Donald Trump

Three world leaders have displayed a total lack of leadership qualities during the worst global calamity since World War II. Not surprisingly, all three are products of the extreme right-wing, a political faction that excels at carnival stunts and outrageous rhetoric but has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of governance ability. Among the leaders who have done the most miserable jobs at the helms of their respective ships of state are U.S. President Donald Trump, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The broad left has been uniting behind the Democratic Party for the past four decades without having achieved much real progress for its base constituencies.

Future historians employed in institutions not yet founded, or perhaps in lands far from here, will no doubt record that it was the flagrant betrayals of the Democrat Party against its own working class base that led to the festival of violence that characterized the implosion now threatening the United States. Its origins though complex, are not complicated. Will this inevitable and bloody social violence serve as the mid-wife for a truly justice-based system?

So much is changing so fast, by the time I publish this piece, it will likely sound very yesterday very soon.  But particularly now, there seem to be some salient points worth making, and a few recent moments worth recounting.

If a disease can teach wisdom beyond our understanding of how precarious and precious life is, the coronavirus has offered two lessons.
The first is that in a globalised world our lives are so intertwined that the idea of viewing ourselves as islands – whether as individuals, communities, nations, or a uniquely privileged species – should be understood as evidence of false consciousness. In truth, we were always bound together, part of a miraculous web of life on our planet and, beyond it, stardust in an unfathomably large and complex universe.

While the world is consumed with the terrifying coronavirus pandemic, on March 19 the Trump administration will be marking the 17th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by ramping up the conflict there. After an Iran-aligned militia allegedly struck a U.S. base near Baghdad on March 11, the U.S.

The coronavirus epidemic is creating an ongoing teachable moment that could be used to transform the US economy. COVID-19 and the oil war are triggers leading to a recession that has its roots in record corporate and personal debt, longterm low wages and an artificially-inflated stockmarket. The shortcomings of US economic policy, the healthcare system, and workers’ rights are being magnified by the current crisis.

Promising to “smash” Venezuela’s government during a “maximum pressure March,” Trump has imposed crushing sanctions that force Venezuela to spend…
The post US ramps up sanctions devastating Venezuela’s health sector as coronavirus spreads appeared first on The Grayzone.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s caretaker prime minister, is preparing to squeeze every last drop of personal advantage from a local and global crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. He has needed to move fast.
Following this month’s election, Netantyahu’s efforts to establish a governing coalition appeared to have been thwarted yet again – for the third time in a year of elections. His ultra-nationalist bloc fell short by just three seats of winning a majority in the Israeli parliament.

“I am a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist,” current Democratic Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, said in April 2007, soon before he was chosen to be Barack Obama’s running mate in the 2008 elections.