Trump Has Stuffed His Cabinet With Oligarchs Poised To Govern For Their Profit

• by: C.J. Polychroniou

The Bosses of the Senate, a cartoon by Joseph Keppler. First published in Puck 1889.

01-05-2025 ~ The circle of billionaires in Trump’s cabinet embodies the reign of American oligarchy.

In the narrative of mainstream U.S. media, oligarchs — super-rich, politically connected individuals with influence over the state — exist only in post-communist countries and post-colonial societies in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Their power is seen as a foreign, un-American deviation from capitalism. In reality, however, the United States’ own oligarchs are thriving.

The U.S., despite the continued reverie expressed for democratic ideals, has shown to be a full-fledged plutocratic oligarchy — and for the next four years, it will be run directly by the oligarchs themselves. President-elect Donald Trump has assembled an administration of billionaires and warmongers whose combined wealth runs into hundreds of billions of dollars.

In a way, there is nothing surprising about this disturbing development. The rich in the U.S. have seen their wealth rise dramatically over the past 30 years, and the last four years have been particularly great for billionaires. Most people in the U.S. think that the economy works only for the rich and the powerful. Read more

How The World Hides Liability For Climate Deaths

• by: Ashley Berke, Carter Dillard, Beatrix Homler& Rei Stone-Grover

01-04-2025 ~ Unfair family planning regimes have stalled progress in the climate fight and prevent children from having a fair start in life.

Nearly half the world’s children “live in countries where risks to their health and safety due to the effects of climate change are extremely high,” according to UNICEF. By 2050, almost all children globally will be “exposed to heat waves,” resulting in the rise of specific health issues, especially for smaller children, adds the agency.

Rich nations’ inability or unwillingness to curb their emissions has exacerbated the climate crisis, which, if left unchecked, may unfold apocalyptic scenarios. Those most responsible for the climate crisis spent decades funding denialism while robbing children and animals of the future they deserve. They exploited the world’s people and resources while hoarding wealth for themselves.

The outcome of the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan, is a shining example of how rich countries are reluctant to take remedial steps to secure the children’s and the planet’s future. The COP29 was widely criticized for the rich world’s failure to adequately address developing nations’ critical climate-related financing needs.

“The latest NCQG [New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance] decision at COP29 starkly highlights the unwillingness of developed and oil-rich nations to take responsibility for their historical and substantial emissions,” said Pegah Moulana, the secretary general of Youth and Environment Europe, the largest independent platform of environmental youth organizations in Europe. “By failing to provide concrete support to the most affected states and neglecting to establish a robust protocol to ensure these nations remain debt-free during implementation, the decision exacerbates climate injustice.”

According to a 2024 analysis by the International Institute for Environment and Development, the poorest countries and those most vulnerable to climate change spend “more than twice as much to service their debts as they receive to fight the climate crisis.” Read more

The Fight For Transgender Rights Is A Class Struggle Fight For Equality

• by: C.J. Polychroniou

C.J. Polychroniou

12-29-2024 ~ Working class politics must embrace trans rights as the fight for trans rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights are not separate from the fight of the working class.

President-elect Donald Trump said at a conference for young conservatives in Arizona this past Sunday that the official policy of his upcoming administration would be the recognition that there are only two genders, male and female, and pledged to stop “transgender lunacy” from day one of his presidency.

Transgender issues have become a hot topic in U.S. politics, with Democrats and Republicans adopting opposing policies on matters such as healthcare provision and the types of books allowed in public schools and libraries. Republicans have been pushing against LGBTQ rights for many years now, and Republican-led state legislatures have passed legislation restricting medical care to transgender youth. As such, there is little doubt that the incoming Trump administration will seek to make good on its promise to punish transgender people and the LGBTQ community in general.

There are an estimated 1.6 million transgender people in the United States, facing severe discrimination and constant denial of their fundamental rights and, in many cases, even rejection by their own families. Their only crime is that they do not conform to societal expectations of gender identity, meaning that they do not fit the confines of male and female binaries. Yet, transgender people have existed for as long as humans have been around. There is ample documentation of transgender people from ancient Mesopotamia to the Greek and Roman empires. Indeed, the ancient Greeks did not have the same concepts of gender and sexuality that eventually became crystalized in the modern Western world, from around the start of the 16th century. In Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus, the god of hermaphrodites and effeminates, was partly male, partly female. Read more

The Controversy Over Cannibalism

• by: Brenna R. Hassett

Brenna R. Hassett – Photo: en.wikipedia.org

12-25-2024 ~ A recent investigation of human remains found in the UK’s Cheddar Gorge has once again brought a particularly unsavory aspect of our human story into the light: human consumption of other humans. The surprising discovery of cannibalism in the Early Bronze Age comes from the re-examination of the remains of 37 men, women, and children that were found in pieces at the site of Charterhouse Warren, down a disused shaft cut into the Mendip Hills. This is the first instance of cannibalism of humans, or anthropophagy, to be discovered in British prehistory on such a large scale, and the reported findings force a reconsideration of what role cannibalism may have played in the life of humans in the past. Reckoning with such an emotive and sensational topic has never been easy for scientists, however, and there is still quite a lot of controversy about exactly how much cannibalism ever really happened in the past.

In the fairly recent past, accusations of cannibalism in a society or group were often considered to be a propaganda move on the part of the accusers. William Arens argued in his 1979 book The Man-Eating Myth that accusations of anthropophagy were never based on observation, only second-hand reports, and reflected deeply held prejudices by racist and colonial commentators. Whether it was the dog-headed Cynocephali, a tribe of barbarian cannibals described by Ancient Greeks that somehow made it down to medieval times or the Carib people who were described as cannibals to the newly arrived Christopher Columbus by the neighboring Arawak group, what most accusations of cannibalism have in common is that they are used to denigrate the humanity of the accused. Columbus’s description of the “Caniba” in his 1490s journal tells of the people he encountered describing their rivals as “dog-nosed” cannibals. What is left to prove the truth of these accusations then, and what Columbus himself used to bolster his arguments for a dangerous and evil people that had to be subjugated, is the physical evidence left behind by the consumption of human flesh: the bones themselves. Read more

Reimagining Socialism: An Interview With David Kotz

• by: C.J. Polychroniou

C.J. Polychroniou

12-25-2024 ~ “The biggest problem with regulated capitalism is that it is simply not sustainable in the long run,” said the economist.

In the 1990s, all the talk was about the end of socialism and the unchallenged military and economic superiority of the United States. Nonetheless, two decades later, socialism was revived as a possible political alternative as the Great Recession of 2008 and the intensification of neoliberalism’s cruelties tore a huge hole in people’s faith in capitalism, especially among young people in the United States whose hearts had been captured by Sen. Bernie Sanders’ fiery calls for universal healthcare, free public college, and economic and climate justice. Socialism remains a political alternative taken seriously by many across the United States although its vision is still far away from becoming a hegemonic political project.

However, there are different kinds of socialism, and some of them, such as social democracy and market socialism, seek reform rather than the actual replacement of capitalism. On the other hand, the Soviet model, which is the only version of socialism that gave birth to an alternative socioeconomic system to that of capitalism, had many undesirable features and proved unsustainable.

So what would be the ideal system of socialism in the 21st century? In the interview that follows, radical economist David Kotz dissects the lessons drawn from the experience of the Soviet model, explains why reforming capitalism does not solve the problems built into the system of capitalism, and makes a case in defense of democratic socialism as the only sustainable alternative to capitalism. David Kotz is the author of The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism and of the soon-to-be-published book Socialism for Today: Escaping the Cruelties of Capitalism. He is professor emeritus of economics and senior research fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. From 2010-19, Kotz also served as distinguished professor of economics and co-director of the department of political economy at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. Read more

Besieged And Bombed Amid Famine, Hundreds Of Thousands Of IDPs Struggle To Survive In Darfur

• by: Pavan Kulkarni

12-21-2024 ~ As the war between Sudan’s security forces continues into its 21st month, casualties mount in North Darfur’s besieged capital El Fasher, which has been cut off from food aid amid spreading famine while local markets are being bombed.

The lives of hundreds of thousands in the famine-struck Zamzam camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) hang in the balance as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have intensified attacks on North Darfur state’s capital El Fasher.

Having overrun the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the other four states of Darfur, the RSF has besieged this city since May to take the last army foothold in Sudan’s western region. The RSF has nearly completed its ethnic cleansing campaign in West Darfur.

While the RSF has been shelling its way into the city, the SAF has been making little effort to protect civilians. On the contrary, the army has resorted to indiscriminate aerial bombardment of densely populated civilian areas to target RSF troops, seemingly interested in only guarding its headquarters. It has thus caused the bulk of the casualties. Read more