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
Cuba’s own experience when Soviet aid was suddenly lost shows that a country that relies on its people has nothing to fear from self-reliance – and everything to gain… The withdrawal of Soviet aid in 1990 left Cuba’s economy on a knife-edge. Cubans lost all their markets in sugar. They ceased to receive foodstuffs, fuel, wood, soap, raw materials. Calories and protein intake were reduced by half. Plans for nuclear energy had to be abandoned. The US intensified its blockade, passing the Helms-Burton Act. It was a case of adapt or die. No one expects Brexit to be like this, but we will need to be more self-reliant – and self-reliance would be good for Britain. For Cuba, it became an absolute necessity. Small parcels of land were set aside for family gardening. City spaces were utilised for the production, hydroponically, of three million tons of vegetables a year. This gave jobs to 300,000 citizens. Using straw and other agricultural waste and employing drip irrigation or micro-jets, they achieved this without emitting a gram of carbon dioxide. — Lessons From Cuba
Every time I drive up to Mount Bachelor in Central Oregon I pass the Deschutes National Forest’s logging and mastication projects. The Forest Service and the Deschutes Collaborative suggest they are “thinning” the forest to preclude large wildfires and to “restore it.” (The collaborative is a working group of various stakeholders who advise the Forest Service about management issues.) Neither of these assertions is accurate. What they are creating is tree plantations of largely even-aged trees — all done in the name of “fixing” the forest. The first myth they are selling to the public is that logging can preclude large wildfires. There is a host of research — much by Forest Service’s own fire researchers as well as other ecologists — that concludes that under “extreme fire weather” nothing stops a wildfire. When you have high temps, low humidity, drought and high winds, wildfires are unstoppable. It does not matter how much “thinning” or other fuel treatment you have done; wildfires will charge through, over and around any “fire break.” When it appears that a fire break has stopped a blaze, check again. Almost always, the weather has changed. It is weather change, not firefighting, that allows humans to stop large wildfires. I just visited the Thomas Fire in Southern California, the largest blaze in recent California history. Despite thousands of firefighters, and numerous fire breaks along the pathway of the fire, including 12-lane freeways, the only fire break that halted the Thomas Fire was the Pacific Ocean! — Logging Can’t Restore Burnt Forests
Israel’s Deepening Involvement in the Syrian War Israel has recently been intensifying air strikes and the arming of anti-government forces in Syria, some of which are close to Al Qaeda. Professor As’ad AbuKhalil explains how Israel’s activity in Syria is part of a larger pattern of its overall foreign policy engagement around the world.
U.S.:
Alabama Has Been Torturing Poor People for a Long Time If you have a high-profile lawyer with powerful friends and you’re tortured while on death row in Alabama, everyone in the nation not only knows about it—overwhelmingly, especially in liberal, progressive, civilized circles of thought and news—they’re righteously appalled. But poor death row inmates in Alabama (which overwhelmingly describes the population) who’ve got no high-profile lawyer, who are not backed by Columbia University Law School, whose stories are not featured in The New Yorker multiple times, and, who have no well-connected, media-savvy friends and supporters? They can be tortured just as terribly, just as brutally—they can be killed barbarically—and not many people in America, much less the rest of the world, knows a thing about it. Or worse, cares. By Stephen Cooper
The Arctic Heats Up in the Dead of Winter Every once in a while a climatic event hits that forces people to sit down to catch their breath. Along those lines, abnormal Arctic heat waves in the dead of winter may force scientists to revaluate downwards (or maybe upwards, depending) their most pessimistic of forecasts. By the end of February 2018, large portions of the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland were open blue water, meaning no ice. But, it’s wintertime, no daylight 24/7, yet no ice in areas where it’s usually some meters thick! In a remarkable, mindboggling turn of events, thick ice in early February by month’s end turned into wide open blue water, metaphorically equivalent to an airline passenger at 35,000 feet watching rivets pop off the fuselage. Every once in a while a climatic event hits that forces people to sit down to catch their breath. Along those lines, abnormal Arctic heat waves in the dead of winter may force scientists to revaluate downwards (or maybe upwards, depending) their most pessimistic of forecasts.By the end of February 2018, large portions of the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland were open blue water, meaning no ice. But, it’s wintertime, no daylight 24/7, yet no ice in areas where it’s usually some meters thick! In a remarkable, mindboggling turn of events, thick ice in early February by month’s end turned into wide open blue water, metaphorically equivalent to an airline passenger at 35,000 feet watching rivets pop off the fuselage.by Robert Hunziker Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
Black Agenda Radio, Week of March 6, 2018Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.
Holding the Line Against Neoliberalism in Jackson, MS: Cooperation Jackson activist Kali Akuno said the grassroots movement can count on broad aspects of unity with the overwhelmingly Black capital city’s political class. However, “in the era of neoliberalism we are fighting to get those same political forces to not concede to the dictates of big business, to the corporations, to capital, and to not make concessions to privatization” or weaken protections to working people.
Beware the Dangers of Reformism: Reformers often wind up legitimizing and strengthening police power, said Dylan Rodriguez, professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside. Much of what is called “police brutality” is, in practice, “fully endorsed or, at least condoned by the legal system,” he said. It is simply “policing”—American-style. Professor Dylan authored an article for Black Agenda Report, titled “’Mass Incarceration’ as Police Endorsement.”
PROP Calls for Free Mass Transit for NYC Poor: “Our position is that the city should provide free fares to low income people,” said Robert Gangi, of the Police Reform Organizing Project, who notes that 85 to 90 percent of the 20,000 people annually charged with fare-beating are Black and brown. “Everyone has to be able to use the subways to have a decent life” in New York City. Mayor Bill de Blasio objects to the Manhattan district attorney’s decision not to prosecute subway fare-beaters, claiming there is no evidence linking turnstile jumping to poverty..
Labor:
The corporate press hopes that the West Virginia striking teachers will accept the deal passed by the West Virginia Government. ie: West Virginia teachers are being asked to accept a 5% raise with possible negotiations on health care at the expensive of healthcare for the elderly and other social services. “Gov. Jim Justice and West Virginia’s Republican leaders tentatively agreed Tuesday to end the state’s nine-day teachers’ walkout by giving 5 percent raises to not just teachers, but all state workers. To pay for it, lawmakers will seek to cut state spending by $20 million, taking funds from general services and Medicaid, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Craig Blair said. — West Virginia leaders reach deal to end teachers strike.
MORGANTOWN, WV – MARCH 02: West Virginia teachers, students and supporters hold signs on a Morgantown street as they continue their strike on March 2, 2018 in Morgantown, West Virginia. Despite a tentative deal reached Tuesday with the state’s governor, teachers across West Virginia continued to strike on Friday as the Republican-controlled state legislature debated the governor’s deal. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Economy:
Democrats Gutting Wall Street Reform? Follow the Money. Today’s front page of the print edition of the New York Times has articles on the Oscars, the election in Italy, Ben Carson’s reign at HUD and the death of an elderly Briton who once broke the four-minute mile among numerous other less than urgent news pieces. What it does not have on its front page is any headline showing concern that the seminal piece of Wall Street reform legislation of the Obama era, which already has enough loopholes to set off champagne corks on K Street, may be dismantled this week by a vote in the Senate. The move would come in the midst of the 10th anniversary of the greatest Wall Street collapse and economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, both of which were underpinned by casino capitalism — Wall Street banks making obscenely leveraged bets for the house while holding Mom and Pop deposits. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens World:
Five years on: the revolutionary legacy of Hugo Chávez Five years have passed since the death of Hugo Chávez. I had known him for almost ten years and had an enormous respect for his courage, honesty and dedication to the fight against oppression and exploitation. For this he earned the hatred of all the forces of the old society: the bankers, capitalists and landowners, the imperialists, the CIA and of course the so-called ‘free press’ that is merely the slavish mouthpiece of the old order. By Alan Woods Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
International Women’s Day is celebrated in many countries around the world. It is a day when women are recognized for their achievements without regard to divisions, whether national, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic or political. International Women’s Day first emerged from the activities of labour movements at the turn of the twentieth century in North America and across Europe.
Since those early years, International Women’s Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. The growing international women’s movement, which has been strengthened by four global United Nations women’s conferences, has helped make the commemoration a rallying point to build support for women’s rights and participation in the political and economic arenas.
Chronology
1909 The first National Woman’s Day was observed in the United States on 28 February. The Socialist Party of America designated this day in honour of the 1908 garment workers’ strike in New York, where women protested against working conditions.
1910 The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women’s Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women’s rights and to build support for achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, which included the first three women elected to the Finnish Parliament. No fixed date was selected for the observance.
1911 As a result of the Copenhagen initiative, International Women’s Day was marked for the first time (19 March) in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million women and men attended rallies. In addition to the right to vote and to hold public office, they demanded women’s rights to work, to vocational training and to an end to discrimination on the job.
1913-1914 International Women’s Day also became a mechanism for protesting World War I. As part of the peace movement, Russian women observed their first International Women’s Day on the last Sunday in February. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around 8 March of the following year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity with other activists.
1917 Against the backdrop of the war, women in Russia again chose to protest and strike for “Bread and Peace” on the last Sunday in February (which fell on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar). Four days later, the Czar abdicated and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote.
1975 During International Women’s Year, the United Nations began celebrating International Women’s Day on 8 March.
1995 The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a historic roadmap signed by 189 governments, focused on 12 critical areas of concern, and envisioned a world where each woman and girl can exercise her choices, such as participating in politics, getting an education, having an income, an* living in societies free from violence and discrimination.
2014 The 58th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW58) – the annual gathering of States to address critical issues related to gender equality and women’s rights — focused on “Challenges and achievements in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals for women and girls”. UN entities and accredited NGOs from around the world took stock of progress and remaining challenges towards meeting the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs have played an important role in galvanizing attention on and resources for gender equality and women’s empowerment.
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.
Quotes of the Day:
Environment:
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.
Democrats Gutting Wall Street Reform? Follow the Money. Today’s front page of the print edition of the New York Times has articles on the Oscars, the election in Italy, Ben Carson’s reign at HUD and the death of an elderly Briton who once broke the four-minute mile among numerous other less than urgent news pieces. What it does not have on its front page is any headline showing concern that the seminal piece of Wall Street reform legislation of the Obama era, which already has enough loopholes to set off champagne corks on K Street, may be dismantled this week by a vote in the Senate. The move would come in the midst of the 10th anniversary of the greatest Wall Street collapse and economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, both of which were underpinned by casino capitalism — Wall Street banks making obscenely leveraged bets for the house while holding Mom and Pop deposits. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare: