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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 sad fact is that all of these future deaths from cancer and other diseases could have been prevented if the Environmental Protection Agency had lived up to its name. In actuality, the EPA continues to be primarily concerned with protecting the profits of the construction companies that produce buildings made of carcinogenic materials rather than its presumed reason for existence. Cancers from these known carcinogenic particles that were released by the WTC Towers implosion take 20 to thirty years to develop. And in addition to the cancer epidemic that will erupt in New York City in the next few decades, a significant proportion of the tens of thousands of construction workers, like myself (I am a retired painter and work-related cancer victim), will continue to suffer the consequences of our exposure to carcinogenic materials. In my view, this failure of the construction industry and the EPA to do the job it is ostensibly paid to do, is an act no less criminal than any other murder-for-profit crime. — 9-11 World Trade Center Dust Cloud: How Many Will Die!
It is often said that Donald Trump is a confidence artist, a snake-oil salesman, a fraudster. The truth is much more disturbing. The U.S. president is a Ponzi scheme unto himself. He has gotten many hardworking people to invest their hopes and dreams in him. But he has also attracted the support of the more calculating kind, those who smell an easy profit. These Trump supporters know that he is a scam (and will admit so at unguarded moments). But that hasn’t stopped them from getting in on the action, as quickly as possible, before the Trumpian pyramid begins to crumble. —When the President is a Ponzi Scheme
Videos of the Day:
Equifax Data Breach is a 10 out of 10 Scandal The hacking of consumer credit reporting giant Equifax, and the company’s ‘cynical’ handling of it, is a far-reaching disaster that borders on criminal, says financial regulation expert Bill Black
Real Media: Biggest Arms Deal in History As the world’s largest arms fair gets underway in London, author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, Andrew Feinstein talks to Real Media about corruption and justification of arms deals
Activists Try to Stop Massive Arms Fair in London In London, activists have staged a week of protest against the Defense and Security Equipment International, DSEI, one of the world’s largest arms fairs
US Pharma Industry Converts Monopoly Power into Political Power An Ohio ballot initiative aims to lower prescription drug prices, but the pharmaceutical industry is circumventing campaign finance laws according to an investigation. Economics professor Lawrence King explains how the pharma industry converts intellectual property rights into inordinate profits and uses these for political power to maintain its privileged position
U.S.:
Taking Aim at Wikileaks Various scribbles have started to pepper the conversation started by the adventurous Mike Pompeo after he branded WikiLeaks a hostile intelligence agency before the Center for Strategic and International Studies. (This would have generated a wry smile of content from Julian Assange.) by Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Weapons, Natural Disasters, Bullies and Your Doctor The world watches as the natural disasters of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and the earthquake off Mexico wreak their devastation, waiting for their final tolls of death, destruction and devastation. Yet on a daily basis the world faces a far greater manmade threat, that of nuclear war, as tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, the U.S., its NATO Allies and Russia over Ukraine and Syria, and between India and Pakistan play out. The actuality of nuclear war which has grown since the Cold War, would dwarf the devastation of these natural disasters, potentially bringing about the extinction of humans. Even a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan, who are always on a war alert, using half of their arsenals, about ½ percent of the global nuclear arsenals, could kill up to two billion people, or a third of the world’s population, from the dramatic global climate change that would follow. by Robert Dodge
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Environmental Racism: When Texas’ Most Toxic Sites Flooded These Are the Communities that Suffered Most — The EPA’s response only made matters worse. In August, Hurricane Harvey made landfall in southeast Texas as a Category 4 storm, bringing with it catastrophic winds and 33 trillion gallons of rain, which caused deadly flooding in the Gulf Coast region of the state and around the Houston area. The record breaking rainfall also brought another problem: Toxic pollutants in vulnerable communities. There are 82 Superfund sites—EPA-designated areas that have been polluted with toxic waste and chemicals—in 13 counties affected by Harvey. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation organization, 73 percent of those sites are located in communities that are predominantly low-income or homes to people of color. Of the 16 Harvey-affected Superfund sites reported flooded by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Associated Press, nine are in neighborhoods where the majority of the population is of color, low-income, or both. Residents are worried that flooded sites could spread toxic waste to their homes and neighborhoods.
Environment:
Patrick Cockburn I’ve seen the reality of what happens after disasters like Irma Because of an over-focus on empty gestures and a queasiness about money, the response to natural disasters in the US is all too often inadequate. The army and the National Guard are on standby in South Florida — but if Hurricane Andrew taught us anything, it’s that they aren’t as much use as you’d think.
Florida Risks More Irma Devastation Because Gov. Rick Scott Defunded Wetlands Agency Governor Rick Scott supported development instead of proptecting the wetlands that would help absorb a the impact of a storm like Hurricane Irema.
In a Summer of Wildfires and Hurricanes, My Son Asks “Why Is Everything Going Wrong?” The newsroom from the natural world these days is mostly about water, and understandably so. . . . for large parts of North America, Europe, and Africa, this summer has not been about water at all. In fact it has been about its absence; it’s been about land so dry and heat so oppressive that forested mountains exploded into smoke like volcanoes. It’s been about fires fierce enough to jump the Columbia River; fast enough to light up the outskirts of Los Angeles like an invading army; and pervasive enough to threaten natural treasures, like the , tallest and most ancient sequoia trees and Glacier National Park. By Naomi Klein 
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Labor:
Economy: 
Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Harvey and Irma: It’s Time for the Public to Reclaim the National Budget After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and Super Storm Sandy, most rational nations would have imposed restrictions on coastal building and devoted meaningful portions of the national treasury to fund scientific research to limit future loss of life and economic hardships from such monster storms. And yet, here we are in 2017 facing the current reality: vast swaths of a major economic hub, Houston, lies in ruins from the flooding unleashed by Hurricane Harvey while the entire State of Florida awoke this morning to the chaos unleashed yesterday and overnight by the bizarre 415 mile-wide Hurricane Irma, with a reported 4.5 million homes and businesses currently without power in Florida, a state where temperatures routinely reach into the 90s in September and air conditioning is a necessity, not a luxury. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Irma: Cuba sends hundreds of doctors to Caribbean islands devastated by hurricane More than 750 health workers arrive in Antigua, Barbuda, Saint Kitts, Nevis, Saint Lucia, the Bahamas, Dominica and Haiti By Shehab Khan
Stormy Weather In Capitalism: A Ghost Story, 2015, Arundhati Roy writes, “the middle class in India live side-by-side with spirits of the nether world, the poltergeist of dead rivers, dry wells, bald mountains and denuded forests; the ghosts of 250,000 debt ridden farmers who have killed themselves, and of the 800 million who have been impoverished and dispossessed to make way for them”. by John Davis
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
From the WTC to the Freedom Tower: an Architecture of Doom and Dread Over the course of 12 years, the cost of the Freedom Tower rose much faster than the building itself. By the end of the summer, when the finishing touches were being applied to the interior, the price tag had escalated to nearly $4 billion, with about a quarter of the cost coming from the killing that real estate mogul Larry Silverstein had made from insurers and reinsurers following the destruction of the WTC complex. Nowhere along the line did anyone in power seem to consider that those billions might be more efficasciously spent aiding the thousands of people still suffering cancers and lung diseases from the airborne toxins that shrouded the city following the collapse of the Twin Towers or assisting the tens of thousands of working class New Yorkers displaced from lower Manhattan by the takeover of the one-percenters and their political hacks. by Jeffrey St. Clair 
9-11 World Trade Center Dust Cloud: How Many Will Die! The “dustification” and the implosion of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers sent clouds of carcinogenic dust across New York City. By Roland Sheppard
Movie Review: 9-11 Dust and Deceit at the WTC : From the website: “This disturbing film by Penny Little “911: Dust and Deceit at the WTC” exposes the environmental disaster of 9/11 through interviews with scientists, waste management specialists, government workers, volunteers, the heros and victims of the dust which permeated the air after 911. By Roland Sheppard
Since the Dawning of the Atomic Age to 1970 Background Radiation has Increased Over 600%! Background Radiation Has Increased 600 Percent – 1 mSv In 1950 To over 6 mSv Today; Where Is This Coming From? Physicist Dr. Paolo Scampa And Dr Busby Weigh In On The Evidence And Root Causes Background Radiation Has Increased 600 Percent – 1 mSv In 1950 To over 6 mSv Today; Where Is This Coming From? Physicist Dr. Paolo Scampa And Dr Busby Weigh In On The Evidence And Root Causes “Eisenbud points out that the world Inventory of radioactive materials prior to World War II, both In the environment and in the laboratory, was confined to those which occurred in nature, with the exception of a relatively few millicuries of radioactivity produced in cyclotrons during the late 1930’s. Construction of large nuclear reactors during the war and the associated operations for extracting plutonium from irradiated uranium resulted in the first extensive occasions for contaminating the environment with radioactive substances.”
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