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 That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he 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 , thet the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
Today, the media often ignores the range and breadth of King’s teachings. His speeches – on economlc justice, on our potential to end poverty, on the power of organized mass action, his criticism of the hostile media, his opposition to U.S. imperialism (a word he dared to use) – are rarely quoted, much less discussed with understanding. In fact, successors to Dr. King who raise the same concerns today are again treated with sneers, and their “ulterior motives” are questioned. A genuine appreciation of Dr. King requires respect for the totality of his work and an ongoing commitment to struggle for peace and justice today. — Dr. King Was Not A Dreaner
Who provided the bulk of that $29 trillion in bailout money to resuscitate banks engaged in serial frauds? It was the New York Fed, another captured regulator with one critically important and critically dangerous difference from other regulators: it has the ability to electronically create money out of thin air. As a sign of just how brazen and disastrously broken the U.S. financial system has become, with no hearings in Congress, with no blaring headlines on the front pages of newspapers, the New York Fed turned on its money spigot to Wall Street again on September 17, 2019. It was the first time this has happened since the financial crisis. For the past four months the New York Fed has been spewing hundreds of billions of dollars each week to Wall Street’s trading houses, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average up by 3,000 points, with no accountability to anyone or explanation as to why Wall Street needs or deserves this money. Americans must engage in demanding accountability from their elected, and as yet uncaptured, members of Congress. — Bernie Sanders Hasn’t Quite Captured What Wall Street Does: It’s Actually a Fraud-Monetization System with a Money-Printing Unit Called the New York Fed
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.
‘Global Precedent’ Set as UN Rules Climate Refugees Cannot Be Sent Back to Life-Threatening Conditions Human rights advocates on Monday applauded a “ground-breaking” ruling by a United Nations panel which stated that climate refugees seeking asylum cannot legally be sent back to their home countries if they face life-threatening conditions due to the climate crisis. “Without robust national and international efforts, the effects of climate change in receiving states may expose individuals to a violation of their rights,” ruled the U.N. Human Rights Committee, “thereby triggering the non-refoulement obligations of sending states.” By Julia ConleyA Circus Then, a Circus Now (Chris Hedges has the week off. Here, in this reposted column from Jan. 7, 2019, are his thoughts about the then-nascent presidential election campaign.It is January 2019.) This signals the start of the 2020 election circus. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is the first big-name Democrat on stage. But we will soon be deluged with candidates, bizarre antics and endless commentary by fatuous TV and radio pundits. The hyperventilating, the constant polling, the updates on who has the largest campaign war chest, the hypothetical matches between this hopeful and that hopeful, the mocking tweets by Donald Trump, will, as we saw in the 2016 election campaign, have as much relevance to our lives and political future as the speculation on cable sports channels about next year’s football season. This farce takes the place of genuine political life.It costs a lot of money to mount this spectacle. Our corporate masters, like the oligarchic rulers of ancient Rome who poured money into the arena as they stripped the empire and its citizens of their assets, are happy to oblige. The campaign sustains the fiction of a democracy and gives legitimacy to the corporate state. Maybe Hillary Clinton, who raised $1 billion in her 2016 run for president, will return for another season, although the Bill and Hillary tour is now a debacle with empty seats and slashed ticket prices. Maybe Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders will make comebacks. And what about the new faces in the scramble for the presidency—Beto O’Rourke, former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and the billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg? By Chris HedgesEnvironment:
Robber Barons On Steroids: Big Oil Is The New Big Tobacco. Congress Must Use Its Power To Investigate Americans had the right to know the harms of smoking. They have the right to know the harms of the energy industry, too Greta Thunberg summed up 2019 in five words: “Our house is on fire.” In Australia, this is now literally the case. Wildfires there have been raging for more than a month and now span an area larger than Switzerland. The situation bears all he hallmarks of a hot new world: lives lost, livelihoods ruined and species pushed towards extinction, accompanied by government inaction, industry PR spin, abetting rightwing echo chambers, and taxpayers footing the multibillion-dollar bill. Insanely, the Australian government remains in denial – ignoring the science, downplaying the seriousness and subservient to coal. The fossil fuel industry, meanwhile, is busy greenwashing and gaslighting: Chevron is boasting about its $1m donation – 0.00667% of its annual earnings – to the Australian Red Cross, and Exxon Australia just wants everyone to “Stay safe and have fun”. All this is set to a backdrop of mutually reinforcing rightwing new outlets, online bots and trolls, which are distracting and misinforming the public about the science and politics of climate-catalyzed fires. By Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran
‘Act as if You Loved Your Children Above All Else’: Greta Thunberg Demands Davos Elite Immediately Halt All Fossil Fuel InvestmentsI’ve been warned that telling people to panic about the climate crisis is a very dangerous thing to do, but don’t worry—it’s fine—I’ve done this before and I can assure you: it doesn’t lead to anything.” Climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the world’s elite face-to-face at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday where she called on leaders to end their abhorrent and irrefutable failures on the climate emergency and demanded participants “from all the companies, banks, institutions, and governments” in attendance to immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, end fossil fuel subsidies, and divest from all fossil fuels “We don’t want these things done in 2050, 2030, or even 2021,” Thunberg said. “We want this done now.” By Jon Queally
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
If Democrats Want to Honor Legacy of Dr. King, Says Ocasio-Cortez, “We Have to Be Dangerous Too” Congresswoman from New York said Martin Luther King Jr. would disagree with establishment Democrats who believe “we can capitalism our way out of poverty.” At a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day event at Riverside Church in Harlem, New York Monday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez urged her audience to recognize the Democratic Party is closer to “a center-conservative party” than a progressive one—something that must change if the civil rights icon’s legacy is truly to be honored. Speaking to author Ta-Nehisi Coates at the annual MLK Now event, Ocasio-Cortez took issue with Coates calling the Democrats the United States’ “left party.” “We don’t have a ‘left party’ in the United States,” the first-term New York Democrat, who is a democratic socialist, said, to applause. “We can’t even get a floor vote on Medicare for All. Not even a floor vote that gets voted down, we can’t even get a vote on it. So this is not a left party.” By Julia Conley
Bernie Sanders Hasn’t Quite Captured What Wall Street Does: It’s Actually a Fraud-Monetization System with a Money-Printing Unit Called the New York Fed Senator Bernie Sanders has come closer than anyone on the Presidential campaign trail in defining what Wall Street actually does. Sanders has repeatedly stated at his rallies that “the business model of Wall Street is fraud.” That analysis is correct but abbreviated. Sanders needs to go further. It’s not just Wall Street’s business model that has left the United States with the greatest wealth inequality since the Roaring Twenties (a time when Wall Street investment banks were also allowed to own deposit-taking banks). It’s how Wall Street is monetizing that fraud that poses an existential threat to the solvency of the United States and the impoverishment of millions of Americans. By Pam Martens and Russ MartensWorld:
‘Beyond Disturbing’: Right-Wing Bolsonaro Government Charges Journalist Glenn Greenwald With Cybercrimes “This is despicable, dangerous, and a crime against journalism.” Journalist Glenn Greenwald was reportedly charged with cybercrimes by Brazilian authorities Tuesday in connection to his reporting on corruption in the country, a move by the right-wing government of President Jair Bolsonaro that was quickly and forcefully condemned by progressives and journalists around the world. By Eoin HigginsBritain: big business panicked as clock counts down to Brexit By Despite Boris Johnson’s “Bung a Bob” crowdfunding appeal, Big Ben will not “bong for Brexit” at 11pm on 31st January. The Parliamentary Standards Committee has put its foot down and blocked the idea. Instead, the Tory government will project a countdown clock onto the wall of 10 Downing Street. So much for taking back control. This little episode, in a microcosm, sums up the Tory government. They are all bluff and bluster. The Tories are promising a “land flowing with milk and honey” after Brexit. But we are likely to end up with a giant raspberry instead. By Rob Sewell
Education, Health, Science, 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 ‘governn’, 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!
In Historic Shift, Second Largest Physicians Group in US Has New Prescription: It’s Medicare for All “Major changes are needed,” declares the 159,000-member American College of Physicians, “to a system that costs too much, leaves too many behind, and delivers too little.” The fight for Medicare for All received a two-handed boost from tens of thousands of doctors on Monday when the American College of Physicians—in a move described as a “seachange for the medical professions”—officially endorsed a single-payer system as among only one of two possible ways to improve the nation’s healthcare woes. By Jon Queally
More than 2,000 physicians announced an open letter to the American public, prescribing single-payer Medicare for All, in a full-page ad in the New York Times that will run in the print edition on Tuesday, January 21, 2020. On Monday, in a separate but related move, the American College of Physicians (ACP), a national organization representing 159,000 internists, officially endorsed single-payer Medicare for All reform. The ACP is the largest medical specialty society and second-largest physician group in the country after the American Medical Association (AMA). (Photo: PNHP)
Big Pharma Is Literally Poisoning Us Big Pharma spends a small fortune every year buying politicians to make sure we can’t import prescription drugs from Canada, but they’re more than happy to sell us contaminated medications from countries with weak manufacturing controls and exploitable labor that ensure high profit margins. A toxic compound that doesn’t belong anywhere near medicine known as NDMA was first discovered in some blood pressure medications in 2018, and the FDA issued an alert and wrote a complaint letter to the raw materials supplier to Big Pharma companies. It turns out the meds follow the very common pattern of being made in India with raw ingredients coming from China. And they are sold by big companies for obscenely high prices to U.S. consumers. By Thom Hartmann
Quotes of the Day:
A Circus Then, a Circus Now (Chris Hedges has the week off. Here, in this reposted column from Jan. 7, 2019, are his thoughts about the then-nascent presidential election campaign.It is January 2019.) This signals the start of the 2020 election circus. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is the first big-name Democrat on stage. But we will soon be deluged with candidates, bizarre antics and endless commentary by fatuous TV and radio pundits. The hyperventilating, the constant polling, the updates on who has the largest campaign war chest, the hypothetical matches between this hopeful and that hopeful, the mocking tweets by Donald Trump, will, as we saw in the 2016 election campaign, have as much relevance to our lives and political future as the speculation on cable sports channels about next year’s football season. This farce takes the place of genuine political life.It costs a lot of money to mount this spectacle. Our corporate masters, like the oligarchic rulers of ancient Rome who poured money into the arena as they stripped the empire and its citizens of their assets, are happy to oblige. The campaign sustains the fiction of a democracy and gives legitimacy to the corporate state. Maybe Hillary Clinton, who raised $1 billion in her 2016 run for president, will return for another season, although the Bill and Hillary tour is now a debacle with empty seats and slashed ticket prices. Maybe Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders will make comebacks. And what about the new faces in the scramble for the presidency—Beto O’Rourke, former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and the billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg? By Chris Hedges 
Environment:
World:
Britain: big business panicked as clock counts down to Brexit By Despite Boris Johnson’s “Bung a Bob” crowdfunding appeal, Big Ben will not “bong for Brexit” at 11pm on 31st January. The Parliamentary Standards Committee has put its foot down and blocked the idea. Instead, the Tory government will project a countdown clock onto the wall of 10 Downing Street. So much for taking back control. This little episode, in a microcosm, sums up the Tory government. They are all bluff and bluster. The Tories are promising a “land flowing with milk and honey” after Brexit. But we are likely to end up with a giant raspberry instead. By Rob Sewell
