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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!
Puerto Rico Goes Dark After its Power is Stripped Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc on Puerto Rico, but massive debt and a crumbling infrastructure put the island in crisis long before the storm, says Monxo Lopez, a professor at Hunter College
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The communist leader made the statement today to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. The move could help restart Six Party nuclear disarmament talks. North Korea is prepared to impose a moratorium on the production and testing of nuclear weapons, the country’s leader Kim Jong-il told Russian president Dmitry Medvedev today, in a move that could help pave the way for a resumption of stalled nuclear disarmament talks. The promise of a moratorium came during a summit meeting between Mr Kim, 69, and Mr Medvedev, who flew nearly 3,500 miles across Russia to a Siberian military base to hold the first meeting between the former Cold War allies for nearly a decade. Reporting on the summit, a spokeswoman for Mr Medvedev said Mr Kim was ready to resume talks that stalled in 2009 without preconditions. The spokesman stated that “in the course of the talks North Korea will be ready to resolve the question of imposing a moratorium on tests and production of nuclear missile weapons.” The North Korean regime has been in diplomatic and economic isolation since March 2009 when it conducted a second nuclear weapons test; an isolation that deepened last year after the alleged torpedoing of a South Korean warship and the shelling of a South Korean island. — The communist leader made the statement today to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. The move could help restart Six Party nuclear disarmament talks. North Korea is prepared to impose a moratorium on the production and testing of nuclear weapons, the country’s leader Kim Jong-il told Russian president Dmitry Medvedev today, in a move that could help pave the way for a resumption of stalled nuclear disarmament talks. The promise of a moratorium came during a summit meeting between Mr Kim, 69, and Mr Medvedev, who flew nearly 3,500 miles across Russia to a Siberian military base to hold the first meeting between the former Cold War allies for nearly a decade. Reporting on the summit, a spokeswoman for Mr Medvedev said Mr Kim was ready to resume talks that stalled in 2009 without preconditions. The spokesman stated that “in the course of the talks North Korea will be ready to resolve the question of imposing a moratorium on tests and production of nuclear missile weapons.” The North Korean regime has been in diplomatic and economic isolation since March 2009 when it conducted a second nuclear weapons test; an isolation that deepened last year after the alleged torpedoing of a South Korean warship and the shelling of a South Korean island. — North Korea ‘ready to impose nuclear moratorium’, declares Kim Jong-il
All this will be familiar to those who have observed how the American media and popular culture behemoth has revised and served up the great crime of the second half of the twentieth century: from The Green Berets and The Deer Hunter to Rambo and, in so doing, has legitimized subsequent wars of aggression. The revisionism never stops and the blood never dries. The invader is pitied and purged of guilt, while “searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy.” Cue Bob Dylan: “Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?” I thought about the “decency” and “good faith” when recalling my own first experiences as a young reporter in Vietnam: watching hypnotically as the skin fell off Napalmed peasant children like old parchment, and the ladders of bombs that left trees petrified and festooned with human flesh. General William Westmoreland, the American commander, referred to people as “termites.” In the early 1970s, I went to Quang Ngai province, where in the village of My Lai, between 347 and 500 men, women and infants were murdered by American troops (Burns prefers “killings”). At the time, this was presented as an aberration: an “American tragedy” (Newsweek ). In this one province, it was estimated that 50,000 people had been slaughtered during the era of American “free fire zones.” Mass homicide. This was not news. To the north, in Quang Tri province, more bombs were dropped than in all of Germany during the Second World War. Since 1975, unexploded ordnance has caused more than 40,000 deaths in mostly “South Vietnam,” the country America claimed to “save” and, with France, conceived as a singularly imperial ruse. The “meaning” of the Vietnam war is no different from the meaning of the genocidal campaign against the Native Americans, the colonial massacres in the Philippines, the atomic bombings of Japan, the levelling of every city in North Korea. The aim was described by Colonel Edward Lansdale, the famous CIA man on whom Graham Greene based his central character in The Quiet American. Quoting Robert Taber’s The War of the Flea, Lansdale said, “There is only one means of defeating an insurgent people who will not surrender, and that is extermination. There is only one way to control a territory that harbors resistance, and that is to turn it into a desert.” — John Pilger, The Killing of History
Videos of the Day:
Puerto Rico Goes Dark After its Power is Stripped Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc on Puerto Rico, but massive debt and a crumbling infrastructure put the island in crisis long before the storm, says Monxo Lopez, a professor at Hunter College
U.S.:
Korea? It’s Always Really Been About China! How many citizens have ever asked themselves what the United States is doing in Korea in the first place? In November of 1945, two months after the surrender of Japan, Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall spoke to President Truman and the chief figures of his cabinet about his fears of a “the tragic consequences of a divided China” as Chinese Nationalist forces and Communists resumed their struggle for power and Soviet forces seized control of large areas of Manchuria. The resumption of Soviet power in Manchuria Marshall emphasized would result “in the defeat or loss of the major purpose of our war with Japan (emphasis added).What could the general have meant by such a statement? What WAS the “major purpose” of the Pacific war? Most Americans are taught that the foremost reason the United States went to war with Japan was the attack on Pearl Harbor. But the reality was that the U.S. and Japan had been on a collision course since the 1920s and by 1940, in the midst of the global depression, were locked in a mortal struggle over who would ultimately benefit most from the markets and resources of Greater China and East Asia. by Paul Atwood
The Killing of History In a society often bereft of historical memory and in thrall to the propaganda of its “exceptionalism,” Burns’ “entirely new” Vietnam war is presented as “epic, historic work.” Its lavish advertising campaign promotes its biggest backer, Bank of America, which in 1971 was burned down by students in Santa Barbara, California, as a symbol of the hated war in Vietnam. Burns says he is grateful to “the entire Bank of America family” which “has long supported our country’s veterans.” Bank of America was a corporate prop to an invasion that killed perhaps as many as four million Vietnamese and ravaged and poisoned a once bountiful land. More than 58,000 American soldiers were killed, and around the same number are estimated to have taken their own lives. by John Pilger
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s “Vietnam War”: Some Predictions This Essay is an Experiment How Ken Burns and Lynn Novick became the semi-official film documentarians of United States history is an interesting question. Part of the answer lay in the way they manage to whitewash the criminal record of U.S. imperialism. One example of this came in their 2007 “Public” Broadcasting System (“P”BS) documentary on World War II, where they re-transmitted the myth that Harry Truman atom-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki – killing 146,000 Japanese civilians with two weapons – to “save [U.S.] lives.” Burns and Novick ignored compelling primary source evidence and historical literature showing that top U.S. military and intelligence leaders understood that Japan was defeated and seeking surrender at the end of World War II and that the atom bomb crimes were perpetrated to demonstrate unassailable U.S. power to the world and especially to the Soviet Union in the post-WWII era. by Paul Street 
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
The Iron Heel is an Intricate Part of Capitalist Austerity: St Louis protests: three years since Ferguson, why hasn’t anything changed? Since the police shooting of Mike Brown, there’s been little progress — as was evident in St Louis as police mocked people protesting officer Jason Stockley’s acquittal It’s become a familiar scene in the the city’s metropolitan area, equal parts deja vu and cliche. It’s become a familiar scene in the the city’s metropolitan area, equal parts deja vu and cliche. As if on cue, an hour or so in, the protest was declared unlawful — no reason was immediately given. Threats of arrest and chemical munitions rang over police PA. By Jamiles Lartey
Environment:
Why Hurricanes Harvey and Irma Won’t Lead to Action on Climate Change It’s not easy to hold the nation’s attention for long, but three solid weeks of record-smashing hurricanes directly affecting multiple states and at least 20 million people will do it. Clustered disasters hold our attention in ways that singular events cannot — they open our minds to the possibility that these aren’t just accidents or natural phenomena to be painfully endured. As such, they can provoke debates over the larger “disaster lessons” we should be learning. And I would argue the combination of Harvey and Irma has triggered such a moment. The damages caused by the storms will undoubtedly lead to important lessons in disaster preparation and response. For many, though, the most urgent call for learning has been to acknowledge at long last the connection between climate change and severe weather. Will this cluster of disasters provide the lever that will move climate change in the United States from a “debate” to an action plan? By Scott Gabriel Knowles, Drexel University
Controversial Pesticide Remains Unregulated In Hawaii The chemical dicamba appears to have caused widespread crop damage on the mainland but in Hawaii you can’t even find out whether it’s being used or where By Stewart Yerton
The chemical industry is well aware of the environmental health consequences of its products. The following is from Environmental Illness Briefing Paper published by the Chemical Manufactures Association, Washington, D.C. (1990): … There is no doubt that these patients are ill and deserving of compassion, understanding and expert medical care. However, nationally known experts in the fields of allergy, immunology and internal medicine say the assertion that environmental illness is a legitimate disease is unproven. Elaborate testing of the immune systems of these patients almost always indicates normal immune functions, and they rarely have increased infections. . . .” And only rarely are their symptoms supported by physical findings or laboratory tests. In addition, review of both the methods of diagnosis and treatment used by environmental medicine specialists have shown no convincing evidence that their patients have unique, recognizable symptoms or that their treatment procedures are any more effective than placebo treatment. — Roland Sheppard, “Trade Secrets” Cancer and the Environment (What the Bill Moyers Program “Trade Secrets” Revealed)
Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report is an investigation of the history of the chemical revolution and the companies that drove it – and how companies worked to withhold vital information about the risks from workers, the government, and the public. Journalist Bill Moyers and producer Sherry Jones rely on an archive of documents the public was never meant to see –- documents that reveal the industry’s early knowledge that some chemicals could pose dangers to human health that were not disclosed at the time.
Trump’s pick for chemical safety chief called ‘voice of the chemical industry’ Michael Dourson, president’s nominee for EPA position, founded consultancy in which he was paid to criticize studies questioning safety of clients’ products
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Labor:
Norwegian Labour loses important election Norwegian Labour loses important election On 11 September, Norway held a parliamentary elections. These were the first elections since the collapse of the oil prices, which led to Norway’s first austerity programme since the 2007 crisis. But in spite of the attacks that it had carried out against the working class, the right-wing government was re-elected after the main party of the left failed to provide a credible political alternative. By Andreas Rekkeda
Entire towns in Mexico flattened as scale of earthquake damage emerges Thousands of left homeless in towns and communities outside Mexico City as official rescue and relief efforts struggle to cope with the widespread destruction Read: Mexico earthquake: rescuers keep searching as death toll climbs to 250 – live, Rescuers work to pull children from collapsed school in Mexico City By Nina Lakhani and David Agren in Mexico City
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
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Economy:
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