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Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: (1) Austerity, (2) Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and (3) The Iron Heel
Always Remember That Obama Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature, Established, in writing, the United States Capitalist Austerity Program — The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!
emocracy?: 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:
The UK Ruling Class Is So Small It Could Probably Meet in Albert Hall To Unite Against Corbyn — It Is Harder to United The Working Clas, Composed Of The Fifth Column Blairites — Opposition to Austerity Would Have Been The Main Issue To United The Working Class he Main Issue: Jeremy Corbyn at the National Anti-Austerity March 20/06/2015
Quotes of the Day:
Isreal is Anti-Semite: Semite, member of a people speaking any of a group of related languages presumably derived from a common language, Semitic (see Semitic languages). The term came to include Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, Hebrews, some Ethiopians, and Aramaean tribes. Mesopotamia, the western coast of the Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa have all been proposed as possible sites for the prehistoric origins of Semitic-speaking peoples, but no location has been definitively established.
Britain has one of the most concentrated media environments in the world. Just three companies dominate 83% of national newspaper circulation; five companies account for 80% of national newspaper newsbrand reach; five companies command 80% of local newspaper titles; and two companies own nearly half of all commercial analogue radio stations. — New Report: Who Owns the UK Media in 2019?
Labour should have stuck to the 2017 position and explained that, on a capitalist basis, being inside or outside the EU would make no fundamental difference. The working class will continue to be exploited and oppressed unless and until we break with capitalism and fundamentally change society along socialist lines.Brexit therefore decided this election, with many previous Labour voters holding their noses and “lending” their votes to the Tories in order to “get Brexit done”. This election was probably the dirtiest in generations. Corbyn was subjected to an avalanche of slander, along with the vilest of character assassinations by the establishment and their media mouthpieces. — Britain: Lessons Of The Election, Don’t Mourn – Organise!
Indeed, as some have already pointed out, there would be no need for the Washington Post’s belated Afghanistan Papers expose had the Post and other mainstream media not been for years shamelessly promoting the scare stories of a global terrorist threat, an Iraqi threat, a Russian threat, a Chinese threat, a Syrian threat, a Libyan threat and other pulse-pumping nonsense. If the Post and other major news media outlets had been pursuing the truth over the years about these all the wars, and the so-called “War” on Terror, instead of leaving the hard work of exposing all the lies to the likes of whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden and journalist/whistleblower publisher Julian Assange, we’d already know about the venality and culpability of our government. — The Perils of Embedded Journalism: ‘Afghan Papers’ Wouldn’t Be Needed If We Had a Real Independent News Media
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! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.
Money for War — Not For the Poor: More Radioactive Drone Bombs Will Be Dropped on Yemen: The National Defense Authorization Act Perpetuates the Destruction of Yemen The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), released on December 9, signals that the US will continue to render assistance to the coalition led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates which has killed 100,000 Yemenis, including 12,000 civilians. The bill gives the Pentagon $738 billion. The best reaction came from The Intercept: “Congress to Vote on $22 Billion Defense Increase One Week after Trump Slashed Food Stamps.” By Charles Pierson
The FBI: Another Worry in the National Security State The Department of Justice’s Inspector General report of the FBI’s Russian investigation has fully exposed one more dangerous aspect of the steady abuses of national-security surveillance against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 of the national security abuses of the National Security Agency exposed the massive surveillance of U.S. citizens in the expanded campaign against terrorism. Michael Horowitz, the inspector general of the DoJ, has highlighted the abuses of the FBI and the misuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court over an extended period. It will require a comprehensive and bipartisan congressional reform program to gain control over national-security wiretapping. By By Melvin Goodman
Establishment Politics are for the Rich Russiagate, Ukrainegate and impeachment aren’t conspicuously economic issues. But they are, to a large extent, class issues. They are inside-the-beltway dramas about foreign policy arcana that are important to people who see their lots tied in one way or another to the established order. This includes, by degree, those of us who would like to make room for outside-the-beltway concerns like ending militarism, solving environmental crises, providing meaningful employment for all who want it and creating functioning healthcare and educational systems.This isn’t to suggest that these are equivalent concerns. And in fact, they aren’t. Absent something akin to a revolution, the worst possible outcome for the connected insiders engaged in impeachment-tainment will be moving on to lucrative ‘careers’ working for private equity and / or investing their family fortunes in one world-ending enterprise or another. Four plus decades into the neoliberal overthrow of ‘managed’ capitalism, circumstances aren’t quite so universally advantageous for the rest of us. Rising global political unrest seems destined to bring this division to the fore. By Rob Urie
The National Defense Authorization Act Perpetuates the Destruction of Yemen The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), released on December 9, signals that the US will continue to render assistance to the coalition led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates which has killed 100,000 Yemenis, including 12,000 civilians. The bill gives the Pentagon $738 billion. The best reaction came from The Intercept: “Congress to Vote on $22 Billion Defense Increase One Week after Trump Slashed Food Stamps.” By Charles Pierson
Environment:
‘We Are Furious’: As COP 25 Draws to Close, Green Campaigners Fume as Rich Nations Move to Gut Paris Agreement “Just as we thought the slow pace and weak ambition shown at the climate talks couldn’t get worse, along comes COP 25.” With just hours left in the COP 25 climate conference taking place in Madrid, Spain, international climate campaigners said Friday they are “furious” over rich countries’ refusal to adequately commit to addressing the urgency of and pay for their role in fueling the climate crisis. “Just as we thought the slow pace and weak ambition shown at the climate talks couldn’t get worse, along comes COP 25,” said Sara Shaw, Climate Justice and Energy Program coordinator for Friends of the Earth International (FOEI). She also criticized “the advance of dodgy carbon trading that will only exacerbate the climate crisis and harm Southern communities.”By Andrea Germanos
Speech At Cop25: Greta Thunberg: ‘Clever statistics and creative PR’ cover inaction on climate crisis At UN conference, Greta condemns government and corporate refusal to take effective action to reduce emissions.For about a year, I have been constantly talking about our rapidly declining carbon budgets, over and over again. But since that is still being ignored, I will just keep repeating it. In chapter two, on page 108 in the SR 1.5 IPCC report that came out last year, it says that if we are to have a 67% chance of limiting the global temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees Celsius, we had, on January 1st, 2018, 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit in that budget. And, of course, that number is much lower today as we emit about 42 gigatons of CO2 every year, including land use. With today’s emissions levels, that remaining budget will be gone within about eight years.
Brazil’s Amazon Deforestation This Year Nearly Size Of Puerto Rico, Says Agency Destruction of the world’s largest tropical rainforest in November more than doubled the same period last year Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon jumped to the highest level for the month of November since record-keeping began in 2015, according to preliminary government data published.Destruction of the world’s largest tropical rainforest totalled 563 square kms in November, which is more than double the area in the same month last year, according to the country’s space research agency INPE on Friday.
Will Deforestation and Warming Push the Amazon to a Tipping Point For more than 40 years, Carlos A. Nobre has studied his nation’s most magnificent natural asset — the Amazon rainforest — and its vital role in the global climate system. And for the better part of a year, Nobre has watched with alarm as his country’s nationalist president, Jair Bolsonaro, has issued full-throated calls for the further development of the Amazon, leading in recent weeks to a huge outbreak of fires from the illegal clearing and burning of the forest. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Nobre, a senior researcher at the University of Saõ Paulo’s Institute for Advanced Studies, talks about an alarming tipping point now bearing down at which a combination of deforestation and climate change would transform much of the Amazon into a savanna ecosystem, with dire effects on the world’s climate system. But Nobre also discusses solutions he says could quickly halt new deforestation in the Amazon, including putting pressure on the global agribusiness firms driving the destruction; launching low-cost regeneration projects on vast tracts of degraded rainforest; and improving soybean yields on croplands already carved out of the forest. By Fen Montaigne
New Film Dark Waters Shines Light on Chemical Pollution History in Ohio River Valley Dark Waters, the new film starring Mark Ruffalo as attorney Rob Bilott, is set in the Ohio River Valley city of Parkersburg, West Virginia — a place about 150 miles downstream from where Shell is currently building a sprawling plastics manufacturing plant, known as an “ethane cracker,” in Beaver, Pennsylvania.. . . ark Waters, the new film starring Mark Ruffalo as attorney Rob Bilott, is set in the Ohio River Valley city of Parkersburg, West Virginia — a place about 150 miles downstream from where Shell is currently building a sprawling plastics manufacturing plant, known as an “ethane cracker,” in Beaver, Pennsylvania.Ruffalo’s film, directed by Todd Haynes, debuted to critical acclaim, earning a Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating of 91 percent, with The Atlantic calling it a “chilling true story of corporate indifference.”While much of Dark Waters, as the title suggests, centers on contaminated water, the story of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), the Teflon-linked chemical at the heart of the film, is also a story about air pollution. And as much as the film looks back to history, DuPont’s pollution — and the company’s decades-long cover-up — may gain new relevance as the chemical industry plans a multi-billion dollar expansion, fed by fracked fossil fuels, along the banks of the Ohio. By Sharon Kelly
Fracking Republicrates/Trump Proposes Fracking in Earthquake-Prone California:
While Newsom criticized the federal government’s push for drilling leases as being in conflict with California’s policies and “commitment to reducing the consumption of fossil fuels,” the state has similarly moved forward with new drilling. — Trump Administration Opens California To New Oil Drilling; Possibly Bay Area, Too
In 2014, oil producers in California used 70 million gallons of water in the fracking process. Many cited this figure when pointing to wasteful practices contributing to the state’s ongoing historic drought.— California And Fracking
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Economy:
Paul Volcker’s Long Shadow Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called Paul Volcker “the most effective chairman in the history of the Federal Reserve.” But while Volcker, who passed away Dec. 8 at age 92, probably did have the greatest historical impact of any Fed chairman, his legacy is, at best, controversial. “He restored credibility to the Federal Reserve at a time it had been greatly diminished,” wrote his biographer, William Silber. Volcker’s policies led to what was called “the New Keynesian revolution,” putting the Fed in charge of controlling the amount of money available to consumers and businesses by manipulating the federal funds rate (the interest rate at which banks borrow from each other). All this was because Volcker’s “shock therapy” of the early 1980s – raising the federal funds rate to an unheard of 20% – was credited with reversing the stagflation of the 1970s. But did it? Or was something else going on? Less discussed was Volcker’s role at the behest of President Richard Nixon in taking the dollar off the gold standard, which he called “the single most important event of his career.” He evidently intended for another form of stable exchange system to replace the Bretton Woods system it destroyed, but that did not happen. Instead, freeing the dollar from gold unleashed an unaccountable central banking system that went wild printing money for the benefit of private Wall Street and London financial interests. The power to create money can be a good and necessary tool in the hands of benevolent leaders working on behalf of the people and the economy. But like with the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Disney’s “Fantasia,” if it falls in the wrong hands, it can wreak havoc on the world. Unfortunately for Volcker’s legacy and the well-being of the rest of us, his signature policies led to the devastation of the American working class in the 1980s and ultimately set the stage for the 2008 global financial crisis. by Ellen Brown
World:
Today, all the reactionaries are celebrating. But this will be short-lived. In the words of Sir Robert Walpole, the Tories may be ringing their bells now, but tomorrow they will be wringing their hands. Now they have a big parliamentary majority, they have no excuses. They will reap the whirlwind. This Johnson Tory government will be a government of crisis. It will not last its full term. A new world slump looms. This is going to transform the situation. The working class, blocked on the political front, will tend to look towards the industrial front. This can be seen already by the struggles of postal workers and rail workers. Workers and youth will take action in the workplace and on the streets. Events, events and more events will transform consciousness. There is no possibility of stability, as we see internationally with revolutions breaking out from Chile to Sudan to Lebanon. Britain: Lessons Of The Election, Don’t Mourn – Organize!
Britain: Lessons Of The Election, Don’t Mourn – Organize! All the reactionaries are crowing. Donald Trump expressed particular delight at the result. “Congratulations to Boris Johnson on his great WIN!” the US President wrote on Twitter. “Johnson secures crushing UK election victory,” exuded the Financial Times, as the pound rose on foreign exchange markets. Johnson’s Tories, together with the billionaire press, have carried the day. While it is a setback for Labour in terms of seats, the vote for the Tories increased by only 300,000 compared to 2017 – hardly “crushing”. By Rob Sewell
Education, Health, Science, 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
If believing that 500,000 Americans should not be forced into medical bankruptcy every single year is radical, than we’re proud to be radical. —Ilhan Omar