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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
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Quotes of the Day:
Capitalism’s atrocious record when it comes to human life stretches right back to its birth. How many lives did the slave trade claim? How many died at the hands of the British Empire? And during the conquest of the New World? How many capitalists, landlords, bosses, and “statesmen” lined up to praise Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, and others at one time or another? The history and modern-day reality of capitalism is one of horror without end, all in the interests of profit. This is the system that Figes and his ilk defend. What the capitalist press and the academic establishment can’t understand is that Marxist ideas aren’t becoming more popular because they’re fashionable, or because young people are stupid. It’s because the capitalist system is systematically exposing itself as bankrupt in every sense of the word. The only ideas that clearly and coherently explain the fundamental workings of the capitalist system and the contradictions built into its foundations are those first expounded by Karl Marx. — Britain: Marxists scare the Tory press and bourgeois academics
The record of economic sanctions in forcing political change is dismal, but as a way of reducing a country to poverty and misery it is difficult to beat. UN sanctions were imposed against Iraq from 1990 until 2003. Supposedly, it was directed against Saddam Hussein and his regime, though it did nothing to dislodge or weaken them: on the contrary, the Baathist political elite took advantage of the scarcity of various items to enrich themselves by becoming the sole suppliers. Saddam’s odious elder son Uday made vast profits by controlling the import of cigarettes into Iraq. The bureaucrats in charge of UN sanctions in Iraq always pretended that they prevented Saddam rebuilding his military strength. This was always a hypocritical lie: the Iraqi army did not fight for him in 1991 at the beginning of sanctions any more than it did when they ended. It was absurd to imagine that dictators like Kim Jong-un or Saddam Hussein would be influenced by the sufferings of their people. These are very real: I used to visit Iraqi hospitals in the 1990s where the oxygen had run out and there were no tyres for the ambulances. Once, I was pursued across a field in Diyala province north of Baghdad by local farmers holding up dusty X-rays of their children because they thought I might be a visiting foreign doctor. Saddam Hussein and his senior lieutenants were rightly executed for their crimes, but the foreign politicians and officials who were responsible for the sanctions regime that killed so many deserved to stand beside them in the dock. It is time that the imposition of economic sanctions should be seen as a war crime, since it involves the collective punishment of millions of innocent civilians who die, sicken or are reduced to living off scraps from the garbage dumps. — It’s Time to Call Economic Sanctions What They Are: War Crimes
Videos of the Day:
Apple: The Biggest Tax Cheaters in History Repatriate Profits Under Trump’s Tax Bill What Apple did was outright illegal according to the European Union, but instead of taking legal action against Apple for tax evasion, the Trump tax bill will reward them says white-collar criminologist Bill Black
Cape Town Water Wars: A Literal Shitstorm In Cape Town, one of the most unequal cities in the world, poor people are taking the buckets they use for chemical toilets and turning them into weapons, as the water shortage intensifies class conflicts
Baltimore Spends Billions on Corporate Subsidies but Can’t Heat Its Schools Author and political scientist Lester Spence says the discussion around Baltimore’s flagging school system ignores the fundamental priorities of a city that favors corporations over its children
U.S.:
Let’s call the pro-lifers what they are: pro-death On the 45th anniversary of Roe v Wade, it’s time to highlight a hidden truth: restricting abortion means more maternal deaths Ever since the anti-abortion movement claimed the “pro-life” label in the 1970s, the battle over reproductive rights has taken an apocalyptic tone. If the anti-abortion side is pro-life, then the other side – the millions of women who rally every January to keep abortion legal and safe – must be composed of the gaunt, gray-winged handmaidens of death.This polarizing rhetoric turns every clash between the two sides into a prelude to Armageddon, the final showdown between life and death, good and evil. When charged with caring only for life in its fetal form, the anti-abortion side hoists its mythological claim that abortion is a risk factor for breast cancer, lifelong depression and suicide. Thus they can say that they do not only save fetal lives, but the lives of the women who carry these fetuses. On 22 January, on the 45th anniversary of the legalization of abortion, supporters of women’s rights need to go beyond refuting false claims about the dangers of abortion. We should take back the mantle of life. There is mounting evidence that it is not abortion, but the lack of access to abortion that is a deadly threat to women. This conclusion comes from careful state-by-state monitoring of maternal mortality, including deaths occurring at birth and around the time of birth. The less access to abortion, the greater the chance that women will die in childbirth or pregnancy. By Barbara Ehrenreich and Alissa Quart
Congress’s Ratification of Trump’s Spying Power Is a Direct Threat to Our Privacy When it voted 65 to 34 to pass the National Security Agency’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Reauthorization Act of 2017, Congress gave Donald Trump vast authority to spy on Americans. Senate Republicans and Democrats have handed the Trump administration a dangerous tool to intercept our internet communications and target immigrants, people of color and government critics. By Marjorie Cohn
Thought Police for the 21st Century The abolition of net neutrality and the use of algorithms by Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter to divert readers and viewers from progressive, left-wing and anti-war sites, along with demonizing as foreign agents the journalists who expose the crimes of corporate capitalism and imperialism, have given the corporate state the power to destroy freedom of speech. Any state that accrues this kind of power will use it. And for that reason I traveled last week to Detroit to join David North, the chairperson of the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site, in a live-stream event calling for the formation of a broad front to block an escalating censorship while we still have a voice. By Chris Hedges
Environment:
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
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Economy:
The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system,” Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam’s executive director of Oxfam International. “The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors.— ‘Billionaire Boom’: While World’s Richest 1% Took 82% of All New Wealth in 2017, Bottom Half Got Zero, Zilch, Nada
The Number of Billionairs Have Been Rising As Real Wages Have Been Falling Since the 1972 Wage Price Freeze!: Shadow Government Statistics: Real Average Weekly Earnings, Production and Nonsupervisory Employees, 1965-to-Date
Number of Billionaires Around the World Rises 13% in 2017 The U.S. is home to the most, Forbes finds There are 2,043 billionaires in the world, representing a 13% increase from last year’s tally of 1,810, according to the annual Forbes list published Monday. The 233-person increase since 2016 was the highest jump in the 31 years that Forbes has been compiling its list of the world’s billionaires. The total net worth of billionaires increased 18% to $7.67 trillion, which is higher than the GDP in more than 60 countries. By Fang Block
Citigroup: The Poster Child of Bad Mortgages his past Sunday the PBS documentary produced by WNET, New York, about Sherry Hunt, one of my former chief underwriters (Sherry blew the whistle on Citigroup four years after I was thrown out for warning about their bad mortgages), and myself aired on KERA Channel 13, Dallas PBS. The documentary, entitled “The Whistleblower,” is the first episode in a three-part PBS series called Playing by the Rules: Ethics at Work. It has aired in New York and several other cities around the country and in Dallas this past weekend, with most of the PBS stations airing it this month. You can watch it here and on the WNET website. By Richard Bowen
Rising Treasury Yields Pose Risk for Those Over-Weighted in Stocks President Donald Trump’s persistence on his Twitter page in touting how well the stock market is doing is distracting investors from a scary, negative indicator for stocks – rising yields on U.S. Treasury securities. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Britain: Marxists scare the Tory press and bourgeois academics A recent poll finds that young people in the UK today see capitalism as more dangerous than communism. But what has really sent the establishment into a frenzy is Marxist student Fiona Lali’s defence of communism on BBC Radio 4.24 percent of people aged 18-24 see right-wingers and big business as the most dangerous things in the world today. This is compared to just 9 percent who said the same thing about communists. These findings from a ComRes poll have set the establishment on edge.
South Africa: after Ramaphosa’s ANC victory, nothing has been solved Cyril Ramaphosa’s election as ANC president in December has coincided with the meltdown of the main bourgeois opposition party: the Democratic Alliance. But while the DA’s fortunes are declining, paradoxically, Ramaphosa’s victory at the Nasrec conference was widely welcomed by large sections of the ruling class, including big business, which now feels more secure with one of its own at the helm of the ANC. By Ben Morken
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