During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and The Iron Heel.
The Capitalist Austerity Program = The Pauperization of the 99%! (It’s Become the Race to the Botom!)
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!
And that gets to the much deeper issue that there are — essentially, we live in a two-tiered legal system, where poverty has been criminalized. We live in a city where Eric Garner was strangled to death by New York City police for allegedly selling loose cigarettes, which he wasn’t on the day he was killed — he was, in fact, not doing anything — and then Wall Street, which has essentially rewritten the rules to — and so, my worry about impeachment, which I’m not against impeachment, is that people see it as a panacea. I think many in the Democratic Party, in particular in the liberal class, have personalized our problems in the figure of Donald Trump. And, in fact, the malaise runs much deeper. This is what I spent the last two years doing in my book America: The Farewell Tour. It is the rupturing of what the sociologist Émile Durkheim calls the social bonds — that’s where you get the term “anomie” — the disenfranchisement of well over half the country, the inability of them to actualize themselves, and acting out in self-destructive pathologies, whether that’s hate groups, the opioid crisis, gambling, sexual sadism, etc. And so, go ahead with impeachment, but if we don’t begin to address the underlying malaise and disenfranchisement and rage — and legitimate rage — on the part of the white working class — however much Trump lies — and, of course, he lies like he breathes — the Clintons also lied, in far more damaging ways to the working class, and, in particular, the white working class, than Donald Trump. — Chris Hedges: Democrats Cast Their Lot With Elites on Impeachment
In recent days, the hedge fund managers and financial investors who hold the fate of GM in their hands have made it clear they want the strike defeated no matter what the short-term costs to the automaker. In a report, “Wall Street patient as UAW strike against GM drags on, talks progress,” CNBC noted that “Investors aren’t all that worried because they see the strike as short-term pain that will pay off with lower long-term employee costs—even if it costs the automaker hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in lost production.” For the financial aristocracy the defeat of the strike is a strategic, not a short-term, question. In the face of growing signs of a global economic downturn and vast technological changes, Wall Street is seeking a broader restructuring of the global auto industry and a shift of capital towards electric and autonomous vehicles. Though not profitable yet, these technologies promise immense returns to investors from whatever global automaker dominates the market. —As Wall Street Bankrolls GM, UAW Tries to Starve Strikers Into Submission
Videos Of the Day:
White Cops Never Forgive: Why Do Black People Always Have to Forgive? As Botham Jean’s brother makes headlines for “forgiving” Amber Guyger, Real News hosts Jacqueline Luqman and Lisa Snowden-McCray discuss what Christian forgiveness in the face of oppression means.
Study: Indian Politics Legitimize Hate Crimes A new PERI study says that there is a causal relationship between the rise of the right-wing Hindu nationalist BJP party in India and the rise of hate crimes targeted against minorities, especially against Muslims. Prof. Deepankar Basu discusses the research.
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 Corporate Democrats’ (and Alicia Garza’s) Get-Sanders Slanders:Deindustrialization is Austerity = Race to the Bottom Once the Bernie Sanders threat has subsided, Elizabeth Warren will be required to further neuter herself to allay the fears of billionaire Democratic donors. Once upon a time not so long ago the U.S. corporate media was a livelier place, where the rich people that owned the presses argued among themselves about the destiny of the nation and the world through the pages of their publications and allowed some leeway for lowly reporters to disseminate pertinent facts, even if such information sometimes tended to favor politicians, movements and countries disliked by the ruling classes. Of course, “Reds” were always demonized and Black public opinion disregarded unless backed up by Molotov cocktails. But elements of truth could eventually be found between the lines and in stray articles of corporate media, providing more reason to read the New York Times and the Washington Post than simply to find out what the ruling classes were thinking and planning. By Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report Executive Editor‘Unbelievable’: Snowden Calls Out Media for Failing to Press US Politicians on Inconsistent Support of Whistleblowers The comment followed a new Justice Department filing that claims a whistleblower engaged in “thievery, not protected speech” when allegedly leaking classified information on the U.S. drone operations By Jessica CorbettMilitary Keynesianism Marches On Our elected representatives do not have to be bribed with campaign contributions from weapons makers to support the Department of Defense budget. They may, shockingly, be representing our nation. Australian political scientist David T. Smith states: “The National Security State maintains democratic legitimacy because of the way it disperses public and private benefits while shielding ordinary Americans from the true costs of high-tech warfare.” By Joan RoelofsThe New York Times Called a Famous Cartoonist an Anti-Semite. Repeatedly. They Didn’t Ask Him for Comment. Earlier this year the Portuguese cartoonist António Moreira Antunes drew one of the most controversial political cartoons in history. His cartoon about U.S.-Israeli relations sparked so much controversy that The New York Times, whose international edition published it in April, decided to fire its two staff cartoonists, neither of whom had anything to do with it. Then the Times permanently banned all editorial cartooning. By Ted Rall
Environment:
Why then is the US Congress, including AOC – one of the brightest members of this new Congress and the creator of the Green New Deal (#GND) – “leaving the door open” for the same old atomic power marketing ploys? For more than 80-years, we have witnessed the economic failure, ratepayer bailouts, subsidized atomic meltdown insurance, and actual catastrophic meltdowns. When will they ever learn? — Arne Gundersen, Leaving the door open??? Say it ain’t so, #Ocasio!
The series of discussions left Green New Deal supporters with as many questions as concrete proposals: Should every GND program call for an end to fracking, nukes, dam building and nationalization of polluting industries? And, if the GND calls for nationalizing fossil fuel production, should it also call for nationalizing all industries associated with solar/wind power? Likewise, if the GND’s approach to fossil fuels is to “leave them in the ground” then should it also call for leaving in the ground the myriad of substances necessary for “alternative” energy? Most important, should GND supporters explicitly state if their program would result in an increase or decrease in the total amount of energy produced? Don Fitz, Green Party Debates Green New Deal
Greenwashers Meet With Exxon, Mobil, Shell, Chevron, Saudi Aramco, and BP at Oil and Gas Climate Initiative Meeting: Oil Industry Set Agenda During Climate Summit Meeting with Big Greens Last week, as climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the United Nations Climate Action Summit, invited leaders from major environmental groups spent their day listening to the leaders of fossil fuel companies discuss how they want to respond to the climate crisis. Depending on which room you were in, you would have heard two very different messages. Thunberg’s widely watched speech evoked the urgency of acting on climate change. “People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing,” Thunberg told the UN summit. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.” Just blocks away, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), whose members include oil giants like ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, Saudi Aramco, and BP, was meeting with representatives from large environmental organizations, talking about ways to moderately reduce greenhouse gas pollution while continuing business as usual. The OGCI had planned a busy schedule for organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund and the National Wildlife Federation, according to a draft planning document from the event obtained by DeSmog. The draft, dated August 21, shows that a “breakfast and portfolio review” would start the day, hosted by the CEO of oil giant BP, Bob Dudley, and Pratima Rangarajan, CEO of the OGCI Climate Investments. The full day of sessions, preceded by an invitation-only forum the night before, would include CEOs of global oil majors speaking alongside Mark Brownstein, senior vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF); Jason Bordoff, director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy; and Collin O’Mara, head of the National Wildlife “Foundation,” the draft agenda said (O’Mara heads the National Wildlife Federation). By By Sharon Kelly
Bolsonaro’s Highway Project Targets Heart of Amazon Region Amazon researchers said the repaved road would trigger an explosion of deforestation in Amazonas, currently Brazil’s best preserved rainforest state precisely because it has few good roads. Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro is pushing to ressurect a dilapidated highway project that seeks to build a highway through the heart of the South American country’s Amazonas region. For more than 50 years, the destruction has almost always begun with a road hewn through the dense Amazon rainforest. With pavement, comes logging, then ranching and eventually commercial farming and towns.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
‘If We Don’t Fight… Who Will?’: In Name of Students, Chicago Teachers Union Sets Oct. 17 Strike Date CTU could be joined on the picket lines by SEIU members who work as school support staff and for the city’s park district—which would mean 35,000 striking workers all at once. Unionized teachers, school support staff, and park district employees in Chicago announced Wednesday night that all three labor groups—collectively totaling about 35,000 workers—will strike on Oct. 17 if no contract agreements are reached before then. By Jessica CorbettUAW Prepares to Sell Out GM Strike, As New Corruption Revelations Emerge The United Auto Workers is conspiring with General Motors to shut down the strike by 48,000 autoworkers, meeting with the company behind closed doors to put the finishing touches on how they will sell their concessions deal. However, explosive new revelations in the UAW corruption scandal threaten to disrupt these plans. According to a report in the Detroit News Wednesday night, UAW Secretary/Treasurer Gary Casteel and Danny Trull, former deputy to UAW President Gary Jones, are cooperating with federal investigators, providing information on over $1 million allegedly spent on luxuries for UAW officials. By Marcus Day
UAW President Gary Jones (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
August 2019 Construction Spending Continued in Deepening Annual Quarterly Collapse, on Top of Downside Revisions; Pattern Last Seen at Great Recession Onset
Third-Quarter New Orders for Durable Goods Held on Track for a Second Consecutive Annual Decline
Third Estimate of Second-Quarter Gross Domestic Product Was Unrevised at 2.0%, but Growth Revised Sharply Lower for Both Gross Domestic Income and Gross National Product
Perceived U.S. Political Instability Could Threaten U.S. Dollar, Financial-Market and Economic Stability
NY Fed Daily Systemic-Liquidity Infusions Are Intensifying, Expanded Quantitative Easing in Play for the October 30th FOMC September 18th FOMC Cut Rates by the Expected Minimal Quarter Point, Despite Continued Tumbling of the Broad Economy
More-Aggressive Easing Has to Follow
Far from the Happy Media Hype Over Strong Monthly Gains in August Production, Manufacturing and Mining, Annual Growth Continued to Collapse in a Manner Not Seen Since the Onset of the Production-Manufacturing-Mining Recession of 2015, With Fed Funds Then at Zero
Third-Quarter 2019 Manufacturing Held on Track to Drop into Its First Year-to-Year Decline Since that Mini-Recession, With Annual Growth in Aggregate Production and Mining also Declining to the Lowest Levels Since 2015
Derivative Risks Rising: Sell-Off in Interconnected Mega Banks and Insurers The Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost 838 points in the past two days of trading. On a percentage basis, its losses pale in comparison to the losses experienced over the past two days by some of the biggest global banks as well as insurance companies that are derivative counterparties to the big banks. Mega banks continue to be allowed to tie their risky trading gambles to the balance sheets of insurers that also hold life insurance policies and retirement annuities for Moms and Pops across the U.S. by using the insurers as counterparties for their derivative trades. That this is still happening illustrates just how little has changed in the way of enlightened regulation of Wall Street since the banks brought down the big insurer, AIG, in 2008. The U.S. government was forced to seize AIG and institute a $185 billion bailout. AIG also held life insurance policies and retirement annuities for Moms and Pops across the country while it was simultaneously backing tens of billions of dollars of credit derivatives for Wall Street banks, which it couldn’t make good on. By Pam Martens and RussMartens
JPMorgan Chase Has a Pattern of Criminality; Now Wall Street Is Pointing to the Bank as a Cause of the Fed’s Emergency Loans Two notable things happened on Monday, September 16, 2019. Rates started to spike in the overnight loan (repo) market, reaching a high of 10 percent the next day and forcing the Federal Reserve to step in as a lender of last resort for the first time since the financial crisis. The Fed has had to intervene every business day since then with overnight loans, funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to its primary dealers, while also providing $150 billion in 14-day term loans to unnamed banks. The other notable thing to occur on September 16 was this: The largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, had its precious metals desk charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with being a criminal enterprise for approximately eight years as it rigged the prices of gold, silver and other precious metals. The head of that desk and two other precious metals traders were charged with racketeering under the RICO statute that is typically reserved for organized crime. The Justice Department said that the traders and their co-conspirators (others may be named at a later date) “conducted the affairs of the desk through a pattern of racketeering activity, specifically, wire fraud affecting a financial institution and bank fraud.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Dangerous Detention: Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison Much ink has been spilt in textbooks describing situations where autocratic states can behave badly. They abuse rights; they ignore international law and they ride roughshod over conventions. Liberal democracies may boast that they follow matters to the letter of the law, and make sure that citizens are given their fair and just cause in putting forth their cases. The practice suggests all too glaringly that the opposite is true. By Binoy KampmarkEcuador: Transport Strike Begins Nationwide Over Gas Price Hike Prices are expected to increase by 25 to 50 percent starting Oct. 3, as the gallon of gasoline will go from US$1.85 to US$2.30; while diesel, used by most freight transport, will increase from US$1.03 to US$2.27. Ecuador’s transport drivers took to the street Thursday to start an indefinite nationwide strike starting Thursday to protest the elimination of gasoline subsidies announced by President Lenin Moreno as part of a neoliberal reform package in line with the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) following a loan deal with Ecuador.Declassified Emails Reveal NATO Killed Gaddafi to Stop Libyan Creation of Gold-Backed Currency. Declassified Emails Reveal Ghadaffi was brutally murdered because France wanted to maintain their financial stranglehold on African Nations. One of the over 3,000 new Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department on 2016 New Year’s Eve, contain damning evidence of Western nations using NATO as a tool to topple Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. The NATO overthrow was not for the protection of the people, but instead it was to thwart Gaddafi’s attempt to create a gold-backed African currency to compete with the Western central banking monopoly.
Portugal: elections set to punish the inaction of the PCP and BEWe are four years on from the historic formation of an apparently left government in Portugal, in which the Socialist Party (PS) has relied on the support of the Bloco de Esquerda (BE) and the Communist Party (PCP) to pass measures through parliament. Between them, the three parties have commanded a considerable majority in parliament, but the PS government would have fallen without the support of the parties to its left.
Nigeria: Fatoyinbo, religious sex scandal and the class struggle A few months ago, Nigeria was thrown into one of the deepest socio-religious controversies ever when Busola Dakolo, a celebrity photographer and wife of singer Timi Dakolo, accused Biodun Fatoyinbo, senior pastor of Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (COZA) of raping her on two different occasions when she was 16 years old. The accusation, in an explosive interview she granted YNaija, was released on social and mass media via four separate videos on 28 June 2019. By Iye Akinrogunde
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!
‘Unbelievable’: Snowden Calls Out Media for Failing to Press US Politicians on Inconsistent Support of Whistleblowers The comment followed a new Justice Department filing that claims a whistleblower engaged in “thievery, not protected speech” when allegedly leaking classified information on the U.S. drone operations By Jessica Corbett 
Military Keynesianism Marches On Our elected representatives do not have to be bribed with campaign contributions from weapons makers to support the Department of Defense budget. They may, shockingly, be representing our nation. Australian political scientist David T. Smith states: “The National Security State maintains democratic legitimacy because of the way it disperses public and private benefits while shielding ordinary Americans from the true costs of high-tech warfare.” By Joan Roelofs
The New York Times Called a Famous Cartoonist an Anti-Semite. Repeatedly. They Didn’t Ask Him for Comment. Earlier this year the Portuguese cartoonist António Moreira Antunes drew one of the most controversial political cartoons in history. His cartoon about U.S.-Israeli relations sparked so much controversy that The New York Times, whose international edition published it in April, decided to fire its two staff cartoonists, neither of whom had anything to do with it. Then the Times permanently banned all editorial cartooning. By Ted Rall
UAW Prepares to Sell Out GM Strike, As New Corruption Revelations Emerge The United Auto Workers is conspiring with General Motors to shut down the strike by 48,000 autoworkers, meeting with the company behind closed doors to put the finishing touches on how they will sell their concessions deal. However, explosive new revelations in the UAW corruption scandal threaten to disrupt these plans. According to a report in the Detroit News Wednesday night, UAW Secretary/Treasurer Gary Casteel and Danny Trull, former deputy to UAW President Gary Jones, are cooperating with federal investigators, providing information on over $1 million allegedly spent on luxuries for UAW officials. By Marcus Day
Shadow Government Statistics Daily Update (October 1st to 4th)
Ecuador: Transport Strike Begins Nationwide Over Gas Price Hike Prices are expected to increase by 25 to 50 percent starting Oct. 3, as the gallon of gasoline will go from US$1.85 to US$2.30; while diesel, used by most freight transport, will increase from US$1.03 to US$2.27. Ecuador’s transport drivers took to the street Thursday to start an indefinite nationwide strike starting Thursday to protest the elimination of gasoline subsidies announced by President Lenin Moreno as part of a neoliberal reform package in line with the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) following a loan deal with Ecuador.
Declassified Emails Reveal NATO Killed Gaddafi to Stop Libyan Creation of Gold-Backed Currency. Declassified Emails Reveal Ghadaffi was brutally murdered because France wanted to maintain their financial stranglehold on African Nations. One of the over 3,000 new Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department on 2016 New Year’s Eve, contain damning evidence of Western nations using NATO as a tool to topple Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. The NATO overthrow was not for the protection of the people, but instead it was to thwart Gaddafi’s attempt to create a gold-backed African currency to compete with the Western central banking monopoly.
