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
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
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 HoldenWeek 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
Deutsche Bank Headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany Have Been Raided Twice in Less than a Year
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
A construction site in London. Since the global financial crisis in 2008, urban housing prices have skyrocketed and luxury apartments continue to spread.
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!
Big 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
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
Environment:
Clean-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
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
