... on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing - A UK Socialist's blog

… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

‘Oligarchy Is on the Ballot’: Reports Uncover Unprecedented Sums Ultrarich Spent to Buy 2026 Midterms
Article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Billionaire Elon Musk prepares to give $1,000,000 to a Wisconsin voter during a town hall meeting he was hosting at the KI Convention Center on March 30, 2025 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
“In a democracy, it’s supposed to be one person, one vote, and the more one person can influence, the less egalitarian our system becomes,” said one expert.
Some of the richest people in the US have spent unprecedented sums of money to influence the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections, and a Sunday report in The New York Times estimated that the top 20 biggest donors alone have spent a combined $2 billion in federal races this cycle.
The single largest funder of the 2026 midterms, by a wide margin, is far-right billionaire Elon Musk, who has shoveled nearly $450 million to help GOP candidates.
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In fact, pro-Republican donors account for the five largest individual contributors to midterm races.
In addition to Musk, the other largest donors this cycle are industrialists Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, who have given $150 million to help elect Republicans; flagship GOP Senate super PAC One Nation, which has spent $138 million; venture capitalists Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz, who have given $116 million; and hedge fund investor Jeff Yass, who has given $110 million.
On the Democratic side, the top spenders have been flagship Democratic Senate super PAC Majority Forward, which has spent $104 million, and George and Alexander Soros, who have given $103 million.
The Times’ report echoes an analysis published last week by the Brennan Center for Justice showing that the 40 largest individual donors to the 2026 elections had spent a combined $2.4 billion as of mid-October.
According to Brennan, this represents the single largest amount of money spent on a midterm election ever since the US Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC unleashed limitless political campaign spending.
The Brennan analysis reveals that the spending of the very largest donors has grown dramatically over the last decade.
“The donations coming from the top 40 donors for the midterms total eight times the amount from the top 40 donors by mid-October in the 2014 midterms (the first full midterm cycle after Citizens United), adjusted for inflation,” the analysis explains. “The cutoff to be in the top 40 has also increased to 10 times what it was four cycles ago, to $25 million.”
And while the biggest spenders used to favor Democrats, their loyalties have since shifted to the GOP, and in this election cycle “donors loyal to the GOP now give more than three times the amount that reliably Democratic donors give.”
And while labor unions were once at least represented in the list of top 40 election donors, they have since fallen out and have been replaced by donors from the cryptocurrency industry, the Brennan Center analysis finds.
Ian Vandewalker, senior counsel at Brennan and co-author of the analysis, told The Guardian in an interview published Monday that it’s become easier for politicians to be totally beholden to a single large donor while ignoring the needs of voters.
“In a democracy, it’s supposed to be one person, one vote,” Vandewalker explained, “and the more one person can influence, the less egalitarian our system becomes.”
Economist Paul Krugman expressed similar concerns about the influence of big money in US politics, writing on his Substack page Monday that “oligarchy is on the ballot” in the 2026 midterms.
In assessing the massive spending by megadonors on elections, Krugman said the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision deserved significant blame. However, he said it was also a simple reflection of the fact that the US economy for decades has been rigged to provide benefits primarily to the ultrawealthy.
“Now we… have men big enough to own the government of the United States,” Krugman commented. “This midterm is a test of whether they will get away with it.”
Article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
2 November 2026
With ‘Largest Coordinated Port Action Ever,’ Dockworkers in 22 Countries Strike Against Gaza Genocide
Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Seafarers and dockworkers chant slogans as they take part in a march from the port of Piraeus, near Athens, towards Greece’s Ministry of Maritime Affairs on October 30, 2026. (Photo by Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)
“We, the workers in the ports, know very well that without us nothing moves. Without our hands, containers remain still, ships are not loaded, the war machines are blocked.”
Dockworkers in more than 20 countries—from France to India to Greece—are withholding their labor on Friday to demand an end to Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza and highlight the role that commercial ports play in fueling deadly militarism worldwide.
Organizers said the work stoppages, led by dockworkers’ unions at 113 ports across 22 countries, would be the “largest coordinated port action ever,” easily surpassing the international day of action held in February. No Harbour for Genocide, a collective of trade unions and others supporting the day of action, said $2.8 billion worth of cargo will be halted at Mediterranean ports, where workers are planning to strike for 24 hours.
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“A cargo refused in one port sails on to the next,” said No Harbour for Genocide. “Refused in every port, it stops, and the workers have enforced the embargo that governments announced and did not.”
In a joint statement last month announcing the day of action, dockworkers’ unions from Türkiye, Morocco, Italy, France, Greece, Italy, and Basque Country laid out their demands:
1. An immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and the opening of safe corridor for humanitarian aid.. An end of colonization, occupation and apartheid imposed to Palestinian People and the recognition of an independent Palestinian state recognized by the international community on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
2. An end to the war in the Middle East. No support, no facilitation, no participation in the US-Israeli war against Iran, Lebanon or any other imperialist intervention. Military fleets and bases out of the region. We express our full solidarity to the people of Cuba and Venezuela and Sudan menaced by US imperialism and we call for defend people’s sovereignty, resources, territorial integrity, peace with justice, and the right for resistance for self-determination.
3. Ports must not be used for the transport of weapons, ammunition, military equipment and troops. We call on unions to strengthen vigilance, to inform workers, to expose the cargoes of war, and to organize mass collective resistance with all our rightful available means and our struggle.
4. An end to the militarization of ports and critical infrastructure. Ports belong to the peoples and the workers. They are not bases for NATO, the USA or the EU, nor tools of shipowners and monopoly groups.
5. No to the war economy and armaments. The money must go to wages, collective agreements, health, education, social needs, and the protection of life and safety at work.
6. Health and safety measures in the workplaces. Not one worker dead for profits. An end to intensification, subcontracting, dangerous conditions, and employer arbitrariness.
7. Collective agreements with real wage increases, stable jobs with rights, a retirement policy with better pensions, and a reduction of working time. Technological developments, mechanization, automation, the use of AI and the development of ports must serve the needs of workers, and not lead to the intensification of work or the disappearance of their jobs.
“Our strength lies in organization. It lies in our unions, in general assemblies, in collective decisions, in solidarity among workers from different countries,” the unions said. “We, the workers in the ports, know very well that without us nothing moves. Without our hands, containers remain still, ships are not loaded, the war machines are blocked.”
Al Jazeera noted that of the ports participating in Friday’s actions, “Genoa, Livorno, and Gioia Tauro in Italy, Marseille in France, Piraeus in Greece, and Tangier in Morocco all have proven links to weapons shipments to Israel.”
Dockworkers International Day of Action across 5 Continents and 113 Ports

In Pireaus, at COSCO’s terminals, dockworkers are holding the picket lines. Their message is clear

Dockworkers do not work for war! Ports for the peoples and for peace, not bases for imperialists! pic.twitter.com/cpOwK8XLhV
— PAME Greece International (@PAME_Greece) October 30, 2026
The strikes come as Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues despite a ceasefire agreement that putatively took effect last October. A United Nations report published earlier this week noted that “Israeli authorities and forces continue to commit genocidal acts” in Gaza “even after the so-called ceasefire agreement, with the intent to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part.”
The report found that Israel—which is armed and supported diplomatically by Western governments, principally the United States—has “committed war crimes and the crimes against humanity of extermination, persecution, torture, rape, and other forms of sexual violence” in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.
Port Workers and Communities for Palestine said in a statement Friday that will be demonstrating at the Port of Elizabeth in New Jersey. The coalition said the New Jersey port is the only port on the East Coast of the US where a protest is expected. Demonstrations are also expected in Oakland and San Francisco, California.
“We know that, regardless of what union leadership may decide, workers everywhere stand in solidarity with Palestine,” said Port Workers and Communities for Palestine. “We will be out there on Friday to show them that they are part of this movement too. Workers have the power to stop the war machine.”
Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objecting.
Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
2 November 2026
‘Absurd and Outrageous’: UK Bars Entry to Climate Scholar, Palestinian Rights Advocate Andreas Malm
Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Climate scholar Andreas Malm was pictured speaking at the Code Rood action camp in The Netherlands in 2018. (Photo: Code Rood/CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
“This is a drift toward authoritarianism that didn’t begin with me, and it’s not going to end with me either.”
The United Kingdom’s Labour government has barred Swedish climate scholar and Palestinian rights advocate Andreas Malm from entering the country, without explanation, just days before he was scheduled to speak at a conference that will also feature a cofounder of Palestine Action—an organization banned by the UK government on highly dubious grounds.
Malm, an author and associate professor of human ecology at Sweden’s Lund University, said Friday that he was “dismayed” by the UK Home Office’s decision this week to cancel his Electronic Travel Authorization, noting that he has “been going to the UK for decades—this is where I did my archival research for my PhD dissertation and lectured at dozens of universities and participated in even more conferences.”
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Malm said the UK government’s move was “nothing short of scandalous,” and he linked the decision to his scheduled appearance at the conference organized by the socialist magazine Tribune. The event was billed as a discussion of “domination and resistance in the age of [US President Donald] Trump,” featuring Malm and Palestine Action cofounder Huda Ammori.
“This is a drift toward authoritarianism that didn’t begin with me, and it’s not going to end with me either,” Malm told Al Jazeera. “If I’m now being deemed a threat to the public good because I’m supposed to have a conversation with someone from Palestine Action, this is guilt by association.”
Verso Books, Malm’s publisher—including of his 2025 book The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth—said in a statement Friday that it is “shocked and disturbed by the Labour government’s decision to ban one of our leading authors.”
“Never in over 55 years of publishing has a British government revoked the right of one of our authors to enter the country,” said Tariq Ali, the chair of Verso’s board of directors. “We can only assume, since no reasons have been given for banning him, that Andreas’ positions on Palestine, no different from the [International Criminal Court] and UN commissions, is the cause.”
“Verso Books condemns the silencing of critical voices and stands in support of writers and scholars who continue to speak out about important issues and contribute to open intellectual discourse,” Ali added. “We urge the government to restore Andreas Malm’s electronic travel authorisation immediately and allow him entry into the country.”
Jeremy Corbyn, the former UK Labour leader who now serves as the Your Party MP for Islington North, joined the chorus denouncing the cancellation of Malm’s travel authorization.
“This is an absurd and outrageous decision,” Corbyn wrote on social media. “What kind of society are we living in where world-renowned authors and campaigners are treated as enemies and threats? The real threat is this government’s assault on freedom of expression.”
“This is not an isolated incident—and the government should know that it is gaining a bad reputation for censorship and repression,” added Corbyn. “We know why the government has taken this decision: because it wants to silence criticism of Israel, as well as its own complicity in genocide. It will not succeed.”
Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objecting.
2 November 2026
Morning Star Editorial: The youth of Europe demand different political choices. So should we
Article republished from Morning Star
Demonstrators with a banner reading ‘The Youth Is Angry’ attend a protest under the slogan ‘Gen Z Takes Care of It’ in Berlin, Germany, October 31, 2026
PROTESTS over cuts and the cost of living continue to rock Italy and France. Millions were on the streets across Europe on Saturday.
Over the weekend mass demonstrations spread to Germany, where the “welfare not warfare” cause has taken centre stage. Placards at the thousands-strong rally at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate read “Merz Must Go,” “No to Cuts and War Budgets,” “Invest in People Not War.”
As in France the monopoly media focus on occasional outbursts of violence rather than the issues at stake. But this is a movement demanding a complete change of political direction across the continent.
German protesters are not the first to link cuts to social spending to ballooning military budgets. But the political choice being made is especially stark in Europe’s biggest economy.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz is a millionaire whose previous role at US asset-management giant Blackrock ties him to the most parasitical and unproductive expression of modern capitalism.
His government has imposed savage cuts on healthcare — raising the co-payer element for drugs and hospital stays that applies in Germany and cutting insurance exemptions for non-working spouses. It has taken an axe to pensions, which Merz openly says will no longer maintain pensioners’ living standards over time.
It has cut unemployment benefit even as deindustrialisation accelerates, courtesy of the move from piped Russian gas imports to costlier and ecologically more damaging liquefied natural gas shipments from the US.
All this has accompanied staggering increases in military spending — Germany even amended its constitution to exempt the armed forces from its famed balanced-book requirements — and the introduction of compulsory fitness-for-military-service checks at 18, which millions of young people rightly see as a stepping stone to conscription.
As the Morning Star’s German sister paper Junge Welt puts it, young people see investment in the young (across education, parental leave rights and child benefits) slashed; they see decent jobs disappearing as factories close; and “the administrators of this misery offer only one alternative to these hopeless young people: to die on the G36 rifle for German imperialism.”
These are the same dilemmas mobilising the young in France and Italy. In France, the movement is now readying for mass strike action on November 5 as unions and left forces call out the refusal of the Emmanuel Macron regime to change course.
The drive to war is real, Europe-wide, and exceptionally dangerous. All proposals for a negotiated end to the Ukraine war are dismissed as surrender by European governments and their direct involvement in the conflict is ever deeper.
We cannot tolerate the normalisation of the prospect of war “on the scale our grandparents and great-grandparents endured,” as promoted by Nato secretary-general and Trump boot-licker Mark Rutte. Such a war would kill millions and would be, contrary to the propaganda we are exposed to presenting Russia as an imminent threat, a war of choice by Western powers.
Besides its terrible risks, the war drive is, as the young people of Europe increasingly recognise, being used to justify the permanent degradation of public services and social security.
We need an alternative to austerity and war: a programme for state-led investment in reindustrialisation and the technologies and infrastructure projects needed to cope with climate change.
This is as true of Britain as of Europe — which is why, following a do-nothing Budget, the left needs to build a campaign for a new economic direction big enough to force ministers’ hand before next year’s Spending Review.
And as we see on the streets of Paris, Madrid, Rome and Berlin, it is as true of Europe as it is of Britain — exposing claims by Rachel Reeves and other EU-nostalgics who claim Brexit is the source of our economic problems as a total distraction from the fight for economic transformation we need.
Article republished from Morning Star
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objecting.
Andy Burnham brings absurd comedy to politics
2 November 2026
The Green Party responds to Rosebank lobbying scandal
Green party leader Zack Polanski (Green Party of England and Wales). Image: Bristol Green Party Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
Shocking levels of access afforded to oil and gas representatives revealed by Scotland’s The Sunday National newspaper have been called out by Green Party leader Zack Polanski.
Records show the main firms involved in Rosebank and Jackdaw and lobbying for it (Shell, Equinor, Ithaca, Adura and industry body OEUK) met with UK ministers 200 times between July 2024 and June 2026.
The exposé comes as Jackdaw has been approved and the cabinet are split over whether to give the green light to the highly controversial Rosebank oil field, a decision which is expected imminently.
Backbench Labour MPs are said to be furious about the Chancellor’s alleged interference in the upcoming decision, with one MP saying a decision to give the go ahead to the oil drilling project would be “politically explosive.”
It has been estimated that up to 50 Labour MPs could lose their seats to the Greens if Rosebank is given the go ahead. A new YouGov poll shows that 51% of people in the UK support laws to phase out oil and gas production.
Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales said:
“This summer we saw nearly 3000 people die from extreme heat while wildfires raged across the country. This is the crucial decade for climate action – yet Labour ministers are still holding cozy meetings with oil and gas bosses with alarming frequency.
“Budget documents revealed the government is paving the way to greenlight Rosebank which would be catastrophic for the climate. But it’s no wonder this Labour government is making decisions that put the profits of oil and gas giants above the safety of people in this country, when they are constantly rubbing shoulders with them.
“The people of this country deserve better. We need to say no to new oil and gas drilling, a tightened-up windfall tax on oil and gas and an end to tax breaks for fossil fuel companies so we can stop backing climate-wrecking polluters and take real action for a safe future instead.”

The Green Party was the only major political party to condemn the Labour government’s decision to give the go ahead to the Jackdaw gas field last month.

In September over 500 scientists and health professionals from across the UK wrote an open letter calling on Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh to reject Rosebank. They warned that “approval of Rosebank would be ignoring the warnings of scientific research on climate change and would be the wrong decision for the UK, sending a dangerous message on the international stage.”
In July UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that “Every new fossil fuel project approved today makes tomorrow’s heatwaves more dangerous, and our world less secure.”
The decision on Rosebank will also be a test of the government’s proposed sanctions on companies involved in illegal settlements in the West Bank. The FCDO has been on notice since January 2026 that greenlighting Rosebank would put it in breach of Articles 49 and 53 of the Geneva Conventions, as an estimated £235 million would end up flowing to the Delek Group, an Israeli based company that has been blacklisted by the UN.
Today’s revelations come days after another lobbying scandal involving AI and data centres. An investigation by Spotlight on Corruption showed the UK government met representatives of 137 different businesses about AI data centres between July 2024 and June 2026, but not a single environmental group. Chancellor John Healey announced a data centre convenant in his budget last week which, although welcomed by the industry, was condemned as insulting voluntarism by campaigners.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham says ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that he’s delayed the go-ahead for Jackdaw and Rosebank North Sea oil and gas extraction until after the Holborn and St. Pancras by-election – don’t want democracy interfering with Capitalism.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Donald Trump urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
2 November 2026