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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:
Morgan Freeman is used to playing God, and in lesser roles, president of the United States. These days, however, Freeman has sold his image and aura to the worst warmongers on the planet. Morgan Freeman has signed on as a front man and propagandist for an all-out military confrontation with Russia, the only country that has the power to turn the United States into a burned out cinder. In a video that Freeman’s right-wing friends are circulating on social media, the actor declares that a new world war has already begun. “Russia is waging war on the U.S. ,” says the text of a video, produced by the so-called Committee to Investigate Russia. Morgan Freeman then intones, “We have been attacked. We are at war.” He spins an infantile 1950s-type demonization of Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, for supposedly using “cyber warfare to attack democracies around the world.” At this point, we discover that the man who plays God on film is, in real life, just an old time, shuffling Uncle Tom, the kind of shameless bootlicker that we hoped had gone extinct. Morgan Freeman says of the United States, “for 241 years our democracy has been a shining example to the world.” Freeman’s slave ancestors must be cursing his name from the grave. A sudden, early grave awaits us all, if Morgan Freeman’s script-writers have their way. The least dangerous member of the board of the Committee to Investigate Russia is Rob Reiner, the actor and director who used to play the “meathead” on TV’s “All in the Family.” His political family is Zionism. Reiner wants to “eliminate” Hamas , the Palestinian political organization, and charges that Donald Trump’s rich Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner , has “turned his back on his religion.” But Reiner is just the media connection, like Morgan Freeman, himself. “The man who plays God on film is, in real life, just an old time, shuffling Uncle Tom, the kind of shameless bootlicker that we hoped had gone extinct..” — Glen Ford, Morgan Freeman: War Whore
Videos of the Day:
Trump’s Tax Giveaway to the Rich Won’t Boost Economy Donald Trump’s tax plan lowers highest income tax bracket and the corporate tax rate and eliminates the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, all of which will massively benefit him and his rich friends, explains CEPR’s Dean Baker
Trump Sees Devastated Puerto Rico as Captive Market Refusing to waive shipping restrictions and stressing Wall Street debt obligations, President Trump continues a colonial legacy that hampers Puerto Rico’s recovery, says scholar Marisol LeBron
U.S.:
Big winner under Trump’s tax plan for ‘everyday Americans’: Donald J Trump The president has claimed he won’t benefit from the White House plan to cut taxes for ‘hardworking Americans’. Here’s what’s wrong with that assertion Donald Trump has outlined plans for the biggest overhaul of the US tax system since the Ronald Reagan era. The cuts were aimed at “everyday hardworking Americans”, Trump told the crowd in Indiana on Wednesday. But even a cursory look at the still developing plan shows the biggest beneficiary is likely to be … Donald Trump. Here’s why. By Dominic Rushe
Celtics legend Bill Russell takes a knee while wearing Presidential Medal of Freedom By Avery Anapol
Irma and María: Shedding Light on Puerto Rico’s Colonial Reality But Puerto Rico is no stranger to crisis. Before Irma’s and María’s devastating pitstops in the Archipelago, Puerto Rico was (and still is, even more so now) undergoing one of the most detrimental financial and socio-political crises of its contemporary history. With an unaudited $74 billion debt under its belt, and $49 billion in pension obligations, with decades of illegal bond issuances and trades and an overly-advertised tax haven, Puerto Rico was/is almost literally drowning. Neoliberal policies, such as draconian budget cuts and extreme austerity measures, have been in the works towards the precarization of Puerto Rican livelihood. Governor Rosselló, an unelected and antidemocratic Fiscal Control Board, and Judge Laura Taylor Swain are all trying to oversee and command Puerto Rico simultaneously, going back and forth on the Archipelago’s fiscal management and debt restructuring processes. by Ana Portnoy
Watch: America’s Mobster President — New Evidence in Dutch Public TV Documentary of Trump’s International Money Laundering Circles The follow-the-money film reveals connections between Trump associates and an alleged multibillion-dollar fraud. By Steven Rosenfeld ((The documentary was produced based on a three-month collaboration between Zembla, The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)—known for the Panama Papers, and McClatchy newspaper’s Washington bureau (including Kevin Hall, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the Panama papers.))
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Remember this about Donald Trump. He knows the depths of American bigotry Two Sundays ago, after a night of tense confrontations, police in St Louis trooped through the city chanting: “Whose streets? Our streets.” They were mocking marchers protesting at the acquittal of a former police officer, who had fatally shot a black man after a high-speed pursuit. This in the city just a few miles away from Ferguson, where Michael Brown was shot dead in the middle of the day in 2014. By Gary Younge
Bernie Sanders Can’t Shake His Imperial Piggishness Sanders revealed his own swinish predilections in Westminster.” Donald Trump’s performance last week at the UN General Assembly set the rhetorical bar for U.S. imperial piggery at a 21st century low — although Hillary “We came, we saw, he died” Clinton is surely his equal in moral depravity. At about the same time that Trump was threatening to incinerate a whole nation of people, Bernie Sanders attempted to fill in the vast holes in his own foreign policy profile, in a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, the same venue where Winston Churchill, the 20th century’s prototypical western imperial pig politician, delivered his Cold War-initiating “Iron Curtain descending on Europe” speech in 1946. This is deep swine territory, and Sanders could not help but wallow in it. By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
Irma (and the 8 questions) Raymond Nat Turner Maybe Irma’s a
yellow Caterpillar already Bulldozing our belongings— A drone striking our homes with Hellfire Missiles,Reducing them to dust? By BAR poet-in-residence Raymond Nat Turner,
Environment:
In the Era of Climate Change, Militarized Borders Reinforce an Unjust World Order More and more people across the world are forced to relocate due to climate change, and the business of building stronger borders to contain them is booming. Todd Miller reports from flashpoints of climate clashes and likely sites of future battles around the world, revealing the heavily militarized gap not just between rich and poor but between the environmentally secure and the environmentally exposed. By Todd Miller
Sixth mass extinction of wildlife also threatens global food supplies Plant and animal species that are the foundation of our food supplies are as endangered as wildlife but get almost no attention, a new report reveals By Damian Carrington
‘Alarm bells we cannot ignore’: world hunger rising for first time this century UN agencies warn conflict and climate change are undermining food security, causing chronic undernourishment and threatening to reverse years of progress By Karen McVeigh
For Snubbing Glyphosate Hearing, EU Parliament Bans Monsanto Lobbyists “Those who escape democratic accountability must be excluded from access to lobbying.” Monsanto lobbyists were officially barred by the European Parliament on Thursday after refusing requests to participate in hearings about the U.S. corporation’s efforts to influence regulations of its controversial glyphosate within the 28-nation bloc. The ban was announced by the parliament’s presidential council under rules designed to combat misbehavior by those lobbying the EU’s lawmaking body. By Jon Queally
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Labor:
Federal Railroad Administration Nominee Plans to Push Rail Industry to Self-Regulate Ronald Batory — President Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) — will be pushing for the controversial self-regulatory approach to safety known as “performance-based regulations,” according to his July 26 statement for the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Shifting toward this self-regulatory approach could have major implications for the safety of trains carrying potentially dangerous cargo, including oil and ethanol. By Justin Mikulka 
Economy:
‘What a Rigged Economy Looks Like’: Top Financial Times Columnist Skewers Wall Street Model in the New York Times Rana Foroohar, an Associate Editor and Global Business Columnist for the Financial Times, penned an OpEd at the New York Times yesterday that was as audacious in its insults to the Times’ richest hometown industry, Wall Street, as it was brilliantly in touch with the abject dysfunction of the U.S. financial system. Foroohar’s thesis is this: “…there’s a core truth about our financial system that we have yet to comprehend fully: It isn’t serving us, we’re serving it.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Catalonia: situation heating up as day of referendum approaches The student strike will continue today and the universities will join it. The slogan is to occupy the schools during the strike and keep them open, in close collaboration with the local community and working class through the defence committees. The latter have been growing all over Catalonia, and now they no longer just organise pickets and propaganda teams but are preparing the actual logistics of the referendum, faced with the paralysis of the Generalitat: to keep the polling centres open, bring in the urns and the ballots, fend off the police, etc. By Arturo Rodriguez in Barcelona
Shredding ‘Failed Dogmas of Neoliberalism,’ Corbyn Charts Bold New Vision for UK The British Labour leader also slammed Tories’ austerity agenda and Prime Minister Theresa May’s “disdain for the powerless and the poor” In a rousing speech at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Brighton, England on Wednesday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn took aim at the “callous and calculating” austerity agenda of Prime Minister Theresa May, slammed the “failed dogmas of neoliberalism” that produced the deadly Grenfell Tower fire, and argued that his party—bolstered by its ambitious “for the many, not the few” Manifesto—is now at the “threshold of power.” by Jake Johnson
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
They Are Laughing at the 99% 
Quote of the Day:
