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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 Those Who Profit From Austerity!
Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico!
Images of the Day:
The World Conference on Racism held in Durban, South Africa (2001), several years ago, not only raised the issue of Israel as an apartheid state, but also raised the issue of reparations for the colonialized world due to centuries of rape and plunder of the world’s masses by capitalism. Most of the arguments on this subject were first written by Karl Marx, over 130 years ago in “Capital”, Volume One, Part VIII, Chapter 31, (the) “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist”. This often-overlooked chapter is very important in today’s world. Industrial Capitalism did not come into being due to the gradual primitive accumulation of capital, but rather the industrial revolution was fueled by the wealth plundered from the colonialized world in the name of Christianity. This is the historic material basis for modern racism as an ideology, which is used to justify the holocaust perpetuated upon the majority of the world during the period of the subjugation of the colonial world to European/United States capitalist imperialism. Karl Marx was one of the first to oppose the colonial oppression of the world’s masses. He did not mince his words in, this chapter of Capital, he wrote: 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. — Roland Sheppard, Reparations and Capitalism
There is now a clear genocidal intent in the Saudi attack on Yemen. An attack assisted by and designed in part by the United States. It is worth noting at the top that once King Abdullah died, and Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud took the throne, the shape of the Saudi power structure was changed. And the most important part of that change was the ascension of Mohammad bin Salman to defense minister. Bin Salman is all of thirty one, and in addition has retained the title of Minister of State, and added secretary general of the Royal Court. A rather astounding and nearly unprecedented consolidation of power in the hands of thirty one year old. Additionally the eighty-one-year-old King is already suffering dementia and is not expected to long survive his tenure as Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques {sic}. Bin Salman is second in line to the throne. Also worth noting that a week after Trump visited the Kingdom and did the sword dance and touched the orb (and seriously, what the fuck is all that?) the president appointed clear cut nut job Michael D’Andrea to head up Iranian affairs at the CIA. A guy nicknamed ‘The Undertaker’. And a chain smoking abusive bully who converted to Islam (I mean there is a real story in unpacking D’Andrea). And a short time later a terror attack hit Tehran. Not to mention that secretary of war James ‘Mad Dog” Mattis is a longtime anti-Iranian zealot. You connect the dots. The U.S. is now ramping up an already breathtaking assault on the Arab world, and on the global south overall. And barely any of this is even mentioned in the mainstream press. The logic at work, from the U.S. assault on Yugoslavia (which looms as the real trial run) to Libya and Iraq and now Syria, has been not just to defuse pockets of developing resistance to Western capital, but to dominate labor markets and control resources. The penetration of Western capital is the engine behind this massive wave of attacks on the global south. All of this began, in a sense, at least in its current incarnation, after 1989 and the fall of the U.S.S.R. But the hyper escalation began with 9/11. And it was Obama, far more than Bush, that implemented the structural and tactical policy that Trump has inherited. And to return to the Saudis for a moment; Obama oversaw a cooperation with the Saudis in channeling money to Takfiri mercenaries as part of the assault on Syria. To the tune of billions of dollars (or as one analyst put it, over a hundred thousand dollars a year for every single anti Assad terrorist mercenary). And it was Obama who had U.S. military advisors in Riyadh, from day one, of the Saudi attack on Yemen. An attack that has left millions suffering starvation, and an outbreak of Cholera — a proxy biological attack itself, and a totally destroyed infrastructure. And remember, too, that Saudi Arabia only exists in its current form because of the U.K., and because of subsidizing from the West. And the British saw some sort of logic in supporting the minority fringe fundamentalism of Wahabbist Islam. A short bit of history here: it was in the 1700s that Ibn Saud formed an alliance with itinerant religious fanatic Adl al-Wahhab and this alliance formed into a movement of fanatic reformists who terrorized the peninsula until the start of the 19th century. And once destroyed by Egyptians (and Turks), the Wahab doctine survived underground in small enclaves of nomadic tribes. But it was the start of the 20th century that saw the return of Saudi power and Wahabi ideology. — Global Detention
Videos of the Day:
Criminal Charges Filed Against Six State Officials Over Flint Water Scandal, But Problem goes Far Deeper While the criminal charges against the officials is an important first step, the root causes of the crisis – the system of emergency management – have not been tackled explains Rev. David Alexander Bullock of Change Agent Consortium
How Can 50 Years of Israeli Occupation be Brought to an End? Nabil Maarouf, Palestine’s Representative in Canada, calls for sanctions, boycotts and criminal prosecutions to being an end to Israel’s system of apartheid
U.S.:
Election Con 2016: New Evidence Demolishes the Myth of Trump’s “Blue-Collar” Populism By Anthony DiMaggio
The Qatar Blockade, the Petro-Yuan, and the Coming War on Iran Trump’s speech to the assembled Gulf leaders in Saudi Arabia on May 21st is worth reading in full. It is deeply disturbing. Having praised himself for his $110billion arms deal with the Saudis, he goes on to talk about the threat posed by terrorism, and what a wonderful job the US and the Gulfis — that is, the leading state sponsor of the region’s supremacist death squads, and its assembled proxies — are doing in combating it. He then goes on to claim that at the root of the region’s terrorism lurks — guess who? The power leading the regional pushback against ISIS and Al Qaeda — Iran. By Dan Glazebrook
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Environment:
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Labor:
Economy:
United States: Trump brings economic nationalism centre stage Recent weeks have brought to the fore two main issues concerning US President Donald Trump. The first was his doubling down on one central theme of his election campaign — economic nationalism. This was found in his charge that most of the rest of the world is somehow “exploiting” the United States — and he will fight back. This charge was somewhat muted in the first months of his presidency, but now he is emphasising it again. The second, also a main feature of his election campaign, is his drive to establish himself as an authoritarian president, the “strongman” who can take on the dysfunction in the two capitalist parties that dominate US politics. This is bound up in his economic nationalism, and by extension political nationalism — as seen in his assertion that he is the strongman who can take on the rest of the world. By Barry Sheppard
Shadow Government Statists Level of Industrial Production The overstatement of headline growth in the total series that results directly from the Federal Reserve Board using too low an estimate of inflation in deflating some components of its production estimates into real dollar terms, for inclusion in the Index of Industrial Production. 
World:
Jeremy Corbyn: Empty homes owned by rich should be ‘requisitioned’ for Grenfell Tower residents Jeremy Corbyn has called for the empty homes of rich people in Kensington to be seized for Grenfell Tower residents who have been made homeless by the fire. The Labour leader said that the London Borough was a “tale of two cities” between a wealthy south and a rich north. He suggested that “requisitioning” expensive vacant properties could help ensure that residents are housed locally. By Steven Swinford
Britain: Explosive anger spreads in wake of Grenfell tower tragedy the UK are in a state of shock and visceral anger at the tragedy and crime that is the Grenfell fire. All the accumulated rage within the local working class community has exploded to the surface, as more and more details emerge showing how the Tories and profiteering management companies are culpable for the murder of the tower’s residents. By Nico Baldion 
Grenfell is a Monument to Tory Britain Neither oversight, negligence, nor malfeasance lies at the root of the Glenfell Tower fire in West London. Strip away the sickening obfusaction and platitudes, peddled by the usual parade of confected politicians, and the roots of this disaster lie in the virulent disdain, bordering on hatred, of poor and working class people by the rich in a society which in 2017 is a utopia for the few and a dystopia for far too many. By John Wight
The rise of the ”slave market” in Libya and the hypocrisy of the EU The imperialist military interventions in Iraq, Syria and Libya were portrayed by Western leaders as “humanitarian” operations to restore democracy and human rights. But what has instead occurred is the exact opposite with the rise of different degrees of barbarism in all three countries. Just like in Syria and Iraq, we are now also witnessing the rise of slave-like conditions in Libya on a systematic level. This was revealed in a series of disturbing reports produced by the International Organization for Migration [IOM]on the horrific situation faced by Sub-Saharan African migrants, including the rehabilitation of a modern-day slave market in Libya.
Venezuela: Our programme for the Constituent Assembly The calling of a National Constituent Assembly (ANC) has been issued in the middle of one of the worst offensives of the counter-revolution and imperialism in the last eighteen years. In this political situation, the convening of a Constituent Assembly has awoken important revolutionary aspirations among sections of the workers’ and people’s vanguard, who are ready to fight to elect deputies to the Constituent Assembly who come from the rank and file and defend a programme of revolutionary demands. This is in opposition to the bureaucratic clique at the top that is trying to impose itself with any means necessary, with the aim of imposing a programme of concessions to the ruling class and the abandonment of any pretence of a socialist programme. The only alternative to the serious crisis which the Bolivarian Revolution is going through is to radicalise it along socialist lines, by completing the expropriation under workers’ control of the capitalists and the dismantling of the bourgeois state, creating revolutionary people’s militias and mobilising the masses to defeat the fascist assault. By Lucha de Clases
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
Petroleum Broadcast Service (PBS): Gloriflies Devos: PBS Runs A Three-Hour Series Glorifying The DeVos Education Agenda Funded by conservative foundations devoted to privatization, this program is the definition of paid propaganda. Public education today faces an existential crisis. Over the past two decades, the movement to transfer public money to private organizations has expanded rapidly. The George W. Bush administration first wrote into federal law the proposal that privately managed charter schools were a remedy for low-scoring public schools, even though no such evidence existed. The Obama administration provided hundreds of millions each year to charter schools, under the control of private boards. Now, the Trump administration, under the leadership of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, wants to expand privatization to include vouchers, virtual schools, cyberschools, homeschooling, and every other possible alternative to public education. DeVos has said that public education is a “dead end,” and that “government sucks.” By Diane Ravitch
Trump’s Dangerous Economic Nationalism (America First)
Quotes of the Day: