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During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: 1, Austerity,2 Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 3. The Iron Heel
Always Remember: That Obama That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he Established, in writing, the United States Capitalist Austerity Program. — The Race to the Bottom/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 , thet the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
Images of the Day:
Quotes of the Day:
The Trump administration has stuck a fork in new regulations requiring that “certified organic” cows and chickens have enough room to spread their wings and hooves. The Obama-era rules required that organic poultry have enough room to run around, while livestock sold under the label had to have year-round access to an outdoor space and comfy indoor pens, The Hill reports. The regulations were supposed to go into effect March 20, but the Department of Agriculture delayed them three times and on Friday officially announced its intention to put them out to pasture — arguing they will “hamper market-driven innovation and evolution and impose unnecessary regulatory burdens.” — Trump Administration Scraps Organic Food Regulations
President Trump told his national security adviser in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by the former adviser, John R. Bolton. — Trump Tied Ukraine Aid to Inquiries He Sought, Bolton Book Says
Videos of the Day:
Meghan Markle: My Sister In England My sister in England sent me this… Its not lost on them over there what’s going on… Whoever created this… Nailed it!
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.
‘Cruelty Is the Point’: Trump Takes Aim at Medicaid With Plan That Could Harm Millions “The president’s war on healthcare knows no bounds.” The Trump administration is reportedly planning to intensify its assault on Medicaid by granting certain states permission to convert federal funding for the program into block grants, a move critics slammed as a cruel and likely illegal attack on vulnerable people. By Jake Johnson
Can Manufacturing Workers Take Many More of Trump’s Trade “Victories”? Last week, as Donald Trump was trying to distract attention from his impeachment trial, he was holding events touting his big trade victories. The two items for celebration were the new NAFTA, dubbed by Trump as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and a “phase one” trade deal with China. While these deals may be useful props for the impeachment distraction, they are unlikely to offer much to the manufacturing workers who Trump claims are at the center of his trade agenda. By Dean Baker
Environment:
Giving Cover to the Abuses of Big Ag A recent commentary promoting agriculture by Brenden Weiner of the Gallatin Valley Land Trust was full of misinformation. Weiner suggested that “working farmlands grow our food, provide scenic open space, give wildlife a place of refuge, and are the foundation of our community and economy.” He goes on to suggest that protecting farmland will preclude subdivisions—which he implies is worse than the “working landscapes” represented by farms. He is wrong on every count. By Rose Miriam Elizalde
After a Decade of Fracking, Billions of Dollars Lost and a Climate in Crisis As 2020 begins, the impacts of climate change have become increasingly clear around the world. The new year started amid devastating wildfires, tied to the worst droughts Australia has experienced in hundreds of years, which encircled much of the continent. So far, 29 people have been reported dead. A University of Sydney professor estimated the number of animals killed likely tops one billion. Today’s climate impacts have been shaped heavily by actions taken during the last 10 years, particularly in the U.S., where the climate benefits of coal power plant retirements were undermined by the rise of natural gas. Global carbon emissions had leveled off in the middle of the last decade, but began to climb again in 2017, breaking records anew each year since.Over the past decade, as the climate crisis worsened, hundreds of drilling rigsdotted both the Permian Basin’s desert expanses in Texas and the Marcellus Shale’s Appalachian hills, grinding through rock to reach oil and gas trapped in brittle shale deep underground. In that time, the U.S. smashed global records for the production of oil and gas — two of the three fossil fuels most responsible for the ongoing climate crisis. By Sharon Kelly
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
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Claudia Jones: Black Feminist Fighter for Socialism Zifeng Liu, a doctoral student in Africana Studies at Cornell University, has authored a paper on Black activist Claudia Jones, who was deported from the US for her communist affiliations. Jones was an unstinting fighter for socialism and decolonization. Liu’s paper is titled, “Decolonization Is Not a Dinner Party: Claudia Jones, China’s Nuclear Weapons, and Afro-Asian Solidarity.”
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Black Women Against White Supremacist Empire Black women played a central role in the fight against European colonization, said Annette Joseph-Gabriel, professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Michigan and author of the book, “Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire.” Joseph-Gabriel examines the lives and struggles of seven women activists who “understood that white supremacy was global in scale and scope, and that the resistance – and imagining of new worlds – also had to be global,” she said.
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African Peoples Socialist Party Heightens Global StruggleOmali Yeshitela said his African Peoples Socialist Party’s upcoming plenary gathering is designed to “build and strengthen the regional components of our party through the world.” The APSP aims to “turn every African community in the world into a bastion of anti-colonial hostility,” said chairman Yeshitela.
Labor:
Economy:
Fed Repos Have Plowed $6.6 Trillion to Wall Street in Four Months; That’s 34% of Its Feeding Tube During Epic Financial Crash According to the data made available on the public website of the New York Fed, since September 17, 2019 it has funneled a cumulative total of $6.6 trillion to some of the 24 trading houses on Wall Street that are known as its “primary dealers.” The giant sum has been sluiced to Wall Street in the form of repurchase agreement (repo) loans without any details being provided to the elected representatives in Congress as to which firms are getting the money or what it’s being ultimately used for. But since the stock market has set repeated new highs since the program launched, some veteran market watchers believe the Fed is fueling a Ponzi-like rally in stocks. When the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, the General Accountability Office (GAO), tallied up the cumulative total that the Federal Reserve had secretly sluiced to Wall Street from December 2007 through July 21, 2010, it came to $16.1 trillion. (See chart below.) But the GAO did not include all of the programs that came out of the New York Fed. When those other programs are added, the Levy Economics Institute, using the Fed’s own data, arrived at the tally of $19.559 trillion to the Wall Street trading houses and another $10 trillion in central bank liquidity swaps, bringing the bailout figure to over $29 trillion. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Cuba: a Matter of Principle Think tanks in the United States and Cuban researchers agree on one thing: the policy of more sanctions and the extension of the U.S. blockade will not change the socialist course of Cuba. In the case of the island, punishment produces the exact opposite of weakness. It has been that way for more than 60 years and nothing indicates that it will change, just because Donald Trump wants to win Florida in 2020 and satisfy the Cuban-American right by raising his fist against the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel. By Rose Miriam Elizalde
U.S. Trade Embargo Has Cost Cuba $130 Billion, U.N. Says HAVANA (Reuters) – A United Nations agency said on Tuesday an “unjust” U.S. financial and trade embargo on Cuba had cost the country’s economy $130 billion over nearly six decades, coming up with the same estimate as the island’s communist government.
Enough is Enough! French Masses at Boiling Point The mobilisation that began on 5 December is now at a crossroads. The indefinite strike called by French rail workers is at an ebb, after over 40 days of exemplary struggle. This ebb fits perfectly into the government’s scheme. Since the month of November we have emphasised that: “If the rail workers’ strike remains isolated, the government will have one of two options: either it can make concessions contained to the isolated sections of workers on strike, or it can count on their exhaustion. In either case, the masses in general would lose.” By mid-January, the government thought that its victory was assured. But since then we have witnessed a new push from different sectors. Militant actions have emerged from lawyers and sewage workers alike, accompanied by a spectrum of teachers, electricians, nurses, dockers, etc. Protest actions, strikes and local demonstrations have multiplied. The New Year announcements of ministers, deputies and other figureheads have been disrupted and often cancelled. With a loud outburst of defiance and daring struggle, workers have downed their uniforms and tools before those who embody power. The bosses have attempted to pass off in a friendly vein, but their authority has withered amidst the downed uniforms, robes and books. By Jérôme Métellus
Seventy-Five Years Since the Liberation Of Auschwitz When units of the 60th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army liberated the concentration death camp at Auschwitz 75 years ago today, they confronted evidence of the most horrific crimes in human history. “Human beings, or rather skeletons, were lying in the cots with only a covering of skin and distant stares,” recalled a Red Army soldier. Around 8,000 prisoners, on the verge of death, were all that remained from the far more than 1 million people killed at Auschwitz in less than five years.
Adani and the Purpose of Education Recently, Survival International, the organization that campaigns with ‘tribal peoples,’ ran a story about the Indian conglomerate, Adani Group, setting up a Tribal Residential School for children in Bankishole, Baripada, in Mayurbhanj District in Odisha State – a region in Eastern India known for its tribal communities. Adani is best recognized internationally for its mining activities, particularly its recent struggle to get a mine authorized in coal-addicted Australia in the face of massive popular protests. By Peter Harrison 
Education, Health, 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 ‘governn’, 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!
Capitalism Can’t Give Us Affordable Housing Under capitalism, housing provision is based on what will make developers, lenders, and landlords rich — not what average people need to survive. That’s why we’ll never get decent, affordable housing for everyone under the free market. Certain reform-oriented struggles, especially those around rent control and expanded provision of social housing, offer important opportunities for on-the-ground socialist organizing. But we also shouldn’t be shy about our big-picture diagnosis. Socialists have to make the case, loudly, publicly, and globally: capitalism can never meet our needs for high-quality, affordable housing. The reason is straightforward: the profit motive. In a capitalist society, land and housing stock are treated as commodities, basic goods and services that can be bought, rented, and sold for a profit. And like all commodities under capitalism, it is the profit motive that rules the production and maintenance of housing.By Robbie Nelson
Exclusive: Body Cam Shows Cop Planting Gun on Innocent Man 
Climate & Capitalism
Black Agenda Radio for Week of January 27, 2020 With Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford