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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:
Building a Movement Against War, Injustice & Repression! A National Conference hosted by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) June 16-18, 2017, Greater Richmond Convention Center, 403 North 3rd Street, Richmond, VA 23219
Join activists from the many domestic and international struggles as we build unity against the Trump Regime and the underlying system responsible for imperialist wars, poverty, racism, sexism, the oppression of LGBTQ people, attacks on Muslims and undocumented immigrants, environmental destruction and all forms of injustice.
Quotes of the Day:
. . . It’s impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg… The system in this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, period . . . And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg, I’m certain you would say it was certainly a revolutionary chicken.” — Malcolm X Militant Labor Forum (May 29, 1964)
. . .The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. … If money … comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek, capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. — Capital, Volume One, Part VIII, Chapter 31, (the) Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist
California’s Central Valley is best known for supplying nearly 25% of the country’s food, including 40% of the fruit and nuts consumed each year. Yet today, backcountry places such as Patterson, population 22,000, are experiencing an increase in homelessness that can be traced, in part, to an unlikely sounding source: Silicon Valley. The million-dollar home prices about 85 miles west, in San Francisco and San Jose, have pushed aspiring homeowners to look inland. Patterson’s population has doubled since the 2000 census. Average monthly rents have climbed from about $900 in 2014 to nearly $1,600 in recent months, according to the apartment database Rent Jungle, compounding the hardships of the foreclosure crisis, the shuttering of several local agricultural businesses and surging substance abuse rates. — ‘It’s a perfect storm’: homeless spike in rural California linked to Silicon Valley
Videos of the Day:
Wells Fargo’s Board Investigation of Itself Amounts to a Farce Bill Black explains how the Wells Fargo scandal is emblematic of the bank’s corporate culture and that the fined executives are only scapegoats
U.S.:
The United States is Applying and Preparing the Iron Heel at Home and Abroad:
Pax Americana: Trump: Self-Proclaimned “Cop of the World” History has repeatedly demonstrated the need to view with the greatest skepticism U.S. imperialism’s justifications for its endless wars and interventions. by Jeff Mackler
Intercepted Podcast: The Emperor’s New Cruise Missiles There is almost nothing that brings the warmongers, the hawks, and the elites from both the Democratic and Republican parties closer together than a cruise-missile strike. This week’s episode of Intercepted will piss off Assad supporters and the Democrats and Republicans fawning over Trump’s newest war. Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who recently met with Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, questions the official story on the chemical weapons attack. Murtaza Hussain explains what Assad would stand to gain by using chemical weapons. And we hear from Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian engineer who was kidnapped at JFK airport by U.S. operatives after 9/11 and rendered to Syria where he was tortured and interrogated by Assad’s intelligence agents. Arar explains why he is against Assad and U.S. military intervention in Syria. All that and a bucket of the media stupidity that is always on hand to ogle over the awesome, beautiful missiles.
Trump’s Making Good on One of His Many Campaign Promises: Promoting Unfettered Police Power As the world focuses on state violence from Syria to Iraq to Yemen to North Korea, the groundwork is being laid in the United States for unchecked state violence here at home. Donald Trump is making good on at least one of his many campaign promises: promoting unfettered police power. His point person on these goals, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is leading the Justice Department through a tectonic shift, abandoning Obama-era efforts to protect civil and voting rights, threatening more deportations and resuscitating the decades-old, failed “War on Drugs.” By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
Black Liberation/Civil Rights
#BlackLivesMatter Introduces a New Visa Debit Card, and Revives the Toxic Old Myths of Black Capitalism The old myths that African Americans are poor because we don’t spend wisely invest or save enough have been demolished many times. Black unemployment and poverty are core features of US capitalism and can’t be cured by black banking or shopping with black businesses. So why has #BlackLivesMatter teamed up with shady black bankers to introduce a #BlackLivesMatter debit card in a campaign that boosts the fake economics of black capitalism? by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon 
Trump, Moved by Blond-Haired Victims, Surrenders to War Party It’s a doomsday combination: Donald Trump, the raging racist who, nevertheless, claimed to oppose regime change and eternal tensions with Russia, has thrown in big time with the War Party — in hopes that the Deep State will spare him. Trump “will pursue the imperial military offensive that Obama initiated, six years ago, with the mad energy of a racist psychopath.” The immediate winner: al-Qaida, protected by the U.S. Navy and Air Force. by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Environment:
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Jury verdicts Against Big Oil Don’t Matter: How a Judge Scrapped Pennsylvania Families’ $4.24M Water Pollution Verdict in Gas Drilling Lawsuit For many residents of Carter Road in Dimock, Pennsylvania, it’s been nearly a decade since their lives were turned upside down by the arrival of Cabot Oil and Gas, a company whose Marcellus Shale hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) wells were plagued by a series of spills and other problems linked to the area’s contamination of drinking water supplies. With a new federal court ruling handed down late last Friday, a judge unwound a unanimous eight-person jury which had ordered Cabot to pay a total of $4.24 million over the contamination of two of those families’ drinking water wells. In a 58 page ruling, Magistrate Judge Martin C. Carlson discarded the jury’s verdict in Ely v. Cabot and ordered a new trial, extending the legal battle over one of the highest-profile and longest-running fracking-related water contamination cases in the country. By Sharon Kelly and Steve Horn
Labor:
Economy:
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
Robert Reich: Trump is fleecing America, and the Department of Justice is letting it happen President Donald Trump’s business (now run by his two adult sons) has 157 trademark applications pending in 36 countries, according to The New York Times. Registered trademarks are huge financial assets for a business like Trump’s, which is now focused on marketing his name rather than building or making anything. And all these countries depend on decisions Trump will have a hand in making — over trade, foreign policy, international banking, foreign aid and the use of military force. . . . When the Chinese granted Trump preliminary approval of 38 trademarks of his name soon after he was sworn into office — and right after Trump backed off of his brief flirtation with a “two China” policy — China gave Trump the equivalent of a huge amount of money.
America owes China $1tn. That’s a problem for Beijing, and Trump knows it 
World:
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
