. . . If you go back to the record of the Constitutional Convention, which took place in 1787, almost immediately after the end of the war, you see that they are already moving in another direction. James Madison — who was the main framer, and one of the Founding Fathers who was most libertarian — makes it very clear that the new constitutional system must be designed so as to ensure that the government will, in his words, “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority” and bar the way to anything like agrarian reform. The determination was made that America could not allow functioning democracy, since people would use their political power to attack the wealth of the minority of the opulent. Therefore, Madison argues, the country should be placed in the hands of the wealthier set of men, as he put it. . . . Noam Chomsky, American History and Democracy
Taking a Stand at Standing Rock Like millions of other concerned people, I’ve followed the standoff at the Standing Rock Sioux Nation in North Dakota for months. The good people of Standing Rock, including the Dakota, the Lakota and all Sioux, have stood their ground since April, to block the evil 1,170 mile, $3.7 billion Dakota Access Oil Pipeline which will dig through the three-mile-wide Missouri River, potentially poisoning the water for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people, and desecrating the sacred land of the indigenous people. They’ve built several large camps and a permanent campaign that has gained the support of 200 other tribes. by Rev. John Dear
Twenty Years of Dictatorial Democracy The presidential campaign has mortified millions of Americans in part because the presidency has become far more dangerous in recent times. Since 9/11, we have lived in a perpetual emergency which supposedly justifies trampling the law and Constitution. And the illegalities will not end after Tuesday’s vote count. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have signaled that they will perpetuate power grabs in the next four years. by James BovardThe Election and Nukes: We Are Playing a Game of Chicken with Nuclear Strategy The growing global nuclear threat is real. I was born on July 20, 1944, the day of the failed officers’ plot against Adolf Hitler. That means I preceded the official dawning of the nuclear age by exactly 361 days, which makes me part of the last generation to do so. I’m speaking not of the obliteration of two Japanese cities by America’s new “wonder weapon” on August 6th and 9th, 1945, but of the Trinity test of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexican desert near Alamogordo on July 16th of that year. When physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” witnessed that explosion, the line from the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita, that famously came into his head was: “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” ByMichael Klare Six Flint Government Employees FINALLY Criminally Charged by M. DavidNine Ways the U.S. Voting System Is Rigged But Not Against Donald Trump Donald Trump is right — The U.S. voting system is totally rigged! It’s not rigged against him, though. It’s rigged against people without much money, and people who are members of any number of minority groups. By Jon Schwarz Environment:
The first civil and human rights movement by and for Black people started during the Civil War and the period of Black Reconstruction that followed. It was a time of radical hopes for many freed slaves. But it was also a time of betrayal. Then President Andrew Johnson and the non-radical Republicans, in collusion with the Democratic Party, the party of slavery, sold out the early post-war promises for full equality and “40 acres and a mule”. Instead, the promise of equality was soon replaced by the restoration of the property rights of the former slave owners in the South. This was accomplished by the Compromise of 1877. How did they accomplish this betrayal? The answer is simple—terrorism. They used police and terroristic Ku Klux Klan violence. These extra-legal activities laid the basis for the overthrow of Black Reconstruction and the institutionalization of legal segregation (Jim Crow) in the former slave states. To enforce Jim Crow, Black people were, for decades, indiscriminately lynched and framed. — Roland Sheppard, The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights Movement
The Russian Revolution: The Meaning of October Today is the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, an event which altered the entire course of human history. For the first time – if we exclude the brief but glorious episode of the Paris Commune – the working people took power into their own hands and began the gigantic task of the socialist re-construction of society. Here we republish an article written in 1992 by Alan Woods. The article gives an excellent overview of the revolution as well as highlighting its main lessons. by Alan Woods
Quotes of the Day:
The Election and Nukes: We Are Playing a Game of Chicken with Nuclear Strategy The growing global nuclear threat is real. I was born on July 20, 1944, the day of the failed officers’ plot against Adolf Hitler. That means I preceded the official dawning of the nuclear age by exactly 361 days, which makes me part of the last generation to do so. I’m speaking not of the obliteration of two Japanese cities by America’s new “wonder weapon” on August 6th and 9th, 1945, but of the Trinity test of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexican desert near Alamogordo on July 16th of that year. When physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” witnessed that explosion, the line from the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita, that famously came into his head was: “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” By Michael Klare 
Six Flint Government Employees FINALLY Criminally Charged by M. David 
Nine Ways the U.S. Voting System Is Rigged But Not Against Donald Trump Donald Trump is right — The U.S. voting system is totally rigged! It’s not rigged against him, though. It’s rigged against people without much money, and people who are members of any number of minority groups. By Jon Schwarz
Environment:
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis: 
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
More Unarmed Black Americans Have Been Lynched In The Last 2 Years Than The Entire 1950’s and 60’s When people think of the concept of lynching, many assume that lynching means just hanging a person accused of a crime. But the basic definition of lynching is to execute someone who has not been found guilty of a crime at a legal trial. Thats all lynching is. And since 2014, more unarmed Black people in the United States have been legally lynched by suspected white supremacist race soldiers posing as police, than the entire 1950’s and 60’s combined
Labor:
World:
A view of the Syrian war from the Golan Heights One Syrian lieutenant described to me how he directed his artillery fire onto an Israeli jeep in the Jabhat al-Nusra occupied town of Al-Hamidiya inside Syria and destroyed it. The jeep might have been a gift or borrowed from Israel By Robert Fisk
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare: