Skip to content
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!
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:
When Trump leaves the White House millions of his enraged supports, hermetically sealed inside hyperventilating media platforms that feed back to them their rage and hate, will see the vote as fraudulent, the political system as rigged, and the establishment press as propaganda. They will target, I fear, through violence, the Democratic Party politicians, mainstream media outlets and those they demonize as conspiratorial members of the deep state, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci. The Democratic Party is as much to blame for this disintegration as Trump and the Republican Party. The election of Biden is also very bad news for journalists such as Matt Taibbi, Glen Ford, Margaret Kimberley, Glenn Greenwald, Jeffrey St. Clair or Robert Scheer who refuse to be courtiers to the ruling elites. Journalists that do not spew the approved narrative of the right-wing, or, alternatively, the approved narrative of the Democratic Party, have a credibility the ruling elite fears. The worse things get – and they will get worse as the pandemic leaves hundreds of thousands dead and thrusts millions of Americans into severe economic distress –the more those who seek to hold the ruling elites, and in particular the Democratic Party, accountable will be targeted and censored in ways familiar to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, now in a London prison and facing possible extradition to the United States and life imprisonmen — Chris Hedges: The Ruling Elite’s War on Truth
Even though the World Health Organization had, in March 2020, offered coronavirus test kits to the world and had advice on how to combat the coronavirus pandemic in March of 2020, “Effective quarantine is essential for tackling the coronavirus and this cannot happen without extensive testing for covid-19, says World Health Organization assistant director general Bruce Aylward. ‘To actually stop the virus, China] had to do rapid testing of any suspect case, immediate isolation of anyone who was a confirmed or suspected case, and then quarantine the close contacts for 14 days so that they could figure out if any of them were infected,; Aylward told New Scientistin an exclusive interview.’’’Those were the measures that stopped transmission in China, not the big travel restrictions and lockdowns.’” — WHO Expert: We Need More Testing to Beat Coronavirus The White House refused to take advantage of their information. And since then, the Trump adminstration has refuse help fom the World Health Organization, and even stop funding it! — United States Coronavirus Pandemic Crisis: Lessons to be Learned
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!
Scarry Image
Chris Hedges: The Ruling Elite’s War on Truth American political leaders display a widening disconnect from reality intended to mask their complicity in the seizure of power by global corporations and billionaires. Joe Biden’s victory instantly obliterated the Democratic Party’s longstanding charge that Russia was hijacking and compromising US elections. The Biden victory, the Democratic Party leaders and their courtiers in the media now insist, is evidence that the democratic process is strong and untainted, that the system works. The elections ratified the will of the people.
Trump’s Massive, Lawless, and Immoral Legacy to Our Country Will Continue Unless … Trump has gotten away with almost everything throughout his bankruptcy-driven business career and his corrupt, cruel, and costly political years in the White House. Things changed on November 3, when he was retired by the voters.Refusing to concede, however, so as to prolong his crazed fantasies, Trump is distracting the mass media from his looting of the Executive Branch departments to the advantage of big business bosses and his failing family enterprises. Expect this to continue until January 20, 2021. (See my op-ed titled: “If Trump loses, expect him to exact revenge on his way out” Boston Globe, August 10, 2020). Trump and his cronies will get away with their crime sprees unless Joe Biden has a Justice Department team that will follow the law and prosecute any government official who broke the law. In 2009, Barack Obama let law-breaking Wall Streeters and the Bush/Cheney war criminals become successful fugitives from justice. Trump has inflicted lasting damage to our social morality and to the rule of law. Unfortunately, the destructive and uncontrollable momentum unleashed by Trump will not be easily reversed. By Ralph Nader
US Political Crisis Just Entered More Dangerous Phase This weekend the political crisis in America may be entering an even more dangerous phase–a phase that I predicted was possible months ago. On Friday,Trump reportedly asked Republican state legislators in Michigan, where he lost the popular vote, to come to the White House. Trump no doubt wants them to select electors who will vote for him, not for the winner of the vote in Michigan, Biden. The veil of Democracy in America is being ripped away from the body politic right before our eyes. Not only can the Electoral College thwart the popular vote for president; but there are even more nefarious ways for political elites to circumvent the Electoral College if they don’t like it. The electoral college is, of course, the means by which the popular vote for the president is prevented. Instead of Democracy’s principle of ‘one person, one vote’, we have electors who are selected by their state legislatures who then cast their vote for president. That’s the appearance. But it’s even worse than that. By Jack Rasmus
Should Michèle Flournoy be Secretary of Defense? President-elect Joe Biden faces monumental challenges, left to him by an exceptionally dysfunctional administration now heading for the exits—despite temper tantrums en route. Among those challenges, one hardly mentioned during the campaign is stemming the runaway appetite in the Pentagon, the defense industry, and Congress for never-ending increases in the military budget. The president-elect’s apparent pick for secretary of defense, Michèle Flournoy, would not squelch that appetite. Her stated prescriptions for defense are to bring in people ill-suited to curb Pentagon spending, kill off badly needed oversight, and worsen long-standing pathologies that make our armed forces smaller, older, and weaker. By Winslow Wheeler – Pierre Sprey
Environment
‘Historic’ Court Ruling Will Force France To Justify Its Climate Targets A French court this week issued what climate campaigners are calling a “historic decision” in the fight to hold national governments accountable for insufficient action to address the climate crisis. The decision finds that France in recent years has exceeded its “carbon budgets” — the upper limit of allowable carbon emissions to help keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). The French government must now justify within the next three months how its refusal to take more stringent measures to curb emissions in line with the Paris Agreement puts the nation on track to meet its 2030 emissions reduction target. This is the first court ruling of its kind in France — and it could influence other ongoing climate lawsuits in the country. The decision is the latest in a string of successful legal challenges to European governments’ inadequate policies to tackle the climate crisis, including in Ireland and most famously in the Netherlands, which was the first time a court anywhere in the world ruled that a national government has a legal duty to prevent dangerous climate change. By Dana Drugmand
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Tyson Exploits Consumers Just Like Its Animals and the Workers Who Raise Them (Related Articles: 1. Tyson Foods Runs Slave Camp As Workers Are Forced to Wear Diapers, Denied Bathroom Breaks 2. Watch for “U.S. Raised” Label on Chickens Processed in China) The actions of the U.S. meat industry throughout the pandemic have brought to light the true corruption and waste that are inherent within our food system. Despite a new wave of rising COVID-19 cases, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently submitted a proposal to further increase slaughter line speeds by 25 percent, which are already far too fast and highly dangerous. It’s evident that the industry will exploit its workers and animals all to boost its profit. By David Coman-Hidy
Economy:
New Book: Engels 200 – His Contribution to Political Economy Friedrich Engels was Karl Marx’s close collaborator and life-long friend. But his economics has been sadly neglected, being lost under the large shadow of Marx’s Capital and his other economic works. And yet, Engels was the first to present a critique of the contemporary classical political economy of Smith, Ricardo and Malthus from a Marxist perspective – that is before Marx himself. Michael Roberts outlines, explains and analyses Engels’ contribution to a Marxist critique of political economy and capitalism and its relevance today.G20: the Debt Solution This weekend, the G20 leaders’ summit takes place – not physically of course, but by video link. Proudly hosted by Saudi Arabia, that bastion of democracy and civil rights, the G20 leaders are focusing on the impact on the world economy from the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the leaders are alarmed by the huge increase in government spending engendered by the slump forced on the major capitalist governments to ameliorate the impact on businesses, large and small, and on the wider working population. The IMF estimates that the combined fiscal and monetary stimulus delivered by advanced economies has been equal to 20 per cent of their gross domestic product. Middle income countries in the developing world have been able to do less but they still put together a combined response equal to 6 or 7 per cent of GDP, according to the IMF. For the poorest countries, however, the reaction has been much more modest. Together they injected spending equal to just 2 per cent of their much smaller national output in reaction to the pandemic. That has left their economies much more vulnerable to a prolonged slump, potentially pushing millions of people into poverty. By Michael Roberts 
The Corporate Debt Crisis Has Not Gone Away 1. The stock markets do not currently reflect fundamentals. 2. Corporations are still deep in debt and heaping up more debt. 3. The Fed is a contributing cause of the crisis. The Stock Markets Do Not Reflect Fundamentals It has become clear that the stock markets do not reflect fundamentals at the present time. Since March the markets have recovered and reached new highs. The real economy is suffering terribly. US GDP fell over 30% in Q2. It is therefore very difficult to have a clear idea of where markets will be going from here. Lance Roberts thinks that fundamentals eventually catch up with the markets. What is not given is how long it will take before the markets take into account the sad state of the economy. Hanging over the economy like the sword of Damocles is the huge amount of corporate debt.
The Untold Story of Mnuchin’s Demand for the Fed to Shut Down Emergency Lending Programs Fourteen days before U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin released a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, demanding the return of taxpayers’ money and the end to specific Fed emergency programs by the end of the year, four Senate Democrats had written to Mnuchin and Powell asking them to extend those very same emergency programs. The Senate Democrats who authored the letter were Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Mark Warner of Virginia and Chuck Schumer of New York. The letter explained that “As of September, 3.8 million workers suffered permanent job losses, with 2.4 million considered long-term unemployed. Moreover, according to an analysis from Moody’s, without more federal support, another 3 million teachers, nurses, emergency responders, firefighters, and others from around the country will lose their jobs in the next two years.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
What Does the Monetary Reorganisation in Cuba Mean? On 12 October, the Cuban Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil Fernández appeared on the television programme Mesa Redonda [Round Table] to talk about the economic strategy “to boost the economy and overcome the global crisis caused by COVID-19.” A central part of it is the “monetary reorganisation” that has generated so many rumours and uncertainty in Cuba in recent months. By Jorge Martín
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
Even though the World Health Organization had, in March 2020, offered coronavirus test kits to the world and had advice on how to combat the coronavirus pendemic in March of 2020, “Effective quarantine is essential for tackling the coronavirus and this cannot happen without extensive testing for covid-19, says World Health Organization assistant director general Bruce Aylward. ‘To actually stop the virus, China] had to do rapid testing of any suspect case, immediate isolation of anyone who was a confirmed or suspected case, and then quarantine the close contacts for 14 days so that they could figure out if any of them were infected,; Aylward told New Scientistin an exclusive interview.’’’Those were the measures that stopped transmission in China, not the big travel restrictions and lockdowns.’” — WHO Expert: We Need More Testing to Beat Coronavirus The White House refused to take advantage of their information. And since then, the Trump adminstration has refuse help fom the World Health Organization, and even stop funding it! — United States Coronavirus Pandemic Crisis: Lessons to be Learned
. . . His opinion should have been taken seriously since China, notwithstanding the suppression of the Uighurs and democracy in Hong Kong, along with other east Asian countries, were succeeding in bringing the coronavirus epidemic under control. But instead of drawing on this experience, the new cold war against China ensured that any positive news from there was ignored, disbelieved or derided. China’s initial concealment of the epidemic was highlighted, and its success in containing it was disregarded. When China’s return to normality was mentioned, it was attributed to autocratic rule that could not and should not be emulated elsewhere. In point of fact, the Chinese achievement resulted largely from old-fashioned public health measures, with a heavy emphasis on test-and-trace and travel bans, pursued with great energy and with the mobilisation of vast resources. — Patrick Cockburn, America and Britain are the Big Losers on the World Stage as They Fail to Control Covid
The Imperative to Achieve National Improved Medicare For All Health care will be a major issue early in the new Biden/Harris administration. Unemployment is still high with over a million people applying for unemployment benefits last week and 42.6% of working age people without a job. In the United States, losing employment often means losing health insurance. On top of the 30 million people who are already uninsured, it is estimated that nearly 15 million people lost their health insurance due to becoming unemployed as of June. The current number of people without health insurance is not known, but as Biden takes office, it could surpass the 44 million who were uninsured when Obama took office in 2008. Biden’s healthcare plan looks like a replay of the health reform process of 2009-10 when the Democrats effectively divided the movement in support of national improved Medicare for all and pushed through the so-called Affordable Care Act (ACA), which passed without Republican support. Health insurance and pharmaceutical corporate profits have soared since then.
Vaccine Access Advocates Cautiously Optimistic As G20 Summit Ends With Pledge to ‘Spare No Effort’ to Ensure Widespread Distribution “This is not a ‘do-good’ exercise. It is the only way to stop the pandemic dead in its tracks. Solidarity is indeed survival.” World leaders expressed cautious optimism about widespread coronavirus vaccine access as the virtual G20 summit wrapped up with a final statement from the world’s 20 largest economies, expressing that the countries would make sure vaccines are distributed equitably across the globe when they are available. By Julia Conley
Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this 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!
Quotes 0f the Day: