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Laura Gray’s cartoon from the page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace”
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:
. . . A human rights movement, King believed, held revolutionary potential. Speaking at a Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff retreat in May 1967, he told SCLC staff, who were concerned that the Civil Rights Movement had lost its steam and its direction, “It is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights.” Political reform efforts were no longer adequate to the task at hand, he said. “For the last 12 years, we have been in a reform movement…. [But] after Selma and the voting rights bill, we moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution. We must see the great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement. We are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society.”63 More than forty years later, civil rights advocacy is stuck in a model of advocacy King was determined to leave behind. Rather than challenging the basic structure of society and doing the hard work of movement building—the work to which King was still committed at the end of his life—we have been tempted too often by the opportunity for people of color to be included within the political and economic structure as-is, even if it means alienating those who are necessary allies. We have allowed ourselves to be willfully blind to the emergence of a new caste system—a system of social excommunication that has denied millions of African Americans basic human dignity. The significance of this cannot be overstated, for the failure to acknowledge the humanity and dignity of all persons has lurked at the root of every racial caste system. This common thread explains why, in the 1780s, the British Society for the Abolition of Slavery adopted as its official seal a woodcut of a kneeling slave above a banner that read, “AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?” That symbol was followed more than a hundred years later by signs worn around the necks of black sanitation workers during the Poor People’s Campaign answering the slave’s question with the simple statement, I AM A MAN. The fact that black men could wear the same sign today in protest of the new caste system suggests that the model of civil rights advocacy that has been employed for the past several decades is, as King predicted, inadequate to the task at hand. If we can agree that what is needed now, at this critical juncture, is not more tinkering or tokenism, but as King insisted forty years ago, a “radical restructuring of our society,” then perhaps we can also agree that a radical restructuring of our approach to racial justice advocacy is in order as well. All of this is easier said than done, of course. Change in civil rights organizations, like change in society as a whole, will not come easy. Fully committing to a vision of racial justice that includes grassroots, bottom-up advocacy on behalf of “all of us” will require a major reconsideration of priorities, staffing, strategies, and messages. Egos, competing agendas, career goals, and inertia may get in the way. It may be that traditional civil rights organizations simply cannot, or will not, change. To this it can only be said, without a hint of disrespect: adapt or die. If Martin Luther King Jr. is right that the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice, a new movement will arise; and if civil rights organizations fail to keep up with the times, they will pushed to the side as another generation of advocates comes to the fore. Hopefully the new generation will be led by those who know best the brutality of the new caste system—a group with greater vision, courage, and determination than the old guard can muster, trapped as they may be in an outdated paradigm. This new generation of activists should not disrespect their elders or disparage their contributions or achievements; to the contrary, they should bow their heads in respect, for their forerunners have expended untold hours and made great sacrifices in an elusive quest for justice. But once respects have been paid, they should march right past them, emboldened, as King once said, by the fierce urgency of now. … Chapter 5, The New Jim Crow: Obama—the Promise and the Peril By Michelle Alexander
Videos of the Day:
Body Cam Shows Brutal Arrest of Man for Exercising 1st Amendment Rights A recent arrest of a man playing guitar on a public sidewalk raises deeper questions about the power of American policing and how cops have nearly lawless discretion to arrest and harm. 
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.
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The American Society of Civil Engineers report card says $588 billion is needed for roads, bridges and dams. Experts told us it could be more. Tackling deferred maintenance should be the top priority in all three areas, Richard Geddes, professor and founding director of the Cornell University Program in Infrastructure Policy, told us. “That is, when each type of facility is designed and constructed, there is a set schedule to keep each dam, road or bridge in a state of good repair,” he said. “The problem is that, when budgets become tight, infrastructure maintenance becomes one of the easier things to defer until next year, and then the year after, and so on. Sadly, if scheduled maintenance is deferred for too long, then major repairs are required. Those major repairs end up being much more costly than the regular maintenance would have been.
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Roads: American Society of Civil Engineers report card grade: D.One out of every five miles of highway pavement is in poor condition, and “our roads have a significant and increasing backlog of rehabilitation needs,” according to the report card, which pegs the cost of clearing the backlog at $420 billion.
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Bridges American Society of Civil Engineers report card grade: C+. Here’s the conditionof the 616,096 bridges in the 50 states, Guam and Puerto Rico bridges, according to the latest annual tallies, as of Dec. 31, 2018, from the Federal Highway Administration: . . . Fixing the backlog of bridge problems would cost $123 billion, according to the report card. But the American Road & Transportation Builders Association goes higher, saying it would cost $171 billion to make fixes to 235,000 bridges that need some kind of repair.
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Dams American Society of Civil Engineers report card grade: D The cost would be $45 billion “to repair aging, yet critical, high-hazard potential dams,” according to the report card. Meanwhile, the Association of State Dam Safety Officials puts forthtwo figures: $70 billion to fix the dams in need of rehabilitation — or $24 billion just to fix the “most critical” ones. “Public safety is the driver for investment” for both bridges and the 90,580 dams across the country, Heaslip said. “Bridges and dam failures place people and, in the case of dams, property at significant risk.”
Update: Can the U.S. Fix Its Failing Infrastructure? It’s no secret that America’s infrastructure is crumbling. Just look around you. Everywhere there are potholed streets, congested highways, trains going off the tracks, bridges collapsing, dams and locks failing, and levees leaking. The problem is especially acute on the nation’s inland waterways, whose system of locks and dams was built largely in the 1930s, and where barge traffic can be delayed for days or even weeks because of a failed lock. According to a recent report from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), more than $3.6 trillion will be needed by 2020 to address the nation’s aging infrastructure. In the next ten years, investment shortfalls will impact ports by $168 billion, rail by $116 billion, airports by $26 billion and roadways by $3.4 trillion
Kemp Loses Vote Purge Suit Brought by Reporter Palast [Atlanta-Feb 9] In an extraordinary and unexpected move, Federal Judge Eleanor Ross has declared Gov. Brian Kemp the loser in a lawsuit brought by investigative journalist Greg Palast to compel the State of Georgia to open up its complete files on the mass purge of over half a million voters from the rolls.Surprising all parties, the judge ruled that Kemp’s defense was so weak that no trial is needed. The judge acted “sua sponte” — on her own initiative, unrequested by Palast’s attorneys. Palast has been fighting Kemp to release his hidden purge lists and methods for six years, for Rolling Stone, Aljazeera, Salon, Democracy Now and currently, The Guardian. By Nicole Powers for The Palast Investigative Fund\
Money Talks, Bullshit Walks on Cable News Is it any wonder that the nation’s “liberal” cable news stations CNN and MSNBC can barely contain their disdain for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and even (to a lesser degree) for that of Elizabeth Warren while they promote the nauseating center-right candidacies of the bewildered racist and corporatist Joe Biden, the sinister neoliberal corporate-militarist Pete Butiggieg and even the marginal Wall Street “moderates” Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris? Next time you click on these stations, keep a pen and paper handy to write down the names of the corporations that pay for their broadcast content with big money commercial purchases. By Paul Street
Environment:
‘Something Big Is Shifting’: As Georgetown Announces Fossil Fuel Divestment, Students Across US Demand Their Schools Follow Suitm The decision came after 90% of students who voted on a referendum voted in favor of divestment. tudent-led anti-fossil fuel campaigns at universities across the country pointed to Georgetown University Friday as the school’s board of directors announced it would divest from fossil fuels and redouble its efforts to invest in renewable energy instead. The university’s decision came after a sustained pressure campaign from Georgetown University Fossil Free (GUFF), a student group which submitted multiple proposals to the Georgetown Committee on Investments and Social Responsibility before the panel recommended the divestment this week. The school community also voted on a referendum regarding divestment on Thursday, withn more than 90% voting in favor. By Julia Conley
Climate Manipulation and Murdoch’s PR Machine (Media Momopoly) Western democracies and their respected societies appear to be incapable or unwilling of solving global warming. At least partly, this might be because voters in most countries have been lied to by the corporate media for decades on end. Much of this is due to one very rich and very old man – Rupert Murdoch. The shaping of public opinion takes place in a world in which very rich and very powerful men – they are always men – make their own rules, define their own issues, help getting their people elected, and make sure that global warming remains down the list of voters’ most pressing concerns. It is a world in which the most powerful want to create their own reality. This reality is presented in their media outlets. No matter if it violates laws, rules, norms or simply decency and courtesy, they get their ideologies pushed because of the gigantic media apparatus they own. At times, they have certain things in common with certain politicians. Putin and Murdoch, for example, have much in common. By Thomas Klikauer 
Newly Revealed Emails Highlight Coziness and Favors Between Local Officials, Jordan Cove LNG Backers Emails exchanged between an Oregon county commissioner and Pembina, the parent company of the proposed $10 billion fossil fuel export terminal Jordan Cove, raise ethics issues and may create openings for legal challenges to key permits for the controversial Jordan Cove project. The emails, obtained via an open records request by the Energy and Policy Institute and shared with DeSmog, appear to show contacts between Pembina officials and Coos County commissioners — communications that were not disclosed during public hearings. Oregon law generally requires communications with commissioners about a pending permit to be disclosed publicly, so that those from the other side can respond. By Sharon Kelly
Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
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The Global Struggle Continues — But So Does Racism Students of all races should be exposed to the history of movements of liberation from colonialism and racist rule, said Nana Osei-Opare, a professor of history at Fordham University. Osei-Opare wrote a “Books I Teach” feature for the Black Agenda Report Book Forum. His reading list contains many works by luminaries in anti-colonial and socialist struggles that show “racism cuts across the fascists, the capitalists, the communists and the liberals,” said Osei-Opare. “Racism is racism, and that’s something that I want students to see.”
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Black Mothers and Children Die Because of Racist Medical “Science” Centuries of medical experimentation on enslaved and free Blacks and scientifically erroneous assumptions about Black bodies have created “a crisis in Black maternal morbidity and infant mortality” in the US, said Deirdra Cooper-Owens, of the Humanities in Medicine Program at the University of Nebraska. The crisis is only now being recognized because “the chorus of protest is getting louder and louder.” Cooper-Owens is co-author of a paper titled “Black Maternal and Infant Health: Historical Legacies of Slavery.”
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Embassy Activists Face Prison in Trial Based on Trump Venezuela Fantasy The jury in the February 11 trial of four US activists charged with disobeying police orders to relinquish their occupation of the Venezuelan embassy to supporters of self-proclaimed president Juan Guaido will not be told that the actual president is Nicolas Maduro, or that Guaido “has never served a nanosecond as president,” said defendant Kevin Zeese. “The little sliver of hope we have,” based on the judge’s ruling, “is that we can say that we believedwe were in the embassy with the permission of what we thought was the elected government of Venezuela.” The defendants face a year in prison and fines of $100,000 each. The jury in the February 11 trial of four US activists charged with disobeying police orders to relinquish their occupation of the Venezuelan embassy to supporters of self-proclaimed president Juan Guaido will not be told that the actual president is Nicolas Maduro, or that Guaido “has never served a nanosecond as president,” said defendant Kevin Zeese. “The little sliver of hope we have,” based on the judge’s ruling, “is that we can say that we believed we were in the embassy with the permission of what we thought was the elected government of Venezuela.” The defendants face a year in prison and fines of $100,000 each
Labor:
Economy:
10,599 Corporate Lawyers Have Donated to Buttigieg’s Campaign: Here Are the Dirty Little Secrets Pete Buttigieg, a 38-year old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, a city with a population of 102,000, who has never held an elected federal office and was unknown to the majority of Americans last spring, has magically risen to the top ranks of the field of Democratic contenders for President – a field that includes three sitting U.S. Senators and a former Vice President. On top of Buttigieg’s lack of experience in Washington, Buttigieg has almost no support from the black community, which would be essential for winning the Presidency. So exactly why has Buttigieg raised $77 million from some of the smartest and richest people in America. According to our tally from the Federal Election Commission’s data, 10,599 donor entries for Buttigieg list their occupation as lawyer or attorney. On top of that, there’s a high correlation between Buttigieg’s Big Tech donors and the law firms these lawyers work for: the law firms have big antitrust departments that work for Big Tech, at a time when it is under investigations for monopoly practices. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
After Evo, the Lithium Question Looms Large in Bolivia Bolivia’s President Evo Morales was overthrown in a military coup on November 10. He is now in Mexico. Before he left office, Morales had been involved in a long project to bring economic and social democracy to his long-exploited country. It is important to recall that Bolivia has suffered a series of coups, often conducted by the military and the oligarchy on behalf of transnational mining companies. Initially, these were tin firms, but tin is no longer the main target in Bolivia. The main target is its massive deposits of lithium, crucial for the electric car. Over the past 13 years, Morales has tried to build a different relationship between his country and its resources. He has not wanted the resources to benefit the transnational mining firms, but rather to benefit his own population. Part of that promise was met as Bolivia’s poverty rate has declined, and as Bolivia’s population was able to improve its social indicators. Nationalization of resources combined with the use of its income to fund social development has played a role. The attitude of the Morales government toward the transnational firms produced a harsh response from them, many of them taking Bolivia to court. By Vijay Prashad
Health, Science, 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 ‘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!
Book review of Slaying Goliath:An Indictment Of Education Reformers, And A Call To Fight Back In the Old Testament story of David and Goliath, a young man confronts a Philistine giant who has terrorized the people of Israel. No one thinks there is any hope of taking on Goliath until David steps forward. Rejecting the offer of heavy body armor because it weighs him down, David instead faces the outsize enemy armed with just his trusty slingshot and five smooth stones. With one well-aimed shot and against all odds, he takes Goliath down. This is the tale Diane Ravitch alludes to with her title, “Slaying Goliath,” and the choice is apt. She has written a thought-provoking, painstakingly researched account of those who have sought to privatize and monetize America’s schools. She calls them the “Disrupters,” and they are indeed a foe with all the intimidating strength of Goliath. Confronting this opponent is the “Resistance”: the ordinary teachers, parents and citizens who are fighting back and winning. By Melanie McCabe
WeeBlack Agenda Radio for Week of February 10, 2020 With Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford