Skip to content
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%!
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:
The Wall Street Robber Barons ‘Get Their MoneyFor Free’: The S&P 500 Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average set new record highs every single day last week. This occurred despite the Federal Reserve justifying its unprecedented hundreds of billions of dollars each week in cheap loans to Wall Street’s trading houses as necessary to stem a “liquidity” crisis. You can’t have a liquidity crisis when the stock market is setting record highs for an entire week. Those two things just don’t correlate. The Fed, through its money spigot, the New York Fed, began sluicing these funds to Wall Street on September 17, the day the overnight borrowing rate in the repurchase agreement (repo) loan market spiked from 2 percent to 10 percent. This was the first such intervention by the Fed since the financial crisis. The repo market is where banks, hedge funds and money market funds loan each other money overnight on the basis of good collateral like U.S. Treasury securities. — Trump and the Stock Market Are the Winners in the Fed’s Repo Loan Binge; Here’s the Losers
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.
Hunger impacts every American. According to the latest “food insecurity” numbers by the United States Department of Agriculture, 14% of all households struggle to have enough to eat. That’s 48 million of our friends, neighbors and fellow Americans. And that is one in six Americans — not just in the inner city, but in the suburbs, rural areas and every primary and battleground state across the country. These numbers show how many American households struggle to consistently provide all of its family members enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle. It could mean some days the cupboards are completely bare. It could mean a mother is skipping meals to ensure food for her son at night. It could mean a family is choosing between food and medicine, or food and rent. It does mean there is never enough. Hunger has a devastating effect on the food insecure, but, it is not just those with empty bellies who suffer. Hunger impacts education, health and the economy at large. Children struggling with hunger struggle with schoolwork and tend to have lower test scores and are less likely to graduate. People are not getting the nutrition they need, and are at higher risk for expensive, avoidable health conditions, like diabetes, heart disease and asthma. As a nation, we spend billions on the fall-out from hunger, including avoidable health care costs and the rising cost of poor education outcomes, all while losing productivity in the workplace. — One In Six Americans Go Hungry. We Can’t Succeed On An Empty Stomach
The Impeachment’s Moral Hypocrisy The impeachment process was a nauseating display of moral hypocrisy. The sound bites by Republicans and Democrats swiftly became predictable. The Democrats, despite applauding the announcement of the voting results before being quickly silenced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sought to cloak themselves in gravitas and solemnity. Pelosi’s calculated decision to open the impeachment proceedings with the 1954 “under God” version of the Pledge of Allegiance was an appropriate signal given the party’s New McCarthyism. The Democrats posited themselves as saviors, the last line of defense between a constitutional democracy and tyranny. The Republicans, as cloyingly sanctimonious as the Democrats, offered up ludicrous analogies to attack what they condemned as a show trial, including Rep. Barry Loudermilk’s statement that “Pontius Pilate afforded more rights to Jesus than the Democrats have afforded to this president.” The Republicans shamelessly prostrated themselves throughout the 10-hour process at the feet of their cult leader Donald Trump, offering abject and eternal fealty. They angrily accused the Democrats of seeking to overturn the 2016 election in a legislative coup. It was a mind-numbing spectacle, devoid of morality and ethics, the kind of political theater that characterizes despotic regimes. No one in the House chamber was protecting the Constitution. No one was seeking to hold accountable those who had violated it. No one was fighting to restore the rule of law. The two parties, which have shredded constitutional protections and rights and sold the political process to the highest bidders, have engaged in egregious constitutional violations for years and ignored them when they were made public. Moral stances have a cost, but almost no one in Congress seems willing to pay. Trying to tar Trump as a Russian agent failed. Now the Democrats hope to discredit him with charges of abuse of power and contempt of Congress. By Chris Hedges
Us Defense Secretary: ‘Us To Stay In Syria For Years To Come’ According to US Defense Secretary Mark Esper and General Mark Milley, the Empire of Bases will continue to have occupying troops inside Syria for many years, and that it is “hard to foresee anytime soon” when the US might leave.They claim this presence continues to be about the ISIS threat, and that it would be a long time before regional forces in Syria could fight on their own. It’s not clear what regional forces are even being referred to, as the American occupying troops are centered in a very small area at this point.
Democrats Cave in Secret Budget Deal with Trump While attention was focused on the House of Representatives’ impeachment of Donald J. Trump, legislators from both parties were secretly huddling with White House aides to seal a $1.4 trillion budget deal to fund the government until next September. They were rushing to do this to avoid a partial government shutdown starting December 21, 2019. … Astoundingly the Democrats also caved in on Trump’s wall! After blocking Trump’s funding demand for the wall for three years, the Democrats approved $1.4 billion for the wall and even allowed Trump to divert funds from the Pentagon to that porous, wasteful barrier. In so doing, the Democrats legitimized one of the egregious, impeachable offenses Trump committed earlier this year when he seized $3.6 billion from the Pentagon’s budget in money not approved for the wall. The Washington Post reported that former secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus tweeted “As hurricane heads for Camp Lejeune Trump takes $3.6b from military for needless wall. Same amt Marines say needed to fix Lejeune after last storm.” By Ralph Nader
Environment:
Greenland Ice Losses Rising Faster Than Expected Greenland is losing ice seven times faster than in the 1990s and is tracking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s high-end climate warming scenario, which would see 40 million more people exposed to coastal flooding by 2100. A team of 96 polar scientists, from 50 international organizations, have produced the most complete picture of Greenland ice loss to date. The Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE) Team combined 26 separate surveys to compute changes in the mass of Greenland’s ice sheet between 1992 and 2018. Altogether, data from 11 different satellite missions were used, including measurements of the ice sheet’s changing volume, flow and gravity.
2019 in Photos: Impacts from Environmental Rollbacks and the Growing Climate Activism
As Fracking Companies Face Bankruptcy, U.S. Regulators Enable Firms to Duck Cleanup Costs In over their heads with debt, U.S. shale oil and gas firms are now moving from a boom in fracking to a boom in bankruptcies. This trend of failing finances has the potential for the U.S. public, both at the state and federal levels, to be left on the hook for paying to properly shut down and clean up even more drilling sites. Expect these companies to try reducing their debt through the process of bankruptcy and, like the coal industry, attempting to get out of environmental and employee-related financial obligations. By Justin Mikulka
The Amazon at a Tipping Point The Amazon rainforest is a crucial life-support ecosystem. Without its wondrous strength and power to generate hydrologic systems across the sky (as far north as Iowa), absorb and store carbon (CO2), and its miraculous life-giving endless supply of oxygen, civilization would cease to exist beyond scattered tribes, here and there.Sad to say, a recent scientific analysis of the health of the Amazon rainforest is downright dismal. The world’s two leading Amazon scientists, Thomas Lovejoy (George Mason University) and Carlos Nobre (University of Sao Paulo) recently reported: “Today, we stand exactly in a moment of destiny: The tipping point is here, it is now.” (Source: Amazon Tipping Point: Last Chance for Action, Science Advances, Vol. 5, no. 12, December 20, 2019). By Robert Hunziker
Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Right to Dump Sewage on Your Lawn In debates over protecting the environment, and especially global warming, it is standard practice to refer to the pro-protection side as being in favor of government regulation and the anti-protection side as being pro-free market. This is nonsense and it is nonsense in a way that strongly benefits the enemies of environmental protection.There is a simple way to think about environmental protection. If I build a home and want to dispose of my sewage in the cheapest possible way, I will just dump it on my neighbor’s lawn. Environmental regulation means having the government say that I can’t do this. By Dean Baker
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Despised Private Prison Companies Rebrand as Prison Real Estate Companies Many people believe that the United States government is constantly battling corporations, with the government enforcing regulations and corporations skirting them. While this is true in isolated cases, the reality is much more complex. The prison-industrial complex, for example, encompasses a state-run apparatus that is symbiotically intertwined with various private entities. A growing public relations crisis threatens all entities in this complex. Widespread grassroots movements calling for no new jails and prisons have gained power. Incarcerated people have organized the largest prison strikes to date within the past several years. All major Democratic presidential candidates call for the abolition of private prisons. Even large banks — including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase — have committed to ending their relationships with private prisons following pressure from employees and activists. By Ella Fassler
Labor:
Economy:
-
Despite a “Perfect” Economy, Fed Actions Have Triggered a Deepening Recession
-
The Faltering and Not-So-Perfect Economy Can Be Attributed to the Fed
-
With Stocks Closing Out 2019 at or Near All-Time Highs, Holding Precious Metals in the Same Period Still Outperformed the Major Stock Indices Against Their 2018 Highs
-
FOMC Manipulation of the Monetary Base and Interest Rates
-
Have Been the Dominant Drivers and Inhibitors of U.S. Economic Activity, Since the 2008 Banking-System Collapse and Federal Reserve Bailout
-
Unprecedented in 101 years of Reporting, U.S. Manufacturing Just Completed Twelve Years, 144 Straight Months and Counting, of Economic Non-Expansion, Never Recovering Its Pre-Great-Recession or Pre-Banking-Collapse Peak Activity
-
That Said, Manufacturing, Durable Goods Orders and Freight Activity, All Are in Record Non-Expansion, Showing a Deepening, New Recession
-
Twelve Months Real New Orders for Durable Goods to November 2019 Was Down Year-to-Year Versus the 12 Months to November 2018, Both Before and After Consideration of Volatile Commercial Aircraft Orders
-
Still Shy by 20% to 50% of Ever Recovering Pre-Recession Peak Activity, Elements of the Housing Sector Continue to Show Signs of Low-Level Stabilization
World:
US (Oil Corpotations) Invasion of Syria Was Started By Obama: Top Syrian Official Says US Has ‘Absolutely No Right’ to Occupy or Plunder Nation’s Oil Fields “He’s talking about stealing it,” Bouthaina Shaaban said of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has kept troops in Syria to guard that country’s oil fields. Citing U.S. President Donald Trump’s openly stated plan to maintain a troop presence in Syria with the sole purpose of plundering the country’s oil reserves, a top Syrian government official said America has “absolutely no right” to the nation’s natural resources and warned of “popular opposition and operations” against foreign occupiers. “It is our oil,” Bouthaina Shaaban, a political and media adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, told NBC News in an interview Tuesday. By Jake Johnson
Argentina Defies the Americas’ Crisis of Democracy Everything grinds to a halt in the Buenos Aires heat. Pedestrians retreat indoors, shops can close for hours at a time, and the city itself seems to buckle in the sub-tropical humidity. So when a clutch of sanitation workers marched slowly up a cordoned-off Avenida Rivadavia earlier this month, the sun beating down on their neon vests, dozens of those who had defied temperatures in the 90s to support President-elect Alberto Fernández took notice, briefly erupting in applause. The workers grinned broadly, and several made the “V” for victory hand sign synonymous with Peronism, as well as the new coalition party Frente De Todos (Everyone’s Front). Inside the Palace of the Argentine National Congress, Fernández delivered his inaugural address, laying out his vision for a more egalitarian society and a new social contract. Fernández, who defeated conservative incumbent Mauricio Macri by just shy of 8% in the October elections, acknowledged: “Los Argentinos hemos aprendido así, que las debilidades y las insuficiencias de la democracia solo se resuelvan con mas democracia.” (“We Argentinians have learned that the weaknesses and insufficiencies of democracy can only be resolved with more democracy.”) By Jacob Sugarman
Iran: united call to protest on 23 December 2019 The November protest movement in Iran was drowned in blood, but the fight isn’t over. Anger is ripe on the streets, and for the first time ever, a serious, organised attempt at protest is being led by nine organisations representing workers and the poor. We publish their joint statement and call to protest on 23 December (tomorrow). We do not know what will transpire, but this is an important development and a sign of where things are headed. Fellow workers, teachers, retirees and companions!The continuation of economic pressures against the people, imposed by the government, has made our situation absolutely unbearable. Rampant price hikes, affecting the most basic essentials of life for ordinary families, have made the lives of millions of working people, retirees and unemployed even more miserable and created a critically dire situation. Hence, the uprisings of bloody November this year, which ended by drowning hundreds of our most dear defenceless youth in blood and putting thousands behind bars, represented a clear confrontation between a minority with wealth and power on the one side, and millions of impoverished and dispossessed people on the other.
Firefighters in Australia Say Situation ‘Out of Control’ as Prime Minister Denies Request for Emergency Aid “They believe they have the situation in hand. That is definitely not the case.” The ring of bushfires raging around Australia is “out of control,” firefighters said Monday night, and the country’s government appears unwilling—or unable—to take action to assist those battling the blazes despite the danger.Volunteer Fire Firefighters Association president Mick Holton, in comments to Australian paper the Age, said that Prime Minister Scott Morrison and New South Wales (NSW) premier Gladys Berejiklian were ignoring the need for equipment and income support from firefighters on the front lines. By Eoin Higgins
Medical Opinion, Torture and Julian Assange On November 27 this year, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, delivered an address to the German Bundestag outlining his approach to understanding the mental health of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. These comprised two parts, the initial stage covering his diplomatic asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy, the second dealing with his formal detention in the United Kingdom at the hands of the UK legal and judicial system. The conclusion was a recapitulation of previous findings: that Assange has been subjected to a prolonged, state-sponsored effort in torture, nothing less than a targeting of his being. By Binoy Kampmark
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 ‘governn’, 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
Trump and the Stock Market Are the Winners in the Fed’s Repo Loan Binge; Here’s the Losers
Quotes of the Day:
