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Right After June Nineteenth is Declared a National Holiday, the Supreme Court Opens the Door For New Jim Crow Laws!:
Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act Decision Narrows Another Path to Challenge Discriminatory Voting Laws Today, the Supreme Court decided two Arizona voting laws were not racially discriminatory and did not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. The VRA is a landmark piece of federal legislation that prohibits racial dis-crimination in voting. As Justice Kagan wrote in dissent, the VRA “represents the best of America … It marries two great ideals: democracy and racial equality.” Congress enacted Section 2 of the VRA to address discrimination imposed by voting laws — no matter how blunt or subtle — considering local circumstances and history, as the ACLU and ACLU of Arizona described in their amicus brief.
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 of the Day:
It’s almost impossible to believe, but while Montanans are melting in record-high, triple-digit temperatures in June, mining and burning more coal as well as drilling and burning more oil and gas continues to be recklessly promoted by our politicians who are apparently blind to the severe drought, blistering temperatures and insect infestations as the climate-destroying cycle of fossil fuel production and consumption continues. Given the increasingly negative effects on our overheated planet, one might wonder how it’s possible that we are still being told we’ll magically transition to a carbon-free society by 2050. That’s 29 years from now and the planet is already warming much faster than previously predicted in ways that weren’t even contemplated, let alone quantified. The resulting feedback loops are now widening the impacts far beyond temperature and sea level rise as Siberian and Alaskan permafrost melts, releasing vast quantities of methane, a far more potent global warming gas than carbon dioxide. In turn, that traps more heat, melts more permafrost, and, well, you get the picture. — Montana is Melting Thanks to Fossil Fuel-Addicted Politicians
Global Warming Kills!: In southeastern Queens, cooling centers are virtually absent in a handful of neighborhoods that are overwhelmingly populated by low-income Black residents, despite the fact that two times as many Black New Yorkers die of heat-related illnesses compared to the city’s white residents, according to city data.” The climate crisis does not affect all equally, whether in the Pacific northwest or in New York City, or elsewhere in the world. — Sandra Steingraber, Hundreds Lose Power In Queens; At-Risk Locals Lack Cooling Sites
A race of people is like an individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own self hood, it can never fulfill itself. – Malcolm X
Racism in Systemic to Capitalism: From the Slave Trade till Now!: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. … If money … comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek, capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. — Marx, Chapter Thirty-One: Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist
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 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!
Chris Hedges Speaks on ‘American Sadism’ Chris Hedges gave this talk on American Sadism at The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, New York on Sunday June 27.Sadism defines nearly every cultural, social, and political experience in the United States. It is expressed in the unchecked greed of an oligarchic elite that has seen its wealth increase during the pandemic by $1.1 trillion while the country has suffered the sharpest rise in its poverty rate in more than 50 years. It is expressed in the wanton killings by police of unarmed citizens in cities such as Minneapolis. It is expressed in the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA at secret black sites, Guantánamo Bay, and our prisons at home. It is expressed in the separation of children from their undocumented parents, where they are held as if they were dogs in a kennel.
The War on Drugs Comes to the Doctor’s Office An undercover drug cop tried to shut down a doctor in Indiana. Soon, two patients were dead. Ashley* lived with addiction and anxiety for years, but she was in recovery and making progress in 2017 after finding treatment at Jay Joshi’s clinic in northwestern Indiana. Joshi was known as a pioneer of telehealth visits for addiction patients that became widely used during the COVID pandemic, an expansion that lawmakers and the American Medical Association (AMA) are now pushing to make permanent. Joshi prescribed Ashley buprenorphine, a standard for treating opioid addiction and preventing overdose. Untreated mental health conditions can play a role in drug addiction that is often overlooked, so Joshi set Ashley up with a psychologist through a telehealth service. On November 21, 2017, Ashley was at Joshi’s office for a telehealth therapy appointment with her psychologist when Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents arrived with a search warrant. By Mike Ludwig
‘Bombshell’ Secret Footage of ExxonMobil Lobbyists Sparks Calls for Action by Congress “We demand Congress immediately investigate Exxon and fossil fuel companies’ climate crimes, and make polluters pay for their destruction,” said a 350.org campaigne While ExxonMobil’s decades of sowing public doubt about climate science and the impact of fossil fuels have provoked various lawsuits, secretly recorded videos released Wednesday expose how the company continues to fight against U.S. efforts to tackle climate emergency. By Jessica Corbett
Hundreds Lose Power In Queens; At-Risk Locals Lack Cooling Sites The Mayor pledged to bring more cooling sites to Queens and urged New Yorkers to limit electricity use amid a ‘heat emergency’ and outages. In the midst of New York City’s hottest three-day stretch of the year, hundreds of people in Queens are without power Wednesday afternoon, and many vulnerable residents in the borough lack public, air conditioned facilities in their neighborhoods. By Kayla Levy
Cut poverty and Energy Use to Cool the Climate To cut poverty and energy use would cool the planet, build a more just society − but end dreams of economic growth. Containing climate change is really quite simple. The answer? Cut poverty and energy use: higher living standards for the poorest people, together with using less energy more economically, would produce a cooler planet and a more just society. The two demands may be inseparable. By Tim Radford
Capitalism’s Approach to Drought: Wall Street Sharks Are Out to Privatize, Commodify, and Profit From Our Water The good news is that the U.S. public is not only increasingly aware of the inexcusable inadequacies and inequalities in our water system but also increasingly outraged. “The pump don’t work ’cause the vandals took the handles.” Thus sang Bob Dylan in 1965, and we can now clearly see those vandals: In addition to polluting corporations, they’re the national, state and local officials who have routinely failed over the years to prevent the waste and defilement of our water supply while also failing to budget for even minimal upkeep and modernization of water delivery. As a result, the system is badly broken. By Jim Hightower
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
UN Report Calls for Reparations for Victims of Systemic Racist Police Violence “Systemic racism needs a systemic response,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet stated. On June 28, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet released a stunning 23-page report accompanied by a 95-page conference room paper for the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) documenting systemic racism and human rights violations by police forces against Africans and people of African descent throughout the world. The report considered more than 340 interviews and more than 100 written submissions from civil society organizations. Bachelet grounded her analysis in “the long-overdue need to confront the legacies of enslavement, the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and colonialism and to seek reparatory justice.” She took aim at “misconceptions that the abolition of slavery, the end of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and colonialism” and subsequent reforms have eliminated “the racially discriminatory structures built by those practices and created equal societies.” By Marjorie Cohn
Freedom Rider: The Terrible Origins of July 4th
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
The British crown and the colonists were both determined to seize lands from native peoples and to continue enslavement.”
Twerkers of the World you might…(Or when they go low we get high?)
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Bleach barker, low-Barr, last days of Pompeo—of
Decaying empire; of paper towel-tossing, pussy-
grabbing presidents… An a couple of big black
booties—a couple of pumping rumps are atop an
Ambulance as it attempts to transport mass murder victim #
300 something to some pay or die hospital; day 170 of the yr.
Western Powers Only Seek to Curtail the Right of Self-Determination for the Horn of Africa and Global South States.
BAP and HAPALS
Western powers only seek to curtail the right of self-determination for the Horn of Africa and Global South states.
The Thin Blue Lies Behind Crime Wave Hype
Josmar Trujillo
Data fail to show that bail restrictions or any other reform fueled the spike in violence during the pandemic – but facts don’t matter to the corporate press
Don’t Allow Another U.S.-NATO Libya in the Horn of Africa
Ready for Evolution
The US clearly intends to justify yet another armed intervention in Africa in order to reinstate its former proxies in Ethiopia
BAR Book Forum: Monika Gosin’s “The Racial Politics of Division”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Miami serves as a heightened case to explore such contradictions as I look closely at tensions between African Americans, white Cubans, and Black Cubans.
BAR Book Forum: João H. Costa Vargas’s “The Denial of Antiblackness”
João H. Costa Vargas
In typical critical analyses and progressive multiracial mobilizations Black suffering is acknowledged while antiblackness is negated
Community Control of Police is the Best Remedy
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Community Control of Police is the Best Remedy Chicago leads the nation in moving towards community control of the police, with a majority of the city’s board of aldermen in favor. Jasman Salas, co-chair of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression, which is spearheading the measure, said, “We cannot beg officers to change…or for more training…or for body cameras…or for window dressing and superficial changes. We must demand community control of the police.”
Reparations Supporters Need to Unite Around Specific Demands
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Efia Nwangaza, director of the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination in Greenville, South Carolina, is trying to unite the member organizations of the South Carolina Reparations Coalition behind specific demands for repair of Black US descendants of slaves. Prisoners were exempted from the post-Civil War amendment against slavery, allowing forced human bondage to continue and grow into mass Black incarceration. Slavery never ended, said Nwangaza.
US Acting as “Rogue State” in Shutting Down Iranian News Site
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The US seizure of the Iranian news site Press TV shows that Washington “will continue to operate as a rogue state as long as it can get away with it,” said Ajamu Baraka, national organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace. Moreover, there is “no real protection from the US state moving against Black Agenda Report” and other left web sites “in this growing neofascist environment.”
The Left Lens Presents the Left Voice in Latin America w/Camila Escalante
Wherever the Left has risen up in Latin America, rightwing oligarchs backed by the United States have responded with violence and political chicanery. Journalist Camila Escalante joins The Left Lens to discuss Peru’s recent election and developments in Latin America’s ongoing struggle against imperialism.
The Unknown History of Black Uprisings
Keeanga-Yamahia Taylor
Historian Elizabeth Hinton’s book reveals that, in the late sixties and early seventies, there were hundreds of local rebellions against white violence and racial inequality.
American Racism in the Time of Plagues
Andrew Lanham
The U.S Has a long history of blaming Asian immigrants for outbreaks of disease, and every time, democracy and public health suffer.
Lost Opportunity, Lost Lives
Lisa Armstrong
Prison officials could have prevented sickness and death by releasing those who were most vulnerable to coronavirus and least likely to reoffend — older incarcerated people.
JuneTeenth: A Marxist Perspective
Scott Cooper
As long as capitalism exists, the capitalists will seek to elevate some people and denigrate others, sowing divisions to deflect attention away from a common enemy.
Rock-A-Bye Baby: The Anesthetizing Effects of Political Concessions
joshua briond
The response to Black rebellion are all distinct types of “reforms” to politically sedate Black surplus populations and sustain white settler-capitalist hegemony.
Black Liberal, Your Time is Up
Yannick Giovanni Marshall
You are here to show your black skin so that you can claim the mantle of authority on anti-Blackness that white liberals have bestowed upon you.
Labor:
Economy:
Witness Drops Bombshell at House Hearing: Hedge Funds Are Getting “100 Times” Leverage on Crypto Yesterday, the House Financial Services’ Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a critically important hearing on the crypto craze that has engulfed U.S. financial markets. The hearing was titled: “America on ‘FIRE’: Will the Crypto Frenzy Lead to Financial Independence and Early Retirement or Financial Ruin?” Before the witnesses could testify, the Republican Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, Congressman Tom Emmer of Minnesota, delivered Alice in Wonderland opening remarks that downplayed the legitimate concerns of the hearing and effectively characterized crypto as the best innovation since sliced bread. (Emmer is a former registered lobbyist in Minnesota and his Congressional campaign coffers are stuffed with money from the financial services industry.). It didn’t take long, however, for that farcical assessment to collapse under the weight of testimony from a Wall Street veteran, Alexis Goldstein, who is the current Director of Financial Policy for the nonprofit group, the Open Markets Institute. Goldstein was asked by Congresswoman Maxine Waters about a survey released earlier this year by the accounting firm, PwC, which indicated that 1 in 7 hedge funds have 10 to 20 percent of their total assets under management invested in crypto. (Equally frightening, the same survey found that 86 percent of the hedge funds currently investing in crypto intend to deploy more capital by the end of this year.) By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Canada’s Indigenous Genocide Is Ongoing The mass graves at former Indian residential school sites are not the whole story. Colonial violence is far from over. The recovery of mass and unmarked graves at former Indian residential school sites in recent weeks has released a deluge of outrage and grief across the settler colony known as Canada. Horrifying truths are being unearthed that reveal the treachery by which Canadian governments, churches and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) originally stole — and continue to steal — Indigenous lands. I say recoveries because these are not new discoveries; this particular form of genocide unleashed against Indigenous children has been aggressively instituted and actively concealed by Canadian governments, churches and the RCMP since 1831, when the first residential school was established in Brantford, Ontario. Genocide here is defined both as murders of children and criminal acts of negligence and mistreatment that caused deaths that could have been prevented if authorities had acted on the concerns that were repeatedly brought to government. The high death rates, inhospitable conditions, and preventable causes of death were known. By Siku Allooloo
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!
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!