Skip to content
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:
Videos of the Day:
Canadian Aluminum Workers Launch Factory OccupationIn a rare move, hundreds of workers of the Nemak aluminum factory in Windsor, Canada, decided to occupy their factory when it was announced that it would close down soon. Pablo Vivanco reports
Trump’s Deadly Decision Harms Veterans
“President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the government will purchase “a lot” of the drug esketamine, a derivative of ketamine. Though ketamine is known as a recreational hallucinogen, Trump asserted that a new nasal-spray derivative would be of great benefit to veterans with depression. As he left the White House for a veterans’ conference in Kentucky, he told reporters that he had instructed the Department of Veterans Affairs to make a large purchase—overriding a recent decision by the doctors who manage thehospitals’ formulary of which drugs are to be prescribed.”
Republicans Partied in a Monument to American Wealth InequalityThe little-known back story of the hotel where Republican’s gathered in Baltimore last week is how it embodies all the unjust policies that have created record wealth inequality in the US
Tohono O’odham Nation: ‘All These Areas Can Collapse’Tohono O’odham Nation Members voice their objections to Trump’s border wall and the disruption of the lives of the people and animals that have lived there for centuries.
Quotes of the Day:
While Donald Trump is truly the “moron” described by his former and fired Secretary of State, Exxon Mobile chief Rex Tillerson, he and his U.S. critics, and the central leaders of world capitalism, from China, Japan to Europe, are all aware not only of the declining power of U.S. imperialism, but of the emerging crises facing the entire world capitalist system. China too, a major player in this world constellation of ever competing and inherently warring nations, has seen its record growth rates of previous decades sharply decline. None of the players in this deadly venture of subordinating human needs, and the environment itself, to the private profits of the few, including endless hot and cold wars to achieve heinous ends, have any serious solutions other than more of the same. The bully Trump’s current weapons include embarrassing and uninformed displays of disgusting bluster and bluff. But his critics, with zero exceptions, accept and embrace the same basic tenets of capitalist plunder, but seek to sugarcoat its ongoing and inevitable consequences with Cheshire cat smiles. —Jeff Mackler, Trump, Trade and China
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.
The US Has “Disappeared” More Than 42,000 Migrants. Where’s the Outrage?In operation since late January, Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), originally called “Remain in Mexico,” allows the U.S. government to push most non-Mexican asylum seekers into Mexico once immigration officials have cleared them to make an asylum claim. As of early September, the number of people forced into Mexico under MPP had reportedly risen to more than 42,000. Immigration authorities say that these migrants are able to pursue their asylum cases while waiting in Mexico, but this is nonsense. It’s difficult for impoverished asylum seekers to get legal representation even while inside the United States; from across the border, it’s virtually impossible. At the end of June, a grand total of 1.3 percent of these asylum-seekers had succeeded in finding a lawyer, according to an August report by the U.S. nonprofit Human Rights First. So far, only one of the applicants is known to have won asylum. By David L. Wilson
Post-9/11 Terrorism Watchlist of More Than 1 Million Judged UnconstitutionalThe U.S. government has used the post-9/11 war on terror to launch two major wars, mount gunship and drone attacks on several countries, and institute a widespread program of torture and abuse. Casualties of those conflicts number in the hundreds of thousands. Another casualty of the war on terror is civil liberties. From the USA PATRIOT Act, to warrantless surveillance, to the Muslim Ban, to the use of metadata to spy on people and target for drone strikes, the deprivation of constitutional rights has continued during the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. An additional assault on the Constitution is the terrorism watchlist, a federal government database of “known or suspected terrorists.” In 2013, there were 680,000 people on the watchlist, called the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB). By 2017, the number had swelled to 1.2 million, including 4,600 U.S. citizens. By Marjorie Cohn
Democracy (American Style):More People Are Voting — But 1,688 Polling Places Have Closed in 6 YearsVoters came out in record numbers for the 2018 midterms, and analysts with both parties predict turnout for the 2020 election could be unprecedented. Meanwhile, civil rights groups are warning an “epidemic” of polling place closures has swept 13 states, including several southern states with deep histories of racial voter suppression. Civil rights groups say the mass shuttering of polling places could make it harder for rural voters, voters with disabilities, lower-income voters and people of color to access the ballot next year. By Mike Ludwig
The Fbi Was Deeply Involved in Cia Black Site Interrogations Despite Years of Denials, Guantánamo Defense Lawyer SaysOn monday morning, two days before the 18th anniversary of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Pakistani engineer accused of masterminding the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., appeared in a Guantánamo Bay courtroom sporting a black turban. Seated near him was his new lead attorney, Gary D. Sowards, a death penalty specialist who represented the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski; Kaczynski is now serving a life sentence. In the second row, Mohammed’s co-defendant Walid bin Attash, a native of Yemen, draped a scarf displaying a Palestinian flag over his computer monitor. Rows three to five were occupied by defendants Ramzi bin al-Shibh; Mohammed’s nephew Ammar al-Baluchi; Mustafa al-Hawsawi; and their defense teams. By Margot Williams
Environment:
Attacks on Greta Thunberg Are About More Than Anti-EnvironmentalismThis story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. “Freak yachting accidents do happen…” That was how British businessman, Trump ally, and Brexit bankroller Arron Banks responded to the news that Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teen who inspired the school climate strikes movement, was sailing to America to attend the UN Climate Action Summit. His scorn was not unique. Many people have already spilled thousands of words of commentary explaining how personal attacks on Greta — often lobbed by old white men, sometimes mocking her Aspergers — are unacceptable. But understanding where those attackers come from, ideologically and professionally, casts an important light on some of their dark statements. By Mat Hope
Antarctica is Losing Sea-Ice at Record Levels. It’s Time to Pay Attention A record start to summer ice melt in Greenland this year has drawn attention to the northern ice sheet. We will have to wait to see if 2019 continues to break ice-melt records, but in the rapidly warming Arctic the long-term trends of ice loss are clear. But what about at the other icy end of the planet? Antarctica is an icy giant compared to its northern counterpart. The water frozen in the Greenland ice sheet is equivalent to around 7 metres of potential sea level rise. In the Antarctic ice sheet there are around 58 metres of sea-level rise currently locked away.Table 1. Estimated potential maximum sea-level rise from the total melting of present-day glaciers. 
10 Things You Need to Know about the Fires in the Amazon
-
-
Deforestation Fires Have Burned the Amazon for Decades
-
Fires Have Increased by 85% Under Bolsonaro’s Government.
-
Previous Governments Also Let Agribusiness Interfere in the Amazon Basin
-
A Handful of Multinational Companies Are Helping to Destroy the Amazon
-
“Green Capitalism” Won’t Save the Rainforests
-
The Amazon has become a disputed territory for different capitalist sectors; some of them use More Than a Million Indigenous Lives Are in Danger
-
The Fires Have Disastrous Environmental Consequences
-
The Fires Put Working People’s Health At Risk
-
The Amazon Isn’t the Only Region Being Destroyed for Agribusiness
-
Demonstrations Around the World Are Calling for the Protection of the Amazon
Capitalism versus the Global Carbon Cycle Carbon cycles regulate the Earth’s temperature and provide essential elements of life. Capitalist industry and agriculture are disrupting those vital life support systemsDespite what you may hear from science deniers, the greenhouse effect is proven fact. The role of carbon dioxide in warming the Earth was demonstrated by physicist John Tyndall in 1859, and his work has been confirmed many times over. If there were no CO2 in the air, Earth’s average temperature would be minus 18 degrees Celsius (zero degrees Fahrenheit), the oceans would be frozen and life as we know it would never have evolved. Anyone who says that increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doesn’t make the Earth warmer has to explain why the laws of physics don’t apply. But while the physics of the greenhouse effect have long been known, only in recent decades have scientists fully understood the natural processes that have stabilized the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, and thus global temperatures, for millions of years. This article outlines how the Global Carbon Cycle works, how it is being disrupted, and why it cannot heal the metabolic rift caused by modern capitalism.[1] By Ian Angus
Capitalism Is All Fracked Up!: Fracked Gas Well Blowout in Louisiana Likely to Burn for the Next Month A fracked natural gas well in northwest Louisiana has been burning for two weeks after suffering a blowout. A state official said the fire will likely burn for the next month before the flames can be brought under control by drilling a relief well.DeSmog obtained drone video footage shot 10 days* after the blowout, which occurred early in the morning on August 30, the day after the well was hydraulically fractured. A tower of flames reportedly shot into the air that could be seen from more than 30 miles away. While the flames are no longer as intense, the fire is still visible from a distance of more than a mile. GEPHaynesville, LLC, the well’s operator, told local ABC affiliate KPVI that the fire started during flow-back operations, but the exact cause has not been determined yet. By Julie Dermansky
The War on the World: Industrialized Militaries Are a Bigger Part of the Climate Emergency Than You Know Not only do conflicts leave a poisoned landscape in their wake, but the U.S. military has a larger carbon footprint than most countries on earth. O ver a century before we reached the brink of ecological catastrophe, Rabindranath Tagore had a glimpse of where we might be headed. Tagore, an Indian author and cultural reformer who lived during the period of British colonialism, was among the last of a generation able to examine the industrialized world from the outside. He issued one of the earliest and most eloquent warnings about the precarity of a world sustained, like ours today, on the twin pillars of industrial consumption and industrial warfare. On a sea voyage to Japan in 1916, Tagore witnessed an unfathomable event that seems almost mundane to us today: an oil spill. To him, it was a jarring image of an earth destroyed by humanity’s unbridled pursuit of power, now supercharged by the tools of modern science. “Before this political civilization came to its power and opened its hungry jaws wide enough to gulp down great continents of the earth,” Tagore wrote in “On Nationalism,” his 1917 book of essays, “we had wars, pillages, changes of monarchy and consequent miseries. But never such a sight of fearful and hopeless voracity, such wholesale feeding of nation upon nation, such huge machines for turning great portions of the earth into mincemeat, never such terrible jealousies with all their ugly teeth and claws ready for tearing open each other’s vitals.” By Murtaza Hussain
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Current State of the Working Class — Where Do We Go From Here? Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced by the press, frowned upon in public opinion, and deceived by politicians. ‘But notwithstanding all this and all these, labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun. — Eugene V. Debs
The last 4 decades, in the United States, have been the largest transference of wealth From the Poor, the Working class, and the Middle class, to the rich, the 1%, in the history of the world! This has been done thorugh ‘normal exploitation’ of the working class, and through Austerity Programs (Cutting the social wages of the working class.), through Government Lies and Statistics, Usury, and with the full Compliance and Silence of the United States trade Union Bureaucracy! In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. — Martin Luther King, Jr. By Roland Sheppard
‘When We Fight, We Win’: Protesting Stagnant Wages as GM Rakes in Record Profits, 50,000 Auto Workers Go On Strike“We are standing together in unity and solidarity for our members, their families, and the communities where we work and live.” Demanding fair wages, decent healthcare benefits, and their share of General Motors’ “record-level profits,” nearly 50,000 United Auto members went on strike just before midnight Sunday following failed contract negotiations. “Today, we stand strong and say with one voice, we are standing up for our members and for the fundamental rights of working class people in this nation,” said UAW vice president Terry Dittes ahead of the strike, which will grind to a halt dozens of plants across the U.S. By Jake Johnson
“The Rank and File Have to Take Control!”: Ford, Fiat-Chrysler Workers Call for All-Out Strike Alongside GM WorkersAt midnight Sunday, roughly 49,000 autoworkers struck at General Motors (GM), shutting down production at the largest US-based automaker. The strike is a major episode in the resurgence of the class struggle. American autoworkers are now at the tip of the spear of a global counteroffensive by workers against poverty, inequality and job losses, encompassing not only autoworkers but teachers, public transit workers, Amazon workers and the entire working class.
Economy:
Saudi Oil Supply Disruption And The Fomc Meeting – More-Aggressive Fed Easing on The 18th Would Make Sense.(September 16th, 10 a.m. ET) The weekend attack on Saudi oil production remains a rapidly evolving circumstance, with broad implications for the global economy and political environment. One quick, limited observation from the standpoint of potential impact on the U.S. economy and the FOMC: To the extent higher oil prices remain in place, U.S. inflation will spike in a manner (non-core inflation) the Fed would like to ignore, but should not. Inflation-adjusted, real U.S. economic activity would take a near-term hit, with U.S. consumer liquidity and consumption strained in the same manner as seen from the impact of a major FOMC rate hike. With the U.S. economy already in a deepening downturn, and with ongoing downside revisions to headline activity likely to intensify with the September 19th release of the budget-delayed 2017 U.S. Economic Census, to which all major series will be benchmarked, the FOMC would do well to go beyond market expectations for a quarter-point rate cut in the September 18th FOMC announcement.
In the WeWork IPO, the Money Trails End Up at JPMorgan’s DoorstepAccording to the amended prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to alert the public to the thousands of warts with malignant possibilities sprouting out of the office rental company, WeWork, which plans to offer its shares to the public for the first time, JPMorgan Chase will receive something no other underwriter is getting in this deal: a cool $50 million extra as a “structuring fee.” On top of that, of course, the bank will also get the fat underwriting fees that the other banks involved in the IPO get. That’s just one of the many curious ways that JPMorgan Chase stands out in its relationship with WeWork. (The parent of WeWork, The We Company, is actually offering the shares to the public.) As it turns out, quite a few of JPMorgan Chase’s commercial real estate clients who have obtained massive loans from the bank are benefitting from WeWork taking out big leases in their buildings, helping JPMorgan Chase’s clients thus have a lower vacancy rate and thus a smaller chance of defaulting on their loans to the bank. Those corporate clients include Rudin Management; L&L Holding Company; and Midwood Investment and Development, to name just a few. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Debate that Richest 3 Americans Own More Wealth than Bottom 160 Million Americans. It’s Actually Worse than That.During last evening’s Democratic debate, Senator Bernie Sanders said this: “You’ve got three people in America owning more wealth than the bottom half of this country.” According to Politifact, Sanders is basing this claim on a 2017 study done by the Institute for Policy Studies which put the richest three Americans’ wealth as follows (based on the Forbes list of billionaires at that time): Bill Gates of Microsoft with $89 billion; Jeff Bezos of Amazon with $81.5 billion; and Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway with $78 billion — for a total of $248.5 billion. That wealth figure contrasts with the $245 billion owned by the bottom 50 percent of Americans according to the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances conducted by the Federal Reserve. (The Fed’s survey is conducted every three years and the 2019 study has not yet been released.) By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
US ‘Lies’ Slammed After Pompeo, Without Proof, Blames Iran for Drone Attacks Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) threatens to “break the regime’s back” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Mousavi forcefully rejected Sunday unsubstantiated charges by by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) regarding the recent drone attacks that caused serious damage to two crucial Saudi Arabian oil installations. “It has been around 5 years that the Saudi-led coalition has kept the flames of war alive in the region by repeatedly launching aggression against Yemen and committing different types of war crimes, and the Yemenis have also shown that they are standing up to war and aggression,” Seyyed Abbas Mousavi said in a statement.
Attacks on Saudi oil facility and the changing landscape of the Middle EastA series of attacks on Saudi oil installations have set sparks flying once again in the Middle East. Only months after a last-minute cancellation of a US strike on Iran – and weeks after reaching out for talks without any preconditions – US President Donald Trump is yet again filling the twittersphere with threats and intimidation. Meanwhile, oil prices shot up by 20 percent and the ripple effects are already working their way through the sensitive oil and currency markets. By Hamid Alizadeh
Mourning And Resistance in Kashmir After India Revoked the State’s Special StatusSrinagar, Jammu and Kashmir — On the eve of Eid al-Adha last month, 17-year-old Asrar Khan lay in a vegetative state at Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, a hospital in downtown Srinagar, Kashmir’s largest city. The unconscious teenager was barely hanging on to life, connected to a ventilator and blinded in one eye — the result, his family says, of pellet injuries at the hands of India’s armed forces.
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!
