By immensely helpful coincidence, Donald Trump’s 11-year-old sexist rant tape surfaced on the same day that Wikileaks revealed Hillary Clinton’s support for hemispheric “free trade” and cuts in Social Security. But Trump’s campaign may be doomed, while Clinton rides high in the polls. The Donald is “a better foil for the Democratic party than any other Republican could possibly be.” Both sides of the duopoly connive to fill Hillary’s big tent.

It would be nice if the old adage, “What goes around, comes around” applied to the larger world of gross inequality and race and class oppression. However, the ruling classes do have the resources to exact pay-back within their ranks. Donald Trump may now “rue the day” that he insulted the Bush family.

Lesser-evilism has rendered the U.S. Left incapable of resisting the forces of imperial war and bankster rule when they come in the form of Democrats. “What is most important is not where the Democratic Party and Republican Party differ, but how both parties work in harmonious service to the ruling class.” A vote for the Greens is a break with the parties of white supremacy, war and the rule of the rich.

Severe state repression and a near-total press blackout make it impossible to determine how many prisoners are continuing the national work strike that began on September 9th. The core demand is an end to prison slavery: the forced low-or-no-wage employment extracted from inmates. “Once we take our labor back,” said an organizer, “prisons will again become places for correction and rehabilitation rather than centers of corporate profit.”

The conventional wisdom is that Chicago’s Blue Code of Silence operates at the lower ranks, on the cop-to-cop level, and has now been exposed to the public glare. But the weight of evidence from key cases shows that corruption reaches to the highest levels of police department “bosses,” who are in turn protected by the city administration. The Code of Silence is a curtain hiding a culture of criminality.

Ethiopia’s authoritarian regime, dominated by elites of the Tigrayan ethnic group, faces growing protest by the Oromo and Amhara people, who together make up the majority of the population. Even the U.S. admits that the regime is a serious violator of human rights, yet the U.S. is Ethiopia’s main military ally. Given the glaring contradictions, it is fair to ask: “Will U.S. troops be called into Ethiopia to do battle with civilian protesters?”

In the 1960s, a group of leftists risked everything to revive the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. These international activists who embraced a working-class radicalism that was internationalist, cosmopolitan, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist — and most important, steadfastly opposed to legalized racial oppression in South Africa.

Eritrea and Cuba have a great deal in common. Both are relatively small countries attempting to build socialism in the crosshairs of imperialist embargoes, sanctions and constant military threats. In both nations, the basic means of production “belong to the people, through their governments,” and “education and medical care are accessible, universal and paid for by the state.”

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The United Nations panel of experts that blasted the U.S. for its “legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality” had no choice but to call for reparations for people of African descent, said Kamm Howard, of NCOBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. “The international community recognizes that reparations is pretty much mandatory when a state has committed those types of crimes,” said Howard. “You have to repair the injury, you have to make the people whole, because these types of injuries are long term and, generally, self-perpetuating.”

Ajamu Baraka: Bush and Obama Backed Jihadist Forces
“This country and the world is more dangerous as a consequence of the rampage the U.S. has been involved in in the so-called Middle East,” said Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka. Speaking on Democracy Now!’s “Expanded Debates,” Baraka said both Republicans and Democrats are responsible for the rise of Islamic jihadism. “Under the Bush administration, there was a conscious decision to utilize jihadist forces to advance U.S. policies,” he said. “That policy was continued under the Obama administration. We see the blowback happening across the world.”

Crying Wolf on Fascism
“This notion that we’re going to have a white nationalist fascist takeover in this election, and that we all need to go running to this rightwing fanatic, this arch-corporatist, this lying neoliberal warmonger” — Hillary Clinton – “is not sticking with a lot of people on the Left,” said historian and political analyst Paul Street. Part of the reason is that “Clinton has such a long and unambiguous track record of really vanguard neoliberalism,” said Street. The Clintons “led the way for the rightward drift of the Democratic Party.”

Nat Turner as Revolutionary Organizer
The slave revolt that swept through Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831, in which about 60 whites were killed and hundreds of Blacks were hanged or murdered in retaliation, was “far more than an impulsive lashing out against mistreatment,” said Dr. Melvin Peters, associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Eastern Michigan. Turner was a man of “unparalleled leadership,” said Peters. “When Turner called out to the recruits, his six men grew to at least 60, maybe 80 freedom fighters, including free Blacks.” Slave insurrections also broke out “all around the Dismal Swamp, even down to Wilmington, North Carolina, in the same time period — so much so, that they appeared to be coordinated.”

Black Colombians Favored Peace Deal
“The majority of the ‘Yes’ vote came from Afro-descended territories and from those territories where war has hit most strongly at communities,” said Afro-Colombian human rights activist Charo Mina-Rojas. The agreement that would have ended the half-century-long war between FARC guerillas and the Colombian government was narrowly defeated in a referendum, last month. The conflict has killed hundreds of thousands and left more than five million homeless, the majority of them Black. Mina-Rojas called the vote a victory for “the elite.” “We were not shocked,” she said.

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.