ERIC ZUESSE—The first fact that they hide is that though elections are a NECESSARY part of any democracy, elections throughout the U.S. empire are only for PR purposes, to fool the deceived public to think that an election is a SUFFICIENT condition in order to BE a democracy. That ridiculous lie is universal throughout the U.S. empire — despite its ludicrousness. For example: Did you know that each of the two political Parties in America, the DNC and the RNC, is a closed self-appointing private club, which has no obligation to its voters — much less to the entire public — and so it can and sometimes does ignore vote-counts in its primary ’elections’, whenever it wants to?
CLASS STRUGGLE
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EDITOR—The panel discusses the delicate situation engulfing the EU and the United States, where the anti-immigrant issue has gathered considerable momentum, presenting difficult problems (and opportunities) for the reigning oligarchy. It’s noteworthy, says Dust James, that in both the US (capital/imperial core) and Europe (the periphery, where a “labor aristocracy” developed) the capitalists are drifting toward fascism. In America, where the economy continues to worsen for the working class, and the immigration issue (exploited mercilessly by Trump), adds fuel to the flames, such situation could easily drive some sort of fascistic movement forward, even if Trump himself may not be fully aware (or concerned) about the chaotic consequences of his careless opportunism. Mass immigration is an issue with no easy answers, notes Billy Bob; socialists could arguably defend or oppose either side of the equation. There is no doubt, however, that lowly paid Americans—including many Latinos—are fiercely hostile to “illegal immigration”, since any mass influx of undocumented workers will inexorably depress wages.
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GARLAND NIXON—A debate between a man who has little, if any, understanding of complex geopolitical issues and a brain dead warmonger who was never the sharpest knife in the drawer has exposed the irreversible decline of the US empire.
If we use a baseball metaphor, Donald Trump looked like a pitcher coming off injured reserve who had trouble getting his pitches over the plate. Trump had one pitch, immigration, and that pitch was placed lazily and haphazardly throughout the debate in a manner that made him appear unprepared and not overly focused on winning the game. In the context of that same metaphor, Joe Biden looked like a player that had been dragged into the dugout and beaten mercilessly about the head and neck with a 54-ounce Louisville slugger.
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How Venezuela Is Overcoming the US Blockade
13 minutes readROGER D. HARRIS—This election is taking place in the context of US unilateral coercive measures. These so-called sanctions have amounted to an actual economic and financial blockade designed to cripple the economy and cause the people to renounce their government. Such outside interference by Washington is tantamount to electoral blackmail.
Yet Carlos Ron, Venezuela’s deputy minister of foreign affairs for North America, is confident that the government party will win. He spoke on June 25 at a webinar organized by the Venezuela Solidarity Network.
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RAINER SHEA—The book makes it apparent that the solution isn’t to simply restore the original Marcyism, because Marcyism’s strategy was always flawed. As the book recounts, during the 80s the Marcyists would argue against capitalism by uniformly calling the capitalist state’s policies “racist.” Which they weren’t wrong about, but the effect this had was to reduce capitalism to race. It was a way of signaling that liberals could find a friend in the WWP, which evidently didn’t bring WWP to success. It couldn’t rebuild U.S. communism following its crippling by McCarthyism, and its next big defeat with the destruction of the Black Panther Party.