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May 1, 2017
May 1st – International Labor Day
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Trump: I could meet Kim jong un
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-01/trump-says-he-d-meet-with-north-korea-s-kim-if-situation-s-right?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
Serious or just tactic?
Posted by: Anon | May 1 2017 18:24 utc | 2
Posted by: Anon | May 1, 2017 2:24:04 PM | 2
Serious or just tactic?
Well I guess Trump realized that the most effective weapon in his arsenal is his pastry chef.
Posted by: hopehely | May 1 2017 18:56 utc | 4
Maybe the most fulfilling thought on 1 May 2017 is that all those degreed neoliberal economists can be replaced by an algorithm and once that is done, the machine be unplugged.
Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | May 1 2017 19:09 utc | 5
54 years on and the Propaganda System is still hard at work covering up JFK’s assassination as this item at The Indicter exposes, http://theindicter.com/time-magazine-history-channel-ramp-up-oswald-jfk-fake-news/
Key excerpt:
“The specifics here are worth examining because they help illustrate how Time, its corporate affiliates like CNN, and most other mainstream media deliberately confuse the public on the most vital public affairs issues in collaboration with intelligence agencies even as they claim to oppose “fake news” and alternative media. In JFK Declassified: Fallback to the Original Phase One Cover Story, longtime JFK researcher William Kelly provided this review: “The much-ballyhooed History channel six-part “documentary,” JFK Declassified, is a slick but unconvincing piece of propaganda, a classic case of disinformation that mixes some truth with total falsehoods to promote the original Phase One cover-story for the Dealey Plaza Operation: that the Cuban Castro Communists were behind it.””
Posted by: karlof1 | May 1 2017 19:12 utc | 6
@4 Well Kim won’t be going to the US and Trump won’t go to NK. So where could a meeting happen? China?
Posted by: dh | May 1 2017 19:43 utc | 7
Stand up all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might
Don’t cling so hard to your possessions
For you have nothing if you have no rights
Let racist ignorance be ended
For respect makes the empires fall
Freedom is merely privilege extended
Unless enjoyed by one and all
So come brothers and sisters
For the struggle carries on
The internationale
Unites the world in song
So comrades come rally
For this is the time and place
The international ideal
Unites the human race
Posted by: chet380 | May 1 2017 20:00 utc | 8
Posted by: Anon | May 1, 2017 2:24:04 PM | 2 and #7
Maybe he wants to build a trump tower and country club there. Cheap land and dam near free labor;)
Posted by: jo6pac | May 1 2017 20:45 utc | 10
Presentation on Syria by author Stephen Gowans. Worth a listen.
https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2017/05/01/stephen-gowans-launches-his-new-book-washingtons-long-war-on-syria/
Posted by: Stephen | May 1 2017 21:22 utc | 11
American Everyman on April 27: “German Soldier Caught Setting Up False Flag Gladio Attack in Germany.” (While his superiors pretend not to know about his lengthy absences.)
Sorry, this computer won’t allow me to give you the direct link.
Posted by: Penelope | May 1 2017 22:18 utc | 12
See the losers, celebrating an always-failing socio-economic system!
Pathetic.
Posted by: Desertrat | May 1 2017 22:37 utc | 13
Unions are still at a low point thanks to the gutting of US mfg decades ago. And yet many decades ago they fought against police and corporate thugs. It looks like the American worker lost the battle and the war.
Posted by: Curtis | May 1 2017 22:49 utc | 14
Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few!”[3]
Posted by: boindub | May 1 2017 22:50 utc | 15
Let Union Leader moles convince you to surrender your collective bargaining rights, then actually surrender your collective bargaining rights – that’ll show ’em.
They destroyed labor, then they stole their pensions. Now they’re coming after our social security.
Posted by: fast freddy | May 1 2017 23:15 utc | 16
well it is not as if the msm has been a strong advocate for much other then the walmarts of the world that want to ensure minimum wages at all costs… but hey – if it seems like fun to play with the same kicking ball the corporations and msm has fun kicking – go for it, lol… i wouldn’t expect for some folks to break out of that rut!
Posted by: james | May 1 2017 23:24 utc | 17
james 17
I’ve sometimes wondered if WalMart were a model of socialism since it tends to exert control over wages in the US as elsewhere in order to assure profits of the very few at the top. This control also extends to manufacturing sources, the supply chain, and sales. It is control at every step of the way.
Posted by: Curtis | May 2 2017 0:17 utc | 18
Re: Posted by: Anon | May 1, 2017 2:24:04 PM | 2
He’s being real. With a new South Korean President coming this might happen sooner than you might think.
@20 curtis.. i never thought of it that way.. perhaps always living in canada, i never had this hostility towards socialism, but then yeah – that is some weird form of socialism if walmart is involved!
mostly i can think of walmart and mcdonalds as two corporations hell bent on not allowing unionization.. slave labour or (1 step up from child labour in the case of mcd’s) seems to be their thing! i’d take joining a union over that myself.. people are funny.. sometimes they have no clue what they are or aren’t supporting indirectly..
Posted by: james | May 2 2017 0:43 utc | 20
Trump, Putin To Speak In Phone Call On Tuesday
by Tyler Durden
May 1, 2017 10:38 PM
World Cash Day May 1, 2017 10:47 PM
Putin: “What can we do this week to make sure Ms. Le Pen wins?”
Trump: “Another terrorist attack by some Islamic crazies maybe?”
Putin: “Champs Elysee?”
Trump: “Righto. I’ll get my boys onto it quick-smart.”
Putin: “Haha, Angie’s going to hate this!”
Trump: “I know! Isn’t it going to be great!”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-01/trump-putin-speak-phone-call-tuesday
I have always been working class. I recall growing up that there was a very real kind of sanity that pulsed through that class – maybe we thought of it as common sense.
I love the working poor. They are the people who sustain the rich, through their inherent gentleness that allows the rich to steal all the wealth of the world’s bounty, without the ordinary working poor being able to generate the aggression required to fight back.
Except in groups. Except en masse. And then we see some very scared rich people. Then we see the professional representatives of the working poor come and co-opt the groups into safe and harmless compliance with order. The Democratic Party in the US comes to mind quite readily. I’m sure examples from around the world can be found.
Fuck ’em. On this day of all days, I can say that. Fuck the rich. Thieves, every one of them.
Meanwhile in Moscow, as one commentator says, we see “what a unified and civilized country looks like” with 1.5 million people on the street peacefully, together, joyfully, and without incident or emergency. As TASS reports: 1.5 mln people hit the streets in Moscow to mark May Day
Posted by: Grieved | May 2 2017 3:13 utc | 22
@22
And on reflection I came back to add that the quality of those groups was simply that they were organized. Power comes from organizing. It’s this simple. Simply organize, and power will manifest as of right.
For example, and by contrast, this comment thread has much potency but no power, because it isn’t organized in the way that groups are, namely, in terms of direct social action. Here is a learning place, a discussion place, an excellent place, and maybe the breeding ground of revolutionaries but not the barricade itself, not the field of battle. (I enjoy the peace here.)
So on this day of all days, I wanted to pass along this knowledge, that power comes simply from organizing. If you wish to achieve something in your world, simply organize. You’ll have power simply from this.
Posted by: Grieved | May 2 2017 3:45 utc | 23
@23 grieved
amen, brother grieved. there are more than 175,000 cells to organize in the us of a … they’re called voting precincts. averaging one to two thousand souls in each. when we’ve organized ourselves in everyone of those we’ll own our country. our country. the country of the people living within its borders. the country of the sovereign american people. just a question of putting one foot in front of the other and walking ourselves back home.
Posted by: jfl | May 2 2017 5:55 utc | 24
Here in the U$A, May day means almost nothing. The citizens aren’t aware enough to pound sand into a rat hole. The media peddles the corporate rant while millions stare into a 5 by 7 inch screen called an I phone. 24/7 of input, without a self generated thought.
If the world is to be saved, it’ll have to come from some other part of the globe other than this herd of sheep.
“It’s just business”
Posted by: ben | May 2 2017 5:57 utc | 25
International labor day is on May1 to commemorate the Haymarket Square massacre of striking rail road workers in Chicago. The always reactionary AFL lobbied that the American labor day be in September because they considered May1 a Socialist holiday. Hard to imagine that the militancy of American workers inspired the Internationale.
Posted by: ToivoS | May 2 2017 6:27 utc | 26
@2,7,19
Trump is not meeting with Kim anywhere except in a parallel delusional universe!
This is bullshit Trump-speak. The only noteworthy part of the statement that reveals what he’s up to is “IF”…the circumstances are right. IF it’s under the right circumstances; IF it’s appropriate.
In other words, IF Kim does away with his nukes and ballistic missiles and every other little thing Trump desires, he’ll be honoured.
It’ll rain in hell first before Kim gives up his only insurance. Kim had the mere scent of treason eliminated even within his closest entourage; and he’s gonna step right into a Trump quid pro quo trap? Fat chance.
Posted by: Circe | May 2 2017 6:39 utc | 27
An excerpt I, posted elsewhere on May 1, st.
A socialist understanding of what May Day means:
We must understand that May Day is not about phony liberal Identity politics attached to immigrants or women, LGBT, animal rights etc.,. It is all about pure class politics of working and poor people struggle against greed and opulence of US and global ruling oligarchy.
May day is a day of all working people i.e. those whose 99% of income is a “wage earned income” not income from investments or rents. In other words it is a day of those who work for living regardless of color creed or anything else.
This is the day of humanity, all humans who decided to retain their humanity often under tremendous mental and physical oppression.
Since May Day is sadly ignored by most, wrongly called progressive blogs I will dare to give few pointers of for those who self-describe as socialists or even progressives, in some part based on Hedges writing for over a decade.
There cannot be true mainstream political movements without presence of sound political radicalism especially completely missing today radicalism on the left. The control over the population, the ruling class has a grip upon, is first of all mental, setting up difficult or impossible to fight mental and propaganda frame built of Orwellian style hijacked language terms and corrupted meaning of socialism and communism.
On May Day we have to reflect on mental chains around our minds that enslave us and makes us accept war, horrendous brutality, pillaging and massive theft of national treasure by oligarchic pigs as suppose price of progress or some other absurd concocted by propaganda.
True socialists must understand that we are not really fighting to increase wages, benefits pensions, healthcare cleans water, land etc., we are fighting to eradicate oligarchy and destroy the imperial regime created by oligarchy for their own sick delusional benefit driven by their liberal philosophy and to detriment and genocide to the rest of us as well as our life giving environment.
So what are we fighting for on this May Day?
Only R. Luxemburg correctly understood Marx and that Marxian revolution is not about taking power and using it for good of “working class” as Lenin posited, but taking power away from murderous oligarchy and destroying its foundations and institutions that implemented them and that includes getting rid of propaganda of Machiavellian body politics, while creating new self-governance from the scratch based on transformed socialist class consciousness rejecting capitalist consciousness of liberalism, individualism and individual freedoms that correctly should be called class division, conflicting/atomization and abandonment respectively.
We must realize that any money and privilege given away by oligarchic ruling elite is aimed solely to divide us and any our supposed gain with be paid handsomely by some other fellow victim of this abhorrent regime, somewhere and somehow making us accomplices to a crime, which is to even listen to the oligarchic pigs instead of eradicate them from political landscape.
We must reject begging and submission to the power of usurpers.
One of the symptoms of the submission is pushing down throats of working Americans fallacy of a Labor Day, a shameful, insult to American working class who are denied yearly demonstration of their power and successful legacy of sweat and blood for young generations to see and celebrate their ancestors courage and moral superiority.
The celebrating American “Labor Day” is like celebrating Slavery Day. It is an insults to thousands of American workers and they families brutally killed, hundreds of thousands injures and millions sentenced to a slow death on the margins of society by the so-called “American Democracy” protected by the American militarism used, as gen. Butler said, solely in the defense of American Oligarchic class and their cronies.
Tens of thousands of gallons of blood spilled by the working people viciously attacked by the thugs hired by the ruling elite, only because they demanded their dignity as human beings, earned them, their own proud and unique in the world “American Day of Labor Struggle; a MAY DAY”.
Do not let anyone to tell you otherwise. The MAY DAY is a purely American day adopted by the workers’ movements all over the world as UN sanctioned International Workers Day” and cruelly and deliberately denied at home for sole purpose of wiping out from working class conscientiousness its great and successful legacy Chris spent a lot of tame to bring back into young people conscience.
Americans must know that American workers’ struggle was one of those few things that really made America great, not wars or black/native Americans genocide, not skyscraping castles of vanity and moral decay, or banking or transportation systems of theft, exploitation and death, all belonging to oligarchs but actually built by blood, sweat and tears of ordinary American working people and should belong to them as American commons.
Only working people i.e. simply people who work for living could ever make America great, not those banksters, insane entrepreneur wanna bees’ and their psychotic delusion of grandeur, or half-bred political weasels including even those lesser evils like FDR or JFK who were preoccupied with saving capitalist pigs using tones of cheap lipstick.
The MAY DAY we should celebrate together with worker’s families all over the world, immigrants or not, every one who work with their hands and brains producing overall socially beneficial products or outcomes and that excludes tools of war and oppression.
We should adopt May Day as a day of awaking against small or big, local or global ruling elites, does not matter who they are and does not matter where the front lines may be located, at home, at school, Church, at work, at the store or governmental agency.
Let’s May Day be a day of repudiation and rejection of a mental and physical slavery and acquiescence to the rampant greed and exploitation.
Let’s May Day be a day of repudiation and rejection of war and violence in all shapes and forms anywhere domestic and international, unequivocally and universally as having no place among humanity and no role but pain, suffering and division of working class dying in oligarchic wars.
Let’s May Day be a day of rejection of a political fakery and deceit of the controlled opposition or teachings of the liberal class of intellectual submission that breeds chaos of anti-intellectualism.
Let’s May Day be a day of declaration of our most sacred values of family, community and hard work; unalienable rights to life and subsistence of all humanity as well as our unwavering commitment to direct action against systemic institutions of apartheid and murder run by oligarchic regimes in the US and elsewhere.
Let’s May Day be a day of unity of all humanity and rejection of hatred and all Identity Politics divisions that ruling elites incessantly continue to instill within the human society in order to enslave and destroy it.
Let’s May Day be a day of message to all those who sold their souls to oligarchic elites for a silver coin and creature comforts and under their orders hurt or mistreated fellow human beings. When judgment day comes they all will be forgiven but will be asked to correct injustice they’ve done and/or to pay for their deeds as human ethics requires.
Let’s May Day be a day of beginning of honest debate about completely new system of societal organization and working people self-governance devoid of moneyed capital, secrecy, extortion, coercion, brutality and conspiracy against the very people who hold the only sovereign power.
Happy May Day America and the World.
Posted by: Kalen | May 2 2017 8:21 utc | 28
Grieved says:
Power comes from organizing. It’s this simple. Simply organize, and power will manifest as of right
more oblique platitudes mr. grieved? perhaps you could take the next baby step and elaborate a little? are you organized mr. grieved? has power manifested? please, share the particulars.
jfl says:
just a question of putting one foot in front of the other and walking ourselves back home
and this is your idea of direct advocacy, mr. lee? does sounds pretty simple…even simpler than just voting for Jill Stein.
…
understand that i wouldn’t take issue over this kind of nonsense gratuitously, not just because it’s annoying, salvaging our existential plight by dispensing meaningless feel-good soundbites,
but because it’s fucking offensive!
Posted by: john | May 2 2017 11:07 utc | 29
@Curtis 18
That’s pretty much the definition of ‘capitalism’, actually. The system has an in-built tendency towards monopolies which aim to dominate markets and prices.
Posted by: smuks | May 2 2017 11:50 utc | 30
If there is ever any justice in America, May 1st will become a holiday where Communists and leftists are rounded up and thrown out of helicopters. May 1st should be a day where if you know an antifa, you’re allowed to do anything you want to them with no consequences to yourself. Communists, leftists and antifa are enemies of humanity and they have no right to exist.
Posted by: Pareto | May 2 2017 12:47 utc | 32
I am reminded of this little gem of wisdom. Labour produces all wealth and the vaunted surplus called capital. The “ism” just determines who gets paid by appropriating the surplus.
@33 True but if labour just produces then the stuff goes nowhere. Somebody has to do the packaging, marketing, transporting and retailing.
Posted by: dh | May 2 2017 13:41 utc | 34
White Helmets may be preparing to earn another false flag paycheck:
“New Developments Suggest Potential False Flag Coming In Syria”
http://tinyurl.com/ljc89wq
I’ve sometimes wondered if WalMart were a model of socialism since it tends to exert control over wages in the US as elsewhere in order to assure profits of the very few at the top. This control also extends to manufacturing sources, the supply chain, and sales. It is control at every step of the way. Curtis at 18.
More or less so, yes… – though *not* a model of socialism, = a joke?
Many in the ‘W’, ‘developed’ or ‘rich’ countries, one sees, low to the deep-pits of non-livable wages doled out by, typically, Walmart, many others as well, to keep these workers alive, their take, aka living standards, upped, by the State, in the form of various Gvmt. aids given to the poor.
— In the US, opaque and complex, discriminatory — Medicaid, ObamaCare, WIC, Section 8 housing, tax credit, free lunch for kiddies, and about 400 varied.. potential ‘aids’ progs..recipient if you have clean hands… —
On the face of it, the tax-payer supports via redistribution the ‘poor, unqualified’ employee, the disabled / suffering / kiddies, which clarions nobly altruist, or ‘leftist’ .. but in fact, the tax-payer (via Gvmt.) supports the shareholders of Big Biz, the high-up profit makers, by keeping quasi-slave labor alive so that Walmart need not pay proper wages and can make ++ profits distributed to the already rich. (Walmart just one ex. and maybe not the best but it is much discussed.) Prison labor (US) another ex.
Posted by: Noir22 | May 3 2017 18:12 utc | 36
Le Pen and Fake News Attack in Debate
The Macron campaign identified the first tweet referring to the documents as coming from the Twitter account of a far-right activist and convicted felon based in northern California.
The Macron campaign identified the first tweet referring to the documents as coming from the Twitter account of Nathan Damigo, a far-right activist and convicted felon based in northern California. Damigo is known on social media for punching a female anti-fascist in the face at a Berkeley protest.
From my diary …
France Election: Fake News As It Happened
Originated online in California, just before the 2.5 hour debate between Le Pen and Macron.
Yes, But if you are looking where to advertise your business online, I have an online to tool to introduce, the iConnect10 Classified Ads – wherein you can build your business, and get paid!!
Posted by: Lex Mark Clavaton | May 16 2017 14:28 utc | 39