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Images Of the Day:
Victim/Vigilante: Wearing a ‘Hoodie’/Carring a Gum
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!
Quotes 0f the Day:
The Cuban Revolution faces very serious difficulties and it is obvious that there is a critical mood among broad sectors of the population. But that does not mean that those who are critical are going to join a clearly counterrevolutionary demonstration, which is in open opposition to the conquests of the revolution, and which is linked to the very imperialist power that for 60 years has used every means in its attempts to crush the will of the Cuban people to decide their own future. On the other hand, the failure of 15N does not mean that everything has returned to normal in Cuba. The problems facing the revolution (imperialist aggression, unequal terms of trade that Cuba experiences in the world market, the existence of the bureaucracy, etc.) are still there. They are serious and must be addressed. — The Red Scarves — For this reason, perhaps the most significant element of the developments in Cuba in recent days has been the sit-in of the red scarves. This is not because of its numerical importance, but rather because of its political importance. And of course, none of the international media paid any regard to the activities of the red scarves. The vultures that they are, they had only come to the island seeking pictures of violence, repression, and the “fall of the regime”. Shortly after the 11 July protests, a group of young Cuban revolutionaries decided to organise a public action against the blockade and in defense of the revolution, but to do so outside the official institutions. Finally, after delays in obtaining permission, a 48-hour sit-in was called at the statue of José Martí in central Havana, from Friday 12 to Sunday 14 November. The organisers decided to call themselves “the red scarves”. Activists from various groups joined in – from the Martin Luther King Center, Cimarronas, La Tizza, the Our America Project, LGBT activists fighting for the new Family Code, artists and university students, etc. — Cuba: Reactionary Protests Flop As ‘Red Scarves’ Rally To Defend Revolution
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 ownershipof the Reublicrats, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay!
Sanders Says Deficit Concerns ‘Seem to Melt Away’ When It’s Time to Fill Pentagon Coffers The Vermont senator called out fellow lawmakers for approving a $778 billion military budget while claiming the government “can’t afford” climate action and Medicare expansion. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont noted in a floor speech Wednesday that concerns about the deficit curiously disappear on Capitol Hill when it’s time to authorize the annual U.S. military budget, which lawmakers are preparing to boost to $778 billion for fiscal year 2022.
Environment:
Imagine Stopping Climate Change was More Important Than Creating More Climate Change Billionaires We are still getting through a worldwide pandemic that has taken tens of millions of lives. While we did develop effective vaccines, they were not produced and distributed quickly enough to prevent enormous loss of life. This is a tragedy that should force us to ask how we could have done better. On the other side, some people did manage to get enormously rich from the pandemic. Specifically, those who had patent monopolies on the mRNA vaccines did very well, as the stock prices of both Pfizer and Moderna soared during the pandemic. Back in April, Forbes identified 40 people who became billionaires as a direct result of their ownership of stock in companies that were profiting off the pandemic. Three of these were from Moderna alone. The number has surely grown, as the stock market has gone up further in the last seven months.
COP26: Capitalism = Death Days before the UN’s COP26 (Conference of Parties) concluded in Glasgow (UK), U.S. and China unveiled an emissions announcement to, in the words of Reuters, “save UN climate talks.’’ Key features of the statement include cutting methane emissions, phasing out coal consumption and protecting forests. The deal’s goal was to keep alive the COP21 (i.e., Paris 2015) accord that capped global temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. For many, the U.S.-China deal, like much of the other proclamation made by government leaders at the conference, exemplified what Swedish climate activities Greta Thunberg dubbed the great “blah, blah, blah.” As she said at the Youth4Climate summit in Milan (Italy) in September: Build back better. Green economy. Blah blah blah. Net zero by 2050. Blah, blah, blah … This is all we hear from our so-called leaders. Words that sound great but so far have not led to action. Our hopes and ambitions drown in their empty promises.
First Fires, Now Floods: B.C. Residents Reeling From Climate Extremes One person dead, hundreds involved in harrowing highway rescues, thousands evacuated from their homes after a wastewater treatment facility flooded, and a shutdown for the Trans Mountain pipeline: these were some of the scenes unfolding after a monster storm dropped a month’s worth of rain on southern British Columbia this past weekend. Tuesday evening brought news of one confirmed death, with CBC News reporting that a woman’s body had been recovered from the site of a mudslide on a highway near Lillooet, 250 northeast of Vancouver, and some 60 kilometres due north of what remains of the town of Lytton after it was incinerated by wildfire June 30. Search and rescue efforts were still under way as The Energy Mix went to virtual press.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Two Men Convicted Of Killing Malcolm X Exonerated Half A Century Later Manhattan judge dismisses convictions of Muhammad Aziz and the late Khalil Islam – the men always maintained their innocence. Muhammad Aziz talks outside the courthouse with members of his family after his conviction in More than half a century after the assassination of Malcolm X, two of his convicted killers were exonerated on Thursday after decades of doubt about who was responsible for the death of the civil rights leader.A Manhattan judge dismissed the convictions of Muhammad Aziz and the late Khalil Islam, after prosecutors and lawyers said a renewed investigation found new evidence that the men were not involved and determined that authorities withheld some of what they knew.
Book Review: ‘Why the U.S. Government Assassinated Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.’ Review by Roger Hollander of the book by Roland Sheppard, just published by ReMarx Publishing The question of who ordered the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. is a vital one, and thousands of pages have been written on the issue. Those who dismiss the notion that the United States government would engage in assassination — by characterizing those who believe this as “conspiracy nuts” — willfully ignore the 1975 Church Committee Report that exposed covert, illegal government activities and the many CIA-orchestrated assassinations and coups d’etat from Africa to Latin America.The CIA’s experience with overseas assassinations has given it more than enough expertise to conduct domestic assassinations, with the added advantage of having control over investigating agencies at the local, state and national levels.
Why the U.S. Government Assassinated Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Pamphlet (2021 Update) 2 Men Convicted of Killing Malcolm X Will Be Exonerated After Decades The 1966 convictions of the two men are expected to be thrown out after a lengthy investigation, validating long-held doubts about who killed the civil rights leader. Two of the men found guilty of the assassination of Malcolm X are expected to have their convictions thrown out on Thursday, the Manhattan district attorney and lawyers for the two men said, rewriting the official history of one of the most notorious murders of the civil rights era.
Two Men Convicted Of Killing Malcolm X Exonerated Half A Century Later Manhattan judge dismisses convictions of Muhammad Aziz and the late Khalil Islam – the men always maintained their innocence. Muhammad Aziz talks outside the courthouse with members of his family after his conviction in More than half a century after the assassination of Malcolm X, two of his convicted killers were exonerated on Thursday after decades of doubt about who was responsible for the death of the civil rights leader.A Manhattan judge dismissed the convictions of Muhammad Aziz and the late Khalil Islam, after prosecutors and lawyers said a renewed investigation found new evidence that the men were not involved and determined that authorities withheld some of what they knew.
The Major Historical Role of The Police 
Diversifying the Police Force Won’t End Police Violence Hiring a diverse police force may change what cops look like, but it doesn’t change what policing means and does. After a white cop fatally shoots someone, prison reformers often suggest hiring more Black cops or more women. But diversifying the police force won’t end police violence, and neither will milquetoast reforms that have been tried and tried again.
Systemic Racism: US Officials Outrageously Claim Black Men Fleeing Slavery Lack “Credible Fear” The DHS is issuing form letters of denial to Black asylum seekers from Mauritania who escaped enslavement and torture. Less than two months after U.S. border patrol agents were caught on video flogging Haitian asylum seekers with riding crops, the Biden administration is continuing its pursuit of deportation of Black asylum seekers with a seemingly banal but still devastating instrument: boilerplate form letters.
Labor:
John Deere Strike:UAWBureaucracy/JohnDeer ‘Partnership’ Forces/Steals a Yes Vote on the 3rd Try Striking Deere Workers Approve New Contract On the Third Try. Under the agreement, workers can earn 20 percent beyond (Piecework) their base pay when they hit productivity targets, rather than 15 percent, according to a union spokesman. . . . Matt Pickrell, a longtime worker at a John Deere plant in Ottumwa, Iowa, said that some workers languished in jobs in which it was effectively impossible to earn performance pay, like employees on an assembly line slowed by supply-chain disruptions.
Economy:
In my view, Grossman makes an important point in emphasising that the production of value is the driving force behind the contradictions in capitalism not its circulation or distribution, even as these are an integral part of the circuit of capital, or value in motion. This issue of the role of production retains even more relevance in debates on the relevant laws of motion of capitalism today, given the development of ‘financialisation’ and the apparent slumber of industrial proletariat. In the chapter on dynamics, Grossman perceptively exposes the failure of mainstream theories which are based on static analysis. Such theories lead to the conclusion that crises are just shocks to an essentially tendency towards equilibrium and even a stationary state – something that Keynes too accepted. Capitalism is not gradually moving on (with occasional shocks) in a generally harmonious way towards superabundance and a leisure society where toil ceases – on the contrary it is increasingly driven by crises, inequality and destruction of the planet. It is the “incongruence” between the value side and the material side of the process of reproduction that is the key to the disruption of capitalist accumulation. There is no symmetry as the mainstream thinks. The value of individual commodities tends to fall while the mass of material goods increases. Here is the essence of the transitional nature of capitalism as expressed in Marx’s ”dual” value theory and the law of profitability. — Grossman On Capitalism’s Contradictions
Martin Wollf: Fed Policy Must Adjust For Inflation Finally, a general wage-price spiral became all too visible. Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.comT&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here. It starts with the occasional rock as the policymakers row over the sea of denial. Then many more rocks appear. Finally, they see that they are sailing towards an inflationary cliff. Only with great effort do they turn the ship around and row to safety. This is how the world is beginning to feel to someone whose life as an economist began in the 1970s. Few wanted to believe Milton Friedman’s warnings. But he was right. The process began to be visible with jumps in prices in what the late John Hicks called “flexprice” markets, such as those for food. Some jumps in prices could be explained away by supply restrictions, such as the oil embargo of 1973-74. In what Hicks called “fixprice” markets we saw excess demand and shortages. But, as price rises became more general and real wages were being eroded, workers became increasingly militant. Finally, a general wage-price spiral became all too visible.
Michael Roberts Blog: The latest EU Commission economic forecast for the Euro area indicates that Eurozone GDP growth next year will still not put the area back on the pre-pandemic growth path – it’s a reverse square root trajectory from 2019 to 2023. Meanwhile energy and retail prices are rocketing.
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University of Michigan’s Preliminary November 2021 Consumer Sentiment Plunged Anew •
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October 2021 Consumer Inflation Broadly Jumped to a Four-Decade High, Highest Since the Days of Runaway Inflation in the Early 1980s •
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October Housing Starts Continued in Deepening Downturn
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October Industrial Production Was Spiked by a Hurricane,
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Retail Sales Were Spiked by Surging Inflation
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October 2021 Annual PPI Final-Demand Goods Inflation, and Annual and Monthly Construction Inflation Jumped to Historic Highs (Final-Demand Series Created in 2009)
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Despite Highly Questionable Headline Payroll-Employment Gains, October 2021 Payrolls Continued to Hold Well Shy of Economic Recovery • Worst-Ever 12-Month, Quarterly and Monthly Real Merchandise Trade Deficits (Third-Quarter and September 2021) Continued Pummeling U.S. Economic Activity, Despite FOMC Happy Hype
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November 2021 FOMC Announced It Would Taper Its Regular $120 Billion in Monthly Asset Purchases by $15 Billion in November and by Another $15 Billion in December 2021; Such Would Continue, Assuming the Rather Doubtful Presumption of No Further Economic Downturn, or That No “… Risks Emerge That Could Impede the Attainment of the [FOMC] Committee’s Goals”
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Advance” Third-Quarter 2021 Annualized Real GDP Growth of 2.02% Was Entirely in Increased Inventories, Where Final Sales Declined at an Annualized Pace of 0.07% (-0.07%), the First Decline Since the Great-Recession, Outside of the Initial Pandemic-Collapsed Quarters
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Separately, Third-Quarter ShadowsStats Corrected GDP Contracted by 0.05% (-0.05%)
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Headline Year-to-Year GDP Inflation Hit a 38-Plus Year High of 4.53% • September 2021 Money Supply Growth Continued Surging at Record High Levels
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Preliminary-October 2021 Monetary Base Growth Softened Minimally, but Was Rebounding Anew in Early November.
Traders Are Running for the Exits at JPMorgan Chase. Bloomberg News Can’t Figure Out Why Last Thursday, Hannah Levitt of Bloomberg News published a report about a large trader exodus at JPMorgan Chase. She wrote: “…By this fall, many of the team’s heaviest hitters had gone. “The setting wasn’t some struggling investment bank. It was the equity derivatives desk inside the mighty JPMorgan Chase & Co. – one of many pockets of employee turnover that have erupted there in recent months, keeping the company’s recruiters busy.”
World:
Cuba: Reactionary Protests Flop As ‘Red Scarves’ Rally To Defend Revolution In the end, the much anticipated opposition demonstration of 15N in Cuba did not materialise. The organisers’ ties with Washington and with counterrevolutionary and terrorist elements removed any legitimacy from their call to mobilise. In the end, the much anticipated opposition demonstration of 15N in Cuba did not materialise. The organisers’ ties with Washington and with counterrevolutionary and terrorist elements removed any legitimacy from their call to mobilise. Selective police repression did the rest. After calling off the demonstration, the public face of 15N, playwright Yunior García, ended up leaving for Madrid. But perhaps the most significant development in these few days – about which the Western capitalist media has been silent – has been the rise of the red scarf movement. The total failure of N15 has dealt a severe blow to all those who were expecting and had prepared the ground for large anti-government demonstrations, police repression and regime change. The US had issued stern warnings of more sanctions should the Cuban government carry out a crackdown, in the typical double standards of imperialism, which turns a blind eye to brutal repression of peaceful demonstrators and police killings in its own country. European Union MEPs tried to land on the island shouting, “we want the same for Cuba that we have in Europe.” They were referring to so-called “human rights” – rights about which the Polish police in the same capitalist EU show a very different regard for when they deploy tear gas, barbed wire and water cannons against refugees at their border seeking asylum and humanitarian protection.
U.S. Military Training in Mexico Increased As Human Rights Waned, New Database Reveals. In the years after the U.S. pledged to invest in human rights and rule of law, the Pentagon spent millions training elite Mexican units how to fight. FAMILIES IN THE Mexican state of Tamaulipas were left reeling last week after a federal judge released from custody 12 members of an elite U.S.-trained special operations unit accused of kidnapping their loved ones. According to the families, the Mexican marines orchestrated a wave of terror during their six-month deployment in the city of Nuevo Laredo, just across the border from Laredo, Texas, that resulted in at least 47 abductions in 2018. The bodies of 19 victims were later recovered, some bearing signs of torture; 25 people remain missing, including a teenage U.S. citizen. The youngest of the victims was a 14-year-old boy.
Education.Health,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
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!
United States:
ShadowGovernment Statistic Daily Update –(November 17th to 19th)