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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:
As the world urbanizes and industrializes, and as effects of climate change intensify, environmental crises will increasingly devastate the lives, health, and livelihoods of people around the globe. A lack of legal regulation and enforcement of industrial and artisanal mining, large-scale dams, deforestation, domestic water and sanitation systems, and heavily polluting industries can lead to host of human rights violations. Activists and ordinary citizens defending their rights to land and the environment may face intimidation, legal harassment and deadly violence. The primary victims of environmental harm are often impoverished and marginalized communities with limited opportunity to meaningfully participate in decision-making and public debate on environmental issues, and have little access to independent courts to achieve accountability and redress. — Human Rights Watch: Environment
The take-home message for right now is that we need to get more information. In the meantime, we all need to really double down on our public health measures—wearing masks, remaining physically distanced, avoiding crowds of people. — Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, With New Covid-19 Strain 70% More Transmissible, Nations Rush to Contain Spread From UK
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!
Will Bunch: Until We Punish American Greed, No Coronavirus Bailout Will Save Our Warped Economy In a time of a deadly coronavirus, America needs to have a serious conversation about something else that kills: greed. Consider the case of one of U.S. capitalism’s iconic brands and one of our largest private employers, the aircraft giant Boeing Co. In 2018, the giant manufacturer was a huge beneficiary of President Donald Trump and the then-GOP-dominated Congress’ massive corporate tax giveaway — but rather than plow that money into upgrading its manufacturing plants, rewarding its blue-collar workers, or saving for the inevitable rainy day (for a firm with roots in Seattle, no less!), Boeing’s executives decided to get drunk on stock buybacks. From 2013 through 2019, the company spent a huge chunk of its profits — on either dividends for its shareholders or buybacks of outstanding stock, which increases the share price to enrich both Boeing’s top execs and its Wall Street investors. As the buyout binge boosted Boeing stock to atmospheric levels, the firm scrimped in other areas, like R&D. When it came to its new commercial jetliner the Boeing 737 Max, the Financial Times reported that “[i]nstead of building a wholly new aircraft, Boeing simply bolted new fuel-efficient engines on to a tweaked existing airframe” — scrimping to have more dollars for the buybacks.
Why Can’t CEOs Pay For Their Own 3 Martini Lunches? Buried in the Covid relief deal is a provision that will require taxpayers to subsidize lavish business meals for corporate executives. While the world is reeling from the pandemic, corporate lobbyists have been focused on making taxpayers subsidize lavish lunches for wealthy executives. And their work has paid off in the new Covid relief deal. Buried in the details of this modest aid plan is a provision to give executives unlimited tax deductions for their business meals for two years.That’s how it worked back in the 1970s, when Presidential candidate George McGovern had this to say about it: “There’s something fundamentally wrong with the tax system,” he said, “when it allows a corporate executive to deduct his $20 martini lunch while a workingman cannot deduct the price of his bologna sandwich.” By Sarah Anderson
Big Ag Is a Breeding Ground for Pandemics: Tom Vilsack’s Cozy Relationship With Big Ag Makes Him A Non-Starter at USDA The Biden administration will fail rural America right out of the gate with a choice like Tom Vilsack for Secretary of Agriculture. Tom Vilsack wasn’t the right choice for Secretary of Agriculture in 2008 when President Obama nominated him to serve in that role. He isn’t the right choice now, either. With Vilsack, we’re guaranteed years more of corporate agribusinesses running roughshod over family farms and rural communities, and years more of the USDA prioritizing corporate farm policy at the expense of the rest of the agency’s mandate. Years more of declining rural communities, increasing food insecurity and dangerous working conditions for food and farmworkers. Bad policy that allowed for the takeover of corporate agribusiness got us into this mess. It’s unlikely Tom Vilsack will get us out. By Krissy Kasserman and Amanda Claire Starbuck
Congress Passes $900 Billion Mitigation 2.0 Bill (As Double Dip Recession Looms) As the 2020 year closes, Congress is about to pass a $900B Covid Relief spending bill. But make no mistake. It’s Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s proposal. And it will hardly dent the rapidly slowing US economy this 4th quarter and the increasingly forecasted coming double dip recession early next year. The new spending shouldn’t be confused as a ‘stimulus’ bill. It won’t stimulate the economy much, if at all. A stimulus requires significant net new spending. Most of the deal is just a continuation of past spending levels, and in some notable examples it’s a reduction in spending levels. The same can be said for the companion legislation to keep the US federal government funded. That’s another $1.4 trillion. But that too is just continuation spending. Nevertheless, we hear from the mainstream media it’s a $2.3 trillion total spending package, the second largest in US history (the first largest being the past March Cares Act which the same media keeps misrepresenting as a $3 trillion package). By Jack Rasmus
Nuclear Bribery in Ohio: Let’s Put It in Perspective According to the FBI’s criminal investigation, First Energy (aka Energy Harbor since it came out of bankruptcy) is a regulated public utility that illegally used $61 Million in corporate funds to bribe energy regulators and state legislators in Ohio. “Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder’s political operation accepted more than $60 million in bribe money from FirstEnergy Corp. to secure the company a $1.3 billion public bailout,” [according to the July 2020 federal complaint]. Householder, chief political aide Jeff Longstreth, and lobbyists Matt Borges, Neil Clark, and Juan Cespedes used the bribe money to expand the speaker’s political power and enrich themselves by millions of dollars through a “web” of dark-money groups and bank accounts, including the 501(c)(4) Generation Now, according to the complaint. Householder and the four others were charged with conspiracy to commit racketeering. Each could face up to 20 years in prison and a maximum $250,000 fine, court officials said Tuesday.”
Chris Hedges: The Great Delusion The real lesson we should learn from the rise of a demagogue such as Trump and a pandemic that our for-profit health care industry proved unable to contain is that we are losing control as a nation and as a species. Joe Biden and the systems managers of the deep state and empire are returning to power. Trump and his coterie of buffoons, racists, con artists and Christian fascists are sullenly preparing to leave office. U.S. pharmaceutical corporations are starting to disseminate vaccines to mitigate the globe’s worst outbreak of COVID-19 that has resulted in more than 2,600 deaths per day. America, as Biden says, is back, ready to take its place at the head of the table. In the battle for the soul of America, he assures us, democracy has prevailed. Progress, prosperity, civility and a reassertion of American prestige and power are, we are promised, weeks away.
‘This Is Atrocious’: Congress Crams Language to Criminalize Online Streaming, Meme-Sharing Into 5,500-Page Omnibus Bill “These types of decisions should never be made in closed-door negotiations between politicians and industry or rushed through as part of some must-pass spending package.” Lawmakers in Congress are under fire from digital rights campaigners for embedding three controversial changes to online copyright and trademark laws into the must-pass $2.3 trillion legislative package—which includes a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill and a $900 billion Covid-19 relief bill—that could receive floor votes in the House and Senate as early as Monday evening. The punitive provisions crammed into the enormous bill (pdf), warned Evan Greer of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, “threaten ordinary Internet users with up to $30,000 in fines for engaging in everyday activity such as downloading an image and re-uploading it… [or] sharing memes.”By Kenny Stancil
Coronavirus Bill: Landlords Bailot — No Bailout of Renters: Cancel the Rent: A Rising National Rent Strike Movement Gains Momentum Rent strikes had a history as a resistance tactic before the pandemic hit. Cleveland tenants settled a rent strike in February, after 38 families forced concessions on the landlord of the 348-unit Vue Apartments in Beachwood. San Francisco had a famous rent strike that went on for three years at the Midtown Park Apartments, ending in 2017. But with the pandemic, rent strikes have become a widespread response to brutal economic pressure. According to the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, 16.5 million families who rent housing lost income when the crisis began. Its October report states, “Nearly 50 percent of households in California have lost employment income since March of 2020, and one in five households (20.7 percent) indicated that they have no or only slight confidence that they have the ability to pay their mortgage or rent next month.” By David Bacon
Environment:
Toxic Tuesdays: Radium Radium is a naturally-occurring element found in soil, rocks, and water. Radium is radioactive, meaning its atoms are unstable and will decay over time. This process of radioactive decay produces gamma radiation, which can damage and mutate the cells in our body. This makes exposure to radium through inhalation or ingestion highly dangerous, leading to an increased risk of bone, blood, liver, and breast cancers. Even more concerning, radioactive decay of radium also produces the element radon, another radioactive element which causes lung cancer. The EPA classifies both radium and radon as known human carcinogens. Radium is present at low levels in the environment, but elevated levels can be released through industrial plants that extract or process fuels such as ores, coal, oil, and gas. Working in these kinds of facilities or being exposed to improperly protected waste from them are common ways people come into contact with radium. In Ohio, communities are being exposed to radium in new ways. A byproduct of oil and gas production wells is brine, a mixture of injection chemicals, oil, salts, and water from the underground geologic formation. The state Department of Trans-portation uses this brine on roads as a deicer and dust suppressant in at least 28 counties. This brine can ultimately end up in soil, drinking water, and agricultural products. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) tested samples from 151 gas and oil wells and the vast majority of them contained radium levels far above state legal limits and EPA drinking water standards. This means the brine sprayed on roads likely contains high levels of radium that pose a danger to the surrounding communities.
PFASs are Carcinogens!: ‘Forever Chemicals’ Pollute Water From Alaska to Florida Whichever state you are in, there could be harmful PFAS chemicals in water near you . . . More than 200 million Americans may be drinking PFAS-contaminated water, suggests research by the nonprofit Environmental Working group (EWG), an advocacy group which is collaborating with Ensia on its Troubled Waters reporting project.As studies continue to link exposures to a lengthening list of potential health consequences, scientists and advocates are calling for urgent action from both regulators and industry to curtail PFAS use and to take steps to ensure the chemicals already in the environment stay out of drinking water. By Lynne Peeples
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
From the New Jim Crow — Prison Industrial Slave Labor Complex: People Incarcerated in Alabama Are Pushing for a New Year’s Prison Strike The Free Alabama Movement (FAM), a group of incarcerated people and supporters who were involved in organizing the famed prison strikes of 2016 and 2018, plans to start off the new year right. For these activists, that means a statewide “30-day blackout” prison strike and boycott that will begin on or around the New Year, incarcerated FAM member Swift Justice told Truthout. He says he hopes the push will inspire actions on a national scale to reduce prison populations and improve desolate prison conditions. By Ella Fassler
Black Agenda Report will return from holiday hiatus on January 6, 2021. However, Black Agenda Radio is not taking a break.
Enjoy!
Black Agenda Radio for Week of December 21, 2020 Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
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Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power Meets African Liberation In the political hotbed that was Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1967, US Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael, who had not yet changed his name to Kwame Ture, made both friends and enemies among the continent’s various African liberation groups. “Stokely Carmichael understood the Black Power revolution to be a global movement that centered Africa, but also African descended people” elsewhere in the world, said Toivi Asheeke, a post-doctoral Fellow in sociology at Vassar College. Asheeke authored an article titled, “Black Power and Armed Decolonization in Southern Africa: Stokely Carmichael, the African National Congress of South Africa, and the African Liberation Movement.”
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“Colonial Logics” Remained for Black Women in “Liberated” Zimbabwe Black women “posed a problem” for the Black government that replaced white rule in Zimbabwe, because their bodies were thought to “disturb urban space,” said Rudo Mudiwa, a PhD in Community and Culture and a Research Fellow at Princeton University. Under colonial rule, “women were supposed to stay in the village to produce more laborers,” said Mudiwa, a native of Zimbabwe. But after liberation, “colonial logics were still operating,” resulting in massive arrests and harassment of women on urban streets. Dr Mudiwa wrote an article titled, “Stop the Woman, Save the State: Policing, Order, and the Black Woman’s Body.”
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Sex was Central to Dutch West Indies Anti-Colonial Politics Sexual issues were loudly debated among anti-colonial activists in the Dutch Caribbean colonies of Curaçao and Aruba, said Chelsea Shields, a history professor at the City University of New York. Among colonized people of color, the connection between sex and violence “was why it was so urgent to reclaim sexuality as a vital aspect of self-determination,” said Dr Shields, author of a book on the subject and a recent article titled, “Sex, Socialism, and Black Power in the Dutch Atlantic.” However, Curaçao authorities created an economic model reliant on tourism” – including sexual tourism, which remains a drawing card for the island. Shields’ forthcoming book is titled, “Offshore Attachments: Oil and Intimacy after Empire.”
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LIVE on The Left Lens, on Dec 28: Watch LIVE on Dec 28, 2020 Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly on Socialism and the American Nightmare
Labor:
Economy:
The Language Toomey Inserted into the Stimulus Bill Enshrines a $681 Billion Trading Slush Fund for Mnuchin with the NY Fed The language that Republican Senator Pat Toomey inserted into the final stimulus bill (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021) appears below. It not only restricts the Federal Reserve’s ability to extend some of its current emergency lending programs that help small and medium size businesses and state and local governments beyond December 31 of this year (while leaving Wall Street bailout programs alive for at least another 90 days) but it also enshrines the autonomy of the U.S. Treasury Secretary to operate a massive slush fund – the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF). By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Boris Johnson is as Incompetent as General Haig at the Somme: the Price is 50,000 Unnecessary Deaths This Year On 1 July 1916, the British Army attacked the German front line on the Somme in an ill-planned and over-ambitious offensive. Advancing soldiers were slaughtered by machine guns and artillery fire as they tried to struggle through unbroken barbed wire. The battle was to go on for 141 days, but on the first day alone the British suffered 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead. By Patrick Cockburn
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 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
With New Covid-19 Strain 70% More Transmissible, Nations Rush to Contain Spread From UK ” Scientists should watch and worry, yes, but the rest of us need not panic.” British government officials met on Monday to discuss the implications of strict new travel restri-ctions imposed by several countries, following reports of a highly virulent new strain of the coronavirus, which is driving a rapid spread of Covid-19 infections in the London area according to Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Experts say the new strain does not appear to be more deadly than the novel coronavirus first detected in November 2019, and that they have no reason to believe the new vaccines developed by Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna will not work against the mutation. By Julia Conley
Capitalism on a Ventilator Asian countries have been far more successful than the US in responding to the COVID pandemic, but you’d never know that from the US media. Even most alternative media has been largely US- & Euro-centric. While our domestic issues here are important, we have been missing out on important lessons from other places. A partial remedy to this dearth of information is provided by the just released, “Capitalism on a Ventilator: The Impact of COVID-19 in China & the U.S.” The book is an anthology of writing by over fifty activists and independent journalists, edited by Sara Flounders & Lee Siu Hin. (I interviewed Sara about this book for my podcast here.) By Kollibri Terre Sonnenblume
COVID-19 Vaccines: Big Pharma Profits Trump Human Lives The COVID-19 vaccines slowly entering circulation offer a glimmer of hope for millions of ordinary people who have spent the best part of a year trapped in the seemingly endless nightmare of this pandemic. For the pharmaceutical capitalists, these essential resources (whose development has been funded largely by public money) are a goldmine to be plundered. Meanwhile, stockpiling by the imperialist powers, and Big Pharma’s bottom line put a working vaccine out of reach for the poorest parts of the world. By Joe Attard
The !% Got the Bailout They Paid For”!: ‘Pathetic’: Congress Passes Covid Relief Bill With Billions in Gifts for the Wealthy, $600 Checks for the Working Class “You’re getting a one-time $600 check to survive a pandemic, but hey, at least lobbyists can get their three-martini lunches delivered.” The entire Senate Democratic caucus and every Republican but six voted for the roughly $900 billion coronavirus relief legislation, which was paired with a $1.4 trillion spending package that will fund the federal government through next September. Just two House Democrats—Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii)—voted against the coronavirus relief portion of the sprawling package (pdf), which President Donald Trump is expected to sign. By Jake Johnson
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!
Quotes 0f the Day: