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 That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he 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 , thet the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
Sat. Jan. 25 – Global Day of Protest – No War On Iran! The People of the World Say: No War On Iran! The Trump administration is dragging the United States into a war with Iran that could engulf the whole region and could quickly turn into a global conflict of unpredictable scope and the gravest consequences.The people of the world need to rise up and stop it. For all who believe in peace, for all who are opposed to yet another catastrophic war, now is the time to take action. On Saturday, January 25 in cities across the globe, there will be protests against a new war in the Middle East. Please join us.Quotes of the Day:
On 1 January, the Economist delivered a sombre verdict on the perspectives of the world economy: “Global growth in 2019 was the slowest since the financial crisis of 2008-09. The world’s GDP rose by roughly 2.2%. This year will be little better, according to the latest estimates from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a sister company of The Economist. The EIU forecasts that the global economy will expand by 2.4% in 2020. “Rich economies are expected to grow at roughly the same lacklustre pace as they did in 2019—the euro zone’s, almost exactly the same: 1.3%, against 1.2% last year. The EIU sees a fairly sharp slowdown in America, from 2.3% to 1.7%, as trade tensions continue to depress trade and investment. “A continuation of the global slowdown in manufacturing will also drag down growth worldwide. A no-deal Brexit could make matters worse, for Britain and its trading partners.” — 2020: A World On Fire
Meet Brittany Kaiser, Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Releasing Troves of New Files from Data Firm New details are emerging about how the shadowy data firm Cambridge Analytica worked to manipulate voters across the globe, from the 2016 election in the United States to the Brexit campaign in Britain and elections in over 60 other countries, including Malaysia, Kenya and Brazil. A new trove of internal Cambridge Analytica documents and emails are being posted on Twitter detailing the company’s operations, including its work with President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton. The documents come from Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Brittany Kaiser, who worked at the firm for three-and-a-half years before leaving in 2018. We speak with Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, co-directors of the Oscar shortlisted documentary “The Great Hack”; Brittany Kaiser, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower featured in “The Great Hack” and author of “Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower’s Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again”; and Emma Briant, a visiting research associate in human rights at Bard College whose upcoming book is titled “Propaganda Machine: Inside Cambridge Analytica and the Digital Influence Industry.”
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.
Iran crisis: ‘All is well!’ Trump tweets after missile strike on US Iraq bases ‘We have the most powerful and well equipped military anywhere in the world, by far!’ president says “All is well!” is the message from Donald Trump, after Iran launched missile strikes against two US-Iraqi airbases.Tehran fired more than a dozen ballistic missiles at US targets inside Iraq in retaliation for the death of Qassem Soleimani, its top general, in an American drone strike last week. The rockets were aimed mainly at the Ain al-Asad airbase west of Baghdad, though another base in Erbil, in Kurdistan, was also struck. Mr Trump tweeted: “All is well! Missiles launched from Iran at two military bases located in Iraq. Assessment of casualties & damages taking place now. So far, so good! By Jon SharmanNoam Chomsky: US Is a Rogue State and Suleimani’s Assassination Confirms It Trump’s decision to assassinate one of Iran’s most prominent and highly respected military leaders, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, has added yet another name to the list of people killed by the U.S. — which many rightly see as the world’s biggest rogue state.The assassination has escalated hostilities between Tehran and Washington and created an even more explosive situation in the politically volatile Middle East. As was to be expected, Iran has vowed to retaliate on its own terms for the killing of its general, while also announcing that it will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Iraq’s parliament, in turn, has voted to expel all U.S. troops, but Trump has responded with threats of sanctions if the U.S. is forced to remove its troops from the country.
Chevron pulls American oil workers from Iraq America’s second largest oil company has evacuated all of its American oil workers from Iraq following last week’s U.S. airstrike in Baghdad.Chevron said it is taking a precautionary measure in statement on Monday. All of its employees and contractors who are U.S. citizens have left the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq. by Bre Jackson‘They Fear Someone Will Go There and Tell the Truth,’ Says Iran’s Top Diplomat as Trump White House Bars Him From US “You can speak with American people from Tehran too and we will do that,” said Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on Tuesday confirmed reports that the Trump administration has denied him a visa to enter the U.S. for a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York this week, a move the diplomat said was motivated by a desire to suppress facts about the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani. “This is because they fear someone will go there and tell the truth to the American people,” Zarif told reporters from Tehran. “But they are mistaken. The world is not limited to New York. You can speak with American people from Tehran too and we will do that.” By Jake Johnson,
Welcome To The Roaring Twenties The next decade will be noisy as hell. As more intense wildfires blaze across every continent except Antarctica, the sound of the planet burning will only get louder.Climate scientists are looking back over the last decade, collating the data, and reviewing the numbers. Every single one of the most important metrics are signaling a worsening situation. It’s common knowledge that emissions of the carbon gases continue to increase and that this is driving up global temperatures, but the intensifying impact of heat waves and wildfires is starting to overwhelm governments’ capacity to keep these disasters under control.Driven by record-breaking temperatures, wildfires have blazed across Australia killing nine people since September, destroying about 1000 homes, and burning close to 5 million hectares. California’s fire season is winding down but has been once again disastrous, displacing thousands from their homes, and burning more than 100,000 hectares. Seven of California’s 10 most destructive wildfires have occurred in the last four years By Martin Bush
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Colin Kaepernick Drone Strike On Iran …U.S.A. Imperialism At Its FinestColin Kaepernick has some thoughts on the United States taking out a top Iranian officer with a drone strike … calling it classic American imperialism via our military. The ex-NFL quarterback posted some scathing remarks Saturday about the international move that’s got everyone here at home worried about a so-called World War III — and he didn’t hold back in criticizing it to the max, likening it to an attack on people of color.
Rogue US Assassination Spurs International Solidarity Washington’s assassination of an Iranian general “brings Russia, China and Iran closer together,” said Duboisian scholar Dr Anthony Monteiro. “Other nations of the global South will rally around Iran because they recognize that this could happen to any nations with this kind of brazen, Wild West behavior” by the United States. Monteiro is active with the Philadelphia Saturday Free
Hip Hop Vs Late Stage Capitalism “People will always resist,” said Dr Lisa Calvente, author of a Soulsarticle that draws a straight line between neoliberal capitalism and the birth of Hip Hop in New York City. “Hip Hop is that resistance from neoliberalism,” which devastated Black and brown neighborhoods in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Dr. Calvente is a professor of Intercultural Communications at DuPaul University.
Early African Captives Talked Back to European Enslavers Early African Captives Talked Back to European EnslaversBucknell University Professor of Spanish Dr. Nick Jones’ book on “Habla de Negros” — “Black talk/speech” — in early colonial Spain and Portugal shows that “through their Africanized Spanish, they’re speaking back to their masters, they’re critiquing them” and making their humanity and agency known.
Labor:
Economy:
JPMorgan’s Federally-Insured Bank to $2.4 Trillion Federally-insured banks are not supposed to be making large speculations in the stock market. They are supposed to be using bank deposits to make loans to worthy businesses and consumers to help grow the U.S. economy and keep the United States competitive on the global stage.But according to the official reports from the federal regulator of national banks, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), since December 31, 2010 the federally-insured bank owned by the monster trading house of JPMorgan Chase (JPMorgan Chase Bank NA) has increased its equity (stock) derivative bets from $337 billion to $2.4 trillion as of its latest report for the quarter ending September 30, 2019. (The data is found in a graph titled “Table 10” in the appendix of each of the quarterly reports published by the OCC.) By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Dow Jones Industrial Average Versus Stock Price of JPMorgan Chase from January 2, 2007 to January 6, 2020
World:
In An Election: It’s Not the Voting That Counts — It’s the Counting That Counts!: New Cambridge Analytica Leaks to Expose Election Manipulation in 68 CountriesThe Guardian reports a new massive leak by data firm Cambridge Analytica is set to expose tens of thousands of documents detailing the work of a global operation involving at least 68 countries used to manipulate voters on “an industrial scale.” The documents will be released over the next months. Cambridge Analytica was founded by billionaire Robert Mercer. Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon of Breitbart News was one of the company’s key strategists. The company collapsed in May 2018 after The Observer newspaper revealed the company had harvested some 87 million Facebook profiles without the users’ knowledge or consent. Cambridge Analytica then used the data to sway voters to support President Trump during the 2016 campaign. The most recent leak began on New Year’s Day through an anonymous Twitter account with links to documents on elections in Brazil, Malaysia and Kenya.
The ‘Great Game’ is Afoot: Killing Soleimani Reflects US Desperation in the Middle East Both U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were on the lookout for a major disruption – that would situate them in a positive light within their countries’ respective media – and they found it. Minister of Social Development, Daniel Arroyo, By killing top Iranian military commander, Qasem Soleimani, American and Israeli leaders demonstrated the idiom “out of the frying pan into the fire.” By: Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo
Powerful Earthquake Hits Puerto Rico for the 2nd Time This Week “We want everyone to be safe. That is why all work in the public sectors has been suspended today, so that you can be with your family, implementing your emergency plans,” Vazquez tweeted.A 6.4 magnitude earthquake was reported Tuesday in Puerto Rico, causing material damage to several areas and leaving at least one person dead, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The earthquake, which was the second one this week, knocked out the electrical grid inside Puerto Rico, leaving much of the country without power, Reuters reported.
A home is seen collapsed after an earthquake in Guanica, Puerto Rico January 7, 2020. REUTERS/Ricardo Ortiz
2020: A World On Fire . . .Since everyone (except the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party that now rules the UK) is well aware that it is impossible to conclude a very complex trade deal in 12 months, this amounts to an act of collective insanity. Britain has been teetering on the edge of an abyss for the past 12 months. But now, under the bold leadership of Tsar Boris the First, we are about to take one step forward. The euphoria that gripped the bankers and capitalists when they realised that Jeremy Corbyn would not be the next prime minister of Britain did not last very long. The pound sterling first rose, then plummeted as the financial centres of the world realised that Britain had jumped out of the frying pan and straight into the Fire. By Alan Woods
Trump’s Ordered Assassination Of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani Plunged The World, And Particularly The Middle East, Into Crisis / Image: Fair Use
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!
Quotes of the Day:
Noam Chomsky: US Is a Rogue State and Suleimani’s Assassination Confirms It Trump’s decision to assassinate one of Iran’s most prominent and highly respected military leaders, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, has added yet another name to the list of people killed by the U.S. — which many rightly see as the world’s biggest rogue state.The assassination has escalated hostilities between Tehran and Washington and created an even more explosive situation in the politically volatile Middle East. As was to be expected, Iran has vowed to retaliate on its own terms for the killing of its general, while also announcing that it will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Iraq’s parliament, in turn, has voted to expel all U.S. troops, but Trump has responded with threats of sanctions if the U.S. is forced to remove its troops from the country. 
‘They Fear Someone Will Go There and Tell the Truth,’ Says Iran’s Top Diplomat as Trump White House Bars Him From US “You can speak with American people from Tehran too and we will do that,” said Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on Tuesday confirmed reports that the Trump administration has denied him a visa to enter the U.S. for a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York this week, a move the diplomat said was motivated by a desire to suppress facts about the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani. “This is because they fear someone will go there and tell the truth to the American people,” Zarif told reporters from Tehran. “But they are mistaken. The world is not limited to New York. You can speak with American people from Tehran too and we will do that.” By Jake Johnson, 
Black Agenda Radio for Week of December 23, 2019 With Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
