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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!
Liberalism is dead, there is no longer any material basis for New Deal Reformism. In the 1930’s, when capitalism was in crisis the working class rose up to form their unions in order to protect their class interests and standard of living. To prevent a socialist revolution, the U.S. ruling class, under FDR, were able to grant a few New Deal concessions to the working class. They were able to do this because the United States was the world’s creditor nation.
In today’s crisis, since the United States is a debtor nation, the 1% cannot afford the luxury of New Deal politics or reformism to prevent what occurred in the 30s.
Worldwide the only choice for capitalism is to apply the political program of austerity enforced by Iron Heal. The fig leaf of reformation is over.
As U.S. Applies the Iron Heel Worldwide, Trump and his Billion Dollar Cabinet Make It Clear That United States Capitalism plans to Launch a Full Frontal Austerity Assault Upon the Social Gains of the 20th Century! The Iron Heel Has Come Home to Roost in the United States.
The ruling class, under Trump and the banner of austerity, are prepared to attack all the social gains of the New Deal, during the labor upsurge in the 30s and forties, and all of the gains of the Civil Rights Movements in the 60s and 70s, by any means they deem necessary. All of the leaderships of these movements have been become, in their own words, in partnership with the 1% — in opposition to and a historic betrayal of the working class and the masses the masses they were/are supposed to represent. The resistance to austerity has begun in the Black Community, in response, the use of forces, as Jack London, described in the Iron Heel were/are used by Obama’s militarized police forces. The misleaders of the traditional Black movement were not recognized by the Black Lives Matter movement, which has risen from the ashes of Ferguson and Baltimore. As Colin Kaepernick pointed out, both Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, have supported and encouraged the use of the Iron Heel in the community and are/were the enemy of the Black Community.
The fight against austerity is a political fight and must be fought by the political reorganization of the working class with their natural alies, the Black working class and other oppressed minorities.
The Labor misleaders and the leaderships of the oppressed minorities, in this country, have opposed all such political formations. Thus we, in the United States, have no political organization to oppose austerity. Since the defeat of the Patco strike in 1981, the trade union bureaucracy has declared itself in partnership with the 1% against the class as a whole. This deal was brokered through the Democratic Party.
Worldwide the only political opposition to austerity, has been the newly invigorated Labor Party in England.
Alan Woods clearly stated, the political situation in his essay 2016: The Death of Liberalism:
. . .For the last hundred years, the political system in the USA was based on two parties — the Democrats and Republicans — that both stood for the maintenance of capitalism and both represented the interests of the banks and big business. This was very well expressed by Gore Vidal who wrote “our Republic has one party, the property party, with two right wings.” This was the solid foundation for the stability and longevity of what Americans regarded as “democracy”. In reality, this bourgeois democracy was merely a fig leaf to conceal the reality of the dictatorship of the bankers and capitalists. Now this convenient setup is being challenged and shaken to the core. Millions of people are waking up to the rottenness of the political establishment and the fact that they are being deceived by those who claim to represent them. This is the prior condition for a social revolution. We see a similar situation in Britain, where for 100 years Labor and Conservatives alternated in power, providing the same kind of stability for the ruling class. The Labor Party and Conservative party were run by solid, respectable men and women who could be relied upon to run society in the interests of the bankers and capitalists of the city of London. But the election of Jeremy Corbyn has upset the apple cart. The ruling class fears that the massive influx of new members into the Labor Party may break the stranglehold of the right wing over Labor. That explains the panic of the ruling class and the vitriolic nature of the campaign against Corbyn.
During the past period, the United States has accelerated the application of the Iron Heal to the Black Community, with the silence and/or tacit of the misleadship bureaucracies. When people protested against the racism and austerity programs of the Obama administration, the government applied the Iron Heel of the Obama’s newly militarize police and police murderers provoked more demonstrations, the police responded with tear gas and tanks. When these murders were not even indicted a new movement, Black Lives Matter, arose from the wretched of the earth to defend themselves.
The Declaration of Independence declared that “All Men are created equal”, With “certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” And that “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” And that we have a right and a duty to overthrow an unjust government!
In the coming period all of the oppressed and working masses will reject their misleaders and organize a new party to overthrow austerity and the Capitalist Class.
Images of the Day:
The Ministry of Truth is the propaganda ministry. As with the other ministries in the novel, the name Ministry of Truth is a misnomer because in reality it serves the opposite: it is responsible for any necessary falsification of historical events. As well as administering truth, the ministry spreads a new language amongst the populace called Newspeak, in which, for example, “truth” is understood to mean statements like 2 + 2 = 5 when the situation warrants. In keeping with the concept of doublethink, the ministry is thus aptly named in that it creates/manufactures “truth” in the Newspeak sense of the word. The book describes the doctoring of historical records to show a government-approved version of events. In Newspeak, the ministry is known as Minitrue. — Ministries of Nineteen Eighty-Four
The Iron Heel is cited by George Orwell‘s biographer Michael Shelden as having influenced Orwell’s most famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.[3] Orwell himself described London as having made “a very remarkable prophecy of the rise of Fascism”, in the book and believed that London’s understanding of the primitive had made him a better prophet “than many better-informed and more logical thinkers.” — The Iron Heel
. . . The artist is audaciously utilizing the methods of hyperbole. He is bringing the tendencies rooted in capitalism: of oppression, cruelty, bestiality, betrayal, to their extreme expression. He is operating with centuries in order to measure the tyrannical will of the exploiters and the treacherous rôle of the labor bureaucracy. But his most “romantic” hyperboles are finally much more realistic than the bookkeeper-like calculations of the so-called “sober politicians.” The chapter, The Roaring Abysmal Beast, undoubtedly constitutes the focus of the book. At the time when the novel appeared this apocalyptical chapter must have seemed to be the boundary of hyperbolism. However, the consequent happenings have almost surpassed it. And the last word of class struggle has not yet been said by far! The “Abysmal Beast” is to the extreme degree oppressed, humiliated, and degenerated people. Who would now dare to speak for this reason about the artist’s pessimism? No, London is an optimist, only a penetrating and farsighted one. “Look into what kind of abyss the bourgeoisie will hurl you down, if you don’t finish with them!” This is his thought. Today it sounds incomparably more real and sharp than thirty years ago. But still more astonishing is the genuinely prophetic vision of the methods by which the Iron Heel will sustain its domination over crushed mankind. London manifests remarkable freedom from reformistic pacifist illusions. In this picture of the future there remains not a trace of democracy and peaceful progress. Over the mass of the deprived rise the castes of labor aristocracy, of praetorian army, of an all-penetrating police, with the financial oligarchy at the top. In reading it one does not believe his own eyes: it is precisely the picture of fascism, of its economy, of its governmental technique, its political psychology! The fact is incontestable: in 1907 Jack London already foresaw and described the fascist regime as the inevitable result of the defeat of the proletarian revolution. Whatever may be the single “errors” of the novel – and they exist – we cannot help inclining before the powerful intuition of the revolutionary artist. — Trotsky and the Iron Heel His Observations on the Famous Novel (1937)
Video of the Day:
The Whole Bushel: Stop It With These False Prophets In the first episode of the Whole Bushel, Baltimore rapper Eze Jackson sits down with three local artists: singer Ama Chandra, rapper Ashley Sierra, and spoken word artist Neptune the Poet. They discuss the widespread disillusionment with electoral politics, the need for police accountability, and the distinction between White and Black feminism.
U.S.:
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
The quote below if rom one of Martin Luther King’s last speeches, given 40 years ago and one year before his assassination, at Stanford University in April 1967 and titled the The Other America. In this speech, he speaks not of a dream but of the nightmarish economic condition of Black people. When he talks about ‘work-starved men searching for jobs that do not exist’ and living on a ‘lonely island of poverty surrounded by an ocean of material prosperity,’ the speech remains timely in today’s world.” — Roland Sheppard
. . . But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the ebullience of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. . . . — Martin Luther King, The Other America (1967)
Nearly half of young black men in Chicago out of work, out of school: report Nearly half of young black men in Chicago are neither in school nor working, a staggering statistic in a bleak new youth unemployment report that shows Chicago to be far worse off than its big-city peers. By Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz
Labor:
Economy:
The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.
World:
Britain: “Train-crash” Brexit and the tensions in Whitehall Within the next three months, the Brexit negotiations with the European Union will officially start. The plan is to leave within two years, nothing more, nothing less.“Brexit means Brexit” according to Theresa May. We are told that there will be either “soft” Brexit, where Britain has access to the Single Market or “hard” Brexit, where we don’t. However there is a more probable third option: “train-crash” Brexit, where there is a failure to reach a deal and Britain crashes out of the European Union – with chaotic and drastic consequences. By Rob Sewell
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
‘Fake News’ — The ‘Spin Doctors’ of War — The U.S. Media Monopoly!
Quotes of the Day: 
No Conflict Here: 150 Wall Street Firms Own Over $1.5 Billion of Trump’s Debt Wall Street Journal analysis uncovers scope of Trump’s web of debt and the financial institutions ‘in a potentially powerful position over the incoming president’ by Lauren McCauley
Environment: 
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis: