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Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 4 Years Ago and Did Nothing!: Under Capitalism — Human Lives Don’t Matter 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 Racism, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the Banner Headline: “There Is No Peace”
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! For Decades, Blacks Have Been Subjected to The Iron Heel! Currently, the US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply It to Everyone!
Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Now Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World! And Now the Total Caronavirs Deaths in the United States are Over 20% of the Total Deaths in the Entire World!
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!
Images of the Day: The ‘Curve’ Keep Rising!:
The American left has been disappearing into the thoroughly capitalist Democratic Party since the Communist’s Popular Front in 1936 and the Socialist Party’s realignment policy in the 1950s and 1960s. They went in and never came out as a distinctive left alternative. In the absence of a broad independent left party competing for votes, the Democrats have moved steadily to the right in search of swing voters. The Republican Party now represents a revanchist white racism that has always been a force in American politics, but is now declining as it ages out and the country moves toward a majority of people of colour. The GOP is over-represented in the states due to gerrymandered legislative districts, and the undemocratic Electoral College. The Democrats represent the corporate and professional-managerial mainstream as a party that would sit comfortably on the centre-right of the European political spectrum. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is allowed to make speeches, but the corporate wing makes the decisions. The mass base of both parties is the middle and upper-middle classes. The working class votes in low numbers. The Democrats have no solutions to the life-or-death issues we face with the climate, inequality, and the new nuclear arms race. The Democrats have resisted climate action since the Clinton/Gore administration negotiated to weaken the Kyoto Protocols and then never pushed the Senate for ratification. Forty-five years of stagnant wages and growing inequality has led to declining life expectancy in the American working class. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved its Doomsday Clock the closest it has ever been to midnight. None of the major party candidates have addressed the new nuclear arms race as the last bilateral nuclear arms treaty between the US and Russia expires next February. The Greens offer real solutions to these problems. Real solutions can’t wait. — US Green Party Presidential Candidate Offers Socialist Solutions.
But an equally fatal defect of Originalism is found in how it fails to understand the role of precedent in the law. There may be an original Constitution that had some meaning, but over time it has been interpreted, creating precedents to guide judicial reasoning. The meaning of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights includes these precedents. Since the 1980s, and especially now under the Roberts Court, the Originalists, including Justices Thomas and Alito as seen recently in a case where they expressed disagreement with the way Obergefell was decided, have expanded the grounds for the overrule of precedent. They repeatedly quote the phrase “precedent is not an inexorable command” and that if a decision were simply wrong or badly or insufficiently reasoned, that is grounds to overrule it. Originalism ignores how the law evolves and grows, and it runs roughshod on the settled expectations of what the law has come to mean. It rips the law out of its contemporary context and meaning. Amy Coney Barrett is an Originalist, a student of Scalia. No matter what assurances she gave to the Senate about remaining open-minded to precedents, either her past comments on the law, her legal opinions in cases, her ideology, or her interpretive method question her fidelity to precedent. Like her mentor she argued in a 2013 Texas Law Review Article that precedent need not always be followed and in her list of “superprecedents”—supposedly cases that could never be overruled—she excluded Roe v. Wade. By her own analysis respect for precedent is a self-imposed restraint on the Court, not something they have to necessarily follow, and her Originalism, like that of her mentor Scalia, is either a façade for her political views or a method inherently hostile to rights. — Amy Coney Barrett, Constitutional Precedent, and the Problem of Originalism
Videos of the Day:
United States:
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 Reublicrats 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. Rax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay!
Trump Administration Is Paying Big Pharma Billions in Rush for Vaccine We must demand transparency to ensure the vaccine is as safe as possible. Desperate to distract the national discourse from his criminal mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump is promising that a vaccine will be available before Election Day. His vaccine campaign is named “Operation Warp Speed” and there is a real danger that its speed will warp the results. Ironically, the Trump administration is comparing this effort to the Manhattan Project, the highly secret government program to develop the first atomic bomb. “This isn’t a secret government weapon we’re trying to keep from an enemy,” said David Mitchell, founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs. “The enemy is the virus. This is actually a rescue mission to save Americans and humanity from the virus.” By Marjorie Cohn
The Right of First Night?: Using DOJ ‘to Crush a Victim,’ Barr Claims Trump Cannot Be Sued for Denying E. Jean Carroll’s Rape Accusation“There is not a single person in the United States—not the president and not anyone else—whose job description includes slandering women they sexually assaulted,” Carroll’s lawyers said. In Attorney General Bill Barr’s latest attempt to help President Donald Trump avoid accountability for an alleged rape he is accused of committing in the 1990s, Barr on Monday argued in court filings that when the president denied columnist E. Jean Carroll’s accusation last year, he was acting not on behalf of his own interests but in his capacity as a public servant representing the people of the United States. By Julia Conley
Environment:
Large-Scale Permafrost Thawing Twenty-five percent (25%) of the Northern Hemisphere is permafrost. By all appearances, it is melting well beyond natural background rates, in fact, substantially! Making matters much, much worse, new research has identified past warming events of large-scale permafrost thaw in the Arctic that may be analogous to today, thus spotting a parallel problem of large-scale thawing accompanied by massively excessive carbon emissions spewing into the atmosphere, like there’s no tomorrow. (Source: Jannik Martens, Remobilization of Dormant Carbon From Siberian-Arctic Permafrost During Three Past Warming Events, Science Advances, vol. 6, no. 42, October 16, 2020) By Robert Hunziker
Big Energy Operates With Reckless Profiteering of the Environment and No Acountability!: With Bankruptcies Mounting, Faltering Oil and Gas Firms Are Leaving a Multi-billion Dollar Cleanup Bill to the Public Amid a record wave of bankruptcies, the U.S. oil and gas industry is on the verge of defaulting on billions of dollars in environmental cleanup obligations.Even the largest companies in the industry appear to have few plans to properly clean up and plug oil and gas wells after the wells stop producing — despite being legally required to do so. While the bankruptcy process could be an opportunity to hold accountable either these firms, or the firms acquiring the assets via bankruptcy, it instead has offered more opportunities for companies to walk away from cleanup responsibilities — while often rewarding the same executives who bankrupted them. By Justin Mikulka
Forever Causing Cancer: More Traces of Cancer-Causing PFAS in Arctic Raise Alarm Over Global Spread This July, a new study revealed that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — a family of potentially toxic chemicals with more than 4,700 known members — have become even more widespread in our environment than previously thought. The researchers behind the study, which was published in Environmental Science and Technology, detected 11 different PFAS compounds all the way up in the Arctic Ocean, including the first officially confirmed instance of certain relatively newer members of the PFAS family in such a remote body of seawater. The new study provides a snapshot into the sheer ubiquity and pervasiveness of these bio-accumulative compounds, called “forever chemicals” because of their stubborn persistence in the environment. Just how widespread are they? We’re still learning, but they’ve appeared in such far-flung places as the polar bears of East Greenland. Back home, the findings of an Environmental Working Group (EWG) study helped lead the nonprofit watchdog organization to posit that PFASs are probably detectable in “all major water supplies” in the U.S. What’s more, over 200 million Americans could be drinking water containing PFAS above a level EWG scientists believe is safe, according to the organization’s most recent findings. By Daniel Ross
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
COVID-19 in Prisons Is Far Worse Than Previously Thought, Data Trackers Say The public may never know the full extent of death and suffering of incarcerated people during the pandemic.James King was incarcerated in California’s San Quentin State Prison for roughly six years. He spent much of that time analyzing the politics of incarceration by chronicling his experiences living in one of the country’s most notorious prisons. When he was released from prison in December 2019, he joined the staff of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, where he has campaigned for decarceration. By Tyler Hicks
Black Agenda Radio for Week of October 19, 2020 With Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
LGBTQ Newsletter Surveys Prison Conditions The newsletter for the prison abolition organization Black and Pink sent out a 133-page questionnaire to incarcerated LGBTQ persons, earlier this year, so that “we can laser beam solutions to the needs of these individuals,” said organizer Fatima Shabazz, a trans woman. Among the findings of the questionnaire: 85 percent of respondents have spent time in solitary confinement, half of them for two years or more. Black and Pink claims 20,000 members in 13 chapters around the country.
Anti-Blackness Spread by Global CapitalThe ideology of anti-Blackness is both a prerequisite to the rise of capitalism and a product of its spread around the world, said Adam Bledsoe, a professor of Geography, Environment and Society at the University of Minnesota. “What we see today is very much a continuation of the colonial project,” said Bledsoe. Global capital ascribes “value to populations in a differential way,” with Black populations assigned the lowest value.
Protests in Minneapolis Disrupted by Orange-Shirted “Collaborators” with Cops A group calling themselves “violence interrupters” played a role in the October 7 arrest of 50 protesters demanding community control of police, said Jae Yates, of the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar. “They are paid,” said Yates. “We know that this is a city council initiative.” During massive protests in June, members of the Minneapolis city council promised to disband the police force, but have since backed off that position. Yates says her group will “confront” the orange shirts and “tell them to leave” if they show up again at demonstrations.
Labor:
Study Confirms Paid Sick Leave is Crucial in Fight Against Covid-19 “It’s not a magic bullet, but it’s one tool that’s been shown to work. Over and over again.” A team of health policy researchers found that the emergency paid sick leave benefit passed by Congress in March to curb the coronavirus pandemic did “flatten the curve” and prevent a substantial number of Covid-19 cases in the U.S., but despite the fact that this policy improved the nation’s public health, it is set to expire at the end of 2020, well before the crisis is expected to subside. The peer-reviewed study, published late last week in Health Affairs, shows that the paid sick leave provision of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) reduced the spread of the coronavirus. By Kenny Stancil
Economy:
Worst Recovery in Postwar Era Largely Explained by Cuts in Government Spending
Loan Loss Reserves at Mega Banks Are Far from Where They Need to Be It’s time to revisit that scene from the movie, The Big Short, where Steve Carell, playing Mark Baum, is sitting in the audience at the American Securitization Forum and interrupts the speaker on stage who has just stated that he expects subprime losses “will be contained at 5 percent.” Baum loudly asks: “Would you say that it is a possibility or a probability that subprime losses stop at 5 percent?” The speaker says: “I would say that it is a very strong probability, indeed.” Baum sits down but then begins to waive his arm in the air, forming a zero with his fingers. Baum then shouts out: “Zero! Zero! There is a zero percent chance that your subprime losses will stop at 5 percent.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
When Does Incompetence Become a Crime? Politicians grappling with crises, be it a war or a pandemic, are frequently over-impressed by experts with the right bedside manner and a command of the technical jargon. They are less good, and the same applies to the media, in knowing if this apparent expertise has real practical value in averting some pressing danger. Often it does not. A doctor or an academic specialist may know a lot about how the virus operates inside the body, but have no idea and no experience of how to stop it spreading from person to person in an epidemic. This is quite a different skill. By Patrick Cockburn 
New Zealand general election 2020: Labour’s earthquake In a landslide election result New Zealand’s Labour party has won an absolute majority, showing a dramatic shift to the left. However, the programme promises very little and its limits will be exposed by the coming economic tsunami A political earthquake struck New Zealand on general election night, with the Labour Party securing a second term in office with an absolute majority. This is the first time since the MMP voting system was introduced in 1996 that a political party has won such a majority. This election is highly significant in New Zealand politics. It shows the dramatic shift to the left within society and the polarisation taking place. In fact, the only parallel with this election is in the depression-era 1938 general election when Labour was re-elected, under the first-past-the-post voting system, with a swing of 10.1 percent from National to Labour. This enabled Mickey Savage’s Labour Government to introduce the welfare state, and other pro-worker reforms in full.
Decisive Victory of MAS in Bolivia: A Blow to Anti-Indigenous and Anti-Socialist Coups in the Americas The decisive electoral victory of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) in Bolivia may be a point of inflection on the continent that advances the construction of a new South American socialist bloc. After having been removed from power by a military coup with fascist, anti-Indigenous, and neoliberal elements a year ago, ex-president Evo Morales, with his allies, presidential candidate Luis Arce and vice-presidential candidate David Choquehuanca, declared victory in the elections that came to a close on the evening of October 18. According to an exit poll, Arce, who served as Minister of Finance in the Morales administration, was leading in the presidential contest with 52.4 percent of the vote and ex-president Carlos Mesa came in second place with 31.5 percent. The right wing candidate Luis Camacho, allied with the de facto president Jeanine Añez, follows in a distant third place, with only 14.1 percent of the vote. Añez and Mesa have both recognized the outcome of the election[1]. By William Camacaro
Uyghurs in Xinjiang: National Oppression and Imperialist Hypocrisy Both the US and British governments have recently launched a barrage of criticism against China’s treatment of the Uyghurs. The US has gone as far as imposing sanctions on top Chinese state officials responsible for Xinjiang, and the oppression of the Uyghurs by the Chinese state is now regularly featured in the news in the West. According to reports by the capitalist press, hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs are being detained in prison camps, whilst others face extremely repressive conditions. But why only now have western imperialists hypocritically taken up the plight of the Uyghurs? By James Kilby
Education, Health, Science, 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 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
Fauci Says Trump’s Refusal to Wear Mask Is Due to Belief It Makes Him Look Weak During an interview on Sunday evening on CBS’s “60 Minutes” program, Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explained that President Donald Trump’s aversion to wearing a mask is based on the desire to be perceived as strong. Fauci was at times defensive of the president’s attitudes, saying his position on masks in general was “less an anti-science” viewpoint and “more a statement” he was attempting to convey to the American people.“You know, a statement of strength,” Fauci said. “Like, ‘We’re strong. We don’t need a mask.’ That kind of thing.
Total Coronavirus Deaths in the United States: 225,209
Quotes 0f the Day: