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.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey published earlier this month found that 55 percent of Democratic primary voters prefer a candidate who “proposes larger-scale policies that cost more and might be harder to pass into law, but could bring major change on these issues.” Forty-two percent said they favor a candidate who “proposes smaller-scale policies.” “Poll after poll has shown that the majority of Americans favor a Medicare for All, single-payer health care system over a profit-driven health insurance system,” said Cortez of NNU, which is holding local canvassing operations throughout the nation to build grassroots momentum for Medicare for All. “National Nurses United, along with our allies, will continue to build the grassroots movement for genuine health care justice and push to pass Medicare for All,” Cortez concluded. — As Pelosi Unveils ACA Fix, Medicare for All: Backers Say ‘Now Is Not the Time for Watered-Down, Incremental Measures’
Surveillance Capitalism: Economic pressures of capitalism are driving the intensification of connection and monitoring online with spaces of social life becoming open to saturation by corporate actors, directed at the making of profit and/or the regulation of action.[3]Relevantly, Turow writes that “centrality of corporate power is a direct reality at the very heart of the digital age“. [3][4]:17Capitalism has become focused on expanding the proportion of social life that is open to data collection and data processing.[3] This may come with significant implications for vulnerability and control of society as well as for privacy. However, increased data collection may also have various advantages for individuals and society such as self-optimization (Quantified Self),[3] societal optimizations (such as by smart cities) and new or optimized services (including various web applications). Still, collecting and processing data in the context of capitalism’s core profit-making motive might present an inherent danger.
Videos of the Day:
On April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King Was Assaassinated. The Following Audios Tell the Story:
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!
Surveillance capitalism is doing to human nature what industrial capitalism has done to our planet. For Google, Facebook, Twitter and their ilk, ad revenues are sacred. As Shoshana Zuboff observes in her new book, , users are not tech companies’ customers — the businesses who purchase ads are. And those ads derive from data invasively captured, to which the tech behemoths have unilaterally laid claim. The data is secret, and so are the behavioral predictions based on it. With the ads — as with the novel ways of invading privacy afforded by new technologies — something new is going on; because although advertising has been around for generations, in the twenty-first century it suddenly exploded into a titanic fountain of wealth for tech companies. By Eve Ottenberg
Crony Capitalism at the Borders!: Trump team overruled 25 clearance denials, official saysA career official in the White House security office says dozens of people in President Donald Trump’s administration were granted security clearances despite “disqualifying issues” in their backgrounds, including concerns about foreign influence, drug use and criminal conduct. Tricia Newbold, an 18-year government employee who oversaw the issuance of clearances for some senior White House aides, says she compiled a list of at least 25 officials who were initially denied security clearances last year but then had those denials overruled by senior administration officials. The allegations were detailed in a letter and memo released Monday by Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. The documents, which are based on Newbold’s March 23 private committee interview, don’t identify the officials on the list but say they include “two current senior White House officials, as well as contractors and individuals” in different parts of the Executive Office of the President. By Chad Day
The Forever Wars Will Go On Without Me “Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners.” — Robert Graves, Goodbye To All That (1929) I’m one of the lucky ones. Leaving the madness of Army life with a modest pension and all of my limbs intact feels like a genuine escape. Both the Army and I knew it was time for me to go. I’d tired of carrying water for empire and they’d grown weary of dealing with my dissenting articles and footing the bill for my seemingly never-ending PTSD treatments. Now, I’m society’s problem, unleashed into a civilian world I’ve never gazed upon with adult eyes By Danny Sjursen
“The More Effective Evil” The old adage needs to be updated. It should now read as follows. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me scores and scores of times over decade after decade, I must be a democrat and a republican. A few years back, when Black Agenda Report’s Glen Ford made the accurate assessment that Barrack Obama was the “more effective evil” he was underestimating. The problem remains that by saying that Obama was the more effective evil (which he was in comparison to the more blatant republican candidate evil) people have been assuming that Obama was someone who was a bigger fraud than the rest of the Democrats. This assumption needs to be abandoned and the Democrats. By Clark T. Scott
Can the Military Be Reformed?: Six Unusual Veterans Ponder Active Duty and Its Aftermath It happens all the time in small towns and big cities across the country. A young person from a poor or working-class family can’t find a good job or afford to pay for higher education. Other family members, a teacher, coach or guidance counselor–who have been in the armed forces themselves– encourage them to enlist. Military service promises an escape from the dead-ends and disappointments of civilian life. It offers steady employment with benefits, now and later. By signing up, you can learn a skill, see the world. Overcome challenges. Make yourself into a leader. Become an army of one.By Steve Early
Widespread Censorship Of Former Government Employees Violates The First Amendment, Lawsuit SaysFor officials in the Trump administration, leaving the government and writing a book has become a reliable and lucrative exit strategy — so much so that it has created a small army of literary agents who specialize in snapping up the next tell-all memoir. For anyone with name recognition in D.C., it has perhaps never been easier to scoop up a sizable advance and make the best-seller list. But for rank-and-file members of the intelligence community, the process is not so easy. Employees who formerly had access to sensitive information must submit manuscripts for a government “pre-publication review,” intended to ensure that they don’t divulge official secrets. By Alex Emmons
Why the Real Migration Crisis Is in Central America, Not at the Southern U.S. Border President Trump has announced the United States will cut off funding to the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador that are the primary source of a wave of migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, including caravans of families with children. He is also threatening to close the border with Mexico. This comes after Trump declared a national emergency to justify redirecting money earmarked for the military to pay for building a wall at the border. We speak with John Carlos Frey, award-winning investigative reporter and “PBSNewsHour” special correspondent who has reported extensively on immigration and recently traveled with the first migrant caravan from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Environment:
New York passes Manhattan congestion charge and plastic bag banDrivers traveling into the busiest sections of Manhattan will be subject to a congestion charge starting in 2021 and single-use plastic bags will be banned across New York state in less than a year, under a $175.5bn state budget agreement announced on Sunday by the governor, Andrew Cuomo, and legislative leaders.
Traffic on 42nd Street in Manhattan. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters
. . . It’s impossible for a chicke to produce a duck egg… The system of this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, this social system, this system period. It is impossible for it , as it now stands, to produce freedom right now for the Black man in this country — it is impossible. And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg, I’m certain you would say it was certainly a revolutionary chicken. . . . — Malcolm X, Harlem ‘Hate Gang’ Scare Militant Labor Forum, May 29, 1964
I first started to write about Malcolm X’s assassination, after I watched the 1992 CBS documentrary, The Real Malcolm X, An Intimate Portrait of the man, narrated by Dan Rather. I then saw that Spike Lee’s documentary movie, Malcolm X, had left out the most of the events in the last year of Malcolm’s life, starting with March 12, 1964 Press Statement By Malcolm X. When Denzel Washington, acting as Malcolm X, is shown addressing this press conference, right after Malcolm’s statement: “There can be no black-white unity until there is first some’ black unity”, Denzel Washington did not state what Malcolm X said next, which was “There can be no workers solidarity until there is first some racial solidarity,” The statement about ‘workers solidarity’ showed some of Malcolm’s thinking and outlook at that time — he was becoming anti-capitalist in his political thinking.
I felt compelled to write this essay to show why this government, “the assassination leader of the world “ assassinated Malcolm X. But when I began to read more of what King had stood for at the end of his life, that he also was becoming anti-capitalist in his political thinking, before his life was ended, I realized the United States Government had the same motive to kill both Malcolm X Martin Luther King. When I discovered and realized the complicity, of the government, in both assassinations, I then felt compelled to write this essay, based upon what I learned and my own personal experience. Read More
Freedom Rider: Remembering April 4th“The Black Alliance for Peace demands that the Congressional Black Caucus and the Progressive Caucus end AFRICOM.” On April 4, 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his famous sermon, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.” In doing so King made a very public break with president Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was seen as an ally and it was feared that the movement would fail without his support. King’s new stance was a declaration that he would depend on the determination of the people and cease being a pawn to the White House, Congress or any other authority. King’s decision was condemned by the political establishment. He was vilified by the New York Times, the Washington Postand the rest of the corporate media. His own father and others in leadership positions in civil rights organizations criticized him too. But he rejected the idea that he had to compromise his principals. On the contrary, King understood that drawing a line in the sand against imperialism was necessary to bring about the radical changes he wanted to see in the United States. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR editor and senior columnistAmerican Exceptionalism is at the root of the Fake News Epidemic Attempting to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution “{The Black Alliance for Peace demands that the Congressional Black Caucus and the Progressive Caucus end AFRICOM.” On April 4, 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his famous sermon, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.” In doing so King made a very public break with president Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was seen as an ally and it was feared that the movement would fail without his support. King’s new stance was a declaration that he would depend on the determination of the people and cease being a pawn to the White House, Congress or any other authority.King’s decision was condemned by the political establishment. He was vilified by the New York Times, the Washington Postand the rest of the corporate media. His own father and others in leadership positions in civil rights organizations criticized him too. But he rejected the idea that he had to compromise his principals. On the contrary, King understood that drawing a line in the sand against imperialism was necessary to bring about the radical changes he wanted to see in the United States. By Danny Haiphong
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Monday, Jan. 28, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
In This Small Georgia City, an Unpaid Court Fine Can Get Your Utilities Cut Off Located 40 miles south of Atlanta, LaGrange uses local utilities as a form of social control. “The story of LaGrange reeks of the systemic racism in both Flint and Ferguson.” At an MLK Day celebration in LaGrange, Georgia, a few years ago, a man approached Ernest Ward, then-president of the Troup County NAACP, about his water bill. The man was upset, confused: He said he couldn’t afford the bill from the city because an old court fine he owed had been added on to it. That didn’t sound right to Ward, who wrote it off as impossibly bizarre. By Lewis Raven WallaceRussia Warns About False Flag Chemical Attack in SyriaUS-backed jihadists have been getting away with pinning their attacks on the Syrian government since 2013. “White Helmets members will be present in the area to ‘rescue’ the victims.” Radical armed factions, including the Al Qaeda off-shoot in Syria, are preparing a false flag chemical attack in Idlib, the last province under the control of the opposition forces, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed. The preparations are supervised by French and Belgian intelligence and involve members of the notorious self-styled rescue group White Helmets, according to the Ministry. By Ahmad Al Khaled
Black Alliance for Peace Demands Black Caucus Hold Hearings on US Militarization of AfricaAs part of its “US Out of Africa” campaign, BAP collected thousands of signatures demanding Black lawmakers fulfill their responsibilities to Africa and peace. “The collective voice of elected Black leaders has been muted and overtaken by war drums.” Members of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) delivered about 3,500 signatures calling on the Congressional Black Caucus to hold hearings on the impact of U.S. militarization in Africa. Lettersand petition signatures were handed to Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Chairperson and U.S. Representative Karen Bass (D-CA) as well as to U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a CBC member and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations. A letterwas delivered to U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), asking the CPC to partner with the CBC on a congressional investigation.Rwandan Genocide: A US Senate Resolution in Praise of BloodThe Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front massacred hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutus.”Last week New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez introduced a Senate Resolution commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. It “calls on the United States and the international community to cooperate in preventing and responding to genocide and crimes against humanity in nations across the globe.” Like the “Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act ” passed in December 2018, the Menendez resolution bolsters the “humanitarian interventionist” argument that US policymakers have deployed to justify bombing, special forces, and/or sanctions in Libya, Syria, and now Venezuela.It describes the 1994 Rwandan Genocide as the genocide of 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis by Hutu extremists, but Canadian investigative journalist Judi Rever’s“In Praise of Blood: Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front ”is just one of the latest books that upends that version of events. Those previously published books include ” R wanda and the New Scramble for Africa: F rom Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fictio n ” by Robin Philpot, “Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire ”by Marie Beatrice Umutesi, “Dying to Live: A Rwandan Family’s Five-Year Flight Across the Congo ”by Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga, “How Paul Kagame Deliberately Sacrificed the Tutsi ”by Jean-Marie Ngadimana, and “The Accidental Genocide ,” a compendium of primary-source documents compiled by former ICTR defense attorney Peter Erlinder. By Ann Garrison
Labor:
Amazon Workers Left to Suffer After Workplace Injuries: Report Amazon workers are left to fight for medical benefits and payment after sustaining injuries at the workplace while Jeff Bezos become richer. Amazon warehouse workers are left alone to suffer after sustaining injuries in the workplace, often being unable to work or find other means of income, an investigative report by The Guardian revealed. While Jeff Bezos became the wealthiest person in the world, inhuman working conditions often leave the workers with serious injuries and they have to fight for months to receive benefits and medical care from the company.
Economy:
No risk Banking: Crony Capitalism at the Bank! They are “Getting their money, for nothing, and, their profits, for Free!”: Why Is the Fed Paying So Much Interest to Banks? When “Mary Poppins” was made into a movie in 1964, Mr. Banks’ advice to his son was sound. The banks were then paying more than 5% interest on deposits, enough to double young Michael’s investment every 14 years. Now, however, the average savings account pays only 0.10% annually—that’s one-tenth of 1%—and many of the country’s biggest banks pay less than that. If you were to put $5,000 in a regular Bank of America savings account (paying 0.01%) today, in a year you would have collected only 50 cents in interest. That’s true for most of us, but banks themselves are earning 2.4% on their deposits at the Federal Reserve. These deposits, called “excess reserves,” include the reserves the banks got from our deposits, and on which they are paying almost nothing; and unlike with our deposits, there is no $250,000 cap on the sums banks can stash at the Fed amassing interest. A whopping $1.5 trillion in reserves are now sitting in Fed reserve accounts. The Fed rebates its profits to the government after deducting its costs, and interest paid to banks is one of those costs. That means we, the taxpayers, are paying $36 billion annually to private banks for the privilege of parking their excess reserves at one of the most secure banks in the world—parking them, rather than lending them out. The banks are getting these outsize returns while taking absolutely no risk, because the Fed, as “lender of last resort,” cannot go bankrupt. This is not true for other depositors, including large institutions such as the pension funds that hold our retirement money. By Ellen Brown
World:
Croatia: TOKG – five examples of betrayal by an anti-worker union In modern-day Croatia, sectors such as the garment, shoe and leather industries are marked by hard labour for minimum wages, coupled with non-existent workers’ rights and constant pressures from management. The trade union for textiles, garments, leather and rubber (TOKG) is making sure that things get even worse. This article, originally published at Radnički Portal,describes five cases in which TOKG served as management’s right-hand, and was an ally in the destruction of companies, ramping up exploitation and undermining workers. By Radnički PortalSpain: against the Francoist right, vote Unidos Podemos – fight for the republic and socialism! Voting is not enough! UP should not present itself as a companion of the PSOE in a government limited to granting some crumbs to workers and youth, but offer an alternative government that favours working families. It should be equipped with a programme that spans from the most immediate demands to the most general, that puts the main levers of the economy (large companies, banks and large landed estates) at the service of the people, as collective property to plan the economy in the interest of the majority. We must demolish the regime and the old neo-Francoist State apparatus, at the service of the 200 families of the oligarchy, to build a democratic, socialist republic that offers all the peoples of the Spanish State a voluntary union on an equal footing, and that would be the prelude to a revolutionary and socialist movement in the rest of Europe and the whole world. By Lucha de Clases
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!
American Exceptionalism is at the root of the Fake News Epidemic Attempting to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution “{The Black Alliance for Peace demands that the Congressional Black Caucus and the Progressive Caucus end AFRICOM.” On April 4, 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his famous sermon, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.” In doing so King made a very public break with president Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was seen as an ally and it was feared that the movement would fail without his support. King’s new stance was a declaration that he would depend on the determination of the people and cease being a pawn to the White House, Congress or any other authority.King’s decision was condemned by the political establishment. He was vilified by the New York Times, the Washington Postand the rest of the corporate media. His own father and others in leadership positions in civil rights organizations criticized him too. But he rejected the idea that he had to compromise his principals. On the contrary, King understood that drawing a line in the sand against imperialism was necessary to bring about the radical changes he wanted to see in the United States. By Danny Haiphong
Russia Warns About False Flag Chemical Attack in SyriaUS-backed jihadists have been getting away with pinning their attacks on the Syrian government since 2013. “White Helmets members will be present in the area to ‘rescue’ the victims.” Radical armed factions, including the Al Qaeda off-shoot in Syria, are preparing a false flag chemical attack in Idlib, the last province under the control of the opposition forces, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed. The preparations are supervised by French and Belgian intelligence and involve members of the notorious self-styled rescue group White Helmets, according to the Ministry. By Ahmad Al Khaled
Rwandan Genocide: A US Senate Resolution in Praise of BloodThe Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front massacred hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutus.”Last week New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez introduced a Senate Resolution commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. It “calls on the United States and the international community to cooperate in preventing and responding to genocide and crimes against humanity in nations across the globe.” Like the “Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act ” passed in December 2018, the Menendez resolution bolsters the “humanitarian interventionist” argument that US policymakers have deployed to justify bombing, special forces, and/or sanctions in Libya, Syria, and now Venezuela.It describes the 1994 Rwandan Genocide as the genocide of 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis by Hutu extremists, but Canadian investigative journalist Judi Rever’s“In Praise of Blood: Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front ”is just one of the latest books that upends that version of events. Those previously published books include ” R wanda and the New Scramble for Africa: F rom Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fictio n ” by Robin Philpot, “Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire ”by Marie Beatrice Umutesi, “Dying to Live: A Rwandan Family’s Five-Year Flight Across the Congo ”by Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga, “How Paul Kagame Deliberately Sacrificed the Tutsi ”by Jean-Marie Ngadimana, and “The Accidental Genocide ,” a compendium of primary-source documents compiled by former ICTR defense attorney Peter Erlinder. By Ann Garrison
