The richest one-tenth of Americans owned more than two-thirds of the nation’s wealth, according to Fed data through the end of March, the latest period for which data are available.
The top 1% owned 31%.
The Republocrats and the Demopublicans.
Workers everywhere have an underlying common interest around which to unite. Capitalism, in contrast, is fundamentally anarchic; the capitalists cannot overcome their divisions. The coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matters protests have showed the enormous hatred growing against the horrors of capitalism. That hatred has to be turned into dedication to overthrow the entire capitalist system.
Labor has no voice in nominating the candidates. Labor has no say in drafting the platforms. Labor will have no control over the victorious politician. The lords of commerce and barons of industry rule.
The capitalists understand this clearly. American labor will be suckered again in the 2020 election. Big Business possesses two parties under its control, with one always in reserve when public dissatisfaction has temporarily exhausted the other.
Our task is to organize the labor vote for socialist candidates rather than for the candidates of Wall Street. The myth that Biden is a “liberal” continues on, despite all evidence to the contrary. It is carefully nurtured by the media monopoly. Whatever the rhetoric emanating from the progressive left, corporate America, the banks, Wall Street and the hedge funds can be sure that the Democratic Party remains in safe hands with Biden and Harris. Even Sanders concedes, “it’s Wall Street that regulates Congress.”
The progressives have one great choice before them from now on. Two roads remain before them. They can take the road of independent political action, or they can continue the present policy of tying themselves to capitalist politics, which in essence means support to the political representatives of the economic rulers whom it fights on the economic field. It would mean a sharp break with capitalist politics and its organizations. How many times must labor have to repeat its experience with the two old capitalist-dominated boss parties, before it learns that nothing can be gained through playing ball with them? Democrats have joined the Republicans in protecting the interests of employers. The side-lining of Sanders should have been instructive to those who still believe that the Democratic Party can be transformed into a “party of the people,” or that labor can defend and advance its political interests without building a new party of its own.
The working class should not support any of the presidential candidates, as none offer any program which would benefit the working people of the United States.
The policies advanced by Trump and Biden differ only in superficial respects. Both would continue the assault on the living standards of working people, boost corporate profits, continue to slash social services and take back reforms won through hard struggle over the past years, and step up U.S. war preparations.
This year the Democrats and Republicans have never looked so similar, with both reflecting the conservative mood within the U.S. ruling class. When the voters enter the voting booth they will face no real choice other than the different candidates’ personalities. The working class should reject the big business candidates and their common programs of economic austerity, repression and war preparations. Working people must reject the “lesser evil” argument for Biden (or for Trump, for that matter) – there is no such thing when the choice is between chickenpox and measles. The “lesser evil” fallacy serves only to underestimate the danger of the poison you pick, and keeps the masses chained to the bourgeois political system and its two parties. By not voting for any candidate working people will register their rejection of the big business candidates. Voting in the presidential election would only strengthen the two-party system and hold back the process of forging a political trend independent of the elite. The presidential office is the highest in the land, and is therefore controlled most tightly by the Big Business
The word on every politician’s lips in this election season is “change” but nothing will change, despite millions of working class people desperate for relief from years of hardship, hope the elections will make a difference.
Elections are always difficult for capitalist politicians. They must appeal to the workers for their votes while reassuring the ruling class that its interests will be protected. The more the candidates can find a theme that can unite the working class behind capitalist interests, the better. In these elections, the vague promise of “change” has fit the bill perfectly, since the ruling class itself is for the most part desperate for a change in government. Of course, the workers have a very different idea of what “change” means.
The answer to this world of exploitation, oppression and war is working-class revolution that will overthrow the capitalists and their profit-driven system and build a socialist world of freedom and abundance. We don’t have to take what the powers-that-be give to us. We can create a new politics. Readers interested in an alternative to the parties of capital in the Capitol may look at the WSPUS website.
The poor and their poor nutrition
The UK’s poorest households struggle to afford to meet the government’s recommended guidelines on a healthy diet, leaving them more at risk of obesity and heart disease.
With healthy foods three times as expensive as less healthy ones, the 20% least well-off families must spend 40p of every pound of their income in order to achieve an officially nutritious diet, according to the Broken Plate audit, compared with just 8p in the pound for families in the wealthiest 20%.
The Food Foundation thinktank estimates that if the diets of the least well-off do not improve, more than half of the children born in the UK this year will experience obesity as a result of poor diet by the time they are 65.
Existing inequalities in the ability of families to buy sufficient healthy food had been highlighted during the coronavirus pandemic, which had demonstrated a “failing system where the poorest simply cannot afford to feed their families”, the foundation said.
Foundation director Anna Taylor said: “Covid has exposed the devastating consequences of diet-related disease, showing that efforts to shift our food system in favour of healthy eating have been too little, too late. Leaving citizens to swim against the tide of a system which favours unhealthy eating is no longer an option.”
The government recommends people eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, two portions of fish a week, while limiting consumption of meat and processed food high in sugar and salt.
The foundation said, however, that the mean price of fruit and vegetables continues to soar – it cost £9.39 per 1,000 calories in 2019, having risen every year since 2016 – while the price of food and drinks that are high in sugar, salt and/or fat has remained stable at £3.54 per 1,000 calories.
“We need to ensure that people aren’t incentivised to buy less healthy food because it is more affordable,” the report said.
The Broken Plate report comes amid increasing concern over a growing crisis of food poverty and unhealthy eating, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, in which the poorest households struggle to eat regularly and healthily, and reliance on charity food parcels is growing. The Food Standards Agency reported in August that the pandemic had had a catastrophic effect on the nutritional health of the poorest families, with as many as one in 10 forced to use food banks, and millions skipping meals or going hungry.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/21/uk-poorest-nutrition-guidelines-obesity
The poor and their poor nutrition
The UK’s poorest households struggle to afford to meet the government’s recommended guidelines on a healthy diet, leaving them more at risk of obesity and heart disease.
With healthy foods three times as expensive as less healthy ones, the 20% least well-off families must spend 40p of every pound of their income in order to achieve an officially nutritious diet, according to the Broken Plate audit, compared with just 8p in the pound for families in the wealthiest 20%.
The Food Foundation thinktank estimates that if the diets of the least well-off do not improve, more than half of the children born in the UK this year will experience obesity as a result of poor diet by the time they are 65.
Existing inequalities in the ability of families to buy sufficient healthy food had been highlighted during the coronavirus pandemic, which had demonstrated a “failing system where the poorest simply cannot afford to feed their families”, the foundation said.
Foundation director Anna Taylor said: “Covid has exposed the devastating consequences of diet-related disease, showing that efforts to shift our food system in favour of healthy eating have been too little, too late. Leaving citizens to swim against the tide of a system which favours unhealthy eating is no longer an option.”
The government recommends people eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, two portions of fish a week, while limiting consumption of meat and processed food high in sugar and salt.
The foundation said, however, that the mean price of fruit and vegetables continues to soar – it cost £9.39 per 1,000 calories in 2019, having risen every year since 2016 – while the price of food and drinks that are high in sugar, salt and/or fat has remained stable at £3.54 per 1,000 calories.
“We need to ensure that people aren’t incentivised to buy less healthy food because it is more affordable,” the report said.
The Broken Plate report comes amid increasing concern over a growing crisis of food poverty and unhealthy eating, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, in which the poorest households struggle to eat regularly and healthily, and reliance on charity food parcels is growing. The Food Standards Agency reported in August that the pandemic had had a catastrophic effect on the nutritional health of the poorest families, with as many as one in 10 forced to use food banks, and millions skipping meals or going hungry.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/21/uk-poorest-nutrition-guidelines-obesity
The Mayflower Myth
In 1620 the Mayflower took its 102 men, women, and children – the majority of whom were Puritan religious dissenters known as Separatists, but also called Pilgrims – from Plymouth to what they hoped would be the Hudson river. It was an act of madness because they were going at the wrong time of year into an incredibly dangerous Atlantic.
They endured a treacherous 66-day voyage and were blown off course, landing on the tip of what is now Massachusetts, before crossing the bay to set up a colony on land belonging to the Wampanoag, whose name means “people of the first light” and who had inhabited the area for some 12,000 years. They had an estimated population of at least 15,000 in the early 1600s, and lived in villages on the Massachusetts coast and inland. Their help enabled the English to survive, and also became the basis for the much-mythologised first Thanksgiving feast, still celebrated in the US. Although there were periods of good relations between the English and Wampanoag, there were also violent conflicts, culminating in King Philip’s War of 1675, which ended with the head of Metacom, the Wampanoag leader, being put on a spike and the survivors sold into slavery. It was a far cry from the scenes of a harvest celebration.
Although the mythology presents them as fierce critics of the Church of England seeking religious freedom, they had already found that in the Dutch city of Leiden, where they lived for a decade before crossing the Atlantic. What drove them onwards was the lack of economic opportunity.
“It’s just not the story we think it is,” said the exhibition’s curator, Jo Loosemore.
Economic factors fuelled the Separatists’ decision to obtain permission from the London Company of Virginia to establish a colony, and for funding from the Company of Merchant Adventurers.
But religious freedom and economic opportunity for the English would come at a heavy price for the Wampanoag. By the time the English arrived, the Wampanoag would have been familiar with Europeans, including the terrible diseases they brought. A few years before the Mayflower’s passengers landed, a plague wiped out an estimated 70% of their population. When the Pilgrims stepped ashore, the Wampanoag had been significantly weakened and were willing to make alliances with the English in order to keep their rivals, the Narragansett, at bay.
“These were people who came here for their religious freedom because they couldn’t worship as they pleased in their own country, and yet when they came to this country they did not seem to have that same tolerance for the people that they met here, despite all that the Wampanoag did to help them,” said Paula Peters, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Nation . “You can’t have a colony without someone being colonised.”
Yet the myth of Native American and English in Thanksgiving harmony remains. This mythology persists, despite the fact that the Pilgrims were not the first Europeans to arrive in North America, and their relationship with the Wampanoag was far from peaceful. US President Abraham Lincoln declared a Thanksgiving holiday in 1863 in an attempt at national unity while the civil war was under way. In the decades that followed, these strands merged together into a narrative, which was fostered by a New England elite that including many prominent US leaders who were Mayflower descendants, such as the second president, John Adams.
The Pilgrims are often used as an origin myth for the US, the English were late arrivals to North America. Juan Ponce de León explored Florida as early as 1513, and the Spanish had a settlement in St Augustine by 1565, while French Huguenots tried and failed to establish a colony on the coast of what is now South Carolina in 1562.
Some 35 years before the Mayflower, two ships set sail from Plymouth to explore the North Carolina coast, and the following year the colony of Roanoke was established, but by 1590 all the settlers had disappeared. Eventually, in 1607, the English had success with the colony of Jamestown, Virginia, which managed to survive. As well as these early settlers, Europeans came to trade – and often to kidnap and enslave Native Americans – well before the arrival of the Pilgrims. Jamestown, with its slavery, and St Augustine, with its Spanish Catholics, were ignored, and the national story became that of the hard-working, freedom-seeking Protestant “Pilgrim fathers”, aided by kind Native Americans.
The Madrid Lockdown
Residents in some poorer areas of Madrid that are facing lockdown to stem a soaring COVID-19 infection rate took to the streets on Sunday to protest for better health provisions, complaining of discrimination by the authorities. Madrid’s regional government on Friday ordered a lockdown from Monday in some of the poorer areas of the city and its outskirts that are home to about 850,000 people after a surge in coronavirus cases there. The lockdown measures predominantly apply to areas of lower income and with higher immigrant populations. Peaceful protests were held in 12 of the 37 districts affected on Sunday.
Vallecas has one of the highest infection rates in the Spanish capital – about six times higher than that of Chamberi, a wealthy area in the north of the city, according to regional government figures. Madrid accounts for a third of all infections in Spain, announced the restrictions in areas where the contagion levels exceed 1,000 per 100,000 inhabitants. Spain has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in western Europe. 640,040 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in Spain, health authorities said on Friday, with a rise of 4,697 in the past 24 hours. Nearly 30,500 people have died.
“It is illogical that you can go and do things in wealthier areas, but you cannot do the same in Vallecas. There is the same risk of contagion. They are discriminating,” said Begona Ramos, 56, a protester, who is self-employed and lives in Vallecas.
Protesters also called for the resignation of Madrid regional leader Isabel Diaz Ayuso, who attracted criticism for saying this week that “the way of life of immigrants” was partly to blame for the rise in cases.
Access to parks and public areas will be restricted, gatherings will be limited to six people, and commercial establishments will have to close by 10 p.m. local time. Police will set up 60 checkpoints to enforce the measures, but will not impose fines on the first day, regional authorities said on Sunday. Fines can vary between 600 euros ($710.64) and 600,000 euros, they said. A pass is required for people who need to leave lockdown areas for work.
The Inequality of Climate Pollution
The wealthiest 1% of the world’s population were responsible for the emission of more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorer half of the world from 1990 to 2015, according to new research, compiled by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute
Carbon dioxide emissions rose by 60% over the 25-year period, but the increase in emissions from the richest 1% was three times greater than the increase in emissions from the poorest half. The richest 10% of the global population, comprising about 630 million people, were responsible for about 52% of global emissions over the 25-year period, the study showed. Globally, the richest 10% are those with incomes above about $35,000 (£27,000) a year, and the richest 1% are people earning more than about $100,000. The report warned that rampant overconsumption and the rich world’s addiction to high-carbon transport are exhausting the world’s “carbon budget”.
If left unchecked, in the next decade the carbon emissions of the world’s richest 10% would be enough to raise levels above the point likely to increase temperatures by 1.5C, even if the whole of the rest of the world cut their emissions to zero immediately, according to Monday’s report.
Such a concentration of carbon emissions in the hands of the rich means that despite taking the world to the brink of climate catastrophe, through burning fossil fuels, we have still failed to improve the lives of billions, said Tim Gore, head of policy, advocacy and research at Oxfam International. Oxfam argues that continuing to allow the rich world to emit vastly more than those in poverty is unfair. While the world moves towards renewable energy and phases out fossil fuels, any emissions that continue to be necessary during the transition would be better used in trying to improve poor people’s access to basic amenities.
“The best possible, morally defensible purpose is for all humanity to live a decent life, but the carbon budget has been used up by the already rich, in getting richer,” said Gore.
“The global carbon budget has been squandered to expand the consumption of the already rich, rather than to improve humanity,” he told the Guardian. “A finite amount of carbon can be added to the atmosphere if we want to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. We need to ensure that carbon is used for the best.” He pointed to transport as one of the key drivers of growth in emissions, with people in rich countries showing an increasing tendency to drive high-emitting cars, such as SUVs, and take more flights. “This isn’t about people who have one family holiday a year, but people who are taking long-haul flights every month – it’s a fairly small group of people,” said Gore.
The FinCEN Files
The unchecked movement of dirty money involves narcotraffickers, smugglers and Ponzi schemers shift illicit profits beyond the reach of authorities, and despots and corrupt captains of industry swell their own ill-gotten fortunes and consolidate power, aided and abetted by the powerful and the banking system. Dozens of the stories documented during the FinCEN Files investigation trace money transfers like these, connecting foreign capital to companies that only exist on paper. The suspicious flow of money is made possible by globally operating banks, which so far appear to have felt little pressure to prevent such transfers.
The FinCEN Files are based on Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). These are records of money movements that the banks themselves compile and submit to the US Department of the Treasury, when they suspect a possibly suspicious activity. A review of the files casts a disturbing spotlight on the complex trail left by nearly $2 trillion (€1.7 trillion) of suspicious funds being maneuvered around the globe — and on the role of banks.
“It isn’t the criminals themselves that launder the money. So the banks have a really important role to play because they are the system by which that money is being moved from their country, to a nice, safe place,” Graham Barrow, a money laundering expert.
The Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) come from a small number of large banks: Deutsche Bank (982), Bank of New York Mellon (325), Standard Chartered Bank (232), JPMorgan Chase (107), Barclays (104) and HSBC (73). Together, these banks filed more than 85% of the SARs contained in the leak.
Dozens of prominent figures appearing in the documents read like a who’s who of well-connected political insiders. They include Paul Manafort, the former Donald Trump campaign manager, who was convicted of fraud and tax evasion. JP Morgan reported that it moved money between Manafort and his associate shell companies as recently as September 2017, long after his ties to Russian-connected Ukrainian officials and suspected money laundering had been widely reported.
Often the person tied to a suspicious transaction was one step removed from the boldfaced name: a child, an associate, or the wife — as in the case of Atiku Abubakar. The former Nigerian vice president was indicted by a Nigerian Senate committee for diverting over $100 million from an oil development fund. Years after corruption allegations against her husband surfaced, Rukaiyatu Abubakar moved more than $1 million of her husband’s money through Habib Bank to a company in the United Arab Emirates to buy an apartment in Dubai.
Some, like Iranian-Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab, appear in connection to sanctions violations. In 2017, Zarrab pled guilty to charges of fraud, money laundering and evading US sanctions on Iran before a US Federal District Court in New York. The SARs in the FinCEN Files document how he and his network transferred funds through US-based financial institutions. In June 2016, three months after Zarrab was arrested on his way to Walt Disney World, Standard Chartered Bank filed a series of Suspicious Activity Reports on a decade of bank transactions involving Zarrab and his network. The following October, Standard Chartered filed another report, listing $133 million worth of transactions made by entities the bank had tied to Zarrab’s network.
A probe by US and New York banking regulators found the Deutsche Bank had moved $10.9 billion (€9.2 billion) on behalf of Iranian, Libyan, Syrian, Burmese and Sudanese financial institutions sanctioned by the US between 1999 and 2006. The bank was accused of carrying out transactions for its customers using “non-transparent methods and practices” to disguise its actions.
https://www.dw.com/en/fincen-files-tracing-the-flow-of-dirty-money/a-54995003
Forgotten Workers
Spain’s Mar del Plastico (Plastic Sea), the 31,000 hectares (76,600 acres) of farms and greenhouses in the region of Andalucía known as “Europe’s garden”. El Barranquete is one of the poorest of 92 informal worker slums that have sprung up around the vast farms of Almería and which are now home to an estimated 7,000-10,000 people. Many of El Barranquete’s inhabitants don’t have electricity, running water or sanitation. The tens of thousands of migrant workers working in the province are vital to the Spanish economy and pan-European food supply chains. In two weeks, the greenhouses of Almería will be at their busiest as the high season for tomatoes, peppers and salad begins.
Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty, says the situation facing migrant workers in southern Spain is a human tragedy. For decades, the exploitation and abuse of migrant workers in Spain has been widely condemned by UN officials and human rights campaigners, but to little effect.
When he first arrived in Spain, Hassan was stunned by how the workers were treated on the farms. Like other workers in El Barranquete, Hassan says he earns only about €5 (£4.50) an hour, well under the legal minimum wage. “The working conditions are terrible,” he says. “Sometimes we work from sunup to sundown in extreme heat, with only a 30-minute break in the whole day.” Now, as Almería faces a wave of Covid-19 infections, workers say they have been left completely unprotected. “We pick your food,” says Hassan. “But our health doesn’t matter to anyone.” Hassan knows that his work and living conditions make him vulnerable to becoming infected with Covid-19. When asked whether he is supplied with PPE at work, Hassan laughs. “Gloves and face masks in the greenhouse? Temperature checks?” he says. “They don’t give you anything.” Like many of the people living in the settlements, he say he is more scared of not being able to work than they of becoming ill. If he can’t send money home, his children don’t eat.
A joint supply chain investigation by Ethical Consumer magazine has linked many of these workers to the supply chains of UK supermarkets including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Lidl and Aldi. All claimed to be facing systemic labour exploitation before and throughout the pandemic such as non-payment of wages and being kept on illegal temporary contracts. Many described being forced to work in a culture of fear and intimidation. Some of those who complained about conditions said they had been sacked or blacklisted.
Workers employed by Spanish food companies linked to UK supermarkets also claimed that throughout the pandemic they have been denied access to adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) that under Spanish law they are entitled to as essential workers. Many said they were not given enough face masks, gloves or hand sanitiser and have been unable to socially distance at work. One man employed at a big food company supplying the UK says that he has only been given two face masks in six months. Spain is experiencing the highest numbers of new Covid-19 infections in Europe, with the province of Almería recording more than 100 new cases a day. There have been multiple outbreaks on farms across the province and in the cortijos, the dilapidated housing blocks near the farms in which workers live.
“The pandemic has exacerbated the unacceptable conditions facing migrant workers and the Spanish government must urgently act. But two-thirds of all fruit and vegetables consumed across Europe and the UK come from these greenhouses and all the companies and retailers up these supply chains have a responsibility to these workers as well,” Olivier De Schutter says.
As Covid-19 infections rise, medical charities such as as Médicos del Mundo are supplying masks, gloves and temperature checks in the settlements in scenes more reminiscent of a disaster zone than one of the richest countries in the world.
“People want to protect themselves, but they cannot”, says Almudena Puertas from the NGO Cáritas. “They are here because there is work and we need them.”
One groups of workers say that they lost their jobs after testing positive for Covid-19 and quarantining at home. Muhammad, a farm worker from Morocco, said that when he and others had recovered and returned to work, some of them were told there was no work for them.
“When I contracted Covid-19, I’d already spent two years working for this company without papers and two years on a temporary contract, but when I came back they said there is nothing for me here,” he says. He says he and the other workers who did not get their jobs back also did not receive the sick pay they were entitled to as essential workers.
The Soc-Sat union, which represents agricultural workers across Almería, says the failure to provide farm workers with basic PPE speaks to the culture of impunity that surrounds the mistreatment of Spain’s migrant workforce.
“Around 80% of fruit companies in Almería are breaking the law,” says José García Cuevas, a Soc-Sat union leader. The union says that across the region, widespread fraud is being perpetrated on the farm workers. “People will work 25 days but their employers will only count 10,” he says. “Or when you look at the payslips, it says €58 a day, which is minimum wage but that’s not what the worker is receiving.” He says that according to figures from the General Union of Workers, workers lose out on up to €50m of wages every year. “If, under normal conditions, health and safety regulations are not followed, you can imagine what’s happening in the current situation with a pandemic,” says García Cuevas.
“If you complain, they will say: ‘If you don’t want to work here then go home,’” Ali, a farm worker says. “Every worker here has a family, a wife and children, but the only thing that matters is that we work to get the vegetables to Germany or the UK. It’s like they have forgotten we are also human beings.”
Australia’s Population to Fall
Australia’s National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation’s study found that population growth could be cut by 214,000 between 2019 and 2021, a 0.8% decline only surpassed by the first world war and the unwinding of the 1971 baby boom. This is the result of international border closures that have effectively shut down net overseas migration, which has accounted for 59% of population growth since 2007.
It could cut demand for housing in Australia by between 129,000 and 232,000 dwellings over the next three years
International students account for 50% of migration and the study notes Covid-19 hotspots such as India and Brazil are large contributors to Australia’s pool of students.