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During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: 1. Austerity, 2. Scapegoating Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal Immigrants’ for Unemployment, and 3. 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 Who Profit From Austerity! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico
Images of the Day:
Quotes of The Day:
After the assassination of Martin Luther King, and the subsequent rebellions in the inner cities protesting his assassination, the Democratic Party’s “war on poverty” started laying dollars on any potential Black leaders and grooming Black Candidates. John Lewis, formally of SNCC, became enlightened, he ignored the Black Panthers and saw the Democratic Party, symbolized by a jackass, as his party. Most of what W.E. B. Dubois described as the “talented tenth” were bought off by this process. The more radical concepts that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X had developed, at the time of their deaths, disappeared from the scene. No one took up where they left off. The governmental policy, directed towards the ‘leaders’ of the civil rights movement, of the carrot (dollarism) and the stick (assassinations), has proven to be successful. — Roland Sheppard, The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights Movement
Our reality is still the rape of Africa! On this soil, Black women labored for hundreds of years for no pay, and knew intimately the authority and the power of tyranny. It’s better to intimidate, to blacklist those who refuse to obey and fall in line, better to outright lie, protracting a smear campaign against individuals that last for year than it is to apologize. But no half-baked apology can erase what happened no more than a half-baked apology can erase the legacy of the historical violence of enslavement and segregation. And above all, the forced silencing of the victims. It’s still with us, and it hasn’t gone away. The abuse of power is well managed — by perpetrator and victims, alike. White people don’t take kindly to hearing how white supremacy works. Blacks have been asked to follow the pointing arrow, recognize America’s enemy within us while Americans, asked to look outside themselves, not surprisingly, see the criminals and terrorists — in our internalization of this nation’s irrational fear of difference. But there’s the flip side: women don’t need to stay home. Encouraged to join the workforce, women work harder but for less pay. The “bonus package” — for the privilege of working — is expecting sexual harassment, intimidation, bullying. Consider it an admission fee. And, in the meantime, the sham continues: white American men are family men. Protectorates. Good ole’ boys! Lenore Daniels, Me Too: Abuse of Power and Managed Inequality
Videos of the Day:
Virtually No Economist Believes the GOP Tax Bill Will Generate Growth The $1.5 trillion growth dividends that Republicans project on their tax bill remained the same at 20% and at 21% , this shows that they are picking the figure out of the air, and it is “pretty far-fetched,” says economist Dean Baker
U.S.:
Surveillance That Never Sleeps “He sees you when you’re sleeping He knows when you’re awake He knows when you’ve been bad or good So be good for goodness sake!” —“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” Just in time for Christmas, the Deep State wants to give America the gift that keeps on giving: never-ending mass surveillance. I’m not referring to the kind of surveillance carried out by that all-knowing and all-seeing Jolly Old St. Nick and his informant the Elf on the Shelf (although, to be fair, they have helped to acclimate us to a world in which we’re always being watched and judged by higher authorities). No, this particular bit of Yuletide gift-giving comes courtesy of the Deep State (a.k.a. the Surveillance State, Police State, Shadow Government and black-ops spy agencies). by John W. Whitehead
Republicans and Democrats Doing the Trickle Up: Tax Bill: Fossil Fuel Provision Would Personally Enrich Republican Lawmakers The rich get richer and the earth gets hurt. When Texas Sen. John Cornyn slipped an obscure tax break for pipeline giants into the GOP tax bill, he wasn’t just helping major Republican Party donors, he was also potentially helping 16 of his congressional colleagues. Together those 16 lawmakers — 13 Republicans, three Democrats — own multimillion-dollar stakes in the special investment vehicles that stand to benefit from Cornyn’s amendment. They include three of members of the Texas Congressional delegation: Sen. Ted Cruz and two top Republicans in the U.S. House. By David Sirota / International Business Times
Environment:
Arctic Report Card: Permafrost Thawing Faster than Before Permafrost in the Arctic is thawing faster than ever, according to a new report released Tuesday. Water is also warming and sea ice is melting at the fastest pace in 1,500 years at the top of the world. The annual report released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed slightly less warming in many measurements than a record hot 2016. But scientists remain concerned because the far northern region is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe and has reached a level of warming that’s unprecedented in modern times. “2017 continued to show us we are on this deepening trend where the Arctic is a very different place than it was even a decade ago,” said Jeremy Mathis, head of NOAA’s Arctic research program and co-author of the 93-page report. Findings were discussed at the American Geophysical Union meeting in New Orleans. “What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic; it affects the rest of the planet,” said acting NOAA chief Timothy Gallaudet. “The Arctic has huge influence on the world at large.” By Seth Borenstein
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
ALEC, Corporate-Funded Bill Mill, Considers Model State Bill Cracking Down on Pipeline Protesters At its recent States & Nation Policy Summit, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group that connects state legislators with corporations and creates templates for state legislation, voted on a model bill calling for the crack down and potential criminalization of those protesting U.S. oil and gas pipeline infrastructure. Dubbed the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, the model legislation states in its preamble that it draws inspiration from two bills passed in the Oklahoma Legislature in 2017. Those bills, House Bill 1123 and House Bill 2128, offered both criminal and civil penalties which would apply to protests happening at pipeline sites. Critics viewed these bills as an outgrowth of the heavy-handed law enforcement reaction to protests of the Dakota Access pipeline. By Steve Horn
Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
“Russsiagate” and the Collapse of Obama’s War Against Syria — “How could a U.S. administration align itself with the same forces that were blamed for 9/11?” “Russia-gate” is the scream of a wounded U.S. empire – a military colossus that can destroy the planet many times over but was defeated in its war of regime change in Syria, despite killing half a million people and displacing a third of its population. Barack Obama was packaged as a “peace” candidate, but his real objective was to reverse the humiliation of his predecessor’s forced withdrawal from Iraq and thus maintain the image and substance of U.S. “primacy” in the world. U.S. public opinion, however, would not tolerate another massive mobilization of American ground forces in the region. Instead, Obama and his secretary of state and would-be successor, Hillary Clinton, partnered with the monarchies of the Persian Gulf, the most backward regimes on the planet, to transform the various flavors of al Qaida into a pro-western foreign legion: foot solders of imperialism. By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
Christmas and the Contradictions of Capitalists Who Celebrate It “Oppressed communities around the world need to divorce themselves from empires.” On Christmas morning, many major shareholders and executives of oil companies, weapons manufacturers, mining corporations and other enterprises that are part of the military-industrial complex will rise with their families and spend a day feasting and trading obscenely expensive gifts. It is, of course, possible they will say an obligatory prayer of thanksgiving, but there will be scant mention, let alone in-depth consideration of the life of the individual whose birthday has become the annual excuse for the capitalist system to wage a no-holds-barred campaign to promote among working people and the poor a lust for material excess, waste and mindless consumption. Corporate big shots will not consider that the little baby born in Bethlehem about 2,050 years ago grew into a man who found himself in the midst of a revolutionary maelstrom. He watched as an overseas empire headquartered in Rome deployed its military troops and enforcers to occupied Palestine where they went house-to-house extorting the meager financial resources of desperately poor people and torturing and killing those who resisted. Modern day capitalists will not think about the guerrilla fighters (“Zealots”) who ambushed and killed Roman soldiers. Nor will they contemplate that at least one of these fighters was recruited into Jesus’ trusted circle of disciples. By Mark P. Fancher
Labor:
Student Loans, The Indentured Servitude of the 21st Century I have seen the student loan crisis up close from both sides of this polemic. First, as an extremely young student who was “sold” the only way to get an education—in addition to joining the U.S. Army and working throughout my degree—I was able to earn my first degree. And then later as a university professor who witnessed the student loan industrial complex rise, especially in its abetting the marketing campaigns for graduate programs from the 1990s onward. Such marketing strategies were personalized to arouse anxiety within the public, targeting the insecurity of individuals who “only” had a Bachelor’s degree. by Julian Vigo
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics: Real Average Weekly Earnings, Production and Nonsupervisory Employees, 1965 – to – Date
You are working harder and getting paid less The bad news: Your wages are declining. The worse news: Surveys documenting falling wage actually under-estimate how much your wages are declining. A recent entrant to this labor literature, a research paper titled Decomposing the Productivity-Wage Nexus in Selected OECD Countries, 1986-2013, studied 11 advanced-capitalist countries and found that in eight of them median wages have not kept pace with growth in labor productivity. To put the preceding sentence in clear language: You are producing more and getting paid less. By Pete Dolack
What’s Going On Inside Your Wall Street Brokerage Firm? The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Wall Street’s self-regulator with a long history of conflicts of interest, has released a summary of its findings from the examinations it conducts at the nation’s brokerage firms. As is typical of FINRA, the document released to the public is extremely light on details. (Almost half of FINRA’s Board comes from inside the industry, with current representation from JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Citadel and Fidelity, to name just a few of the insiders.) By Pam and Russ Martens
World:
UK: May’s Brexit fudge — keeping the DUP happy, at what cost? On Monday 4 December, it was finally announced that a deal on phase one of the Brexit negotiations was about to be struck. The Financial Times lauded the Brexiteers’ “surprising realism” in a negotiation described by one former head of the Treasury as more like a “drive-by shooting” than a negotiation. By Ben Curry
Appropriation of Jerusalem In recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a state formed by native Jews and Jewish settlers from Europe and America, President Trump and the U.S. Congress have validated the Jewish appropriation of a disputed city. This commentary explains the foul dynamics of settlements. It also illuminates the “sacred” justifications offered to legitimize settler colonialism. In addition to Israel, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many other states, owe their origin to settler colonialism, another name for forcibly taking land from indigenous inhabitants. The criticism of settler colonialism is highly sophisticated in academic circles, college colonialism courses, this year mystifyingly trickling down in high school debates. by Liaquat Ali Khan
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
