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During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: 1. Austerity, 2. Scapegoating Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal Immigrants’ for Unemployment, and 3. The Iron Heel.
Democracy?: As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99% — Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The Who Profit From Austerity! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico!
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. . . This year (2016) activists received an education in corporate politics when Wikileaks revealed the dirty tricks played on Bernie Sanders by Hillary Clinton operatives. Just as in corporate America, you can’t find two cents worth of democracy in the Democratic Party. For those tired of the corporate rule of both major parties, the Green Party (GP) seems a way out — or so you might think. But, facts matter. A close look at the Green movement is overdue. There are Greens in 70 countries. If you’re anti-capitalist, some of their politics may surprise you. Some Green parties and many Green leaders have been in capitalist governments, dishing out austerity and supporting imperialist war. The Greek Green Party, for example, agreed to the SYRIZA government’s 2015 austerity “loan” package of the European Union on behalf of its crooked banks and backed by the U.S.-dominated IMF. Below we’ll focus on Green politics in Germany, France, and the U.S. . . . Green Party of the U.S: During the current presidential cycle, the Green Party’s presidential candidate, Jill Stein, proposed to self-styled socialist Bernie Sanders to run as the Green candidate. Although Sanders had voted with the Democrats 98% of the time, Stein wanted him to switch parties as if it were merely a question of changing hats! In California, Stein asked voters to back Sanders in its primary. It was all quite at odds with her double-talk about the Democratic Party as “counter-revolutionary.” Some leftists in the Green Party now make the boast, echoed by the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in the Aug. 9 issue of its Socialist Worker newspaper, that the August GP convention adopted an “explicitly anti-capitalist” plank (Amendment 835), which called for “an alternative economic system” based on “workplace and community democracy.” Where’s the socialism in this resolution? Are greedy Wall Street crooks to be nationalized or not? And what does “workplace and community democracy” really mean? It’s miles short of a socialist program—i.e., for nationalization of the economy under worker’s control. How can “workplace and community democracy” replace capitalism if society remains in the hands of the bosses? The GP’s slight-of-hand here is meant to placate radicalizing youth, while not alienating middle-class voters. (As of Oct 3, the “anti-capitalist” plank does not appear on the GP website.) The Greens do not call on working people themselves to take up the class struggle, pushing aside union misleaders if need be. Nowhere does the Green Platform advocate striking as a powerful weapon for workers, public or private. Their proposals for a $15 an hour minimum are laudable, but there’s no call for workers themselves to organize the fight for $15 (and more!), and not wait years for politicians to bestow raises that have been lowered in value. Lastly, the platform says, “End police brutality and mass incarceration. Create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to understand and eliminate the legacy of slavery that lives on as pervasive racism in the economy.” Indeed, ending racist police murders is urgent, but a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission?” Socialists demand, “Black control of the Black community,” not “reconciliation” with racist cops! The GP doesn’t call for socialism, and like Green Parties worldwide, is objectively a liberal capitalist party. — Green Parties: The real history
Additionally, there are no viable solutions for pain management. Even if the crises were subsided, the residual tissue damage would create a consistent pain that is difficult to mask or chemically block. For many patients, including Ola, medical marijuana is the only medicine that has been proven to be fully effective for pain relief. The legal access to this, however, is suspect in light of suggestions that the Department of Justice of Attorney General Jeff Sessions may challenge the states on marijuana legalization. A cure, however, may be in reach. A clinical trial, sponsored by Bluebird Bio, has been conducted following gene therapy on a French boy that has effectively stopped his sickle cell crises. The therapy took the healthy hemoglobin gene and affected the boy’s bone marrow cells, effectively purging the hemoglobin S gene from his system. — How Race and Money Stood in the Way of a Cure for Sickle Cell Anemia
Videos of the Day:
Big Oil Overturns Portland’s Landmark Fossil Fuel Ban Portland’s first-of-its-kind zoning ordinance, which banned new fossil fuel projects within city limits and prevented existing facilities from expanding, was overturned under pressure from the Western States Petroleum Association
U.S.:
New Pentagon Study: ‘U.S. public opinion and perceptions will increasingly become battlefields’:
Finally, it is impossible not to recognize the profound atomization of resistance as well. The United States and its population are increasingly exposed to substantial harm and an erosion of security from individuals and small groups of motivated actors, leveraging the confluence of hyperconnectivity, fear, and increased vulnerability to sow disorder and uncertainty. This intensely disorienting and dislocating form of resistance to authority arrives via physical, virtual, and psychological violence and can create effects that appear substantially out of proportion to the origin and physical size or scale of the proximate hazard or threat. Without a sophisticated and nuanced approach to strategy and risk assessment, the proliferation, diversification, and atomization of counter-U.S. resistance will overwhelm DoD’s convention and bias. It will expose substantial U.S. military capability to serial “capacity tests” that are bound to either fail or result in substantial losses or costs. The sources, vectors, and types of consequential hazards to enduring defense objectives equate to a persistent home field advantage for U.S. adversaries and “no field advantage” — or ceaseless disadvantage—for the U.S. defense enterprise under virtually all foreseeable contingency circumstances. High-end U.S. military advantage will continue to erode as the United States struggles to translate global reach into local superiority. At the same time, the U.S. homeland, individual American citizens, and U.S. public opinion and perceptions will increasingly become battlefields. — New Pentagon study, At Our Own Peril: DoD Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World
Pentagon Study Declares American Empire Is ‘Collapsing’ Report demands massive expansion of military-industrial complex to maintain global “access to resources.” An extraordinary new Pentagon study has concluded that the US-backed framework of international order established after World War II is “fraying” and may even be “collapsing,” leading the United States to lose its position of “primacy” in world affairs. By Nafeez Ahmed
“Inclusive Capitalism,” Nancy Pelosi, and the Dying Planet A recent Washington Post and ABC poll finds that just 37 percent of Americans think that the Democratic Party “stands for something.” Fifty two percent say it’s about nothing more than opposing Trump. The 37 percent is right. The Democratic Party stands for something, alright. It stands for the socio-pathological system of class rule and environmental ruin called capitalism – and for capitalism’s evil Siamese twin imperialism. by Paul Street
Killing Civilians in Iraq and Syria The ongoing effort of the United States to eradicate the Islamic State by aggressively launching airstrikes against targets that include non-combatants is causing significant harm to civilians in Iraq and Syria. Estimates of civilian deaths from airstrikes range from the hundreds to the tens of thousands. Although the U.S. government says that it has killed 603 civilians in airstrikes since the start of military operations in 2014, the monitoring group Airwars estimates that airstrikes have killed at least 4,500 civilians, including nearly 1,000 children. by Edward Hunt
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
White Liberal Guilt, Black Opportunism and the Green Party Building a new kind of left party isn’t easy, or it would have been done a long time ago. The Green party’s annual meeting in Newark last week revealed some of the deep problems caused by liberals whose goal is “diversity.” Diversity creates token blacks, browns, women and queers and pretends they are leaders, instead of nurturing and developing leadership from below. Liberal diversity creates phantom and undemocratic bodies responsible to nobody which are easily manipulated by cynical opportunists. by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
Low Regard Yesterday’s news was that Donald Trump wishes he hadn’t hired Jefferson Beauregard Sessions to be Attorney General. Sessions, who happens to be a lawyer actually read, or had somebody on his staff read the DOJ guidelnes which say the AG has to recuse himself from investigations into affairs in which he played a role. So now the president holds Beauregard in low regard as well. Comes around and goes around. by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner
Environment:
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Labor:
Economy:
New Republic: Trump’s Russian Laundromat How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House. ‘Trump Taj Mahal paid the largest fine ever levied against a casino for having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering rules.’ — ‘Russians spent at least $98 million on Trump’s properties in Florida—and another third of the units were bought by shadowy shell companies.’ — ‘In 2013, police burst into Unit 63A of Trump Tower and rounded up 29 suspects in a $100 million money-laundering scheme.’ By Craig Unger
World:
Canada: Interview with NDP left candidate Niki Ashton On Friday June 23rd, the day after Niki Ashton gave what was generally considered a commanding performance at the Toronto NDP leadership debate, Fightback’s editorial board sat down with her for an interview at our Toronto offices. It was a wide-ranging discussion spanning everything from Palestine to free education, nationalization to Islamophobia, Quebec solidaire to Jeremy Corbyn. We even asked Niki her position on the Queen. This interview has informed the discussion in our movement about how socialists should approach the NDP leadership campaign. Read Fightback’s position here and the interview below: Fightback: Thanks Niki for meeting with us for this interview, let’s dive right in. There’s been a wave of movements against capitalist inequality, expressed by such figures as Sanders, Corbyn and Melenchon. How do you situate yourself in relation to these movements?
Venezuela Under Siege by U.S. Empire It is all about the oil. Whatever else one hears about Venezuela, it is all about the oil. That is what one needs to know first about why the U.S. Empire has Venezuela under siege. It is about the oil by David W. Pear
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
How Trump signed a global death warrant for women With one devastating flourish of the presidential pen, worldwide progress on family planning, population growth and reproductive rights was swept away. Now some of the world’s poorest women must count the cost By Sarah Boseley
“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” —Rosa Luxemburg: The Revolutionary Imagination: Rosa for Our Times It was 98 years ago that the brilliant socialist leader Rosa Luxemburg was murdered by a right-wing paramilitary group in Berlin. Her death in early 1919 came at the hands of one of the Freikorps death squads that roamed post-war Germany, killing left-wing workers and socialists who supported the anti-government uprisings that came with the end of World War I. In this age of Trump, this vulgar era of rising alt-right demagoguery and violence, perpetual global conflict and entrenched social and economic inequality, it’s worth remembering the legacy of this revolutionary leader. by Mark Harris
Irony
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