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Friday the 13Th: A suggested origin of the superstition — Friday, 13 October 1307, the date Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar — may not have been formulated until the 20th century. It is mentioned in the 1955 Maurice Druon historical novel The Iron King (Le Roi de fer), John J. Robinson‘s 1989 work Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, Dan Brown‘s 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code and Steve Berry‘s The Templar Legacy (2006).[2][13][14] — Wikipedia
Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 4 Years Ago and Did Nothing!: Under Capitalism — Human Lives Don’t Matter Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading Racism, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the 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! 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!
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:
Signe Wilkinson: Trump’s Big Boy Pants Last week, Philadelphia’s Mayor Jim Kenney helpfully advised President Donald Trump to “put his big pants on” and “acknowledge the fact that he lost.” The president has been distinctly cool about taking the mayor’s advice. He and his GOP followers are refusing to look reality (currently the president is trailing in PA by over 50,000 votes) in the face. Maybe because the face they’d have to look into is President Elect Joe Biden’s.
Quotes 0f the Day:
People of color, long denied even a taste of democratic pretense, are policed intensely by overmilitarized local and state law enforcement that are armed by the war industry. They are then stuffed at disproportionate rates into the prison system where they’re used as cheap labor. (Federal Prison Industries, a corporation owned by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons, makes a lot of light gear and clothing for the military.) The Commission on Presidential Debates doesn’t even allow non-corporate parties to participate, effectively banning anti-war discourse. Organized labor is dismantled piece by piece, helping corporate criminals, to the working class’ detriment. The fascist system then draws support from chunks of a white working class that lives precariously (due to bipartisan abuse and imposition of neoliberal economic policies outsourcing jobs and automating the rest). An invasive surveillance state and armed bureaucracies at the federal, state, and local level protect the status quo.Fascism, the brutal fusion of corporate might with government authority, is the MIC. Democracy will be out of reach until working people recognize their enemy and addresses the MIC. This means dismantling the war industry and converting factory output to meet human need instead of war profiteering. This Veterans Day, if you wish to honor the troops and humanity as a whole, vow to break with or challenge the MIC. Do your part, and help create a better world for all. — The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex Is Fascism
Videos of the Day:
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!
What Patriotism Means to a Veteran of America’s Forever Wars The following excerpt from Maj. Danny Sjursen’s new book, “Patriotic Dissent” is printed with permission from Heyday Books and is available for purchase on their site. Patriotism is one of those rather difficult words to define, to nail down in any agreed-upon way. It is also a word whose official—or at least dictionary—definition has changed over time. For example, Merriam-Webster now defines patriotism simply as “love for or devotion to one’s country.” This seven-word explication of one of the more powerful forces in American and global life is striking in its very vagueness. Furthermore, this dictionary lists nationalism as a synonym for patriotism. This is as curious as it is potentially dangerous. A basic grasp of modern world history demonstrates the extraordinary differences between simple patriotism and the far more traditional chauvinism and superiority typically inherent in nationalism. After all, most serious historians agree that nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, much like religious sectarianism in the eleventh to seventeenth centuries, was responsible for the preponderance and the bloodiest of European and global wars.
Feel Uneasy. Feel Very Uneasy Are we simply just stuck in the middle seat between a lunatic (Trump) and scumbag (McConnell) on an insane airplane ride…. or is it something much more sinister? It’s hard to rest assured. And that unease stems in no small part from the fact that it’s almost impossible to ascertain Trump’s true motivation … at least, not with any certainty.Is this just about a sadly insecure narcissist who cannot accept defeat? Are the sycophants and lawyers just placating his fragile ego? Are the Republicans simply going through the motions to avoid disturbing the sleeping dog of Trump’s Twitter feed until he finally flees to Mar-a-Lago? By JP Sottile
State of Chaos: Trump Knew Us Better Than We Knew Ourselves In 2016 as now, he was the candidate of chaos. Yes, he was a billionaire (or wanna-be billionaire or in-hock billionaire, not to mention a liar, a cheat, and a scoundrel), but from the beginning he appealed to the forces of order in America that were also, as it happened, the forces of chaos. Donald Trump entered the presidential sweepstakes, or to be completely accurate rode an escalator into it, from stage right. In another universe, he could have entered from stage left and he wouldn’t have given a damn either way. After all, there never really was a left, right, or center for the king of apprentices. There was never anything but the imposing figure known as The Donald, the man of the hour, any hour, past, present, or future. Whatever his political position of the moment, he reflected one thing above all: the underlying chaos and bad faith of a world of wealth, power, and ever-growing inequality, a world, as it happened, just waiting to go down. By Tom Engelhardt
Victims of Nuclear Bomb Tests on U.S. Soil 75 Years Ago Continue to Seek Justice “They thought the world was coming to an end,” Genoveva Peralta Purcella explains. On July 16, 1945, the first-ever nuclear bomb was tested in New Mexico, in the Southwestern United States. The detonation was code-named “Trinity.” It is the day that would seal the fate of many Americans living in the surrounding areas for generations to come. By Satya Vatti
Environment:
Black Agenda Report
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor: Black Voters: “Contrarian” Men and “Communal” Women A significant portion of Black males are “contrarians” that take positions at odds with the general Black political consensus – while Black women tend to take the communal approach.
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist: Freedom Rider: The Real Resistance Begins “Kamala Auntie” and Joe from Scranton will do as little as possible so that “nothing will fundamentally change” that would halt endless wars and the Race to the Bottom.
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor: Joe Biden’s Victory is Still a Loss for Humanity The Biden-Harris administration is good news for corporations, cops, war profiteers and banks too big to fail, but offers nothing to save the people and planet from multiple rises.
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor Rice: Susan Rice, a Butcher of Africans, May Become Secretary of State Rice has been intimately involved in covering up the deaths of moe than six million Congolese, and has cultivated close relations with every US-backed tyrant on the continent.
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence: My Wise Country Cousin on Unca Jim Clyburn an de Sharp Rite Turn Son, it look lak Unca Jim say, “Las’ time I chek I’se de whip— an’ got no time fo’ young Negroz wit all dey Blak Life lip…”
Bree Newsome Bass:
Black Cops Don’t Make Policing Any Less Anti-Black The idea that we can resolve racism by integrating a fundamentally anti-Black institution is the most absurd notion of all.
Alex Zambito: The FBI’s War on the Left: A Short History of COINTELPRO The Bureau’s COINTELPRO deployed every trick and crime in the book to crush left dissidents, from disruption to assassination.
Meredeth Turshen and Annie Thébaud-Mony: The COVID-19 Pandemic Exposes Fatal Health Inequities Privatization of health care is why some of the wealthiest countries have proved unable to respond rapidly to the pandemic.
Angelique Richardson: “No Coloreds:” Racism in Britain has a Long if Contested History The Brits practiced a nonjudicial form of Jim Crow against non-white immigrants from their colonial empire.
Bashir Muhammad Akinyele: The Elusive Quest for Justice in Black AmericaWe as Black people must keep pushing, organizing, and demanding a Black agenda centered on reparations
Popular Resistance: Now that Trump Has Been Defeated… We need to continue building power from the bottom up through organizing, political education and community assemblies.
Labor:
Economy:
Federal Regulators Have Gutted Safety and Soundness Rules for the Biggest Wall Street Banks Last week, the New York Times’ Emily Flitter, Jeanna Smialek and Stacy Cowley provided an excellent rundown of the dangerous rollbacks of regulations on the big banks by federal regulators appointed by Donald Trump. Today, in preparation for a hearing with these regulators, the House Financial Services Committee has released a Memorandum that further outlines how the safety and soundness of the biggest banks have been impacted by changes to regulations. Many of the rollbacks or watering down of the bank rules have occurred quietly or without the attention of mainstream media. Taken together, the rule changes are striking in their reckless disregard for the safety and soundness of a sector that blew itself up just 12 years ago, taking the U.S. economy and U.S. housing market down with it, while getting propped up with the largest taxpayer and Fed bailout in U.S. history. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Femicides in Mexico: justice for Alexis! In the evening of Friday 7 November, 20-year-old Bianca Alejandrina, known to friends as Alexis, did not return home after she had gone out to sell electronic cigarettes in the suburbs of Cancún, in Quintana Roo, southeast Mexico. On Sunday, her dead body was found. She had been quartered. Her remains had been put in plastic bags. Thousands of youths took to their streets of Cancún and other cities to protest against this brutal murder. By Arturo Rodríguez
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 arrival of new zoonotic diseases − infections caught from other creatures − has been counted at roughly two a year since 1918. The number could increase to as many as five a year. And most of them will be linked to increasing human impact upon what had once been largely undisturbed wilderness. “There is no great mystery about the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic − or of any modern pandemic”, said Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance and chair of a workshop of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES for short) that assembled the research. “The same human activities that drive climate change and biodiversity loss also drive pandemic risk through their impacts on our environment. Changes in the way we use land; the expansion and intensification of agriculture; and unsustainable trade, production and consumption disrupt nature and increase contact between wildlife, livestock, pathogens and people. This is the path to pandemics.” — More Avoidable Pandemics Await a Heedless World
Who Says H.S. Juniors Can’t Ease Schools Other Headaches? Amid the current unemployment statistics of 66.7 million filings since March—excluding the 1.3 million not looking for work—it clearly is no time for high school students to be invading the part-time adult workforce, perhaps even for gig labor. Because I’d been a high school teacher (Maine, Oregon) and at 15 held two part-time jobs, I certainly understood what this means for teenagers: Do not apply. But then I read about Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) new bill (S. 4538 ) to help relieve youth unemployment by resurrecting the Great Depression’s famed CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps). Recruits would be 16 or older, not just the 18-25 in the original men’s program. At the same time the AmeriCorps was announcing expansion plans to help the nation recover from the “economic and social impact” of COVID-19. This despite its parent agency, the 295,000 volunteer Corporation for National and Community Services (CNCS), barely escaping President Trump’s FY2021 budget snickersnee for the fourth year (“Funding community service and subsidizing the operation of non-profit organizations is outside the proper role of the Federal Government”). By Barbara G. Ellis
Civil Rights/Black Liberation: