Skip to content
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 Those Who Profit From Austerity! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico!
Hiroshima and Nagasaki Never Again! Hiroshima August 7, 1945 The detonation of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima was a deeply sobering event for all Mankind. The fact that man was capable of building a weapon with this kind of power meant that humans now had the ability to destroy every living thing on this planet. By Roland Sheppard
Images of the Day:
Ronald Takaki wrote, in his article on the subject in the July 31, 2005 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, “During the days before that fateful Aug. 6, 1945, Gen. Douglas MacArthur learned that Japan had asked Russia to negotiate a surrender. ‘We expected acceptance of the Japanese surrender daily,’ one of his staff members recalled. When he was notified that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, the general was livid. MacArthur declared that the atomic attack on Hiroshima was ‘completely unnecessary from a military point of view.’” General Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of allied forces in Europe and later president of the U.S., also called it “completely unnecessary” and later told an interviewer,” It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Fleet Admiral William Leahy, the president’s chief of staff, believed that Japan would fall without the necessity of a land invasion. Leahy later wrote that, in dropping the bomb, “we had adopted an ethical standard common to barbarians of the dark ages.” (Eisenhower and Leahy quotes found at: HIROSHIMAWHO DISAGREED WITH THE ATOMIC BOMBING?Why they did it.) Why then did the president make the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima? In fact Truman gave an order not to bomb Nagasaki. A memo published in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, (May/June 1998), states that Truman “had given orders to stop atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn’t like the idea of killing, as he said, ‘all those kids.’” Dirty Harry in San Francisco So why was the bomb dropped? Why were Truman’s orders on the second bomb not obeyed? “Secretary of War Henry Stimson, for his part, regarded the atomic bomb as what he called the ‘master card’ of diplomacy towards Russia. However, he believed that sparring with the Soviet Union in the early spring, before the weapon was demonstrated, would be counterproductive. Before a mid-May meeting of a cabinet-level committee considering Far Eastern issues, Stimson observed that “the questions cut very deep and [were] powerfully connected with our success with S-1 [the atomic bomb Gar Alperovitz, in “Hiroshima: Historians Reassess” Foreign Policy (Summer 1995) No. 99: 15-34, where it is only available to subscribers; the section quoted is available online at page 4. A web version of the article on can be found at the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives website. These new facts from history and Eisenhower’s memoirs show that the carnage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not to make Japan surrender and save American lives, but to warn the Soviet Union that the United States had the atomic bomb and its leaders were cold-blooded enough to use such a weapon of mass destruction. It was the opening salvo of the, “Cold War” and beginning of the process of “Pax Americana.” So why was the bomb dropped? Why were Truman’s orders on the second bomb not obeyed? “Secretary of War Henry Stimson, for his part, regarded the atomic bomb as what he called the ‘master card’ of diplomacy towards Russia. However, he believed that sparring with the Soviet Union in the early spring, before the weapon was demonstrated, would be counterproductive. Before a mid-May meeting of a cabinet-level committee considering Far Eastern issues, Stimson observed that “the questions cut very deep and [were] powerfully connected with our success with S-1 [the atomic bomb Gar Alperovitz, in “Hiroshima: Historians Reassess” Foreign Policy (Summer 1995) No. 99: 15-34, where it is only available to subscribers; the section quoted is available online at page 4. A web version of the article on can be found at the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives website. These new facts from history and Eisenhower’s memoirs show that the carnage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not to make Japan surrender and save American lives, but to warn the Soviet Union that the United States had the atomic bomb and its leaders were cold-blooded enough to use such a weapon of mass destruction. It was the opening salvo of the, “Cold War” and beginning of the process of “Pax Americana.” — Hiroshima and Nagasaki Never Again!
Videos of the Day:
Scheer: ‘Fake News’ Label Is Used to ‘Whitewash American History’ (Video) The term has real power now, says Truthdig’s editor in chief, “and you can use it against anyone who comes up with a narrative different from yours.”
The Real Baltimore: Failing Schools or Failed Policies? Baltimore educators Diamonte Brown and Job Trotsky join former Chicago principal Troy LaRaviere say schools should not be blamed for failures of society
Empire Files: Privacy, Control & the Darknet Out of the periphery of most online users, there’s a vast, hidden space used by people who want to remain anonymous, which filmmaker Alex Winter explores in his documentary Deep Web. The film focuses on the Silk Road, a black market hosted on the Darknet using bitcoin cryptocurrency, and the trial of Ross Ulbricht, who was given a double life sentence without the possibility of parole for creating and hosting the site.
U.S.:
Dark Mesas Under an Ancient Light: Southwest Under Siege by Jeffrey St. Clair
Forget Principles, Impose Sanctions! There is generally a degree of hypocrisy about the infliction of sanctions on a country by another country or group of countries. Those who impose sanctions assert that their target has done something terribly wrong which will be corrected following its recognition that superior beings are setting an international example of flawless moral rectitude, but it is doubtful that such perfection exists. by Brian Cloughley
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Environment:
Industrial meat production is killing our seas. It’s time to change our diets Every spring, as the snows thaw, water rushes down the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, spreading life, then death into the Gulf of Mexico. The floodwaters are laden with fertilisers washed from fields and factory farms. As spring turns to summer, excessive nutrients first drive a huge bloom of living plankton, then cause death on a gargantuan scale as a dead zone blossoms across the seabed. Most years it grows swiftly to over 5,000 square miles of seabed, killing everything that cannot outrun it. By Callum Roberts
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Labor:
. . . There are some capitalist countries that question democracy in Cuba. There can be no democracy better than a democracy where the workers, the peasants, the students hold the arms. [applause] To all the Western countries that question democracy in Cuba, I say: Go ahead and give the arms to the workers, to the peasants, to the students, and let us see if you can start hurling tear gas canisters to put down a strike, or at any organization that struggles for peace [applause], or at students. We would see if these countries could send out the police, covered with shields and all that equipment that makes them look like astronauts. We would see if these countries could attack the masses with dogs every time there is a strike or a peaceful demonstration or a people’s struggle. I think the litmus test for democracy is to arm the people. [applause] When defense becomes the task of the people and arms become the prerogative of all the people, then there is democracy. Meanwhile, there are specialized police teams and armies to put down the people when the people show discontent over the abuses and injustice of a bourgeois system. It is the same in a Third World country as in a developed capitalist country. . . . — Fidel Castro
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Unemployment Charts 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. Alternate Unemployment Rate for June 2017 is 22.1%.
World:
The fascist bourgeois opposition, with the support of North American and European imperialism, threatens to crush the Venezuelan revolution and to wreck its achievements. The fascist attacks, in working-class neighbourhoods and against Chavista, are a taste of what is to come if the opposition takes power. This ultra-reactionary opposition must be defeated now, and only the workers’ revolutionary initiative can achieve this. . . . In this centenary year of the Russian Revolution, would it not be possible for those who claim its heritage to learn a little about what happened in that year of 1917, under the brilliant leadership of Lenin and Trotsky? Long live the 1917 Russian Revolution!Long live the Venezuelan Revolution!
• All the power to the Constituent Assembly!
• Popular tribunals, prison and trials of the fascists!
• No payment of foreign debt! Money for food, wages, and health!
• Land Reform and expropriation of the banks and large companies!
• Long live the international socialist revolution! 
US destroyed Libya to re-colonize Africa: American journalist The United States and its allies are responsible for destroying Africa’s wealthiest nation, Libya, in order to re-colonize the African continent, an American journalist and political analyst says. Don DeBar, an anti-war activist and radio host in New York, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Wednesday, after US President Barack Obama ordered a new bombing campaign in Libya.
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
Chomsky: How the U.S. Developed Such a Scandalous Health System It all started after World War II, but now public support for universal health care is higher than ever C.J. Polychroniou: Article 25 of the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) states that the right to health care is indeed a human right. Yet, it is estimated that close to 30 million Americans remain uninsured even with the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in place. What are some of the key cultural, economic and political factors that make the US an outlier in the provision of free health care?. By C.J. Polychroniou
Quote of the Day: