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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! For Decades, Blacks Have Been Subjected to The Iron Heel! Currently, the US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply It to Everyone!
Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Now Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World! And Now the Total Caronavirs Deaths in the United States are Over 20% of the Total Deaths in the Entire World!
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, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
Images of the Day:
Marshall Ramsey: Hotspot
Quotes 0f the Day:
We should tell him the same truth the great African American writer James Baldwin told his nephew in a letter published in 1962, in one of the most extraordinary books ever written, The Fire Next Time. With great passion and searing conviction, Baldwin had this to say to his young nephew: This is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it…. It is their innocence which constitutes the crime…. This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity…. You have, and many of us have, defeated this intention; and, by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that your imprisonment made themsafe are losing their grasp on reality. But these men are your brothers—your lost, younger brothers. And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what it must become. It will be hard, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and, in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets since Homer. One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost, My dungeon shook and my chains fell off…. We cannot be free until they are free. God bless you, and safe are losing their grasp on reality. But these men are your brothers—your lost, younger brothers. And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what it must become. It will be hard, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and, in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets since Homer. One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost, My dungeon shook and my chains fell off…. We cannot be free until they are free. God bless you, and Godspeed. — Chapter 5, The New Jim Crow: Obama — the Promise and the Peril By Michelle Alexander
On May 27th, two days after Floyd’s killing, a video caught a man walking in front of an AutoZone shop at E. Lake Street and Minnehaha systematically breaking the store’s windows. He is dressed in black and wares a face-covering gas mask; in one hand, he carries a sledgehammer and, in the other, an umbrella although it is not raining. Local police later reported that the man had spray-painted “free [expletive] for everyone zone” on the store’s double front doors. Protestors follow the man and keep asking him to stop but to no avail. The police noted that the AutoZone shop was among dozens of buildings across the city that burned to the ground in the days that followed. “This was the first fire that set off a string of fires and looting throughout the precinct and the rest of the city,” Sgt. Erika Christensen wrote in a search warrant. “Until the actions of the person your affiant has been calling ‘Umbrella Man,’ the protests had been relatively peaceful. The actions of this person created an atmosphere of hostility and tension. Your affiant believes that this individual’s sole aim was to incite violence.” Rumors circulated that the provocateur was an undercover St. Paul police officer seeking to incite violence. However, the Minneapolis Police Dept. received an email tip identifying the “Umbrella Man” as a member of the Hells Angels biker gang who “wanted to sow discord and racial unrest by breaking out the windows and writing what he did on the double red doors.” Sgt. Christensen reported that the provocateur had a criminal history that included convictions of domestic violence and assault. — Protests & Provocateurs: Infiltrators are Disrupting BLM Protests
Manifest Destiny: A phrase coined in 1845, is the idea that the United States is destined—by God, its advocates believed—to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent The philosophy drove 19th-century U.S. territorial expansion and was used to justify the forced removal of Native Americans and other groups from their homes.
The median household income hit $61,372 in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s almost $20,000 more than it was in 2000. But the typical American household now carries an average debt of $137,063. The median debt was only $50,971 in 2000. — Demographics of Debt
Videos of the Day:
Black Agenda Report presents: The Left Lens The U.S. claims to hold a monopoly on human rights despite being the most egregious human rights violator on the planet. Margaret Kimberley and Danny Haiphong discuss the domestic and international scope of U.S. human rights abuses and the hypocrisy of the evidence-free claims made against China.
United States:
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 Reublicrats 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. Rax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay!
Pence Refused to Say Whether Trump Would Accept Election Outcome Hours before Wednesday’s vice presidential debate, one of the nation’s leading medical journals released a scathing and unprecedented plea for voters to reject Trump and Pence’s reelection bid, calling their leadership on COVID-19 “dangerously incompetent.” In its editorial Wednesday, The New England Journal of Medicine accused the Trump-Pence administration of eviscerating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sidelining experts at the National Institutes of Health and politicizing the Food and Drug Administration. That pattern — sideline the experts, ignore the science, politicize and defund the regulatory agencies — will sound all too familiar to those who follow the Christian Right. Since well before COVID, anti-choice politicians have eroded access to reproductive and LGBTQ health care by circulating lies about people seeking abortions because of a fetus’s race, spreading the outrageous myth that rape can’t result in pregnancy and pretending that medication abortions can be reversed. The Food and Drug Administration has made ideologically motivated decisions before, including imposing onerous “black box” restrictions like those used for narcotics on the abortion-inducing medication mifepristone, despite studies showing it is safe. By William Rivers Pitt
Fauci: If Precautions Are Not Taken COVID Deaths Could Reach 400K This Winter! The death count could be lowered, Fauci says, if Americans begin heeding advice on social distancing and wearing masks. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a virtual audience this week that they should not be surprised if the coronavirus casualty count ends up being near 400,000 by the end of the winter season. By Chris Walker
19 Years After US Invasion (19 Years of Occupation and Opium Dealing), Afghanistan’s Civil War Rages Despite Peace Talks After 19 years and $2 trillion, the U.S. has little to show by way of peace but the amount of bloodshed is undeniable. The United States invaded Afghanistan 19 years ago today, sparking the nation’s longest-running war that has cost tens of thousands of lives and the U.S. about $2 trillion. While the U.S. originally ousted the Taliban as part of a broader anti-terrorism campaign, the Taliban and other militants have waged a bloody and arguably successful insurgency for nearly two decades. Despite billions of dollars in U.S. aid, and years of state-building and counterterrorism operations obscured by mission drift and government disinformation, Afghans continue to suffer a bloody civil war even as the Taliban meet with the Western-backed government for historic peace talks in Qatar. By Mike Ludwig
About $1 billion in stimulus funds for making masks and other protective equipment went to weapons manufacturers. As the pandemic continues to claim lives across the country, new information keeps coming out about how the Trump administration has made it harder for Americans to protect themselves. We now know, for example, that early in the pandemic the U.S. Postal Service had planned to deliver five face masks to every U.S. household. It could have made mask-wearing a lot more common a lot earlier — and maybe saved a lot of lives. But the White House scrapped the idea. Now we also know that the Trump administration took $1 billion in stimulus funds that were supposed to go towards making masks and other protective equipment for the pandemic — and gave most of it to weapons manufacturers. By Phyllis Bennis
Environment:
Ecosocialism and/or Degrowth? Should the ecological left aim to reduce all consumption, or to radically transform the prevalent type of consumption? Ecosocialism and the degrowth movement are among the most important currents of the ecological left. Ecosocialists agree that a significant measure of degrowth in production and consumption is necessary in order to avoid ecological collapse. But they have a critical assessment of the degrowth theories because: A. the concept of “degrowth” is insufficient to define an alternative program; B.it does not make clear if degrowth can be achieved in the framework of capitalism or not; and C. it does not distinguish between activities that need to be reduced and those that need to be developed. by Michael Löwy
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Legal Lynching of Black People: Systemic Police Racism:
Police Depts in the US Have a KKK Problem – They’ve Long Been Infiltrated – Denying it Won’t Help
White Supremacist Infiltration of US Police Forces: Fact-Checking National Security Advisor O’Brien It’s more than “a few bad apples”On Sunday morning, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked President Trump’s National Security Advisor, Robert O’Brien, whether he thinks “systemic racism” is a problem in law enforcement agencies in the United States. O’Brien responded: “I don’t think there is systemic racism. I think 99.9 percent of our law enforcement officers are great Americans,” said O’Brien. “But … there’s a few bad apples.” There are two flaws in O’Brien’s response. First, O’Brien ignores the well-documented support by law enforcement officers of alt-right extremist ideology throughout the country. Second, O’Brien misunderstands the nature of systemic racism—a term that means that institutions we have in place produce racially disparate effects on minority populations—in his discussion of individual officers. An FBI intelligence assessment—titled White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement and published in 2006 during the administration of President George W. Bush—raised alarm over white supremacist groups’ interest in “infiltrating law enforcement communities or recruiting law enforcement personnel.” The report, based on FBI investigations and open sources, warned, for example, that skinhead groups were actively encouraging their members to become “ghost skins” within law enforcement agencies, a term the report said white supremacists use to describe members who “avoid overt displays of their beliefs to blend into society and covertly advance white supremacist causes.”
Black Agenda Report
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor: Bidens and Trumps, Foxes and Wolves
08 Oct 2020
The fox and wolf parties – both corporate canines – debate how best to acclimate the masses to their deepening state of precarity.
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist:Freedom Rider: Liberal Sympathy for Trump If Ava Duvernay really believes Trump is a white supremacist, why wish him well? “Maddow and Duvernay speak and act in defense of their class interests.”
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor: Debate Lesson: 2020 Election is a Great Corporate Thug-a-thon Trump and Biden avoided policy because neither had anything to offer the masses of people.
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor: Fight the Power: Resistance Radio at the Virtual GRC Summit The Grassroots Radio Virtual Summit is for anyone looking for ways to resist heightening repression and anyone who feels that grassroots radio is vital to their community, writes Ann Garrison.
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence: October Surprise? (or President Pence pardon?) They say he could use your thoughts and prayers; like he used your taxes Praying to big white Buddha bottles of bleach…They say he never, ever.
Friends of Congo: AFRICOM: Deadly Deception
AFRICOM’s real aim was never peace nor stability but rather, strategic US interests.
Sam Levin: Blacks in LA Nearly Four Times as Likely to be Cited by Police
07 Oct 2020
Activists say these ordinances for minor violations are rooted in racist laws and anti-homeless policies. “it’s illegal to be Black in public.”
Gwendolyn Wallace and Roberto Sirvent: Health Justice and Black Liberation: Shay-Akil McLean Black health is directly connected to the displacement and dispossession of our ancestors and the conditions of our neighborhoods.
Labor:
Economy:
U.S. Economy is Nearing a Dangerous ‘Tipping Point’ Here is the situation the U.S. economy faces, with a month to go before Election Day: Job growth is stalling. Layoffs are mounting. And no more help is coming. American households and businesses have gone two months without the enhanced unemployment benefits, low-interest loans and other programs that helped prop up the economy in the spring. And now, after President Trump’s announcement Tuesday that he was cutting off stimulus negotiations until after the election, the wait will go on at least another month — and very likely until the next presidential term starts in 2021. It could be a dangerous delay. Already, many furloughs are turning into permanent job losses, and major companies like Disney and Allstate are embarking on new rounds of layoffs. The hotel industry is warning of thousands of closures, and tens of thousands of small businesses are weighing whether to close up shop for good. An estimated one of every seven small businesses in the United States had shut down permanently by the end of August — 850,000 in all — according to data from Womply, a marketing platform. The deeper those wounds, the longer the economy will take to heal. By Ben Casselman and Jim Tankersley
Fed Bailout Allows Private Equity Pirates to Loot $10 Billion From Companies They OwnThe pirates of yore at least had to sail the high seas and risk life and limb to seize their loot. Today, Wall Street’s private equity pirates are managing to loot the companies they control with a round of bond sales and a lift from the Federal Reserve. This industry, which includes some of the richest people on the planet, has been able to extract $10 billion from the companies it owns since March, assisted by the Federal Reserve’s widespread, unconditional support of the financial markets. By Andrew Park
Wall Street Bamksters Update: Citigroup Is Slapped with a $400 Million Fine for Doing Something So Bad It Can’t Be Spoken Out Loud Federal regulators are rapidly becoming bigger Dark Pools of information than those secretive stock exchanges run by the big banks on Wall Street. On Tuesday, September 29, when all eyes were focused on the presidential debate to occur that evening, the Justice Department issued a press release announcing the fourth and fifth felony counts against JPMorgan Chase in the past six years. In an unprecedented move, the Justice Department did not hold a press conference to explain why the country’s largest bank is allowed to perpetually commit felonies with no change in management. The bank admitted to the charges and was put on a three-year probation – its third such probation in six years. Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of the bank, who has presided over all five felony counts, was left in place at the bank. Yesterday, when all eyes were on the vice-presidential debate last night, the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced consent decrees with Citigroup, the third largest bank in the country. The OCC imposed a $400 million fine on Citigroup’s federally-insured commercial bank, Citibank, and stated in its Consent Order that it had “identified unsafe or unsound practices with respect to the Bank’s internal controls, including, among other things, an absence of clearly defined roles and responsibilities and noncompliance with multiple laws and regulations.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
American Capitalism’s Manifest Destiny Worldwide: ‘Outright Genocidal’: Even as Iran Reels From Covid-19 Pandemic, Trump to Unveil Punishing New Sanctions “These new sanctions, as well as the brutal ones already in place, only hurt the Iranian citizens and should be considered a crime against humanity.” In a move that could further restrict Iran’s access to humanitarian goods such as food and medicine at a time when the country is being ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration is planning to impose punishing new sanctions on the Iranian financial sector reportedly at the behest of warmongers in the Republican Party, Israeli officials, and hawkish U.S. advocacy organizations. By Jake Johnson
Guatemalan and Mexican Governments Use Pandemic to Turn Back Caravan of Thousands of Refugees Thousands of Honduran migrants and refugees have been beaten, arrested, threatened with prison, and deported as they tried to make their way through the closed borders of Guatemala and Mexico. Over the last few days the Mexican and Guatemalan governments collaborated to stop the migrant march or caravan, which left Honduras on 30 September, from reaching Mexico and the US. By Tamara Pearson
Race, Militarism and the US Scheme to Control the Pacific Following World War II, the United States swiftly expanded its military presence in the region and established and supported reactionary client states. It aimed to roll back socialism and pursue economic, political, and military domination throughout the region. Those goals remain unchanged to this day. Christine Hong’s marvelous book, A Violent Peace: Race, U.S. Militarism, and Cultures of Democratization in Cold War Asia and the Pacific, arrives at a time when Washington’s Indo Pacific Strategy is driving U.S. political, economic, and military confrontation in the Asia-Pacific, as the culmination of a long process that began in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. By Gregory Elich
Nagorno-Karabakh: The Bleeding Wound of Post-Soviet Nationalism The conflict that has erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan is the bloody legacy of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism. This is a barbaric war with reaction on all sides. All the powers intervening in the conflict claim to be victims, but the only real victims are the working people, on both sides, who are paying with their blood for the cynical and reactionary games of their leaders. Only internationalism and class struggle can direct the workers against their true enemies: their own ruling capitalist class. This statement by our Russian comrades can be read in its original language here. By Marxist Tendency (Russia)
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 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 to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People Vote on Healthcare
The Right to Life?
Covid-19 (United States) – Trump on the Virus: Let It Run Wild! The fact that Trump was found to have COVID-19 and became sick enough that he was sent to a Navy hospital has put the pandemic back in the center stage of the presidential campaign. By Barry Sheppard
Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the Banner Headline: “There Is No Peace”
