During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 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.
After popularizing the idea of a 70 percent top marginal tax rate earlier this month, the freshman congresswoman recently suggested that the mere existence of billionaires was both immoral, and a threat to American democracy. “I do think that a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong,” Ocasio-Cortez told the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, during an interview on Martin Luther King Day. One day later, the congresswoman approvingly quoted an op-ed by the economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, which argued that the purpose of high taxes on the wealthy wasn’t merely to generate revenue, but rather, to safeguard “democracy against oligarchy.” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Videos of the Day:
What is at Stake in Venezuela: National Sovereignty NYU history professor Greg Grandin discusses the history of the concept of national sovereignty as it originated in Latin America, but was repeatedly challenged by the US. The latest US threats against Venezuela once again threatens to make the concept irrelevant and would serve as justification for more unilateral interventionsRacially Discriminatory Lending Leads to Black Community Wealth Decline Racially Discriminatory Lending Leads to Black Community Wealth Decline
US Plans to Deliver Arms to Venezuelan Opposition, Russia Warns! The Russian government warned Friday that the United States and its allies from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of planning to deliver arms to the Venezuelan opposition. “We have evidence that U.S. companies and their NATO allies are working on the issue of acquiring a large batch of weapons and ammunition in an Eastern European country for their subsequent transfer to Venezuelan opposition forces,” the Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said. “The batch will reportedly include heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, portable missile launchers and ammunition for light weapons and artillery systems. So this is what they mean when they talk about delivering humanitarian aid.” Zakharova also spoke of the U.S. President Donald Trump’s words, which were addressed to the Venezuelan military, urging them to ignore the orders of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
North Carolina board votes to hold new House election over absentee ballot fraud The North Carolina Board of Elections voted unanimously to hold a new election in the state’s 9th District after overwhelming evidence of vote tampering. Prior to the board’s decision, Republican Mark Harris, the declared winner in the race who had been fighting for his election to be certified, changed his position and called for a new election. Harris was initially declared the winner by 905 votes over Democrat Dan McCready but the race was never certified as evidence began to surface of ballot fraud by employees of the Harris campaign. On the fourth day of an evidentiary hearing by the board, Harris said there should be another election. By Christopher Wilson
Environment:
World’s food supply under ‘severe threat’ from loss of biodiversity Plants, insects and organisms crucial to food production in steep decline, says UN The world’s capacity to produce food is being undermined by humanity’s failure to protect biodiversity, according to the first UN study of the plants, animals and micro-organisms that help to put meals on our plates. The stark warning was issued by the Food and Agriculture Organisation after scientists found evidence the natural support systems that underpin the human diet are deteriorating around the world as farms, cities and factories gobble up land and pump out chemicals. By Jonathan Watt
Pollinators such as bumblebees, which provide essential services to most of the world’s crops, are under threat, says report. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA
‘Kicking Ass for Her Generation’: Applause for 16-Year-Old Greta Thunberg as EU Chief Pledges $1 Trillion to Curb Climate Threat “Greta Thunberg, literally changing the world.” Sixteen-year-old climate action leader Greta Thunberg stood alongside European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker Thursday in Brussels as he indicated—after weeks of climate strikes around the world inspired by the Swedish teenager—that the European Union has heard the demands of young people and pledged more than $1 trillion over the next seven years to address the crisis of a rapidly heating planet. By Julia Conley
Big Energy:
Appeals Court Rejects Big Oil’s Lawsuit Against L.A. Youth Groups, City of Los AngelesIn a victory for environmental justice, a California appeals court on February 15 dismissed the California Independent Petroleum Associations’s lawsuit against youth organizations from South Los Angeles and Wilmington, the Center for Biological Diversity and the city of Los Angeles. Judge Terry A. Green of the California 2nd District Court of Appeals reversed a previous order by the L.A. Superior Court denying the special motions by the nonprofit organizations and the city to strike the oil industry lawsuit. The oil industry is the most powerful corporate lobby in California, so this big win by the Center and youth groups is very significant. By Dan Bacher
Nalleli Cobo, an activist with the South Central Youth Leadership Coalition, speaks at a protest against Jerry Brown’s expansion of oil and gas drilling in California last year. Photo by Dan Bacher.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Black History Month: The Role of the 1% Political Parties (Republicrates)
At that rally, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Chairman John Lewis was prevented from delivering his prepared speech at the 1963 March on Washington, by the march organizers. It was a notable omission. In this speech, he was going to say: . . . . We are now involved in a serious revolution. This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their career on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation. What political leader here can stand up and say ‘My party is the party of “principles”’? The party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater. Where is our party? . . .
That is the truth that we must face at Gary. If white “liberalism” could have solved our problems, then Lincoln and Roosevelt and Kennedy would have done so. But they did not solve ours nor the rest of the nation’s. If America’s problems could have been solved by forceful, politically skilled and aggressive individuals, then Lyndon Johnson would have retained the presidency. If the true “American Way” of unbridled monopoly capitalism, combined with a ruthless military imperialism could do it, then Nixon would not be running around the world, or making speeches comparing his nation’s decadence to that of Greece and Rome. If we have never faced it before, let us face it at Gary. The profound crisis of Black people and the disaster of America are not simply caused by men nor will they be solved by men alone. These crises are the crises of basically flawed economics and politics, and or cultural degradation. None of the Democratic candidates and none of the Republican candidates — regardless of their vague promises to us or to their white constituencies — can solve our problems or the problems of this country without radically changing the systems by which it operates.
If we have never faced it before, let us face it at Gary. The profound crisis of Black people and the disaster of America are not simply caused by men nor will they be solved by men alone. These crises are the crises of basically flawed economics and politics, and or cultural degradation. None of the Democratic candidates and none of the Republican candidates — regardless of their vague promises to us or to their white constituencies — can solve our problems or the problems of this country without radically changing the systems by which it operates.—The Politics of Social Transformation—So we come to Gary confronted with a choice. But it is not the old convention question of which candidate shall we support, the pointless question of who is to preside over a decaying and unsalvageable system. No, if we come to Gary out of the realities of the Black communities of this land, then the only real choice for us is whether or not we will live by the truth we know, whether we will move to organize independently, move to struggle for fundamental transformation, for the creation of new directions, towards a concern for the life and the meaning of Man. Social transformation or social destruction, those are our only real choices.
. . .In 1968, having won landmark civil rights legislation, King strenuously urged racial justice advocates to shift from a civil rights to a human rights paradigm. A human rights approach, he believed, would offer far greater hope than the civil rights model had provided for those determined to create a thriving, multiracial democracy free from racial hierarchy. It would offer a positive vision of what we can strive for-a society in which people of all races are treated with dignity and have the right to food, shelter, health care, education, and security. “We must see the great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement,” he said. “We are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society. The Poor People’s Movement seemed poised to unite poor people of all colors in a bold challenge to the prevailing economic and political system. . . . — Michelle Alexander, Think Outside the Bars Why real justice means fewer prisons.
More than forty years later, civil rights advocacy is stuck in a model of advocacy King was determined to leave behind. Rather than challenging the basic structure of society and doing the hard work of movement building —the work to which King was still committed at the end of his life — we have been tempted too often by the opportunity for people of color to be included within the political and economic structure as-is, even if it means alienating those who are necessary allies. We have allowed ourselves to be willfully blind to the emergence of a new caste system—a system of social excommunication that has denied millions of African Americans basic human dignity. The significance of this cannot be overstated, for the failure to acknowledge the humanity and dignity of all persons has lurked at the root of every racial caste system. This common thread explains why, in the 1780s, the British Society for the Abolition of Slavery adopted as its official seal a woodcut of a kneeling slave above a banner that read, “AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?” That symbol was followed more than a hundred years later by signs worn around the necks of black sanitation workers during the Poor People’s Campaign answering the slave’s question with the simple statement, I AM A MAN. — Michelle Alexander, Chapter 5, The New Jim Crow: Obama—the Promise and the Peril
Labor:
In some Bay Area cities, making $200,000 a year means you’re middle class Fremont, Oakland and San Jose among top 10 with rising middle class incomes San Francisco ranked number one for middle-class income growth among the nation’s 200 largest cities, followed by Oakland and Fremont in second and third place, according to a new study from personal finance website GOBankRates. Two other Bay Area cities were in the top 10 — San Jose ranked sixth and Sunnyvale came in eighth. The study ranked cities based on a combination of household income measures from the U.S. Census Bureau over the past five years.
Annual Growth (Year-to-Year Percent Change) in GDP is shown in the chart on the right. This is not the annualized quarterly rate of change that serves as the headline number for the series.
Note: The GDP headline number refers to the most-recent quarter’s annualized quarter-to-quarter rate of change (what that quarter’s percent quarter-to-quarter change would translate into if compounded for four consecutive quarters).
This can mean that the latest quarter can be reported with a positive annualized growth rate, while the actual annual rate of change is negative. Such was the case for the 3rd quarter of 2009
World:
People Around the World Reject US Intervention in Venezuela Demonstrations supporting Venezuela’s government are using the hashtags #TrumpHandsOffVenezuela and #VenezuelaEnDefensaDeLaPaz (Venezuela In Defense Of Peace). People around the world have expressed solidarity with Venezuela and have rejected the United States government’s interventionism and the attempted coup in Venezuela. Demonstrations in support ofthe Venezuelan government on social media are mainly under the hashtags #TrumpHandsOffVenezuela and #VenezuelaEnDefensaDeLaPaz (Venezuela In Defense Of Peace). The Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Ministry has shared several posts to show the support received by the Bolivarian government in different countries and cities around the world
Venezuela Cuts Ties with Colombia As Maduro Declares ‘Coup Has Failed’ According to Maduro, the U.S.-backed coup has failed in Venezuela, thanks to the unity of civic groups and the military.Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro broke all “all diplomatic and politic relations” with Colombia Saturday, after stating that President Ivan Duque has supported a “foreign military invasion” against Venezuela. President Maduro gave 24 hours for all Colombian diplomatic personnel to leave the country. “Patience has been exhausted. We cannot continue to stand for it. We cannot continue to endure how Colombia lets it territory be used for aggression against Venezuela,” said Maduro in a Bolivarian rally.
“Here (in Venezuela) the people govern, nobody else.” | Photo: teleSUR
Venezuela: declaration to the revolutionary people – before the imperialist onslaught, we must go on the offensive! In Venezuela, a new reactionary coup attempt, led by imperialism and the oligarchy, is underway. 20 years since the imperialist-backed ruling class lost direct control of the Venezuelan state, the White House has decided to reestablish its grip by resorting to relentless diplomatic, economic and military pressure against the government of Nicolás Maduro. The goals pursued by the US are known to all: to control the innumerable riches of Venezuela, to crush the Bolivarian Revolution and to make an example of the Venezuelan people to discourage popular and workers’ movements of the continent and the world. We have arrived at a decisive and defining moment in the national class struggle. The situation demands a forceful, revolutionary response By Lucha de Clases
Venezuela Announces Arrival of 7.5 Tons of Medicine President Maduro met with representatives from Russia, Cuba and the Pan American Health Organization, at Miraflores Palace, to discuss strengthening Venezuela’s health system. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro Moros announced Thursday the arrival of medical aid, arriving from Russia for the strengthening of the public health system
The U.S. and Venezuela: a Long History of Hostility As the world’s fifth largest oil exporter, and holding the largest reserves of oil outside of the Middle East, Venezuela, as of 2004, was one of the four (4) top oil suppliers to the U.S. “Before (Hugo) Chavez was elected, two political parties representing the white elite and their U.S. friends ruled Venezuela for 40 years. Torture, disappearances and corruption were rife. Only 24 per cent of revenue from its nationalized oil reached state coffers. Consequently, 80 per cent of the country’s population (who are mainly people of African and indigenous descent) were living in poverty despite its oil wealth.”[1] By Robert Fantina
The War on Venezuela is Built on Lies Should the CIA stooge Guaido and his white supremacists grab power, it will be the 68th overthrow of a sovereign government by the United States, most of them democracies. A fire sale of Venezuela’s utilities and mineral wealth will surely follow, along with the theft of the country’s oil, as outlined by John Bolton. Under the last Washington-controlled government in Caracas, poverty reached historic proportions. There was no healthcare for those could not pay. There was no universal education; Mavis Mendez, and millions like her, could not read or write. How cool is that, Tom? By John Pilger
Haiti: imperialist aggression against Bolivarian Revolution sparks mass movement Mass protests and a general strike against growing poverty, corruption, and demanding the resignation of President Jovenel Moïse have shut down Haiti for the past two weeks. This mass movement is a direct continuation of the general strike that erupted last summer against proposed increases to the cost of fuel as well as the mass protests that took place last November in relation to a corruption scandal involving PetroCaribe funds. By Rob Lyon
US Racism and Imperialism Fuel Turbulence in Haiti Beginning on February 7, Haitians have been in the streets protesting against corruption, high prices, shortages, inflation, and power outages. Demonstrators are demanding that President Jovenel Moïse, in power since January 2017, resign. Moïseblames the disturbances on “armed groupsand drug traffickers” and is calling for negotiation. Facing police brutality, masses of Haitians have blocked roads, stoned officials, burned vehicles, and ransacked stores; nine are dead and over 100 wounded. Food and drinkable water are scarce. The United States withdrew non-emergency diplomatic representatives and issued travel warnings. The Trump administration indicated humanitarian aid may be on the way. By W. T. Whitney
American Strike Force Arrested in Haiti Go Free The Core Group of “Haiti friends,” are the ambassadors from U.S., France, Canada, Brazil, Spain, OAS, UN, European Union and Germany. They prop up the corrupt and unpopular Jovenel-Céant regime, no matter how much violence it meters out onto the people. It’s chilling and so Nazi terrible for the dying Haitian collective, some burned the U.S. flag at the last massive protests against the government and put out an SOS to Russia. It’s against this background of brutal, Western-sponsored institutionalized violence, that we must look at the latest indignity. By Ezili Dantò
Nigerian elections postponed due to imperialist meddling Nigerians woke up on Saturday, 16 February 2019, to the shocking news of the postponement of the Presidential and National Assembly elections, scheduled for that day. But what class interests lay behind this decision? The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, made the announcement a few hours before the opening of the polls. This was after he had been repeatedly assuring Nigerians and international observers that the elections were going ahead. . . . The way forward lies in building a mass working-class party resting on the trade unions with an alternative ideology and programme to the current rot we have before us. There is no solution to the immense problems faced by the Nigerian masses if we remain within the limited confines of the capitalist system. The corrupt ruling elites will continue to live in opulence at the expense of the masses, and they will seek this or that foreign master who can guarantee their continued existence as local errand boys of imperialism. The imperialist powers will continue to drain the wealth of Nigeria, ignoring the needs of the very people who produce that wealth. Within the fast-approaching turmoil, the whole political edifice will be shaken to its foundations. The trade union leaders will either have to give expression to the seething anger of the workers or be replaced by real working-class fighters. A shift to the left is inevitable at some point, as the masses seek a way out of the present nightmare. In this context, the ideas of Marxism will find a wider and wider echo. By Ola Kazeem
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
New Jersey: Dark Money Is Paying to Double Down on High-Stakes Testing Wake up, parents and teachers in New Jersey! The billionaires and Dark Money are launching a sneak attack on your children and students. When he ran for office, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy promised to scrap the Common Core-aligned PARCC and end the state’s high-stakes exit exams. But billionaires and hedge fund managers don’t want to stop high-stakes testing. They love PARCC because it makes public schools look bad. Making public schools look bad helps the privatization movement. Dark money and billionaires are dumping money into the bank accounts of key legislators to keep the testing machine alive. Find out which billionaire education reformers are behind the push to keep high-stakes standardized testing alive in New Jersey, and which legislators are doing their bidding. #HijackedByBillionaires By Diane Ravitch
Racially Discriminatory Lending Leads to Black Community Wealth Decline Racially Discriminatory Lending Leads to Black Community Wealth Decline
