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Images of the Day:
“Competition permits the capitalist to deduct from the price of labour power that which the family earns from its own little garden or field; the workers are compelled to accept any piece wages offered to them, because otherwise they would get nothing at all, and they could not live from the products of their small-scale agriculture alone, and because, on the other hand, it is just this agriculture and landownership which chains them to the spot and prevents them from looking around for other employment.” ― Friedrich Engels, The Housing Question
“The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” ― Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Videos of the Day:
U.S.
Mark Ruffalo to Obama
As President Obama Hints At Dakota Access Possible Reroute, Tensions Swirl at Standing Rock By Steve Horn
The Human Right to Water at Standing Rock The Standing Rock Sioux protesting the Dakota Access pipeline are exercising their human right to safe drinking water. The international community, including the World Health Organization, has long recognized that access to safe water is closely linked to Indigenous peoples’ control over their ancestral lands. By Marjorie Cohn
Dakota pipeline protesters say activist accused of shooting at police is a pacifist Attempted murder charge against Red Fawn Fallis is unfathomable to her supporters, but held up by police as evidence of protesters’ violent behavior By Sam Levin
Hillary’s “Big Tent” is Obama’s “Grand Bargain” on Steroids Barack Obama tried to woo Republicans into a “Grand Bargain” that would have gutted Social Security. Bill Clinton let loose the banks. But Donald Trump’s destruction of the Republican Party will allow Hillary Clinton to “gather the whole of the ruling class under the same party banner, in one Big Tent, where the grandest of bargains can be conceived and achieved without crossing an aisle.” The rich are about to get their best deal yet. by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Barrel Bomb: the Cataclysmic Close of Campaign 2016 Well, here we are: at the bottom of the barrel under forty feet of slag. In a few days’ time, we’ll know our fate: the five-alarm fire of Trump Rule (oh, how those police unions are chomping at the bit!) or the Clinton Age of Hyper-War (oh, how those neocons are chomping at the bit!). by Chris Floyd
Housing Profiteers Since the 2008 housing bubble the price to income ratio has been climbing back to bubble territory. Americans have been led to believe when their house increases in value it benefits them, it doesn’t. Elevated housing costs have been shown to drive homelessness more than poverty rates. The effect of housing inflation also means increases in interest paid on the principle loan, private mortgage insurance rates, property insurance, realtor commissions, closing costs, and property taxes. It’s a lose lose lose lose lose lose for the people and a giant win for predatory capitalism. By Jason Holland 
Environment:
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
Quote from Chapter 5 The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander:
. . .That is the basic message that Martin Luther King Jr. aimed to deliver through the Poor People’s Movement back in 1968. He argued then that the time had come for racial justice advocates to shift from a civil rights to a human rights paradigm, and that the real work of movement building had only just begun. A human rights approach, he believed, would offer far greater hope for those of us determined to create a thriving, multiracial, multiethnic democracy free from racial hierarchy than the civil rights model had provided to date. It would offer a positive vision of what we can strive for — a society in which all human beings of all races are treated with dignity, and have the right to food, shelter, health care, education, and security. This expansive vision could open the door to meaningful alliances between poor and working-class people of all colors, who could begin to see their interests as aligned, rather than in conflict—no longer in competition for scarce resources in a zero-sum game. A human rights movement, King believed, held revolutionary potential. Speaking at a Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff retreat in May 1967, he told SCLC staff, who were concerned that the Civil Rights Movement had lost its steam and its direction, “It is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights.” Political reform efforts were no longer adequate to the task at hand, he said. “For the last 12 years, we have been in a reform movement…. [But] after Selma and the voting rights bill, we moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution. We must see the great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement. We are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society.” More than forty years later, civil rights advocacy is stuck in a model of advocacy King was determined to leave behind. Rather than challenging the basic structure of society and doing the hard work of movement building —the work to which King was still committed at the end of his life — we have been tempted too often by the opportunity for people of color to be included within the political and economic structure as-is, even if it means alienating those who are necessary allies. We have allowed ourselves to be willfully blind to the emergence of a new caste system—a system of social excommunication that has denied millions of African Americans basic human dignity. The significance of this cannot be overstated, for the failure to acknowledge the humanity and dignity of all persons has lurked at the root of every racial caste system. This common thread explains why, in the 1780s, the British Society for the Abolition of Slavery adopted as its official seal a woodcut of a kneeling slave above a banner that read, “AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?” That symbol was followed more than a hundred years later by signs worn around the necks of black sanitation workers during the Poor People’s Campaign answering the slave’s question with the simple statement, I AM A MAN. The fact that black men could wear the same sign today in protest of the new caste system suggests that the model of civil rights advocacy that has been employed for the past several decades is, as King predicted, inadequate to the task at hand. If we can agree that what is needed now, at this critical juncture, is not more tinkering or tokenism, but as King insisted forty years ago, a “radical restructuring of our society,” then perhaps we can also agree that a radical restructuring of our approach to racial justice advocacy is in order as well. All of this is easier said than done, of course. Change in civil rights organizations, like change in society as a whole, will not come easy. Fully committing to a vision of racial justice that includes grassroots, bottom-up advocacy on behalf of “all of us” will require a major reconsideration of priorities, staffing, strategies, and messages. Egos, competing agendas, career goals, and inertia may get in the way. It may be that traditional civil rights organizations simply cannot, or will not, change. To this it can only be said, without a hint of disrespect: adapt or die. If Martin Luther King Jr. is right that the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice, a new movement will arise; and if civil rights organizations fail to keep up with the times, they will pushed to the side as another generation of advocates comes to the fore. Hopefully the new generation will be led by those who know best the brutality of the new caste system — a group with greater vision, courage, and determination than the old guard can muster, trapped as they may be in an outdated paradigm. This new generation of activists should not disrespect their elders or disparage their contributions or achievements; to the contrary, they should bow their heads in respect, for their forerunners have expended untold hours and made great sacrifices in an elusive quest for justice. But once respects have been paid, they should march right past them, emboldened, as King once said, by the fierce urgency of now. Those of us who hope to be their allies should not be surprised, if and when this day comes, that when those who have been locked up and locked out finally have the chance to speak and truly be heard, what we hear is rage. The rage may frighten us; it may remind us of riots, uprisings, and buildings aflame. We may be tempted to control it, or douse it with buckets of doubt, dismay, and disbelief. But we should do no such thing. Instead, when a young man who was born in the ghetto and who knows little of life beyond the walls of his prison cell and the invisible cage that has become his life, turns to us in bewilderment and rage, we should do nothing more than look him in the eye and tell him the truth. . . .
Labor:
Economy:
World:
Is ISIS’s Baghdadi Trapped in Mosul? by Patrick Cockburn 
Iraq ‘ready for war’ with Turkey over who should control Mosul after Isis Tension between the two countries is growing as parties inside Iraq and neighbouring countries become convinced that they are seeing the last days of Isis rule, writes Patrick Cockburn By Patrick Cockburn
Five years after Gaddafi’s death: The balance sheet of imperialist intervention By Roberto Sarti
South Africa: The fight for free education and the lessons of the student movement The mobilisation of thousands of South African students taking their futures into their own hands has shaken up South African society. This is an extremely significant development. It means the youth are not content to leave their fate to the those politicians and leaders who have adapted themselves to life under capitalism. The youth are now some of the most politically active layers in society and are taking the road of class struggle. By Ben Morken in South Africa
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
‘Lesser Evil’ Obama leading the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse — US ImperialismSpreading War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death.
Quotes of the Day:
