Always Remember: 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!
Building Power Together: Rise Against Militarism, Racism and the Climate Crisis A National Conference, hosted by The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) February 21-23, 2020 The People’s Forum 320 West 37th Street New York, NY 10018 (between 8th & 9th Avenues)
The US military’s carbon bootprint is enormous. Like corporate supply chains, it relies upon an extensive global network of container ships, trucks, and cargo planes to supply its operations with everything from bombs to humanitarian aid and hydrocarbon fuels. Our new study calculated the contribution of this vast infrastructure to climate change. Greenhouse gas emission accounting usually focuses on how much energy and fuel civilians use. But recent work, including our own, shows that the US military is one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries. If the US military were a country, its fuel usage alone would make it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, sitting between Peru and Portugal. — The US military is a bigger polluter than more than 100 countries combined
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.
Chelsea Manning’s Lawyers Demand Her Release, Decry ‘Punitive’ Incarceration “No matter how much you punish me, I will remain confident in my decision,” said the whistleblower. Lawyers for Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning on Wednesday filed a motion for her release, saying her continued incarceration for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury is unlawful. The motion, filed in the Alexandria, Virginia-based federal district court for the eastern district of Virginia, says that Manning’s “incarceration is not serving its only permissible purpose”—to coerce her testimony. Rather, the motion argues, the detention is clearly punitive. By Andrea GermanosDemocratic Party Crisis Deepens, Independent Politics on the Agenda As these lines are written, the 2020 Democratic Party primaries have begun in an overall political situation characterized by the New York Times on January 27 as one where, “day after day, there is one more ripple in a flood of chaos streaming out of Washington.” One of the ripples in this “flood of chaos” — an electoral expression of the outrage by workers and youth over their deteriorating working and living conditions — is the sudden surge of Bernie Sanders. The Democratic Party leadership is beside itself. Top party officials have gone public with the alarm: Everything must be done to stop Sanders. The mainstream media and liberal pundits are unhinged. Sanders is being targeted as a “divisive extremist who will destroy the Democratic Party.” The Business Roundtable warns that Sanders “will wreak havoc with the economy.” Media reports speak of a “civil war” inside the Democratic Party. Sanders has been given plenty of leeway by the Democratic Party leadership to raise pressing issues such as free college education, canceling the student debt, single-payer healthcare, and taxing the rich — as this helps to legitimize the Democratic Party at a time when its traditional voting base has either continued to stay home on election day, or bolted, in the case of white working-class men in the Rust Belt, to the Republican Party. His New Deal-type program has struck a responsive chord among working people and youth who have not experienced the much-touted economic “recovery.”Being allowed onto the roster of Democratic Party presidential candidates, however, has come with a steep political price-tag: Sanders has had to pledge time and again that he will campaign actively for whatever candidate the Democratic Party nominates at its July 2020 national convention — including Wall Street favorites Joe Biden and multi-billionaire Mike Bloomberg. When Hillary Clinton, Wall Street’s candidate in 2016, recently chastised Sanders for not doing enough to get behind her presidential bid, he replied that he had done “everything humanly possible” to support her.Environment:
How the Military is Raiding Public Lands and Civilian Spaces Across the Western Front Military public land grabs and intrusions into civilian spaces are raging in the West. Wild landscapes are targeted for huge seizures of public land, increases in hideously loud war plane overflight impacts, or development of facilities like threat emitters. The military already has seized vast areas of the American West for use as ground and air ranges. The Nellis Range in Nevada spans 2.9 million acres, but the Air Force now wants to seize 300,000 more acres of the Desert National Wildlife Refuge. The Navy finalized a gigantic Fallon Range expansion EIS to lock up over 600,000 more acres of public lands east of Reno. Mountain Home Air Force base’s Owyhee Range airspace covers portions of three states (Idaho, Oregon, Nevada). Now the Air Force is proposing even more intrusive overflights. Washington’s wild coastal lands and waters, and people’s homes on Whidbey Island, are suffering nearly 100,000 Navy Growler flights a year. Navy intrusions on Olympic National Park and other sensitive sites include an area of the Hoh rainforest that had been described as the quietest place in the contiguous US. Meanwhile, civilian spaces in our cities and neighborhoods are increasingly subjected to creeping militarism and war games. By Katie FiteEarth is Burning: Capitalist Roots Of The Environment CrisisWhat’s behind the breakdown of the relationship between human society and the natural world on which we depend? Amid the infinite, silent expanse of the universe, the emergence of any kind of life at all on the small speck we call Earth is miraculous enough. That those first primitive forms of life, after 3 to 4 billion years of development, would give rise to a species that can ask about the origin and meaning of the universe and our place in it, and that can, at least potentially, freely and consciously try to build a good society and live a good life within it, is truly wondrous. By James PlestedStudy Suggests Fossil Fuel Use Emits Up to 40% More Climate-Heating Methane Than Previously Thought The lead author said that one positive implication of the research is “if we can reduce our emissions, it’s going to have more of an impact.” A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature found that extraction and use of fossil fuels may emit up to 40% more climate-heating methane than previously thought—underscoring humanity’s ability to significantly limit global temperature rise by rapidly transitioning to renewable energy. While methane doesn’t stay in the atmosphere nearly as long as carbon dioxide, it is 84–87 times more potent over a 20-year period. The latest update from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in November 2019 showed that globally averaged concentrations of the top two greenhouse gases increased in 2018. By Jessica CorbettDamning New Report Says Every Nation Undermining Children’s Hopes for a Livable Planet Children’s “collective concerns must now be heard, and effective actions taken to prevent the next generation inheriting an irreversibly damaged planet.” A major new report released Wednesday says every nation on the planet is failing children because of the threats to their health and wellbeing from the climate and ecological crises and commercial exploitation. The damming assessment comes from 40 global child and adolescent health experts in “A Future for the World’s Children?” The expert commission was convened by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. By Andrea Germanos
Bloomberg Wants to Swallow the Democrats and Spit Out the Sandernistas If, somehow, Bernie Sanders is allowed to win the nomination, Michael Bloomberg and other plutocrats will have created a Democratic Party machinery purpose-built to defy Sanders — as nominee, and even as president. “No one knows how much abuse and humiliation the Sanders faction is willing to endure to remain in the bosom of the corporate political beast.” The oligarchy has awakened to the threat to its dictatorship from the left-most ranks of one of its own corporate parties. Michael Bloomberg, the 8th richest man in the world and former three-term mayor of New York City, has vowed to spend unlimited cash to defeat Donald Trump. But Bloomberg’s real mission is to retain oligarchic control of the Democratic Party, the corporate mechanism that squats like a giant toad on the most ethnically and ideologically diverse half of the U.S. population, including virtually all Black electoral politics. By Glen Ford , BAR executive editorFreedom Rider: Bloomberg is Worse Than Trump Black elected officials will be silent when Bloomberg subjects the entire country to stop and frisk or some other horrible plan. “History tells us that Bloomberg is a Trump with more money and better manners.” By Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnistThe Danger and the Opportunity in the Democratic Party’s Red Baiting of Bernie Sanders The ruling class’ anti-communist attacks on the popular politician holds the danger of moving the left in an even more conservative direction. “Sanders’ popularity presents a chance to challenge the legitimacy of racist anti-communist tropes.” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews recently warned viewers that it remains unclear whether Bernie Sanders aligns with so-called “Nordic socialism” in Denmark or Castro-led socialism in Cuba. Matthews raised the possibility that a Sanders presidency would result in “assassinations in the streets” of Central Park. He added that a “victory for the reds” during the Cold War would have placed him in front of the socialist firing squad. At the New Hampshire debate, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked candidates to raise their hands if they were concerned about Sanders’ identification with democratic socialism . While much of the red baiting and anti-communist narrative in the corporate media has been centered on how Trump would hypothetically approach Sanders in a general election, the last four years of Russiagate alone have made it painstakingly clear that the Democratic Party is just as committed to Cold War era anti-communism as its Republican counterparts. By Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing EditorThe Shocking Death of Rwandan Gospel Singer and Dissident Kizito Mihigo I would like to say that President Kagame has finally gone too far, that the powerful industrial nations will finally stop running cover for his crimes, but that would greatly surprise me. “There will be no trial or evidence of what really happened because the totalitarian Rwandan government has spoken.” Rwandan gospel singer, organist, and composer Kizito Mihigo has died in police custody. On February 17, the Rwandan National Police reported that he had committed suicide in isolation in a cell. He was 38 years old. A Tutsi genocide survivor, he grew from age eight to twelve during the four years of the Rwandan war and massacres, which ended in 1994, when General Paul Kagame seized power in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. By Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing EditorBlack America and the Presidents Every single US president—regardless of party—actively upheld white supremacy in the US. “Kimberley’s volume belongs on the shelf next to the works of Howard Zinn and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.” The myth of US American “greatness” is not only a right-wing narrative. Liberals too embrace the concept that the nation is fundamentally good; certainly, they insist, our worst days are behind us and we can all be grateful for the progress we’ve made. Leading us on this shining path have been enlightened figures like Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, Carter and Obama, all of whom have sought to fulfill the promise of the wise “Founding Fathers” and their brilliant (even sacred) Constitution. By Kollibri terre SonnenblumeThe Torture Machine, Racism and Violence in Chicago Chicago’s torture machine was both a real mechanism to produce confessions through pain, and a racist political instrument. “For more than a decade, a group of Chicago police detectives regularly subjected black men to aggravated physical abuse until they would agree to confess under duress.” The Torture Machine Racism and Police Violence in Chicago by Flint Taylor The Torture Machine, Racism and Police Violence in Chicago, by People’s Law Office and longtime National Lawyers Guild attorney Flint Taylor, is a meticulously detailed and authentic, truly appalling story of shame and disgrace to the city of Chicago, its political and police administration establishments, and numerous judges of the Cook County criminal courts; an account of dozens of cases in which black men from the South Side were sent to state prison—and a number to Death Row—on the basis of confessions extracted from them by police torture. By Jeff Haas and Dennis CunninghamNigeria Jailing Journalists Stories that embarrass high officials can earn reporters treason charges, imprisonment and death. “Alex Ogbu and Precious Owolabi were killed under similar circumstances.” Nigeria is rounding up journalists who investigate corruption – jailing them for indefinite periods of time and accusing them of treason. Agba Jalingo, publisher of Cross River Watch, was arrested and jailed last August 2019 until this month when a Cross River court granted bail. He faces trial over a report written by the newspaper alleging that Cross River State Governor Ben Ayade diverted 500 million naira meant for the establishment of Cross River Microfinance Bank. By Global Information NetworkEmbassy Defenders Win Mistrial, But the Struggle Continues The jury felt they weren’t hearing the whole story, due to the suppression of nearly every relevant fact in the case. “The US charade claiming Guaido is the president and the judge refusing to challenge that fiction has dangerous and deadly consequences.”Last week, we along with Adrienne Pine and David Paul were unsuccessfully prosecuted by the Trump administration for our protection of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC from April 10 to May 16, 2019. The jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision and so we remain innocent of the charge of interfering with the protective functions of the US Department of State. The judge declared a mistrial. It was a partial victory. We appreciate the jurors who were able to see through the cloud of misinformation in the courtroom and vote to acquit us. By Kevin Zeese and Margaret FlowersIndoctrination Nation: The Institutionalization of US Imperialism Crimes that earned their perpetrators capital sentences at Nuremberg are celebrated as the sacred patrimony of the United States. “Those who speak out against the war-machine are often seen as outcasts and anti-American troublemakers who need to be silenced.” Year-after-year, the United States’ government reigns supreme within the destructive realm of imperialism and the unmitigated carnage that it causes. Innocent women, children, men and the elderly, alike, have lost their lives due to the United States’ unbridled thirst for geopolitical supremacy, no matter the cost. The USA has long valued money over the interests of human life. This wretched trend has a legacy that spans over generations. It does not matter whether the president and/or congress is controlled by Democrats or Republicans, the results are the same. Quite simply, it is a structural component within the blood-stained fabric of American foreign policy. By Solomon ComissiongHow Corporations Are Forcing Their Way Into America’s Public Schools Public school students are being “trained” for jobs at specific corporations rather than educated for a lifetime in a changing world. “Students led to believe that business-branded CTE courses guarantee future employment with the business are really buying into a ‘false promise.’” In the expanding effort to privatize the nation’s public education system, an ominous, less-understood strain of the movement is the corporate influence in Career and Technical Education (CTE) that is shaping the K-12 curriculum in local communities. By Jeff BryantNew York Schools Gang Unit Pushes the Criminalization of Children A school handbook paints a picture of youth criminality that is steeped in law enforcement lingo and appears to have been written by police rather than educators. “You are essentially priming teachers who are otherwise supposed to be interacting with their students and teaching them to now have to identify alleged gang or crew activity.” An obscure unit of the New York City Department of Education tasked with addressing “gang and youth violence” in the city’s public schools has been promoting a set of guidelines that reveal serious ignorance of adolescent behavior and perpetuate false and racist stereotypes. By Alice Speri
Labor:
Economy:
Paul Krugman Returns to Perpetuating the Big Lie for Wall Street Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist who won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, is back to pedaling his Big Lie that Wall Street banks were not responsible for the financial crash of 2008 or the ensuing housing crash. This time he’s told such a doozie of a lie that there is no longer any doubt that he’s on a mission to restore Wall Street’s credibility, even if he has to rewrite the history of the financial crash and every official report that’s been published on it. The latest Big Lie from Krugman appeared in yesterday’s print edition but first appeared in the digital edition on Monday under a different headline, “Have Zombies Eaten Bloomberg’s and Buttigieg’s Brains?” In a very clever sleight of hand, Krugman is complaining, correctly so, about the fact that presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg has adopted a right-wing mantra in attempting to place the blame for the housing bust, that accompanied the Wall Street collapse, on liberals who “caused the crisis by forcing poor innocent bankers to lend money to people of color….” (Krugman’s complaint about Buttigieg is that he’s too obsessed with the $23 trillion national debt – a significant part of which, of course, resulted from attempting to recover from the Wall Street collapse.) By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Clash Between The Greek and Turkish Bourgeoisie And The Tasks of the Labour Movement A sharpening of tensions between Greece and Turkey reflects both the ruling classes of these nations attempting to get a bigger share of the oil and gas under the Eastern Mediterranean and the changed balance of power between the two countries. The labour movement of Greece and Turkey need to stand firmly against any warmongering or nationalist division and engage in united struggle for a socialist transformation of society! By Ilias KirousisIreland: ‘Common History, Common Struggle’ – from an error of emphasis to opportunism Peter Hadden was still working on the finishing touches of his book, Common History, Common Struggle, when he sadly passed away in 2010. In it he analysed the events surrounding the beginning of the Troubles in Ireland. What began as a mass uprising of working-class, Catholic neighbourhoods eventually descended into a reactionary spiral of violence. Clashing head on with counter-revolution, the movement (or more precisely, the leadership of the movement) proved unprepared for the turn of events. As a result, the period from the mid-1970s to the 1990s was dominated by tit-for-tat sectarian conflict and a struggle principally between the IRA on the one hand, with its methods of individual terror, and the British state and loyalist paramilitaries on the other. The subtitle of the book summarises its central theme: “when workers’ unity & socialism challenged unionism & nationalism”. Hadden’s intention, of highlighting the role of the working class in these events, is noble enough. But his conception of “workers’ unity” at times becomes quite abstract. Throughout, unionism and Republicanism are incorrectly placed on the same plane by Hadden as two equally reactionary camps. Persisting in what was largely an error of emphasis, the Socialist Party of Ireland (SP), to which Hadden belonged, has today found itself mired in the swamp of opportunism. By Ben Curry
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!
55 years Ago, I witnessed the assassination of Malcolm X.
Malcolm X In 1964, Flashing the Infectious Smile That Drew People to Him
In the afternoon of Feb. 21, 1965, I went to the Audubon Ballroom to hear Malcolm X speak. I also went to sell the newspaper, The Militant, a radical newspaper that printed the truth about Malcolm X, published his speeches and publicly defended him.
When I got to the ballroom, things were radically different – there were no cops. Normally, Malcolm’s meetings in Harlem were crawling with cops. As I was selling papers, Malcolm X approached the Audubon Ballroom. I offered to sell him the latest issue, but he told me, “Not today, Roland. I am alone and in a hurry.”
A while later as I entered the meeting room, again I did not see any cops. I went in to sit down where I normally sat along with the rest of the press in the front and the left side of the room. On the way to my seat, Gene Roberts, who later surfaced as a police agent member of the Black Panther Party, told me that I could not sit at my regular place but that on that day I had to sit in the front row on the right side of the hall, facing the stage.
As I sat down, I glanced over to where I normally sat and saw a large Black man with a navy blue-gray trench coat. When the meeting started, all was quiet as the crowd listened to Benjamin X introducing Malcolm X.
When Malcolm approached the podium, he gave the normal Muslim greeting for peace. At that point a disturbance occurred in the room. Two men were standing about halfway back in the room and to the right of Malcolm on stage. One was shouting, “Get your hand out of my pocket!”
Malcolm was trying to calm things down, when the men — one later identified as Talmadge Hayer — started running down the right aisle shouting and firing a pistol at Malcolm and ran out the exit doors by the stage, to the right of Malcolm X
Malcolm is wheeled out of the Audubon Ballroom on a stretcher, escorted by NYPD, on the fateful day, Feb. 21, 1965.
Suddenly I heard gunshots fired from all over the place, and I instinctively hit the floor. When I looked up, I saw Malcolm X standing up and glaring down at one of his assassins. At that point, from the corner of my eye, nearby to my left, I saw a flash from a gun as I watched Malcolm X fall down and back about 10 feet.
In that instant, as Malcolm died before my eyes, I suddenly realized how big he was and I realized that he was a giant in stature and in the world. This vision of Malcolm X, being assassinated, has haunted me ‘til this day.
The fatal blast, which I later found out to be from a shotgun, came from the area where I had seen the large Black man with a navy blue-gray trench coat! When I left the hall, Malcolm’s bodyguards told me that they had caught two of the assassins, one who was shot – Talmadge Hayer – and one whom the police took away.
A few weeks later, when I was questioned in the Harlem police station, I was shown a series of photos of people whom I recognized as members of the Nation of Islam or Malcolm’s organization. I also saw a picture of the large Black man with a navy blue-gray trench coat that I had seen at the Audubon Ballroom.
I was thinking of how to respond to the cops and how to say that I did not recognize the photos of Malcolm’s friends and supporters and the members of the Nation of Islam. I then told the cops that I had to go to the rest room.
When I got to the men’s room door, I saw the same large Black man coming out of the men’s room that I had seen in the Audubon Ballroom and in the photos that had just been shown to me. He walked by me, past the desks of the secretarial pool, and went to his office inside the police station!
At that point I knew that he and the government either killed Malcolm X or were part of the assassination plot. I became very nervous thinking about what I was going to say to the cops when I got back and how I was going to get out of the station alive.
I then came up with, “I cannot recognize anyone, for all Black people look the same.” The cops nodded in agreement and we were allowed to leave the police station.
Malcolm X was one of my heroes. He was the most honest mass leader that I have ever known or seen. He was a great orator and his speeches seemed like a conversation between himself and the audience.
His speeches were like music to my ears and have inspired me for the rest of my life in the fight for social justice. He was so human in his orations. I still remember him when he made the “Harlem Hate Gang Scare” speech at the Militant Labor Forum on May 29, 1964, and other speeches in which he chuckled a “heh heh” when he was about to make a special comment.
At that forum, he said: “It’s impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg … The system of this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, this social system, this system period. It is impossible for it, as it now stands, to produce freedom right now for the Black man in this country — it is impossible. And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg (heh heh), I’m certain you would say it was a revolutionary chicken (heh heh).”
Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, both incomparable leaders, both assassinated – Photo: Trikosko, Library of Congress
Both he and Martin Luther King had come to similar positions about capitalism and the Vietnam War at the time of their death. That is why this government assassinated them. No one has followed in their footsteps.
From the point of view of this government, the world leader in political assassinations, the two assassinations worked. For to this day, no mass leader has had the courage to pick up where they left off. They were able to silence the art, science and truth of these two great orators. To me, Feb. 21 is “the day the music died.” It was the saddest day of my life.
In that article is the picture shown here of , who is the man that I had seen in the Audubon Ballroom and in the photos that the Harlem police showed me while I was being interrogated. Bradley was the man I saw coming out of the men’s room, walking by me, past the desks of the secretarial pool, and into his office inside the police station, as I was going to the men’s room!
As I wrote in my original 2009 essay: “At that point I knew that he and the government either killed Malcolm X or were part of the assassination plot.” And now I know his name. William Bradley is the man that Talmadge Hayer identified as the one who shot the shotgun. Zak Kondo also identified William Bradley as the assassin with the shotgun.
In his article, Abdur-Rahman Muhammad states: “Although his name has been in the public domain now for well over three decades, ever since 1977 when Hayer filed his affidavit with famed lawyer William Kuntsler naming his accomplishes, nevertheless a face has never been attached to the name. Historian and member of the committee researching this story Zak Kondo published a marvelous book two decades ago on the assassination of Malcolm X, wherein he explored quite a bit of biographical material on the five assassins. Spike Lee even named the five killers in the credits of his movie. But in all of these years none of them, including ‘Willie’ Bradley, has ever filed a libel suit. And for good reason – they would lose.”
A new improved video, “The Hunt for William Bradley,” by Karl Evanzz in association of Shabazz Productions, identifies the man rescued from the crowd by the police as William Bradley. The video is contained in a collection of clips titled “Naked Lies: The Continuous War Against Malcolm X.” Shabazz Productions had previously produced: Omar Shabazz “Inside Job: Betrayal of the Black Messiah.”
Building Power Together: Rise Against Militarism, Racism and the Climate Crisis A National Conference, hosted by The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) February 21-23, 2020 The People’s Forum 320 West 37th Street New York, NY 10018 (between 8th & 9th Avenues)
Democratic Party Crisis Deepens, Independent Politics on the Agenda As these lines are written, the 2020 Democratic Party primaries have begun in an overall political situation characterized by the New York Times on January 27 as one where, “day after day, there is one more ripple in a flood of chaos streaming out of Washington.” One of the ripples in this “flood of chaos” — an electoral expression of the outrage by workers and youth over their deteriorating working and living conditions — is the sudden surge of Bernie Sanders. The Democratic Party leadership is beside itself. Top party officials have gone public with the alarm: Everything must be done to stop Sanders. The mainstream media and liberal pundits are unhinged. Sanders is being targeted as a “divisive extremist who will destroy the Democratic Party.” The Business Roundtable warns that Sanders “will wreak havoc with the economy.” Media reports speak of a “civil war” inside the Democratic Party. Sanders has been given plenty of leeway by the Democratic Party leadership to raise pressing issues such as free college education, canceling the student debt, single-payer healthcare, and taxing the rich — as this helps to legitimize the Democratic Party at a time when its traditional voting base has either continued to stay home on election day, or bolted, in the case of white working-class men in the Rust Belt, to the Republican Party. His New Deal-type program has struck a responsive chord among working people and youth who have not experienced the much-touted economic “recovery.”Being allowed onto the roster of Democratic Party presidential candidates, however, has come with a steep political price-tag: Sanders has had to pledge time and again that he will campaign actively for whatever candidate the Democratic Party nominates at its July 2020 national convention — including Wall Street favorites Joe Biden and multi-billionaire Mike Bloomberg. When Hillary Clinton, Wall Street’s candidate in 2016, recently chastised Sanders for not doing enough to get behind her presidential bid, he replied that he had done “everything humanly possible” to support her.
Environment:
Earth is Burning: Capitalist Roots Of The Environment Crisis What’s behind the breakdown of the relationship between human society and the natural world on which we depend? Amid the infinite, silent expanse of the universe, the emergence of any kind of life at all on the small speck we call Earth is miraculous enough. That those first primitive forms of life, after 3 to 4 billion years of development, would give rise to a species that can ask about the origin and meaning of the universe and our place in it, and that can, at least potentially, freely and consciously try to build a good society and live a good life within it, is truly wondrous. By James Plested
Study Suggests Fossil Fuel Use Emits Up to 40% More Climate-Heating Methane Than Previously Thought The lead author said that one positive implication of the research is “if we can reduce our emissions, it’s going to have more of an impact.” A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature found that extraction and use of fossil fuels may emit up to 40% more climate-heating methane than previously thought—underscoring humanity’s ability to significantly limit global temperature rise by rapidly transitioning to renewable energy. While methane doesn’t stay in the atmosphere nearly as long as carbon dioxide, it is 84–87 times more potent over a 20-year period. The latest update from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in November 2019 showed that globally averaged concentrations of the top two greenhouse gases increased in 2018. By Jessica Corbett
Damning New Report Says Every Nation Undermining Children’s Hopes for a Livable Planet Children’s “collective concerns must now be heard, and effective actions taken to prevent the next generation inheriting an irreversibly damaged planet.” A major new report released Wednesday says every nation on the planet is failing children because of the threats to their health and wellbeing from the climate and ecological crises and commercial exploitation. The damming assessment comes from 40 global child and adolescent health experts in “A Future for the World’s Children?” The expert commission was convened by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. By Andrea Germanos
Black Agenda Report Week of Februsry 17th
Freedom Rider: Bloomberg is Worse Than Trump Black elected officials will be silent when Bloomberg subjects the entire country to stop and frisk or some other horrible plan. “History tells us that Bloomberg is a Trump with more money and better manners.” By Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
The Danger and the Opportunity in the Democratic Party’s Red Baiting of Bernie Sanders The ruling class’ anti-communist attacks on the popular politician holds the danger of moving the left in an even more conservative direction. “Sanders’ popularity presents a chance to challenge the legitimacy of racist anti-communist tropes.” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews recently warned viewers that it remains unclear whether Bernie Sanders aligns with so-called “Nordic socialism” in Denmark or Castro-led socialism in Cuba. Matthews raised the possibility that a Sanders presidency would result in “assassinations in the streets” of Central Park. He added that a “victory for the reds” during the Cold War would have placed him in front of the socialist firing squad. At the New Hampshire debate, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked candidates to raise their hands if they were concerned about Sanders’ identification with democratic socialism . While much of the red baiting and anti-communist narrative in the corporate media has been centered on how Trump would hypothetically approach Sanders in a general election, the last four years of Russiagate alone have made it painstakingly clear that the Democratic Party is just as committed to Cold War era anti-communism as its Republican counterparts. By Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
The Shocking Death of Rwandan Gospel Singer and Dissident Kizito Mihigo I would like to say that President Kagame has finally gone too far, that the powerful industrial nations will finally stop running cover for his crimes, but that would greatly surprise me. “There will be no trial or evidence of what really happened because the totalitarian Rwandan government has spoken.” Rwandan gospel singer, organist, and composer Kizito Mihigo has died in police custody. On February 17, the Rwandan National Police reported that he had committed suicide in isolation in a cell. He was 38 years old. A Tutsi genocide survivor, he grew from age eight to twelve during the four years of the Rwandan war and massacres, which ended in 1994, when General Paul Kagame seized power in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. By Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Black America and the Presidents Every single US president—regardless of party—actively upheld white supremacy in the US. “Kimberley’s volume belongs on the shelf next to the works of Howard Zinn and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.” The myth of US American “greatness” is not only a right-wing narrative. Liberals too embrace the concept that the nation is fundamentally good; certainly, they insist, our worst days are behind us and we can all be grateful for the progress we’ve made. Leading us on this shining path have been enlightened figures like Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, Carter and Obama, all of whom have sought to fulfill the promise of the wise “Founding Fathers” and their brilliant (even sacred) Constitution. By Kollibri terre Sonnenblume
The Torture Machine, Racism and Violence in Chicago Chicago’s torture machine was both a real mechanism to produce confessions through pain, and a racist political instrument. “For more than a decade, a group of Chicago police detectives regularly subjected black men to aggravated physical abuse until they would agree to confess under duress.” The Torture Machine Racism and Police Violence in Chicago by Flint Taylor The Torture Machine, Racism and Police Violence in Chicago, by People’s Law Office and longtime National Lawyers Guild attorney Flint Taylor, is a meticulously detailed and authentic, truly appalling story of shame and disgrace to the city of Chicago, its political and police administration establishments, and numerous judges of the Cook County criminal courts; an account of dozens of cases in which black men from the South Side were sent to state prison—and a number to Death Row—on the basis of confessions extracted from them by police torture. By Jeff Haas and Dennis Cunningham
Nigeria Jailing Journalists Stories that embarrass high officials can earn reporters treason charges, imprisonment and death. “Alex Ogbu and Precious Owolabi were killed under similar circumstances.” Nigeria is rounding up journalists who investigate corruption – jailing them for indefinite periods of time and accusing them of treason. Agba Jalingo, publisher of Cross River Watch, was arrested and jailed last August 2019 until this month when a Cross River court granted bail. He faces trial over a report written by the newspaper alleging that Cross River State Governor Ben Ayade diverted 500 million naira meant for the establishment of Cross River Microfinance Bank. By Global Information Network
Embassy Defenders Win Mistrial, But the Struggle Continues The jury felt they weren’t hearing the whole story, due to the suppression of nearly every relevant fact in the case. “The US charade claiming Guaido is the president and the judge refusing to challenge that fiction has dangerous and deadly consequences.”Last week, we along with Adrienne Pine and David Paul were unsuccessfully prosecuted by the Trump administration for our protection of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC from April 10 to May 16, 2019. The jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision and so we remain innocent of the charge of interfering with the protective functions of the US Department of State. The judge declared a mistrial. It was a partial victory. We appreciate the jurors who were able to see through the cloud of misinformation in the courtroom and vote to acquit us. By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers
Indoctrination Nation: The Institutionalization of US Imperialism Crimes that earned their perpetrators capital sentences at Nuremberg are celebrated as the sacred patrimony of the United States. “Those who speak out against the war-machine are often seen as outcasts and anti-American troublemakers who need to be silenced.” Year-after-year, the United States’ government reigns supreme within the destructive realm of imperialism and the unmitigated carnage that it causes. Innocent women, children, men and the elderly, alike, have lost their lives due to the United States’ unbridled thirst for geopolitical supremacy, no matter the cost. The USA has long valued money over the interests of human life. This wretched trend has a legacy that spans over generations. It does not matter whether the president and/or congress is controlled by Democrats or Republicans, the results are the same. Quite simply, it is a structural component within the blood-stained fabric of American foreign policy. By Solomon Comissiong
How Corporations Are Forcing Their Way Into America’s Public Schools Public school students are being “trained” for jobs at specific corporations rather than educated for a lifetime in a changing world. “Students led to believe that business-branded CTE courses guarantee future employment with the business are really buying into a ‘false promise.’” In the expanding effort to privatize the nation’s public education system, an ominous, less-understood strain of the movement is the corporate influence in Career and Technical Education (CTE) that is shaping the K-12 curriculum in local communities. By Jeff Bryant
New York Schools Gang Unit Pushes the Criminalization of Children A school handbook paints a picture of youth criminality that is steeped in law enforcement lingo and appears to have been written by police rather than educators. “You are essentially priming teachers who are otherwise supposed to be interacting with their students and teaching them to now have to identify alleged gang or crew activity.” An obscure unit of the New York City Department of Education tasked with addressing “gang and youth violence” in the city’s public schools has been promoting a set of guidelines that reveal serious ignorance of adolescent behavior and perpetuate false and racist stereotypes. By Alice Speri
Paul Krugman Returns to Perpetuating the Big Lie for Wall Street Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist who won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, is back to pedaling his Big Lie that Wall Street banks were not responsible for the financial crash of 2008 or the ensuing housing crash. This time he’s told such a doozie of a lie that there is no longer any doubt that he’s on a mission to restore Wall Street’s credibility, even if he has to rewrite the history of the financial crash and every official report that’s been published on it. The latest Big Lie from Krugman appeared in yesterday’s print edition but first appeared in the digital edition on Monday under a different headline, “Have Zombies Eaten Bloomberg’s and Buttigieg’s Brains?” In a very clever sleight of hand, Krugman is complaining, correctly so, about the fact that presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg has adopted a right-wing mantra in attempting to place the blame for the housing bust, that accompanied the Wall Street collapse, on liberals who “caused the crisis by forcing poor innocent bankers to lend money to people of color….” (Krugman’s complaint about Buttigieg is that he’s too obsessed with the $23 trillion national debt – a significant part of which, of course, resulted from attempting to recover from the Wall Street collapse.) By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Ireland: ‘Common History, Common Struggle’ – from an error of emphasis to opportunism Peter Hadden was still working on the finishing touches of his book, Common History, Common Struggle, when he sadly passed away in 2010. In it he analysed the events surrounding the beginning of the Troubles in Ireland. What began as a mass uprising of working-class, Catholic neighbourhoods eventually descended into a reactionary spiral of violence. Clashing head on with counter-revolution, the movement (or more precisely, the leadership of the movement) proved unprepared for the turn of events. As a result, the period from the mid-1970s to the 1990s was dominated by tit-for-tat sectarian conflict and a struggle principally between the IRA on the one hand, with its methods of individual terror, and the British state and loyalist paramilitaries on the other. The subtitle of the book summarises its central theme: “when workers’ unity & socialism challenged unionism & nationalism”. Hadden’s intention, of highlighting the role of the working class in these events, is noble enough. But his conception of “workers’ unity” at times becomes quite abstract. Throughout, unionism and Republicanism are incorrectly placed on the same plane by Hadden as two equally reactionary camps. Persisting in what was largely an error of emphasis, the Socialist Party of Ireland (SP), to which Hadden belonged, has today found itself mired in the swamp of opportunism. By Ben Curry
