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As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99% — Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!
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Just recently, Carrier announced a price increase of 5 percent on all its residential and commercial HVAC equipment, an announcement that came just days after Trump said he was helping keep a 1,000 jobs from moving to Mexico. Here were his comments: “I think we came up with a relatively good solution for everybody … We still got to do the preponderance of the restructuring, which we were going to do anyways. So it’s — I would say no “deal,” but at the end of the day a good deal for UTC.” A good deal for his company? He’s getting $7 million in tax breaks from Indiana, in addition to other federal incentives that haven’t been completely disclosed still to this day. And — in the end — Carrier will still be shipping more jobs to Mexico when you add in the fact that they are also closing their Huntington, Indiana plant. In total, 1300 jobs are going to Mexico and only 800 jobs are staying. The 1,100 number was bogus because 300 of them were corporate jobs — and they weren’t moving regardless of what happened under Trump’s deal. The CEO’s comments about there not being a “deal” are striking. With no “quid pro quo” as he says it, that means Carrier is under no obligation to keep its word going forward — and they still get to keep all the tax incentives coming their way. That’s a smart move — at least for United Technologies. Not so much for the taxpayer. Mr. Hayes also seemed to imply that in the future they would use their Mexico plant more, a plant that is some 1 million square feet. That’s another strike against Trump. He went on to explain why free trade was so important, despite Trump saying he would place heavy tariffs on companies who outsourced: “This country was founded on two principles, right — immigration and free trade. And that is what made America great over time because we had to develop and innovate in the U.S. and take those products and sell them around the world.” — Breaking: Carrier CEO Comes Forward – Says Trump Deal Not True (Interview)
None of this is new. The present wars in the Middle East started with the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 which was justified by the supposed threat from Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Western journalists largely went along with this thesis, happily citing evidence from the Iraqi opposition who predictably confirmed the existence of WMD. Some of those who produced these stories later had the gall to criticise the Iraqi opposition for misleading them, as if they had any right to expect unbiased information from people who had dedicated their lives to overthrowing Saddam Hussein or, in this particular case, getting the Americans to do so for them. Much the same self-serving media credulity was evident in Libya during the 2011 Nato-backed uprising against Muammar Gaddafi. Atrocity stories emanating from the Libyan opposition, many of which were subsequently proved to be baseless by human rights organisations, were rapidly promoted to lead the news, however partial the source. The Syrian war is especially difficult to report because Isis and various al-Qaeda clones made it too dangerous to report from within opposition-held areas. There is a tremendous hunger for news from just such places, so the temptation is for the media give credence to information they get second hand from people who could in practice only operate if they belong to or are in sympathy with the dominant jihadi opposition groups. It is always a weakness of journalists that they pretend to excavate the truth when in fact they are the conduit rather than the originator of information produced by others in their own interests. Reporters learn early that people tell them things because they are promoting some cause which might be their own career or related to bureaucratic infighting or, just possibly, hatred of lies and injustice. A word here in defence of the humble reporter in the field: usually, it is not he or she, but the home office or media herd instinct, that decides the story of the day. Those closest to the action may be dubious about some juicy tale which is heading the news, but there is not much they can do about it. — Patrick Cockburn
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U.S.
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
Welcome, to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective.
Donald Trump’s Corporate Bait-and-Switch: A new report by Public Citizen shows 70 percent of Donald Trump’s presidential transition “landing team” members are affiliated with corporations. Trump’s rank-and-file supporters should be “furious that here we have corporate insider after corporate insider taking over the administration,” said Public Citizen research director Rick Claypool. Steven Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs banker slated to become Secretary of the Treasury, “is the appointment we would expect a president to have picked, if he intends to forge a plutocratic alliance” with Wall Street, said Claypool, who warned: “We can expect a return to the kind of Wild West of anything goes risk-taking that led to the 2008 crisis.”
A Movement Sorely in Need of Science: “The importance of the discussion of analysis has grown since the election,” said Nandita Chaturvedi, one of the organizers of a conference on Revolutionary Science for Radical Times, December 9 and 10, at Philadelphia’s Church of the Advocate. “You see that there is so much confusion on the left, and you see activists that are aligning with the liberal media and aligning with the Clinton machinery.” Without a disciplined political analysis, social movements lose their moorings. “In order to see clearly what we are trying to oppose, and what is the system that we are dismantling, I think analysis is really needed,” said Chaturvedi.
RICO Prosecutions as a Tool of Gentrification: “They came to my house in the pre-dawn hours with all the elements of war,” said Paula, mother of one of 120 young men swept up in a police raid centered on two housing projects in The Bronx, last April, and charged with a wide range of crimes under RICO conspiracy laws. It was the biggest such sweep in New York City history – larger than a raid that netted 103 youths from two Harlem housing projects, in 2014. Paula has withheld her last name in fear of retaliation against her son, whose mental health has deteriorated under solitary confinement. “They are not mafia, as they are charged under RICO,” she said. “None of these youth had arsenals of firearms.” Most had no money for defense lawyers. Paula sees the raids as part of gentrification pressures to empty public housing. Many of the mothers, she said, “have their sons in jail and, at the same time, they’re going through an eviction process.
U.S. is Lying Aggressor in Syria: The United States has no right to interfere in the affairs of other countries, period, said BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley, speaking to a gathering of the Hands Off Syria Coalition, last week. The U.S. carries out regime change under the guise of “humanitarian” intervention to “protect” people from their own government, but “the claim is always a lie, a ruse to make real the Project for a New American Century,” said Kimberley, who is also active with UNAC, the United National Anti-War Coalition. “The United States never has a humanitarian purpose in mind, in Syria or anyplace else — any more so than it does here at home.”
Just Like in Libya and Iraq: Michael Sampson, a co-founder of the Florida-based Dream Defenders who is now a labor organizer in the Washington, DC area, was among those that testified at a People’s Tribunal on the Iraq War, December 1 and 2, at the University of DC Law School. “The same tanks, the same police equipment, the same tear gas canisters that the war profiteers are spending billions of dollars on, are being thrown on the streets of Ferguson and Baltimore and Milwaukee and Charlotte,” said Sampson. “The wars that occur everywhere are all connected to war at home – the war on working class people and Black and brown people. All these movements must connect. The people who colonized Iraq are the same people who colonized African Americans, here.” The Real News Network covered both days of testimony, live.
Labor:
Economy: 
Is Wall Street Trying to Rig Trump’s Business Advisory Panel? On December 2 President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team sent out a press release advising that he had formed a business advisory panel “which is composed of some of America’s most highly respected and successful business leaders, will be called upon to meet with the President frequently to share their specific experience and knowledge as the President implements his plan to bring back jobs and Make America Great Again.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Castro Was Right About US Policy in Latin America Reactions to the death of Fidel Castro Ruz have highlighted some of the differences in the way the Cuban revolutionary and long-time head of state is perceived throughout the world. Most of the world admires Castro and Cuba as having accomplished something heroic by standing up to a bullying empire of immense power, defending the country’s national sovereignty, and living to tell about it. Not to mention the millions of people aided by Cuban doctors and health care workers and other acts of international solidarity that are perhaps unrivaled in modern history, especially for a nation of Cuba’s size and income level. By Mark Weisbrot
Carlos Latuff: Tears for Syria 
This is why everything you’ve read about the wars in Syria and Iraq could be wrong It is too dangerous for journalists to operate in rebel-held areas of Aleppo and Mosul. But there is a tremendous hunger for news from the Middle East, so the temptation is for the media give credence to information they get second hand By Patrick Cockburn 
World Perspectives 2016 – An update The capitalist system has entered the most serious crisis in its history; it is a decaying and decrepit system that has survived well beyond its natural limits. This explains the constant deterioration of living conditions for billions of human beings, the wars going on in several parts of the world, as well as the damage to the environment. These are the effects of the predatory and increasingly anarchic and irrational capitalist mode of production. By In Defense of Marxism
South Korean Protests Growing For the sixth straight weekend, hundreds of thousands of Koreans came out in Seoul (and with other Korean cities estimates approaching 2 million people on the streets) to demand the resignation of President Park Geun-hye. This Saturday December 3, the protests marched on the Presidential Blue House. The three opposition parties introduced a bill last week to impeach the President, supported by a majority of the parliament (171 of 300 members), for abuse of power in an influence-peddling scandal. But the vote needs a 2/3 majority and requires a rump of Park’s Saenuri party to break and support the opposition to pass the bill. These are the largest demonstrations in South Korea since the pro-democracy movement of the 1980s. But the street protests are also against the neoliberal reforms Park has pursued and the attacks on the KCTU (Korean Confederation of Trade Unions), and an emphatic statement that all politics is not forming in a populist hard right. The below essays were written just after the fourth demonstration weekend. By SooKyung Nam
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
Meet Betsy DeVos 
The Deepest Hole On Earth Revealed The Soviet efforts also yielded some pretty significant scientific discoveries. Microscopic fossils of single-celled organisms were found 4.3 miles below the Earth’s crust—which is also where water was discovered. The temperature at the bottom of the hole reached 356 degrees. It was this blistering heat that halted the drilling in 1994. One of the most shocking conclusions from the journey to the center of the earth is that scientists estimate it to be 4,000 miles down. In more than two decades, we’ve only scratched the surface.
Has Last Shoe Dropped in Fight Against Superbugs? Resistance to drug of last resort—Carbapenem resistant bacteria—found for first time in U.S. livestock by Andrea Germanos
Quotes of the Day:
If the DAPL Corporation Violates the Law, Obama Should Send the Troops it Inforce the Decision of the Army Corp. If not the Protestors Should be Armed Foe Self Defense. If Obama Refuses to so Do, The Protestors Have the Right to Arm Themselves Against these Violations!: DAPL Corporation Just Told The Army Corp They Will Do What They Want And Keep Building ILLEGAL Pipeline At Standing Rock
After 8 Years of Expanding Presidential War Powers, Obama Insists They Are Limited By Alex Emmons
Environment:
Black Agenda Radio December 16, 2016
