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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.
Women’s Day or Working Women’s Day is a day of international solidarity, and a day for reviewing the strength and organization of proletarian women. But this is not a special day for women alone. The 8th of March is a historic and memorable day for the workers and peasants, for all the Russian workers and for the workers of the whole world. In 1917, on this day, the great February revolution broke out.[2] It was the working women of Petersburg who began this revolution; it was they who first decided to raise the banner of opposition to the Tsar and his associates. And so, working women’s day is a double celebration for us.
But if this is a general holiday for all the proletariat, why do we call it “Women’s Day”? Why then do we hold special celebrations and meetings aimed above all at the women workers and the peasant women? Doesn’t this jeopardize the unity and solidarity of the working class? To answer these questions, we have to look back and see how
Women’s Day came about and for what purpose it was organized. Not very long ago, in fact about ten years ago, the question of women’s equality, and the question of whether women could take part in government alongside men was being hotly debated. The working class in all capitalist countries struggled for the rights of working women: the bourgeoisie did not want to accept these rights. It was not in the interest of the bourgeoisie to strengthen the vote of the working class in parliament; and in every country they hindered the passing of laws that gave the right to working women.
Socialists in North America insisted upon their demands for the vote with particular persistence. On the 28th of February, 1909, the women socialists of the U.S.A. organized huge demonstrations and meetings all over the country demanding political rights for working women. This was the first “Woman’s Day”. The initiative on organizing a woman’s day thus belongs to the working women of America.
In 1910, at the Second International Conference of Working Women, Clara Zetkin[3] brought forward the question of organizing an International Working Women’s Day. The conference decided that every year, in every country, they should celebrate on the same day a “Women’s Day” under the slogan “The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism”. During these years, the question of making parliament more democratic, i.e., of widening the franchise and extending the vote to women, was a vital issue. Even before the first world war, the workers had the right to vote in all bourgeois countries except Russia. [4] Only women, along with the insane, remained without these rights. Yet, at the same time, the harsh reality of capitalism demanded the participation of women in the country’s economy. Read More
Women’s Day History: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. Increasingly, International Women’s Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities. Below is a brief history of how the Day has evolved.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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1975 The United Nations began celebrating International Women’s Day (IWD) on 8 March during International Women’s Year 1975.
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1977 In December 1977, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a United Nations Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace to be observed on any day of the year by Member States, in accordance with their historical and national traditions.
Images of the Day :
Quotes of the Day:
For the world’s masses, from Capitalism’s beginning there has been nothing progressive about capitalism. From its bloody beginning capitalism has been a holocaust for humanity bringing war, drug addiction, famine, pestilence and death throughout the world. In today’s world—the aids epidemic; the many wars and bombings; the overproduction of food and simultaneous starvation of the world’s poor; and the destruction of the earth as a habitat for humanity—capitalism continues to demonstrate its inhuman bloody nature against humanity. Based upon what Karl Marx explains in this chapter and the Petras addition to it, the amount due to be repaid based upon profits made from this plunder would be more than the total gross national product (GNP) of all of the imperialist states. In reality, the costs for reparations by capitalism for its crimes against humanity, is so astronomical it is beyond human understanding. —Roland Sheppard, Reparations and Capitalism
Budget projections show the federal budget deficit growing substantially in the next decade and beyond. A major part of this story is high US health care costs. The United States pays roughly twice as much per person for its health care with little to show in the way of better outcomes. If US health care costs were in line with those in other countries, the budget picture would be substantially improved. I will make five main points in this discussion. First, I show how the budget outlook would look if US health care costs were comparable to those in other wealthy countries. Second, I point out that US health care costs have actually slowed substantially over the last decade. This fact has drawn remarkably little attention. Third, I point out that we pay roughly twice as much for prescription drugs as other wealthy countries and describe routes for bringing down drug prices. Fourth, we also pay twice as much for our physicians as other wealthy countries. Fifth, our administrative costs also vastly exceed costs in other wealthy countries. — Dean Baker,Health Care Costs and the Budget
U.S.:
Setting the Stage for an Encounter at the Colombia-Venezuela Border On February 23, The U.S. and Colombian governments together tried to push humanitarian supplies from the Colombian border city Cúcuta into Venezuela. The humanitarian aid was a Trojan horse that, in theory, would confront Venezuelan security forces with a dilemma. These would supposedly step aside or desert. A take-down of Venezuela’s socialist government would follow. But the soldiers, police, and people’s militia remained loyal to the emancipating legacy of President Hugo Chávez. They blocked the trucks and the façade shattered. By W. T. Whitney
‘Outrageous Violation of First Amendment’: Leaked Docs Reveal Trump Tracked Journalists and Rights Advocates at Border “The government cannot use the pretext of the border to target activists critical of its policies, lawyers providing legal representation, or journalists simply doing their jobs.” — ACLU Monitoring and intimidation program denounced by one reporter as “deeply disturbing.” By Eoin Higgins 
This Jew Tells Speaker Pelosi: “You May Well Prove Ilhan Omar Correct” Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reportedly still considering a symbolic “show vote” in Congress on an anti-Semitism and “hate” resolution – which would offer all the authenticity and honesty of a Soviet show trial. If Pelosi proceeds, it will prove Rep. Ilhan Omar’s point about the inordinate influence wielded over Congress by the “Israel-right or-wrong”/AIPAC lobby and its power to stifle criticism of Israel. The anti-Omar resolution, whether mentioning Omar or not, was originated by two Democrats who are among Congress’s most longstanding pro-Israel diehards: Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey. Both endorsed Bush’s Iraq invasion. Both opposed Obama’s Iran nuke deal. Both supported Trump’s move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. By Jeff Cohen
Environment:
Big Capital, the Working Class, and US Imperialism: a Brief Look at Recent History Today, the two looming “existential threats” are the possibility of nuclear war, and unprecedented human-caused climate change, yet neither of these seems to unduly concern our plutocrats. Capitalism thrives on war, and we forget this historical fact at our peril. Nor do they seem worried about the drastic consequences of global warming, which has been denied, ignored, or downplayed in the corporate media. In fact, it may appear that the big business oligarchs who run the US and dictate policy to a large part of the rest of the world fear very little, perhaps least of all the world’s working classes. These people suffer most from capitalism: they die in large numbers in imperialist wars and are chronically victimized by unemployment and economic crises. They are (and will continue to be) the main victims of capitalist-caused climate change. By Chuck Churchill
Exclusive: ICE Has Kept Tabs on ‘Anti-Trump’ Protesters in New York City Documents reveal that the immigration enforcement agency has been keenly attuned to left-leaning protests in the city. In the late summer of 2018, as protests against the Trump administration’s immigration policies intensified and the movement to abolish ICE gained momentum, the federal agency at the center of the storm was keeping tabs on a series of “anti-Trump protests” in New York City, according to documents obtained by The Nation via a Freedom of Information Act request. Among the protests the agency tracked were several promoting immigrants’ rights and opposing the administration’s deportation policies, as well as one protesting the National Rifle Association. One event was organized by a sitting member of Congress. By Jimmy Tobias
Government fracking policy declared unlawful by High Court ‘It is clear what the government must now do, namely hold a full review of its policy support for fracking’ Key elements of the government’s policy on fracking have been declared unlawful by the High Court. Ministers had failed to consider the latest evidence concerning the technique’s “low carbon” credentials, campaign group Talk Fracking argued. The judge agreed the climate impact of shale gas extraction had been overlooked and described government policy as “flawed in its design and processes”. The case was the latest in a series of challenges to fracking. Many environmental groups and local campaigners around the country oppose the practice. Previous unsuccessful legal cases have tried to overturn decisions at individual sites, but this ruling will apply to national policy in England. By Josh Gabbatiss
Big Energy:
Flirting With Disaster: the Return of Offshore Drilling It’s been decades since a fisherman out of Montauk on Long Island told me about seeing a ship in the Atlantic Ocean east of Long Island similar to those he had seen searching for oil in the Gulf of Mexico when he was a shrimper there. I telephoned oil company after company and each gave a firm denial about having any interest in looking for petroleum off Long Island. That was until a PR man from Gulf called back and said, yes, his company was looking for oil and gas off Long Island—and was involved in a consortium of 32 oil companies (many of which earlier issued denials). By Karl Grossman
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Reparations Now? Maybe In Order to Get the Job Done It’s Time To Call It Something Else The moral justice of the reparations proposition is unassailable. Millions were murdered, transported across oceans, worked to death, starved abused, raped, their labor, loved ones and children stolen from them, and their descendants selectively disadvantaged to this very day. They deserve to be made whole. It’s only justice, and it’s only right to try to correct an historic wrong. The reparations demand is not new . It was embodied in the efforts of some Union generals in the Civil War who redistributed land confiscated from slavemasters. That’s where the slogan “40 acres and a mule” comes from. President Andrew Johnson vetoed legislation to give the freed slaves the land they had worked on, and quickly reversed the policy almost every place it had been enacted. In the 1890s the demand surfaced again with proposals to grant pensions and land to surviving former slaves and their families. Again there was powerful opposition from the planter class, since most African Americans were agriculture and domestic workers in the South, and all the pension bills died in committee. By Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor
Labor:
Secret document reveals police ‘blacklisting’ A secret police document has revealed how the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch helped the illegal blacklisting of trade unionists – preventing them from getting jobs because of their political views. By Dominic Casciani 
1,700 workers battle two-tier wages at Erie, Pennsylvania locomotive plant 1,700 workers battle two-tier wages at Erie, Pennsylvania locomotive plant Seventeen hundred workers at the giant locomotive plant in Erie, Pennsylvania have entered their second week on the picket line, braving subzero wind-chill temperatures, to fight the company’s demands for a two-tier wage system and other givebacks. By Samuel Davidson
Real Weekly Wages Have Fallen 100% Since 1965!
. . . Real Wages have Fallen Since the Wage Price Freeze of 1972 (Shadow Government Statistics): Graph 3 plots the seasonally-adjusted earnings as officially deflated by the BLS (red-line), and as adjusted for the ShadowStats-Alternate CPI Measure, 1990-Base (blue-line). When inflation-depressing methodologies of the 1990s began to kick-in, the artificially-weakened CPI-W (also used in calculating Social Security cost-of-living adjustments) helped to prop up the reported real earnings. Official real earnings today still have not recovered their inflation-adjusted levels of the early-1970s, and, at best, have been in a minimal uptrend for the last two decades (albeit spiked recently by negative headline inflation). Deflated by the ShadowStats (1990-Based) measure, real earnings have been in fairly-regular decline for the last four decades, which is much closer to common experience than the pattern suggested by the CPI-W. See the Public Commentary on Inflation Measurement for further detail. (The Big Drop in wages, as shown by the graph, occured when the Labor Bureaucracy began to implement the tier wage system in the middle 80s, as part of their declared “partneship with the boss” — Betraying both their membership and the entire working class!)
Economy:
World:
Israel Grants First Golan Heights Oil Drilling License To Dick Cheney-Linked Company Israel has granted a U.S. company the first license to explore for oil and gas in the occupied Golan Heights, John Reed of the Financial Times reports. A local subsidiary of the New York-listed company Genie Energy — which is advised by former vice president Dick Cheney and whose shareholders include Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch — will now have exclusive rights to a 153-square mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights.
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr Explains How Big Pharma Completely Owns Congress The Facts: Robert F. Kennedy Jr emphasizes how pharmaceutical companies have a large hand in how the American government creates healthcare policy and recommendations. Reflect On: At the end of the day, awareness is key, as we are the tools used by these corporations. Without US, they would not be able to sell their product. Do these companies have our best interest at heart? Or does business greed take over? By Arjun Walia
Videos of the Day:
