Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The very future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: 1.Austerity, 2.Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 3. The Iron Heel! Always Remember: That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he Established, in writing, the United States Capitalist Austerity Program. — The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!
Democracy?:As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%, Only the 1% Voted For Austerity! The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who, Profit From Austerity!! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.! Socialism Means True Democracy, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
200 Die From: Coronaivrus: The Senate unanimously passed a $2.2 trillion emergency relief package late Wednesday, concluding a grim day in which health departments around the United States reported more than 200 coronavirus-related deaths. — Live Updates
The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War! Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.
Bailout Bill: $2 Trillion to the Struggling 99% — $4 Trillion for the 1%: (Since The United States Population Is Approximately 330,495,000, the Bailout is $2,000,000,000,000 (Max) for 227,0330,3100,5 00 (99%) of the people. And @4,,000,000,000,000 for the other 330,4950 (.01%) of the people.)
‘Socialist’ Senator Bernie Sanders voted for the Bailout! He voted for the Bill, which Wall Street on Parade in Stimulus Bill: The Fed and Treasury’s Slush Fund Is Actually $4 Trillion , described as “massive giveaway to Wall Street banks, just as happened from 2007 to 2010, when White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow appeared at the White House briefing yesterday evening. Kudlow revealed that the stimulus plan is actually a $6 trillion package — $2 trillion to struggling Americans and $4 trillion to dispense as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and the Federal Reserve see fit. Since the Federal Reserve has seen fit since September 17 of last year to flood the trading houses of Wall Street with $9 trillion cumulatively in revolving loans, one can reasonably expect that this is where the new $4 trillion will be going.” This proves that he is, in reality, the Democratic Party Pied Piper leading todays youth into the swamp of the Democratic Party! To paraphase Bruce Dixon, of Black Agenda Report, in his 2015 essay: “Vermont senator and ostensible socialist Bernie Sanders is playing the sheepdog candidate Joe Bidenfor this year. Bernie’s job is to warm up the crowd for Biden, herding activist energies and the disaffected left back into the Democratic fold one more time. Bernie aims to tie up activist energies and resources till the summer of 2020 when the only remaining choice will be the usual lesser of two evils. . . . The sheepdog is a card the Democratic party plays every presidential primary season when there’s no White House Democrat running for re-election.
‘Looting of America by Big Corporations’: Progressives Appalled as Senate Passes Largest Bailout Bill in US History “A transfer of wealth and power to the super rich from the rest of us, with the support of both political parties—a damning statement about the condition of American democracy.” By a vote of 96-0, the United States Senate Wednesday night passed an enormous coronavirus stimulus package that would provide some desperately needed economic relief to struggling workers and the unemployed while establishing a $4.5 trillion fund to bail out large corporations—with little to no enforceable restrictions. Progressives didn’t mince words in response to the unanimous vote, which sends the largest bailout legislation in U.S. history to the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, where it could pass as early as Friday before heading to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature. By Jake Johnson
Environment:
Superbugs In The Air: Burned or Buried, Garbage Spreads Antibiotic Resistance In my recent Monthly Review article, Superbugs in the Anthropocene, I discussed the growth of the antibiotic resistome, the worldwide pool of genes that enable bacteria to resist antibiotics. Such genes can concentrate in environmental hot spots, where resistance can easily spread. “Hot spots, in soil and water as well as in hospitals, factories, sewage-treatment plants, and factory farms, provide excellent conditions for the spread of multidrug-resistant bacteria in local ecosystems and around the world.” Add municipal landfills to that list. By Ian Angus
Breathing can be dangerous when bacteria and Antibiotic Resistance Genes travel through the air from municipal waste to humans. (Diagram from Environmental Science & Technology)
Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
Time of Plague and Meltdown: Mass Murder by Corporate Duopoly The shrinking of the public health sector is a capitalist crime, abetted by the two corporate parties. “There is now no possibility of avoiding many tens of thousands of deaths due to a shortage of equipment, beds and health care personnel.” Tens of thousands of people, disproportionately Black and brown, are marked for death by coronavirus in the coming weeks and months because the United States political system allows only corporate parties to govern. By ensuring that the Dictatorship of Capital is immune to effective electoral challenge, the duopoly system has made the people of the United States less healthy than the rest of the developed world, and far more vulnerable to epidemics of all types. As dutiful servants of Capital, the Democratic and Republican parties have for more than 40 years facilitated a Race to the Bottom (austerity) that has steadily lowered working people’s living standards and slashed social service supports, including the number of hospital beds, which have declined by more than half a million since 1975 despite a population increase of 114 million. By Glen Ford, BAR Executive EditorFreedom Rider: Revolutionary Change and COVID-19 The genie has escaped from the bottle, revealing the deep injustices and cruelties that are embedded in US capitalism and its warped relationship to the peoples it rules, and the world. “COVID-19 is an opportunity to demand change while the people are paying attention to the crisis.” The coronavirus pandemic has upended the economy and the lives of millions of people. In so doing it has exposed the wreckage of a country living under the rule of billionaires and the military industrial complex. The health care system is controlled by corporations and therefore cannot meet human needs. The United States gave up its large scale manufacturing to China, the country which it both demonizes as the source of infection but also begs to produce more ventilators, masks and other medical equipment. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnistThe U.S. is a Failed State, and COVID-19 Proves it The United States’ capitalist and imperialist economy cannot provide a modicum of social welfare to its people and has been in perpetual war with Black Americans and Indigenous Peoples since its formation. “COVID-19 proves that the United States’ war on the world is a drag on humanity.” U.S. imperialism has a long-standing habit of imposing the most brutal forms of war and torture onto nations under the pretext of so-called humanitarian grounds. Humanitarian intervention and the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) have been used to destroy Libya, Syria, and Somalia and turn them into “failed states.” In many cases, however, these states were declared failures prior to U.S. intervention. Failure in the eyes of U.S. imperialism and its legion of profiteers is defined as any oppressed nation’s refusal to bow down to the economic and political dictates of a foreign imperial power. To be a “failed state” has always been a declaration of war by the U.S. and its imperial allies on the most oppressed and downtrodden nations of the world. What the hubris and racism of American exceptionalism and humanitarianism masks is that the U.S. is an actually existing failed state. COVID-19 has exposed this fact to the masses. By Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Can COVID-19 Take Down NATO? The Pentagon insisted on going ahead with provocative NATO war games near Russia’s borders, despite the coronavirus epidemic, but Germany pulled its forces out and closed its roads to troop movements.“The virus will spread on the more than 800 US bases strategically scattered around the globe, causing worry and fear in the local communities surrounding them.” EFENDER Europe 20 , NATO’s latest anti-Russian war games, began in February and was scheduled to continue into June. The games would have been the largest rehearsal for transferring US troops from the US to Europe since the mid-1990s. However, on March 13, the German army announced that it would not participate and withdrew its troops for fear of spreading the coronavirus.By Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Coronavirus, Militarism and the End of an Illusion People are waking people up to the fact that the US state and government does not belong to them but to a capitalist class that is only looking out for itself. “The ‘sheltering in place’ order is starting to look like a convenient tool for the state to manage the growing frustration, fear and anger.” “The nation that considers itself to be the apex of capitalist achievement on planet Earth turns out to have no health care system worthy of the name – a testament to the sucking moral vacuum at America’s imperial, white settler colony core. A lowly virus – a form of being that exists at the very border between “life” and “not-life” – has revealed the world’s superpower as butt-naked and very much afraid. (Glen Ford) Coronavirus and second economic collapse in just ten years should finally put to rest the fairy-tale of U.S. Exceptionalism. By Black Alliance For PeaceBlack Politics, Class Struggle and the Illusion of Centrism Black Democratic Party operatives seek to camouflage class antagonisms among African Americans and to equate racial progress with the feeble policies of “diversity and inclusion.” “Black poor and laboring folk need to escape the clutches of Democratic Party hucksters while restoring their own agency and will to fight.” Anyone who knows [African Americans], who knows their history…must recognize that…the hatred of bourgeois society and the readiness to destroy it when the opportunity should present itself, rests among them to a degree greater than in any other section of the population in the United States. — C. L. R. James, 1948 Are African Americans still among the most progressive groups in the United States? By Russell Rickford
BAR Abolition Mutual Aid Spotlight: Ujimaa Medics Chicago’s Ujimaa Medics bring a racial justice and cultural specificity lens to community health care through mutual aid. “The western medical-industrial complex has often left out or been directly harmful to Black people.” In this feature, we ask organizers involved in mutual aid projects to share a little bit about their work. We understand mutual aid work as the part of social movement organizing that meets people’s direct needs. Unlike charity work, however, mutual aid is part of a broader strategy to address the root causes of injustice by mobilizing people to dismantle structures of domination and build the world we want. By Dean Spade and Roberto Sirvent, BAR ContributorsTrump Using Virus to Privatize Government, Increase Repression Trump’s administration is more interested in saving Wall Street and boosting their profits than they are in saving lives and meeting the needs of the people. “Trump refuses to nationalize pertinent industries and be responsible for producing and distributing medical equipment.” Friends and Comrades: In Italy, military trucks are now being used to haul away dead bodies. Perhaps by the time U.S. cities and states get help from the military that is what they will be doing, hauling dead bodies. On Meet The Press this week when the head of FEMA was asked, “Is the federal government in charge of getting medical supplies and material to where it is needed?” — the answer was “No.” The message to the states was “if you need it buy it.” In other words, in this pandemic crisis the federal government is encouraging competition between the states thus allowing businesses to engage in profiteering while people are dying. By Frank Chapman
Joint Statement From Elected Prosecutors on COVID-19 and Addressing the Rights and Needs of Those in Custody Overcrowded jail, prison and immigration detention facilities force people together in close quarters without access to proper hygiene or medical care. “An outbreak of the coronavirus in these custodial facilities would not only move fast, it would potentially be catastrophic.” COVID-19 has the world on high alert. In recognition that the coronavirus is spreading quickly among high concentrations of people in close proximity, schools are being shut down, conferences rescheduled, international travel is being restricted, and cruise ships — the early incubators of the virus — are being quarantined. Those measures are all sensible, but they also drive home how little attention is being paid to the millions of people in the most overcrowded conditions that are ripe for the spread of this contagious and deadly virus: the people behind bars in America’s jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers. By Fair & Just ProsecutionHumanity Not Cages: Demanding a Just and Humane Response to Outbreak With 2.3 million people in the United States in prison or jail on any given day, an outbreak in these facilities poses a threat to the entire country. “At no point should any facility be on lockdown.“ It is not a matter of if but when the coronavirus will enter prisons and jails, according to health experts. The consequences of that eventuality will be devastating. COVID-19 outbreaks in prisons and jails will spread “like wildfire ” due to close quarters, unsanitary conditions, a population that is more vulnerable to COVID-19, and the large number of people that cycle through the criminal justice system. The risk extends far beyond those who are incarcerated. By Human Outbreak ResponseEconomists Demand Trump Immediately Lift Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela Sanctions That Are ‘Feeding the Coronavirus Epidemic’ This policy is unconscionable and flagrantly against international law. It is imperative that the U.S. lift these immoral and illegal sanctions. “US sanctions against Venezuela and other nations have severely hindered their ability to respond to the pandemic.”A group of economists and policy experts called on President Donald Trump to immediately lift the United States’ crippling sanctions against Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries, warning that the economic warfare—in addition to being cruel in itself—is “feeding the coronavirus epidemic” by hampering nations’ capacity to respond. By Jake JohnsonSanders’ “Miscreants” From welfare queens and super predators to “Bernie brothers,” the democratic establishment is never short of boogeymen. “Bernie Sanders’ supporters have come to personify the repugnant behavior that has always been associated with those who benefit the least from capitalism.” When I was a kid, I hung out in the housing projects. If it was nice out, I would wrestle, skateboard, and shoot hoops. If it rained, I would post up at a friend’s and watch music videos. My friend Dez had the biggest television in the neighborhood. He also had one of those indoor basketball games, so we could make it rain inside even if it was raining outside. One night, my mom picked me from Dez’s on her way home from work. She had just finished a shift of taking orders and washing dishes and, as usual, she was looking to vent. When Dez opened the door, she saw me shooting hoops in the living room. She saw the big screen television bumping Limp Bizkit in the background. I saw the contempt on her face. In the car, she told me that she was sick of people taking advantage of the system. She was sick of welfare queens like Dez’s mom. By Adam SzetelaThe Dangers of Binary Politics for the African American Community We have traded our interests in for “electability” and “anybody but Trump.” “Remember ‘ending welfare as we know it’ under Clinton and Obama’s failed ‘Grand Bargain’”? “You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger…This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish…The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity…that you were a worthless human being…not expected to aspire to excellence…expected to make peace with mediocrity.” — James Baldwin My Dungeon Shook, 1963. America is recklessly muddling its way through perilous times. The pandemic called Covid-19 is being mismanaged by an administration that ignores science. Trump lied to the nation, falsely asserting that major insurance companies will cover treatment for Covid-19 free of charge. He then contradicted health experts with his “hunch” that the death rate was lower than World Health Organization estimates, possibly down to a “fraction of 1 percent”. He also believes, “…we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work…” By Wilmer J. Leon IIILabor:
Economy:
Stimulus Bill Allows Federal Reserve to Conduct Meetings in Secret; Gives Fed $454 Billion Slush Fund for Wall Street Bailouts The U.S. Senate voted 96-0 late yesterday on a massive bailout of Wall Street banks versus a short-term survival plan for American workers thrown out of their jobs – and potentially their homes. The text of the final bill was breathtaking in the breadth of new powers it bestowed on the Federal Reserve, including the Fed’s ability to conduct secret meetings with no minutes provided to the American people. The House of Representatives has yet to vote on the bill. The bill provides specific sums that can be made as loans or loan guarantees to passenger airlines ($25 billion), cargo airlines ($4 billion), and loans and loan guarantees to businesses necessary to national security ($17 billion). But when it comes to the money going to the Federal Reserve and then out the door to Wall Street, the legislation says only this: “Not more than the sum of $454,000,000,000…shall be available to make loans and loan guarantees to, and other investments in, programs or facilities established by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for the purpose of providing liquidity to the financial system….” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Technology of Death: The Not-So-Shocking Report on Israeli Weapons Exports The Middle East region, battered by wars and adjoining humanitarian crises that have left millions of people stateless, hungry and diseased, is in urgent need for peace, security and reconstruction. Thanks to the US, Russian, French, Israeli and other weapons manufacturers, however, it is now the dumping ground for military hardware, an ominous sign for the years ahead. Data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on March 9, paints a grim picture of the world, in general, and the Middle East, in particular. According to the report, the demand for weapons in the warring region has increased by a whopping 61% between 2015 and 2019. By Ramzy Baroud
Business as Usual: Coronavirus, Iran and US Sanctions Never discount the importance of venality in international relations. While pandemics should provide the glue for a unified front in response – we keep being told of fighting this horrendous “invisible enemy” – it’s business as usual in other respects. The United States, with a disparate, confused medical system that risks being overwhelmed, remains committed against that other country floundering in efforts to combat COVID-19: Iran. Instead of binding the nations, the virus, as with everything else, has served as a political obstacle.By Binoy Kampmark
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘governn’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People Vote on Healthcare!
USA: COVID-19 and NYC’s Sick Public School System NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio’s treatment of the NYC Public Schools is an indictment of capitalism’s prioritization of profits over the wellbeing and safety of its youth and workers. On Friday, March 13, the last day before the country’s most extensive school system was finally closed, attendance in my classroom had plummeted. Hardly anyone could focus on the regular classwork as anxiety over the virus was at the forefront of everyone’s mind. I decided to ask my eighth-graders to prepare an argument about whether or not we should shut down the schools. By NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio’s treatment of the NYC Public Schools is an indictment of capitalism’s prioritization of profits over the wellbeing and safety of its youth and workers. Bi Hannah B.Beethoven: Man, Composer and Revolutionary Ludwig van Beethoven died today in 1827. If any composer deserves to be called a revolutionary, it is Beethoven. He carried through what was probably the greatest single revolution in modern music and changed the way music was composed and listened to. This is music that does not calm, but shocks and disturbs. Writing in 2006, Alan Woods describes how the world into which Beethoven was born was a world in turmoil, a world in transition, a world of wars, revolution and counter-revolution: a world like our own world. By Alan Woods
Quote of the Day:
Freedom Rider: Revolutionary Change and COVID-19 The genie has escaped from the bottle, revealing the deep injustices and cruelties that are embedded in US capitalism and its warped relationship to the peoples it rules, and the world. “COVID-19 is an opportunity to demand change while the people are paying attention to the crisis.” The coronavirus pandemic has upended the economy and the lives of millions of people. In so doing it has exposed the wreckage of a country living under the rule of billionaires and the military industrial complex. The health care system is controlled by corporations and therefore cannot meet human needs. The United States gave up its large scale manufacturing to China, the country which it both demonizes as the source of infection but also begs to produce more ventilators, masks and other medical equipment. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
The U.S. is a Failed State, and COVID-19 Proves it The United States’ capitalist and imperialist economy cannot provide a modicum of social welfare to its people and has been in perpetual war with Black Americans and Indigenous Peoples since its formation. “COVID-19 proves that the United States’ war on the world is a drag on humanity.” U.S. imperialism has a long-standing habit of imposing the most brutal forms of war and torture onto nations under the pretext of so-called humanitarian grounds. Humanitarian intervention and the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) have been used to destroy Libya, Syria, and Somalia and turn them into “failed states.” In many cases, however, these states were declared failures prior to U.S. intervention. Failure in the eyes of U.S. imperialism and its legion of profiteers is defined as any oppressed nation’s refusal to bow down to the economic and political dictates of a foreign imperial power. To be a “failed state” has always been a declaration of war by the U.S. and its imperial allies on the most oppressed and downtrodden nations of the world. What the hubris and racism of American exceptionalism and humanitarianism masks is that the U.S. is an actually existing failed state. COVID-19 has exposed this fact to the masses. By Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Black Politics, Class Struggle and the Illusion of Centrism Black Democratic Party operatives seek to camouflage class antagonisms among African Americans and to equate racial progress with the feeble policies of “diversity and inclusion.” “Black poor and laboring folk need to escape the clutches of Democratic Party hucksters while restoring their own agency and will to fight.” Anyone who knows [African Americans], who knows their history…must recognize that…the hatred of bourgeois society and the readiness to destroy it when the opportunity should present itself, rests among them to a degree greater than in any other section of the population in the United States. — C. L. R. James, 1948 Are African Americans still among the most progressive groups in the United States? By Russell Rickford
Trump Using Virus to Privatize Government, Increase Repression Trump’s administration is more interested in saving Wall Street and boosting their profits than they are in saving lives and meeting the needs of the people. “Trump refuses to nationalize pertinent industries and be responsible for producing and distributing medical equipment.” Friends and Comrades: In Italy, military trucks are now being used to haul away dead bodies. Perhaps by the time U.S. cities and states get help from the military that is what they will be doing, hauling dead bodies. On Meet The Press this week when the head of FEMA was asked, “Is the federal government in charge of getting medical supplies and material to where it is needed?” — the answer was “No.” The message to the states was “if you need it buy it.” In other words, in this pandemic crisis the federal government is encouraging competition between the states thus allowing businesses to engage in profiteering while people are dying. By Frank Chapman
Labor:
