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!
While in El Pasco, Trump, the Terrorist President, Responded to His Follower’sWhite Terrorist Shootings, in El Paso Texas, by Descending Upon and Terrorizing Immigrant Workers and TerrorizingTheir Children in Mississippi, who had recently won a workplace battle against sexual harassment, national origin and race discrimination. From: the August 9 Democracy Now ShowMass ICE Raids in Mississippi After Workers Fought for Better Conditions Leave Kids Without Parents:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swept through seven poultry processing plants in Mississippi this week and arrested 680 people. It was the largest single-state raid in U.S. history. The mass arrests also came on the first day of the school year, and some children walked home from school only to find their doors locked and their family members missing. Wednesday’s raids targeted chicken processing plants operated by Koch Foods, one of the largest poultry producers in the U.S. Last year, the company paid out $3.75 million to settle an Equal Employment Opportunities Commission class-action suit charging the company with sexual harassment, national origin and race discrimination, and retaliation against Latino workers at one of its Mississippi plants. Labor activists say it’s the latest raid to target factories where immigrant workers have organized unions, fought back against discrimination or challenged unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone. — The Diary of Anne Frank Mortality Quotes
Politicians have long manipulated public perceptions of immigration, turning immigrants into a scapegoat for issues like unemployment and economic troubles. In recent months, immigrants and refugees have also been tacked with the blame for terrorism by populist leaders like Donald Trump. Immigrants, however, are not to blame for terrorism or a litany of other legitimate grievances. Populists simply use them because they’re an easy target. — It’s not just Trump. Immigrants are the global right’s main scapegoat.
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!
‘Progressive’ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Votes for War Budget!:
Deficit Hawks Are Enabling The Next US War — The U.S. Budget is Rigged To Hold Essential Domestic Programs Hostage o The Pentagon’s War Chest. Back in April, progressives in Congress succeeded in halting a vote that included a military budget increase. In July, most of those same progressives — including powerhouses like Reps. Barbara Lee and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — voted to support a military budget that was slightly larger even than what they’d rejected in April. What changed? As Democratic and White House leadership announced a backroom budget compromise and put it up for a vote in July, congressional progressives faced a seemingly impossible choice: They could vote to support new spending on programs that alleviate poverty and create opportunity, but they would also have to support more spending on the U.S. war machine. Or, they could vote against new Pentagon funds and risk massive budget cuts to programs like housing and food assistance, education and job training. By Lindsay KoshgarianChelsea Manning faces $441,000 in fines and another year in jail for refusing to testify against WikiLeaksFederal District Judge Anthony Trenga rejected a motion Monday from imprisoned whistleblower Chelsea Manning to reconsider the imposition of daily fines for her principled refusal to testify before a grand jury impaneled to bring frame-up charges against WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange. . . . The 31-year-old former Army intelligence analyst is being vindictively pursued by the Trump administration for her role in exposing US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. She leaked to WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of military war logs, diplomatic cables and the infamous Collateral Murder video, which showed an Apache helicopter airstrike in Baghdad that killed at least a dozen civilians, including two Reuters journalists. By Niles NiemuthEnvironment:
Internal Monsanto records just filed in court show that a corporate intelligence group hired to “to take the temperature on current regulatory attitudes for glyphosate” reported that the White House could be counted on to defend the company’s Roundup herbicides. In a report attached to a July 2018 email to Monsanto global strategy official Todd Rands, the strategic intelligence and advisory firm Hakluyt reported to Monsanto the following:“A domestic policy adviser at the White House said, for instance: ‘We have Monsanto’s back on pesticides regulation. We are prepared to go toe-to-toe on any disputes. — White House Has “Monsanto’s Back on Pesticides,” Newly Revealed Document Says
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must ban chlorpyrifos—a pesticide linked to learning disabilities in children—from food in the U.S., according to litigation filed today in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by Earthjustice on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and a coalition of labor and health organizations. It is the second lawsuit the groups have filed against EPA over the chemical since the Trump administration refused to take action in 2017. “We will not stand by while the Trump administration fights to keep this poison on the food we feed our kids,” said Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, senior scientist at NRDC. . . . — NRDC Sues EPA Over Latest Refusal to Ban Pesticide Toxic to Kids’ Brains
“EPA knows this stuff is toxic—its own scientists have been sounding the alarm for years now—but this administration is shameless in its push to keep it on the market. We are urging the court to side with children over a powerful chemical industry with friends in high places. Chlorpyrifos does not belong on our food or in our fields.” — NRDC Sues EPA Over Latest Refusal to Ban Pesticide Toxic to Kids’ Brains
Climate Crisis Means the Ruling Class has Failed. Can the Working Class Inherit the Earth? The climate crisis is proof positive that the ruling class is an utter failure — but it will not fall on its own. Can the working class rise to the challenge? It sure will help if we understand that our class interests are not merely the economic needs of working people — no matter how important that is — but the universal interests of a healthy planet for all the people. Let’s start acting like it.The corporate solutions to the climate crisis must dodge the causes of the crisis. The ruling class uses deception and secrecy to limit public debate. When the facts become obvious and overwhelming corporate politicians simply refuse to debate it. Gag rules are back in fashion. When the people demand a Green New Deal the same politicians water it down and disarm it. By Richard Moser
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
The first civil and human rights movement by and for Black people started during the Civil War and the period of Black Reconstruction that followed. It was a time of radical hopes for many freed slaves. But it was also a time of betrayal. Then President Andrew Johnson and the non-radical Republicans, in collusion with the Democratic Party, the party of slavery, sold out the early post-war promises for full equality and “40 acres and a mule”. Instead, the promise of equality was soon replaced by the restoration of the property rights of the former slave owners in the South. This was accomplished by the Compromise of 1877 How did they accomplish this betrayal? The answer is simple—terrorism. They used police and terroristic Ku Klux Klan violence. These extra-legal activities laid the basis for the overthrow of Black Reconstruction and the institutionalization of legal segregation (Jim Crow) in the former slave states. To enforce Jim Crow, Black people were, for decades, indiscriminately lynched and framed. — The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights Movement
Roaming Charges: Small Stains on the Pavement Many of the liberals talking the loudest about “white supremacy” on MSDNC have only known its privileges, thus they would have us believe white supremacy resides only in the vile minds of the KKK and Aryan Nations, instead of the racist forces operating inside the banks, the school boards, the police, the FBI, the Pentagon that degrade, impoverish and kill people every single day. By Jeffrey St. Clair
Mass-Shootings as Expressions of U.S. Racism Nineteenth century U.S. racism, resting in part on biblical myth (the curse of Ham) and Social Darwinist notions of racial hierarchies, focused on the defense of slavery and suppression of uppity blacks. Its cruelest, most terrorist tool was the lynching. Twenty-first century racism rests on the myth of a lost golden era of white (“White”) prosperity and happiness in the Promised Land, a halcyon time gradually stolen by waves of unwelcome unassimilable brown people; it focuses on whites as victims, and the expulsion and exclusion of these others. Its current weapon of choice is the mass-shooting. By Gary Leupp
American Exceptionalism = Mass Murder By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor U.S. police agencies, including the FBI, are incapable of mounting an effective offensive against their soul mates in the armed white right. “The FBI has always behaved as if armed white supremacists were a potential reserve force to help crush Black rebellions.” In the Age of Trump, the New York Times and other corporate media have discovered that militant white supremacists are over-represented among the practitioners of the nation’s peculiar pathology: massshootings. Patrick Crusius, the El Paso gunman who last weekend killed 22 people and injured dozens, mostly Latinos, was apparently a devotee of the French racist writer Renaud Camus, who warned that whites were in danger of being “replaced” by non-white immigrants. Before going on his Wal-Mart rampage, Crusius posted online that he was resisting “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” The Times notesthat the shooter who killed 51 people at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand , last March, left a manifesto with the same title as Camus’ book, The Great Replacement, which is also thought to have inspired the shooter that killed 11 congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October of last year, as well as the gunman that attacked a synagogue outside San Diego , in April. According to “replacement theory,” Jews are the orchestrators of non-white people’s incursions on “white” territory. The white supremacists that marched in Charlottesville, Virginia , during the first summer of Trump’s presidency, chanted, “Jews will not replace us!”
Labor:
Government Union Busters: You Can Bet That the ICE Armed ICE Raiders in Mississippi Did Not Just Target Immigrants, but also, That ICE Targeted Those Workers, That Were Targeted by Their Employers, as the Worker Leaders, Who Were Involved in the Struggles Against Discrimination of the Chicken Factories and the Unionization of Those Plants!
Economy
#Trillion Swindle: Higher Education Usury
Student Debt Crisis: Today, August 7 2019, The Student Debt Crisis Reached $1,654,792,448,885!
The Truth About Student Debt: 7 Facts No One Is Talking About The facts seem stark: About 45 million Americans now owe a stunning $1.6 trillion in student debt. That’s roughly one in every four adults, nearly double the number who had higher education loans 15 years ago. Among millennials, the number is one in three, often cited as a reason why so many young adults can’t afford to buy a home, get married, have a family or move out of their parents’ basements. eanwhile, the average amount that undergraduates borrow has shot up 60 percent over the same period, and defaults on loans have jumped as well. More than one-quarter of students can’t keep up with their payments 12 years after borrowing, vs. 18 percent just a few years ago, and that number is projected to hit 40 percent by 2023. With default can come heartache: It can ruin people’s credit scores, wreck their ability to borrow or rent an apartment and, in some areas, cause their professional licenses to be revoked. Given all that, it’s not exactly shocking that a lot of people are using the word “crisis” to describe student debt these days. Or that college loans and the pain they can cause have become a hot topic in the 2020 presidential campaign. Nearly every candidate is turning up the hyperbole and offering a proposal for debt relief, from the modest (hello, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke) to the sweeping (nice to see you, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren). By Diane Harris
Malaysia Indicts 17 of the “Untouchables” at Goldman Sachs When it comes to serial and systemic frauds perpetrated by big banks on Wall Street, the U.S. Department of Justice typically punts. It will either not charge the bank itself or it will issue a felony charge along with a non-prosecution agreement that lets the bank settle the charges without a trial. These tactics by the Justice Department are why Wall Street crimes remain serial and systemic in nature. This morning, the Attorney General in Malaysia stunned Goldman Sachs with an indictment of 17 of its former and current executives. That came on the heels of criminal charges filed last December by Malaysian authorities in the same matter against three Goldman Sachs subsidiaries and two former Goldman employees, Tim Leissner and Roger Ng. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
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!
Big Pharma: Gouges, Casualties, and the Congressional Remedy! The Congress can overturn the abuses of Big Pharma and its “pay or die,” subsidized business model for its drugs. Big Pharma’s trail of greed, power, and cruelty gets worse every year. Its products and practices take hundreds of thousands of lives in the U.S. from over-prescriptions, lethal combinations of prescriptions, ineffective or contaminated drugs, and dangerous side-effects. The biggest drug dealers in the U.S. operate legally. Their names are emblazoned in ads and promotions everywhere. Who hasn’t heard of Eli Lilly, Merck, Pfizer, and Novartis? Big Pharma revenues and profits have skyrocketed. In 2017, the U.S. consumers spent $333.4 billion on prescription drugs. By Ralph Nader
Quotes of the Day:
Chelsea Manning faces $441,000 in fines and another year in jail for refusing to testify against WikiLeaksFederal District Judge Anthony Trenga rejected a motion Monday from imprisoned whistleblower Chelsea Manning to reconsider the imposition of daily fines for her principled refusal to testify before a grand jury impaneled to bring frame-up charges against WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange. . . . The 31-year-old former Army intelligence analyst is being vindictively pursued by the Trump administration for her role in exposing US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. She leaked to WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of military war logs, diplomatic cables and the infamous Collateral Murder video, which showed an Apache helicopter airstrike in Baghdad that killed at least a dozen civilians, including two Reuters journalists. By Niles Niemuth
Environment:
American Exceptionalism = Mass Murder By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
U.S. police agencies, including the FBI, are incapable of mounting an effective offensive against their soul mates in the armed white right. “The FBI has always behaved as if armed white supremacists were a potential reserve force to help crush Black rebellions.” In the Age of Trump, the New York Times and other corporate media have discovered that militant white supremacists are over-represented among the practitioners of the nation’s peculiar pathology: massshootings. Patrick Crusius, the El Paso gunman who last weekend killed 22 people and injured dozens, mostly Latinos, was apparently a devotee of the French racist writer Renaud Camus, who warned that whites were in danger of being “replaced” by non-white immigrants. Before going on his Wal-Mart rampage, Crusius posted online that he was resisting “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” The Times notes that the shooter who killed 51 people at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand , last March, left a manifesto with the same title as Camus’ book, The Great Replacement, which is also thought to have inspired the shooter that killed 11 congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October of last year, as well as the gunman that attacked a synagogue outside San Diego , in April. According to “replacement theory,” Jews are the orchestrators of non-white people’s incursions on “white” territory. The white supremacists that marched in Charlottesville, Virginia , during the first summer of Trump’s presidency, chanted, “Jews will not replace us!”
Malaysia Indicts 17 of the “Untouchables” at Goldman Sachs When it comes to serial and systemic frauds perpetrated by big banks on Wall Street, the U.S. Department of Justice typically punts. It will either not charge the bank itself or it will issue a felony charge along with a non-prosecution agreement that lets the bank settle the charges without a trial. These tactics by the Justice Department are why Wall Street crimes remain serial and systemic in nature. This morning, the Attorney General in Malaysia stunned Goldman Sachs with an indictment of 17 of its former and current executives. That came on the heels of criminal charges filed last December by Malaysian authorities in the same matter against three Goldman Sachs subsidiaries and two former Goldman employees, Tim Leissner and Roger Ng. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens