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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!
Images of the Day:
Stone gathers contemporary reports from South Korean, U.S. and U.N. sources documenting what was known before June 25. The head of the U.S. CIA, Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenloetter, is reported to have said on the record, “that American intelligence was aware that ‘conditions existed in Korea that could have meant an invasion this week or next.'” (p. 2) Stone writes that “America’s leading military commentator, Hanson Baldwin of the New York Times, a trusted confidant of the Pentagon, reported that they [U.S. military documents] showed ‘a marked buildup by the North Korean People’s Army along the 38th Parallel beginning in the early days of June.'” (p. 4) How and why did U.S. President Truman so quickly decide by June 27 to commit the U.S. military to battle in South Korea? Stone makes a strong case that there were those in the U.S. government and military who saw a war in Korea and the resulting instability in East Asia as in the U.S. national interest. Stone presents the ideas and actions of them, including John Foster Dulles, General Douglas MacArthur, President Syngman Rhee and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, which appear to amount to a willingness to see the June 25 military action by North Korea as another Pearl Harbor in order to “commit the United States more strongly against Communism in the Far East.” (p. 21). Their reasoning may have been, Stone thought, the sooner a war with China and/or Russia the better before both become stronger. President Truman removed Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, according to Stone’s account, because Johnson had been selling this doctrine of preventive war. (p. 93) Stone shows that Truman committed the U. S. military to the war in Korea, then went to the U.N. for sanctions against North Korea. “It was neither honorable nor wise,” Stone argues, “for the U.N. under pressure from an interested great power to condemn a country for aggression without investigation and without hearings its side of the case.” (p. 50) But that is what the U. S. insisted should happen using, Stone argues, distorted reports to rush its case. Then when the war came to a stalemate at the 38th Parallel, Stone makes a strong case that U.S. Army headquarters provoked or created incidents to derail the ceasefire negotiations. When the North Koreans and Chinese had ceded on Nov. 4, 1952 to the three demands of the U.N. side, the U. S. military spread a story that “The Communists had brutally murdered 5,500 American prisoners.” The talks were being dragged out, the U.S. military argued, because “The communists don’t want to have to answer questions about what happened to their prisoners” and they are lower than “barbarians.” (pp. 324-25) At no time after these reports were these “atrocities” reported again or documented. But hope of a ceasefire subsided. Stone takes the story in time only a little beyond the dismissal of MacArthur on April 11, 1951. He quotes press reports as late as January 1952 that “there still could be American bombing and naval blockade of Red China if Korean talks fail.”(1) The evidence which Stone presents is solid but circumstantial. What else could it be, with the official documents still unavailable? In the 1960s, the Rand Corporation, a major think tank originally funded by the U.S. Air Force, conducted studies with additional information and according to one reviewer came to “almost identical conclusions” as Stone.(2) Stone’s telling of the history of the Korean War, emphasizing the opportunistic response by the forces in the U.S. advocating rollback and also downplaying the role of the Soviet Union challenged the dominant assumption that this was Stalin’s war. “Until the release of Western documents in the 1970s, prompted a new wave of literature on the war, his remained a minority view.”(3) — Book Review]: Jay Hauben ‘The Hidden History of the Korean War’ by I.F. Stone
Videos of the Day:
The Daly/Obama Machine Strikes Again: The Nauseating Racial Discrimination of Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago Public Schools On Reality Asserts Itself, Paul Jay talks to the president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, Troy LaRaviere about his new report that found systemic racial discrimination in the way Chicago Public Schools receive special education funding
U.S.:
From my own experience, the only way to enforce affirmative action, is if there are quotas for employment in the workplace. The new Black politicians, along with Jessie Jackson, came out against quotas in the 80s, helping to make affirmative action more difficult. Various court decisions helped to reduce the effects of affirmative action and to resegregate the nation’s school system. In 1995, President Clinton, as the leader of the Democratic Party, drafted a memorandum for the elimination of any program that creates (1) a quota; (2) preferences for unqualified individuals; (3) creates reverse discrimination (The slogan of the racists); or continues affirmative action even after its equal opportunity purposes have been achieved.” (A myth) Actually, according to a recent article from the Boston Globe, at the elite colleges, there is affirmative action for rich dim white kids. Roland Sheppard, The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights Movement
Cartoon of the Week: Juda M Lost Wages 
The Indecency of the Black Misleadership Class “The ideology of the Black Misleadership Class — awesomely self-serving and pitifully servile, at the same time — does not allow for decency, and is wholly unfit to guide politics of 40 million people.” When Rep. Barbara Lee made the House vote for sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea unanimous, she snuffed out the last flicker of any independent worldview among the Black political (misleadership) class. Russiaphobia reigns supreme in the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), where “auntie” Maxine Waters, who once blamed the CIA for the crack cocaine epidemic, now fills her rhetorical pipe with war-inducing hallucinogens straight from spook headquarters in Langley. Three summers ago, the Black Caucus joined in a unanimous House resolution in support of Israel, effectively cheering the apartheid state at the very moment it was slaughtering 2,500 Palestinians in Gaza. by BAR executive editor Glen Ford 
Tillerson Threatens Regime Change in Venezuela “The U.S.’s junior partners in the governments of Panama and Mexico’s unpopular Peña Nieto administration have pledged to assist the sanctions efforts.” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson floated the possibility of measures to force President Nicolas Maduro to leave. Washington has made one of its most foreboding threats so far against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson openly floated the possibility of stepping up “regime change” measures against the government of democratically-elected President Nicolas Maduro. By TeleSur
An Anatomy of the Black South African “Middle Class” The question of who is “middle class” is as perplexing in Black South Africa as it is in Black America. A study of residents of Soweto showed “two-thirds of the respondents classified themselves as middle class” — far more than called themselves “working class.” The term is largely aspirational, but to what do they aspire? by Henning Melber 
Cuba Has Trained 170 Doctors From the US For Free Under Fidel Castro’s direction, Cuban became a “medical superpower,” setting new standards for global solidarity in the interests of human health. Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) has been training students from the United States to be doctors since 1999, and “has graduated more than 28,500 doctors from 103 countries, free of charge.” by Cuba News Agency
There’s Only One Rogue Nuclear State, and it’s the USA This week marks the anniversary of two monstrous war crimes, the nuking of two undefended Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. The fake history I learned as a child in the 50s and 60s was that the bombings saved the lives of a million Japanese and Americans who would have perished in a land invasion of Japan. That was a lie. The US anticipated turning its World War 2 ally the Soviet Union into its postwar enemy, and hoped to scare the scare the Soviets with the terrible carnage its new nuclear weapons would inflict. A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
Freedom Rider: The Defeat of American Workers “There was hope that the majority black work force at the Nissan plant would be less likely to reject unionization than their white counterparts.” American workers have been completely crushed by capitalism. That is the goal of the capitalists after all but working people in this country have fallen further and faster because they are without any political friends and because they declare allegiance to a compromised political party. The evidence can be seen in the vote against union representation at the Renault-Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi. Additional proof of the assault can be seen in the decision by the state of Wisconsin to promise electronics giant Foxconn $3 billion in subsidies to create 3,000 jobs. by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Congo Genocide, 5.4 Million Dead: An Interview with Sylvester Mido It’s Congo Genocide Week, the anniversary of the 1998 invasion of the Congo by the US puppet armies of Rwanda and Uganda. Since then 5.4 million Congolese have perished. Africa reporter Ann Garrison talks to Sylvester Mido of Genecost about the invasion and its consequences almost two decades on. By Ann Garrison
Barbara Lee and Tulsi Gabbard Side with War Party on Sanctions “The same set of conditions that drove Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency are linked to Barbara Lee and Tulsi Gabbard’s right-wing turn.” The House recently voted to enforce sanctions against Russia, Iran, and the DPRK. Congress included an unprecedented provision in the bill to restrict the President from amending the sanctions without approval from Congress. Despite vocal opposition, the Trump Administration was forced to sign the bill in the face of near unanimous support. All three in Congress who voted against the sanctions were Republicans. Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul were the only Senators to vote down the bill. Also missing from the opposition’s short list was Democratic Party representatives Barbara Lee and Tulsi Gabbard. by BAR contributor Danny Haiphong 
Environment:
A Sobering National Climate Change Report Embattled climate scientists working in 13 various US government agencies threw down the gauntlet before the Trump administration by releasing an over 600-page report on climate change in the US, the work of several years intended to comply with a Congressional requirement for such a report every four years.The scientists involved in releasing the leaked document — the fifth draft of the 2018 report — told the Times they were releasing the document early in draft form for fear that the Trump Administration and Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, climate change denier Scott Pruitt, would attempt to deep-six, or at least drastically revise their work and conclusions. by Dave Lindorff
Leaked Climate Report Shows US In Peril From Global Warming: “Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” Friedman writes, quoting the draft report. President Trump has repeatedly dismissed the importance of global warming and the contributions of human activity to the changing climate; he has called it a “hoax” perpetuated by China, and he pulled the United States out of the much-lauded Paris climate accord. According to the report, the U.S. is already experiencing significant climate shifts as the result of human emissions, and coastal communities will face severe threats in the future. By Cody Fenwick
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