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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. Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!
Images of the Day:
Democrats? A clique run by a brittle, doddering Crone and Geezer Politburo mired in mendacity, paralyzed in a retro Cold War brainfreeze, smelling of yesteryear, of betrayals and cowardice and moral failure, like the cowboy in the song, “…always in search of, and one step in back of, himself and his slow-moving dreams”. In deep thrall to Big Money, they stand foursquare for the few who own it all, and are horrified by rising demands of the young, sharp and vital who might be theirs if they offered anything but visionless stasis, baseless, perilous hatred of Russia, and endless money for the War Machine that will destroy us. And the answer..? Don’t look for it, as Saint George of Carlin told us. Ain’t gonna be one. Vote, if you like; do a citizen’s paramount duty, if it you pleaseth. But don’t hold your breath for hope and change. Don’t chant yes, we can, again. And never fool yourself that we did it before and we can do it again, because we’ve never done this before. Never. Greenland lost 10 billion tons of ice yesterday. We’re in uncharted waters. Here be dragons. — Tainted Meat Market
Videos of the Day:
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!
From the “Beacon to the World of the Way Life Should Be”: Some Online Reflections on Mass-Shootings #249 and 250 The USA, self-proclaimed vanguard of human superiority, has had 249 mass shootings in 215 days this year. In a fall 2002 US Senate speech supporting the authorization of George W. Bush to mass-murderously invade Iraq if he wanted to (he did because Gold told him to), then Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) called the U.S. “the beacon to the world of the world of the way life should be.” This sick society has literally nothing, nada, to tell any other people or nation about how to live. By Paul Street
Blue No Matter Who? Lesser Evilism in the Age of Trump Let’s tackle that brain teaser by reflecting on what is probably the most conspicuous examples of its operation in politics, the person who holds a position she tacitly knows to have logical implications she would disavow, and the person who puts forward plainly counterfactual descriptions of salient political realities. In both cases we find the kind of lesser-evil thinking that has become in these times indispensable to the true-believing Democratic Party liberal. I begin with the odd logic of lesser-evil thinking, and then move on to a remarkable recent instance of political self deception which almost certainly employs lesser-evil thinking as a means of disguising the incoherence of the political self deception at work.By Alan Nasser
The Rise of the American Gestapo Despite the finger-pointing and outcries of dismay from those who are watching the government discard the rule of law at every turn, the question is not whether Donald Trump is the new Adolf Hitler but whether the American Police State is the new Third Reich. For those who can view the present and past political landscape without partisan blinders, the warning signs are unmistakable: the Deep State’s love affair with totalitarianism began long ago. By John W. Whitehead
Don’t Let Mass Shooters and the New York Times Destroy Freedom of Speech “Online communities like 4chan and 8chan have become hotbeds of white nationalist activity,” wrote the editors of the New York Times on August 4 in the wake of a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas. Then: “Law enforcement currently offers few answers as to how to contain these communities.”Wait, what? Is the Times really implying what it looks like they’re implying? Yes. “Technology companies have a responsibility to de-platform white nationalist propaganda and communities as they did ISIS propaganda,” the editorial continues. “And if the technology companies refuse to step up, law enforcement has a duty to vigilantly monitor and end the anonymity, via search warrants, of those who openly plot attacks in murky forums.” By Thomas Knapp
Environment:
We need to rapidly shift our food system away from dependence on harmful pesticides and toward organic farming methods that work with nature rather than against it. — Kendra Klein, Friends of the Earth
Explosions in Three States Highlight Dangers of Aging Fossil Fuel Infrastructue On August 1, for the third time in as many years, Enbridge’s Texas Eastern Transmission gas pipeline exploded. This tragic incident in central Kentucky killed a 58-year-old woman, Lisa Denise Derringer, and injured at least five others. Flames towered 300 feet high when the 30-inch diameter pipe ruptured at 1 a.m. and forced at least 75 people to evacuate. “We opened the backdoor and it was like a tornado of fire going around and around and he said we were trapped,” survivor Jodie Coulter, 53, told CBS News, describing her efforts to flee on foot. Coulter, whose house was within 600 feet of the pipeline, suffered third-degree burns on her arms. “It felt like we were standing next to a blow torch. By Sharon Kelly
Alarming’ Explosion of Toxic Pesticide Use Causing Insect Apocalypse in United States: Study “Insect abundance has declined 45 percent. This is a global crisis—we must ban neonics to save the bees!” The rapid and dangerous decline of the insect population in the United States—often called an “insect apocalypse” by scientists—has largely been driven by an increase in the toxicity of U.S. agriculture caused by the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS One. The study found that American agriculture has become 48 times more toxic to insects over the past 25 years and pinned 92 percent of the toxicity increase on neonicotinoids, which were banned by the European Union last year due to the threat they pose to bees and other pollinators. By Jake Johnson
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
The “Feel Better” President: Making Racism Fashionable Again Recently, after complaints from consumers, so-called “feel better” rag dolls reminiscent of sambo dolls and other picaninny kitsch were recalled. This has not been the first time that such products have been removed from the market. The list includes Pradamalia, Prada’s own line of kitschy blackface collectibles, Gucci’s blackface wool balaclavas, Burberry’s noose hoodie, and H&M’s “coolest monkey in the jungle” hoodie ad. By John G. Russell
Trump’s Disavowal of White Supremacy Makes a Mockery of Antiracism—But So Does the Rest of the Political Establishment The partisan condemnation of white supremacy that has taken shape during the Trump era has reduced anti-racist critique to political theater. By Crystal M. Fleming, Ph.D. 
Tulsi Gabbard vs Google Goliath Tulsi Gabbard was the most-searched person on Google during the first debate – so the giant corporation shut down her account. By
Rick Sterling
Popular Resistance Newsletter – Another Year Closer to Winning Medicare for All Democratic Party voters are showing that the momentum for Medicare for All may not be stoppable. By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers
White Power: At Home and Abroad Where most people see a “lone shooter,” the armed White Power movement sees “leaderless resistance.” “For much of the 20th century, the struggles against communism and black progress were close to indistinguishable.” By Thomas Meany
Data Shows How Bernie Dominates the Contributor Race Bernie Sanders’s is the individual donor king all across the country, except a few islands of wealth. By Eoin Higgins
The Rich White Man’s Justice System Protects Trump and his Cronies Justice will have to be found outside the two-party system of corporate rule. By Howie Hawkins
Freedom Rider: Who’s a White Supremacist? Americans have an openly racist president, racist foreign policy, racist law enforcement and racist corporate media. By Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnist
U.S. imperial Decline and the Belt and Road Initiative: The Most Important Global Struggle of the Century U.S. imperialism views the One Belt One Road as an existential threat to the domination and monopoly of the dollar. By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
What Good Is a New Cold War Without a New Arm$ Race? The US and Russia are closer to annihilating each other and the world than ever before, but Democrats think Trump is too friendly with Putin. By Ann Garrison , BAR contributor
This Week’s Mass Murders By Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
I just walked in the building, and
I’m pissed—shaking with anger—why am I
the usual, permanent suspect,
Scrutinized, looked up and down, looked at
sideways? Why must I always remind rent-
a-pigs not to worry ‘bout me, “Black Identity
Extremist;” or “Bad Hombre” from below the
Border; or the Muslim; and instead, Sherlock
clean cut white boys, AKA Angry Gunmen?(Read More)
Labor:
Layoffs in global auto industry hit Mexico, India, China and the USA rolling wave of layoffs in the global automotive industry is hitting workers on virtually every continent. A survey of recent headlines from auto industry and other news publications yields a grim picture of the relentless job-cutting. “Tens of thousands losing jobs as India’s auto crisis deepens,” writes Reuters, reporting on 350,000 auto assembly and parts workers who have been cut in recent months during India’s worst sales downturn in a decade. Maruti Suzuki has halved its production targets and is laying off six percent of its temporary workforce, with analysts predicting that up to a third of the three million workers employed in the industry nationwide will be dismissed. “Shrinking Chinese car market sparks fears over foreign groups’ future,”reports the Financial Times, noting that Chinese plants owned by Ford and PSA are running at 11 percent and 1 percent capacity, respectively, and some 220,000 workers have lost their jobs in China’s first sales decline in three decades. By Jerry White
Economy:
Central Banks Are in Panic Mode — for Good Reason On July 30, 2019, the day before the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, cut interest rates by one-quarter of one percent, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note closed the day at 2.06 percent. Early this morning, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury stood at 1.65 percent, a stunning decline of 41 basis points in 8 days. A yield evaporation on U.S. sovereign debt that resembles a snow cone in July is not consistent with a strong economy. It is consistent with a seriously sputtering economy and a stock market out over its skis in terms of valuation. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Shadow Government Statistics Flash Update No. 2 Financial Market Turmoil
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China’s Devaluation of the Yuan versus the Dollar Began in March 2019
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Amidst Likely, Continuing Irregular Financial-Market Volatility and Intensifying Economic Weakness, Flight from U.S. Stocks and the Dollar Into Gold Should Intensify
Escalating Sino-U.S. Trade War Flight from Stocks and the Dollar into Gold
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Burgeoning U.S. Trade Deficit Drains U.S. Economic Growth; the Largest and Fastest Growing U.S. Deficit Is With the People’s Republic of China. The U.S. trade deficit is the biggest single drain on U.S. economic activity. Far and away the largest U.S. trade deficit with any country is the one with the People’s Republic of China, which accounted for 46.4% of the total nominal U.S. trade deficit in first- half 2019. Consider where the headline, inflation-adjusted, second-quarter 2019 U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was an annualized 2.01%, that growth would have been 2.71% net of the deterioration in the second-quarter U.S. trade deficit. Again, that is the net change in the quarterly level of, not the aggregate level of the deficit.
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A number of issues have accounted for that deficit over the years, ranging from short-sighted U.S. trade policies, and what have evolved into costly, business-killing federal regulations on labor and the environment in the United States, to the lack of same and near slave-labor rates in China and its associated trade areas. The Trump Administration has been negotiating changes in that trade relationship, which at one point hiked tariffs, then relieved them, and then re-imposed meaningful tariffs last week.
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Yesterday, China retaliated with a competitive devaluation of the Yuan and announced it would cease buying U.S. agricultural products. In response to these evolving circumstances, the U.S. stock market tanked, capital fled the U.S. Dollar and the price of gold surged, with an influx of flight capital. Similar patterns of market response are expected by ShadowStats as to the slowly unfolding, new recession and a still deeper and longer-range easing by the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) than the July 31st token quarter-point rate cut. Discussion of what likely is unfolding there—renewed quantitative easing—follows in pending Commentary No. 985.
World:
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!
Harold Meyerson on Walmart and Guns Did you know that Walmart is the single biggest seller of guns in America? Did you know that Walmart allows customers who are carrying guns to walk through the stores without hindrance? Of course, you know that Walmart does not allow unions. See how all these issues converge in this short article by Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect. The Walton Family, which owns Walmart, is the richest family in the world. Their family foundation is the single biggest supporter of charter schools. They say they funded one of every four charters in the nation. By Diane Ravitch
Quotes of the Day: