During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and The Iron Heel.
Always Remember That Obamba Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature, Started the United States Capitalist Austerity Program — The Race to the Botom or the Pauperization of the 99%!
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. Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!
No matter what the definitions of reparations are, in my opinion there should be no talk of reparations in the United States unless it includes the ending of the historic and horrific crime against humanity: the death penalty. The death penalty in all its heinous forms was used not only to force people to submit to being slaves but also to keep them enslaved, from the shores of Africa to the shores of the United States. From 1619, when the first African slaves set foot on this land, the death penalty and torture that preceded it kept an entire population of African and African American people in fear and enslaved. Even white abolitionists who tried to end slavery were tortured and executed. This took place from 1619 to 1865, and from 1865 to 1965, the freed slaves and their descendants went from chattel slavery to slavery by another name—by way of the prison leasing system. That system, just like the system it replaced, relied on the death penalty and torture to force black people to work and live against their will in inhumane conditions. For many, that was a fate worse than death. In the tortured history of this country, the death penalty has reigned supreme over the lives of the descendants of slaves. For decades, studies have shown that often, all-white or mostly white juries have disproportionately imposed the death sentence on blacks. When Jim Crow segregation was used to keep black people in the separate and unequal world, the death penalty was right there as a reminder of what would happen to them if they got out of line, or out of their place, or became too “uppity.”It is neither right nor fair to talk about reparations and not include ending the main tool that has been implemented to terrorize a people forced to live, work and raise a family while contributing to a country hellbent on denying them their humanity. The system that exists gives lip service to the historical suffering, torture and cold-blooded murder of the people who have had the death penalty imposed on their black bodies. — Kevin Cooper, A Key Reparation to Descendants of Slaves Wouldn’t Cost a Dime
“We have been taught that ignorance and hate lead to racist ideas, lead to racist policies,” Kendi said. “If the fundamental problem is ignorance and hate, then your solutions are going to be focused on education, and love and persuasion. But of course [Stamped from the Beginning] shows that the actual foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate, but self-interest, particularly economic and political and cultural.” Self-interest drives racist policies that benefit that self-interest. When the policies are challenged because they produce inequalities, racist ideas spring up to justify those policies. Hate flows freely from there. — Ibram X. Kendi
Recent debates about slavery in Britain and the United States have understandably focused on the toxic legacies those systems bequeathed to the black peoples of the Caribbean and the US, the descendants of the slaves. What is sometimes overlooked is that the racial ideas of the pro-slavery lobby were also aimed at Africans in their home continent. The impact of Atlantic slavery on Africa can be measured not just in terms of underdevelopment and depopulation, but also in the way in which the continent came to be imagined in Europe in the post-slavery era, during which all but two of Africa’s nations were colonised by the competing European powers. — The Roots of European Racism Lie in The Slave Trade, Colonialism – And Edward Long
The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War! Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.
Nobody Gets Liberated Until the Defeat of the Plutocrats The Lords of Capital commission their politicians and media servants to spin lies all day long, because every fact of capitalist life demands the overthrow of the system. “Black liberation/self-determination, by any definition, is wholly incompatible with the emerging imperial nightmare order.” Late stage capitalism is eating US society alive, dissolving all bonds between peoples and savaging every human right that has not already been put on the “market” and made buyable. The rule of the super-rich makes all the rest of us super-small. Relations among individuals, classes and even workers doing exactly the same job on the assembly line are distorted and deformed to further enrich the likes of Jeff Bezos ($114 billion), Bill Gates ($106 billion) and Warren Buffett ($80.8 billion), who have grasped more wealth in their personal clutches than is held by the entire bottom half of the U.S. population. One out of five Americans owe more than they own, rendering them negative beings in U.S. society. . By Glen Ford, Black Agends Report executive editorOil Is Behind Every War in the Middle East: U.S. May Now Keep Some Troops in Syria to Guard Oilfields The U.S. may leave some forces in Syria to secure oilfields and make sure they don’t fall into the hands of a resurgent Islamic State, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Monday, even though President Donald Trump has insisted he is pulling troops out of the country and getting out of “endless wars.” By Lolita C. Baldor
A Soldier or a “Killing Machine”? “We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill!” Donald J. Trump tweeted October 12, 2019 regarding the case of Maj. Mathew Golsteyn a former Green Beret who is on trial for killing an unarmed Afghan man in 2010, a killing Golsteyn twice admitted. This statement was made by the Chief Law enforcement officer of the U.S. whose job it is to enforce the Constitution and laws (including the laws of war) “faithfully” under Article II of the Constitution, a Constitution which supposedly sought to limit war by giving only Congress the power to declare war, to avoid standing armies in times of peace, and to, in America, “make law king.” By Kary Love
The White House Targets Refugees, Green Card Applicants, and Poor Immigrants On September 26th, President Donald Trump’s White House announced that, in 2020, refugee admissions to the United States will be limited to 18,000, drastically lower than any yearly ceiling over the past 40 years. Along with that announcement, the White House released a separate executive orderintended to upend many years of precedent by giving state and local authorities the power to deny refugees resettlement in their jurisdictions. By Arnold R. Isaacs
Environment:
Trump’s Regulatory Rollbacks Linked to Worse Air Quality and Thousands of Premature Deaths “This is happening at a time when the EPA has disbanded its scientific panel reviewing fine particle air pollution.” The Trump administration’s aggressive regulatory rollback on the environment has rapidly led to worsening air quality in the U.S., according to a new study. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University said Tuesday that after seven years of a 24 percent decline in air pollution, it took just two years for the number of pollutants in the air to rise by 5.5 percent, from 2016 to 2018. By Julia Conley
Segregation, Wealth and Education: the Politics of Liberal San Francisco’s ‘Separate But Equal’ A recent New York Times article about the segregation of schools across the district of San Francisco (San Francisco Had an Ambitious Plan to Tackle School Segregation. It Made It Worse) cites president of the SF Board of Education, Stevon Cook, stating that the problem arose inadvertently. It discusses issues of wide-scale busing needs and school zoning as contributing factors to the city’s segregation. That article pertains to segregation between schools, not within schools, and Starr King Elementary, the city’s single most segregated school, is not even mentioned. If you look closely at what is happening at Starr King, and in particular at the power and funding structures that have developed there since a Chinese Mandarin Immersion program was added in 2006, the idea that the segregation could be inadvertent becomes less plausible. There are no issues of wide-scale busing or school zoning to blame for the school’s segregation. Low-income people of color who live a stone’s throw away from the school do not need a bus or different school zone to go there. By A.M. Hennessey
Labor:
More GM Workers Reject Deal As UAW Tries To Suppress “No” Votes Striking General Motors in Kentucky, Tennessee, New York and Michigan have rejected the four-year deal brought back by the United Auto Workers despite the efforts of the UAW to suppress opposition and ram through the sellout agreement. GM workers in Rochester, New York, who produce components for GM, voted overwhelmingly against the UAW-backed contract. Results posted on the UAW Local 1097 Facebook page Wednesday stated that of the 636 ballots cast, 526 voted “no,” or 83 percent. Only 110 “yes” votes were cast. By Jerry White “GM Paid For This Vote”: Autoworkers Denounce Sellout Contract As Opposition Grows Tensions between autoworkers and the United Auto Workers are coming to a boil this week, as the UAW continues its attempts to force through the sellout contract and end the month-long walkout. “Informational meetings” throughout the country have already seen showdowns between union executives and workers opposed to the contract, which gives the company a blank check to use temporary workers with a bogus, years-long “pathway” for temps to be hired in, and confirms the company’s shutdown of Lordstown and three other facilities. By Tom Hall and Jerry White
Thousands Of Demonstrators Take To The Streets, Stopping Traffic And Circling City Hall
World:
Abuses and Police Violence in Chile, Live on Social Networks The Chilean social upheaval is leaving unpublished signs of police abuse and violence since the military dictatorship, although now social networks help spread these outrages almost live. Chileans observe incredulous scenes that seemed forgotten, such as people who identify themselves with their name while being detained by police or military agents so that the fact is recorded and the trail can be followed. That was a common practice during the Augusto Pinochet regime (1973-1990). It served so that the witnesses of the detention could notify the families so that they denounce the facts to the courts or entities such as the Vicaria de la Solidaridad. Now, however, there is almost always someone who records the arrest with a smartphone, uploads the video to social networks and soon after the images go viral.
Economy:
Fed Ups Its Wall Street Bailout to $690 Billion a Week as Media Snoozes esterday the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Fed) announced that the giant money spigot it turned on for Wall Street on September 17 would be growing exponentially beginning today. The New York Fed will now be lavishing up to $120 billion a day in cheap overnight loans to Wall Street securities trading firms, a daily increase of $45 billion from its previously announced $75 billion a day. In addition, it is increasing its 14-day term loans to Wall Street, a program which also came out of the blue in September, to $45 billion. Those term loans since September have been occurring twice a week, meaning another $90 billion a week will be offered, bringing the total weekly offering to an astounding $690 billion. It should be noted that if the same Wall Street firms are getting these loans continuously rolled over, they are effectively permanent loans. (That’s exactly what happened during the 2007-2010 Wall Street collapse: some teetering Wall Street casinos received, individually, $2 trillion in cumulative loans that were rolled over for two and one-half years – without the authorization or even awareness of Congress or the American people. One bank, Citigroup, received over $2.5 trillion in Fed loans, much of them at an interest rate below 1 percent, at a time when it was insolvent and couldn’t have obtained loans in the open market at even high double-digit interest rates.) By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Health, Education, and Welfare:
The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!
The 10 points of Marx’s Communist Manifesto Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production. These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c. (from the Communist Manifesto and all)
Oil Is Behind Every War in the Middle East: U.S. May Now Keep Some Troops in Syria to Guard Oilfields The U.S. may leave some forces in Syria to secure oilfields and make sure they don’t fall into the hands of a resurgent Islamic State, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Monday, even though President Donald Trump has insisted he is pulling troops out of the country and getting out of “endless wars.” By Lolita C. Baldor
“GM Paid For This Vote”: Autoworkers Denounce Sellout Contract As Opposition Grows Tensions between autoworkers and the United Auto Workers are coming to a boil this week, as the UAW continues its attempts to force through the sellout contract and end the month-long walkout. “Informational meetings” throughout the country have already seen showdowns between union executives and workers opposed to the contract, which gives the company a blank check to use temporary workers with a bogus, years-long “pathway” for temps to be hired in, and confirms the company’s shutdown of Lordstown and three other facilities. By Tom Hall and Jerry White
