Skip to content
As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99% — Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!
Images of the Day:
Quotes of the Day:
The White House Negro: . . . Back during slavery. There was two kinds of slaves. There was the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes — they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good ’cause they ate his food — what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near the master; and they loved their master more than the master loved himself. They would give their life to save the master’s house quicker than the master would. The house Negro, if the master said, “We got a good house here,” the house Negro would say, “Yeah, we got a good house here.” Whenever the master said “we,” he said “we.” That’s how you can tell a house Negro. If the master’s house caught on fire, the house Negro would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the master got sick, the house Negro would say, “What’s the matter, boss, we sick?” We sick! He identified himself with his master more than his master identified with himself. And if you came to the house Negro and said, “Let’s run away, let’s escape, let’s separate,” the house Negro would look at you and say, “Man, you crazy. What you mean, separate? Where is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than this? Where can I eat better food than this?” That was that house Negro. In those days he was called a “house nigger.” And that’s what we call him today, because we’ve still got some house niggers running around here. This modern house Negro loves his master. He wants to live near him. He’ll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near his master, and then brag about “I’m the only Negro out here.” “I’m the only one on my job.” “I’m the only one in this school.” You’re nothing but a house Negro. And if someone comes to you right now and says, “Let’s separate,” you say the same thing that the house Negro said on the plantation. “What you mean, separate? From America? This good white man? Where you going to get a better job than you get here?” I mean, this is what you say. “I ain’t left nothing in Africa,” that’s what you say. Why, you left your mind in Africa. On that same plantation, there was the field Negro. The field Negro — those were the masses. There were always more Negroes in the field than there was Negroes in the house. The Negro in the field caught hell. He ate leftovers. In the house they ate high up on the hog. The Negro in the field didn’t get nothing but what was left of the insides of the hog. They call ’em “chitt’lin’” nowadays. In those days they called them what they were: guts. That’s what you were — a gut-eater. And some of you all still gut-eaters. The field Negro was beaten from morning to night. He lived in a shack, in a hut; He wore old, castoff clothes. He hated his master. I say he hated his master. He was intelligent. That house Negro loved his master. But that field Negro — remember, they were in the majority, and they hated the master. When the house caught on fire, he didn’t try and put it out; that field Negro prayed for a wind, for a breeze. When the master got sick, the field Negro prayed that he’d die. If someone come [sic] to the field Negro and said, “Let’s separate, let’s run,” he didn’t say “Where we going?” He’d say, “Any place is better than here.” You’ve got field Negroes in America today. I’m a field Negro. The masses are the field Negroes. When they see this man’s house on fire, you don’t hear these little Negroes talking about “our government is in trouble.” They say, “The government is in trouble.” Imagine a Negro: “Our government”! I even heard one say “our astronauts.” They won’t even let him near the plant — and “our astronauts”! “Our Navy” — that’s a Negro that’s out of his mind. That’s a Negro that’s out of his mind. Just as the slavemaster of that day used Tom, the house Negro, to keep the field Negroes in check, the same old slavemaster today has Negroes who are nothing but modern Uncle Toms, 20th century Uncle Toms, to keep you and me in check, keep us under control, keep us passive and peaceful and nonviolent. That’s Tom making you nonviolent. It’s like when you go to the dentist, and the man’s going to take your tooth. You’re going to fight him when he starts pulling. So he squirts some stuff in your jaw called novocaine, to make you think they’re not doing anything to you. So you sit there and ’cause you’ve got all of that novocaine in your jaw, you suffer peacefully. Blood running all down your jaw, and you don’t know what’s happening. ’Cause someone has taught you to suffer — peacefully. — Malcolm X – The House Negro and the Field Negro
Negro leaders suffer from this interplay of solidarity and divisiveness, being either exalted excessively or grossly abused. Some of these leaders suffer from an aloofness and absence of faith in their people. The white establishment is skilled in flattering and cultivating emerging leaders. It presses its own image on them and finally, from imitation of manners, dress and style of living, a deeper strain of corruption develops. This kind of Negro leader acquires the white man’s contempt for the ordinary Negro. He is often more at home with the middle-class white than he is among his own people. His language changes, his location changes, his income changes, and ultimately he changes from the representative of the Negro to the white man into the white man’s representative of the Negro. The tragedy is that too often he does not recognize what has happened to him. — The Black Power Defined, Martin Luther King Jr. 1967
Videos of the Day
Democrats Go Soft on Jeff Sessions and Why That Should Concern Us All Historian Gerald Horne says Jeff Sessions as Trump’s Attorney General signals a frontal assault against the gains of the Civil Rights Movement
U.S.:
Environment:
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
The Nuclear Power’s Agency: Are the EPA’s Emergency Radiation Limits a Cover for Fukushima Fumbles? The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is poised to issue guidelines that would set radiation limits for drinking water during the “intermediate period” after the releases from a radioactive emergency, such as an accident at a nuclear power plant, have been brought under control. The emergency limits would allow the public to be exposed to radiation levels hundreds and even thousands of times higher than typically allowed by federal law. By Mike Ludwig
How Jeff Sessions Profited from Introducing a Fracking Exemption for Drinking Water Rules With U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) in the midst of Senate confirmation hearings, watchdog group Food and Water Watch has raised new questions about how Sessions and his family profited from a fracking loophole provision he introduced in the Senate. The group has unveiled new documents showing that Sessions’ family owned stock in Energen, a Birmingham, Alabama-based oil and gas company, which pioneered fracking in Alabama and in turn benefited from Sen. Sessions’ push to exempt hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforcement of the Safe Drinking Water Act. Known better as the “Halliburton Loophole,” Sessions co-sponsored — along with climate-denying U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) — the first federal bill (S.724) to exempt fracking activities from drinking water regulations, a 1999 bill which later passed as a provision of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. A few years later, Energen’s stock raised significantly in value, and Sessions and his wife cashed out in 2008. By Steve Horn
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
Obama’s Last Presidential Lies Nobody lies with the style and aplomb of Barack Hussein Obama, soon to be an ex-president of the United States. In his last address to the nation, Obama lied about his support for labor; economic and social justice for Black people; climate change and, of course, the rightwing Republican program that is his shameful legacy, Obamacare. Virtually everything the man says is a form of lie. But he does it so well, and some folks want so badly to believe. A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
Freedom Rider: Contradiction in the Time of Trump The cacophony of pre-inaugural madness is full of lies against Russia, wild exaggerations about Obama’s accomplishments, and a weird and shameful alliance of so-called “progressives” and the CIA. Anti-Trump protests turn out to be props for useless Democrats. The contradictions of late stage capitalism abound — which should be the cue for genuine radicals to fight both corporate parties. That means kicking the Democrats “while they are down.” by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Some Guidance on the Russia Question Barack Obama, “has spent its last days in the White House laying the basis for World War, claiming that the Russian government had directly interfered in the 2016 elections.” The corporate media and the Democratic Party have joined in the hysteria, along with far too many so-called progressives. “If criticism of Russia at this time takes precedence over fighting US imperialism, then a reexamination of the movement’s priorities is in order.” by Danny Haiphong
Black Awakening, Class Rebellion “The Black movement has been and will continue to be the foundation for the emergence of other liberation movements” in the U.S., says Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, whose Black Awakening in Obama’s America has been described as “the most important book of 2016.” However, the Black Misleadership class stands with corporate power. “Black officials uphold a status quo that is institutionally racist and incapable of delivering the goods to Black people.” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and George Ciccariello-Maher
Pity the Sad Legacy of Barack Obama One of the few Black public intellectuals to break with the First Black President early on, Dr. Cornel West notes that “those Obama cheerleaders who refused to make him accountable bear some responsibility” for the impending Age of Trump. Obama ignored pleas to “break with Wall Street priorities and bail out Main Street” – but bailed out the banks instead, and oversaw what has become “the full-scale gangsterization of the world.” by Cornel West
The New Black Maroons to America: “We Quit!” Just as slave runaways made common cause with Native Americans in resistance to white settlers, U.S. Blacks should reciprocate the solidarity offered by Cuba, Venezuela and Palestinians, as well as providing whatever assistance is possible to progressive and revolutionary forces in Africa. However, “the task of political disengagement” from the rigged U.S. process “demands assurance that the community is not embarking on a journey into the abyss.” by Mark P. Fancher
Journalism and Pornography: Real Crime is Always Organized Douglas Valentine latest study of the CIA shows him to be “an excellent history teacher” – which is high praise from the reviewer, an excellent teacher, himself. The CIA is a banditry on a huge scale, “invented not simply as an advisory and coordinating instrument for spying but as a criminal organization to cover for the fundamental criminal activity of US corporations and those who own them.” by Dr. T.P. Wilkinson
The Untold Story of the Black Radical Tradition in Canada The author is a veteran of the Black political struggle on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border, having emigrated to Canada in the Sixties. He points out the similarities — and differences – in Black radical politics in the two countries. For example, early on, “Africans born in Canada organized as Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Barbadians or Black Canadians.” by Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali
Labor:
Economy:
World:
Britain: Momentum’s Night of the Long Knives And so the Bonaparte of Momentum was born. At a stroke, Momentum’s democratic structures have been abolished; the tireless work of thousands of Corbyn supporters over the past year-and-a-half thrown out the window. Overnight, grassroots activists have been shunted to the side in what can only be described as a coup. Momentum’s rank-and-file members must not stand for this behaviour — a sickening imitation of that seen from the Blairite mafia in the Parliamentary Labour Party last summer. Members and activists must organise emergency local meetings immediately and call for the originally planned Momentum conference to go ahead on 19th February, to discuss the way forward for the Corbyn movement and the fight for a socialist Labour government. As we have reported previously (here and here), a divide has opened up in Momentum in the recent period, nominally over the issue of whether the organisation should be based on elected and accountable representatives or on a “horizontal network” of activists that make decisions through “one member, one vote” (OMOV). Rising above these factional disputes, however, Jon Lansman – the Momentum boss – has now imposed himself as dictator, presenting a fait accompli to the grassroots that is the worst of all worlds, both scrapping democratic structures and disenfranchising members in one fell swoop: precisely what nobody is calling for! By Adam Booth
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
