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As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99% — Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!
Images of the Day:
Quotes of the Day:
. . . The American Revolutionary War lasted eight years, from initial skirmishes in 1775 to 1783. A Constitutional Convention was called in 1787, to draft the constitution. Those whom, the powers that be, now call the ‘Forefathers of the Constitution’, were the ones who led the counter-call to the Declaration of Independence. Instead of codifying the constitution to guarantee our “certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, they refused to include the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights and even the 1689 English Bill of Rights in the original draft of the constitution! Due to the revolutionary consciousness at that time, it became very clear that the States would not ratify the constitution, these ‘forefathers’ had to declared that the first act of congress would be the enactment of the Bill of Rights, in order to get the states to approved the constitution. (Rhode Island held out, until the actual deed was done.) Never the less, the constitution was written to allow only white males of property to vote, legalized slavery, and stated that Black People were only 4/5 human. Noam Chomsky stated in his interview on American History and Democracy: . . . “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. . . .” To this day, we have a government and state apparatus that is designed to “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority” — there is no Democracy! It has been endemic to this society to expand westward which included the genocide of the Native Americans. . . . — Roland Sheppard, My Forefathers and The 1%’s Forefathers
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of 6 August, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, unforgettably. When I returned many years later, it was gone: taken away, “disappeared”, a political embarrassment. I have spent two years making a documentary film, The Coming War on China, in which the evidence and witnesses warn that nuclear war is no longer a shadow, but a contingency. The greatest build-up of American-led military forces since the Second World War is well under way. They are in the northern hemisphere, on the western borders of Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, confronting China. The great danger this beckons is not news, or it is buried and distorted: a drumbeat of mainstream fake news that echoes the psychopathic fear embedded in public consciousness during much of the 20th century. — John Pilger
Videos of the Day:
U.S.
Jeff Sessions, Trump’s Attorney General Pick, Introduced First Bill to Exempt Fracking from Drinking Water Rules U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney General, introduced the first so-called “Halliburton Loophole” bill back in 1999 before it was ever known as such. Sessions co-sponsored the bill (S.724) with the climate change-denying Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). The bill called for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to exempt enforcement of the Safe Drinking Water Act as it relates to hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). By Steve Horn
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
Blacks Systematically Barred from Temporary Jobs in Chicago Chicago-area businesses and a national temporary worker staffing agency conspired to discriminate against Black applicants in favor of largely undocumented Hispanic workers, according to a suit filed in federal court. “It was said to be common for managers to ask MVP to only send them workers that listened to 107.9 FM, a Spanish language radio station in Chicago.” A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
Freedom Rider: Black Fear in the Age of Trump Having accepted the unacceptable and defended the indefensible when it came from Democrats, Blacks must now confront the white people’s president, Donald Trump. As in dark days of the past, we must cast off fear and cast out Black misleaders who are loyal only to themselves. “Creating political crisis should be the order of the day. That has always been the game changer, not necessarily getting Democrats into office instead of Republicans.” by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
The Second Phase of the propaganda Fake News War: Economic Strangulation. What Comes Next? Frustrated and outraged at how reality has turned out, the ruling class denizens of Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential tent are lashing out at truth-tellers. “Fake news” is whatever contradicts their lies, and Russia is their all-purpose boogeyman. “Google and Facebook have joined theri corporate media compatriots in an attempt to limit the public’s access to alternative news analysis and independent investigative reporting.” by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Adebayo
When It Comes to U.S. Foreign Policy, the Truth Hurts A bill before Congress could be used to target “any website, or blog, that does not share the mainstream media’s proclivity to serve as the Public Relations arm of a given administration.“ All they have to do is claim it is being “manipulated” by the Russians. But, Moscow doesn’t have to lie to counter a lawless U.S. foreign policy. “The Russians only need to stick to the facts (omitting the pipeline) to ultimately win the propaganda war.” by Ronald Thomas West
A Eulogy for Fidel Fidel was a political giant, to whom the U.S. left is indebted, “not only because he and the Cuban people have protected Black revolutionaries such as Assata Shakur, Robert Williams, and Huey Newton from US government persecution.” The revolution he led built “a new society and a new people rooted in the principles of Marxism.” by Danny Haiphong
Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK): How the Armed Struggle Succeeded Despite its 30 years of sacrifice, Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK), the armed force of the South African liberation struggle, “does not feature in school history curricula, no official films have been produced, and no military record is established.” The author, a former MK commander, proposes to comprehensively set the record straight. The following is his address at the University of Witwatersrand on “the politics of armed struggle in Southern Africa.” by Ronnie Kasrils
How Rock and Roll Became White Rock and roll music has always been a site of struggle over issues of race and racism. In this insightful review, Colin Vanderburg surveys what Jack Hamilton has to say regarding how rock music succumbed to the lure of American racism. by Colin Vanderburg
Labor:
Economy:
World:
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
What We Talk About When We Talk About Class In the course I teach on social class in America, I show students how capitalism generates inequalities in wealth, status, and power. What I offer is not a moral critique of capitalism but rather an empirically grounded analysis of how it works, at a nuts-and-bolts level, to create and maintain a disproportionate flow of material and symbolic resources to the capitalist class. That capitalism does this is, as Noam Chomsky might say, uncontroversial. Or, as a student double-majoring in sociology and business once said to me, “You talk about a lot of the same things my business professors do, but you sure talk about them differently.” by Michael Schwalbe
Forget Air Force One, Pentagon Wastes Billions and Billions Every Month President-elect Donald Trump’s focus on single Boeing contract ignores enormous waste of bloated Pentagon budget by Nadia Prupis
Will Trump Start a War on China? Like the renewal of post-Soviet Russia, the rise of China as an economic power is declared an “existential threat” to the divine right of the United States to rule and dominate human affairs. By John Pilger
Is Trump’s Idea To Fix the ‘Rigged System’ by Appointing Crooks Who’ve Played It? Donald Trump’s cabinet choices are suggesting a governing philosophy along the lines of a corrupt municipal police force relying on gangsters to help it keep street crime held in check. Trump has been naming top Wall Street bankers and hedge fund owners to staff his Commerce Department (former Rothschild banker and billionaire Wilbur Ross), Treasury (former Goldman Sachs executive and hedge fund executive Steve Mnuchin, and more recently, as top “economic strategy advisors”, Blackstone Group CEO Steven Schwartzman and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. By Dave Lindorff
Environment:
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis: