the self-proclaimed “defender of Mother Earth”.

Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare! 

Food Safety Resources for Managers and Vendors of Farmers Markets in Texas Farmers markets have grown exponentially in the past two decades; however, there is an increasing need to ensure that fresh produce and other ready-to-eat food commodities sold directly to consumers are safe and free of microbial contamination. Therefore, it is crucial to equip managers and vendors at farmers markets with food safety materials that are engaging and educational. The objective of this study was to survey market managers and vendors to identify food safety educational needs and current food safety practices. Observational studies were conducted at 10 farmers markets (300 vendors) in Houston, Texas, to identify positive and high-risk practices. Based on the results obtained, educational materials in the form of videos and information sheets were developed and disseminated to managers and vendors at Texas farmers markets. Feedback on the educational materials obtained from stakeholders was positive and 88% of market managers and vendors stated that the food safety materials were effective as an educational tool.

The Crumbling, Differed Maintenance, and/or Polluted Infrastructure of the United States:

In Flint, Mich., there’s so much lead in children’s blood that a state of emergency is declaredAlmost immediately after the city started drawing from the Flint River in April 2014, residents began complaining about the water, which they said was cloudy in appearance and emitted a foul odor. Since then, complications from the water coming from the Flint River have only piled up. Although city and state officials initially denied that the water was unsafe, the state issued a notice informing Flint residents that their water contained unlawful levels of trihalomethanes, a chlorine byproduct linked to cancer and other diseases. By By Yanan Wang5,300 U.S. water systems are in violation of lead rules Eighteen million Americans live in communities where the water systems are in violation of the law. Moreover, the federal agency in charge of making sure those systems are safe not only knows the issues exist, but it’s done very little to stop them, according to a new report and information provided to CNN by multiple sources and water experts. “Imagine a cop sitting, watching people run stop signs, and speed at 90 miles per hour in small communities and still doing absolutely nothing about it — knowing the people who are violating the law. And doing nothing. That’s unfortunately what we have now,” said Erik Olson, health program director at Natural Resources Defense Council, which analyzed the EPA’s data for its report. In this case, the “cop” is a combination of the states and the EPA. States are the first line of enforcement, but when they fail — as they did recently in Flint, Michigan — the EPA is supposed to step in. But in many cases, the agency hasn’t.

Lead poisoning— Symptoms: Initially, lead poisoning can be hard to detect — even people who seem healthy can have high blood levels of lead. Signs and symptoms usually don’t appear until dangerous amounts have accumulated.

Lead poisoning symptoms in children:  Signs and symptoms of lead poisoning in children include:

• Developmental delay

• Learning difficulties

• Irritability

• Loss of appetite

• Weight loss

• Sluggishness and fatigue

• Abdominal pain

• Vomiting

• Constipation

• Hearing loss

• Seizures

• Eating things, such as paint chips, that aren’t food (pica)

Lead symptoms in newborns: Babies exposed to lead before birth might:

• Be born prematurely

• Have lower birth weight

• Have slowed growth

Lead poisoning: symptoms in adults: Although children are primarily at risk, lead poisoning is also dangerous for adults. Signs and symptoms in adults might include:

• High blood pressure

• Joint and muscle pain

• Difficulties with memory or concentration

• Headache

• Abdominal pain

• Mood disorders

• Reduced sperm count and abnormal sperm

• Miscarriage, stillbirth or premature birth in pregnant women

Daily News Digest August 27, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!

During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

Democracy?:  As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day:

Signe Wikenson: Political Cartoon: Philadelphia law enforcement working together for a safer city 

Quotes of the Day:

You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace, unless he has his freedom.—Malcolm X

Videos of the Day:

The crumbling United States Infrastructure:  Newark’s Water Crisis is One of Thousands That Are Worse Than Flint’s  Newark is the latest community to grab the headlines about the ravages of lead poisoning. Newark, Flint, Baltimore, South Bend, Indiana, across this nation, there are at least 3,000 communities with lead poisoning rates that double Flint’s, that match well beyond Newark’s, but they’re not in the headlines. Each time this comes to our attention, most state governmentsseem to understand that these are public health emergencies. Most of these communities are also ravaged by poverty, and most are communities of color. And as Reuters reported, there are communities like Goat Island, Texas where over 25% of the children had high levels of lead— to Warren, Pennsylvania on the Allegheny River, mostly white working-class community where 35% had levels too high. And in mostly African American communities, that are devastated by abandonment and poverty in cities like Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia, it can be as high as 50% of the people who have been poisoned by lead.

Lula: “US hand” on everything that’s happened in Brazil For former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, events in Brazil since the 2016 coup that deposed President Dilma Rousseff were orchestrated by the US government. “Everything that is happening has the hand of the United States on it…. The US created the Lava Jato investigation to take our oil,” he said, speaking for the first time after Supreme Court (STF) prevented his transfer to a São Paulo prison. Lula’s interview, with veteran journalist Bob Fernandes, aired on TVE, a public television station from Bahia, on Friday, August 16th. The full two hour interview with the Lula can now be seen on YouTube here

Solar Energy Is Renewable, But Is It Environmentally Just (1/2)

The Land Politics of Solar Energy (2/2)

Unreported Deaths, Child Cancer & Radioactive Meat: The Untold Story of Chernobyl

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich!

‘Stop Your Cowardice’: Sanders Calls Out McConnell for Ignoring Protesting Coal Miners and Blocking $15 Minimum Wage“I say to Senator McConnell: Stop worrying about your billionaire friends, they’re doing just fine. Start worrying about the working families of your state and around this country.” By Jake Johnson

New Poll Shows ‘Deep and Boiling Anger’ Towards Political Establishment Still WidespreadMore than half of respondents also said race relations are worsening under Trump and that they feel “anxious and uncertain” because of the economy, f you’re feeling anger the political system being rigged to benefit those at the top, a new poll reveals you’re far from alone.  By Andrea Germanos“Hereby Ordered”: On Trump, Capital, Fascism, and China in a World on FireI am hearing whispers from lefties that “the ruling class is finally done with Trump.” It’s “the China stuff” that’s doing the trick. Sure, the argument goes, the corporate and financial powers that be haven’t been all that happy with Trump’s open white nationalism, racism, narcissism, and sexism. It’s not their style. But they’ve been willing to put up with Trump’s noxious nonsense because he’s rewarded them with plutocratic tax cuts and de-regulation. The presidents’ immigrant-bashing awfulness has kept his “heartland” base loyal to a president who knows (despite all his insanity) which constituency matters most in the American oligarchy: the wealthy Few. By Paul Street
Environment:

Capitalisn and the Climate Crisis— A Crime Against Humanity!:

Jefferson’s words, from the Declaration of Independence, that human rights are unalienable, mean that these rights can never be superseded. At all points of conflict the rights of humanity to survive must supersede the right of the few to make a profit. The right to a safe environment is an unalienable human right!    Since environmental illness and destruction are a global concern, it requires all of humanity to act collectively, in our overall interests for our survival as a species, to correct the problem and to remove the obstacle of capitalism. It requires a society where humanity has social, economic, and political control over the entire environment. Such a society, a socialist society, is needed to ensure that all decisions affecting the environment are under the democratic control of humankind so that the production of goods will be done for the needs and survival of humanity instead of the production and the destruction of humanity and other species for profit.  With common ownership of the means of production, and common control and protection of all property and wealth, science and society will be in harmony with the ecosystem and humanity’s future. — Whither Humanity? The Environmental Crisis of Capitalism

The environmental movement has raised many of these demands. In the past 30 years, many laws have been written incorporating some of these concepts. Yet despite these laws, environmental destruction has been allowed to  proceed because these regulations have always been compromised by the incorporation of the concept of economic feasibility. ‘Economic feasibility’ means that the profitability of an economic enterprise cannot be subordinated to environmental needs. Therefore, environmental and safety laws, under capitalism, have always been a compromise between science and business. In fact, environmental destruction, pestilence, and death are factored into production the same as casualties of war are factored into military battles. The most glaring example is the occupational environment, where workplaces have become “killing fields”. (See my essay The War at the Point of Production: The ‘Killing Fields’ of the United States.) — Whither Humanity? The Environmental Crisis of Capitalism

Trump and the Climate Crisis–a Crime Against HumanityThe President of the United States is a criminal.  I’m not referring to the twenty-odd investigations of him currently underway for violations of the Constitution, obstruction of justice, and collaboration with the Russian election attack, among other misdeeds.  No, I’m referring to his and his administration’s intentional and reckless pursuit of national policies that condemn American and the world’s citizens to environmental destruction and the end of life as we know it. By Mel Gurtov

Pretty Soon They Will Try to Privatise Water and Sunlight!:  Nestlé Plan To Take 1.1m Gallons of Water AaDay From Natural Springs Sparks OutcryOpponents fighting to stop the project say the fragile river cannot sustain such a large draw The crystal blue waters of Ginnie Springs have long been treasured among the string of pearls that line Florida’s picturesque Santa Fe River, a playground for water sports enthusiasts and an ecologically critical haven for the numerous species of turtles that nest on its banks. Soon, however, it is feared there could be substantially less water flowing through, if a plan by the food and beverage giant Nestlé wins approval. By  Richard LuscombeCaptalism Kills!: Fires in the Amazon could be part of a doomsday scenario that sees the rainforest spewing carbon into the atmosphere and speeding up climate change even more

• The Amazon rainforest provides 20% of the world’s oxygen, but its destruction could cause it to not only stop helping the planet, but start releasing carbon and worsening climate change.

• In a “dieback” scenario, rising temperatures could dry trees, meaning they absorb less carbon and become more flammable, eventually turning the rainforest into a savannah and releasing billions of tons of stored carbon.

• Researchers have debated the likelihood of the scenario, but fears have heightened under Brazil’s new president, who has advocated expansion of industry in the region, which involves burning and cutting down trees.

• A record number of fires have hit the Amazon this year — more than 70,000 — and experts say they are due to human activity.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Labor:

Economy:

Shadow Government Statisticss Flash Update No. 5

• Major Downside Benchmark Revisions Announced for Payroll Employment

• Payroll Employment Hit by 501,000 (-501,000) Downside Preliminary Benchmark Revision for Year-Ended March 2019

• Final 2019 Benchmarking Estimate Should Be Even Worse; Publication Due With January 2020 Payrolls

• Previously Estimated Jobs Gain for Full Year Ended March 2019 Was Reduced by 20% (-20%) from 2.496 Million to 1.995 Million

• Year-to-Year Payroll Growth Revised from 1.69% to 1.35%, Weakest Since Great Recession

• Negative Benchmarking Suggested Further FOMC Easing and Weakening GDP in Revision

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!