“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.”
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon, and the military-industrial complex.
GLOBALIST JOE BIDEN'S OPEN BORDERS:
Amazon, the multinational online retail conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to the United States to take coveted tech industry jobs than Facebook and Google combined. JOHN BINDER
"Today, each of the top 5 billionaires owns as much as 750 million people, more than the total population of Latin America and double the population of the US."
In bipartisan vote: US House approves record $741 billion military spending bill
The
overwhelming bipartisan vote by the House of Representatives Tuesday evening to
approve the largest military budget in American history demonstrates the
reality of capitalist politics. Democrats and Republicans are supposedly at
each other’s throats over an array of social and political issues, but they are
entirely in agreement on funding the world’s largest and most lethal military
machine.
The
House vote for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was by a massive
margin, 335–78. Democrats supported passage by 195–37. Republicans supported
passage by 140–40. Every leader of the House Democrats backed passage: Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip James Clyburn. They
were joined by the top Republicans: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Minority
Whip Steve Scalise and the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services
Committee, the co-sponsor of the massive bill, Mac Thornberry of Texas.
The
margin was far more than the two-thirds required to override a threatened Trump
veto, although it is not clear that Trump will actually follow up on his tweets
demanding two changes in the bill, neither relevant to its basic purposes.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already said the Senate will pass
the NDAA in the next few days. The margin is likely to be even more decisive
than in the House.
While rubber-stamping the largest-ever Pentagon budget, the
House and Senate remain locked in a protracted stalemate which has blocked the
payment of a single dollar of federal supplemental unemployment insurance since
the benefit expired last July 31.
The $741 billion for the Pentagon is approximately six times as
much as the $121 billion in unemployment benefits paid out to 60 million
workers since the coronavirus pandemic struck.
The
goal of the NDAA, according to its preamble, is to achieve “irreversible
momentum in the implementation of the National Defense Strategy” spelled out by
the Pentagon in 2018, which identified “strategic competition” with Russia and
China, not terrorism, as the “preeminent challenge” of US military policy. This
includes, according to the various subdivisions of the massive bill, achieving
“Superiority in the Air”, “Superiority on the Seas,” “Superiority on the Land,”
and, in keeping with the demands of Trump, “Superiority in Space.”
It
is not hard to imagine what the rest of the world is to think of this all-out
US drive for military power “uber alles”: China, Russia and imperialist powers
like Germany, Britain, France and Japan are all engaged in military build-ups
to match that in America, bringing ever closer the danger of an uncontrolled
military clash between great powers, most of them nuclear armed.
Well
short of such an apocalypse, the arms race involves an unforgivable squandering
of economic resources needed to meet social concerns such as education, health
care, alleviating poverty and retirement security.
One
of the largest single components of the Pentagon budget is Overseas Contingency
Operations (OCO), funded to the tune of $69 billion. This is the spending for
ongoing military operations where US forces are deployed: primarily
Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, as well as the Persian Gulf, where vast naval and air
assets are arrayed against Iran. The OCO also covers active drone missile
warfare operations across Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.
Democratic
and Republican leaders on the committees overseeing Pentagon policies and
military budgets gave unanimous support to the NDAA, boasting that the military
budget has passed Congress by huge majorities for 59 straight years, and the
Fiscal 2021 budget will be number 60.
When
it comes to the most critical institution of the capitalist state, there is not
even a two-party system in America, there is only one party: the party of the
military-intelligence apparatus, which is required both to assert US
imperialist interests around the world and to defend the financial aristocracy
against the looming threat of social disorder and class conflict at home.
This is because despite all its declarations,
the Democratic Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team
attests, is a party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon, and
the military-industrial complex.
Amazon
is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with the US military and
intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million contract with the CIA
in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the Department of Defense last
year to move government data onto the cloud. Meanwhile, Amazon’s
facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being marketed to federal and
local police.
“Amazon is a massive wrecking machine consuming American retail.
It's looting the economy and leaving behind rubble.”
DANIEL GREENFIELD
Traditional book publishers were decimated by
the arrival of Amazon, which aggressively pursued them, in the words of Bezos,
“the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.”
Amazon, the multinational
online retail conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to the United
States to take coveted tech industry jobs than Facebook and Google combined.
JOHN BINDER
Amazon is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with the US military and intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million contract with the CIA in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the Department of Defense last year to move government data onto the cloud. Meanwhile, Amazon’s facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being marketed to federal and local police.
THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS WAGES WAR ON AMERICA!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/09/bill-gates-zuckerberg-jeff-bezos.html
"GOP
estb. is using the $5 billion border-wall fight to hide up to four blue/white-collar
cheap-labor programs in lame-duck DHS budget. Donors are worried that
salaries are too damn high, & estb. media does not want to
know."
TOP EVIL CORPORATIONS LOOTING AMERICA
Goldman Sachs TRUMP CRONIES – CLINTON CRONIES
JPMorgan Chase OBAMA CRONIES
ExxonMobil
Halliburton BUSH CRIME FAMILY CRONIES
British American Tobacco
Dow Chemical
DuPont
Bayer
Microsoft
Google CLINTON CRONIES
Facebook OBAMA CRONIES, BIDEN CRONIES
Amazon WORKS FOR BIDEN, OR DOES HE WORK FOR JEFF BEZOS?
Walmart
Graph from the Economic Policy Institute
Decades of decaying
capitalism have led to this accelerating divide. While the rich accumulate
wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages and benefits have been under
increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of the population took in 70
percent of the nation’s income. But, by 2017, that fell to only 61
percent.
Millionaires
projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019...watch those
numbers go up with Bidenomics!
While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace,
there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards
the very top.
At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41
percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that
collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in
liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.
By Gabriel Black
The
massive increase in the value of the stock market, which only a small
segment of the population participates in, means that the top
10 percent of the population controls 73 percent of all wealth in the
United States. Just three men—Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates—had
more wealth than the bottom half of America combined last year.
The father of US Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin just completed the most expensive purchase of a living
artist’s work in US history, spending over $91 million on a
three-foot-tall metallic sculpture. Ken Griffin, the founder of hedge fund
Citadel, recently dropped $238 million on a penthouse in New York
City, the most expensive US home ever purchased. And Amazon’s Jeff Bezos,
the world’s richest man, has invested $42 million in a 10,000-year
clock (BEZOS OWNS ABOUT $300 IN
RESIDENTIAL PROPERTIES HE CONSIDERS HIS HOMES THESE INCLUDE $135 MILLION
MANSION IN BEVERLY HILLS, A $40 MILLION DOLLAR TOWNHOUSE IN D.C. AND $100
MILLION IN CONDOS IN NYC).
Amazon’s 25th anniversary: A conglomerate based
on parasitism and exploitation
Last
week, Amazon commemorated its 25th anniversary. From its beginnings in a garage
in Seattle, Washington, Amazon has grown into a multinational technology
conglomerate with a market capitalization of nearly one trillion dollars.
In 1994, future Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos left
his job at hedge fund D.E. Shaw to get out in front of the possibilities opened
up by the accelerating development of the internet, beginning with the modest
idea of an online bookstore. Bezos went on to become the wealthiest man on the
planet, his hoard by one estimate peaking at a record $157 billion before his
assets were divided in a divorce earlier this year.
Now
considered one of the “Big Four” technology monopolies alongside Apple, Google
and Facebook, Amazon controls the largest marketplace on the Internet:
Amazon.com. The conglomerate’s reach extends from Whole Foods Market, which
Amazon purchased in 2017 for $13.4 billion, to consumer electronics such as the
Kindle reader and the voice-controlled Alexa. Amazon subsidiary Kuiper Systems
announced in April of this year that it will spend a decade launching 3,236
satellites into space to provide broadband internet.
Traditional book publishers were decimated by the arrival of
Amazon, which aggressively pursued them, in the words of Bezos, “the way a
cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.” Using its vast flows of cash, Amazon ruthlessly undercut
its rivals, from neighborhood stores to diaper manufacturers, accepting losses
in order to drive competitors out of its way. Meanwhile, Amazon
demanded and obtained free money from state and local governments in the form
of tax breaks and other concessions.
Amazon’s annual revenues reached $233 billion in 2018, on which
the conglomerate is expected to pay zero federal income tax. To put this figure in
perspective, these revenues are nearly at the level of the annual tax revenue
of Russia, which amounted to $253.9 billion in US dollars in 2017. Amazon’s
revenues are higher than the government revenues of Turkey ($173.9 billion),
Austria ($197.8 billion), Poland ($90.8 billion) and Iran ($77.2 billion).
Nearly
half of American households now have subscriptions to Amazon Prime. The click
of a mouse on a personal computer, or the tap of a finger on a mobile device,
now sets into motion the speedy delivery of commodities from around the world,
or the instantaneous electronic transmission of a film, song or book. Behind
these deceptively simple transactions lies Amazon’s vast and complex
commercial, logistics, distribution and computing empire.
Promising
advances have indeed been made in automation and artificial intelligence. These
technological advances carry with them tremendous liberating potential for
human civilization as a whole. Heavy and repetitive toil by humans can
increasingly be mitigated by robots, and possibilities appear on the horizon
for advanced levels of coordination and integration around the world, assisted
by artificial intelligence.
But under capitalism, new advances in technology have made
possible new techniques of exploitation. Amazon has become a watchword for a
new kind of despotism in the workplace.
In
Amazon “fulfillment centers,” workers are forbidden to carry cellphones or to
talk to each other. They are searched coming in and out, and minute details of
their activity throughout the workday are tracked. Amazon specializes in
putting constant pressure on workers to move as fast as possible, with
electronic devices constantly prompting and prodding them to complete the next
task.
Workers
are instructed to compete with each other to surpass each other’s rates, which
they are admonished constitutes “fun.” Arbitrarily high rates are demanded, and
then raised, and then raised again. A worker who takes a moment to rest, to
drink water, or to go to the bathroom can be criticized for a diminished rate.
The workers who are deemed too slow, or who simply tire out, are replaced.
Amazon
is now the second-largest employer in the United States, and there are around
647,000 Amazon workers worldwide. Journalist John Cassidy, writing about Amazon
in The New Yorker in 2015, commented: “Behind
all the technological advances and product innovation, there is a good deal of
old-fashioned labor discipline, wage repression, and exertion of management
power.”
Over
the past week, we published an article exposing the injury of 567
workers over a two-year period at Amazon’s DFW-7 fulfillment center near Fort
Worth, Texas. In December of last year, the WSWS reported how Amazon had hired a private
detective to spy on 27-year-old worker Michelle Quinones in an effort to block
compensation for her injury.
Amazon
has appeared in the “Dirty Dozen” list maintained by the National Council for
Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) for two years in a row. The 2019
report highlights six worker deaths in seven months, 13 deaths since 2013, “a
high incidence of suicide attempts, workers urinating in bottles and workers
left without resources or income after on-the-job injuries.”
Amazon’s
techniques are merely a refined expression of conditions being imposed on
workers around the world. In March of this year, Ford Motor Company announced
the hiring of its new chief financial officer, Tim Stone, who previously served
as Amazon’s vice president of finance and the leader of the Amazon’s
acquisition of Whole Foods. Stone was hired as Ford carries out brutal
cost-cutting in the US, Europe and around the world.
There
is no shortage of opposition among Amazon workers. On social media, current and
former Amazon workers are contacting each other, looking for ways to fight
back. In Poland, where Amazon workers make around $5 per hour, Amazon walked
out of negotiations on July 2 with two unions over working conditions, setting
the stage for a strike.
To
fight for their interests, Amazon workers cannot allow their struggles to be
corralled and smothered by the pro-capitalist trade unions, which are doing
everything they can to block a fight against inequality and exploitation.
In
25 years, Amazon produced the biggest individual fortune in history, and it did
so on the backs of hundreds of thousands of workers. Amazon’s trajectory
represents an “accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of
capital.”
Not
just Bezos, but many others have enriched themselves or stand to enrich
themselves from Amazon’s rise. Wall Street has its fingers in the pie. The
Vanguard Group currently owns $55 billion of Amazon stock, BlackRock owns $45
billion and FMR owns $30 billion.
The
parasitic activities of Amazon, through which it has sought to appropriate for
itself the surplus value accumulated by other companies, have been integrated
with the financial parasitism of the American economy. Amazon’s own stock has
been buoyed ever higher as part of the speculative mania on Wall Street.
Amazon
is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with the US military and
intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million contract with the CIA
in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the Department of Defense last
year to move government data onto the cloud. Meanwhile, Amazon’s
facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being marketed to federal and
local police.
In
2013, Bezos personally purchased, and now operates, the Washington
Post, which has been a main media voice for the Democratic Party’s
anti-Russia campaign and the overall interests of American imperialism.
The
increasing integration of Amazon with the repressive apparatus of the state,
while its tentacles stretch into every corner of society.
Amazon
must be placed under public ownership and democratic control. It must be taken
out of the hands of the financial oligarchy and transformed into a public
utility. The technology and infrastructure behind Amazon’s meteoric trajectory
and the biggest individual fortune in modern history must be turned towards the
needs and aspirations of the world’s population as a whole.
This
program can only be achieved through the mobilization of the working class on
an international scale on the basis of a fight to overthrow the capitalist
system and establish a democratically-controlled socialist economy, run on the
basis of social need, not private profit.
ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN WORKER…. Amazon’s JEFF BEZOS PLAN FOR
A NEW AMERICAN SLAVERY
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/11/amazon-billionaire-jeff-bezos-says-fuck.html
"Amazon is a massive wrecking machine consuming American
retail. It's looting the economy and leaving behind rubble. " --- DANIEL
GREENFIELD FRONTPAGE MAG
Traditional book publishers were decimated by
the arrival of Amazon, which aggressively pursued them, in the words of Bezos,
“the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.”
AMAZON’S ASSAULT ON AMERICA CONTINUES
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/05/modern-slaver-jeff-bezos-of-amazon.html
Amazon, the multinational online retail
conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to the United States to take
coveted tech industry jobs than Facebook and Google combined. JOHN BINDER
"Today,
each of the top 5 billionaires owns as much as 750 million people,
more than the total population of Latin America and double the population
of the US."
“A
comprehensive new report released Sunday by the New York-based labor rights
watchdog China Labor Watch (CLW) has shed new light on the barbaric and illegal
practices that Amazon employs to boost its profits by driving down production
costs on the backs of factory workers at the company’s electronics assembly
plants in China.”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/06/hundreds-of-miserably-paid-employees-at.html
“A
comprehensive new report released Sunday by the New York-based labor rights
watchdog China Labor Watch (CLW) has shed new light on the barbaric and illegal
practices that Amazon employs to boost its profits by driving down production
costs on the backs of factory workers at the company’s electronics assembly
plants in China.”
Amazon, the multinational online retail
conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to the United States to take
coveted tech industry jobs than Facebook and Google combined. JOHN BINDER
AMAZON’S JEFF BEZOS IS THE FACE OF MODERN SLAVERY!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-face-of-evil-jeff-bezos-assault-on.html
The
gains for employees are a novel pain for the investors and employers who
have been able to hold down wages for decades because the federal government is
trying to grow the economy via cheap-labor legal immigration.
“INVESTORS”
HAVE AND WILL DESTROY THIS NATION IF IT WOULD IMPACT THE NEXT QUARTER’S
EARNINGS!
Amazon, the multinational online retail
conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to the United States to take
coveted tech industry jobs than Facebook and Google combined. JOHN BINDER
Hunger and evictions surge in the US
The worst social catastrophe to befall the US working class
since the Great Depression of the 1930s continues to leave millions of people
hungry, jobless and facing eviction.
Feeding
America, the second-largest food charity in the US, estimates that upwards of
54 million people, including one in four children in the US are facing food
insecurity.
People line up and check-in for a food giveaway at Harlem's
Food Bank For New York City, a community kitchen and food pantry, Monday, Nov.
16, 2020, in New York. Over five hundred turkeys and produce food boxes were
given away by lottery to needy families for Thanksgiving. (AP Photo/Bebeto
Matthews)
The
growing need for food among millions of workers and their families is
coinciding with record levels of COVID-19 infections reported in states across
the country. In Texas, over 1 million have contracted the coronavirus, with
over 20,000 perishing, the second highest tolls in the country behind New York.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation forecasts roughly another
190,000 deaths by March 1, 2021 if current trends continue.
On
top of food insecurity, between 11 and 13 million renter households across the
country are at risk of eviction, according to research by Stout, an investment
bank and global advisory firm.
The
Eviction Lab at Princeton University reports that eviction filings increased in
several major metro areas following the expiration of CARES Act provisions at
the end of July and before the CDC eviction moratorium was implemented on
September 4. However, even with the moratorium, Princeton researchers note that
evictions have continued across the country, and Stout estimates that with its
expiration at the end of the year, this could lead to up to 6.4 million
eviction filings.
The
Eviction Lab data shows that two weeks after the CDC moratorium was
implemented, evictions still continued to be processed, with 508 in Fort Worth
and 1,053 in Houston, Texas. Filings also increased on a month-to-month basis
in several cities, including Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and in the Florida
cities of Tampa, Jacksonville and Gainesville.
In
North Carolina, almost 25,000 eviction cases were filed between July and
September, according to data from the North Carolina Administrative Office of
the Courts, with almost 15,000 completed. Overall, Stout estimates that between
300,000 and 410,000 North Carolina households are unable to pay rent, with
240,000 expected eviction filings by January 2021.
In
an interview with CNN, attorney Michael Trujillo commented on the bind that
renters will find themselves in come January 1, 2021. “The pandemic is not
going away before the end of the year,” he said, adding that without additional
protections, “a huge wave of evictions” is on the horizon.
In
a Hill-HarrisX poll taken between November 10 and November 13, 77 percent of US
voters were in favor of passing a coronavirus relief package “as soon as
possible.” Yet despite massive popular support for more stimulus, no relief is
coming.
After the House and Senate passed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act at
the end of March, which provided billions to Wall Street, large corporations
and the well-connected, ensuring their financial stability for a lifetime,
workers were left with limited protections and only temporary unemployment
relief. Congress has
yet to pass another bill long after the $1,200 stimulus checks have been sent
out and enhanced unemployment benefits have expired. Months of inaction have
left millions of workers and their families without additional stimulus,
eviction protection, health care, food or medicine, exacerbating mental health
issues and stress.
Included
in the CARES Act was an eviction moratorium that expired, along with the
federal $600-a-week unemployment supplement, at the end of July. After Congress
failed to come to terms on another bill at the end of July, the Centers for
Disease Control, on September 4, implemented a federal eviction moratorium,
which required tenants to sign a declaration and provide a copy to their
landlord. This, along with additional federal unemployment assistance
distributed under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and Pandemic
Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) programs, are set to expire the
final week of December, leaving millions of people who have yet to find jobs or
come up with the monies needed to pay back rent facing eviction in less than 50
days.
As
of October, some 13 million people were receiving benefits through the PUA or
PEUC program, more than from state unemployment insurance, which has also
expired for millions of workers.
While
the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that over 11.1 million people
are unemployed, thousands of workers, primarily low-wage workers, continue to
be laid off. Last week, the BLS recorded over 700,000 first-time unemployment
filings for the 34th week in a row, with first-time unemployment claims
exceeding any week throughout the 2008-09 Great Recession.
A Washington
Post analysis found that among higher education workers, low-wage and
administrative staff have seen ongoing monthly job losses or have not been
called back to campus, while higher paid instructors have been hired back.
The Post found that while colleges hired 180,000 workers
during the fall semester last year, only 20,000 jobs were added this year.
Mass
unemployment has led workers to apply for state unemployment benefits, but
hundreds of thousands have yet to receive anything nearly eight months into the
pandemic. In Wisconsin, reporters working with Wisconsin Watch found that
nationally only 56 percent of unemployment claims were paid from March through
August, while in Wisconsin the level was only 42.5 percent. As of November 10,
more than 94,000 people in the state were still waiting for either state or
federal unemployment benefits.
For
those who were fortunate enough to receive benefits, their expiration and the
inability to find safe well-paying work have left them unable to afford basic
necessities.
The
out-of-control spread of the virus coupled with overcrowded hospitals prompted
a flurry of public health declarations over the past 72 hours from Republican
and Democratic governors, such as Iowa Republican Kim Reynolds and Michigan
Democrat Gretchen Whitmer. These included curfews, mask mandates and calls to
limit social gatherings to 10 people or less. However, not one politician in
either party is advancing the necessary demand to resume lockdowns of all
non-essential businesses, with guaranteed pay for jobless workers and small
business owners.
As
Democratic President-elect Joe Biden made clear in his speech yesterday after
meeting with corporate executives, the number one concern of the ruling class
is “to get the economy back on track,” not to stop the spread of the virus,
feed the hungry, provide relief or house the homeless. All policy is focused on
ensuing the flow of profits to the corporations and Wall Street.
Not
once in Biden’s speech did he call for resuming the unemployment benefits in
the CARES Act or extending eviction moratoriums.
This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic
Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a
party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon, and the
military-industrial complex.
In
the latest round of political theater on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote a letter to Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell appealing, “for the sake of the country,” to “come to
the table and work with us to produce an agreement that meets America’s needs
in this critical time.”
The
letter noted that the negotiations should begin from the previous failed
starting offer of $2.2 trillion, which McConnell and the Republicans have
dismissed, a position from which they have not budged for the last six months.
Despite the intransigence on the part of the Republicans, the fact is that the
Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have found time to advance several of
President Trump’s federal judges past committee hearings, including Supreme
Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, allowing them to be approved.
Ultimately,
both parties see the provision of even the most meager benefits as a
“disincentive” for their real aim: getting workers back on the job in factories
and other workplaces amid a raging pandemic.
This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon, and the military-industrial complex.
Amazon is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with
the US military and intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million
contract with the CIA in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the
Department of Defense last year to move government data onto the cloud.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being
marketed to federal and local police.
Biden names
national security team of right-wing militarists
President-elect
Joe Biden sent a clear message to the world and to the American people with the
first announcement of the top appointees to his cabinet and White House staff:
the number one priority of the incoming Democratic administration is to build a
US-led front of imperialist powers in preparation for stepped up military
pressure and outright war on Russia and China.
All
six of the appointments announced Monday in press releases—the nominees
themselves will be introduced to the public later today—are in the sphere of
foreign policy and national security. All are veterans of the
Obama-Biden administration, and many were confirmed in those earlier positions
by a Republican-controlled Senate led by Mitch McConnell, demonstrating that
Biden intends to form a government entirely acceptable to the Republican right.
Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken speaks
during a news conference in Kiev, Ukraine, Friday, March 6, 2015. (AP
Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)
The
six officials named Monday include:
Antony
Blinken, secretary
of state: Blinken is a long-time Biden national security aide in both the US
Senate and during Biden’s vice presidency, and he was deputy secretary of state
in 2015-2016.
Jake
Sullivan, national
security adviser: Sullivan succeeded Blinken as national security adviser to
Vice President Biden, as well as serving as chief of staff to Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton.
Avril
Haines, director of
national intelligence: Haines was on Biden’s staff at the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, then on the Obama-Biden National Security Council before
serving two years as deputy director of the CIA in 2015-2016.
Alexander
Mayorkas, secretary
of homeland security: a Cuban-born son of immigrants, Mayorkas is a career
domestic security official who was deputy secretary of the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) in the Obama administration, which deported more
immigrants than any previous government.
Linda
Thomas-Greenfield,
ambassador to the United Nations: the highest ranking African American in the
career foreign service, Thomas-Greenfield was named ambassador to Liberia by
George W. Bush, then State Department personnel chief under Obama and later
assistant secretary for African Affairs. She was forced out by Trump in 2017
and became a counselor with the Albright-Stonebridge Group, a foreign policy
think tank for Democrats headed by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright.
John
Kerry, special
presidential envoy for climate: the former senator, presidential candidate and
secretary of state, now 76, co-chaired Biden’s climate change task force along
with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He will head a US effort to
rejoin the Paris climate accord.
The first and most obvious fact about all six nominees is that
they are dedicated defenders of American imperialism and the interests of Wall
Street. Several are multi-millionaires, while all are comfortably within the
top tier financially. Blinken, for example, is the son of a founder of Warburg
Pincus investment bank, Donald Blinken, who was for 12 years chairman of the
board of the State University of New York.
For
all the hosannas in the media over the “diversity” of these initial
appointees—one African American, one Hispanic, two women—these facets of their
identities are entirely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter to the victim of torture
in a CIA secret prison that the torturer (or her boss in Washington) is female.
It doesn’t matter to refugee children separated from their parents by
immigration agents that the DHS secretary is Hispanic. It doesn’t matter to the
victims of US military aggression that the diplomat who defends this violence
before the world is black.
The
emphasis on diversity is used to distract from the reactionary character of the
foreign policy orientation of the incoming Biden administration, which his
apologists seek to disguise using the skin color, gender and national origin of
the personnel who will carry it out.
There
has been little discussion in the media of the significance of Biden choosing,
in the midst of a nationwide and worldwide public health catastrophe that has
already taken the lives of a quarter million Americans, to announce his foreign
policy team first. If victory over coronavirus was the number one priority, as
Biden claimed during the fall campaign, why not announce those who will head up
the Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies with the main
responsibility for the fight against the pandemic?
This
is a signal that the real point of difference between the Democrats and Trump
is not his catastrophic performance in relation to COVID-19. While Trump now
openly embraces “herd immunity” and dismisses the death toll as
inconsequential, the Democrats will pursue essentially the same policy, and
Biden has flatly rejected any new lockdown of the US economy.
Ever
since Trump took office, the focus of Democratic Party opposition has been on
foreign policy, particularly Trump’s allegedly “soft” line on Russia and his
pullout, albeit largely rhetorical, from US commitments to Syria, Iraq and
Afghanistan. Now that Biden expects to be in control of US foreign policy in
less than 60 days, he is demonstrating that this will be the initial focus of
policy changes.
BLOG EDITOR: THE WASHINGTON POST IS OWNED BY BIDEN
CRONY JEFF BEZOS.
Both
major pro-Democratic Party newspapers emphasized this in their coverage of the
Biden team’s rollout. The Washington
Post wrote, “Biden is planning to prioritize foreign
policy as a major pillar in his administration, with vows to reassemble global
alliances and insert the United States into a more prominent position on the
world stage.”
The New
York Times was even blunter, identifying China as the main target of
the new administration. In a front-page profile, the Times described
Blinken as “a defender of global alliances” and said that he “will try to
coalesce skeptical international partners into a new competition with China…”
It identified trade in the Indo-Pacific region, technology investments, and
Africa as areas in which the US would be “competing with China.”
Other
profiles have noted that Blinken and Biden were generally aligned on foreign
policy issues during the Obama administration, except on two occasions—the US
attack on Libya, and US policy towards Syria—where Blinken favored more
aggressive US intervention and Biden was more cautious.
The
two were completely in step in relation to Ukraine, where Blinken played a key
public role in turning the Crimean secession and reunification with Russia into
a major international crisis. Blinken was the main US spokesman advocating
heavy sanctions on Russia, to punish not only the Putin government, but also
the population of the country as a whole. In a speech at the time, he said
sanctions were needed to “demonstrate to the Russian people that there is a
very hefty fine for supporting international criminals like” Putin.
Of
the other appointees, Avril Haines is also a close personal associate of Biden,
serving on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he was
chairman, then moving to the National Security Council in the Obama-Biden White
House before her two years at the CIA. After
leaving the government when Trump came in, Haines joined Blinken at the newly
formed WestExec Partners, a national security think tank peddling advice to US
corporations. Another partner was Michele Fluornoy, the former
Pentagon official under Obama who is widely expected to be Biden’s choice as
secretary of defense.
Late
Monday, after the rollout of the group that Biden called the “crux” of his
national security team, the Biden transition revealed that his next major
cabinet pick would be former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen to serve as
Treasury secretary. This underscores the
absolute subservience of the incoming administration to Wall Street, since
Yellen was identified with the Fed policy of unrestrained opening of the
financial spigots to support the financial markets during the 2008-2009 Wall
Street crash.
Yellen
was a top Fed official from 2004 on, working with then-chairman Ben Bernanke,
moving up to vice chair in 2009 and appointed by Obama to succeed Bernanke in
2013. Trump declined to reappoint her to a second term in 2017.
Wall Street, Republicans and militarists
back Biden campaign
Anyone who wants to know what type of policies will be pursued by a Biden administration in the event the Democrats win the November 3 presidential election has only to look at the social and political forces that are rallying to his campaign.
BLOG EDITOR: BIDEN WAS ENDORSED VERY EARLY BY WAR PROFITEER
AND PARTNER FOR RED CHINA SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN.
They include Wall Street, prominent Republicans and
veterans of the Obama national security team.
Thanks to strong support from big business, the
presidential campaign of the former vice president outraised President Trump’s
reelection campaign in June, according to figures announced by the two
campaigns last week. Joe Biden raked in $141 million, while Trump’s campaign
took in $131 million.
It was the second consecutive month that Biden collected
more in campaign contributions than Trump, following a $6 million edge in May,
$80.8 million to $74 million, according to reports filed with the Federal
Election Commission.
The Trump campaign still leads in cash in the bank, with
$295 million on hand as of July 1, as it had few expenses during the Republican
primaries, where Trump had only token opposition. Biden’s campaign was
effectively broke at the time of his breakthrough victories in the Super
Tuesday primaries on March 3, but he now has amassed a war chest of at least
$125 million, according to published estimates.
ActBlue, the online fundraising vehicle for the Democratic
Party as a whole, took in $392 million in June, shattering all previous
records, the bulk of it in smaller donations and contributions from first-time
donors. This is an indication of the widespread popular hostility to Trump,
exacerbated by his vitriolic attacks on the mass protests against police
violence that took place throughout the month, as well as his refusal to take
any serious action to stem the coronavirus pandemic.
BLOG EDITOR: THE RICH KNOW WHO WILL SERVE THEM BEST! ALL
BILLIONAIRES ARE DEMOCRATS. THE GREATEST TRANSFER OF WEALTH TO THE
RICH IN AMERICAN HISTORY OCCURRED DURING THE BANKSTER REGIME OF
OBAMA-BIDEN-HOLDER.
But a major factor in Biden’s fundraising surge has been a
series of virtual events featuring former President Obama, Senator Elizabeth
Warren and Senator Kamala Harris, at which wealthy contributors were invited to
give the maximum donation of $5,600 directly to Biden as well as much larger
sums to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the political action
committee favored by the Biden campaign, Priorities USA, which expects to spend
$200 million by itself to support his election.
Under the terms of an agreement between the Biden campaign
and the DNC, the Biden Victory Fund can receive checks as large as $620,600
from wealthy donors. The money is then distributed in smaller amounts to the
campaign, the DNC and various state parties in order to comply with campaign
finance regulations.
According to figures released this week by the Center for
Responsive Politics, Wall Street in particular is favoring Biden’s campaign
over Trump’s. The group found that Biden has raised $52.4 million from the
finance, insurance and real estate industries, of which $32.2 million came from
“securities and investment.”
Trump raised $33.5 million from the broader category of
finance, insurance and real estate. He was competitive with Biden among the
real estate moguls, who view Trump as one of their own, but trailed badly, with
only $7.8 million, from the “securities and investment” subcategory.
In other words, Wall
Street favored Biden by better than four to one, and Biden’s $23
million lead among the financial elite accounted for more than his entire $16
million edge over Trump in fundraising in May and June.
Along with the support of the stock exchange and financial
institutions, Biden is winning support from sections of the Republican Party.
This includes the well publicized Lincoln Project, established by former
Republican campaign operatives Reed Galen, John Weaver, Rick Wilson and Steve
Schmidt, with the support of other former party officials like Jennifer Horn,
former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party, and George Conway, a
prominent Republican lawyer and husband of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.
The Lincoln Project began running
television and internet commercials denouncing Trump from a right-wing foreign
policy standpoint, criticizing him as soft on China and Russia. One ad,
released after the New York Times launched its fabricated
and unsubstantiated charge that Russia paid bounties to Taliban fighters to
kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, features a former Navy SEAL who attacks
Trump for not ordering military action to kill Russians. The ad is titled
“Betrayal.”
BLOG EDITOR: BOTH BIDEN AND GEORGE W BUSH ARE GLOBALIST FOR
OPEN BORDERS AND ENDLESS WAR. THE BUSH FAMILY, LONG PARTNERED WITH THE 9-11
INVADING SAUDIS, STARTED TWO WARS AGAINST IRAQ WHICH ARE STILL FILLING THEIR
POCKETS.
Another political action committee, “43 Alumni for Biden,”
consists of hundreds of former officials in the Republican administration of
George W. Bush (the 43rd US president). They declare they are “choosing country
over party” in the November election, stating: “We believe that a Biden
administration will adhere to the rule of law ... and restore dignity and
integrity to the White House.” As a Super PAC, the group can raise unlimited
sums of money to run ads attacking Trump or boosting Biden.
The final component in the rapidly coalescing coalition of
reactionaries supporting the Biden campaign consists of former
military-intelligence officials of the Obama administration, who have made a
killing in the lucrative business of “strategic consulting” and now hope to
return to power in a Biden administration. Several of them, including former
deputy defense secretary Michele Flournoy and former deputy national security
adviser and deputy secretary of state Anthony Blinken, have signed on as
Biden’s top national security advisers.
A remarkable article
in The American Prospect—a liberal publication that supports
Biden against Trump—makes a devastating exposure of these militarists for
Biden, under the headline, “How Biden’s Foreign Policy Team Got Rich.”
It documents the creation of a strategic consulting firm
called WestExec Advisors (named after West Executive Avenue, the street outside
the West Wing of the White House in Washington D.C.). WestExec was founded by
two lesser operatives, Sergio Aguirre, former chief of staff to Samantha Power,
UN ambassador under Obama, and Nitin Chadda, a former aide to Obama Secretary
of Defense Ashton Carter.
These two recruited Flournoy and Blinken to serve as the
group’s biggest “names.” Flournoy was widely expected to become secretary of
defense if Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election and she is once again at the
top of the list for Pentagon boss under Biden.
Under Trump, Flournoy served on the
Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board
and the CIA director’s External Advisory Board, before leaving once the 2020
presidential campaign heated up. She is a notorious warmonger, and The
American Prospect article details her role in
advocating continued US military support to Saudi Arabia in its war in Yemen,
which has resulted in $3 billion in weapons contracts for Raytheon. WestExec
principal Robert Work, a former deputy defense secretary, is a member of
Raytheon’s board of directors.
WestExec quickly made a splash in Washington with its
launch party attended by top former Obama national security aides such as Susan
Rice, Tom Donilon and Denis McDonough. It lined up a list of clients so potent
that neither WestExec nor the Biden campaign would release the names, for fear
of exposing the fact that Biden’s foreign policy advisory group is a wholly
owned subsidiary of the big military contractors.
One particularly noxious principal at
WestExec is former Deputy CIA Director Avril Haines, who, as The
American Prospect put it, “helped design Obama’s program of using
drones for extrajudicial killings.” In June, the Biden campaign announced that
Haines would oversee foreign policy for the Biden transition team.
While the former drone missile chief
prepares plans for the future Biden administration, the current advisers, with
their lucrative “consulting” affiliations, are listed by The American
Prospect as follows: “Nicholas Burns (The Cohen Group), Kurt Campbell
(The Asia Group), Tom Donilon (BlackRock Investment Institute), Wendy Sherman
(Albright Stonebridge Group), Julianne Smith (WestExec Advisors) and Jake
Sullivan (Macro Advisory Partners). They rarely discuss their connections to
corporate power, defense contractors, private equity, and hedge funds, let
alone disclose them.”
This is what Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth
Warren and their various liberal and pseudo-left apologists have embraced as
the alternative to the fascistic Trump administration—a government of
warmongers and corporate shills, no less committed to the defense of the
interests of the American ruling elite.
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