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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:
Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans. — Jacques Yves Cousteau
One Would Expect That the ‘Christians’ Would Want to Drive the Money Lenders/Usury out of the High Temples of Government! — Roland Sheppard
From the get-go, Bolsonaro’s presidency has endangered the more than 300,000 Indigenous people who live in the Brazilian Amazon and the very health of our planet. The rainforest’s nearly 400 billion trees not only suck up vast amounts of carbon but also, through the process of evapotranspiration, govern seasonal rainfall patterns. Stop and ponder that for a moment: The trees in the Amazon are so powerful in their plenitude that they’re capable of making their own rain. Deforestation has been identified as the greatest threat to the Amazon’s biodiversity and its ability to carry out these important ecosystem services. And yet a policy of increased deforestation, as nonsensical as it sounds, was an actual platform of Bolsanaro’s successful campaign for president. (In 2017 Bolsonaro told one audience, “Where there is indigenous land, there is wealth beneath it.”) — Jair Bolsonaro to a Horrified World Community: “The Amazon Is Brazil’s, Not Yours”
Videos of the Day:
The Neoliberal Scam: Public Money for Private Playgrounds TRNN takes an in-depth look at so-called public-private partnerships and how they funnel public money into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy
Why Are Hong Kong Protesters Asking Trump for Help? Journalist Ilaria Maria Sala discusses the arrest and release of demonstration “leaders,” the history of Hong Kong’s struggle for democracy, American involvement in the protests, and the complexity of the current movement
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
Making a Killing From Killing The “permanent warfare state” has been erected on the backs of American taxpayers by fraudulent claims of threats to our national security. In the case of “terrorists” these adversaries were the result of our own interventions in Muslim countries. In truth, no nation is, or ever has been, or ever will be capable of invading the U.S. or otherwise subjecting us to its will. Should collapse be our fate we will have none but ourselves to blame for accepting a dysfunctional system sustained by the dishonesty of our government officials and the establishment media that consistently fail to fulfill their obligation to hold power to account. By Paul Atwood
US ‘Complicit in This Nightmare,’ Says Sanders, After Trump-Backed Saudi Coalition Kills Over 100 in Bombing of Yemeni Prison “Congress has declared this war unconstitutional. We must now stand up to Trump and defund all U.S. involvement in these horrors.”By Jake Johnson
How the US Exported Its Border Around the World Todd Miller’s new book examines the massive industrial complex that sustains and influences the lines that divide the globe. The border, in the abstract, can seem like a simple, objective thing, just a line on a map that gives a country its shape. And because securing and enforcing that line—what people call border security—can seem just as obvious and self-evident, people of very different political stripes can find themselves taking the border for granted, as something natural and normal and given. Journalist Todd Miller’s Empire of Borders is about how dramatically and completely this easy simplicity can mislead us about what the border really is, where it is, and where it is going. Borders aren’t just there. Not only were they made (often arbitrarily and with great cruelty and violence), but the US border, in particular, extends far beyond the frontier line that separates one country from another, even far beyond the 100-mile range that Homeland Security considers the border zone. The US border is a massive global apparatus, an interconnected network of partnerships, funding, multinational industries, and international agreements, stretching across every continent and saturating the world. Most important, it’s still growing. With a climate-changed future on the horizon—and the prospect of climate refugees from around the globe growing exponentially—walls and fences and towers are proliferating, as the global border security industrial complex accelerates its efforts. From his home in Arizona, Miller tracks the border from Guatemala and Honduras to the Caribbean, Israel, the Philippines, and Kenya, interviewing subjects on every side of that multidimensional line. By Aaron Bady
Environment:
Shocking photo shows Caribbean Sea being ‘choked to death by human waste’Aphotographer has captured the damage being done to the planet’s oceans with a shocking “sea of plastic and styrofoam” image taken near a tranquil Caribbean island. Caroline Power, who specialises in underwater photography, has dedicated her career to highlighting the damage plastic waste is doing to our oceans. She said witnessing the plastic blanket of forks, bottles and rubbish between the islands Roatan and Cayos Cochinos, off the coast of Honduras, was “devastating”. By Mark Molloy
Neocolonialism Will Spell the Amazon’s Demise The 2019 G7 summit in Biarritz unnecessarily handed Brazil’s Neofascist Bolsonaro a propaganda coup with which to rally his dwindling support. With his approval falling to record lows and facing international attacks of unprecedented intensity, their colonial-sounding rhetoric allowed him to appear heroically nationalistic, a defender of Brazilian sovereignty over the Amazon, when in reality he and his government are fully geared to serve the interests of foreign capital in true comprador tradition. Jair Bolsonaro is effectively the G7’s guy. He and his Chicago School Economy minister Paulo Guedes are implementing an ultra-neoliberal economic platform from which Brazil is sold off for the price of a Banana. There should be no doubt about who the practical rather than rhetorical defenders of sovereignty are on the political spectrum. By Daniel Hunt
Hundreds of Offshore Fracking Wells Dump Billions of Gallons of Oil Waste Into Gulf As the U.S. shale industry comes under increasing scrutiny for its environmental and health impact, it has emerged that the U.S. has approved fracking offshore leading to billions of gallons of wastewatert o be dumped at sea. The Center for Biological Diversity has released federal documents that reveal that officials approved more than 1,200 offshore fracks in 630 different wells in the four years from 2010 to 2014 in the Gulf of Mexico. By Oil Change Internationaal
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
DEA Agents Ambush Amtrak Passengers With Controversial Searches and SeizuresWith the help of Amtrak and Greyhound informants, agents approach people on thin evidence they are drug couriers — and often take their cash. By Amy Martyn
FBI Tracking of Bob Dylan and Suze Rot olo Foreshadowed Future Abuses Rotolo’s FBI File is a Reminder That The Greatest Threat to Freedom is The Agency Tasked With Protection It.In 1963, Bob Dylan released his breakthrough album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, an artistic broadside against the Cold War status quo, with Dylan parodying World War III (“Talkin’ World War III Blues”), railing against inequality and Jim Crow (“Blowin’ in the Wind”; “Oxford Town”), and offering a haunting vision of a world in which the Cuban Missile Crisis transpired differently (“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”). These were songs challenging the standing social order and, in many ways, served as an opening bell of the Black freedom, antiwar and other radical upsurges of the decade that followed. The album itself was tucked inside a jacket bearing the iconic image of Dylan and his then-girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, walking in the February chill on Greenwich Village’s Jones Street. Much has been written about Dylan, Freewheelin’ and his relationship with Rotolo, who passed away in 2011. Rotolo herself documented that relationship, along with her larger life as a political activist and artist, in her 2009 memoir. Unknown and missing from all the various accounts, however, was the fact that Rotolo — and to a degree, Dylan — was under scrutiny by the FBI at the moment that photo was taken, and for the entire span of her relationship with Dylan. Rotolo’s FBI file is exemplary of the repressive role of the Bureau during the 1960s, and underscores the ongoing looming presence of the FBI and other entities that would seek to stifle dissent. By Aaron J. Leonard
Arrest, Release, Repeat (The Cops ‘Dropped a Bag on Him’ — R.S.): New Report Exposes Vicious Cycle of Imprisonment Robert McCoy has a 78-page rap sheet that includes 80 arrests and five prison sentences. He was paroled to New York City in June 2018 after spending over 11 years in prison. Determined to stop the cycle of arrests and incarcerations stemming from his past drug use, he found both a job and a bed in a homeless shelter. But, three weeks into his job as a dishwasher, he dropped a piece of machinery onto his foot, leaving him unable to work. Two months later, he was in midtown Manhattan when he saw a backpack by a garbage can. “It looked like it had been abandoned,” he told Truthout. He picked up the bag and began looking inside. Less than a minute later, two officers arrested him on charges of stealing the bag. He had been caught in Operation Lucky Bag, a police sting in which seemingly abandoned bags are planted and those who pick them up are arrested. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has said that it is selective about the cases it chooses to prosecute, but McCoy, with his extensive rap sheet, seemed to fit their criteria. In court, bail was set at $500; unable to come up with that amount, McCoy was sent to Rikers Island, the city’s notorious island-jail complex. There, he connected with the nonprofit Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, which bailed him out less than a week later. By Victoria Law
I was Videootaped for This Video Program.
Even though I was the only eyewitness to identify William Bradely as the Assassin, who shot the shotgun that Killed Malcolm X, my interview was left on the cutting room floor. I was informed “Regretfully, due to time limitations in the series, we were unable to include it.” Read my essay The Day the Music Died: Malcolm X’s Assassination, Feb. 21, 1965
Copy of the Ark Media Email Below.
Upcoming Airdate for Fusion and Netflix Malcolm X Documentary Series
From: Nailah Sims [n.sims@ark-media.net]
Sent: Thu, 5:07 am
To: Roland Sheppard
Cc: Rachel Dretzin, Phil Bertelsen, Shayla Harris
Dear Roland,
We hope this email finds you well.
We would like to sincerely thank you for your participation in the Ark Media production for Fusion and Netflix. he six-part documentary series about the life and death of Malcolm X is entitled “Who Killed Malcolm X?” and will air for 6 consecutive weeks beginning Monday, Sept. 23rd @ 10pm est, on the cable network Fusion. The series is set to stream on Netflix thereafter, either the end of this year or early 2020. We will update you once that date is final. We really appreciated your time and thoughtful interview. Regretfully, due to time limitations in the series, we were unable to include it. Please tune in and let us know what you think. Warmest regards,
Phil, Rachel, Shayla, Nailah, and Team
… A while later as I entered the meeting room, again I did not see any cops. I went in to sit down where I normally sat along with the rest of the press in the front and the left side of the room. On the way to my seat, Gene Roberts, who later surfaced as a police agent member of the Black Panther Party, told me that I could not sit at my regular place but that on that day I had to sit in the front row on the right side of the hall, facing the stage.
As I sat down, I glanced over to where I normally sat and saw a large Black man with a navy blue-gray trench coat. When the meeting started, all was quiet as the crowd listened to Benjamin X introducing Malcolm X.
A few weeks later, when I was questioned in the Harlem police station, I was shown a series of photos of people whom I recognized as members of the Nation of Islam or Malcolm’s organization. I also saw a picture of the large Black man with a navy blue-gray trench coat that I had seen at the Audubon Ballroom.
I was thinking of how to respond to the cops and how to say that I did not recognize the photos of Malcolm’s friends and supporters and the members of the Nation of Islam. I then told the cops that I had to go to the rest room.
When I got to the men’s room door, I saw the same large Black man coming out of the men’s room that I had seen in the Audubon Ballroom and in the photos that had just been shown to me. He walked by me, past the desks of the secretarial pool, and went to his office inside the police station!
At that point I knew that he and the government either killed Malcolm X or were part of the assassination plot. I became very nervous thinking about what I was going to say to the cops when I got back and how I was going to get out of the station alive.
In that article is the picture shown of William Bradley Pictured Below), who is the man that I had seen in the Audubon Ballroom and in the photos that the Harlem police showed me while I was being interrogated. Bradley was the man I saw coming out of the men’s room, walking by me, past the desks of the secretarial pool, and into his office inside the police station, as I was going to the men’s room!
Labor:
Economy:
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: 
World:
Sanders Previews Plan to Cancel $81 Billion in Medical Debt and Tackle ‘Barbaric’ Number of Bankruptcies In addition to canceling all past-due medical debt, according to his campaign, the forthcoming proposal will also address all future debt At a healthcare-focused town hall in South Carolina Friday—followed by an official campaign statement Saturday—Democratic presidential primary candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders announced he is working on a plan to cancel Americans’ existing past-due medical debt and address future medical debt. By Jessica Corbet