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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.
Images of the Day:
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Just 100 companies produce 71 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases.
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This map lists their names and locations, and their CEOs.
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The climate crisis may be too complex for these 100 people to solve, but naming and shaming them is a good start.
How the Mainstream Media Ignores the Climate Change Crisis The climate change crisis is real: more powerful storms, droughts, floods, and rising sea levels. However, mainstream media continues to ignore the crisis. A TRNN documentary on the lack of coverage
Trump’s New Policies to Limit Asylum Having failed to force the courts to bend to his will, Trump has now resorted to backdoor and covert measures outside of legislation to keep asylum seekers from crossing the border. We speak to Helena Olea of Alianza Americas about the new tactics
Manufactured Iranian Threat in the Persian GulfNational Security Adviser John Bolton released a statement on May 5 announcing that the United States is deploying the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf. The action is “to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.” There was no clarification regarding any warnings the United States had received about Iran’s activity.
Let Them Have the Water: Aid Worker Faces 20 Years in Prison for Providing Water and Shelter to Immigrants
Quotes of the Day:
We are at the tipping point because the climate state includes large, ready positive feedbacks provided by the Arctic sea ice, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and much of Greenland’s ice. — James Hansen, Director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration God- dard Institute for Space Studies, but the perspectives here are his own. Hansen is also Ad- junct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University’s Earth In- stitute, and he appeared in An Inconvenient Truth. He has also criticized the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for not adequately addressing the danger of large sea level rise.,Tipping Point(2008)
The disturbing conclusion, documented in a paper I have written with several of the world’s leading climate experts, is that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) and it may be less. Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year. Stunning corollary: the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation. These conclusions are based on paleoclimate data showing how the Earth responded to past levels of greenhouse gases and on observations showing how the world is responding to today’s carbon dioxide amount. The consequences of continued increase of greenhouse gases extend far beyond extermination of species and future sea level rise. — James Hansen, Global Warming Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near(2018)
Conway blamed Trump’s take on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election on his being “a malignant narcissist — a person with both narcissistic and antisocial personality disorders,” a diagnosis he has repeatedly applied to his wife’s boss. — George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway
U.S.:
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!
Trump Has Defied Nearly All Subpoenas. What Can the House Do? The Constitution gives Congress the authority to check and balance the executive branch. That includes the power to issue and enforce subpoenas. In the 1927 Teapot Dome scandal case about government corruption, the Supreme Court held that Congress’s “power of inquiry — with process to enforce it — is an essential and appropriate auxiliary to the legislative function.” Justice Willis Van Devanter wrote for the unanimous Court that when the Constitution was adopted, “the power of inquiry, with enforcing process, was regarded and employed as a necessary and appropriate attribute of the power to legislate — indeed, was treated as inhering in it.” Yet Trump has defied nearly all of the nine subpoenas and requests for testimony and/or documents that House committees have issued. By Marjorie Cohn
Chelsea Manning Warns the Trump Administration ‘Clearly Wants to Go After Journalists’.“Whenever a journalist makes a misstep, I think that they’re put on notice now that the FBI and the Department of Justice are going to go after them, on the administration’s behalf.” By Jake Johnson
US Press Reaches All-Time Low on Venezuela CoverageAs famed Latin American author Eduardo Galeano once wrote, “every time the US ‘saves’ a country, it converts it into either an insane asylum or a cemetery.” Of course, as we look over the wreckage left by the US in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, we see that this statement is demonstrably true. And yet, now that the US is poised for another intervention, this time in Venezuela, the press is right there again to cheer it along. Analyzing 76 total press articles of the “elite” press from January 15 to April 15, 2019, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) could find not one voice that opposed Trump’s regime plans in Venezuela. Meanwhile, 54 percent openly supported these plans. Of course, this should not be all too surprising given the press’s usual complicity in past US war efforts — e.g., by pushing such war lies as the Gulf of Tonkin, the killing of babies in Kuwait, the WMDS of Iraq and the alleged Viagra-fueled rapes in Libya. By Daniel Kovalik
Long-Form Journalism is the Future of Print Journalism is in trouble. Writers of articles pointing this out typically argue that this is really bad for democracy or America or whatever. Anyone who disagrees is too stupid to read this so I won’t bother to repeat this obviousness. Such writers also point out contemporaneous evidence of the media apocalypse; here are the three I came across this week. 1. 1,800 local newspapers have gone out of business in the last 15 years. Since print newspapers generate nine out of ten stories that appear on radio, TV and online, that’s a big loss. By Ted Rall
D is for a Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. And what political theater it is, diabolically Shakespearean at times, full of sound and fury, yet in the end, signifying nothing. Played out on the national stage and eagerly broadcast to a captive audience by media sponsors, this farcical exercise in political theater can, at times, seem riveting, life-changing and suspenseful, even for those who know better. By John W. Whitehead
Environment:
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! — Roland Sheppard, Whither Humanity? The Environmental Crisis of Capitalism(1999)
Beyond the Tipping Point:
‘We Don’t Know a Planet Like This’: CO2 Levels Hit 415 PPM for First Time in 3 Million+ Years” How is this not breaking news on all channels all over the world?” Atmospheric levels of carbon registered 415 parts per million over the weekend at one of the world’s key measuring stations, a concentration level researchers say has not existed in more than 3 million years – before the dawn of human history. By Lon Queally
David Attenborough: The Truth About Climate Change (BBC – Part 1)
As Capitalism Fails, We Need a Roadmap to Survive Climate Change As we enter an era of energy transition and the effects of climate change become more dramatic, our need for new forms of economic thinking is becoming increasingly urgent. The existing economic theories and models are clearly ill-equipped to address the intertwined challenges of a massive energy shift and climate change because they are all linked to the era of material abundance and cheap energy resources. The existing economic system has failed and if it continues it will lead to inestimable catastrophic consequences. But what would the policy framework of the much-needed new economics on energy, climate and environment look alike? By C.J. Polychroniou
As More Diverted Floodwaters Head Their Way, Dolphins Keep Dying in Louisiana As an unprecedented amount of floodwater makes its way down the Mississippi River, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers today opened the Bonnet Carre Spillway for the second time this year. Done to prevent New Orleans from being flooded, the action marks the first time the spillway, which diverts the Mississippi’s nutrient- and pollutant-heavy freshwater into Lake Pontchatrain, has been opened twice in the same year. By Julie Fermansky 
Week 120: Trump Can’t Even Run a Garbage Dump Properly Plus, the president sacrifices an endangered species to oil drillers, and Mike Pompeo makes bizzare climate change comments. Trump’s Legal Arguments Are GarbagePop quiz! Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. What are the three largest sources of human-caused methane emissions? Many environmentalists know that oil and gas drilling and livestock are the two biggest sources. But few people know the third: landfills. And it’s not even a distant third. Landfills and other waste sites are responsible for 16 percent of methane emissions, the result of organic matter rotting in a low-oxygen environment. The global warming potential of methane is many times greater than that of carbon dioxide, making landfills a major problem for the climate. By Brian Palmer
US Plays Word Games in Arctic Council Consensus While Ignoring Indigenous People This is why the Arctic matters to us all: The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, showing temperature increases twice as large as global averages. “Sea ice, snow cover, glaciers and permafrost are all diminishing due to Arctic warming. Vulnerable ecosystems in the Arctic are under threat,” reports the Arctic Council. “Climate change causes rapidly changing living conditions for 4 million Arctic inhabitants. Hunting, fishing and herding activities are threatened by changes in snow and ice conditions. Traditional livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic are at risk.” By Mark Trahant
Black Liberaation/Civil Rights:
Should 11-year-old girls have to bear their rapists’ babies? Ohio says yes An 11-year-old rape victim in northwestern Ohio is pregnant, according to news reports, and a highly restrictive state law on abortion signed last month says a girl in her position must carry and deliver her rapist’s baby. In arguing the abortion issue I used to test the zealotry of my anti-choice opponents with a hypothetical question with similar facts, and was often told such a situation was too far-fetched to be probative. But now the hypothetical is real. By Eric Zorn
Labor:
World:
South Africa elections 2019: widespread fury and big gains for the EFFElection results can provide an important barometer of the mood in society. The results of the Sixth National and Provincial elections on 8 May confirm that there is a deep ferment in South African society. The sharp drop in voter turnout, together with the high abstention from the election process, especially by the youth, meant that, for the first time ever, a minority of the voting-age population voted in the elections. This is highly significant in a country where the working class conquered the right to vote from the ruling class only 25 years ago. By Ben Morken
Economy:
The Wolf is Guarding the Chicken Coup:
The Untold Story of the Paul Weiss Internal Investigation that Didn’t Catch a Massive Stock Fraud The legal press has been having a field day with how the U.S. Department of Justice, funded by U.S. taxpayers to conduct its own serious and unbiased investigations, has been outsourcing its investigations to the criminal target and its outside counsel – specifically, the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
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!
Background Information for Understanding Zionism
It was at this point that the British began to rely on the Zionists who provided them with a unique resource they had never tapped in any of their colonies: a local force which had made common cause with British colonialism and was highly mobilized against the indigenous population. If before this the Zionists had handled many of the tasks of reprisal, they now played a larger role in the escalated repression which was to include mass arrests, assassinations and executions. In 1938, 5,000 Palestinians were imprisoned, of whom 2,000 were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment; 148 people were executed by hanging and over 5,000 homes were demolished. [34] Zionist forces were integrated with British intelligence and became the police enforcers of draconian British rule. A “quasi-police force” was established to provide cover for the armed Zionist presence encouraged by the British. There were 2,863 recruits to the quasi-police force, 12,000 men were organized in the Haganah, and 3,000 in Jabotinsky’s National Military Organization (Irgun). [35] In the summer of 1937 the quasi-police force was named the “Defense of the Jewish Colonies”, and later the “Colony Police”. Ben Gurion called the quasi-police force an ideal “framework” for the training of the Haganah. Charles Orde Wingate, the British officer in charge, was, in essence, the founder of the Israeli army. He trained such figures as Moshe Dayan in terrorism and assassination.By 1939, Zionist forces working with the British rose to 14,411 organized into ten well-armed groups of Colony Police, each commanded by a British officer, with an official of the Jewish Agency as second in command. By the spring of 1939, the Zionist force included sixty-three mechanized units, each consisting of eight to ten men.
Videos of the Day:
