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Shaky Joe Biden, Billionaire Bloomberg, and the Global Race to the Bottom Bloomberg has put himself and his fortune into the contest to rally his (ruling) classmates to the task of shoring up corporate control of the Party if Sanders seizes the top spot. “The fate and fortunes of the oligarchy cannot be allowed to depend on Old Shaky Joe.” U.S. oligarchs have begun to panic at the prospect that they will lose control of the other half of the American electoral duopoly. With the GOP in Donald Trump’s unreliable hands, the Democrats four years ago became the de facto ruling class party, and thus the favored brand of the national security state and most of the corporate media. Although there is not even one genuine anti-imperialist among congressional Democrats – certainly not Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren — the party’s popular base is in revolt against a 40-year domestic austerity regime that offers nothing but ever-declining real wages, non-existent job security and a visibly decaying nation-scape. It has finally dawned on most Americans that they have been conscripted into a Global Race to the Bottom, and they want out of the downward spiral. By Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
Freedom Rider: The Internet Does Washington’s Dirty Work As long as the internet is in private hands it should be seen as a “frenemy” — a useful resource that can also be wielded as a weapon. “Black people are routinely sent to “facebook jail” if their words anger racist white people.”In its early days the internet seemed to be an undisputed good, a means of communication open to all. It was hoped that these new platforms would level the playing field and give smaller outlets like Black Agenda Report access to a worldwide audience. The internet has done that but it is also a weapon that is used against the left in this country and against nations and movements declared enemies by this government. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
White Supremacy and War Are Vice Grips Strangling the Working Class: What we Can Learn from China The same white supremacist ideology that dehumanizes Black Americans also steers the US Empire’s regime of endless war abroad. China teaches us is that the U.S. no longer holds a monopoly on the economic and political direction of humanity.”This article was originally intended as remarks to the China-US Solidarity Network Silk Road Delegation. Due to logistical issues, the remarks have instead been republished here.I am a member of the working class in the United States. I have been a shop steward for two unions and have engaged in work with several anti-imperialist and socialist organizations. I am second generation Vietnamese. My mother emigrated from Saigon during the U.S. invasion of Vietnam that killed two to three million people over the course of over a decade. My father was a working-class white American who was deployed to Vietnam to participate in the genocidal war. White supremacy and war have always acted as vice grips meant to strangle and suffocate my family and my community. Anti-Asian sentiment and the precipitous decline in living standards for workers and poor people propelled me into the struggle for social transformation and revolutionary change. By Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
The New York Fed’s Financial Stranglehold on Iraq The US is threatening to seize Iraq’s oil revenues if Baghdad expels American troops. “If they want to cut you off from the global economy, they can do so at the flick of a switch.” After the US assassination of Iranian general Qaseem Soleimani on Iraqi soil, the Iraqi government demanded that the US remove all its troops. Great idea, long overdue. Black Agenda Report readers no doubt agree, and many of us will no doubt join the national and international day of antiwar marches coming up on Saturday, January 25. Up rising Today reports that tens of thousands of Iraqis took to the streets in Baghdad and other cities in the south and center of the country on January 18 to demand the US troops leave. They also demanded a new government. By Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Forty-Five Felons With Their Own Holiday: The U.S. Presidency Margaret Kimberley’s new book on US presidents and Black people shows why the executive mansion is called the “White” House.“FDR told his Attorney General, ‘I warned you not to call me again about any of Eleanor’s niggers.’” I suppose you have to actually be convicted of a felony to be a felon, but I also think we should make an exception for U.S. presidents. Take the current one, for example. Donald Trump just murdered Iranian and Iraqi military officials at an airport in Baghdad. His staff later “briefed” Congress members on why these murders were “legal.” Congress members denounced the briefing as utter nonsense, and yet labeled the murders “a strike of choice.” People who have been convicted of murder, and who are properly called felons, never had the option of getting their crimes labeled “strikes of choice.” By David Swanson
Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy White supremacist Democrats staged a military assault on the last bastion of biracial government in the South, killing scores of Blacks and driving thousands out of North Carolina’s largest city. “White supremacy consolidated its power through political calculation, racist defamation, intimidation, terrorism, and premeditated, remorseless violence.”Wilmington’s Lie The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White SupremacyDavid ZucchinoAtlantic Monthly PressISBN-13 978-0-8021-2838-6 By Steve Nathans-Kelly
The Injustice of This Moment Is Not an “Aberration” Yes, Trump is an inveterate liar, but American politicians have always told lies about the Black and brown people they demonize and mass-imprison. “Highly racialized and punitive systems thrived under liberal presidents who were given the benefit of the doubt by those who might otherwise have been critics.Ten years have passed since my book, “The New Jim Crow,” was published. I wrote it to challenge our nation to reckon with the recurring cycles of racial reform, retrenchment and rebirth of caste-like systems that have defined our racial history since slavery. It has been an astonishing decade. Everything and nothing has changed.By Michelle Alexander
Venezuela: A Successful Year of Resistance Washington’s strategy throughout 2019 was aimed at bringing about chaos and mayhem sufficient to justify US military intervention. “The Bolivarian socio-economic model is structured to defend the poorest and most vulnerable.” The failure of Juan Guaido to be re-elected as president of the national assembly is also a failure of the US to bring about regime change through his self-proclamation as “president in charge” of Venezuela. By Francisco Dominguez
In Anti-Communist Fervor, FBI Built a 500-Page File on Coretta Scott King Scott King was spied on constantly by the FBI – surveillance that was authorized by the Kings’ “friends,” the Kennedy brothers. “The bureau was fixated on determining whether she and her husband were consorting with or being influenced by Communists.”“This is a rough, tough, dirty business.” — former FBI Assistant Director, William C. Sullivan, on the nature of counterintelligence.Struggle is a never-ending process. By Aaron J. Leonard 
Want Out of Jail? First You Have to Take a Fast Food Job The convict labor system was once notorious in Mississippi – and it still is, under the guise of debt restitution. “Many inmates have no idea how much money they are accumulating or how long it will take to pay their way out.” During her shifts at a Church’s Chicken, Annita Husband looked like the other employees. She wore the same blue and red polo shirt, greeted the same customers, and slung the same fried chicken and biscuits. But after clocking out, Husband, a mother in her 40s, had to wait for a white van with barred windows and the seal of the Mississippi Department of Corrections on its sides. It delivered her to the Flowood Restitution Center, a motel converted into a jail surrounded by razor wire, nestled among truck stops and an outlet mall. Here, Husband slept in a room with seven other women, sharing a mirror to get ready in the mornings, enduring strip searches for contraband at night. By Anna Wolfe and Michelle Liu
