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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 it comes to “tax breaks for rich people or corporate welfare or bloated military budgets, that’s OK,” said Sanders, deriding the GOP’s position. “But when you stand up and you say that working class families need some help, ‘Oh my god, the world is gonna collapse.'” “So I am a little bit tired of that hypocrisy,” Sanders continued. “I’m tired of companies like Amazon making billions and billions of dollars not paying a nickel in federal taxes—no one talks about that. But when you’re helping a mom trying to feed her kids, ‘Oh my god, we can’t afford it.’ This is hypocrisy. — ‘Tired of That Hypocrisy’: Sanders Blasts GOP for Claiming $2,000 Checks Are Too Costly After Passing $1.5 Trillion in Tax Cuts
Videos of the Day:
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
Year End Report: Dr. Trump’s’ ‘Coronavirus War’: Due to His Incompetence, Mis-Leadership, and Depraved Indifference, We Are Still The World Coronavirus Leader! The Casualty Count Is: 20,444,153 Total Cases, 354,175 Total Deaths,12,123,686 Total Recovered , and 29,214 People in Serious/Critical Condition!
The Rise of Government Violence and Government Encouraged Extra-legal Violence: Year for Far Right Violence in the US This year was quite active for the far right in the United States, especially after its relative downturn in 2019 as an active street movement compared to the recent past. Although the far right may not have committed as many high-profile massacres as previous years, 2020 saw more murders and car attacks at demonstrations than any year in recent memory. While the openly fascist wing of the “alt-right” continued to implode over the past year, some on the far right picked up steam: the Boogaloo movement — a new grouping of younger activists with militia-style politics, but the look and feel of the alt-right; Gropyers — white nationalists and their allies who are trying to influence the Trumpist movement from inside; and followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, who believe Trump is always about to arrest a cabal of liberal, deep state, satanic pedophiles. Moreover, aggressive street demonstrations led by the Proud Boys reached a fever pitch, inspired by comments from Donald Trump, and renewed opposition to the revived Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. By Spencer Sunshine
National Park Ranger Condemned for Attacking Unarmed Indigenous Man on Sacred Native Land “Public lands are stolen lands,” asserted Red Nation. “Indigenous people have the right to practice their culture and spiritual ways on Indigenous land without fear of repression, discrimination, or violence.” By Brett Wilkins
Pabdemic Crisis: 1.5 Trillion for th 1%. — Nothing for the Pandemic Victims!: ‘Tired of That Hypocrisy’: Sanders Blasts GOP for Claiming $2,000 Checks Are Too Costly After Passing $1.5 Trillion in Tax Cuts “When you stand up and you say that working class families need some help, ‘Oh my god, the world is gonna collapse.'” By Jake Johnson
‘They’re Liars’: Activists Say Brooklyn Residents Were Not Informed of Fracked Gas Pipeline Environmentalist groups say the pipeline, intended to funnel gas from Pennsylvania to north Brooklyn, is an example of environmental racism National Grid, the public utility company behind the pipeline, has already completed the first four phases of construction, and says it did community outreach in neighborhoods that would be affected. But residents like Rodriguez dispute the claim, saying they only learned about the project in 2019 because of local environmentalist groups. (National Grid did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on this matter.) Those groups – like the Sane Energy Project and Frack Outta Brooklyn – are calling on local officials to stop the pipeline, and say the project – which is meant to funnel fracked natural gas from Pennsylvania to existing infrastructure in north Brooklyn – is another example of environmental racism taking place in Black and brown communities. By Audrey Carleton
Environment:
2020: A Critical Year For Our Future And For the Climate Climate change is here and this is what it looks like: more frequent flooding in the central US, a longer and more costly wildfire season in California, and droughts across the Great Plains. Like investing in your retirement, the sooner we take action, the better chance we have at preventing the direst impacts of our rapidly warming world. The world’s best scientists tell us that to undo the most extreme scenarios of climate change, 2020 must be the year for coordinated, comprehensive climate action. But we’ve got a lot of work to do before then. The good news is that global momentum around climate change is building toward a crescendo. Six in 10 Americans are now either “alarmed” or “concerned” about climate change, a number that has more than doubled in the past five years. Hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life, including students, teachers, communities of faith, health care professionals are taking to the streets to demand climate action. And more than 500 global companies have committed to set climate goals based on the best available science.
These Are Some Climate Stories That Flew Under the Radar in 2020 At the start of December 2020, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres spoke at Columbia University, appearing not before a packed auditorium as in years past, but before a “virtual” audience, making his annual State of the Planet address. “To put it simply,” he said, “the state of the planet is broken.” “Today, we are at 1.2 degrees of warming and already witnessing unprecedented climate extremes and volatility in every region and on every continent,” Guterres said. “Let’s be clear: human activities are at the root of our descent towards chaos,” he went on. “But that means human action can help solve it.” The speech was a fitting postscript for a year that brought not just the Covid-19 pandemic, but also a pummeling of catastrophes worldwide, many related to climate change. By Sharon Kelly
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
2020: Yearning to Be Free
Photos of the Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley in 2020 The disproportionate toll that COVID-19 is taking on the Black community brought environmental justice issues to the forefront during 2020. Calls for dealing with climate change and environmental justice were elevated by president-elect Biden, who spoke about endangered communities in the last presidential debate and on his campaign website, calling for environmental justice and “rooting out the systemic racism in our laws, policies, institutions, and hearts.” That toll is apparent in Louisiana where I continued to document the struggle for environmental justice for DeSmog throughout 2020. These photos are part of an ongoing DeSmog series on the industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans known as ‘Cancer Alley’ which hosts more than 100 petrochemical plants and refineries. Environmental racism and pollution have left fenceline communities especially vulnerable to COVID-19. By Julie Dermansky
Labor:
Economy:
World:
2020 Latin America and the Caribbean in Review: the Pink Tide May Rise Again The balance between the US drive to dominate Latin America and the Caribbean and its counterpart, the Bolivarian cause of regional independence and integration, tipped portside by year end 2020 with major popular victories, including reversal of the coup in Bolivia and the constitutional referendum in Chile. Central has been the persistence of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution against the asphyxiating US blockade, along with the defiance by Cuba and Nicaragua of US regime-change measures. By Roger Harris
2020 Latin America and the Caribbean in Review: the Pink Tide May Rise Again The balance between the US drive to dominate Latin America and the Caribbean and its counterpart, the Bolivarian cause of regional independence and integration, tipped portside by year end 2020 with major popular victories, including reversal of the coup in Bolivia and the constitutional referendum in Chile. Central has been the persistence of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution against the asphyxiating US blockade, along with the defiance by Cuba and Nicaragua of US regime-change measures. By Roger Harris
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 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
World Faces Covid-19 “Vaccine Apartheid” Even countries that hosted vaccine trials — like Argentina, South Africa, Brazil, and Turkey — will not receive adequate supplies. Pfizer ceo albert bourla recently heaped praise on “the almost 44,000 people who selflessly raised their hands to participate in our trial.”“Each of you has helped to bring the world one step closer to our shared goal of a potential vaccine to fight this devastating pandemic,” Bourla wrote in an open letter to volunteers who took part in Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine research, which was conducted in Argentina, South Africa, Brazil, Germany, and Turkey as well as the U.S. His letter was published on November 9, the same day Pfizer announced that the vaccine was more than 90 percent effective at preventing the disease, and Bourla laid this considerable accomplishment at the feet of the medical volunteers: “You are the true heroes, and the whole world owes you a tremendous debt of gratitude.” But Argentina, South Africa, Brazil, and Turkey will have to be satisfied with Pfizer’s gratitude, because (like most countries in the world) they won’t be receiving enough of the vaccine to inoculate their populations, at least not anytime soon. By Sharon Lerner
Website Created by Gates Foundation Leaves Open Personal Data of Hundreds of Thousands of Students The Financial Times reported a major data breach of personally identifiable student data on a website funded by the Gates Foundation. Bill Gates, as we know, is a data aficionado. Several years ago, he created an ill-fated project called InBloom with the intent of gathering the personal data of millions of students. Fortunately it was killed off by parent activists Leonie Haimson and Rachel Stickland, who created the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. The “cloud” is not secure. The personal details of hundreds of thousands of US students were exposed to hackers after a database was left unsecured by Get Schooled, an education charity set up by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Viacom. Get Schooled was set up a decade ago to help students from low-income, minority and immigrant backgrounds with their college applications and financial aid, and to offer job advice. But it left a database of 125m records, including 930,000 email addresses belonging to children, teenagers and college students, “open and accessible” earlier this year when it overhauled its website, said the UK cyber security company TurgenSec. TurgenSec said the database included names, age, gender and school and graduation details of the individuals. Contact information such as addresses and phone numbers was also accessible. By Diane Ravitch
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!
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United States: