PETER KOENIG—Imagine, you are living in a world that you are told is a democracy – and you may even believe it – but in fact your life and fate is in the hands of a few ultra-rich, ultra-powerful and ultra-inhuman oligarchs. They may be called Deep State, Illuminati, or simply the Beast, or anything else obscure or untraceable – it doesn’t matter. They are less than the 0.0001%. For lack of a better expression, let’s call them for now “obscure individuals”.
PLUTOCRATIC POWER
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How the Republican Party Spins Trump’s Corruption
16 minutes readERIC ZUESSE—All of them were career defenders of America’s top corporations. That’s the type of career the U.S. Government wants to ‘police’ Wall Street. And the American public thinks that this is an acceptable Government. The problem isn’t only Trump, and it’s not only his opponents. It instead is virtually everyone who ascends to the top of the U.S. Government. If one’s career isn’t dependent upon American billionaires, then one stands next to no real chance to make it into that level. Billionaires also control the ‘news’-media. So, the public accept this system, the system that basically authorizes billionaires to control the Government.
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JOSE GUADALUPE ARGUELLO—“Few imagined that he would become Brazil’s president. But as after Obama came Trump, so did Bolsonaro come after Lula,” the La Octava host continued. “So, it is wrong to underestimate people like Gilberto Lozano, not so much because somewhere he may have hidden grandeur, but rather because if it goes badly for this [AMLO] government, or if they are not able to meet the expectations of certain sectors such as the middle class, eventually an ultra-right, anti-system figure could grow strong, and get a stroke of luck”.
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US Billionaire Wealth Surges to $584 Billion, or 20 Percent, Since the Beginning of the Pandemic
17 minutes readCHUCK COLLINS—“This orgy of wealth shows how fundamentally flawed our economic system is,” said Frank Clemente, ATF’s executive director. “In three months about 600 billionaires increased their wealth by far more than the nation’s governors say their states need in fiscal assistance to keep delivering services to 330 million residents. Their wealth increased twice as much as the federal government paid out in one-time checks to more than 150 million Americans. If this pandemic reveals anything, it’s how unequal our society has become and how drastically it must change.”
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PAUL STREET—Looting of retail stores is about economic desperation, as well as civil and human rights. Covid-19, and the economic depression that the coronavirus has sparked in the US, has hit already deeply impoverished and highly segregated black communities with special and tragic virulence.