Bulletin from Socialist Appeal (with links to articles)

Welcome to the latest Socialist Appeal weekly bulletin, with the highlights of this week's news and analysis from www.socialist.net.

Boris Johnson's Tory government is presiding over an unprecented health crisis: unable to control the virus as they recklessly reopen the economy; risking workers' lives for the sake of the bosses' profits.

On top of this, a tsunami of job cuts and austerity lies ahead for the working class. As the economic life support is removed, a deep depression looms. We are facing an unparalled crisis of the capitalist system.

Instead of providing a real opposition, Keir Starmer is siding with the Tories, condemning Black Lives Matter activists, and paying off right-wing saboteurs.


This is why we need to build a strong Marxist organisation - in the labour movement and on the streets. We therefore urge all our readers to join us today in the fight for socialism.

‍The latest issue of the paper (no. 333) is out now, with articles on: The Beirut explosion and revolution in Lebanon; 80 years since the assassination of Leon Trotsky; first issue of "PCS Marxists" published; and much much more.

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In Memory of Leon Trotsky


By Alan Woods

Next week we will mark the 80th anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky with an international online rally. We republish here an article by Alan Woods reflecting on the incredible life of this revolutionary giant.
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Ruling class in crisis: Our modern day Ancien Régime


By Socialist Appeal Editorial Board

The mood amongst ordinary people is rapidly shifting as the Tory government lurches from scandal to crisis. The widening class divide in society is being exposed by events, preparing the way for revolutionary explosions.
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The sad case of Paul Mason: a victim of post-modernism


By Alan Woods

Our recent critique has drawn the ire of ‘left-wing’ journalist Paul Mason, who said that our “mouldering” organisation needs to abandon its outdated worldview. Mason’s post-modernism, however, is no substitute for the science of Marxism.
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USA: The Portland protests and Trump’s “Gestapo”


By Ari Saffran and John Peterson

President Trump has attempted to whip up panic around the Black Lives Matter protests, in order to portray himself as the 'law and order' candidate in the upcoming elections. But this desperate move is a sign of weakness, not strength.
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Lebanon’s revolution: an explosion of class anger


By Adam Zeineddine

The explosion in Beirut last week has caused an explosion of rage and struggle, as the Lebanese masses take to the streets once again. We say: trust nobody but your own forces! Workers of Lebanon, overthrow the whole rotten system!
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Latest Socialist Appeal (Issue 333) out now!











With articles on:
The Beirut explosion and revolution in Lebanon

80 years since the assassination of Leon Trotsky

First issue of "PCS Marxists" bulletin published

United Arab Emirates sells out Palestine for Israel

Tamara Nassar Power Suits 

13 August 2020

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/united-arab-emirates-sells-out-palestine-israel




The United Arab Emirates and Israel have agreed to full normalization of relations, bringing their decades-long clandestine dealings proudly into the open.

The so-called “Abraham Accords” sealing the deal were brokered by US officials.

President Donald Trump on Thursday tweeted a joint statement from the three governments.


The deal is named for “the father of all three great faiths,” David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, told reporters at the Oval Office on Thursday.

Religious and cultural tolerance is often used by Arab states and Israel to mask their efforts to normalize ties.

Painting conflict in the region as stemming from a lack of understanding among religions is also a way to obscure its true origin: Israel’s violent dispossession of Palestinians and ongoing military occupation and steady ethnic cleansing of their land.
Public relations

In exchange for normalization, Israel agreed to suspend plans to annex large swaths of the occupied West Bank “and focus its efforts now on expanding ties with other countries in the Arab and Muslim world,” according to the joint statement.

However, this is spin.

In reality, it was the United States that put Israel’s annexation plans on ice weeks ago.

In fact, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed his commitment to annexation shortly after the announcement of the agreement.

The UAE is merely using the American-imposed freeze as an opportunity to bring its secret ties with Israel dating back to the 1990s into the open.

These secret relations have included military and intelligence cooperation and even joint military exercises.

The ground for Thursday’s announcement was laid in recent years with athletic competitions and business cooperation.

Just weeks ago, an Emirati firm struck a deal with two Israeli arms giants, supposedly to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

But the public relations messaging focusing on Israel’s agreement to suspend annexation allows the UAE to claim falsely that it achieved something for Palestinian rights, when the opposite is the case.

Relations between Israel and Gulf States including Saudi Arabia and the UAE are founded on a mutual enmity towards Iran.

Liquidating Palestinian rights and bypassing the Palestinian issue is seen as key to building up this anti-Iran alliance under American oversight.

Annexation, moreover, would only be a formal rubber stamp for what Israel has been doing on the ground for decades: stealing land, forcibly displacing Palestinians and building colonies in flagrant breach of international law.

This violent colonization has never ceased and will not stop as a result of this agreement.

The United Arab Emirates, therefore, asked for and received nothing from Israel on behalf of Palestinians in exchange for normalizing ties.
Dumping Arab Peace Initiative

The Emirates is following in the footsteps of Egypt and Jordan, which signed peace treaties with Israel in 1979 and 1994 respectively.

But the UAE is also departing from the Arab consensus that any further normalization of ties with Israel had to come in the context of an overall peace deal.

This was the essence of the so-called Arab Peace Initiative launched under Saudi auspices and adopted by the Arab League summit in Beirut in 2002.

According to that initiative, Arab states would establish normal relations with Israel only in the context of a “comprehensive peace” based on the establishment of a “sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since the 4th of June 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

The logic was that the prospect of normalization would be an incentive to Israel and that it should not receive payment in advance.

Arab states nonetheless continued to normalize ties with Israel, but until Thursday’s announcement, none went as far as full, formal relations.

With the United Arab Emirates breaking even the minimal commitment to Palestinian rights contained in the Arab Peace Initiative, it is likely more Arab governments will follow in its path to Tel Aviv.

“We are already discussing this with other nations,” Trump reportedly said on Thursday. “So you will probably see others of these.”

The president did not mention which nations those might be, but Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in particular have been cozying up to Israel in recent years.

Israel has been seeking non-aggression pacts with Gulf states.

A report in the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds Thursday said Oman, Bahrain and Sudan were likely to be next in line to normalize ties with Israel.

The report, by the newspaper’s correspondent Said Arikat, cited an “informed source” in Washington who declined to be named.

All three of those countries have sent signals favoring normalization with Israel. In 2018, Oman received Netanyahu on a high-profile visit.
Embassies to come

Negotiations were reportedly underway in recent weeks but the deal was sealed in a phone call on Thursday between Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Netanyahu and Trump.

Also involved were Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and chief architect of the US Middle East “peace” plan, US ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser Robert C. O’Brien.

Israel and the Emirates are expected to open embassies and exchange ambassadors soon.

In the coming weeks, according to the joint declaration, Israeli and Emirati delegations will sign agreements on “investment, tourism, direct flights, security, telecommunications, technology, energy, healthcare, culture” and the environment, among other areas of “mutual benefit.”

The US and Israel thanked the UAE in the joint statement for being represented when Trump and Kushner revealed their “Peace to Prosperity” plan at the White House in January.


“Israel got rewarded for not declaring openly what it’s been doing to Palestine illegally and persistently since the beginning of the occupation,” Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, tweeted.

“The UAE has come out in the open on its secret dealings/normalization with Israel,” she added. “Please don’t do us a favor. We are nobody’s fig leaf!”

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas said he rejected the agreement, calling it a “betrayal of Jerusalem, al-Aqsa mosque and the Palestinian cause.”

Ashrawi and Abbas made no mention, however, of the Palestinian Authority’s long-standing cooperation with the Israeli occupation army and intelligence, to the detriment of Palestinian rights.

What may seem “historic,” in the words of Netanyahu, is only the natural conclusion of years of barely concealed normalization.

Much like Israel’s annexation plans, the agreement between Israel and the UAE merely formalizes what has been happening on the ground for decades.

Brazil does not Wake up from the Pandemic Nightmare

By Francisco Herranz on August 12, 2020

You can say it louder, but not clearer. President Jair Bolsonaro is the man responsible for Brazil’s disastrous handling of the pandemic.

The histrionic leader seems indifferent to the magnitude of the crisis shaking his giant country, where 100,000 people have already perished as a result of the coronavirus, making Brazil the second deadliest nation in the world, surpassed only by the United States.

It also ranks second in the world in the dire classification of the number of people infected by COVID-19: no less than three million. For every seven deaths worldwide, one is Brazilian. And the horrific daily average of 1,000 deaths has been repeating itself for two months, making it the new normal.

Faced with this dismal and desolate panorama, Folha, the most influential newspaper in Sao Paulo and probably in the whole country, has published a short but devastating and extremely critical editorial. The authors of the article don’t mince their words and call it for what it is.

“The major responsibility for this tragedy resides with Jair Bolsonaro. Instead of leading a national action plan, he instead denied the gravity of the public health emergency and promoted unprotected crowds and false therapies, such as chloroquine, and cultivated eight cases of infected ministers in addition to his own and the first lady’s,” wrote the São Paulo newspaper. “Brazil’s destiny is to not even have an effective president and health minister in this moment of mourning,” the editorialists added with a distinct tone of resignation.

The digital archives of the newspaper make a formidable case in retrieved statements, and with characters like Bolsonaro, touched by verbal incontinence, they are relentless. In a video for his social networks broadcast four months ago, the president compared COVID-19 to the 2019 influenza A. “The number of people who died from H1N1 last year was about 800 people [in Brazil]. The forecast is that this coronavirus will not reach that number of deaths, “he said.

In late April, when the fatal number had skyrocketed to more than 5,000, he had the audacity to respond: “What do you want me to do? I am the Messiah, but I do not work miracles”. Bolsonaro’s middle name is Messiah. What an idea! And the last thing he did on his way to foolishness and helplessness was to lash out at confinement by saying he kills like the virus itself. Wouldn’t it be better if he shut up?

As former President Lula da Silva pointed out, this high mortality rate can be explained by the fact that the disease “was despised by those who should be caring for the people” in a cruel exercise of “arrogance”. According to Lula, Bolsonaro has come to defy science and even death, and “will carry in his soul the responsibility for thousands of victims.”

To tell the truth, the evident lack of coordination among the 26 states that make up the Brazilian federation has also been partly to blame. Some governors followed the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) and decreed strong measures of citizen quarantine. However, others aligned themselves with Bolsonaro’s lack of concern and did not encourage the use of masks or the mandatory use of social distancing.

This profound intra-territorial contradiction contributed to the community spread of the disease. And now we see the consequences in horror show with hundreds of graves dug in the cemetery of Vila Formosa, one of the 96 districts of Sao Paulo.

Another obvious problem has been the chronic lack of money, although now tens of billions of reales have been released in emergency aid, funds that were not linked to prevention policies but which, unfortunately, have arrived too late for many people.

Furthermore, it does not help that Brazil is a country with enormous regional and social inequalities, a low distribution of per capita income, high levels of unemployment, a declining economy and a very weak public health system to begin with.

Another remarkable aspect is that the “poor performance of the public authorities” in the fight against the pandemic is even more irritating because it was avoidable. The harsh lessons accumulated in Italy and elsewhere in Europe have been of little or no use. The lessons from abroad were not learned.

The terrible thing about this trend is that there could even be a “boomerang effect”, i.e. a new peak in those regions apparently stabilized such as the cities of Manaus, Fortaleza or Rio de Janeiro. That is the opinion of three national experts consulted by UOL, the largest Brazilian digital services and Technology Company with several journalism channels.

Miguel Nicolelis, volunteer coordinator of the Northeast Consortium’s Scientific Committee for Combating Coronavirus; Paulo Lotufo, epidemiologist at the University of São Paulo; and Domingos Alves, professor at USP’s School of Medicine, believe that “the state capitals that have reported in the media that they have everything under control are increasing opening up. So they will experience the same thing as the virus cycles around in the coming weeks with an increase in new cases.”

The trio of specialists agree that the authorities in Brasilia have not done everything in their power to reduce the infection and diminish the fatalities. They also stress that the disorganization of the federal government, almost three months without a health minister, and Bolsonaro’s interest in proposing solutions without scientific proof, and in minimizing the human cost of the pandemic will directly contribute to the increase in the number of deaths.

With this person at the helm of the ship, it seems impossible to wake up from the nightmare.

The Largest Private-Sector Strike of the Year Is Headed for Union Victory | The AFL-CIO and The Green New Deal

Hello my friends,

Nearly 30 million American workers are on unemployment or waiting to get it, and we are looking ahead to what is sure to be a grim fall and winter that will bring more lockdowns and suffering. So go outside and enjoy the sun now! It’s free—much like a subscription to this labor newsletter, or sending labor news tips to me. We have to enjoy the small things, when all the big things seem bad.

This Week in Working

The Largest Private-Sector Strike of the Year Is Headed for Union Victory
By Jeremy Gantz

The walkout at Bath Iron Works—which represents the largest private-sector strike of the year—has lasted for nearly seven weeks. But late last week, both sides saw a breakthrough as a tentative agreement was reached that appears to hand the union a victory on its demands.

The Green New Deal Just Won a Major Union Endorsement. What's Stopping the AFL-CIO?
By Mindy Isser

Union support for the Green New Deal is growing. It’s time for America’s largest labor federation to get on board.

The Return of the Construction Industry Has Brought a Surge of Immigrant Worker Deaths
By Maurizio Guerrero

The rush to keep building through the pandemic has compounded the risks for construction workers.

Introducing “In The Gap,” a Podcast About the Gender Pay Gap and Black Women
By Chandra Whitfield

In These Times presents In The Gap, a 12-episode podcast series..

The Working People Podcast

Maggie Levantovskaya: Working People talks to writer, organizer, and adjunct lecturer Maggie Levantovskaya about immigrating from the Soviet Union, navigating class differences in the U.S., and about how so many higher education professionals have become gig workers. Listen here.

The Big Issue: Election Madness

Will Donald Trump try to steal the election? We, of course, have no way to know that, except by evaluating his past actions. So, definitely. Yes he will. If current polling holds up (and it may well not), and Biden wins the popular vote and the Electoral College (given a fair count, which we may well not get), I judge there to be two roughly equal possibilities: either Trump throws a tantrum and decides he doesn’t want to be president and petulantly gives up entirely, or he tries to pull every authoritarian shenanigan he possibly can in order to invalidate mail-in ballots, throw the legitimacy of votes into question, and push the ultimate decision of who won into Congress, so that he can steal it through dirty political means.

Which one of these occurs may depend entirely on how jazzed up on Diet Cokes he happens to be on election night.

If he does try to steal the election, we are in for a serious crisis. The process will drag on for weeks, through vote counting and legal challenges and a tidal wave of misinformation. It is vital that Americans not only take to the street in protest when it becomes clear this is happening, but that we stay in the streets the entire time that this is all playing out. We will need a democratic occupation of cities across the country to keep the pressure on and ensure that Republicans know that everyone is watching. If the public’s energy flags, that is when corruption will win.

And that is where the labor movement comes in. Unions—along with political parties and other well-organized political groups—are some of the institutions most capable of organizing and mobilizing members to take to the streets for an extended period of time. Union organizers are the best organizers you will find anywhere. So let them organize. We have more than two months until Election Day. Start organizing. Unions across the country should at least have emergency plans in place that will allow them to channel large numbers of their members into the streets in strategic places to protest, and to keep a rotation of members going constantly until the crisis is resolved. Public outrage will certainly fuel an initial burst of protest, but if we want to make sure that the protests don’t decline, it will take organizing talent. Unions have it. The time to use it is coming. Get ahead of the worst case scenario. Just in case.

If you think this is all far-fetched, I envy your innocent bliss.

Labor News This Week


The motivation for canceling the college football season is union busting--the NCAA would rather lose a season than an entire business model.


There have been many, many shocking stories of how workers have been treated during this pandemic, but cruise ship workers may have been subjected to the craziest treatment of all. They left them on the damn boats for months! What?


A deep dive on how the Writers Guild took on the Hollywood agencies, and won.


Uber is threatening to shut down in California if a court forces them to treat their employees as employees. Okay. You suck!


The Sports Illustrated union is fighting with its owners to maintain basic ethical editorial standards at the storied publication. This will be the norm in media rather than the exception in the near future, and non-union newsrooms will be completely at the mercy of management.


Periodic reminder that management-side anti-union attorneys are scum and should not be welcomed in respectable civil society.


Unemployed workers setting up soup kitchens in front of the offices of senators who won’t vote to extend unemployment benefits is a pretty good tactic.


The Dandelion Cafe in Orland, Florida locked out its workers after they decided to unionize. You can support the workers here.


Unionize tech!!!

Final Thought

“The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this—with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need—this life is hell.” - W.E.B. DuBoi

In solidarity,

Hamilton Nolan

Cornel West and Tricia Rose

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“That tight rope, it gets slippery at times, but we stay on it. We keep on moving.” - Cornel West

Trump Admits To Damaging The USPS To Help Himself

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KqOyNAmzdE

Anti-Laundering Bill Targeting Shell Companies Stalled in Senate as Big Banks Caught Cooking Books

https://citizentruth.org/anti-laundering-bill-targeting-shell-companies-stalled-in-senate-as-big-banks-caught-cooking-books/

The Anti-Money Laundering Act would expose the owners of shell companies now sits alone on a shelf in the US Senate while the Federal Reserve shrugs its shoulders in the face of blatant manipulation by the too-big-to-fail banks.

(By: Raul Diego, Mintpress News) Money laundering and cooking the books are usually treated as separate things when discussing white collar crime, even though the latter is often the mechanism through which the former is carried out. In the world of corporate banking, hedge funds and the host of satellite market services that underpin the financialized economies of the U.S. and U.K., tax haven jurisdictions allow money flowing in from all sorts of highly profitable illicit activities, shell companies and brass plate trusts to become an asset on the books of massive institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and HSBC; all of which have been embroiled in massive money laundering scandals.

Real account holders’ names escape regulatory scrutiny thanks to the anonymity the current rules of the game allow them to enjoy. But, that might soon come to an end if a bill passed by the House of Representatives makes it past the Senate. The Anti-Money Laundering Act was tucked inside the House’s version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act and mandates the creation of a “beneficial ownership” record which would force the public disclosure of any U.S.-based company’s ownership.

The thought of the real names behind the plethora of shell companies and other shady instruments of finance being exposed must have sent a shiver down the back of more than one Senator, because the bill has been excised from the Pentagon’s annual budget authorization by the upper chamber, placing the proposed legislation in a state of limbo for the time being.

A beneficial ownership record would seriously curtail tax haven entities from operating in complete darkness, as they do now. The U.K. created its register in 2016 and Europe has been directed by Brussels to have one up and running by 2020. The legislation, which has earlier iterations known as the Illicit Cash Act and Corporate Transparency Act, was passed by a large majority in the lower house and reportedly has widespread support in the Senate, as well.
Transparency is too risky

Despite the already semi-opaque structure of the current bill, members of the Senate still want more. Unlike the U.K. version, which makes the data publicly available, the U.S. version would be controlled by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and only be accessible to law enforcement agencies.


The Senate Banking Committee has, reportedly already agreed on the bill’s language and only the funding source is a question mark, at this point. It is clear that the legislation has accrued momentum and will likely pass at some point. 42 Attorney Generals have urged the federal government to pass it and in June, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter in support to the Banking Committee.

As usual, the words sound very nice and a lot of people seem to be doing the right thing. But, history does not show a promising outcome. The measures put in place after 2008 in order to restrain the impulses of the “too-big-to-fail” financial institutions are being manipulated and, in some cases, completely ignored. Banks like JP Morgan Chase and HSBC – two of the biggest money launderers on earth – all seem to have a gentlemen’s understanding with the Federal Reserve about how the new rules are applied.
Gaming the system

After the crash of 2008, the Federal Reserve instituted so-called “stress tests” on banks and other financial institutions that had then been deemed “too big to fail”. A formal list has been compiled since 2011 and they are now called by their official designation, Global Systemically Important Financial Institutions (G-SIFIs).

These banks and insurers must report their levels of exposure to the Fed, which then assesses the need for more or less control over the institution’s financial activity or penalties through the results of a stress test (simulations run on their balance sheets). An annual stress test report is published by the Fed, which includes the capital requirements of each institution. But, it has now come to light that virtually all of the G-SIFI banks – JP Morgan Chase, HSBC and Deutsche Bank among others – have been cooking the books to fool the stress test in order to reduce their capital requirements.

A “bombshell” report by the American central bank reveals that the Fed is aware of the pattern being followed by the big banks to game the stress test; which they do by magically dropping their over-the-counter derivatives exposure by Trillions of dollars every fourth quarter and just as magically having it restored by the end of the following first quarter of the next auditing period. The practice, which seems to be tolerated by the Fed “as a legitimate means of reducing its capital requirements” makes a mockery of the entire point for stress testing, which is to mitigate systemic risk.