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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 The 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:
Quotes of The Day:
During the Rise of the CIO is the 1930’s The CIO campaign for Public Education and Against Childhood Labor led to the passing of The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that also prohibited most employment of minors in “oppressive child labor”.[5] It applies to employees engaged in interstate commerce or employed by an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce,[6] unless the employer can claim an exemption from coverage. This Led to Public Education of all children 16 yarsears old and younger. Charter Schools are not covered by this Act. — Roland Sheppard
Leon Trotsky foretold the ‘Partnership Between the Trade Bureaucracy and the Boss’: From the Essay: Leon Trotsky and the Iron Heel One must accentuate especially the role which Jack London attributes to the labor bureaucracy and to the labor aristocracy in the further fate of mankind. Thanks to their support, the American plutocracy not only succeeds in defeating the workers’ insurrection but also in keeping its iron dictatorship during the following three centuries. We will not dispute with the poet the delay which can but seem to us too long. However, it is not a question of Jack London’s pessimism, but of his passionate effort to shake those who are lulled by routine, to force them to open their eyes and to see what is and what approaches. The artist is audaciously utilizing the methods of hyperbole. He is bringing the tendencies rooted in capitalism: of oppression, cruelty, bestiality, betrayal, to their extreme expression. He is operating with centuries in order to measure the tyrannical will of the exploiters and the treacherous rôle of the labor bureaucracy. But his most “romantic” hyperboles are finally much more realistic than the bookkeeper-like calculations of the so-called “sober politicians.” It is easy to imagine with what a condescending perplexity the official socialist thinking of that time met Jack London’s menacing prophecies. If one took the trouble to look over the reviews of The Iron Heel at that time in the German Neue Zeit and Vorwärts, in the Austrian Kampf, and Arbeiterzeitung, as well as in the other socialist publications of Europe and America, he could easily convince himself that the thirty-year-old “romanticist” saw incomparably more clearly and farther than all the social-democratic leaders of that time taken together. But Jack London bears comparison in this domain not only with the reformists. One can say with assurance that in 1907 not one of the revolutionary Marxists, not excluding Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, imagined so fully the ominous perspective of the alliance between finance capital and labor aristocracy. This suffices in itself to determine the specific weight of the novel. Roland Sheppard, The Fall of the Trade Union Movement
Video of the Day:
U.S.
‘The Only Victors’:
Led by U.S. Weapons Makers, Global Arms Sales Soared in 2016: Analysis With U.S. weapons companies claiming more than half of global sales, and despite five previous years of decline, arms producers around the world raked in $375 billion in profits by Jessica Corbett
The Calculated Destruction of America’s Government It is truly extraordinary: the still-new Trump administration keeps appointing people whose common priority is the destruction of the agency they head. Their mission is therefore the opposite of their agency’s: priority to management over responsibility, product over people, and private interests over public service. In essence, Trump is presiding over a government that rejects governing and seems intent on creating a state within a state. by Mel Gurtov
The FBI is Not Your Friend One of the unfortunate ironies of the manufactured “Russiagate” controversy is the perception of the FBI as a friend of liberty and justice. But the FBI has never been a friend of liberty and justice. Rather, as James Bovard writes, it “has a long record of both deceit and incompetence. Five years ago, Americans learned that the FBI was teaching its agents that ‘the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.” This has practically been the Bureau’s motif since its creation in 1908…. The FBI has always used its ‘good guy’ image to keep a lid on its crimes. by Sheldon Richman
‘America First Robber Barons’: Incentive for Terrorism: America Has Taken Nearly 70% of the World’s Wealth Gains Since 2012 The super-rich are pillaging the world and making everyone less safe in the process. America’s super-rich are taking not just from their own nation, but from the rest of the world. Data from the 2017 Global Wealth Databook and various war reports help to explain why U.S. citizens are alienating people outside our borders. By Paul Buchheit
Environment:
The trouble begins where everything begins: with soil. The UN’s famous projection that, at current rates of soil loss, the world has 60 years of harvests left, appears to be supported by a new set of figures. Partly as a result of soil degradation, yields are already declining on 20% of the world’s croplands. Now consider water loss. In places such as the North China Plain, the central United States, California and north-western India – among the world’s critical growing regions – levels of the groundwater used to irrigate crops are already reaching crisis point. Water in the Upper Ganges aquifer, for example, is being withdrawn at 50 times its recharge rate. But, to keep pace with food demand, farmers in south Asia expect to use between 80 and 200% more water by the year 2050. Where will it come from? The next constraint is temperature. One study suggests that, all else being equal, with each degree celsius of warming the global yield of rice drops by 3%, wheat by 6% and maize by 7%. These predictions could be optimistic. Research published in the journal Agricultural & Environmental Letters finds that 4C of warming in the US corn belt could reduce maize yields by between 84 and 100%. The reason is that high temperatures at night disrupt the pollination process. But this describes just one component of the likely pollination crisis. Insectageddon, caused by the global deployment of scarcely tested pesticides, will account for the rest. Already, in some parts of the world, workers are now pollinating plants by hand. But that’s viable only for the most expensive crops. Then there are the structural factors. Because they tend to use more labour, grow a wider range of crops and work the land more carefully, small farmers, as a rule, grow more food per hectare than large ones. In the poorer regions of the world, people with fewer than five hectares own 30% of the farmland but produce 70% of the food. Since 2000, an area of fertile ground roughly twice the size of the UK has been seized by land grabbers and consolidated into large farms, generally growing crops for export rather than the food needed by the poor. — Mass starvation is humanity’s fate if we keep flogging the land to death
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
1. It had mass support and it strength developed from the unity of the Black masses to boycott the buses.
2. In order to sustain the boycott, the MIA had organized an alternative transportation system, which gave the masses the ability to get to work for over a year, something that was crucial to the success of the boycott.
3. The democratically organized Montgomery Improvement Association had regular weekly mass meetings of thousands to decide the strategy and tactics of the movement. The people in the struggle had control and the final say–not the leaders from on high. This helped to insured the power of the movement, for the masses saw the MIA as their organization and were committed by their votes to implement their decisions. The tactics of both mass civil disobedience (the boycott) and self-defense by the MIA weer key to the success of the struggle.
4. The power of independent mass action, independent of the politicians, was demonstrated by the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This is the power that inspired and garnered support from throughout the nation and the world.
Economy:
World
EU leaders complicit in torture of refugees and migrants, Amnesty says Rights group claims EU is financing Libyan system that routinely acts in collusion with militia groups and people traffickers(Slave Traders) European leaders stand accused by Amnesty International of being knowingly complicit in the torture and exploitation of thousands of migrants and refugees by the EU-financed Libyan coastguard and officials running the country’s detention camps. By Daniel Boffey
After the defeat of Islamic State: is peace approaching in the Middle East? Two statements were made on the same day, 21 November. Both declared the end of the war on Islamic State in Syria. The first was made by Vladimir Putin, in a meeting with Bashar al-Assad in Sochi, the second was released by Qassem Suleimani: the Iranian general at the head of the Quds Force (the Islamic Revolutionary Guards). Both, almost simultaneously, stated that “terrorism was defeated” in the country. By Roberto Sarti and Hamid Alizadeh
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
Saving Humanity From Itself Since the beginning of the nuclear age and the dropping of the first atomic bombs, humankind has struggled with the reality of being able to destroy the planet on the one hand and the abolition of these weapons on the other. This year’s Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear (ICAN) acknowledges these realities and celebrates the efforts to achieve the latter. The Nobel Peace Prize with its award criteria specifies: the promotion of fraternity between nations; the advancement of disarmament and arms control and the holding and promotion of peace congresses. by Robert Dodge
