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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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A case can be made that the most direct path to prosperity for working families as a whole is one that has a collective basis creating benchmark standards for wages, conditions, and benefits; where energy otherwise spent on infighting and backstabbing among workers over compensation is harnessed into a common effort. The concept of creating a floor beneath which no one can go is at the heart of union organizing. The energy released from successful agreement to cooperate can go beyond worker compensation and build emotional solidarity among workers. It can be used to get a voice on corporate boards, to trade better productivity and peace on the production lines for a voice in the quality of the product and the level of responsibility towards the planet. Unions working together across industries, and across national borders can be a powerful, parallel, political force if they act inclusively and maintain a goal of “prosperity of all, at the expense of none” (including, now we see, the Eco system).Union movements around the world have had varying success at harnessing this solidarity. European efforts have used their power to bring universal public health care, education, family leave, and the 35 hour week to all of their fellow citizens, union members or not. In these cases, the organized minority had the collective will to steer society towards a more egalitarian division of resources and use of government than would otherwise have developed. — Unions, American Exceptionalism, White Supremacy, and the Road to Hell
Video of the Day:
Quick Hit Video: The New York Times Gives Ex-Blackwater CEO Erik Prince Free Advertising It’s ‘incredible’ that the New York Times gave former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince editorial space to suggest letting private mercenaries lead the war in Afghanistan, says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson
U.S.:
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Freedom Rider: Hurricanes and Capitalism Texans and Floridians suffer not just because of nature but because the system is not meant to help them. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR editor and senior columnist
Mercury in Retrograde: Las Vegas Cops Assault NFL Star Michael Bennett The Las Vegas cops are trying to smear Michael Bennett’s character to cover up their racist assault. By Ann Garrison , BAR contributor
The United States is a Racist Monument, Tear it Down! The whole social, political and economic structure of the U.S. is a monument to racism. By Danny Haiphong, BAR contributor
How Women Were at the Helm of the Black Panther Party How Women Were at the Helm of the Black Panther Party “By the early 1970s, women formed nearly two-thirds of the Black Panther Party.” By Manmeet Sahni
Widening the Tent for a Multiracial Labor Movement “The 1963 March on Washington was also a labor march.” I grew up in Detroit in the 1960s and ’70s, which is to say, I grew up in a union town. My father, Charlie Ransby, did backbreaking work most of his life and was a lifelong union member. He worked in a small plant that cleaned industrial gloves for the Big Three auto companies (GM, Ford and Chrysler). His life was hard, but he was clear it would have been a lot harder if he and his co-workers were not organized. By Barbara Ransby 
People are Radicalizing the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela An interview with Christina Schiavoni “You now see a lot more bartering arrangements between neighbors, as well as new microenterprises popping up” Amidst imperialist interference, the people in Venezuela are carrying on the task of reorganizing their society. The real-life picture of Venezuela is far different from the reports the mainstream media continuously circulates. The following interview with Christina Schiavoni, a researcher and food sovereignty activist, provides a different view of the life of the Venezuelan people. The interview covers food and health situations as well as on-going politics and people’s participation in the politics.
Why I Will Boycott the NFL “We’re talking black balling and lockout.” Yes, yes, I know, no one will notice if I don’t attend a National Football League game this season or watch one on television. And the sky won’t fall if I refuse to read about those games in my daily sports section, listen to sports talk radio or discuss the seasonal ups and downs of the 49ers and the Raiders with my cousin or my father-in-law. Also, I know that the wallets of the fat cat NFL owners will not be thinned by my withdrawal, and the advertising revenue will continue to overfill their coffers as well as the sales of caps, jerseys and logo embossed gadgets. By Don Santina
Blacks, DACA, and Immigration “The wealthy one percent that runs this country, although split regarding divisive tactics, remains united as exploiters that place profit before human need.” Donald Trump recently rescinded DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA protects those minors that undocumented family members brought to America — and keeps them from being deported. By Ken Morgan
Environment:
It is becoming clear that the struggle for the environment is a fight for human rights and the survival of the species–a struggle for environmental justice. We need to defend, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, humanity’s “Unalienable Rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” We should demand that:
All products must be tested for toxicity before being produced for the market. The present practice of experimenting on human beings and waiting for the human body counts before determining that substances are toxic must be stopped!
The production of toxic substances must be stopped and the least toxic alternatives must be used until all toxins can be eliminated from use!
Gravity, wind, and solar power must be developed to replace fossil fuels and nucleal power as sources of energy. The top priority throughout the world must be the elimination of pollution and the development of science to maintain the earth as a healthy biosphere for humanity;
The squandering of trillions of dollars on military spending must stop and these trillions of dollars must be used to repair the environment! (In 1991, even after the end of the Cold War, military spending was almost 1 trillion dollars.); and
There must be a 100 percent tax on the profits of companies that pollute!
The environmental movement has raised many of these demands. In the past 30 years, many laws have been written incorporating some of these concepts. Yet despite these laws, environmental destruction has been allowed to proceed because these regulations have always been compromised by the incorporation of the concept of economic feasibility. ‘Economic feasibility’ means that the profitability of an economic enterprise cannot be subordinated to environmental needs. Therefore, environmental and safety laws, under capitalism, have always been a compromise between science and business. In fact, environmental destruction, pestilence, and death are factored into production the same as casualties of war are factored into military battles. — Roland Sheppard, Whither Humanity? The Environmental Crisis of Capitalism(1998)
Another Global Warming Elephant in the Room: The Pentagon Military Industrial Complex! The United States is ranked #1 in global warming emitions (Ranking Global Warming Contributions by Country) but, actually, the United States has contributed far more global warming admission, if you consider the 800 U.S. military bases and wars, throughout the world. From The Military Pumps Out Staggering Quantities of Toxic Waste, Water and Air Pollution and Radiation Environmentalists are ignoring the elephant in the room … the world’s largest polluter: . . . The Pentagon is also one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the world … and yet has a blanket exemption from all greenhouse gas treaties. The defense department also uses open-air burn pits which send a parade of horribles into the air. Sea life is not exempt. And the military has long been is a flagrant user of chemical weapons and depleted uranium . . . which can trash ecosystems and human health. And Despite our unorthodox presidential election, America’s overseas military bases are largely taken for granted in today’s foreign policy debates. The U.S. maintains a veritable empire of military bases throughout the world— about 800 of them in more than 70 countries. Many view our bases as a symbol of our status as the dominant world power. But America’s forward-deployed military posture incurs substantial costs and disadvantages, exposing the U.S. to vulnerabilities and unintended consequences. See: Why We Should Close America’s Overseas Military Bases By Roland Sheppard
Could companies be made to pay for stoking climate change? The world’s top 90 fossil fuel producers, including Chevron and ExxonMobil, have caused half of global temperature increases since 1880, researchers said, potentially enabling people who have been harmed by climate change to sue for damages. The study in the journal Climatic Change is the first to assess climate change emissions by private and state-owned oil, gas and cement companies, rather than countries, amid debate over who should pay for the impacts of climate change. “Companies knowingly violated the most basic moral principle of ‘do no harm’, and now they must remedy the harm they caused by paying damages and their proportion of adaptation costs,” said the University of Oxford’s Henry Shue. By Anna Pujol-Mazzini
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Labor:
Economy:
Jamie Dimon Knows a Fraud When He Sees It – Outside of His Bank Jamie Dimon became Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan Chase on December 31, 2005. An inordinate amount of frauds have been perpetrated inside his bank since that time, none of which the eagle-eyed Dimon spotted. But Dimon says he knows a fraud when he sees one outside of his bank. Yesterday, he took on the cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin, calling it a fraud. At a banking conference on Tuesday, Dimon said that “Bitcoin will eventually blow up. It’s a fraud. It’s worse than tulip bulbs and won’t end well.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
After Irma, a Look at Why Cubans are 15 Times Less Likely to Die from Hurricanes Than Americans One of the Caribbean islands hardest hit by Hurricane Irma was Cuba, where 10 people died. Irma hit Cuba’s northern coast as a Category 5 storm. It was the deadliest hurricane in Cuba since 2005, when 16 people died in Hurricane Dennis. Cuba has long been viewed as a world leader in hurricane preparedness and recovery. According to the Center for International Policy, a person is 15 times as likely to be killed by a hurricane in the United States as in Cuba. Meanwhile, Cuba has already sent more than 750 health workers to Antigua, Barbuda, Saint Kitts, Nevis, Saint Lucia, the Bahamas, Dominica and Haiti. For more, we speak with Elizabeth Newhouse, director of the Center for International Policy’s Cuba Project. She has taken numerous delegations from the U.S. to Cuba to see how the Cubans manage disaster preparedness.
Cuba After Irma: a Call to Our Combative People Hurricane Irma, with its destructive power, battered our island for 72 hours, beginning the morning of September 8 until this Sunday afternoon. With winds that surpassed 250 kilometers per hour on occasion, it crossed the north of the country from Baracoa – hit hard by another phenomenon of this type almost a year ago – to the outskirts of Cárdenas. However, given its immense size, practically no province was spared its effects. by Raul Castro
South Africa: The murder of Sindiso Magaqa and the rotten state of the ANC The murder of former African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) Secretary-General, Sindiso Magaqa, was received with shock, anger and revulsion across the country. Although his shooting is connected to the infighting in the ANC at local level, it reflects the present crisis in the party generally. Now, three months before of the National Conference, the factions in the party are in an open civil war with serious consequences for the class struggle. By Ben Morken 
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
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