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The Iron Heel 
Quotes of the Day:
“I Don’t Think We’re Free in America” – An Interview with Bryan Stevenson Although the United States has just elected a new president whose promise to make America great “again” evoked an unspecified, presumably more glorious past, Americans’ appreciation of their own history, and particularly its most damning chapters, is limited at best. The country’s long history of racial violence can hardly be denied, but that history is regularly erased from public commemoration. Some civil rights victories are celebrated, but the violence that preceded them is seldom acknowledged. By Alice Speri 
First, Let’s Clean Out the Stables Of course, you remember the Greek myth. The fifth labor that the great hero Hercules must perform is to clean out King Augeas’s stables of shit dropped by 1000 royal cattle who haven’t been cleaned in over 30 years. Augeas, head of the Schumer-Pelosi Democratic National Committee, hates Hercules who comes armed with fresh new ideas hateful to the long-reigning King. So the task Augeas sets for the hero is both impossible and humiliating. But Augeas reckons without the hero’s tenacity and wit. Hercules takes one look at all the corrupt cattle shit and diverts two whole rivers to wash out the filth. He then kills the tyrant and gives his kingdom away. By Clancy Sigal
Freedom Rider: Obama’s Propaganda Gift to Trump Political hysteria has its ironies. President Obama has just signed into law a new office of government propaganda that is intended to prevent any warming of relations with Russia under a Trump administration. But, President Trump will appoint the head of the office. The Democrats apparently expect Trump to cooperate with their plan to undermine his foreign policy, “silence dissent and create a network of propaganda partners” to badmouth Russia. by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Trump’s Neo-Fascism will be Built on Neo-Fascism of Obama and Democrat Party White “radicals” and Black “nationalists” join with corporate Democrats and “latte” liberals” to mouth nonsense about Russians. Clinton Democrats attack Trump from the right — and sweep know-nothings of all stripes along with them. “Collaboration from the left with the new McCarthyism is providing an opening for the isolation and repression of those of us who were going to have to fight no matter who would have been elected.” by Ajamu Baraka
Communities Betrayed and Sick, the EPA Office of Civil Rights Under the Spotlight Just because Donald Trump hates the EPA doesn’t mean the agency has ever acted in the interest of Black people. “Whether the EPA is controlled by the Democratic or Republican Parties, the agency has had a consistent and negative impact on Black and Brown communities.” We’ve all seen the results: “Residents are forced to live in unsafe environments around landfills and oil refineries, and children are exposed to chronic diseases.” by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Adebayo
Obama’s Pardons Distract from the Horror of Mass Black Incarceration Americans imprison big, but they pardon very small. President Obama set a record by giving clemency to 1/2000th of the 2.3million U.S. prison inmates. The Brennan Center recommends release of 40 percent of inmates. But the Black Is Back Coalition calculates that even release of twice that many – 80 percent – would still maintain mass incarceration at 1973 levels. The whole damn system has to go, for Black folks to even get close to justice. A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford 
Message to the Movement Against Donald Trump: Let the Empire Die The Democrats are attacking from the Right, desperate to stir up war fever. “The destabilization of Russia is critical to finance capital’s agenda of self-enrichment from the chaos of political catastrophe.” When Wall Street demands that the country be put on a war footing, the Democrats are eager to please. “Only strong ideological opposition to the Democratic Party can challenge the madness of the US empire’s anti-Russia campaign.” by Danny Haiphong
1st 100 Daze The Trumpacolypse is indeed a new day, notes our poet in residence, but it’s the same old era. by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner
Delusions Shattered: How Democrats Lost Claims to a Moral High Ground by Ignoring Obama’s Transformation Into Bush In defeat, Democrats now cast themselves as defiant “fascist-fighters” and saviors of civil society. Yet, they were silent or supportive when Barack Obama spent eight years committing the same crimes as George Bush, and adding his own atrocities to the record. Donald Trump’s victory, “if there is anything good to say about it, will at least breathe much needed life into an antiwar sentiment that has been largely dormant since Bush left office.” by Jon Reynolds
This Cruel New Policy Makes It Near Impossible for Kids to See Their Incarcerated Parents Adding yet another cruelty to the world’s most monstrous system of mass incarceration, federal prison officials restrict visitation to immediate family members. Yet, relatively few prisoners are legally married. “The practical impact of the policy for most of my clients,” says the author, a lawyer, “is that they cannot see their romantic partners and their children.” Federal jailers are trying to enforce “Leave it to Beaver” rules in the Gulag. by Dana Bazelon
A Quarter of Florida’s Black Citizens Can’t Vote. A New Referendum Could Change That. A Florida court may allow the voters to throw out the state’s lifetime ban against allowing convicted felons to vote – a prohibition that had disenfranchised nearly a quarter of the Black population. The court’s approval clears the way for a grassroots coalition “to move to the final phase of the campaign, which involves collecting some 600,000 additional petition signatures” — ten times the number so far gathered by the coalition. by Spencer Woodman
Walter Rodney and the Racial Underpinnings of Global Inequality While inequality has become a topic of increased popularity and politicization in recent years, most of the attention has focused on how 1% own an increasingly large share of the world’s wealth, rather than on inequalities between nations. In a global context in which national borders and citizenship pose few barriers to the mobility of capital, the reality is also a story of the world’s richest nations continuing to reap a disproportionate amount of the globe’s profits. by Tianna Paschel 
Democracy is Gone in the USA The CIA’s Phoenix assassination program slaughtered 50,000 Vietnamese, and was considered a new benchmark in international state terror. Today, the U.S. conducts a globalized kind of Phoenix Program, using high- and low-tech methods of covert and overt mass murder. Douglas Valentine’s second book on the CIA traces the growth of the world superpower’s Murder Inc. by Ron Jacobs 
War Abroad, Equality at Home? Bernie Sanders and the Sandernistas Is there such a thing as a War Progressive? “Jeffrey St. Clair has tracked the sordid trail of every pro-war stance that Senator Sanders took and every pro-war vote he cast on the way to his failed crusade for equality at home and war abroad.” However, St. Clair has praise for Sanders’ supporters. “You didn’t cry when Bernie betrayed you. At least, not for long.” by Ann Garrison
Labor:
U.S. Quietly Drops Bombshell: Wall Street Banks Have $2 Trillion European Exposure Just 17 days from today, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the nation’s 45th President and deliver his inaugural address. Trump is expected to announce priorities in the areas of education, infrastructure, border security, the economy and curtailing the outsourcing of jobs. But Trump’s agenda will be derailed on all fronts if the big Wall Street banks blow up again as they did in 2008, dragging the U.S. economy into the ditch and requiring another massive taxpayer bailout from a nation already deeply in debt from the last banking crisis. According to a report quietly released by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research less than two weeks before Christmas, another financial implosion on Wall Street can’t be ruled out. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World: 
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