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Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!
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!Images of the Day:Quotes of the Day:
Images of the Day:
Bendib: Smoking Gun
Quotes of the Day:
But as the UN’s new “Production Gap” report reiterates, unrestrained oil and gas production is inconsistent with the world’s climate targets. Current production plans result in 43 percent more oil and 47 percent more gas in 2040 than would be consistent with a 2°C pathway, according to the analysis. And while the oil and gas industry likes to point to the role of natural gas in reducing carbon emissions (while ignoring increases in globe-warming methane emissions), the Production Gap report warns that “the rapid rise in oil and gas production will push total U.S. extraction-based CO2 emissions 40 percent above 2005 levels by 2025.” “The time to begin planning for a wind-down of gas production is, as with other fossil fuels, already upon us,” the report states. —Oil and Gas Industry Rebukes Fracking Ban Talk as UN Shows Just How Much Fossil Fuel Plans Are Screwing Climate Limits
Videos Of the Day:
Stacey Abrams Hires Palast Investigations Team for Massive Federal Suit to Restore Voting Rights In 2018, the Palast investigations team uncovered 340,134 voters illegally removed from Georgia’s voter rolls by Secretary of State Brian Kemp while he was running for Governor against Stacey Abrams.
Economic Update: Teaching Economics – A Revolutionary Approach This week: Updates on Kshama Sawant’s reelection victory in the Seattle City Council race; the obesity problem’s costs and causes in the U.S.; critiquing libertarian arguments in favor of capitalism; Prof. Wolff interviews Dr. Amy S. Cramer, a Professor of Economics at Pima Community College in Arizona about her accessible education project “Voices on the Economy.”
U.S.:
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.
HUD Officials Admit They Knowingly Stalled Puerto Rico Housing Relief Funds Two top officials with the Department of Housing and Urban Development admitted at a congressional hearing this week that the agency knowingly missed a legally required deadline that would have made desperately needed hurricane relief funding available to Puerto Rico. HUD’s chief financial officer, Irv Dennis, and David Woll, the department’s principal deputy assistant secretary for community planning and development, made the admission Thursday before a House Appropriations subcommittee. By Nicole Acevedo
Bearing Witness to the Costs of War There is some incongruity between my role as an editor of a book about the costs of America’s wars and my identity as a military spouse. I’m deeply disturbed at the scale of human suffering caused by those conflicts and yet I’ve unintentionally contributed to the war effort through the life I’ve chosen. I am the co-editor with Catherine Lutz of War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a new volume of social science research from Brown University’s Costs of War Project. At the same time, I am a practicing therapist-in-training and I specialize in working with veterans who have post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Through the scholarly research I review and the veteran clients I have seen, I am committed professionally to bearing witness to the human costs of America’s forever wars, and to alleviating suffering where I can. By Andrea Mazzarino
Environment:
Pennsylvania Communities Grow Wary of Worsening Air Pollution as Petrochemical Industry Arrives While the Ohio River Valley, long home to the coal and steel industries, is no stranger to air pollution, the region’s natural gas boom and burgeoning petrochemical industry threaten to erase the gains of recent decades. Concerns about air quality, which has already begun declining nationally since 2016, are growing rapidly for those living in the shadow of Shell’s $6 billion plastics plant under construction along the Ohio River in western Pennsylvania’s Beaver County. Residents and activists from the greater Pittsburgh area fear that worsening air quality will lower the value of homes, deter new clean business development, and sicken people.“It is not lost on us that Allegheny Health Network is building a cancer institute directly above the cracker plant at the Beaver County Mall,” Matt Mehalik, executive director of the advocacy group Breathe Project, said at a November 6 public meeting about the Shell plastics plant, also known as an “ethane cracker.” “There is a certain degree of sick irony about that.” By Julie Dermansky 
Oil and Gas Industry Rebukes Fracking Ban Talk as UN Shows Just How Much Fossil Fuel Plans Are Screwing Climate Limits The American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s largest oil and gas trade association, is promoting a new video touting domestic natural gas production as essential to energy security. The video, titled “America’s Energy Security: A Generation of Progress At Risk?” comes at a time when calls for halting new fossil fuel production and infrastructure are getting louder and coincided with the release of a United Nations report highlighting the misalignment between global climate goals and countries’ plans to develop fossil fuels. API’s video is part of a broader strategic campaign by the oil and gas industry to quash public support for a national ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and to promote itself as the “natural gas and oil industry.” The lobbying group released its video last week to coincide with the fifth Democratic presidential debate, saying, “some Democratic presidential candidates are now proposing restrictive energy policies that would erase a generation of American progress.” By By Dana Drugmand
Native American Tribes Block Copper Mining Company From Destroying Ancestral Lands For too long, our justice system has sided with the government and corporations at the expense of the rights of indigenous peoples like Native Americans. But a ruling by a judge against a mining company in Arizona may be setting a new precedent.For thousands of years, the Tohono O’odham Nation, Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Hopi Tribe and several others have buried their ancestors at the Santa Rita Mountains and use the surrounding areas to keep themselves connected to the natural world that they revere.
The ‘Climate Crisis Is a Health Emergency’: New Report Warns US Fracking Boom Making People and Planet Sick “It is unconscionable that we continue to subject our communities to these risks when we have the technology to make a just transition to renewable energy.” By Jessica Corbett
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
The End of American Thanksgivings: A Cause for Universal Rejoicing The mythology that Thanksgiving nurtures is itself inherently evil. This article first appeared in the November 27, 2003 issue of The Black Commentator. “The Mayflower’s cultural heirs are programmed to find glory In their own depravity and savagery in their most helpless victims.”Nobody but Americans celebrates Thanksgiving. It is reserved by history and the intent of “the founders” as the supremely white American holiday, the most ghoulish event on the national calendar. No Halloween of the imagination can rival the exterminationist reality that was the genesis, and remains the legacy, of the American Thanksgiving. It is the most loathsome, humanity-insulting day of the year – a pure glorification of racist barbarity. By Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
Freedom Rider: Say No to Bloomberg Bloomberg says he wants to stop Donald Trump but he’s really running to stop Bernie Sanders. “Bloomberg targeted black people for political gain with whites and he created great suffering in the process.” In 2002 Michael Bloomberg was sworn in as mayor of New York City. In that same year the men known as the Central Park Five had their sentences vacated. They all served between 6 and 13 years in prison for a rape they did not commit. They sued New York City for the wrongful convictions but the Bloomberg administration refused to pay. They had to wait until he left office in 2014 to receive their $40 million settlement. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR editor and senior columnist
Barack Obama and the Ruling Class Target the Black Vote to Smother Sanders Obama’s principle task is to ensure sure that Black Americans do not vote in the direction of single-payer healthcare and housing for all. “The ruling class needs Obama as an adviser and bully of the Black vote.” Not a month after condemning “call out culture,” Barack Obama was once again the prized speaker at an event held by Democratic Party “mega donors” (Wall Street) in Atlanta, Georgia. Seated next to Obama protégé Stacy Abrams, Obama warned Democratic Party candidates of going too far left in their policy proposals. “The average American doesn’t think we have to tear down the system,” Obama said , adding, “They just don’t want to see crazy stuff. They want to see things a little more fair, they want to see things a little more just. And how we approach that I think will be important.” By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
The Origins of White Supremacy White supremacy is an incredibly insincere distraction that tries to erase the histories of White, Black, and Red peoples. “Many White people seem to have forgotten what happened to them.” Some say the white supremacy ideology comes from pride. Some say it comes from a belief that one’s culture is superior. Some say it comes from hatred. I never believed these things are the primary reason because I always sensed a deep loss in the heart of countless white people, some deep emptiness and fear. Though, admitting to this emptiness is another matter. By Chelli Stanley
Fascism – The Other F-Word – And Trump Trump is a racist and demagogic capitalist Chief of State, but the United States is not fascist – yet. “The principal contradiction in U.S. society remains in the alienation between labor and capital.” Large swaths of folks from the left — socialists, liberals, democratic socialists — and even a sprinkling of conservatives deem Donald Trump, a fascist. Joe Sims of the Communist Party USA said, “In the U.S., fascism is not fully formed, but it is present in the corporate boardrooms, in the mass rallies, in the online forums of Breitbart and Fox News, and in government.” One liberal journal said, “Now the Democratic Party, and, by all appearances, most independent voters in America are what stand between Donald Trump and his goal of fascist control of the United States.” By Ken Morgan
Bolivia Coup: Hatred of the Indian How did the traditional middle class incubate so much hatred and resentment towards the people, leading them to embrace racialized fascism centered on the Indian as the enemy? “Racial supremacy is something that is not rationalized. It lives as a tattoo of the colonial history.” The author is the vice-president of Bolivia, who was forced out of the country along with President Evo Morales. Almost as a nighttime fog, hatred rapidly traverses the neighborhoods of the traditional urban middle-class of Bolivia. Their eyes fill with anger. They do not yell, they spit. They do not raise demands, they impose. Their chants are not of hope of brotherhood. They are of disdain and discrimination against the Indians. They hop on their motorcycles, get into their trucks, gather in their fraternities of private universities, and they go out to hunt the rebellious Indians that dared to take power from them. By Álvaro García Linera
Give No Thanks for Settlers’ Savagery The peculiar national holiday is a celebration of white settler conquest – a whitewashing of unspeakable crimes. “Denial is facilitated by an extensive and elaborate collection of myths.” When a sane person commits a horrific, unspeakable crime, that person’s psyche is unable to effectively withstand the trauma. Such an individual will either suffer a loss of mental stability or instinctively default to any of several psychological coping mechanisms. As a consequence of a protracted campaign of conquest, territorial theft, genocide and enslavement, European settlers in the U.S. and their racial heirs have had to cope with heavy emotional baggage. Knowledge that the country they relish is built on piles of bloody carcasses of many millions of African and indigenous peoples overwhelms their souls, and coping requires a focused, deliberate and permanent state of denial. Denial is facilitated by an extensive and elaborate collection of myths, legends and outright lies about U.S. history and historical figures. Desirable fantasies can even be projected on to contemporary personalities like Barack Obama who has enabled many a white person in denial to say: “There is no more racism because we elected a black president.” By Mark P. Fancher
The Whole Damn System is Guilty as Hell: Taking Control of the Police Democratic community control of the police transforms the power dynamic between police and citizens. “One thousand people attended the re-founding of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression where the centerpiece of discussion was democratic control of the police.The entire system of policing in the United States is in crisis. Police murdering civilians has become a too common nightmare across the United States. The police murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, Eric Garner in New York City, Walter Scott in Charleston, SC, Tamar Rice in Cleveland OH, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, MD, Laquan McDonald in Chicago, IL and so many more have spurred a movement to transform policing.The power relationship between police and the community is out of balance. Militarized policing of black and brown communities resembles an occupying force. While many police departments use the slogan “protect and serve,” in too many communities, people do not feel protected or served. They feel threatened, harassed and abused by police. By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers
A (Re)Born National “Black and Left-Led” Organization Fights for Community Control of Police On the momentum of Chicago’s anti-police movement – the most advanced in the nation – the city’s Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression has gone national after a highly successful conference. On the momentum of Chicago’s vibrant anti-police movement – the most advanced in the nation – the city’s Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression has gone national after a highly successful conference. “This movement will be ‘black-led and left-led.’”Eight-hundred organizers from 28 states gathered last weekend at the Chicago’s teachers union hall to “re-found” the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, an organization initially launched in 1973 by Angela Davis and fellow Communists to resist state destruction of what remained of the 1960s radical movement. Davis, a university professor who became a fugitive and political prisoner when the FBI attempted to entangle her in the 1970 Marin County shootout , was on hand to help restore the Alliance to national status. “We might say that we have acquired more complex approaches to issues of repression that refused to go away,” said Davis, age 75, in her keynote to a spirited rally of mostly young, overwhelmingly non-white activists. By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
Labor:
Just One Week After Trump Rolled Back Safety Measures, Chemical Plant Explosion Rocks Texas Town “This facility has a track record of violating the Clean Air Act.” Concerns about air quality lingered Wednesday following a major early morning explosion at a chemical plant in Port Neches, Texas that shot a fireball into the sky. The disaster at the TPC Group-owned facility roughly 94 miles west of Houston took place a week after the Trump administration rolled back safety rules meant to protect workers and people who live near chemical plants. In light of the timing, Catherine Fraser, Environment Texas’s clean air associate, calledWednesday’s explosion “a timely warning that state and federal officials need to do more to keep communities safe.” By Andrea Germanos 
Economy:These 8 Men Have As Much Money As Half The World A new Oxfam report finds income inequality is benefiting a few billionaires who already have “biblical” fortunes. Just eight super-rich men hold the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population, according to an analysis from the charity Oxfam released Sunday night. Six of these billionaires, from Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people, are American entrepreneurs: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Rounding out the list are Carlos Slim, the Mexican tycoon, and Amancio Ortega, the Spanish founder of a retail conglomerate that includes clothing chain Zara. Together their net wealth ― assets minus debts ― amounts to $426 billion.
World:
‘Secret Agenda Today Is Exposed’: Corbyn Says Leaked Docs Show Tory Plan to Privatize NHS With Trump’s Help The U.K. Labour leader said the move, if successful, “could lead to runaway privatization of our health service.” U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on Wednesday unveiled over 450 pages of leaked documents that he said expose British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s effort to open up the National Health Service to corporate exploitation in trade negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump. During a press conference, Corbyn said the Trump administration’s negotiators are “demanding” that the NHS be put “on the table” in talks over a possible post-Brexit trade pact between the U.S. and U.K. By Jake Johnson
Chile: what would it take to bring down Piñera and his regime? Chile is experiencing another general strike, as part of the uprising against the regime that has been going on for almost 40 days already. The government continues to intensify the repression (denounced by international organisations) and even modifies legislation by granting itself more powers to use the army “in the protection of public buildings”, without decreeing the state of emergency, while trying to bamboozle the movement through “agreements” and promises of negotiation. The conditions for bringing Piñera down are present, but what is missing? Jorge Martin 
Health, Education, Science, 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
New Chinese magnetic levitation train ‘is faster than going by plane’ A bullet train which ‘floats’ above the tracks using magnetic levitation could soon hit 373mph in China – making it faster than travelling by plane. A prototype body of the science fiction vehicle was shown off in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao this week. The machine, designed by China’s China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC), is slated to go into production in 2021. By Rob Waugh
Black Agenda Report Nocember 27, 2019