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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:
Quotes of the Day:
JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the U.S. and is itself a three-count felon. The bank has been compared to the Gambino crime family in a deeply researched book by two trial lawyers, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer. The lawyers write that “…like the Gambino crime family, JPMC recognizes that getting caught is just the cost of doing business illegally.” The lawyers then proceed to list a jaw-dropping chronology of illegal acts by the bank. — Jeffrey Epstein’s Death Adds to the JPMorgan Body Count
Videos of the Day
Anger and Fear Spread Quickly in the Wake of an Anti-Immigrant Week After a week that featured an anti-immigrant massacre and a large-scale ICE raid, which fractured hundreds of families, the latino community is experiencing anger, fear and uncertainty
Laura Flanders Show: A World Beyond Prisons Prisons, police and punishment through incarceration. Are they with us forever in the land of the free? Sustained campaigns for change are beginning to pay off. At the community level, it turns out that a whole lot of people and places already make peace without cops. Today, we imagine a world without prisons. It may be closer than we think.
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! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich!
Fear vs. Fear The old rules of politics no longer apply. The only language understood by Donald Trump and his coterie of con artists, billionaires, generals, misfits and Christian fascists—and a Democratic Party that has sold us out—is fear. Calling out Trump’s lies and racism does not matter. Calling out his nepotism and corruption does not matter. Calling out the criminality of his administration does not matter. Calling out its incompetence and idiocy does not matter. Calling out the abject subservience of the ruling elites to corporate power does not matter. Trump and his Democratic Party opponents are immune to moral suasion. The more we engage in this empty kabuki theater with its predictable outlandish outbursts, usually from Trump, and predictable outraged responses, usually from Democrats, the more certain are government paralysis and corporate tyranny. The drivel and invective that passes for political discourse is a giant hamster wheel that goes nowhere. It masks the root causes of our political and economic decline and fractures the population into warring camps that increasingly communicate through violence, which is why the United States has suffered mass shootings with three or more fatalities more than 30 times this year. By Chris Hedges
Leaked Draft of Trump Executive Order to ‘Censor the Internet’ Denounced as Dangerous, Unconstitutional Edict “In practice, this executive order would mean that whichever political party is in power could dictate what speech is allowed on the Internet.” Civil liberties groups are warning of a major threat to online freedoms and First Amendment rights if a leaked draft of a Trump administration edict—dubbed by critics as a “Censor the Internet” executive order that would give powerful federal agencies far-reaching powers to pick and choose which kind of Internet material is and is not acceptable—is allowed to go into effect. By Jon Queally
Warnings of ‘Dire Humanitarian Impact’ as Trump Finalizes Rule to Punish Immigrants for Using Public Benefits “Trump’s public charge rule is a xenophobic and classist attack on immigrants.”
Trump: Out of the Graveyard and Into the Pyre? Afghanistan has long been touted as the “graveyard of empires.” The British and the Soviets certainly discovered that lesson to their great regret. Perhaps future historians will judge the failure of the United States to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan over a two-decade period as a critical factor in the loss of American hegemony as well. If so, these historians will no doubt chuckle at the irony of Mr. Make America Great Again throwing the last shovelful of dirt on the grave. By John Feffer
Conspiracy, Death and Jeffrey Epstein Within minutes of news about his death in a Manhattan jail cell Saturday morning, theories spread with pestilential vigour. Was Jeffrey Epstein murdered? Accepting the premise without qualification, the next question followed: Who did it? MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was not giving anyone time to wonder. “A guy who had information that would have destroyed rich and powerful men’s lives end up dead in his jail cell. How predictably…Russian.” There had been a potential trigger: the unsealing of documents by a Federal court from a lawsuit by one of Epstein’s accusers directed against socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, the woman behind the man behind the women. In 2017, Virginia Giuffre, who had accused Maxwell of procuring young girls for sexual abuse by Epstein, settled. The depositions were duly salacious, linking the procurement to the Epstein circle, which, by all accounts, was rather large. Specific to Giuffre were claims that Maxwell had issued her instructions “to serve”, amongst others, Britain’s Prince Andrew, former SenateMajority Leader George Mitchell, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, and scientist Marvin Minsky. By Binoy Kampmark
Environment:
Donald Trump’s leases of public lands and waters for oil and gas drilling could lead to the production of more climate-warming pollution than the entire European Union contributes in a year, according to a new report. The Wilderness Society estimates heat-trapping emissions from extracting and burning those fossil fuels could range between 854m and 4.7bn metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, depending on how much development companies pursue.The 28 nations in the European Union produced about 4bn metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2014, the last year reported. — Trump Drilling Leases Could Create More Climate Pollution Than Eu Does
‘Gold Over Life, Literally’: How Trump Forced Reversal on Mining Project EPA Scientists Warn Could Destroy Alaskan Salmon Ecosystem“This is one of the world’s most beautiful places, with a thriving salmon run, and now we’ll get some…gold.” “Gold over life, literally.” “If that mine gets put in, it would … completely devastate our region. It would not only kill our resources, but it would kill us culturally.” —Gayla Hoseth, Curyung Tribal Council/Bristol Bay Native AssociationThat was the succinct and critical reaction of Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein to reporting on Friday that President Donald Trump had personally intervened—after a meeting with Alaska’s Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy on Air Force One in June—to withdraw the Environmental Protection Agency’s opposition to a gold mining project in the state that the federal government’s own scientists have acknowledged would destroy native fisheries and undermine the state’s fragile cosystems. By Jon Queally
Farm Rot is Eating America Alive American politics covers up the bleeding of nature Listen to the Democratic presidential candidates Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. They promise a more democratic, equal, just, compassionate and civilized America. But the statistics they cite are numbing. Millions of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Additional millions have no medical insurance. Three billionaires own as much as 150 million Americans. Hundreds of thousands of people are homeless. By Evaggelos Vallianatos
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Five years after police murder of Michael Brown:Police have killed 5,000 Americans since Ferguson protestsFriday marked five years since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot at least six times, including once through the top of the head, and left for four-and-a-half hours to die in the street by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson. Brown’s father, Michael Brown, Sr. used the grim anniversary to call for a reopening of the investigation into his son’s death. The killer cop has never been charged. “Justice has not been served,” Brown, Sr. said at a press conference Friday morning outside the St. Louis County Justice Services Center, not far from where Michael Brown was killed. “My son deserved to live a full life. But a coward with a badge… chose not to value his life. My son was murdered in cold blood, with no remorse and no medical treatment.” By Niles Niemuth
Labor:
Economy:
Michael Hudson: Trump’s New Tariffs on China Help Pay for his Corporate Tax Cut Trump’s claim that China is paying for the tariffs is completely false and basically serves to redirect income from his poor supporters to his wealthy supporters. Not only that, the policy will have the consequence of further isolating the United States
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Political and Economic Instabilities Threaten the U.S. Stock Market
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Mounting Political Instabilities, Amidst a Confluence of Unstable and Deteriorating Global Economies, Likely Foreshadow Negative Financial Market Turmoil
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Further FOMC Easing, Possibly Renewed Quantitative Easing Could Be Seen as Early as September
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ShadowStats’ Recession Forecast Remains in Place, With U.S. Economic Activity Still Sinking
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Watch for Continued Flight from the Dollar and Stocks, and into Gold
Deteriorating Financial-Market and Economic Outlook: ShadowStats’ already negative outlook for the domestic U.S. economy and financial markets has shifted increasingly to the downside in recent days. Beyond the outlook of softening near-term data, such also reflects marked and rapid deterioration in unstable global and domestic political circumstances. Mounting political discord intensifies risks of extreme financial-market turmoil, on top of what otherwise should be increasingly negative, and worse- than-expected headline U.S. economic reporting, such as should be seen Thursday, August 15th. Both July 2019 Retail Sales and Industrial Production are good bets to come in below expectations, particularly in the context of likely downside revisions to prior month’s reporting of both series. Unfolding, intensifying economic weakness and negative financial-market turmoil correspondingly should disrupt plans for what some on the Federal Reserve’s FOMC had hoped would be just a one-time, quarter-point rate cut on July 31st. A deepening business downturn and intensifying financial-market instabilities likely will force a more-aggressive Federal Reserve “easing” and “accommodation” for domestic liquidity needs. That should include not only further rate cuts, but also some form of renewed Quantitative Easing, updating the ALERT forecasts in Commentary No. 984. Also relevant to the current markets is Commentary No. 970 of September 26, 2018, which discussed a potential, pending Tipping Point in the U.S. financial markets, which easily could be the current circumstance.
Jeffrey Epstein’s Death Adds to the JPMorgan Body Count Epstein had close ties to JPMorgan Chase. He now joins a dizzying roster of suspicious deaths connected to JPMorgan Chase – particularly among its technology executives, who allegedly jumped to their death from JPMorgan buildings; died in two separate cases of murder-suicides in seven months; died of alcohol poisoning or, in the most recent case of Doug Carucci in March of this year, simply died “tragically” and “suddenly” with all efforts to obtain the tiniest shred of information about what happened hitting a brick wall. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Down with Trump’s Venezuela embargo: fight imperialist aggression by revolutionary meansOn 5 August, the Trump administration took yet another step in escalating imperialist aggression against Venezuela by imposing an economic embargo. The current regime change offensive against President Maduro has so far failed miserably. Incapable of using direct military means to remove the Venezuelan government and impose one of its liking, Washington has decided to further tighten the economic screws on a nation already suffering a catastrophic economic crisis, which previous sanctions have only aggravated. We fully reject this new act of outrageous imperialist meddling. By Jorge Martin
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!
Shadow Government Statistics Flash Update No. 3 ALERT: Unstable Financial Markets Are Increasingly Likely