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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!
Image of the Day:
I last saw Dick Gregory at a Malcolm X Meetin at the Audubon Ballroom in December 1964. Dick Gregory had just published his book, ‘Niggger’. Malcom X ask him to come up the stage as his ‘favorite nigger’— Dick Gregory. Dick Gregory spoke about how he agreed with Malcolm on many issues, but he said that Malcolm could not get him to give up his ham hocks, chitin’s, and his greens. Everybody in the audience and on the stage bust out laughing, including Malcolm X!
Let me try to get this straight: from the moment the Soviet Union imploded in 1991 until recently just about every politician and mainstream pundit in America assured us that we were the planet’s indispensable nation, the only truly exceptional one on this small orb of ours. We were the sole superpower, Earth’s hyperpower, its designated global sheriff, the architect of our planetary future. After five centuries of great power rivalries, in the wake of a two-superpower world that, amid the threat of nuclear annihilation, seemed to last forever and a day (even if it didn’t quite make it 50 years), the United States was the ultimate survivor, the victor of victors, the last of the last. It stood triumphantly at the end of history. In a lottery that had lasted since Europe’s wooden ships first broke out of a periphery of Eurasia and began to colonize much of the planet, the United States was the chosen one, the country that would leave every imperial world-maker from the Romans to the British in its shadow. — The World is a Mess, and U.S. Leaders Scapegoat the Rest of the World
Videos of the Day:
Why Urban Policing Cannot be Reformed The Real News talks to reform advocates, defense attorneys, and former cops who say policing cannot be reformed without fully understanding its underlying imperative
U.S.
Donald Trump’s New Afghanistan Plan Promises More Killing — And Little Else President Donald Trump was set to announce an escalation of 4,000 troops in Afghanistan during a primetime address Monday night, where he planned to clarify his policy on the 16-year war he inherited from the two previous presidents. Trump, however, did neither. His audience was left with nothing but excuses and contradictions. Trump refused to say how many troops he was sending, or set any goals or timetables for withdrawal. “We are not nation-building again,” he stressed, boasting that “we are going to participate in economic development to help defray the cost of this war to us.” By Alex Emmons
“We Burned Down Every Town in North Korea” “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another… Over a period of three years or so, we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population?” — General Curtis LeMay, in “Strategic Air Warfare,” by Richard H. Kohn by John Laforge
Pig’s Blood Bullets: Trump’s Big Lie About the Philippines I don’t know what the people of Barcelona think about Trump’s demented and repulsive tale of bullets and pig’s blood – but I know what Mark Twain would have said. He was the finest American political writer of his time – perhaps of all time – and he wrote with bitterness, sarcasm and disgust about the US military’s war crimes in the Philippines in 1906. No doubt Trump would have approved of them. As so often, there’s no proof — and thus no truth — to the story that General Pershing ever told his soldiers to execute Filipino fighters with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood. Besides, Pershing had left the islands and the Philippine-US war was officially over when the Americans slaughtered the Moro Muslims in their hundreds — men, women and children — in what became known as the Battle of Bud Dajo. With Trump-like enthusiasm, Republican President Theodore Roosevelt congratulated the US commanders on their “brilliant feat of arms”. by Robert Fisk
The World is a Mess, and U.S. Leaders Scapegoat the Rest of the World: But it is Hard to Escape Who is Really Responsible for the Global Crisis From Bush criminal response to 9-11 to Trump putting nuclear war on the front burner, the U.S. is steering the world to disaster. By Tom Engelhardt
Narratives of Decline Among the US and UK Elites Narratives of decline (and fall) have been something of a staple of western consciousness, beginning with Augustine’s City of God (CE 413), the starting point of which is the fall of Rome to the Goths in CE 410, and, depending on one’s viewpoint, reaching something of a literary highpoint with Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (12 volumes, published in 1776), and Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1922). By Kenneth Surin
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Racism: North and South Ironically, this segregation was imposed, not during the rise of the KKK in the 1920s, but during the 1960s under the progressive guise of ‘urban renewal.” It was then, that vibrant, relatively prosperous, historical black neighborhoods like Charlotteville’s Vinegar Hill were deliberately razed, left long vacant, and ultimately replaced by soul-less public housing and institutional projects. — Same Policies in the North — As a proud fourth-generation Connecticut Yankee and longtime resident, I feel compelled to testify that in the 60s the same divisive policies were applied in our prosperous northern, liberal state with the same predictable racist outcomes. In New Haven, where I was a student in 1961, progressive Mayor Dick Lee, under JFK’s “model cities” program, razed the Black, middle-class Dixwell Ave. neighborhood adjacent to the Yale campus, and plunged a monstrous, unnecessary six-lane interchange highway (the Oak St Connector) like a dagger into the heart of the city, dividing it in two separate and unequal parts. by Richard Greeman
Black Agenda Radio — August 21, 2017
Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: a push to put a reparations measure on the ballot, in Chicago; and, Ajamu Baraka, of the Black Alliance for Peace, says Black self-determination and the fight against imperialism are inseparable.
A new survey shows that 56 percent of U.S. doctors now favor a switch to single payer health care. That’s a big increase since 2008, when the same poll showed only a minority of doctors supported single payer. We spoke with Dr. Margaret Flowers, of Popular Resistance, a long-time advocate of single payer.
The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations held its national conference in Chicago, this month. The conference explored the potential for running Black radical candidates for office based on the 19 points of the Coalition’s National Black Political Agenda for Self-Determination. Kamm Howard is active in both the Black Is Back Coalition and NCOBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. Howard is spearheading a drive to put a reparations measure on the local ballot, in Chicago, next year. He says, it’s a question of power.
The latest addition to the coalition is the Black Alliance for Peace, founded by veteran human rights activist Ajamu Baraka, the 2016 Green Party vice presidential candidate. Baraka says the Alliance has no illusions that the vote, alone, will set Black people free.
The cease fire arrangement reached earlier this summer between U.S. and Russian forces in Syria, appears to be holding. In Philadelphia, Duboisian scholar Dr. Anthony Monteiro is confident that the forces of peace will ultimately triumph, in the world. Monteiro says even Washington’s European allies are tiring of endless wars.
Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, also hails from Philadelphia. He says the United States is in a class of its own when it comes to mass incarceration.
“And that’s it for this edition of Black Agenda Radio.
Environment:
Winnemem Wintu, Fishing Groups Sue to Block Ecosystem-Killing Delta TunnelsOn August 17, a California Indian Tribe, two fishing groups, and two environmental organizations joined a growing number of organizations, cities and counties suing the Jerry Brown and Donald Trump administrations to block the construction of the Delta Tunnels. by Dan Bacher
The National Climate Assessment and National Park Neglect Every four years the federal government issues its National Climate Assessment, a comprehensive study compiled by 13 federal agencies. This year’s report is the most eventful of all time for two primary reasons: (1) the congressionally mandated report is filled with powerful evidence that climate change is already significantly impacting lives. In short, anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is really for real; (2) the report requires approval by the office of the president of the United States, which is kinda like asking OJ if he did it. By Robert Hunziker 
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Labor:
Economy:
Wall Street Banks Sued Again for Conspiring to Control a Market As summer draws to a close and the Wall Street titans enjoy the last of their lazy long weekends in the Hamptons, summering next door to the army of lawyers that keep them out of jail, it’s a curious time to be reading about a major new lawsuit that has the potential to shake Wall Streeters right down to their Gucci loafers. The charges include conspiracy to restrain trade in violation of the Sherman Act and unjust enrichment in a $1.7 trillion market. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street’s Latest Plot: Blame the Financial Crash on the French Wall Street appears to have a plan to get the deregulation it wants by pinning the start of the epic financial crash of 2007-2010 on (wait for it) the French, rather than its own unbridled greed, corruption and toxic manufacture of junk bonds known as subprime debt that it paid to have rated AAA by ethically-challenged and deeply conflicted rating agencies. (The same rating agencies that are getting paid by Wall Street to rate its debt issues today.) By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
Quotes of the Day: 
Following Trump’s lead: Police Have Made No Arrests Over Charlottesville Assault of 20 Year-Old Deandre Harris by Michael J. Sainato