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During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: 1. Austerity, 2. Scapegoating Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal Immigrants’ for Unemployment, and 3. The Iron Heel.
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!
Image of the Day:
When Donald Trump charged that President Obama wiretapped the Republican campaign in the weeks after the November election, the bulk of corporate media chose to treat the allegation as another example of Trump’s “alternative facts.” They trotted out folks like Ben Rhodes, a former deputy National Security Advisor to Obama, who dismissed the charge as ridiculous. “No President can order a wiretap,” Rhodes huffed. This may be technically true, but it’s an objective lie. Presidents can cause anybody to be spied upon, simply by indicating a desire to see it happen. In 1963, the Kennedy brothers — formally acting through Bobby Kennedy’s office as Attorney General -— gave FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover permission to tap Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s phones and bug his home and offices. Hoover’s goal, according to a 2008 CNN “Black in America” report, was to “neutralize King as an effective Negro leader.” The Bureau didn’t find evidence that King was under “communist influence,” but did discover “embarrassing details about King’s sex life,” which the FBI used to encourage King to kill himself. When he declined to take his own life, someone else did the job. “Every human being on Earth with an electronic device is being spied upon by the United States.” Technically, neither Robert nor John Kennedy ordered the FBI to spy on MLK. But that’s immaterial; Hoover had reason to believe that the Kennedy brothers wanted King bugged. Hoover offered his clandestine services to the White House, and “went fishing” for any dirt he could get. By the end of 1969, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark and scores of other Black Panthers had joined Dr. King in martyrs’ graves, and many more were consigned to social death in an American gulag that would expand more than ten-fold over the next four decades — proof that those of us who used to greet each other innumerable times a day with “Power to the people – Death to the fascist pigs!” were correct in our analysis of the forces at work. Today, the covert capabilities of the National Security State have grown beyond J. Edgar Hoover’s (and the Kennedy brothers’) wildest dreams. Not just Americans, but every human being on Earth with an electronic device is being spied upon by the United States — which is absolutely logical, given the imperial claim to “exceptional” (supra-legal) prerogatives over its global dominion. Back in 2013, when asked by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden if the NSA collected “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans,” James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, replied, under oath: “No sir, It does not.” Clapper kept his job, despite having committed perjury on prime time television — proof, in the court of common sense, that his boss, President Obama, was both fully aware and approved of the NSA’s surveillance of Americans and homo sapiens in general. For the same reasons, Hoover kept his job under Kennedy’s successors, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, until his death in 1972. — Corporate Media Counting Cadence to Fascism
Videos of the Day:
‘Liberating’ Iraqi Cities Often Reduces Them to Ghost Towns Many ISIS fighters retreated from Mosul prior to the current military campaign, and therefore the existence of organization is not threatened by the ongoing campaign, says Sabah Alnasseri
U.S.:
Trump wants ‘peace through strength’ – but this budget is a recipe for war Diplomacy is the smartest form of military spending, yet the president is slashing soft-power budgets in order to pay for ego-boosting new hardware by Jonathan Freedland
Eve Ensler & Christine Schuler Deschryver on the Predatory Mindset of President Trump When President Trump signed his first executive order in January to temporarily ban refugees and people from seven majority-Muslim nations, he said it was needed, in part, to protect women. A little-noticed part of the executive order reads, “The United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred, including ‘honor’ killings, other forms of violence against women.” Some observers have noticed the irony in the executive order. Both the man who signed the order, Donald Trump, and the man who drafted the order, his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, have in the past been accused of committing violence against women.
Trump’s Attack on America the Beautiful by Robert Hunziker
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
Corporate Media Counting Cadence to Fascism The ruling class/War Party/corporate media campaign for regime change in Washington has moments of pure silliness, with grown men claiming that U.S. presidents don’t have the power to wiretap people. Someone should have informed Dr. Martin Luther King. But, if self-described “progressives” can believe that the CIA is a benign, democratic institution, they can believe anything. “The destabilization of the U.S. bourgeois state is a project, not of the Kremlin, but of multinational and finance capital headquartered in the U.S.” by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Blitzkrieg by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner Blows and kicks are raining thick and fast, though many miss their mark their mark. But the intention of the 45th president is plainly to take us somewhere we really don’t want to go, in a hurry or at all. Are we prepared to resist? Read more
Labor:
On Labor and Beyond, Trump Is Following Scott Walker’s Playbook Matt Rothschild, the executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which exposes the role of money in politics in Wisconsin and advocates for clean government, has tracked the course of Walker’s slash-and-burn governorship to the letter. He says that as president, Trump has so far been vividly reminiscent of Walker. By Dahr Jamail
Environment
Economy:
A People’s History of Poverty in America
Republicans Plan a Coup Today in the House, Gutting Established Class Action Law Without holding as much as one public hearing, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are hoping to show their fealty to their corporate masters and make it next to impossible for citizens to bring class action lawsuits against corporate wrongdoers. A vote will be held today on H.R. 985, a bill with the Orwellian reverse-speak title of “Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2017. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Quote of the Day:
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
Rep. Jason Chaffetz Is Wrong. A $700 iPhone Can’t Cover Your Health Insurance. By Zaid Jilani