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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 Those 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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Revolutionary socialists emphatically reject this approach. Our analysis has demonstrated that the Negro has a vanguard role to play, that his independent struggle will set other currents into motion, and that the worst thing he can do is wait. This is one of the telling differences between a revolutionary approach and a liberal approach, however the latter may be dressed up. Being a minority is not a reason for waiting, but a reason for developing a course of action and program that takes this fact into account and finds ways of overcoming it. Throughout American history militant Negroes have always understood that their progress depends on their own readiness and ability to struggle. The tactics of today’s struggle are necessarily different in this country than in countries like South Africa or Angola or Kenya, where black people are the great majority, and where simple majority rule can mean an end to racial oppression. But here, as in Africa, the liberation of the Negro people requires that the Negroes organize themselves independently, and control their own struggle, and not permit it to be subordinated to any other consideration or interest. This means that the Negroes must achieve the maximum unity of their own forces – organizational unity, in a strong and disciplined nationwide movement or congress of organizations, and ideological unity, based on defeating, exposing and isolating gradualism and other tendencies emanating from their white oppressors. This phase of the process is now beginning. Having united their own forces, the independent Negro movement will then probably undertake the tasks of division and alliance. It will seek ways to split the white majority so that the Negro disadvantage of being a numerical minority can be compensated for by division and conflict on the other side. That has happened at earlier crucial points in American history. When the whites became divided between revolutionists and Tories in the American Revolution, the Negroes allied themselves with the former, and were able to gain emancipation from slavery in many Northern states. In the first half of the 19th century the independent struggles of the Negroes – slave insurrections, mass escapes via the Underground Railway, sabotage, etc. – helped to widen the breach between the North and South and prepare the way for the Civil War. In the Civil War itself the Negroes threw their weight on the Northern side, pressured the North into accepting an emancipation policy, and provided the military balance of power. In the 1930s, when a division among the whites occurred along classic class lines, the Negroes drove in the wedge by giving overwhelming support to the CIO, helping to batter down the open shop and effect their own entry into the labor movement. In each of these cases, the process of social division was accompanied by or led to a process of social and political alliance in action. That is how we see the future too. United, the Negro people through their independent struggle will help to divide the white population – between those who most benefit from racism and those whose interests are really damaged by racism. In the process of this struggle, the Negroes will both seek and find alliances. The major one will be with an insurgent working class, and especially with its most anti-capitalist forces. The general alliance between the labor movement and the Negro fighters for liberation can be prepared for and preceded by the cementing of firm working unity between the vanguard of the Negro struggle and the socialist vanguard of the working class represented by the Socialist Workers Party. This is the primary task of the SWP in the present period of the Freedom Now movement. — Freedom Now ”The New Stage in the Struggle for Negro Emancipation and the Tasks of the SWP,” adopted by the 1963 Convention of the Socialist Workers Party
Videos of the Day:
Why Trump’s Immigration Policies Are Really a War on Workers Trump’s proposal to cut legal immigration by half as well as the targeting of undocumented immigrants who have filed wage disputes will drive down wages for all workers says Garment Worker Center’s Mariela Martinez
U.S.:
‘On Contact With Chris Hedges’: Justice in, and for, a Broken System What happened to the American justice system? While it has always served the needs of some more than—and, it might be argued, at the expense of—others, there has been a shift in recent decades that mirrors similar movements in various realms of American society. In this episode of “On Contact With Chris Hedges,” the show’s host and Truthdig columnist cuts right to the heart of the issue at hand in classic Hedges style. “Our courts and law schools have become wholly owned subsidiaries of the corporate state,” he says. “They have abandoned the guiding principles of justice.”
Blackwater Founder’s ‘Disturbing’ Plan to Privatize Afghan War Gains Ground “There’s a bad record of contractors and human rights abuses.” By Jake Johnson
Liberating Europe from Russian Gas Congress has responded to the president’s apparent intention to improve ties with Moscow with a bill imposing new sanctions on Russia, which Trump has now signed into law. (There was no choice. Trump governs under the cloud of Russian “collusion” and Congress could override a veto.) The law does not just punish Russia, but its European trading partners, most notably Germany, which imports over a third of its natural gas from the nearby country in the natural, normal way. by Gary Leupp
Eve of Destruction…Or Revolution? “In order to replace capitalism with an ecological society we need a revolution.” That modest sentence is how Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams, the authors of Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation, begin the last chapter of their new book. Although the chapter is the end of the book, it is also an opening to a new direction, a new movement. It is also the essence of the entire text. Capitalism is the reason our biosphere is collapsing and the only way humanity and the rest of earth’s species can survive is by ending capitalism. by Ron Jacobs
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Jackie Robinson: “I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag There I was, the black grandson of a slave, the son of a black sharecropper, part of a historic occasion, a symbolic hero to my people. The air was sparkling. The sunlight was warm. The band struck up the national anthem. The flag billowed in the wind. It should have been a glorious moment for me as the stirring words of the national anthem poured from the stands. Perhaps, it was, but then again, perhaps, the anthem could be called the theme song for a drama called The Noble Experiment. Today, as I look back on that opening game of my first world series, I must tell you that it was Mr. Rickey’s drama and that I was only a principal actor. As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made. By Craig Calcaterra
Black Agenda Radio, Week of August 7, 2017 
U.S. Aims to Claim Venezuelan Oil: U.S. efforts to topple the socialist government in Venezuela are largely driven by Washington’s quest to control the global energy market. “The energy question hovers above all others,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, the prolific author and professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston. “It is felt among rightwing Texas oil men that if the United States can get a stranglehold over Venezuelan oil, then Texas and the U.S. will be in position to dominate what remains of the oil industry” in the future, said Horne. “Washington feels it is on a roll” with the rise of rightwing governments in Brazil and Argentina, said Horne.
Anti-War Coalition: Shut Down U.S. Global Empire of Bases: “Any campaign which is really talking about U.S. wars and U.S. intervention has to address the role of the foreign military bases and aircraft carriers, which are huge floating military bases,” said Sara Flounders, of the United National Anti-War Coalition. UNAC has been joined by other peace organizations in demanding closure of the approximately 1,000 overseas U.S. bases. This “infrastructure of U.S. imperialism,” said Flounders, “exercises total control over the economies and social and political life of countries all over the world,” and “completely distorts life here in the United States.”
Sessions Blames Obama for Crime: Attorney General Jeff Sessions claims crime has gone up in some U.S. cities because the Obama administration was too lenient in sentencing offenders. But the facts don’t back him up, according to Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, in Washington. “It’s discouraging that, in the 21st century, we’re making policy decisions based on sound bites and gut instincts rather than evidence,” said Mauer. “There is no lack of evidence to show that mass incarceration has been counter-productive to public safety and devastating for low-income communities of color.”
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.
Environment:
Study showing devastating impact of climate change leaked by someone who fears Trump will suppress it 13 Federal agencies find evidence that global warming has changed the environment and is affecting Americans While President Trump might disregard climate change as a Chinese hoax, 13 agencies within the government he runs have compiled a report that concludes global warming has had a verifiable impact on the environment. The New York Times obtained an unreleased government report that claims “evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans.” The report, a collection of studies conducted by thousands of scientists, asserts that human activities “are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change.” By Taylor Link
From Pathocracy to the (Mis)Anthropocene
* Psychosis – an impaired relationship with reality.
* Psychopathy – a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, egotistical traits.
* Misanthropy – the general hatred, dislike, distrust or contempt of the human species.
* Misanthrope – someone who holds such views or feelings.
*Precariat – a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, a condition of existence without predictability or security.
* Ecocide – extensive damage to or destruction of ecosystems to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants becomes impossible.
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Fukushima Scientists: Days of Eating Fish from The Ocean Are OVER Scientist say there is no ‘safe level Radiation from the Fukushima power plant has been continually leaking since the meltdown as such a catastrophic level, scientists are claiming days of eating fish from the Pacific ocean could be over. Scientists have claimed that TEPCO, the company who is in charge of monitoring the plant, has admitted radiation has been leaking into the Pacific Ocean none stop for the past six years. There are also claims that an estimated 300 to 450 tons of contaminated water being leaked from the Fukushima plant every day. Last month Neon Nettle reported that Tepco confirmed its plans to releases radioactive material from the Fukushima plant into the ocean, stating the decision has already been made”. By Daniel Newton
Labor:
Economy:
What’s Killing U.S. Productivity? America’s Narcissism Era. Kashkari: “This is a big complicated topic. A big question mark in the economics profession is why is productivity growth in the U.S. economy so low. It’s much lower than it has been in prior decades. And, we think, you pull out your iPhone or Twitter or Facebook – you think, wow, all this stuff is happening. Well, some experts say the things that we’re creating now – that we’re innovating now – just aren’t that impactful. They don’t really move the needle very much. So if you compare Facebook and Twitter, which seem pretty cool, to electricity or the internal combustion engine, or the airplane, it’s just not that important.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
U.S. Aims to Claim Venezuelan Oill U.S. efforts to topple the socialist government in Venezuela are largely driven by Washington’s quest to control the global energy market. “The energy question hovers above all others,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, the prolific author and professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston. “It is felt among rightwing Texas oil men that if the United States can get a stranglehold over Venezuelan oil, then Texas and the U.S. will be in position to dominate what remains of the oil industry” in the future, said Horne. “Washington feels it is on a roll” with the rise of rightwing governments in Brazil and Argentina, said Horne.
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
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Ecocide and the Psychotic 0.5 Per Cent by James Heddle
