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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:
Mariam Elba’s first piece for The Intercept attacks the Syrian people by conflating their struggle for self-determination with fascism. She compares Assad to Hitler and (disgustingly, I may add) utilizes a picture of Syrian youth draped in the national flag as proof of their adherence to fascism. The argument that Bashar Al-Assad is a fascist dictator is nothing new. Washington and its allies have targeted non-compliant governments for decades as violators of “human rights.” Iraq, Libya, Russia, China, and Venezuela have all been accused of oppressing their own people. In the case of Libya and Iraq, these accusations have led to US-backed wars responsible for the deaths of over a million people. “It is one thing to condemn Trump’s racism, but entirely another to utilize fascism as a weapon against the oppressed.” I write because far too many in the US remain in the dark about the atrocities of the US military state. In Syria, imperialist-backed terrorists are responsible for the death of over half a million people. A similar number of Syrians have been displaced from their homeland. A once prosperous, independent state is now facing a years-long reconstruction process. This does not seem to matter to Mariam Elba. Elba promotes the same tired, imperialist line on Syria that has been exposed as a lie many times over in the course of the last six years. —The Intercept’s Attack on the Oppressed is Why I Write
Videos of the Day:
U.S.:
Ken Burns’s Vietnam Documentary Promotes Misleading History The film follows previous Burns works in providing poignant footage mixed with compelling interviews and a backdrop of good music, starting in this case with Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall. Despite the counter-cultural veneer, however, and admirable efforts to provide a Vietnamese perspective, Burns and Novick’s film in its first episode provides conventional analysis about the war’s outbreak and can be understood as a sophisticated exercise in empire denial. The film is misleading at the outset in quoting an American soldier who recounts the pain of his homecoming, insinuating that veterans were maltreated in the United States – a trope often used to blame antiwar activists for creating this allegedly anti-veteran and divisive climate. A voice-over by Peter Coyote subsequently claims that the Vietnam War was “started in good faith by decent men. By Jeremy Kuzmarov.
Hué Back When: Vietnam’s Pivotal Battle Reconsidered For Mark Bowden, author of Hué 1968, the pivotal battle of the War in Vietnam did not follow the script most Americans were used to scanning in their newspapers or visualizing on the evening news. The war Americans followed at home was like a humongous hunting expedition. U.S. forces seemed engaged in an endless chase over a lush boondocks inhabited by peasants and dotted with rice paddies or trailing the rugged forested highlands in search of the Viet Cong, a cunning and elusive enemy whose tactics were hit and run, not stand and fight.by Michael Uhl
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Freedom Rider: Trump and America are White Supremacist Why ask if Donald Trump is a white supremacist? Business-as-usual racism is every bit as dangerous as Trump’s presence in the White House. “The system allows every white person to be a supremacist as they carry out their daily lives.”In recent days a foolish controversy has swirled regarding president Donald Trump. At issue is whether or not he can be labeled a white supremacist. There is no need for conjecture on this point. He most certainly is a white supremacist. But asking the question is utterly useless in a country whose very founding was a white supremacist project. Racist structures impact every facet of life in this country. Race determines where we go to school, live, work, or even if one is employed at all. By Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnist
The Intercept’s Attack on the Oppressed is Why I Write Syria is besieged by the white supremacist, imperialist U.S., Israel, and their partners, yet The Intercept smears the victim as “fascist.” By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
Why Anti-Trumpism Doesn’t Include Anti-War “An ideological opening exists for reframing military spending and the war agenda for what it is: An agenda for the protection of the interests of the 1 percent.” By Ajamu Baraka , BAR editor and columnist
The Pentagon’s Human Rights Auxiliary Targets Burundi “The US and allies are trying to beat the October deadline when Burundi will have made its way out from under the court’s imperial jurisdiction.” By Ann Garrison , BAR contributor
Why Claudia Jones Will Always Be More Relevant than Ta-Nehisi Coates “Coates assumes that all the leftists are white, and all race analysis is liberal.” In 1940, Doxey Wilkerson , a Black Marxist educator, editor, and leader of the American Federation of Teachers, broke with Gunnar Myrdal and the Carnegie Corporation funded project, An America Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. He did so because, though Myrdal claimed to be a socialist, he dishonestly excised structural analysis from his consideration of “the Negro question,” instead attributing racism to the hearts and values of Southern whites. Myrdal put forth this idealist interpretation of race relations to propound the liberal vision of his corporate funders, which required not only the omission of Wilkerson’s meticulously researched materialist analysis, but also the exclusion of the immanent scholar W.E.B. DuBois , whose 1935 tome, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880, directly contradicted the Carnegie study’s disingenuous thesis. By Charisse Burden-Stelly, PhD
Fascists Will Fester Until We Get Rid of Capitalism “Trump realizes that it is his extreme racist middle-class base that he can actually rely on.” By Alvaro Reyes
Police Brutality: No End Under Capitalism “Hiring more black police officers probably doesn’t offer a direct solution to this problem.” Recently, another cop — former St. Louis officer, Jason Stockley — was acquitted for the 2011 first-degree murder of Anthony Lamar Smith. By Ken Morgan
Donald Trump and the Fraudulent Democratic Party “The system has to be deconstructed to be reconstructed into something that is actually equitable and democratic.” The United States’ political system is more duplicitous than it is flawed. What appears to be a flawed system, to the critically thinking mind, is really working as it is intended. It is only seen as an open and democratic system to those who failed to break away from countless years of systematic indoctrination. By Solomon Comissiong
Nuke You Too! No More Imperialist and Superpower Exceptionalism “United States leaders threaten North Korea with a first strike.” “A new and vigorous approach to the problem of peace and war is needed. The time has come when the destiny of (mankind) should cease to hang dangerously on the aims and ambitions of Great Powers.” Kwame Nkrumah By All-African People’s Revolutionary Party
Environment:
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Labor:
Economy:
How Many of 2017’s Retail Bankruptcies Were Caused by Private-Equity’s Greed? According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, there have been 35 retail bankruptcies this year, almost double the 18 retail bankruptcies of last year. The filing by Toys ‘R’ Us this week was the latest. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
Education Can’t Solve Poverty—So Why Do We Keep Insisting That it Can? By Jennifer Berkshire No Man is Above the Law, Except on College Campuses Freshman orientation, Columbia University, New York City, Fall 1981: Now as then, there were speeches. A blur of upperclassmen, professors and deans welcomed us, explained campus resources and laid out dos and donts. At one point, the topic of the campus drug policy came up. “You can do whatever you want in your dorm room,” we were told, “just make sure it’s OK with your roommate.” A ripple of surprise swept the audience. Several students asked for elaboration of this don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy on illegal narcotics, and were told that they’d heard correctly. by Ted Rall 
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