Skip to content
Images Of the Day:
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:
Videos of the Day:
On Contact: Business Secrets of Drug Dealers On the show, Chris Hedges discusses the business secrets of drug-dealing with investigative journalist Matt Taibbi.No one knows exactly how big the underground or illegal economy is in the United States, but most estimates say it’s huge, 11%, maybe 12% of the US’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP), that’s well over $2 trillion. The underground economy, designed to avoid taxation and government oversight, has its own set of rules, one of them being that it deals exclusively in cash. The 2008 global financial meltdown and the economic fallout from the pandemic have, by most estimates, seen an expansion of the illegal economy, where people make an off-the-books living. The IRS estimates it lost $441 billion in taxes between 2011 and 2013 due to unreported wages.
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 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!
The Costs of War to the American Taxpayer Our needs versus the Pentagon’s. The interest alone that this country will fork over for those wars would have undoubtedly been more than enough to fund both infrastructure bills in their original forms.
BarrySheppard: The U.S. Is Destroying the People of Afghanistan. When the U.S. left Afghanistan in August it also froze almost all foreign aid to the country. It has now come to light that the major part of the economy under the U.S. military and its puppet government was completely dependent on that foreign aid. In other words, the U.S. invasion destroyed the Afghan domestic economy, which was only kept afloat by aid from outside. The U.S. also froze the $9 billion reserves of the Afghan central bank held in U.S. and other Western banks. That caused banks to fail across the country. The currency tumbled. Pulling the rug of U.S.-created foreign aid out from under has left the economy in shambles. The result is what UN agencies say is a looming humanitarian crisis including mass starvation of 23 million Afghans in the winter that has begun. These actions by the United States come on top of hundreds of thousands of Afghanis (the real number is not known) killed as a result of the U.S. invasion, more maimed, and many scars left. One of these scars is the estimate by international health officials that two-thirds of the Afghan people suffer mental illness. Washington, with full bipartisan support, is making the people of Afghanistan pay for its humiliating defeat in the 20-year-old war. — Democracy Now interviews on U.S.-Caused Catastrophe — A November 16 discussion conducted by Democracy Now hosts Amy Goodman and Juan González with Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, gives greater detail on the looming U.S.-caused catastrophe. Here are excerpts:
From Bush to Obama, and Trump to Biden, U.S. Militarism Is the Great Unifier Many Democrats, Liberals, traditional conservatives, and even some leftists continue to tell themselves that the election of Joe Biden was the first step toward restoring U.S. standing in the world after the damage caused by Donald Trump. And in a variety of ways — many stylistic and some substantive — that perspective has merit. But when it comes to national security policy, the U.S. has been on a steady, hypermilitarized arc for decades. Taken broadly, U.S. policy has been largely consistent on “national security” and “counterterrorism” matters from 9/11 to the present.
‘What Hypocrisy’: Right-Wing Dems Quiet as Military Budget Far Exceeds Cost of Biden’s Agenda Sen. Bernie Sanders criticized his colleagues who complain about social spending but “all of a sudden forget about the deficit when we’re talking about an annual defense budget of $778 billion.” Right-wing Democrats who have spent the past several months griping about the cost of the Build Back Better Act—and lopping roughly $2 trillion off the bill’s top line—are facing growing pushback from progressive lawmakers and analysts as Congress gets ready to approve a military budget that’s far more expensive on an annual basis.
Environment:
The Double Deformation Economic exploitation is only one aspect of capitalism. The crisis of humanity and the crisis of the earth system are inseparable The exploitation of workers is at the core of capitalism. It explains capital’s drive to divide workers in order to grow. Exploitation is the source of the inequality characteristic of capitalism. To fight inequality, we must fight capitalist exploitation. However, inequality is only one aspect of capitalism. In and by itself, exploitation is inadequate to grasp the effects of capital’s drive and thus the products of capitalism. Focus upon exploitation is one-sided because you do not know the enemy unless you understand the double deformation inherent in capitalism.
The Dreaded Rainforest Shift arbon sink to Carbon Source Major portions of the Amazon rainforest have shifted from a carbon sink to a carbon source. This shift has severe planet-wide negative implications. Studies of the Amazon Rainforest over the past decade have shown telltale signals of an impending shift from a carbon sink of heat-trapping gases to a source of greenhouse gases. It’s a dangerous shift that will destabilize the atmosphere of the entire planet. Alas, the dreaded shift has been confirmed via a laborious ten-year airborne detailed study.
Chomsky and Pollin: Protests Outside of COP26 Offered More Hope Than the Summit The conference ended on November 13 with a disheartening “compromise” on the climate after two weeks of negotiation. The legacy of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) this fall was perhaps best encapsulated by its president, who bowed his head and — close to tears — actually apologized for the process, which ended with a last-minute watering-down of participants’ pledges on coal. “May I just say to all delegates I apologize for the way this process has unfolded and I am deeply sorry,” said Alok Sharma, the British politician who served as president for COP26. The conference ended on November 13 with a disheartening “compromise” deal on the climate after two weeks of negotiations with diplomats from more than 190 nations.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Ahmaud Arbery is Responsible for His Own Death On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was running in the Satilla Shores neighborhood in Brunswick, GA, when two decent, gun-toting citizens followed him in their truck. And, because Arbery refused to stop and answer Gregory and Travis McMichael’s questions, he was shot, in broad daylight, in what the McMichaels and their lawyers are asserting to be an act of self-defense. Ahmaud Arbery is an African American resident of the extended neighborhood, and he likes to run. The father son McMichael team are a former cop and former coast guard ensign; they are white, they carry guns, spend much time viewing security recordings, and consider themselves to be the neighborhood’s armed guardians.
COP26: Black Agenda Report Special Issue
BAR Editors
Black Agenda Report is giving special attention to the recent COP26 climate summit. The editorial team and contributors will present more themed issues in the future and provide in-depth analysis to subjects of importance to BAR readers.
Climate Action Pretense at COP26
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Joe Biden’s presence at COP26 was a photo opportunity giving the impression that he is fighting the climate crisis. But the U.S. and other governments continue carbon production while pretending to take action and ignore the needs of the Global South who suffer at the hands of the rich nations
COP26: Greenwashing and Plutocratic Misadventures
Ajamu Baraka, BAR Contributing Editor
For all the policy failures of COP26 it may actually be an inflection point in history — a point where social and political conditions force a transformation of consciousness and politics that can usher in epochal change.
A Dirty Occupation: The U.N.’s Criminal Enterprise and Ecological Catastrophe in Haiti
Jemima Pierre, BAR Contributor What are the environmental and ecological impacts of large-scale military occupations by the United Nations “peacekeeping” missions? The deadly cholera epidemic unleashed on the Haitian people by UN soldiers is an extension of a totality of violence – material, political, and ecological – enacted by a presumably humanitarian peacekeeping mission.
EXCERPT: Genocide: The Social Lynching of Africans and their Descendants in Brazil, Abdias do Nascimento
Editors, Black Agenda Review
The late Brazilian intellectual, artist, and activist Abdias do Nascimento argues that racial democracy is premised on an idea of racial mixing that not only valorizes whiteness, but is predicated on the dilution and disappearance of the African race — on an annihilationist practice of “genocide.”
BAR Book Forum: Camisha Russell’s “The Assisted Reproduction of Race”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Camisha Russell. Russell is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Oregon. Her book is The Assisted Reproduction of Race.
Censorship is the Last Gasp of the Liberal Class
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
It is the liberal class which is determined to censor as much of public discourse as possible. They collude with big technology social media companies to determine what will and will not be seen and heard. In so doing they narrow the issues and positions which the public are able to consider for themselves. Ultimately the attacks are waged against the left.
Officer Prodigy
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR Poet in Residence
F.W. de Klerk: Requiem for a Racist Murderer
Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR Editor and Columnist
F.W. de Klerk was the last apartheid president of South Africa. But remnants of that system remain, and the struggle continues to completely erase the legacy of apartheid criminality.
Industrial Nations Value Capitalism Over People at Global Climate Conference
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
Inaction on the climate crisis is to be expected when capital is valued more than humanity.
Nicaragua Has a Public Relations Problem, Not a Democracy Problem
Roger Harris
Nicaragua’s recent elections were conducted with transparency and freedom of choice for voters. The only problem is with the United States and its determination to undo the will of Nicaraguans and overthrow the government they elected. U.S. corporate media act as governmental spokespeople and aid in the manipulation.
COP26 Was a Failure But the People’s Alternative Can Still Be a Success
Monthly Review Online
COP26 ended the way climate summits always do, with promises for change from countries which have every intention of keeping the status quo. The only possibility for change lies with peoples mass movements.
So Said, Not So Easily Done
Steve D. Whitaker
The island nations of the Caribbean are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Their governments and people need action from those countries with the power to stop the impending catastrophe.
Let a Hundred Socialist Flowers Bloom: A Conversation with Issa Shivji
Issa Shivji
In this extensive interview, socialist activist and writer Issa Shivji discusses the peasantry, capitalist development and socialism. In a discussion with Freedom Mazwi he argues that those who predicted the end of history, have been proven woefully wrong. Capitalism and the planet are in deep crisis. For the first time in decades people in both the South and the North are openly using the ideas and slogans of socialism – even if they have divergent ideas. Shivji argues, we must let a hundred socialist flowers bloom.
We’re About to Pass Up a Generational Opportunity to Stem the Climate Crisis
Basav Sen
The Build Back Better program isn’t just just inadequate on climate. It will have disastrous consequences if there is no active mass movement to counter its provisions.
Organizing Against Racism and Class Oppression
Margaret Kimberley and Danny Haiphong
Core organizer for Freedom Fighters DC Afeni joins Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley to discuss her activism and views on the current political situation in the United States.
Labor:
78% Of Workers Live Paycheck To Paycheck(2019) CareerBuilder found that 78% of U.S. workers are living paycheck to paycheck. This number may be further exacerbated by the recent federal government shutdown, which has resulted in more than 800,000 federal employees not receiving paychecks. So, what can you do to battle financial pressure? Here’s what you need to know and how to improve your financial profile. CareerBuilder found that 78% of U.S. workers are living paycheck to paycheck. This number may be further exacerbated by the recent federal government shutdown, which has resulted in more than 800,000 federal employees not receiving paychecks.So, what can you do to battle financial pressure?Here’s what you need to know and how to improve your financial profile. — Living Paycheck To Paycheck — According to the 2017 survey, CareerBuilder, a leading job site, found some startling statistics related to debt, budgeting and making ends meet.For example, here are some findings from the survey:
-
Nearly one in 10 workers making $100,000+ live paycheck to paycheck
-
More than 1 in 4 workers do not set aside any savings each month
-
Nearly 3 in 4 workers say they are in debt – and more than half think they always will be
-
More than half of minimum wage workers say they have to work more than one job to make ends meet
-
28% of workers making $50,000-$99,999 usually or always live paycheck to paycheck, and 70% are in debt
-
The survey also found that 32% of the nearly 3,500 full-time workers surveyed use a budget and only 56% save $100 or less a month.
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics Money Supply ChartsThe Fed ceased publishing M-3, its broadest money supply measure, in March 2006. The SGS M-3 Continuation estimates current M-3 based on ongoing Fed reporting of M-3’s largest components (M-2, institutional money funds and partial large time deposits) and proprietary modeling of the balance. See the Money Supply Special Report for full definitions. In February 2021, the Fed redefined its narrowest M-1 Money Supply measure back to May 2020, to incorporate the bulk of Non M-1 M-2, with headline M-1 now covering 93% of total M-2, instead of the prior 28%. In order to preserve the information reflected in the most liquid measures of M-1, ShadowStats uses the Basic M-1 Money Supply in its charts and Table here. The original Money Supply measure, Basic M-1 is defined as Currency plus Demand Deposits (checking accounts). 
There is a consensus among U.S. Congressional Investigators, former bankers and international banking experts that U.S. and European banks launder between $500 billion and $1 trillion of dirty money each year, half of which is laundered by U.S. banks alone. As Senator Carl Levin summarizes the record: “Estimates are that $500 billion to $1 trillion of international criminal proceeds are moved internationally and deposited into bank accounts annually. It is estimated that half of that money comes to the United States”. . . All the big banks specializing in international fund transfer are called money center banks, some of the biggest process up to $1 trillion in wire transfers a day. For the billionaire criminals an important feature of correspondent relationships is that they provide access to international transfer systems — that facilitate the rapid transfer of funds across international boundaries and within countries. The most recent estimates (1998) are that 60 offshore jurisdictions around the world licensed about 4,000 offshore banks which control approximately $5 trillion in assets. One of the major sources of impoverishment and crises in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Russia and the other countries of the ex-U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, is the pillage of the economy and the hundreds of billions of dollars which are transferred out of the country via the corresponding banking system and the Private Banking system linked to the biggest banks in the U.S. and Europe. Russia alone has seen over $200 billion illegally transferred in the course of the 1990s. The massive shift of capital from these countries to the U.S. and European banks has generated mass impoverishment and economic instability and crises. This in turn has created increased vulnerability to pressure from the IMF and World Bank to liberalize their banking and financial systems leading to further flight and deregulation which spawns greater corruption and overseas transfers via private banks as the Senate reports demonstrate. The increasing polarization of the world is embedded in this organized system of criminal and corrupt financial transactions. While speculation and foreign debt payments play a role in undermining living standards in the crisis regions, the multi-trillion dollar money laundering and bank servicing of corrupt officials is a much more significant factor, sustaining Western prosperity, U.S. empire building and financial stability. The scale, scope and time frame of transfers and money laundering, the centrality of the biggest banking enterprises and the complicity of the governments, strongly suggests that the dynamics of growth and stagnation, empire and re-colonization are intimately related to a new form of capitalism built around pillage, criminality, corruption and complicity.
At 3:12 P.M. Yesterday, the Stock Market Changed Its Mind on another Four Years of Jerome Powell and Plunged Fed Chair Jerome Powell now finds himself in the same position as Morgan Stanley’s Howie Hubler and JPMorgan’s Bruno Iksil: he’s got a big trade on and no exit plan. The problem for the U.S. economy is this: Hubler and Iksil were gambling with billions of dollars. Powell is gambling with trillions of dollars. Powell’s Fed has effectively become the Whale in the U.S. debt market. Powell was last sworn in as Fed Chair on February 5, 2018. Five days earlier, the securities held on the Fed’s balance sheet totaled $4.2 trillion. As of last Wednesday, that figure stood at $8.179 trillion, thanks to Powell’s endless purchases of U.S. Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Making this situation even more dicey, the Fed bought these debt securities with money it creates out of thin air. The U.S. taxpayer is on the hook for 98 percent of the Fed’s balance sheet.
World:
Socialists Secure Massive Victory in Venezuelan Elections The United Socialist Party of Venezuela secured a resounding victory in Sunday’s regional and local elections, which were defined by the return of obstinate far right political parties to Venezuela’s democratic process after years of United States-backed destabilization efforts and violent regime-change plots. Preliminary results from the country’s electoral authority showed Chavistas winning up to 20 of the 23 governorships that were up for grabs. The results cemented the ruling socialists’ dominance over a political opposition that has struggled to unite under a cohesive strategy and banner after years of violent political schemes that failed to oust President Nicolás Maduro from power despite the opposition having considerable bipartisan support from the U.S. political establishment, which maintains a punishing sanctions regime on the country.
What China Learned From U.S. Capitalism’s Development U.S. capitalism was, in certain ways, the world’s most successful capitalism until recently. Better than the capitalist systems of Britain, Germany, and Japan, U.S. capitalism avoided two key traps. First, it found a remarkable way to manage the capitalist-worker class struggle for a long time before it lost that capacity. The United States also found a way to organize its imperial rule without the overt colonialism that provoked rising resistance that eventually became too costly and unmanageable for Britain, Germany, Japan, and other colonial powers. But in recent decades, U.S. capitalism failed to manage its class struggles or to reverse the decline in its informal imperialism. Chinese leaders have learned, implicitly or explicitly, from how U.S. capitalism lost those capacities. Thus, China organized both its employer-employee relationships and its international linkages differently. By doing so, the Chinese economy is ascending while that of the United States is descending. The process is, of course, uneven; the differences between the United States and China vary. But the general pattern and direction remain the same: China up and the United States down.
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
Pandemic Response Report Denounces Leaving Global Health ‘Hostage’ to Big Pharma “If this pandemic cannot catalyze real change, what will?” The idea that a poor health worker is unprotected while the healthy and wealthy receive booster doses should present a deep moral quandary. To this there is only one solution—vaccine equity.
Why Moderna Refuses to Share Rights to the COVID-19 Vaccine With the Government That Paid for Its Development A quiet monthslong legal fight between the U.S. National Institutes of Health and drugmaker Moderna over COVID-19 vaccine patents recently burst into public view. The outcome of the battle has important implications, not only for efforts to contain the pandemic but more broadly for drugs and vaccines that could be critical for future public health crises. I teach drug regulation and patent law at Saint Louis University’s Center for Health Law Studies. Moderna recently offered to share ownership of its main patent with the government to resolve the dispute. Whether or not this is enough to satisfy the government’s claims, I believe the dispute points to serious problems in the ways U.S. companies bring drugs and vaccines to market.
Five Crises of Capitalism: The Challenges Facing the Left Today We have entered an epoch of crises. These crises are rooted in capitalism and will shape the ideological, economic, and social dynamics globally. They have undermined the legitimacy of establishment parties, set off a wave of struggles throughout the world demanding systemic change, and caused deep political polarization, opening opportunities for a new far-right and a new Left. Socialists must understand the nature of this epoch if we want to play a role in the recomposition of the revolutionary Left, the cohering of a new militant minority, the rebuilding of our organizational infrastructure of dissent and resistance, and the construction of new socialist parties.
Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 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!
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!
