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 The 1%Who Profit From Austerity! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.
One of Vidal’s explanations of the forces behind the current policies of the US government is the consolidation of wealth through corporate mergers. One result from the “merger mania” of recent decades is the consolidation of the mass media (book publishing, broadcasting, newspapers, etc.) under the control of six giant multinational corporations — Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (201)
Videos of the Day:
Tupac – Keep Ya Head Up … You know it’s funny when it rains it pours, They got money for wars, but can’t feed the poor. Said it ain’t no hope for the youth and the truth is It ain’t no hope for tha future
As the US strives to overthrow the democratic and independent Venezuelan government, the historical record regarding the short, middle and long-term consequences are mixed.We will proceed to examine the consequences and impact of US intervention in Venezuela over the past half century.We will then turn to examine the success and failure of US ‘regime changes’ throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
Corporate Titans Target Venezuela Ruling elites have united behind the Trump administration in its illegal, unjust and brutal attempt to meddle in the internal affairs of Venezuela. Democrats and Republicans alike have fallen in line, revealing the degree to which the two parties march in lock step when the geopolitical prerogatives of the one percent are at stake. By Bruce Lesnick
World 1.5F hotter than average set between 1951 and 1980
Current five-year stretch the warmest since records began
Global temperatures in 2018 were the fourth warmest on record, US government scientists have confirmed, adding to a stretch of five years that are now collectively the hottest period since modern measurements began. The world in 2018 was 1.5F (0.83C) warmer than the average set between 1951 and 1980, said Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). This means 2018’s average global temperatures were the fourth warmest since 1880, placing it behind 2016, 2017 and 2015.
Indian villagers paddle a boat in the flood-affected Morigoan district in July last year. The relentless warming has highlighted the steep challenges faced by governments. Photograph: Biju Boro/AFP/Getty Images
Big Energy:
Louisiana and Isle de Jean Charles Tribe Seek to Resolve Differing Visions for Resettling ‘Climate Refugees’After DeSmog broke the news that the Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe (IDJC) was considering ending its partnership in a $48 million climate change resettlement project, talks have restarted between the Louisiana Office of Community Development (OCD) and the Tribe in an attempt to fix the rift. On January 24, Pat Forbes, executive director of the OCD, met with IDJC Chief Albert Naquin and local officials. “The door is back open to find common ground,” Chief Naquin told me after the meeting. By Julie Dermansky
Freedom Rider: Democrats are the McCarthyites The unceasing torrent of Russiagate lies turns Democrats into war hawks and causes liberals to spout nonsense that was once consigned to the fringe right wing. It’s worse than the old McCarthyism.“Liberals who might once have opposed a hot war would now be the first to support it.” A recent poll indicated that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to hold pro-war views . That revelation is hardly surprising considering the degree to which their party has promoted the trope of Donald Trump as a Russian government asset. This strategy is a focal point for them and a weapon to be used against the Republicans instead of the political opposition their voters need. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR editornd senior columnistOn Venezuela and NATO, the Democratic Party is the “Assistance” Not the “Resistance” to Empire Black, working and poor people can expect no relief from Democrats, who will continue to divert the nation’s resources to foreign wars and coups. “Only Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, and Ilhan Omar have voiced any kind of opposition to the Trump Administration’s coup against Venezuela from the Democratic wing of the ruling class.” By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, Trump and the State of Imperial DeclineBernie Sanders’ anticipated second run for the presidency is the 6-ton elephant in the Democratic boardroom. But the rich owners of the Party would rather lose to Trump again than win with Sanders “Sanders’ outstanding primary showing represented the strongest electoral challenge to austerity of the century.” For the entirety of the 21st century the Lords of Capital have offered nothing but deepening austerity and endless war to the “home” populace of the imperial countries. The Great Meltdown of 2008 brought the global capitalist system to the very brink of collapse, impoverishing tens of millions and imprinting a profound sense of dread and insecurity on a new generation. Were it not for the strength of China’s command economy and the $19 trillion Federal Reserve bailout of U.S. and European banks, the global capitalist system might have come totally undone. Instead, the system’s concentration of wealth mechanisms were put on overdrive. No wonder, then, that polls show 18 to 29 year-old Americans favor socialism (51%) over capitalism (45%), and that Black Americans are even more socialist-minded than that. And no wonder a U.S. president felt compelled to exorcise the demons of socialism in his State of the Union Address: “Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country,” Donald Trump told the imperial Congress. “America was founded on liberty and independence — not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
HR 1 Cuts Green Party Campaign Funding, Sics Homeland Security and Political Police on the LeftHR 1 is the premiere legislative initiative of Democrats in the 116th Congress. It contains 571 pages of proposals and findings and such, but only two of HR 1’s dozens of provisions have a reasonable chance of passing the House and obtaining the bipartisan support in the Senate needed to become law. The first is a provision of HR 1 which deputizes the intelligence, police and prison establishment and their contractors to produce an annual report on the threats posed to the security of the US electoral system posed by Americans who might be under the influence of foreign powers. HR 1 cites as the “congressional findings” justifying the legislation a set of cowardly accusations levied by an anonymous group but given wide distribution by the Washington Post, as Glen Greenwald wrote about at the time. Greenwald mentions that Black Agenda Report was one of the institutions anonymously accused. Still, the cowardly accusations somehow count as “congressional findings” robust enough for HR 1 to institutionalize an annual report from the Pentagon, the the intel, the cops and their contractors. By Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor
Cory Booker Hates Public Schools Cory Booker rose to prominence as a fanatical backer of school privatization, yet poses as a friend of public education and teachers. “Booker has openly praised Republican leader Betsy DeVos’s organization American Federation for Children.” Sen. Cory Booker (NJ–D) announced his presidential campaign last week. There’s plenty about Booker’s record worth examining, from his extremely cozy relationship with pharmaceutical companies to his bizarre public defense of Wall Street. But nothing in Booker’s past is as damning as his record on schools. By Eric Blanc
Cory Booker Hates Public Schools / photo: Cory Booker and longtime ally Betsy DeVos
Tasers Claimed 49 Lives in 2018 Through Police Violence There have been a total of at least 1,081 deaths after the use of Tasers since the weapon began coming into widespread use in the early 2000s. “No government agency tracks how often Tasers are used or how many of those deployments prove fatal.” Taser death is a form of police violence that is claiming lives in the United States despite being called non-lethal, a recent Reuters report revealed. By TelesurThe U.S. is a Political Prison, Kamala Harris is a Prison Guard Black Agenda Report and other independent media sources have repeatedly been called “fake news” or “Russian propaganda” by the political gatekeepers of the U.S. empire. Trump has been used as a convenient excuse for the ruling elites to discredit those who tell the truth about the ruthlessness of the system. This became even more evident after journalist Marzieh Hashemi was indefinitely detained for over a week by the U.S. government without any formal charges against her. Last week, I wrote that Hashemi’s incarceration and treatment is a product of the U.S. imperial war on independent journalism. The crime committed against her is also a reminder that the U.S. itself is a political prison. By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party Vows to Resist South African Government’s Privatization Move “In the name of ‘efficiency,’ thousands of workers will be retrenched so that the politically connected capitalist elite of the ANC can continue to enrich themselves.” The working class unions in South Africa, including the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), have been resisting the rampant privatization move of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) for months. One of the workers’ struggles was in the state energy enterprise, Eskom, for wage hike and against privatization. NUMSA claimed that the government was intentionally weakening Eskom to pave the way for private corporate players. The two unions also opposed the Independent Power Producer (IPP) program. Under this plan, the government proposed to diversify power sources by making use of renewable energy produced by private, multinational companies. NUMSA clarified that they are in support of renewable energy, but opposed to the way the ANC (African National Congress) government is implementing it. The Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party (SRWP), a new political party associated with NUMSA, vowed to take forward the struggle. Irvin Jim, general secretary of NUMSA and a member of the National Core of SRWP, writes about the struggle against the Cyril Ramaphosa-led South African government’s privatization move. By Irvin Jim, NUMSA General Secretary
On Venezuela and NATO, the Democratic Party is the “Assistance” Not the “Resistance” to Empire Black, working and poor people can expect no relief from Democrats, who will continue to divert the nation’s resources to foreign wars and coups. “Only Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, and Ilhan Omar have voiced any kind of opposition to the Trump Administration’s coup against Venezuela from the Democratic wing of the ruling class.” The Trump Administration has pursued an open-air coup against the socialist government of Venezuela , with Pence and company nominating the unelected oligarch Juan Guaido as “interim” president of the oil-rich nation. Guaido resides in a National Assembly stock full of white racist oligarchs seeking to overthrow the rule of Bolivarian socialism. The Venezuelan Supreme Court ruled the decisions of the National Assembly illegitimate earlier in 2019 and the people of Venezuela elected President Maduro with sixty-eight percent of the vote in an election that was boycotted by the rightwing opposition in 2017. None of these facts are of any concern to the U.S. empire, which is primarily interested in reproducing itself and the profits that legitimize its racist system. And Bolivarian socialism has been an enemy of the elites since 1998 when the people of Venezuela rejected the U.S. empire by electing the socialist and anti-imperialist military leader Hugo Chavez.
Labor:
Economy:
Bank of England refused to return $1.2bn in gold to Venezuela – reports Britain rejected Venezuela’s request to withdraw $1.2bn in gold stored in the UK, according to reports. It was enough for the self-declared and US-backed ‘president’, Juan Guaido, to support the alleged move. The Bank of England blocked Venezuela’s attempts to retrieve $1.2 billion worth of gold stored as the nation’s foreign reserves in Britain, sources told Bloomberg on Friday.According to the media outlet, officials in Caracas have for weeks been trying to withdraw the gold, with Calixto Ortega, the head of Venezuela’s central bank, traveling to London in mid-December to seek access to the nation’s assets.
World:
Venezuelan Opposition Begins to Fissure as US Military Threats MountVA’s Lucas Koerner speaks to Sky News Australia about growing divisions within the Venezuelan opposition as the White House ramps up its threats to intervene militarily in the South American country. BySky News Australia
Venezuela: Results and Perspectives 1950-2019
During the post WWII decade, the US, working through the CIA and the Pentagon, brought to power authoritarian client regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Peru, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil and several other countries.In the case of Venezuela, the US backed a near decade long military dictatorship (Perez Jimenez ) roughly between 1951-58.
The dictatorship was overthrown in 1958 and replaced by a left-center coalition during a brief interim period. Subsequently, the US reshuffled its policy, and embraced and promoted center-right regimes led by social and christian democrats which alternated rule for nearly forty years. In the 1990’s US client regimes riddled with corruption and facing a deepening socio-economic crises were voted out of power. As the US strives to overthrow the democratic and independent Venezuelan government, the historical record regarding the short, middle and long-term consequences are mixed. We will proceed to examine the consequences and impact of US intervention in Venezuela over the past half century. We will then turn to examine the success and failure of US ‘regime changes’ throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
Venezuela: Results and Perspectives 1950-2019
During the post WWII decade, the US, working through the CIA and the Pentagon, brought to power authoritarian client regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Peru, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil and several other countries.In the case of Venezuela, the US backed a near decade long military dictatorship (Perez Jimenez ) roughly between 1951-58. The dictatorship was overthrown in 1958 and replaced by a left-center coalition during a brief interim period. Subsequently, the US reshuffled its policy, and embraced and promoted center-right regimes led by social and christian democrats which alternated rule for nearly forty years. In the 1990’s US client regimes riddled with corruption and facing a deepening socio-economic crises were voted out of power, By James Petras
France: for a workers’ government! The power of the yellow vests movement never ceases to surprise – and intimidate – its adversaries. Of course, the bourgeois and their lackeys (in politics and the media) know that poverty exists. They hear about it, distantly, but they are totally disconnected from the real living conditions of the people, their suffering and their problems. Then, from their lofty position of privilege, with all their power and their fortune, they said to themselves: “a little more or a little less austerity, what difference will that make?” The answer hit them like a ton of bricks. This is an editorial if the French Marxist journal, Révolution, originally published on 1 Feb 2019
Freedom Rider: Democrats are the McCarthyites The unceasing torrent of Russiagate lies turns Democrats into war hawks and causes liberals to spout nonsense that was once consigned to the fringe right wing. It’s worse than the old McCarthyism.“Liberals who might once have opposed a hot war would now be the first to support it.” A recent poll indicated that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to hold pro-war views . That revelation is hardly surprising considering the degree to which their party has promoted the trope of Donald Trump as a Russian government asset. This strategy is a focal point for them and a weapon to be used against the Republicans instead of the political opposition their voters need. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR editornd senior columnist
On Venezuela and NATO, the Democratic Party is the “Assistance” Not the “Resistance” to Empire Black, working and poor people can expect no relief from Democrats, who will continue to divert the nation’s resources to foreign wars and coups. “Only Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, and Ilhan Omar have voiced any kind of opposition to the Trump Administration’s coup against Venezuela from the Democratic wing of the ruling class.” By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor 
The U.S. is a Political Prison, Kamala Harris is a Prison Guard Black Agenda Report and other independent media sources have repeatedly been called “fake news” or “Russian propaganda” by the political gatekeepers of the U.S. empire. Trump has been used as a convenient excuse for the ruling elites to discredit those who tell the truth about the ruthlessness of the system. This became even more evident after journalist Marzieh Hashemi was indefinitely detained for over a week by the U.S. government without any formal charges against her. Last week, I wrote that Hashemi’s incarceration and treatment is a product of the U.S. imperial war on independent journalism. The crime committed against her is also a reminder that the U.S. itself is a political prison. By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor 
