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The events in the Middle East: Trump carried out an act of war/terrorism against Iraq. In order to provoke Iran into a ‘Wag the Dog’ war. Instead of being provoked, Iran did a measured response, by demonstrating their ability to respond while, at the same time, causing no United States casualties. Iran demonstrated that the United States was the warmonger/terrorist and that Iran was the peacemaker.
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!
Images of the Day:
Quotes of the Day:
In the United States the criminal justice (sic) system is itself not subject to law. We see immunity to law continually as police commit felonies against citizens and even murder children and walk away free. We see it all the time when prosecutors conduct political prosecutions and when they prosecute the innocent in order to build their conviction record. We see it when judges fail to prevent prosecutors from withholding exculpatory evidence and bribing witnesses and when judges accept coerced plea deals that deprive the defendant of a jury trial. — The Justice Department Is Devoid of Justice
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
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.
Opposing War With Iran: Three Reasons The U.S. stands at the precipice of war. President Trump’s rhetorical efforts to sell himself as the “anti-war” president have been exposed as a fraud via his assault on Iran. Most Orwellian of all is Trump’s claim that the assassination of Iranian General Qassam Soleimani was necessary to avert war, following the New Year’s Eve attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. In reality the U.S. hit on Soleimani represents a criminal escalation of the conflict between these two countries. The general’s assassination was rightly seen as an act of war, so the claim that the strike is a step toward peace is absurd on its face. We should be perfectly clear about the fundamental threat to peace posed by the Trump administration. Iran has already promised“harsh retaliation” following the assassination, and announced it is pulling out of the 2015 multi-national agreement prohibiting the nation from developing nuclear weapons. Trump’s escalation has dramatically increased the threat of all-out war. Recognizing this threat, I sketch out an argument here based on my initial thoughts of this conflict, providing three reasons for why Americans need to oppose war. By Anthony Dimaggio
Killing A People’s Heritage Is The Weapon Of Choice Among Dictators Trump, in his warmongering stupor, has proposed the same destruction dictators have used for centuries: ‘culturecide’, where future generations must grieve for their very essence, writes Robert Fisk There is something deeply ritualistic as well as outrageous about our coverage of the latest mummers play in the Middle East. The US president tosses off another tweet to the world and – however infantile or medically insane its contents – we treat it as some serious political statement. Then millions march on the streets of the Arab world, shouting “Death to America’’ and “Death to Israel’’, and we report this nonsense as if these slogans – which I have been listening to in the Middle East for decades – are actually the product of some serious political debate. Their cries may be understandable, but they give no indication of Iran’s future reaction to the murder of Qassem Soleimani.
Just Get the Hell Out Despite conflicting reportyabout US forces leaving Iraq, as of January 4, 2020, about four thousand US troops, Marines and Air Force personnel are preparing to ship out to Iraq. A Pentagon spokesmen has told the world that the US feels free to stage “preventive attacks” against Iraqi anti-occupation groups they believe to be Iranian-supported. In a brazen and illegal attack, US forces killed a top Iranian general and the leader of Iran’s Quds force. At least five thousand US troops were already in country. So are hundreds if not thousands of mercenaries and spies. The reason provided by the Pentagon for this most recent deployment is the recent uptick in popular protest against the US occupation of that country. There have also been a few rocket attacks on US military bases during this time. One such attack killed a US mercenary. The Pentagon and other elements of the US war making establishment are attempting to link the rocket attacks to the protests and the protests to the government in Tehran. While Tehran is certainly influencing events in Iraq, the attempt by Washington to dump the responsibility for the unrest in Iraq on Tehran is both false and foolish. By Ron Jacobs
We Were All Told to Do This”: US Border Officer Uses Nuremberg Defense to Explain Involvement in Separating Families “Ah, so he was just doing his job? Where have we heard that defense before?” In a new Frontline documentary, a Border Patrol agent describes taking part in a pilot program to separate families nearly a year before the Trump administration officially unveiled the policy—saying that while he was unhappy about separating children from their parents, he and other agents were following orders. Journalist Martin Smith interviews agent Wesley Farris in “Targeting El Paso” about the program Farris worked on in the summer of 2017 in El Paso, Texas. Agents were instructed to separate families as the administration tested the theory that doing so would deter people from trying to enter the U.S. at the border city. 
Environment:
Cancer Town Louisiana: Louisiana Issues Permits For Proposed Complex That Would Double Area’s Toxic Emissions The $9.4bn facility, owned by Formosa Plastics, would consist of 14 separate plastic plants in St James parish, known as Cancer Alley The state of Louisiana has issued a series of key air quality permits for a gargantuan proposed petrochemical complex that would roughly double toxic emissions in its local area and, according to environmentalists, become one of the largest plastics pollution-causing facilities in the world. The $9.4bn facility, owned by the Taiwanese chemicals firm Formosa Plastics, would consist of 14 separate plastics plants across 2,300 acres of land in St James parish, a largely African American community in the already heavily polluted area in southern Louisiana known as Cancer Alley. By Oliver Laughland
As the World Burns, the Powerful Go on Holiday Like so many these past few days, I have been stunned by the devastation across Australia. The photographs and videos of the fires sweeping through the countryside and surrounding towns and even the city of Sydney show a nation literally on fire. Terrified people clung to the bottoms of boat docks, neck deep in water to escape the flames. Thousands crowded on to beaches while the skies above became a Mars like hue. At the time of my writing this at least 18 people are confirmed to have died, over 14 million acres scorched, and a half billion wild animals have perished. These numbers will almost certainly rise. Indeed, it has made even the most stoic of climate scientists tremble. The fires are unprecedented in scale, bigger than the fires in California or even the Amazon in 2019. And they are particularly alarming as this is only the beginning of summer in the southern hemisphere. By Kenn Orphan
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Economy:
Fed’s Balance Sheet Explodes by $413 Billion in 119 Days On September 4, 2019, the assets on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve stood at $3.761 trillion. As of January 1, that figure is $4,173,626,000,000. That’s an increase of $413 billion in just the past 119 days and the Fed does not seem inclined to turn off its money spigot to Wall Street anytime soon. At the rate the Fed is now going, its balance sheet is likely to eclipse the $4.5 trillion all-time high it reached in 2015 as a result of the unprecedented sums it funneled to Wall Street following the epic financial crash in 2008 and its three rounds of quantitative easing (QE) to keep interest rates low to appease Wall Street’s trading houses and their trillions of dollars in interest-rate derivative bets. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Justice at Last? Panic in Israel as the ICC Takes Momentous Step in the Right Direction The high level of these ICC investigations places the legal push against Israel at a whole new level. This is uncharted territory for Israel, the United States, Palestine, the ICC and the international community as a whole. At long last, Fatou Bensouda, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has uttered the long-anticipated conclusion that “all the statutory criteria under the Rome statute for the opening of an investigation (into alleged war crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories) have been met”. By Ramzy Baroud
Britain: Labour Leadership Race Begins – Mobilise Members Around Socialist Policies! The National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Labour Party have fired the starter pistol for the race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn. The main contestants have bolted out of the gates, with six candidates already announcing their intention to stand for the top job. But it is clear that the battle for the leadership position is a two-horse race. On the right of the party, the so-called ‘moderates’ have rallied around Keir Starmer. On the left, Rebecca Long-Bailey – ‘RLB’ – is the clear option for those looking to continue the Corbyn movement. By Adam Booth
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!
Study Shows Medicare for All Could Save US $600 Billion Annually on Paperwork and Other ‘Useless Bureaucracy’ “Industry wants you to think universal healthcare is too expensive. In reality, it’s our current system that’s a wasteful, unsustainable disaster.” Insurers and healthcare providers in the United States spent a staggering $812 billion on paperwork and other administrative burdens in 2017 alone, bureaucratic costs that could be dramatically reduced by switching to a single-payer system like Medicare for All. That’s according to a study published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, which found that administrative costs amounted to 34.2 percent of total U.S. national health expenditures in 2017—twice the amount Canada spent on healthcare administration that same year. By Jake Johnson
The Trump Dag Wags