Skip to content
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
February is Black History Month
Quotes of the Day:
As Western media ludicrously claim that the US under Trump is committed to “negotiating” with North Korea, the same media that make a killing analysing Trump’s lies let Secretary of State Rex Tillerson get away (keeping a straight face) with saying that peace talks with North Korea are contingent on North Korea’s initial commitment to “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula”; in other words, they are contingent on North Korea’s giving up its sole deterrent. The CNN interviewer never asked what right the US has to demand anything of North Korea, nor did she point out that the US stations weapons, including likely nuclear weapons, in the region. Under Democrats, Republicans or far-right extremists like Trump, the US project for Full Spectrum Dominance continues… — How the US Bullies North Korea, 1945-Present
I look at Dr. King on television every single day, and I say to myself, “Now there is a man who’s desperately needed in this country. There is a man full of love. There is a man full of mercy. There is a man full of compassion.” But every time I see Lyndon on television, I say, “Martin, baby, you got a long way to go.” So that the question stands as to what we are willing to do, how we are willing to say no, to withdraw from that system and begin, within our community, to start the function and to build new institutions that will speak to our needs. In Lowndes County, we developed something called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization — it is a political party. The Alabama law says that if you have a party, you must have an emblem. We chose for the emblem a black panther — a beautiful black animal — which symbolizes the strength and dignity of black people. An animal that never strikes back until he’s backed so far into the wall that he’s got nothing to do but spring out. And when he springs, he does not stop. Now there is a party in Alabama that is called the Alabama Democratic Party. It is all white. It has as its emblem a white rooster and the words “white supremacy for the right.” Now the gentlemen of the press, because they are advertisers and because most of them are white and because they are produced by that white institution, never calls the Lowndes County Freedom Organization by its name — but rather they call it the Black Panther Party. Our question is, why don’t they call the Alabama Democratic Party the White Cock Party? [laughter] It is clear to me that just points out America’s problem with sex and color — not our problem, [laughter] not our problem. It is now white America that is going to deal with those problems of sex and color. If we were to be real and honest, we would have to admit, we would have to admit, that most people in this country see things black and white. We have to do that, all of us do: we live in a country that’s geared that way. White people would have to admit that they are afraid to go into a black ghetto at night. They’re afraid, that’s a fact. They’re afraid because they’d be “beat up,” “lynched,” “looted,” “cut up,” et cetera, et cetera. That happens to black people inside the ghetto every day, incidentally. And white people are afraid of that. So, you get a man to do it for you — a policeman. And now you figure his mentality, where he’s afraid of black people. The first time a black man jumps, that white man’s gonna shoot him. He’s gonna shoot him. So, police brutality is going to exist on that level, because of the incapability of that white man to see black people come together and to live in the conditions. This country is too hypocritical; and we cannot adjust ourselves to its hypocrisy. The only time I hear people talk about nonviolence is when black people move to defend themselves against white people. Black people cut themselves every night in the ghetto – don’t anybody talk about nonviolence. Lyndon Baines Johnson is busy bombing the hell out of Vietnam – don’t nobody talk about nonviolence. White people beat up black people every day – don’t nobody talk about nonviolence. But as soon as black people start to move, the double standard comes into being. You can’t defend yourself- – that’s what you’re saying. ‘Cause you show me a man who advocates aggressive violence that would be able to live in this country. Show him to me. — Stokely Carmichael, Speech at University of California, Berkeley (1965)
Videos of the Day:
Russian Espionage, or Clickbait? (1/2) The indicted Russian troll farm operation has been compared to Pearl Harbor and widely assumed to be the work of Russian intelligence. But how do we know? CIA veteran John Sipher, who ties the troll farm’s activities to the Kremlin, joins Aaron Mate to discuss
Image of the Day:
U.S.:
Citigroup Drove Puerto Rico Into Debt. Now It Will Profit From Privatization on the Island. One of the same banks that drove the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA, into the red will now be paid to help auction it off to the highest bidder. Citigroup Global Markets Inc., or Citi, will be the main investment bank consultant in the restructuring and privatization of PREPA, the Washington-appointed Fiscal Control Board — the body now overseeing Puerto Rico’s finances — announced recently. Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló first announced the move toward privatization last month. By Kate Aronoff
How the US Bullies North Korea, 1945-Present For more than seven decades, US policymakers and military strategists have bullied, intimidated and ultimately tried to isolate the self-professed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (a.k.a., North Korea). It is particularly instructive to examine official Congressional, CIA and Pentagon sources relating to North Korea’s motivates. These often paint a much more honest picture of events than mainstream media. By by T.J. Coles
Environment:
The Anthropocene’s Birthday, or the Birth-Year of Human-Accelerated Climate Change Scientists have found a major spike in the amount of Carbon-14 within the tree rings of “The Loneliest Tree In The World,” which ring corresponds to October-December 1965. . . . The significance of this finding is that geologists now know that the start of the Anthropocene – which is the geological period when GLOBAL (not just local) climate is clearly being influenced by human activity and at an accelerating rate – began in 1965. The Carbon-14 marker is from the radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear bomb testing, which grew from 1945 and peaked in 1962, after which it stopped (except for a few isolated atmospheric tests since) in 1963 as a result of the Test Ban treaty of that year. The accumulated radioactive fallout from the massive testing of the 1950s and early 1960s (with a huge amount in 1962) had finally spread out uniformly through the global atmosphere, and the Carbon-14 from that fallout was being infused into trees globally through the process of photosynthesis. So, this spike in tree-ring Carbon-14 in 1965 is a GLOBAL marker of human activity on global climate, and thus is the birthday of human-induced/accelerated Climate Change. by Manuel García, Jr.
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
But we must see that the struggle today is much more difficult. It’s more difficult today because we are struggling now for genuine equality. And it’s much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee a livable income and a good solid job. It’s much easier to guarantee the right to vote than it is to guarantee the right to live in sanitary, decent housing conditions. It is much easier to integrate a public park than it is to make genuine, quality, integrated education a reality. And so today we are struggling for something which says we demand genuine equality. It’s not merely a struggle against extremist behavior toward Negroes. And I’m convinced that many of the very people who supported us in the struggle in the South are not willing to go all the way now. I came to see this in a very difficult and painful way in Chicago the last year where I’ve lived and worked. Some of the people who came quickly to march with us in Selma and Birmingham weren’t active around Chicago. And I came to see that so many people who supported morally and even financially what we were doing in Birmingham and Selma, were really outraged against the extremist behavior of Bull Connor and Jim Clark toward Negroes, rather than believing in genuine equality for Negroes. And I think this is what we’ve got to see now, and this is what makes the struggle much more difficult. And so as a result of all of this, we see many problems existing today that are growing more difficult. It’s something that is often overlooked, but Negroes generally live in worse slums today than 20 or 25 years ago. In the North, schools are more segregated today than they were in 1954 when the Supreme Court’s decision on desegregation was rendered. Economically, the Negro is worse off today than he was 15 and 20 years ago. And so the unemployment rate among whites at one time was about the same as the unemployment rate among Negroes. But today the unemployment rate among Negroes is twice that of whites. And the average income of the Negro is today 50 percent less than Whites. Martin Luther King: The Other America Speech Stanford University, April 14, 1967
The Real Goal of “Russiagate” is to Prepare for Endless Austerity and War “The ruling circles of the imperial superpower set out to destabilize and call into disrepute the government of the home country.” Robert Mueller, the former head of the national political police (FBI), has indicted 13 Russian nationals for the crime of sowing “discord in the U.S. political system” and encouraging “U.S. minority groups not to vote in the 2016 U.S. presidential election or to vote for a third-party U.S. presidential candidate.” The defendants’ nationality makes their acts of political speech a crime, in Mueller’s legal view, but “at least 20 Americans” are embedded in the document as unindicted co-conspirators “ because they interacted in various ways with the Russian team’s activities during the 2016 presidential campaign. These U.S. citizens “were just engaging in politics,” said independent journalist Marcy Wheeler, on Democracy Now! “They were putting together campaign events. They were engaging in online speech. That’s like, you know, the most sacred part of being an American citizen. And yet, they were unknowingly interacting with Russians….” By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
The Black Political Class and Network Neutrality Earlier this month, Chicago journalist Curtis Black called the office of Congressman Bobby Rush (D- IL) to ask what the congressman’s position on net neutrality was, now that Donald Trump is president. During his two decades in Congress Rush has taken quite a lot of cash from the bagmen of ATT, Verizon, Comcast and the rest. He’s not alone. Since 2006, Black Agenda Report has covered how the black political class have consistently served the interests of Big Cable and telecoms over those of their supposed constituencies. Only 25 and 30 years ago most corporate donors did not bother to bribe… I mean contribute, to black and Latino politicians. Telecommunications corporations were among the few reliable contributors to the campaigns of black and brown legislators on the state and federal level. They also gave generously to LULAC to the NAACP, Urban League Operation PUSH, the predecessor of today’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition and to similar groups across the country. The early investment of telecom funding in the rising black political class has since paid off many, many times over. By Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor
The Coming Rebellion: Ten Questions to Ask at the Black Mayors Forum in Newark By Dr. Matthew Quest
Get Me Outa Wakanda! #GetMeTheHellOutaWakanda In the Black Panther movie, all the Wakandan players are royalty, their counselors, their advisors or their rivals. All the strikingly beautiful and capable Wakandan women take orders from men. The only unambiguous good guy is the Frodo looking CIA agent. The homicidal Killmonger character is calculated to sully the very notion of black rebellion against unjust authority, while Pan Africanism and humanism are defecated upon from multiple angles. Cinematic bar fights, car chases and battle scenes are a dime a dozen, and worst of all Wakanda isn’t even rendered in any visually inspiring way By Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor
Down with NRA ‘cause death’s in their DNA
Down with NRA tossin’ green papier-mâché
Down with NRA for shopworn loops of SOS
Down with NRA senators spewing bull-mess
Down with NRA thugs who lie and window dress
Down with NRA infesting the corporate press
Down with NRA built on its crimson largess
Down with NRA that weaponized infection
Down with NRA masked as “self-protection”
Down with NRA modeling how the “West was won”
Down with NRA repeating, “good guy with a gun”
Down with NRA burning bloody, cold, dead hands
Down with NRA In the flames of our fiery stands! 
Labor:
Economy:
World:
From Franco to Today the Reign is Spain Remains the Same: Spanish regime’s assault on freedom of expression and democratic rights In the past few days, the level of repression, intimidation and blatant authoritarianism exercised by the rotten Spanish ‘78 regime has reached unprecedented levels. It is enough to make one’s blood boil. On 20 February, Communist rapper Valtonyc was sentenced to three years and six months in prison for “lèse majesté” (insulting the crown) and “glorifying terrorism” in the lyrics of one of his songs. By Arturo Rodríguez
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
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.