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.
The US is formally committed to dominating the world by the year 2020. With President Trump’s new Space Directive-4, the production of laser-armed fighter jets as possible precursors to space weapons, and the possibility of nuclear warheads being put into orbit, the clock is ticking…By T.J. Coles, Countdown to “Full Spectrum Dominance”
“There is nothing parochial or provincial about the project to repair four centuries of Euro-American crimes and savagery.” Most veterans of the reparations movement are internationalists, not narrow racialists or Black American chauvinists. They have played key historical roles in the liberation of all previously colonized and enslaved peoples. There is nothing parochial or provincial about the project to repair four centuries of Euro-American crimes and savagery, in the process of which capitalism was built and brought to its imperial zenith. In the most profound sense, reparations means total global social transformation– and you can’t buy that with Marianne Williamson’s $100 billion scheme, or Booker’s baby bonds, or Harris’ $500 a month stipends, or even with trillions of dollars. Real redress can only come when the system that cannibalized tens of millions of Black bodies and underdeveloped most of the world for the benefit of the Lords of Capital, is demolished root and branch and just settlements made among the people’s of the Earth. We may have come here on a slave ship, but we’re not going down with this Titanic in imperialist —Glen Ford, Reparations Means Global Social Transformation
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!
All the news that’s profitable to print: “And it’s not as if Meet the Press with Chuck Todd doesn’t do disasters. They do. For example, on the March 17, 2019 episode of Meet the Press,the March 15 Christchurch, New Zealand massacre, which killed 50, was a major topic of conversation throughout the show. What might explain this discrepancy? Boeing is at the center of both crashes and is now under criminal investigation. And Boeing is a major sponsor of Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.” — The Boeing Blackout
Vanishing Violence Almost unnoticed, serious youth crime has fallen off drastically, leaving juvenile halls emptied and experts mystified A Chronicle review of federal and state statistics over the past three decades revealed startling declines in the number of crimes committed by people 18 and under even as the population grew. In California, homicides of juveniles dropped 83 percent — from 382 in 1995 to 63 in 2017, the latest state data show. Youth arrests for violent felonies in the state dropped 68 percent — from 22,601 in 1994 to 7,291 in 2017. The Chronicle also found that California has responded slowly at best to the decline in youth crime. Many counties have yet to cut back significantly on the resources directed at juvenile halls and camps, though they are no longer needed at the level they once were. Over the past decade, the state’s numerous expanded juvenile halls have become near-empty monuments to a costly miscalculation — a mistake compounded each year as the number of young offenders plummeted. Some California counties are spending $1,400 a day to incarcerate each juvenile, or $500,000 annually, up from $400 a day or $150,000 annually just eight years ago. By comparison, the state spends roughly $11,500 a year to educate each K-12 student. By Jill Tucker and Joaquin Palomino
The American Emperor Has No Clothes This piece originally appeared on antiwar.com. There are times when I wish that the United States would just drop the charade and declare itself a global empire. As a veteran of two imperial wars, a witness to the dark underside of America’s empire-denial, I’ve grown tired of the equivocation and denials from senior policymakers. The U.S. can’t be an empire, we’re told, because—unlike the Brits and Romans—America doesn’t annex territories outright, and our school children don’t color its colonies in red-white-and-blue on cute educational maps. By Maj. Danny Sjursen
Trump Threatens to Unleash Paramilitary Violence in the USAll these are bad, but none is as bloody awful as his musings on unleashing paramilitary violence if things go too wrong for him in the political arena. In his trademark “I didn’t say it” way, Trump talked in a March 13 Breitbart interview about how he had the police, the military and the biker gangs in his corner — and how wonderful it was that they weren’t violent … for now; the clear nudge, nudge, wink, wink, subtext being that all he would have to do is give a signal, and his armed proxies would go after his enemies. A few days later, white nationalist Rep. Steve King, one of Trump’s closest ideological soulmates on Capitol Hill, forwarded to his followers a cartoon about the possibility of a modern-day U.S. civil war, and how gun-toting conservatives would have a field day shooting down wishy-washy liberals who couldn’t even work out what public bathrooms they wanted to use. Sasha Abramsky
‘Christian’ Charity Gave Over $50 Million to Hate Groups, Report RevealsThe National Christian Foundation is America’s eighth largest public charity, but it doesn’t build houses, educate children, feed the hungry, or provide other goods or services one might commonly associate with a charity. It’s also not a household name like the Red Cross, but that doesn’t prevent it from having vast influence. According to a new investigation from Sludge, the far-right, evangelical NCF “has donated $56.1 million on behalf of its clients to 23 nonprofits identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups.” By Ilana Novick
Daniel Ellsberg Calls Chelsea Manning “an American Hero” Noted whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg praised Manning. “Chelsea Manning is in jail again, this time for resisting a grand jury system whose secrecy and lack of witness rights makes it prone to frequent abuse,” Ellsberg told Truthout. “She is also resisting its current abuse, as it is used to attack freedom of the press by pursuing criminal charges for publication of the very war crimes and corruption she courageously revealed to WikiLeaks nine years ago.” By Marjorie Cohn
Private prisons are archaic and cruel. California needs to stop using them As we contemplate ways to address the disproportionate number of people imprisoned in America, one potential impediment to change is the large corporations that profit from incarceration. Between 2000 and 2016, the number of people housed in private prisons in the United States increased by 47% compared with an overall rise in the prison population of 9%, according to an analysis from the SentencingProject.By Jackie Lacey
An exterior view of the GEO Desert View Modified Community Correctional Facility on Nov. 15, 2016. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Environment:
The Capitalist Class Has Decided to Commit Humanicide:
Science and technology are not an obstacle to maintaining a safe environment. The barrier to a safe environment is capitalism and its paramount principle of production and science for profit. Most environmental studies demonstrate that environmental destruction has become globally intertwined within our society and that the globalization of capitalism has quickened the destruction of the planet. Under the conditions of global capitalist competition, it is not economically feasible to invest the capital necessary to reverse this destruction. In the present world, the rights of the capitalists to make a profit are in direct conflict with our basic rights. In this sense, the capitalist system has become a threat to humanity. Jefferson’s words, from the Declaration of Independence, that human rights are unalienable, mean that these rights can never be superseded. At all points of conflict the rights of humanity to survive must supersede the right of the few to make a profit. The right to a safe environment is an unalienable human right! Since environmental illness and destruction are a global concern, it requires all of humanity to act collectively, in our overall interests for our survival as a species, to correct the problem and to remove the obstacle of capitalism. It requires a society where humanity has social, economic, and political control over the entire environment. Such a society, a socialist society, is needed to ensure that all decisions affecting the environment are under the democratic control of humankind so that the production of goods will be done for the needs and survival of humanity instead of the production and the destruction of humanity and other species for profit. With common ownership of the means of production, and common control and protection of all property and wealth, science and society will be in harmony with the ecosystem and humanity’s future. With these goals we can begin to build a more effective environmental movement. As we continue to organize against capitalism and its destructive course, we can and will transform the world. In the words of Margaret Mead, the famous anthropologist: Never doubt that a “small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” — Roland Sheppard,Whither Humanity? The Environmental Crisis of Capitalism (1999)
Global Banks, Led by JPMorgan Chase, Invested $1.9 Trillion in Fossil Fuels Since Paris Climate Pact A report published today names the banks that have played the biggest recent role in funding fossil fuel projects, finding that since 2016, immediately following the Paris Agreement’s adoption, 33 global banks have poured $1.9 trillion into financing climate-changing projects worldwide. The top four banks that invested most heavily in fossil fuel projects are all based in the U.S., and include JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, and Bank of America. Royal Bank of Canada, Barclays in Europe, Japan’s MUFG, TD Bank, Scotiabank, and Mizuho make up the remainder of the top 10. This report comes as March has already brought deadly weather to places such as the American Midwest, where historic flooding has left four dead and farm losses could reach $1 billion, and Mozambique, where Tropical Cyclone Idai has devastated the East African country and President Filipe Nyusi estimated that more than a thousand people are likely dead.
‘They Have Lied for Decades’: European Parliament To Scrutinise Exxon’s Climate Science Denial With millions of students taking to the streets and oil majors increasingly facing litigation, the fossil fuel industry is finally being held to account for its contribution to the climate crisis. This week, the EU is taking this accountability up a notch, with ExxonMobil’s decades-long denial of climate science facing the scrutiny of MEPs and the public at a hearing at the European Parliament in Brussels on Thursday. During the two-hour session, scientists, campaigners and a historian will examine the history of climate denial and in particular the misinformation spread by Exxon, with MEPs able to ask questions about the role and behaviour of the oil major. By Sophie Yeo Hear the Song of the Earth While You Still Can “One way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, ‘What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?’” — Rachel Carson By William Rivers Pitt
Americans are Being Poisoned and Charged a Fortune for the Cure Americans are Being Poisoned “Contamination of water and air and soil and adding to the worst mass extinction the world has seen in millions of years. All of this is less than than the tip of the Trumpian iceberg, but he doesn’t care as long as money can be made by the rich through his efforts. What he doesn’t seem to have noticed is that humans are a part of what is being destroyed and he has visited even
more suffering on the American people.” And
charged a fortune for the cure. By John Funiciello
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Bribing and Cheating To Get Into Prestigious UniversitiesAs of this writing, the long-time voices of opponents of affirmative action have been largely silent. Why do you think that’s the case?Elwood: Are you surprised?! Don’t hold your breath until they do. You seethe hypocritical, manipulative, deceptive and abhorrent behavior of a number of upper income and wealthy people has been exposed for the entire world to see. Their continued silence or delayed comments will come across as disingenuous because they realize that the lies they have been touting about affirmative action being an unfair policy that benefits supposedly “unqualified” people of color has now been dismantled and torn to shreds. By Dr. Elwood Watson, PhD and Terry Howard
The announced 3.9% unemployment rate is, as news reports mentioned, a low since 2000. But percentages are expressions of ratios: how much of one thing compares to another. The unemployment rate is the ratio ofthe number of unemployed people and the total workforce, which is the sum of the employed and unemployed. Like any ratio, there a number of ways to change the value:
Move people out of the unemployed category into the employed while keeping the total workforce stable.
Increase the total number of employed workers faster than the number of unemployed ones.
Add more people into the employed category without changing anyone’s actual status.
Stop counting some in the unemployed category, making them “disappear.”
World:
Venezuela: US Withholds $5B for MedicinePresident Maduro denounced the theft during an official act to relaunch the national pharmaceutical industry, one of the main focus points of the Bolivarian Economic Agenda. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro denounced on Wednesday that the U.S. Government is withholding US$5 billion dollars from Venezuela, which are meant to purchase supplies to manufacture medicines. “A tremendous effort is made so that free and quality health reaches all the people, to be able to bypass all the aggression of Donald Trump’s government”, said President Maduro during an official act to relaunch the national pharmaceutical industry, one of the main focus points of the Bolivarian Economic Agenda.
Bosnia: a cry for justice – the rebellion against Dodik’s autocratic regimeIt has been a year since the murder of David Dragičević, a student from Banja Luka, which shook the Republic of Srpska to its core. Dejan Prodanović, a member of Banja Luka’s branch of the Marxist organisation, Reds, explores the causes for and the dynamics behind the Justice for David movement, which rattled the reactionary regime of Milorad Dodik. This article, apart from giving a detailed description of the protests and the actions of certain figures within it, also gives an insight into the class character of Dodik’s rule. ByDejanProdanović
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!
Quotes of the Day:
Hear the Song of the Earth While You Still Can “One way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, ‘What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?’” — Rachel Carson By William Rivers Pitt
