Daily News 11/09
Daily News 11/09
Daily News Archives Since June
Interest rates up – bank profits up – cost of living up – help us Albo help us!
The US imperialists cashed in on their demonstrative display of might, signing successive defence contracts with Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Emirates. The Persian Gulf became one giant, monolithic US military base. The world, it seemed, lay at Washington’s feet. The US ruling class imagined that the Middle East could be remade at gunpoint – confusing the ability to destroy with the ability to control. They congratulated themselves on their ‘new world order’. But they were blinkered from seeing what challenges would come with playing the role of the world’s policemen. With colossal power came colossal arrogance. As Alan Woods and Ted Grant warned just before the turn of the 21st century: “The insolence of US imperialism in attempting to subordinate the whole of the Middle East to its control will produce an equal and opposite reaction.” — How Washington failed to remake the Middle East
In the United States, this is the most expensive campaign process in history. And the Supreme Court has ruled that, well, we’ve got to do it the way the Romans did. The Romans assigned weighted votes to the wealthiest Roman constituency, much higher than the votes of the agrarian people as a whole. And so when the wealthiest classes voted, their votes, maybe the one to ten percent, outweighed the ninety percent. So that made sure that there wouldn’t really be a democracy there. Well, the same thing happened in the United States. If you read the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton and especially James Madison said, well, democracy is a threat to the wealthy people. They oppose banking. They oppose the large landowners. How do we keep them in check? Well, we’ve got to have a Supreme Court, and we’ve got to have various ways of making sure that their votes don’t count. Well, the Supreme Court has said just that, that voting should reflect the wealth of the classes that pay for the political campaigns of the candidates who are running in the primaries. And as long as you can have private funding, then essentially the politicians are up for sale. It’s what Americans call pay-to-play. And if you’re a politician and you want to run in a primary, or if you win the primary and run as either a Democrat or a Republican against the opponent, you’ve got to find financial backers who are going to pay for the campaign expenses, and especially the media expenses, the television ads, the radio ads, the newspaper ads and all of the campaigning. That’s what’s been happening in the United States, and we’ll get to this election in a minute. This is the most expensive campaign in history, and one of the issues of the campaign is that either the Republicans or the Democrats will say, well, my opponent is funded by AIPAC, and a vote for my opponent being funded by AIPAC is a vote for the war that is pushing up your oil prices, your gas prices, your diesel prices, your fertilizer prices and all that. So you could say that the whole issue is who is funding which candidates. — Michael Hudson, Democracy Under Oligarchy
Video: Seyed M. Marandi: Trump Is Gambling With The Global Economy — And Iran Knows It
Video: Is The Great Disruption Underway? with Paul GildingIn this Climate Chat episode, we interview author and advocate Paul Gilding as we revisit his 2011 book, The Great Disruption, and his 2012 TED talk, The Earth is Full, and we catch up on his latest work and writings.
Video: Climate Catastrophe Kills Climate Conference.As world leaders prepare to gather for COP31 in Türkiye, a couple of very sobering new climate reports from the UN and The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research have been published. Alongside warnings from the UK’s National Emergency Briefing, the findings raise profound questions about the future of our planet. Can international climate negotiations really deliver solutions on the scale required, or are our political leaders still missing the bigger picture?
Video: Super El Niño Just Took a TERRIFYING Turn — And Scientists Are Sounding the Alarm!
Cop31 must deliver climate progress that people can see is real, host says High-stakes talks involving 190 countries begin on Monday as world grapples with El Niño supercharged by fossil fuels
Beef industry quietly squashes part of its own science curriculum after ranchers protest Lesson for teenagers included how cattle’s methane emissions contribute to climate crisis, but it was then scrapped
Global Youth Rising Up Know There’s No Democracy Without Economic Justice Youth around the world are rising up against capitalism and for democracy. Young people are taking to the streets across France, Italy, Belgium, India, Serbia, and Albania, refusing to surrender their futures to a capitalist system that has abandoned them or to a politics that Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor have described as “end times fascism.” These protests are fueled by mounting anger over deteriorating schools, economic insecurity, unaffordable housing, political corruption, and a ruling class increasingly indifferent to the needs and voices of the young. As far right governments in Europe, the United States, and Latin America cancel out a future plagued by endless wars, climate catastrophe, staggering inequality, deepening poverty, and deteriorating public institutions, young people are rethinking the language of politics, resistance, and hope.
Trump set to lurch further right, claiming US took ‘giant step back’ in elections Trump poised to double down on immigration crackdown and refuse concessions to new Democratic majority in Congress
‘No More Excuses,’ Thunders Bernie Sanders. ‘Democrats Must Deliver’