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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 Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!
Images of the Day:
. . .The second thing to note is that the whole campaign about Russia obscures what the documents, published by Wikileaks, actually revealed. The main question is not who leaked or hacked these documents but what they exposed. Besides some embarrassing details about conflicts in the Clinton campaign, what they showed was an organized effort by the Democratic establishment to discredit the rising challenge by Bernie Sanders. Clinton and the Democrats never challenged the veracity of these documents. So whoever did provide them to Wikileaks is guilty of exposing — the truth. They did a pubic service for the American people. Possibly this exposure of the truth did sway some voters not to vote for Clinton. Sanders had charged dirty tricks were being played against him, and these documents provided the truth of those claims. It is likely that this caused some Sanders supporters not to vote at all or for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. In any case, the fault lay with Clinton and her supporters, not Russia or whomever did the leaking or hacking. . . . — Barry Sheppard, Clinton, Trump, Putin and CIA (Sent to me by Email)
Now that the presidential election no longer takes up all the air in every room, it’s time to pay closer attention to the present and future of the peoples movement in the US, namely who owns it and where the movement’s owners are taking it. Back in August 2016 it was announced that the “Ford Foundation and Anonymous Donors” were helping marshal $100 million dollars for “…field-building activities that strengthen the next generation of social justice leaders. Specifically, the collaborative effort supports the infrastructure, innovation and dynamism of intersectional Black-led organizing that have become integral components of what many call the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL).” This is not $100 million from small donors. It’s100 million in big chunks from big people who have never been shy about letting recipients of their largesse know exactly what they expect for their cash. It’s $100 million from the one percent of the one percent, who intend to pick choose and fund the next generation of black leaders, just as they did with the old ones. What activists have come to call “the movement” has in large part been the creature of its one percenter funders. This is the essence of the nonprofit model of social justice activism, and it’s why, as Warren Marr put it, NonProfits Can’t Lead the 99%. Where the new movement’s owners and their chosen leaders want to go is anybody’s guess. The only thing we can be certain of is that revolutionary changes will not be on the agenda. $100 million can bankroll a lot of careers and organizations going in a number of different directions. One early fruit of this collaboration is a partnership between the Movement For Black Lives and J. Walter Thompson whose clients include corporate criminals Nestle, Shell Oil, and the US Marine Corps, among many others. Last month they premiered the beta version of a web site that’s supposed to tell you the location of the nearest black business. The myth that black folks ought to be able somehow use our “black buying power” to save or spend our way out of oppression has been discredited many times, most notably by Dr. Jared Ball. But it’s one of those fairy tales one percenters really like, so it’s an obvious place to sink some of that money. — Bruce Dixon, Who Owns the Movement, and Where Are They Taking It?
The defeat of the air traffic controllers (PATCO) strike in 1981 marked a new turning point in the history of the trade unions in the United States. During the course of that strike, the federal government, in a bipartisan effort, seized all of the union’s funds and successfully bankrupted and broke that union. The lack of solidarity on the picket line, with the International Association of Machinists crossing the lines and the federal government using military personnel as scabs to break the strike, demonstrated the weakness and total bankruptcy of the trade union leadership. The unflinching willingness of the government to break PATCO sent a fear of death down the spine of every union bureaucrat in the nation. The AFL-CIO leadership at that time responded with the following course of action: They called for demonstrations in the nation’s capital and in other cities against union busting. But they covered up the partnership of Democrats and Republicans with the nation’s employers to break unions, to make picketing illegal, etc.. They developed new theories to cover up their bankruptcy. The code words were: “We can’t win strikes anymore; we need new strategies — the old ways don’t work,” etc.. Out of these echoes of doom, a new strategy, the ‘Corporate Campaign’ and the concept of building a partnership between management and labor was born. They developed the two-tier wage system where by lower wages and worse working conditions were negotiated for new workers entering the industry. In this manner, the AFL-CIO sold out the next generations of workers before they ever went to work. They also began developing other strategies to avoid strikes and risk the loss of their treasuries. The so-called International Unions pledged to the government and their employers to police any local areas that did not follow their program of wage cuts and productivity increases (speedup). During this process, the International Unions consolidated their policies. — The Fall of the Trade Union Movement (2010 Update) Elections: The Default of The Trade Union Movement
Videos of the Day
Tillerson Would Conduct U.S. Foreign Policy on Behalf of Oil and Natural Gas Interests The Former ExxonMobil CEO has failed to demonstrate he would recuse himself from decisions that would affect his former employer, and he also does not grasp the urgency of climate change, says Jamie Henn and Antonia Juhasz
Jeff Sessions Embodies the Old South Kamau Franklin, a longtime activist and civil rights attorney and author joins us to discuss day two of the confirmation hearings of Jeff Sessions
The Planet is Burning Up Because of Corporations Like Those Formerly Led by Rex Tillerson Former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson was grilled during his confirmation hearing when it came to Putin, but was not asked to reflect the same way on U.S. foreign policy or whether Bush or Obama are war criminals, says CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin
U.S.:
As the Democrats Press for War, the Left Must Demand Peace and Social Transformation The Democrats are whipping up war hysteria and “cynically seeking to harness people’s well-founded fears of Trump’s domestic policies in order to sabotage the possibility of a relaxation of international tensions.” Some folks have taken the bait. “Leftists that think they can exploit the split between the Trump troglodytes (fascists) and the Obama/Clinton/Old Line GOP War Party (fascists) will ultimately wind up caught in a pincer between the two.” by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Is Globalization to Blame? While we cannot accept the racism and misogyny on which Donald Trump’s electoral victory fed, we must recognize that the white working-class voters who largely supported him have real grievances. They have been economic losers over the last four decades. They have seen their wages stagnate, and their kids face bleak labor-market prospects. Their plight resulted from economic policies that were designed to redistribute income upward. Globalization was the most visible of these policies. Among the many myths about globalization, the worst is that the loss of large numbers of manufacturing jobs in the United States (and Europe) was inevitable. Because the developing world is full of low-paid workers, this argument goes, it was impossible for Americans to compete. Economists and politicians promoting this view might consider the outcome unfortunate for U.S. workers, but also unavoidable. They take comfort in the growing living standards of billions of impoverished people in the developing world. . . . By Dean Baker
Environment:
2016 Was the Year of Shrinking Ice Both Antarctica and the Arctic saw “a wave of new record lows … for both daily and monthly extent” of sea ice during 2016, according to a recently released analysis by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado. “For the year 2016, sea ice extent in both polar regions was at levels well below what is typical of the past several decades,” the NSIDC report said. By Dahr Jamail
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
As Tillerson Dodges, Exxon Ordered to Hand Over Evidence of Climate Cover-Up On the same day that former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee, was dodging questions about the ongoing ExxonKnew investigation, a Massachusetts court on Wednesday ordered the oil company to hand over decades of documents regarding what it knew about climate change. by Lauren McCauley
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
Who Owns the Movement, and Where Are They Taking It? As funders of the nonprofit industrial complex, the one percent of one percenters literally own what most of us call the movement. Last summer the “Ford Foundation and anonymous donors” pledged to invest $100 million to “strengthen the next generation of social justice leaders… in what many call the Movement for Black Lives.” Do we want to go where the owners of this movement are taking us? Is there any other destination or way to ride? By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon 
Who’s Afraid of a Naked Emperor? Fear is a strange thing. As the war on terror began, the US started dropping bombs on Middle Eastern countries. They killed tons of people. They literally destroyed countries. And we got this thing called Islamophobia. They say that people are scared of Muslims. In 1990, Public Enemy released an album called Fear of a Black Planet. It was a great album. I listened to it so many times. The title track was about people being scared of black people. I think the meaning is clearer today thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement responding to the police killings, gentrification, mass incarceration, institutionalized racism and so on. But the tendency has been always with us. People are scared of black people while black people have been subjected to horrendous mistreatments of police brutality, racism, lynching and slavery. But it has been the non blacks who are scared. by Hiroyuki Hamada
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics
Trump, Spy Stories, Prostitutes and the U.S. Dollar The President of the United States is typically viewed as the person whose top job is to inspire confidence in the dignity, integrity and sanity of his leadership of the country. But the presser held by President-elect Donald Trump yesterday, the first in six months and likely viewed by world leaders around the globe, was short on confidence building and long on slandering the American media and U.S. intelligence agencies. In short order, the U.S. dollar took a dive. Trump has yet to assimilate the concept that his words no longer belong just to him but attach themselves like flypaper to the credibility of the most powerful nation on earth. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Syria: The battle of Aleppo a turning point in world relations The recapture of Aleppo by loyalist forces in December, represents a decisive milestone in the Syrian civil war as well as for the crisis in the whole region. But it also has wide ranging consequences for world relations in the coming period. The Astana negotiations which led to the Syrian ceasefire agreement at the end of December, was the first important conference in modern Middle East history to be organised with the explicit exclusion of the US. From the anti-Assad camp the only country involved was Turkey, which began to shift its policy last summer when the Syrian opposition was well on its way to sinking. By Hamid Alizadeh
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
They’ve Been Looting Social Security Since the Vietnam War
Quotes of the Day:
Labor: