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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!
Images of the Day:
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. — Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president of US (1743 – 1826), Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)
War opens a Pandora’s box of evils that once unleashed are beyond anyone’s control. The invasion of Afghanistan set out to defeat al-Qaida, and nearly 16 years later, we are embroiled in a losing fight with the Taliban. We believed we could invade Iraq and create a Western-style democracy and weaken Iran’s power in the region. The fragmentation of Iraq among warring factions has left Iran the dominant Muslim nation in the Middle East and Iraq destroyed as a unified nation. We set out to topple President Bashar Assad in Syria but then began to bomb the Islamic insurgents trying to overthrow him. We spread the “war on terror” to Yemen, Libya and Syria in a desperate effort to crush regional resistance. Instead, we created new failed states and lawless enclaves where vacuums were filled by the jihadist forces we sought to defeat. We have wasted a staggering $4.79 trillion on death, destruction and folly as our nation is increasingly impoverished and climate change threatens us with extinction. The arms manufacturers, who have a vested interest in perpetuating these debacles, will work to make a few trillion more before this act of collective imperial suicide comes to a humiliating end. In war, when you attack one force you implicitly aid another. And the forces we assist by striking the Assad regime are the forces we ironically are determined to eradicate—Nusra Front, al-Qaida and other Islamic radical groups. These are the same Islamic forces we, along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Kuwait, largely created, armed and funded at the inception of the civil war in Syria. They are the forces that have responded to the chaos caused by our misguided military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. They are the forces that execute Western captives, slaughter religious minorities, carry out terrorism in Europe and the United States and collect billions of dollars from smuggling refugees into Europe. They are our sometime enemies and our sometime allies. — Chris Hedges, The Pandora’s Box of War
Videos of the Day:
Wilkerson: Trump Attack on Syria Driven by Domestic Politics Former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, tells Paul Jay that the Syrian Government may not be responsible for the chemical attack and that Trump’s response was a violation of international law
U.S.:
Trumpenstein’s Tomahawk Dog-Wag: on Real and Fake News by Paul Street
Evidence Calls Western Narrative About Syrian Chemical Attack Into Question Evidence which has emerged in the aftermath of the attack at Khan Sheikhoun indicates that not only was the nature of the attack misreported by the media, but that certain individuals on the ground in Syria may have had foreknowledge of the attack up to several days before it happened. On April 3rd, 2017, an anti-Assad journalist tweeted that the next day he would be launching a media campaign to cover airstrikes on the Hama countryside, including the use of chemical weapons. It is not clear how the reporter was able to know that chemical weapons would be used an entire day before the attacks occurred. Observers further noted that on April 1st, 2017, a doctor on the ground in Khan Sheikhoun, Dr. Shajul Islam, had received several shipments of gas masks in the days running up to the chemical incident. The revelations on Twitter fueled speculation that opposition figures were aware of the chemical attack days before it actually happened, contesting the narrative that the Syrian government was responsible. Daily Mail has reported that Dr. Shajul Islam was at one point sought by the British government in connection with the abduction of two journalists in Syria, and security services have stated that Islam and his brother may have had ties to ISIS executioner “Jihadi John.” by William Craddick
Syria: Another Pipeline War The fossil fuel industry’s business model is to externalize its costs by clawing in obscene subsidies and tax deductions—causing grave environmental costs, including toxic pollution and global warming. Among the other unassessed prices of the world’s addiction to oil are social chaos, war, terror, the refugee crisis overseas, and the loss of democracy and civil rights abroad and at home. As we focus on the rise of ISIS and search for the source of the savagery that took so many innocent lives in Paris and San Bernardino, we might want to look beyond the convenient explanations of religion and ideology and focus on the more complex rationales of history and oil, which mostly point the finger of blame for terrorism back at the champions of militarism, imperialism and petroleum here on our own shores. By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Syria Airstrikes Instantly Added Nearly $5 Billion to Missile-Makers’ Stock Value Raytheon stock surged Friday morning, 59 of the company’s Tomahawk missiles were used to strike Syria in Donald Trump’s first major military operation as President. By Jen Wieczner
It’s Freedom White Phosphorus, Damn Commies We know you’re likewise bound to point out that the use of chemical weapons is only a problem when it’s other people using them as sources as varied as Democracy Now! and the BBC have reported, pointing out that we have already admitted to using white phosphorous during our ill-fated assault on Fallujah, a name now synonymous with the Vietnam II that was the Iraq War. by Ben Debney
Black Liberation/Civil Rights
Worldwide Capitalism is Blaming/Scapegoating Minorities and Immigrants, for the Collapse of Capitalism: Deportation as a Crime against Humanity by L. Ali Khan
Threats of deportations are evolving into a global phenomenon as nativism, racism, and xenophobia sweep the world. All over the world, nations are turning against “foreigners,” particularly against the most vulnerable populations such as refugees, migrant workers, and undocumented immigrants. For example, Pakistan is forcing millions of Afghan refugees born in Pakistan to “go back home.” Myanmar is persecuting the Rohingyas, an unwanted religious minority, pressing them to leave the country. Saudi Arabia has been expelling migrant workers after consuming their labor for years. Right-wing Europeans wish to oust even legal immigrants from North Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. The United States has escalated its campaign to deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants. This commentary focuses on the potential deportation of eleven (11) million undocumented immigrants, including six (6) million of Mexican national origin, the largest group of undocumented immigrants living in the United States. These immigrants live in mortal fear of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents picking them up from work, school, home, hand-cuffing them, putting them in buses and planes, and discarding them out of a country they have made home for years, if not decades. A Mexican man leaped off a bridge and killed himself after being deported. This cruel expulsion is justified under the popular label of “illegal aliens” and under the rhetoric of removing rapists and criminals.
Environment:
Economy:
Easiest Fix for the Fed Has Been to Redefine Bad Economic News Out of Existence. Where most economists would view a monthly payroll jobs gain of 98,000 — just 60,000 net of the prior month‘s revisions — as bad news for the economy, the economists at the Fed redefined such an inevitability as ― good news, back in October 2016. Discussed in the Fedspeak portion of the FED section of No. 859 Special Commentary : Fedspeak perhaps reached a new nadir in Commentary No. 843 (see accompanying discussion there), where Fed economists went far beyond the argument that the economy was at full employment [see the Accompanying discussion in the Household Survey section of this Executive Summary], trying to sell the concept that weak labor circumstances — seen usually only in recession-related circumstances — really represented normal healthy economic activity: Such is amidst faux concerns of an ―overheating‖ economy. Some Federal Reserve Board members have warned that recent headline U.3 unemployment readings around 5.0% show the economy to be near full employment (see Commentary No. 838); they know better. The latest nonsense, however, comes from research at Fed Chair Janet Yellen‘s home base of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. The new story is that monthly jobs growth of 50,000 to 110,000 is adequate ―to maintain a healthy labor market. The implied annual growth rates for the levels proffered there, for healthy monthly jobs growth, historically have never been seen outside of a recession (either going into or coming out of), never in a sustainable, healthy economy.
Headline U.S. Economic Health Still Massively Overstated.
Underlying reality for March 2017 labor conditions remained in the realm of a 22.5 % broad unemployment rate, with the actual monthly payroll-employment change likely in contraction. Where the headline monthly payroll gain was 98,000, keep in mind that the Payroll Survey numbers count jobs, not employed individuals, while the Household Survey counts the number of people with jobs. While the two series are not extraordinarily compatible, consider that the count of individuals in the Household Survey who moved into multiple-job-holder status inMarch was 168,000, well in excess of the 98,000 payroll jobs increase in the Payroll Survey, which again counted all the part-time jobs individually along with the full-time jobs.
Barclays’ Whistleblower-Gate Raises Alarms Bells It is not a promising development for changing the culture of Wall Street when today’s newswires are reporting the sordid details of how the big Wall Street player, Barclays, engaged U.S. law enforcement in an attempt to hunt down the identity of an internal whistleblower. More on that in a moment, but first some background. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Terror attacks in Egypt: Who is to blame? Egypt was rocked yesterday by suicide bombings in major cities which resulted in at least 45 dead and over 100 injured. In the second city Alexandria an attack was carried out at the entrance to St Mark’s Cathedral resulting in the death of 16 people. Two hours earlier in Tanta, a city in the Nile Delta, a bomb attack at a church killed 29. There are unconfirmed reports of further attacks on churches around the country. By Dejan Kukic 
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
For Capitalists, Workers’ Lives Don’t Matter
Quotes of the Day: 
Catastrophic Logging Threatens National Forests by Brett Haverstick
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Labor: