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!
Listen, I’m a prison abolitionist. I’d like to see the whole legal system torn down and rebuilt from scratch. But how in hell a group of pissed off bounty hunters and bail bondsmen can kill an innocent man, in what at very best has to be described as a case of mistaken identity, and get away with it, is beyond me. Defense attorneys basically suggested 101 conspiracy theories, effectively planting doubts in the mind of the jury, that William Ellis really was in that car and disappeared somewhere — even though nobody ever saw any such thing happen. The attorneys also suggested that the victims really did have guns and fired them, even though no evidence whatsoever showed such a thing. Their ploy worked — in great part, I believe, because the jurors treated the bail bondsmen and bounty hunters like they would have treated law enforcement officers, giving them respect and deferring to their storyline. — Bounty Hunters Are a Lethal Weapon in a Justice System Corrupted by Money
While it’s true that individual companies may have their businesses disrupted by raids, ICE’s operations benefit employers as a whole. Dramatic workplace roundups help create the situation that UFCW spokesperson Abraham White described after the Mississippi sweeps: “Workers across this country are too scared to stand up for their rights and to report wage theft, dangerous work conditions, and other workplace issues.” White called for “ending this dangerous climate of fear.” Demands to arrest bosses for hiring immigrants without the proper papers will do nothing to combat the fear — especially in the context of union-busting workplace raids. The way working people can overcome fear and win better wages and conditions is, as it’s always been, by organizing and by firmly resisting the political class’s efforts to create divisions through appeals to racism and xenophobia. —ICE Raids Benefit Bosses by Creating Fear in Workers
Destroying Rainforest For Economic Gain is Like Burning A Renaissance Painting to Cook A Meal. — E. O. Wilson
When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money — Alanis Obomsawin
Videos of the Day:
Trump’s Concentration Camps for Children This week, the Trump Administration declared that immigrant children can be detained indefinitely, and in conditions that can be described as concentration camps. We talk to Sasha Abramsky of The NationCorporate Interests Use Voter Purges To Disenfranchise Citizens The SCOTUS decision in Shelby County v Holder ruled that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is unconstitutional. Greg Palast talks about how what followed has been the expansion of the very issue that the VRA was implemented to curb.DNC Rejects Call for a Climate Debate
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!
As Our Infrastructure Crumbles, Our, Right to Life is Under Attack: Water Rights Group Calls on Newark Officials to Resist Privatization of City’s Water Supply Amid Lead Crisis“While city and state officials must respond to the current crisis with urgency, they must also protect their water system from predatory corporate operators.” Pointing to the public health crisis that ensued in Flint, Michigan after the city turned over control of its water to the state, water rights advocates called on leaders in Newark, New Jersey to retain their authority over the city’s water as they confront their own lead crisis. Reports of lead levels well above the EPA’s safety standard of 15 parts per billion surfaced earlier this month, prompting Newark city officials to distribute bottled water to residents. By Julia Conley
Notes on Inauthenticity in a Creeping Fascist NuthouseThe reigning corporate Democrats would rather lose to the right, even to a proto-fascistic white nationalist and eco-exterminist right, than lose to the left, even to a mildly progressive social democratic and environmentalist left within their own party. How else explain their insistence on promoting the ridiculous, right-wing arch-corporatist, imperialist, and dementia-plagued right-wing gaffe machine Joke Biden in the long march to the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries? By Paul Street
‘Our Lungs Are on Fire’: Climate Campaigners Rally at Brazilian Embassies to Protest Destruction of Amazon Rainforest “We need governments around the world to speak up against Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro—and put pressure on him to stop these devastating fires and protect the Amazon.” Climate campaigners demonstrated outside the Brazilian embassies in London, Paris, and Madrid on Friday to protest what they say is the Bolsonaro regime’s role in dozens of fires that have ravaged large swathes of the Amazon rainforest over the past three weeks. By Jake Johnson
Capitalists Adding More Fuel to Global Warming: Warnings of Grave Climate and Human Rights Impact as US Export-Import Bank Approves $5 Billion for Natural Gas Project in Mozambique Environmentalists reacted with outrage after the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s board of directors on Thursday approved $5 billion in funding for a liquefied natural gas plant in Mozambique that could pump an estimated 5.2 million tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. Doug Norlen, director of the economic policy program at Friends of the Earth, called EXIM’s decision “irresponsible” and said it “proves the agency can’t be trusted to manage billions of dollars in public funds.” By Jake JohnsonThe Fire This Time!:
In pictures: Wildfires ignite across Indonesia As fires rage in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, the south-east Asian nation of Indonesia is witnessing a similarly devastating ecological tragedy unfold. The dry season has arrived in Indonesia – home to some of the world’s oldest tropical forests – bringing with it its worst annual fire season since 2015. Close to 700 hotspots have been identified in fire-prone regions in Sumatra, Kalimantan and the Riau islands.They are often considered to be the planet’s most bio-diverse places but large swathes are being destroyed in the name of large-scale commercial efforts.
Forests provide food and shelter and are critical to sustaining biodiversity. Millions of hectares have been lost to fire in recent decades, having been cleared by commercial or agricultural interests.Amazon Fires Put the Planet at Risk In Brazil, the Amazon rainforest is now burning at a record rate. The greedy, short-sighted policies of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro are jeopardizing indigenous peoples and countless plants and animals. Indeed, in the midst of a climate emergency, Bolsonaro’s policies to slash environmental protections and develop the Amazon for mining, ranching and farming jeopardize the future of life on Earth as we know it. North America has already lost nearly 300 species to extinction. The toll in the more-diverse tropics like the Amazon is unimaginable. The Amazon not only harbors much of the Earth’s cultural and biological diversity, it plays a major role in oxygen production, carbon dioxide balance and the water cycle. It is a living library of pharmaceuticals and anthropological treasures. By Tierra CurryScientists Definitively Debunk the Biggest Climate Change Lie European and US scientists have cleared up a point that has been nagging away at climate science for decades: not only is the planet warming faster than at any time in the last 2,000 years, but this unique climate change really does have neither a historic precedent nor a natural cause. Other historic changes – the so-called Medieval Warm Period and then the “Little Ice Age” that marked the 17th to the 19th centuries – were not global. The only period in which the world’s climate has changed, everywhere and at the same time, is right now. By Tim RadfordWeek 135: California Is Driving Trump Crazy on Auto EmissionsPlus, national parks are getting hazy (again), and Trump makes a quixotic bid to buy Greenland. About one month after President Trump took office, the big carmakers sent a letter to then U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt. It asked the EPA to withdraw President Obama’s fuel efficiency standards, which were set to become stricter in 2022. The letter was extremely dramatic, calling the rule “the single most important decision that EPA has made in recent history” (from the industry’s perspective). By Brian Palmer
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
ICE Raids Benefit Bosses by Creating Fear in Workers. . . In 2000, an immigration official admitted that the authorities rarely detained undocumented workers “unless the employer turns a worker in, and employers usually do that only to break a union or prevent a strike or that kind of stuff.” Immigration officials are more circumspect now, but there are indications that “that kind of stuff” may still be triggering workplace actions .One of the plants raided on August 7 was a Morton, Mississippi, facility owned by Illinois-based poultry giant Koch Foods Inc. In 2018, Koch Foods had to pay $3.75 million to settle an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission suit over racial and sexual harassment of Latina workers there. . . . By David L. Wilson
What Recovery? Half a Million Workers Just Lost Their Jobs !Shadow Government Statists Daily Update (August 23rd to 26th) – Payroll Employment Growth Hit by Massive Preliminary Downside Benchmark Revision of 501,000 (-501,000) Jobs; Major Implications for FOMC Easing and GDP Revisions (see Flash Update No. 5) / July New-Home Sales Dropped 12.8% (-12.8%) on Top of a Nonsensically Volatile 12.7% Upside Revision to June Activity / This Most Worthless of Initial Headline Housing Series Continued in 2q2019 Contraction and Held Shy by 54.3% (-54.3%) of Every Recovering Its Pre-Great Recession Peak / In Contrast, More-Stable and Much-Higher Quality July Existing-Home Sales Reporting Gained 2.5% in July 2019, Versus a Revised June decline of 1.3% (-1.3%) / July 2019 Single-Unit Building Permits Gained 1.8% in the Month, Declined 3.8% (-3.8%) Year-to-Year, With Revised Second-Quarter Activity Holding Its Fifth Consecutive Quarter-to-Quarter Contraction / July CASS Freight Index™ Formally is “Signaling an Economic Contraction” / July Industrial Production, Manufacturing and Mining Declined on Top of Downside Revisions to Second-Quarter Activity / Annualized Quarterly Contraction in Second-Quarter Production Deepened from 1.2% (-1.2%) to 2.1% (-2.1%), Indicating a More-Intense Recession and Downside Revision to Second-Quarter GDP / Oil and Gas Drilling and Exploration Took a Hit / Capacity Utilization Dropped to a 21-Month Low
Jamie Dimon Is in a Whale of a Mess on the WeWork IPOThe WeWork IPOpreliminary prospectus was filed last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the company has been getting savage reviews ever since. WeWork is a commercial real estate company leasing out office space but is attempting to mesmerize the public into believing it is some genius new-age thinker. JPMorgan Securities LLC, a unit of JPMorgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs & Co. are listed as lead underwriters on the IPO. Scott Galloway, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, wrote on his blog that “bankers (JPM and Goldman) stand to register $122 million in fees flinging feces at retail investors….” What has not been crystallized as yet, however, is how Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of the largest bank in the U.S., JPMorgan Chase, sits smack in the middle of this mess. Dimon should definitely have seen this mess coming. Dimon was co-CEO of Salomon Smith Barney when it began its super chummy relationship with Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom, which ended in multi-billion dollar legal settlements by Citigroup, Salomon Smith Barney’s parent, and Ebbers serving a 25-year Federal prison sentence. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
China Announces New Tariffs on $75 Billion Worth of US Imports “Trade wars do not produce winners. China does not want a trade war, but is not afraid to face one, and will fight it if necessary,” said Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce informed that the new tariffs will be applied to more than 5,000 U.S. products in two phases. The first stage would come into effect on September 1 and the second one on December 15. China announced that it will impose additional tariffs worth 75,000 million dollars on imports U.S. products, following the measure recently taken by President Donald Trump against the China’s customs fees.
On political crisis in Moscow The events of the past month in Moscow have led to a political crisis on a national scale. Its distinguishing feature is the inability of the authorities to govern as usual, combining political methods and repression for maintaining stability. The mechanism of maintaining legitimate power through controlled elections with low turnout and the predictable victory of United Russia no longer works. Statement By The Russian Socialist Movement
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!
Quotes of the Day:
Corporate Interests Use Voter Purges To Disenfranchise Citizens The SCOTUS decision in Shelby County v Holder ruled that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is unconstitutional. Greg Palast talks about how what followed has been the expansion of the very issue that the VRA was implemented to curb.
DNC Rejects Call for a Climate Debate
The Fire This Time!:
Health, Education, and Welfare: