Inequality.

         This world is awash with wealth in all shapes and forms, but it is very thinly spread on the majority of the world's population. By far the largest heap of that wealth, though created by the many, is heaped on the few. It is poured over and accumulated by the few, those who own and manage this brutal system of exploitation. Ever since the inception of capitalism, this has been so, but the efficiency of the system of production and exploitation has raced ahead at an unbelievable speed, creating wealth at an ever growing rate, but the distribution has always gone in favour of those owners and mangers of the system. The discrepancy between those few and the many has reach utterly gross and unacceptable inhumane proportions. Poverty and deprivation sprawls over our cities and towns, doorways become beds, food banks the accepted way of life for millions, and death by starvation for many, many more. Yet, within reach and plain view, we see luxury cars, private jets, grand mansions, lavish yachts and a swaggering coterie who weave the illusion that they are entitled to this life style.
        The chasm between these two groups, the many who create all that wealth, and the few who plunder it, is creating an ever growing anger and the many are starting to openly seek redress and justice. However justice will only come when this entire system of exploitation is torn asunder and replaced by a system of equality and fairness, a sustainable system freed from the cancer that is profit, a system moulded round the needs of all our people, and an end to power and privilege for the few. Though the following article is about U$A, it applies equally across the planet.

The following from Struggle-la-lucha:
 

     Almost 13 million people in the U.S. are “officially” jobless. The real number is far higher. Many haven’t received an unemployment check in weeks. Then there’s Jeff Bezos, who runs Amazon and owns the Washington Post. His stash ballooned by another $72 billion in the last six months.
       Over a million people have died of the coronavirus around the world. More than 210,000 expired in the United States of Trump. But it’s been party time for the super rich. Millions line up at food pantries and worry about being evicted or losing their home. Meanwhile, U.S. billionaires gained another $845 billion in wealth according to the Institute for Policy Studies. 
        This nearly trillion-dollar gain during the pandemic is merely dessert for these parasites. They’ve been having a feast for nearly 50 years. If workers were receiving the same share of the economy as they had in 1975, their wages would have approximately doubled by 2018. The bottom quarter of wage earners would be taking home an average of $61,000 per year instead of $33,000. Those in the middle would be making $92,000 instead of $50,000.
      These figures represent another $2.5 trillion dollars stolen every year from poor and working people by the wealthy and powerful. The study showing this “Grand Theft Payday” was commissioned by Seattle’s Fair Work Center and carried out by the RAND Corporation, a Pentagon think tank. Inequality has become so massive and repulsive that it’s obvious to RAND analysts who usually work for the military-industrial complex.
Big Capital’s counterattack
        This massive transfer of income isn’t the result of sunspots or UFOs. It’s the product of a worldwide class struggle between the rich and the rest of us. The class struggle doesn’t just include workers on strike or future union organizing drives at Amazon or Walmart. Every fightback against oppression is a class struggle.
     The Black Lives Matter movement is a class struggle. So is the struggle of the Filipino people against the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Rodrigo Duterte. Transgender people trying to survive is a class struggle.
       The height of the Black liberation struggle was in the 1960s and early 1970s. The master class was pushed back.
       The Vietnamese people defeated the Pentagon war machine. Africans in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique won independence. French workers carried out a general strike in 1968.
       Big Capital staged a counteroffensive. Dozens of Black Panther Party members were murdered by police. New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller massacred the Attica prisoners. Decades before Iraq was invaded, war criminals Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were destroying anti-poverty programs for President Richard Nixon.

Read the full article HERE:

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US Imperialism.

         An accepted fact, the American imperial empire distorts, circumvents and over rules justice in country after country. It is the pattern of empires through the centuries, its citizens are seen as superior to those of other countries. That attitude usually persists even after empires have lost a lot of their power, this manifests itself in the state's attitude to migrants and other facets including that disease called patriotism.

The following from Struggle-la-lucha:

 

        All of Jennifer Laude’s friends called her “Ganda” or “Beauty” in Filipino. Laude’s friends described her as selfless, generous and confident about her sexuality. She was murdered for being a transwoman, and her murderer was never brought to justice because of the neocolonial relationship between the U.S. and the Philippines.
         On Oct. 11, 2014, a custodial worker found Jennifer Laude dead in a motel bathroom, naked, her head shoved in a toilet, with strangle marks on her neck. Earlier that night, Joseph Scott Pemberton, a 19-year-old U.S. Marine, brought Jennifer to a motel in Olongapo City after meeting her at a bar. The doctor who performed the autopsy testified that she was beaten, strangled and drowned to death.
        Over a year later, on the first day of December 2015, Pemberton was found guilty of homicide, not murder, and was sentenced to 6 to 12 years in prison, later reduced to a maximum of 10 years.
        Because of the Visiting Forces Agreement between the Philippines and the U.S., Pemberton remained in U.S. custody throughout the trial proceedings, and spent his prison time on a U.S. military base, rather than in a Philippine prison.
         On Sept. 8, 2020, only five years into his sentence, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte granted Pemberton an absolute pardon. Days later, Pemberton was deported back to the U.S. Recent reports say that he is now stationed in Hawai’i.
         LGBTQ2S rights organization Bahagari released the following statement condemning Duterte’s pardon:
         “Pemberton violently murdered our sister, transwoman Jennifer Laude, six years ago. Even with the admission of his brutal, hateful killing, the courts upheld that Pemberton’s conviction was to be commuted from murder to homicide, for which he was sentenced to 6 to 12 years of imprisonment. That alone was a massive slap to Jennifer’s family and the movement for justice for our slain sister.
         “The feeble conviction set a terrible precedent for the LGBTQ+ community and the Filipino people: under the VFA, if a U.S. soldier brutally murders a transgender woman on Philippine soil, they would ultimately roam free after as little as six years of incarceration.
         “In Pemberton’s case, it was ‘incarceration’ in an exclusive Joint U.S. Military Assistance Group compound inside Camp Aguinaldo, where only American personnel and Philippine officials with clearance may enter. It is no stretch to assert that Pemberton has, in fact, been serving ‘jail time’ comfortably, at ease and with impunity.
         “Pemberton’s release is two-pronged. Firstly, it represents the unfettered violence and injustice the LGBTQ+ community continues to face. Moreover, it symbolizes the Philippine government’s continued submission to U.S. imperialism. Justice for Jennifer cannot exist without both being decisively ended.
           “Duterte suspended the VFA’s termination in exchange for military aid from the U.S., and for its support of the Anti-Terrorism Law. The VFA and ATL are, in fact, quid pro quo for continuing U.S. military aid for Duterte.
           “Hence, we assert that the Visiting Forces Agreement, which has enabled and exacerbated injustice for Jennifer Laude to the greatest extent and which continues to serve as Duterte’s offering in his ploy for continued U.S. assistance, must be finally abolished to bring justice for our slain sister.”

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