The liberals claim that a vote for Biden is a vote for the lesser evil. Time and again we hear that Biden’s liberalism is the last bulwark against Trump’s fascism. Except that for many around the world, Biden is already a proven evil. Throughout his decades-long political career, Biden has consistently toed the line of the American empire.

Biden has ignored the plight of the civilian populations bombed, maimed and killed by American forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. 

Biden never raised any opposition to the American Service-Members’ Protection Act. Signed into law by Bush in 2002, its purpose is “to protect United States military personnel and other elected and appointed officials of the United States government against criminal prosecution by an international criminal court to which the United States is not party” which allows the US president to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any US or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court (ICC)”. The legislation is to keep Americans from being prosecuted for war crimes, and it is otherwise known as The Hague Invasion Act.

Biden does not want to stand up for international justice.

He described the Egyptian military’s coup against the country’s democratically elected president as “restoring democracy” although it led to civil rights activists, journalists and protesters being detained, harassed, tortured and killed.

In 2014, as defenseless Palestinian civilians in Gaza were enduring relentless Israeli air attacks, he declared that “Israel has a right to defend itself”. There is no intention to remove the American embassy from Jerusalem, nor any possible punitive policies to stem the growth of the Israeli apartheid state as it de facto annexes large parts of the occupied West Bank.

History tells us that neither the Republicans nor Democrats have ever really made the world a safer place. Biden will not be the president to prove that any different. We have had centuries of lesser evil politics which has made the evils in both parties more and more evil with no end in sight of the magnitude of evil to be thrust upon us.

There are scores of articles on “progressive” websites, insisting that we support the candidate of one of the parties of Wall Street, that has promoted war and private health insurance parasites. What’s been missing? Articles advocating an end to the Duopoly and agitation for actual resistance. Docile establishment politics dominate beneath the veneer of liberalism. Why should working people support a proven war-hawk and an authoritarian cop?

The approaching election, as usual, has nothing to do with criticizing the economic system but only dwell on what politicians mistakenly believe they can run it in a better way than anybody else can. We need an entirely new society based on the values of humanity and not the market forces of profit. We need to emulate our communist ancestors and re-learn their cooperative means of survival in modern form. Yesterday was the time to fight for a workers’ movement for revolutionary change, not tomorrow.

Divide and conquer – it’s the same old story of the minority of rich ruling over the majority. The same old line from the rotten bunch of millionaires who own presidents and politicians like Biden, a bought man, just as much as any other politician. We don’t need Biden, any more than we need the rest of the self-seeking, power-hungry, politicians and whole system of capitalist robbery that produces them, one after another. We need working class action and their unity to fight for a decent life, for an end to wars, repression, discrimination, unemployment, poverty, exploitation and the jungle law of dog-eat-dog. We need the strength of our own numbers. We need a mass movement based principles committed to a society based on equality, cooperation, and the real will of the majority.

 The Scandinavian welfare-state nations are often lauded as ideal examples of capitalism. But the inequalities of the capitalist economic system are often over-looked.

Gustav Magnar Witzøe (27) is already known as one of Norway’s richest people, but in 2019 his fortune shot up. Witzøe increased its wealth by almost 2000 per cent, from NOK 1.02 billion from 2018 to NOK 20.68 billion in 2019. It shows tax figures Nettavisen has been given access to.

This is a clear new record in the fortunes of Witzøe, who was Norway’s richest in 2016 with a net worth of NOK 11 billion.

Kjell Inge Røkke was Norway’s richest person according to tax figures for 2018 with a net worth of NOK 18.6 billion.  Tax figures of Røkke’s son Kristian Monsen Røkke (37). They show that he can enjoy a wealth increase that percentage is just as big as Witzøes. Røkke junior had a fortune in 2018 of NOK 19.3 million, it has now grown to NOK 398 million, i.e. a 20-fold increase in one year.

The heirs of the Andresen empire, 25-year-old Katharina G. Andresen and 24-year-old Alexandra Andresen, also enjoyed a sharp increase. Katharina’s net worth has increased to NOK 5.89 billion, according to the tax figures for 2019. In 2018, the net worth was NOK 1.1 billion. Little sister Alexandra is on her side with a net worth of NOK 5.88 billion, up from NOK 1.07 billion in 2019. 

https://www.msn.com/nb-no/okonomi/privatokonomi/millliard%C3%A6rarvingen-er-blitt-20-ganger-rikere-p%C3%A5-ett-%C3%A5r/ar-BB19Fqbl?ocid=msedgntp

Science does not support the idea of pure races with ancient origins yet far-right white supremacist ideology is on the rise in Europe, North America and Australia. It appeals to a racist notion whereby many white supremacists see themselves as members of a “pure” race that is at risk of dilution and contamination. 

In the past few years, genetic sequencing of ancient and modern humans and related species has given us a flood of new information about how human populations have evolved. The evidence reveals a history of ongoing genetic mingling, due to interbreeding between different populations and even species. Humans from different groups had children together, and even with Neanderthals and members of other now-extinct hominin species. This mingling occurred constantly in the long process of human migration across the globe. Europeans inhabit one region of a large genetic continuum and are no more or less “pure” than any other population.

In short, the idea of a pure white race has no basis in genetics. Lightly pigmented skin, hair and eyes are simply an adaptation to northern European climates (and represent an inferior adaptation in equatorial regions). These features exist in a background of countless other genetic influences borrowed from many populations, old and new.

FULL ARTICLE AT

https://asiatimes.com/2020/10/white-supremacists-false-belief-in-genetic-purity/

 The US today spends more than $80 billion a year incarcerating 2.3 million people in state and federal prisons, local jails, youth facilities and deportation centers. 

By the middle of October, close to 150,000 inmates and almost 30,000 staff and workers had tested positive to the coronavirus. 1,122 detainees and 42 staff had died according to the Behind Bars Covid Data Project of UCLA.

4,100 prison contractors make a profit off the people locked up. 

An average of 746,000 Americans are held in local jails. Most of whom have not yet been convicted of a crime or are held only for minor offenses.

Many of these voters are jailed simply because they are poor and cannot make bail. Yet in many jails, they are denied the right to vote.—either because officials are confused about their eligibility, or because they have no timely access to registration and absentee ballots, or because they have no access to the voter ID information that many states now require.

 Tier a Shed*

There’s pestilence in Cottonopolis,

So, time to bar the doors and clear the streets,

The rule is, no one drinks if no one eats,

A recipe for neo-Rachabite bliss

Even as bar staff and brewers lament.

There are good odds punters of casinos

Will be better off with tables being closed,

Though owners decry what is being imposed,

Seeing as they’re losing as business goes.

Gyms are shut up, retail is in retreat,

Office blocks are silent and deserted,

Events cancelled, there’s no deadlines to meet

With revenue streams dammed and diverted.

In all news of Cottonopolis ills,

Not a single mention of cotton mills.

D. A.

*Cotton weaving mills were known as sheds.

 A team of researchers from the University of Leeds have built an energy-model to evaluate the global population’s needs in terms of energy consumption by 2050. Their study showed that our global energy consumption could be reduced to the levels of the 1960s, when the Earth counted 3 million inhabitants, less than 40% of today’s energy consumption and still provide a decent standard of living to all.

Their scientific model was based upon data and comparisons from 119 countries worldwide. They calculated minimum final energy requirements to provide decent living standards (heating, petrol, electricity, WiFi, etc) to the entire population (projected to be 10 billion people in 2050).

“We find that, with a combination of the most efficient technologies available and radical demand-side transformations that reduce excess consumption to sufficiency-levels, the final energy requirements for providing decent living standards to the global population in 2050 could be over 60% lower than consumption today,” reads the study.

 Lead author Joel Millward-Hopkins, from the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds University, explained, “Overall, our study is consistent with the long-standing arguments that the technological solutions already exist to support reducing energy consumption to a sustainable level. What we add is that the material sacrifices needed for these reductions are far smaller than many popular narratives imply.” 

Full study can be read at:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378020307512?via%3Dihub

 The Financial Conduct Authority said 12 million adults were struggling to pay their bills, up by 2 million since coronavirus struck in February.

 It also found that 31% of UK households had experienced a decrease in income, with affected families typically having lost a quarter of their income.

The FCA found that 37% of BAME adults had taken an income hit, and were the most likely to have been forced into reduced working hours.

Young adults aged 25 to 34 – many of whom work in bars, restaurants and the arts and entertainment industry – have been the most likely to have had a change in employment as a result of the pandemic. The FCA found that one in five young adults were now more likely to be seeking debt advice, compared with just one in 50 in the 55-64 age group.

4.4m payment deferrals of some sort – including car loans, credit cards and mortgages – had been granted since the pandemic began, but only 323,700 were still in place.

Lenders had provided a total of 2.5m mortgage payment holidays, with 162,000 home buyers still on a payment deferral on 9 October, said UK Finance. The banks said households struggling to meet their mortgage payments could choose from one of four options: extending the length of the mortgage term, switching to interest-only from repayment, deferring payment of the interest, or capitalising the interest and adding it to the total balance outstanding.

The energy regulator, Ofgem, has told utility companies to offer struggling customers “realistic” debt repayment plans, or emergency credit if they are on prepay energy meters.

The Consumer Council for Water separately warned that the financial help offered to 900,000 households risked running dry without a long-term solution to managing water debts.

Citizens Advice said millions of people were in a financially calamitous position.

The chief executive of Citizens Advice, Dame Gillian Guy, said: “With the finances of 12 million people now fragile, there’s a real possibility that new lockdown restrictions will force many people into debt this winter. It’s in the government’s power to prevent this happening. By strengthening the support for those struggling with essential bills.”

It called for improved government support and a continuation of the £20 a week uplift in universal credit beyond spring.

Many of those who have remained employed are now flush with cash as a result of spending less on holidays and going out. The UK savings ratio – the proportion of total income that is put into savings – has leapt from 6% before the pandemic to 29%.

The financial analyst Laith Khalaf, at the investment group AJ Bell, said: “We are now at least a two-tier nation when it comes to finances. The pandemic has served to widen the wedge between the have and have nots in the UK. While 2 million more people may now struggle with bills and repayments as a result of the pandemic, only a few weeks ago mortgage approvals hit a 13-year high, according to the Bank of England. Those who have kept their jobs and income will likely have a new cash buffer in their bank account as lockdown [in effect] imposed a spending freeze.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/22/coronavirus-crisis-uk-wealth-divide-bills-bame

 The UK’s means-tested system of unemployment benefits, which operate as a “bare minimum” safety net, has failed to provide sufficient support to hundreds of thousands of people during the pandemic.

Thousands of middle-income professionals who have lost their job during the pandemic have reported turning to food banks, going into debt and suffering from stress and anxiety after they were turned down for universal credit, research reveals. The majority were turned down because access to benefits in the UK is subject to household “wealth tests”. Some 45% were ineligible because they or their partner earned too much, and 23% because they had savings above a £16,000 threshold.

The study, by the Economic and Social Research Council-funded Benefits at a Social Distance project, found nearly three-quarters were surprised when they were refused benefits, or said it was “unfair”. Many are probably to have had little interaction with the benefit system prior to the pandemic.

The study found nearly half the people rejected for unemployment benefits between March and July reported increased financial strains, while more than half reported problems with mental health, and around one in six said they had struggled to afford food.

At least 290,000 people were turned down for benefits – about one in 10 of all claims made for universal credit during the period – leaving many with little or no state support as they faced often huge reductions in household income.

Roughly half those rejected were graduates, and a third were in professional or managerial jobs, the study found. Over half reported losing at least 25% of their household income. Nearly two-thirds said they were unsure how they would cope financially when they heard they did not qualify for benefits.

Nearly two-thirds of unsuccessful claimants reported poor mental health or high anxiety as a result. Nearly half reported at least one of the following: falling behind on housing costs or bills; not being able to afford daily fresh fruit and vegetables; and being hungry and not eating.

Most had used savings or borrowed money on credit cards to tide them over. Around 4% reported using food banks. Pre-Covid studies show that most food bank users prior to the pandemic were destitute and reliant on benefits.

The £16,000 savings cap in particular proved unpopular, with many people complaining that money set aside for tax bills, mortgage deposits and retirement funds deprived them of benefits support, penalising them at a time of crisis not of their own making.

Although many turned down for universal credit are middle-income households, researchers have also found that around a quarter of the 3 million successful new claimants were also in professional jobs, suggesting the pandemic has brought many middle-class people into intimate contact with the UK benefit system for the first time.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/22/thousands-of-people-refused-universal-credit-turning-to-food-banks

  Under new guidance opposition to capitalism will be barred from England’s schools. The Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein approves, writing that “enemies of capitalism have no place in school”.  It mirrors Trump’s recent announcement of a “1776 Commission” to promote “patriotic education” in the US, or Victor Orban’s February announcement of a national school curriculum reflecting “Hungarian values”. School curricula have become flashpoints for populist regimes around the world.

 The Department of Education’s new policy goes much further than any British government during the cold war. It goes further than Prevent, the 2011 anti-radicalisation programme which gave the state new authority to review curricula. 

So why target anti-capitalism?

Movements such as Occupy and Extinction Rebellion have attracted mass followings with their systematic critiques of capitalism, inequality and environmental crisis. The appeal of such movements to young people may have motivated the government to act.

In 1954, Hartley Shawcross, British prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials, praised British “doctrines of toleration and liberty” that gave citizens “the right even to attack our whole system of government”. “We have refused to allow ourselves to be stampeded by fear,” he said.

https://theconversation.com/anticapitalism-wasnt-banned-in-english-classrooms-during-the-cold-war-why-is-it-now-147121

“Vote for us and all your problems will be solved.”

Psychology professor Bob Altemeyer and former Nixon White House lawyer John Dean write in their new book, ‘Authoritarian Nightmare,’ that “Even if Donald Trump disappeared tomorrow the millions of people who made him president would be ready to make someone else similar president instead.”

They explain that many Trump supporters are submissive, fearful, and longing for a mighty leader who will protect them from life’s threats …They divide the world into friend and foe, with the latter greatly outnumbering the former.”

The World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS)  goal is not to create a socialist society for the working class but to encourage the working class to build socialism for itself. 

Using the words of Eugene Debs:

 “If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, someone else would lead you out.”

“It is infinitely better to vote for freedom and fail than to vote for slavery and succeed.”

“Better a thousand times that labor is divided fighting for freedom than united in the bonds of slavery.”

“The difference between the Republican and Democratic parties involve no issue, no principle in which the working class have any interest. Between these parties socialists have no choice, no preference. They are one in their opposition to the emancipation of the working class from wage-slavery, and every working person who understands the interest of his or her class and the nature of the struggle in which it is involved, will once and for all time sever relations with them both.”

“A political party today must stand for labor and the freedom of labor, or it must stand for capital and the exploitation of labor. It cannot possibly stand for both any more than it could for both freedom and slavery.”

“We want to see workers demand a party of their own, free from their masters — a party with a backbone and the courage to stand up without apology and proclaim itself a socialist party, confident and proudly holding to the principle of industrial and political solidarity, challenging the whole world of capitalism, contesting the right of capitalists to own industries, to control economic resources and opposing their right of use workers so they can enjoy the fruits of our toil.”

Debs explained very clearly that:

 “Now I believe that it is impossible to compromise a principle, and the Socialist Party is committed to a certain principle. To compromise principle is to court death and disaster. It is better to be true to a principle and to stand alone and be able to look yourself in the face without a blush, far better to be in a hopeless minority than to be in a great popular and powerful majority of the unthinking.”

The Democratic Party is the mirror image of the Republican Party minus the inflammatory racial rhetoric of Trump, and it is just as poisonous. It’s political suicide for working people to remain as a subservient political appendage of the Democratic or Republican parties. No sector of the ruling class offers any alternative to austerity and deprivation. The two capitalist parties engage in sham battles. They agree basically on the economy. 

Larger and larger numbers of people are coming to the conclusion that neither of the presidential candidates, offer any real alternative or any real solutions to the crises of capitalism. Everywhere you can hear people saying that there is no real difference between Trump and Biden.

Working people are looking for an alternative. This is why the World Socialist Party call for No Vote on November 3rd, and for a rejection of both politicians and all their reformist fake phoney promises.