Skip to content
Images Of the Day:
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!
Quotes 0f the Day:
Opium production in Afghanistan skyrocketed from 185 tons to 8,200 tons between 2001 and 2007.¹ Most commentary glosses over Washington’s large share of responsibility for this dramatic expansion while magnifying the Taliban’s role, which available data indicates is relatively minor. Also, identifying drugs as a main cause behind the growth of the insurgency absolves the United States and NATO of their own role in fomenting it: the very presence of foreign troops in the country as well as their destructive attacks on civilians are significant factors behind increases in popular support for, or tolerance of, the Taliban. — Cruel Harvest: US Intervention in the Afghan Drug Trade
Videos of the Day:
A New Wave, of Jim Crow Laws, Is Here. Here’s What You Need to Know In 1965, the Voting Rights Act passed and within the first year of its passage, we saw 250,000 Black people registered to vote. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Black voter turnout has increased incrementally in every presidential election since 1996. In 2012, Black voters showed up at higher rates than white voters. Then in 2013, the Supreme court gutted the Voting Rights Act and immediately we saw a deluge of voter ID laws, poll closures, gerrymandering, and other attacks on the Black vote, including various forms of intimidation. On this show, we have covered a number of the attacks on voting rights that we saw under the Trump administration, including efforts to sabotage the postal system to derail mail-in voting. And we did some episodes on what you all were up against in Georgia specifically.
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 ownershipof the Reublicrats, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay!
Cruel Harvest : US Intervention in the Afghan Drug Trade by Julien Mercille (2012, UK-Trade Paper) Cruel Harvest lifts the lid on the reality of Afghanistan’s skyrocketing drug trade and the role played by the US military. Conventional accounts blame the Taliban for the expansion of drug production. However, in Cruel Harvest Julien Mercille shows that the US in fact shares responsibility by supporting drug lords, refusing to adopt effective drug control policies and failing to crack down on drug money laundered through Western banks. Mercille argues that the best way to address drug problems is by reducing demand in consumer countries, not by conducting counternarcotics missions in Afghanistan.
Biden To Support Waiving Patents For COVID-19 VaccinesAs vaccination rates increase in the U.S., developing nations — which have sought the patent waiver for months — are facing massive coronavirus outbreaks. By Daniel Marans
Chauvin Lost, but the Murderers Won The verdict is in. The murderers have won. On April 20, a jury of 12 people managed to swim against the tide of white supremacy, and convict Derek Chauvin of murdering a black man. That’s twelve votes for the party of human life. But during the time of the trial, the party of murderers gained more votes than that. From the middle of March to the end of April, eight people of color, mostly African American, were killed by the police. They did this in teams, as if they were really serious about what they were doing. By Steve Martinot
Internal NYPD Documents Show Cops Were Sent to Protests With Barely Any First Amendment Training Most officers at the George Floyd protests received only vague academy training that emphasized arresting protesters over defending their rights. Last year, after New York officials announced a plan to dispatch 500 additional police officers to the city’s subway system, a coalition of activist groups organized a series of protests. On January 31, they held a “day of transit action” that saw small demonstrations pop up at stations and on trains across the city. “Fuck your $2.75,” a flyer promoting the event read, referring to the cost of a subway ride. “Public transit should be free,” read another, “which means free fares, free of policing, free of accessibility barriers, free to sell churros, free to dance, free to sleep.” By Alice Speri and John Bolger
Environment:
Study Warns of ‘Rapid and Unstoppable’ Sea Level Rise If World Misses Paris Climate Targets “Once you put enough heat into the climate system, you are going to lose those ice shelves, and once that is set in motion you can’t reverse it.” A new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature warns that if the world’s governments fail to meet warming targets set by the Paris climate accord, sea level rise from the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet will accelerate at a “rapid and unstoppable” rate in the coming decades. Authored by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the new paper finds that if planetary warming continues at its current rate—which is headed toward 3° Celsius above pre-industrial levels—Antarctic melting will reach a tipping point by 2060, beyond which the consequences would be “irreversible on multi-century timescales. By Jake Johnson
Faster Glacier Melting Raises Hunger Threat The world’s upland icecaps are in retreat. Faster glacier melting could slow to a trickle streams that once fed foaming rivers. Glacial retreat − the rate at which mountain ice is turning to running water − has accelerated. In the last two decades, the world’s 220,000 glaciers have lost ice at the rate of 267 billion tonnes a year on average, and this faster glacier melting could soon imperil downstream food and water supplies. To make sense of this almost unimaginable volume, think of a country the size of Switzerland. And then submerge it six metres deep in water. And then go on doing that every year for 20 years. European scientists report in the journal Nature that, on the basis of satellite data, they assembled a global snapshot of the entire world’s stock of land-borne ice, excluding Antarctica and Greenland. And then they began to measure the impact of global heating driven by profligate fossil fuel use on the lofty, frozen beauty of the Alps, the Hindu Kush, the Andes, the Himalayas and the mountains of Alaska. They found not just loss, but a loss that was accelerating sharply. Between 2000 and 2004, the glaciers together surrendered 227 billion tons of ice a year on average. By 2015 to 2019, the annual loss had risen to 298 billion tonnes. The run-off from the retreating glaciers alone caused more than one-fifth of observed sea level rise this century. By Tim Radford
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist: Freedom Rider: Progressives Capitulate to Biden There can be no more excuses made for Democratic “progressives,” who steadfastly refuse to fight for what There can be no more excuses made for Democratic “progressives,” who steadfastly refuse to fight for what they know to be right. “Black Americans are confronted with the irreconcilable contradiction of opposing a violent, racist, and exploitative system while being pressured to uphold its most egregious myths.” “There is no lesser evil, no one who will save us.”
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor: Lebron James in the Eye of White Supremacy’s Storm No one, not even Lebron James, is immune to the disciplinary process meted out by the ruling class to maintain the lie of American exceptionalism on a mass scale.
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor: German Greens Crusade for US/NATO Wars The Green Party in the U.S. and most other places in also a pro-peace party — but that’s no longer the case in Germany.
Michael Blakey Interviewed by Dr. Jemima Pierre: Anthropology, Racial Science, and the Harvesting of Black Bones: Dr. Most renowned academic institutions in the United States are implicated in the macabre practices of “racial” science.
Black Alliance For Peace: 100 Days of Biden’s Bait and Switch U S policies are not guided by the whims of the individual who sits in the White House, but by the objective interests of dominant sectors of the ruling elite.
Broderick Dunlap: A Dose of Reality for the #ADOS Movement
Instead of showing solidarity with the third world, ADOS makes it clear that they want their share of the spoils of imperialism.
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence: Police Terror = “Support The Troops!”—1,000 x in ________ And you keep wondering how they kill your sons and daughters
Daily; leaving them lying in city streets for 4 hrs ‘bleeding out?’
You keep crying the system is “broken” and I keep screaming
it’s as broken as a Bentley; hear it purring like a Lamborghini?
Left Lens Live: Justice Not Served by Verdict in George Floyd’s Murder Derek Chauvin was convicted on all charges in the murder of George Floyd last year. Just two hours before the verdict, Ohio police killed Ma’Khia Bryant. Margaret and Danny discuss why justice has not been served as liberals and Democrats have so enthusiastically proclaimed.
The National Workers Union: The US Military Occupation Of Trinidad While stationed on the islands during World War Two, US GIs engaged in land dispossession, rape, murder, bullying and violence against local people.
Matthew D. Lassiter: Police and the License to Kill Detroit police killed hundreds of unnamed Blacks in response to the civil rights movement, revealing why most of today’s proposals to make police more accountable are bound to fail, and how we can do better.
Adam Mahoney: The US’s Biggest County Jails Are Sites of Extreme Environmental Injustice After first being forced to live in chemically toxic communities, Black and Brown people are then incarcerated in jails where they cannot escape some of the worst pollution in the nation.
Labor:
Economy:
Gensler May Force Banks to Disclose Actual Owners of Stocks Under Archegos-Styled, Tricked-Up Derivative Contracts The House Financial Services Committee will hold its third hearing today at noon on the GameStop and other meme stock trading fiascos of January. It will be the first time that the newly sworn in Chair of the SEC, Gary Gensler, gives testimony to Congress. Thus, the written statement that Gensler provided to the Committee has been eagerly awaited by the denizens (and charlatans) of Wall Street for insight into his plans for reining in market abuses and regulatory dodges. While Gensler was just as ambiguous on most fronts in his statement for today’s hearing as he was in his testimony at his confirmation hearing, he did provide a strong hint that he may use the SEC’s authority to force the mega banks to accurately report the beneficial owners of stocks held under tricked-up derivative contracts. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
As Long as Capitalism and Big Pharma Keep Profiting From the Vaccines, The Global Capitalist Pandemic Crisis Will Not End!
Chile: The Institutions of the Pinochet Era Begin to Creak The Chilean bourgeois institutions, like an old rickety wardrobe, creak through all their cracks at the slightest breeze. This last month, these failing institutions have been brought to their knees, as the result of a bill that would authorise, for the third time, a withdrawal of 10% of pension funds by contributors from private pensions. President Sebastián Piñera was defeated on this issue and once again, it was the organisation of the working class that was the driving force of his defeat, expressed in a formidable mobilisation of dock workers and the threat of a general strike. By Galo Cardañosa
Boris Johnson’s Lies Don’t Harm Him Because the UK’s Political System is More Corrupt Than He Is Britain’s corporate media are suddenly awash with stories wondering whether, or to what extent, the UK’s prime minister is dishonest. Predictably in the midst of this, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg is still doing her determined best to act as media bodyguard to Boris Johnson. In a lengthy article on the BBC’s website over the weekend, she presents a series of soothing alternatives to avoid conceding the self-evident: that Johnson is a serial liar. According to Kuenssberg, or at least those she chooses to quote (those, let us remember, who give her unfettered “access” to the corridors of power), he is a well-intentioned, unpredictable, sometimes hapless, “untamed political animal”. A rough diamond. By Jonathan Cook
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
‘Cry No Tears for These Death Profiteers’: Pharma Stocks Plunge as Biden Backs Vaccine Patent Waiver “It’s almost as if the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry are diametrically opposed to the health and well-being of the planet.” Stocks of major pharmaceutical corporations plummeted Wednesday after the Biden administration announced its support for a coronavirus vaccine patent waiver, a measure that would free vaccine recipes from Big Pharma’s stranglehold and help enable generic manufacturers to ramp up global production. As CNBC reported, shares in Pfizer, BioNTech, Novavax, and Moderna fell to “session lows” after the Biden White House endorsed the waiver—a potentially seismic move that came after weeks of tireless campaigning by progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups.Canada, European Union member nations, the United Kingdom, and other wealthy countries remain opposed to the waiver, leaving the chances of consensus approval at the World Trade Organization highly uncertain. By Jake Johnson
Protecting Opium In Afghanistan (How the US Military’s Opium War in Afghanistan was Lost)
Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 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!
