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Sanders Lays Out Plan to Fight Oligarchy as Wealth of Top Billionaires Passes $10 Trillion

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Elon Musk and the wife of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) applaud during a House Republican Conference meeting on November 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

“If there was ever a moment when progressives needed to communicate our vision to the people of our country, this is that time,” wrote Sen. Bernie Sanders. “Despair is not an option.”

A Bloomberg analysis of billionaire wealth published Tuesday found that the combined fortunes of the 500 richest people on the planet surpassed $10 trillion this year, a finding that came shortly after U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders issued an urgent call to action to prevent the emergence of “an oligarchic and authoritarian society.”

The new analysis notes that the world’s top 500 billionaires “got vastly richer” this year with the help of “an indomitable rally in U.S. technology stocks.”

Just eight billionaires—Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin—added more than $600 billion to their collective wealth in 2024 and accounted for 43% of the $1.5 trillion increase in net worth among the world’s 500 richest people, according to Bloomberg.

“But it was Musk—the so-called ‘first buddy’ of President-elect Donald Trump after unprecedented support for his reelection campaign—who dominated the world’s wealthiest in 2024,” Bloomberg observed, adding that Trump himself also saw his fortune surge to a record high this year, “boosted by the performance of his majority stake in Trump Media & Technology Group Corp.”

Musk’s use of his enormous fortune to influence the U.S. political system—including via his purchase of one of the world’s largest social media platforms and donations to Trump’s 2024 campaign—amplified existing concerns about the corrosive impact of massive wealth concentration on democracy.

And wealth inequality in the U.S. could soon get worse, with Trump and the incoming Republican-controlled Congress set to pursue another round of tax cuts for the ultra-rich and large corporations.

“They do not believe in democracy—the right of ordinary people to control their own futures. They firmly believe that the rich and powerful should determine the future.”

In an email to supporters on Monday, Sanders (I-Vt.) called the rapid shift toward oligarchy in the U.S. “the defining issue of our time,” warning that billionaires have come to increasingly dominate not only “our economic life, but the information we consume and our politics as well.”

“A manifestation of the current moment is the rise of Elon Musk, and all that he stands for,” Sanders wrote, pointing to Musk’s outsize influence on the 2024 election and his key role in shaping Trump’s billionaire-dominated Cabinet.

“But it’s not just Musk. Billionaire owners of two major newspapers overrode their editorial boards’ decisions to endorse Kamala Harris, while many others are kissing Trump’s ring by making large donations to his inauguration committee slush fund,” the senator continued. “They do not believe in democracy—the right of ordinary people to control their own futures. They firmly believe that the rich and powerful should determine the future.”

Progressives, Sanders wrote, have a “radically different vision,” one that prioritizes “an economic system based on the principles of justice,” “a vibrant democracy based on one person, one vote,” and making “healthcare a human right.”

“Even though we are not going to succeed in achieving that vision in the immediate future with Trump as president and Republicans controlling Congress, it is important that vision be maintained and we continue to fight for it,” wrote Sanders.

Since Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, Sanders has focused heavily on the need to organize the working class to combat the threat posed by Musk and other far-right billionaires who have amassed obscene wealth and political power.

In his email on Monday, the senator said he intends to “travel, organize, hold events, and create content that reaches people where they are” in the coming weeks as part of the “struggle to determine where we go from here.”

“Will this effort be easy?” asked Sanders. “No, of course it will not. Can it be done? We have no choice. If there was ever a moment when progressives needed to communicate our vision to the people of our country, this is that time. Despair is not an option. We are fighting not only for ourselves. We are fighting for our kids and future generations, and for the well-being of the planet.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingSanders Lays Out Plan to Fight Oligarchy as Wealth of Top Billionaires Passes $10 Trillion

UN Chief’s Message to the World as Blistering 2024 Ends: ‘We Must Exit This Road to Ruin’

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres speaks at the U.N. headquarters on February 22, 2023. 
(Photo: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

“This is climate breakdown—in real time,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a year-end message on Monday that “we have no time to lose” in the face of the worsening global climate crisis, which pushed temperatures to a record high this year and supercharged deadly extreme weather around the world.

“Today, I can officially report that we have just endured a decade of deadly heat,” Guterres said in a video message posted to social media. “The top 10 hottest years on record have happened in the last 10 years, including 2024.”

“This is climate breakdown in real time. We must exit this road to ruin,” he continued. “In 2025, countries must put the world on a safer path by dramatically slashing emissions and supporting the transition to a renewable future. It is essential—and it is possible.”

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Guterres’ call to action came in the waning days of what scientists say is almost certain to be the hottest year on record and the first full year to breach the critical 1.5°C temperature threshold.

Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), echoed Guterres’ warning about the dire consequences of the status quo, saying in a statement Monday that “if we want a safer planet, we must act now.”

“It’s our responsibility. It’s a common responsibility, a global responsibility,” Saulo said. “Every fraction of a degree of warming matters, and increases climate extremes, impacts, and risks. Temperatures are only part of the picture. Climate change plays out before our eyes on an almost daily basis in the form of increased occurrence and impact of extreme weather events.”

Last month, with emissions continuing to surge as the rich nations most responsible for the climate emergency refuse to ditch fossil fuels, world leaders convened for a U.N. climate summit in Azerbaijan that was swarmed by oil and gas lobbyists. The key gathering ended with a deal that climate advocates described as a step backward in the necessary push to rein in fossil fuel emissions.

Climate-denier and fossil fuel booster Donald Trump’s looming return to office in the U.S.—the world’s largest historical emitter—has campaigners and scientists increasingly concerned about the future of existing global climate agreements such as the Paris accord, from which the president-elect has pledged to withdraw once again.

One recent analysis projected that a second Trump administration could unleash an additional 4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030, which would inflict $900 billion in global climate damages and deal a devastating blow to efforts to forestall runaway warming.

Throughout 2024, Guterres used his role as head of the U.N. to sound the alarm about the world’s dangerous trajectory, saying in an October address that “there is a direct link between increasing emissions and increasingly frequent and intense climate disasters.”

“We’re playing with fire,” he said, “but there can be no more playing for time.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingUN Chief’s Message to the World as Blistering 2024 Ends: ‘We Must Exit This Road to Ruin’

Outcry After Biden Admin Pushed for Retraction of Northern Gaza Famine Report

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Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Five-year-old Misk Bilal al-Madhoun struggles to survive due to health problems such as cerebral palsy and body weakness as a result of malnutrition in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on December 18, 2024. (Photo: Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“It sure looks like USAID is allowing political considerations—the Biden administration’s worry about funding Israel’s starvation strategy—to interfere,” said one human rights expert.

Veteran human rights expert Kenneth Roth said Thursday that the withdrawal of a report on imminent famine in northern Gaza negates “the whole point” of the office that produced the analysis: “to have a group of experts make assessments about imminent famine that are untainted by political considerations.”

The decision by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) to retract its December 23 alert on the rapidly spiraling starvation crisis in the northern part of the besieged enclave came after the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, publicly criticized the report.

FEWS NET, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said in its report that Israel’s “near-total blockade of humanitarian and commercial food supplies” for nearly 80 days has made it “highly likely that the food consumption and acute malnutrition thresholds for famine… have now been surpassed in North Gaza Governorate.”

The report referenced the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the United Nations-backed assessment that classifies famine as “phase 5” and declares famine in a region once more than 30% of children under age five are acutely malnourished, more than two people per 10,000 die each day from starvation, or once 20% of households face an extreme lack of food.

On Thursday, a note on the group’s website said the “December 23 Alert is under further review and is expected to be re-released with updated data and analysis in January.”

FEWS NET is hardly the first group to warn of impending famine in northern Gaza, where Israeli troops have been carrying out a ground offensive since early October and where nearly all humanitarian aid has been cut off for thousands of Palestinians who are trapped in the region.

Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Program, said the area was facing a “full-blown famine” in May, and independent United Nations experts made a similar assessment in July.

But the FEWS NET report drew criticism from Lew, who said the analysis relied on “outdated and inaccurate” data pertaining to how many people are currently in northern Gaza.

The report was based on a population of 65,000-75,000 people in northern Gaza, said Lew, but Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) “estimates the population in this area is between 5,000 and 9,000,” said Lew, while the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) “estimates the population is between 10,000 and 15,000.”

“At a time when inaccurate information is causing confusion and accusations, it is irresponsible to issue a report like this,” said Lew.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations was among those who said Lew appeared to reject the report by boasting “about the fact that [northern Gaza] has been successfully ethnically cleansed of its native population.”

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Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Lew’s “quibbling over the number of people desperate for food seems a politicized diversion from the fact that the Israeli government is blocking virtually all food from getting in.”

“The Biden administration seems to be closing its eyes to that reality, but putting its head in the sand won’t feed anyone,” he told the Associated Press.

The Biden White House has been a vehement supporter of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza since October 2023, insisting that the country is only defending itself following a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel—even as the death toll has passed 45,000 and as numerous reports have shown that Israel is waging attacks that officials know will kill hundreds of civilians.

In October the administration said it was giving Israel a month to ensure sufficient humanitarian aid was getting to Palestinians and threatened to cut off military aid, but when the deadline passed, no changes to U.S. political and military support were made.

The U.S. is prohibited from supplying weapons to countries that are blocking U.S. humanitarian aid under its own laws, including Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act.”

Roth suggested that by pushing for the retraction of the FEWS NET report, USAID was acting on its vested interest in denying that Israel is starving Palestinians.

“It sure looks like USAID is allowing political considerations—the Biden administration’s worry about funding Israel’s starvation strategy—to interfere” with the report, Roth told the AP.

Scott Paul, a senior manager at Oxfam America, told the outlet that Lew “leveraged his political power to undermine the work of this expert agency.”

Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingOutcry After Biden Admin Pushed for Retraction of Northern Gaza Famine Report

Support for Luigi Mangione Reflects Working Class Weariness of Top-Down Violence

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Original article by Megan Thiele Strong republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A woman named Mary holds a sign in support of Luigi Mangione outside the Criminal Court building in lower Manhattan as Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the United Healthcare CEO killing, waived extradition to New York on December 19, 2024. (Photo: Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images)

To honor Brian Thompson, and to ensure his death is not in vain, we can engage in the needed conversation about the extreme depravity of our healthcare system which his death revitalized.

Early this month Luigi Mangione, 26, University of Pennsylvania graduate, allegedly gunned down CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, 50. The public response has been varied, with many supporting Mangione. Some fear the positive regard of Mangione is indicative of a shift into a new era where violence is glorified and humanity is lost. As a sociology professor who teaches Poverty, Wealth, and Privilege, I disagree. This failure of subsets of the public to broadly denounce the actions of Mangione does not herald a cultural shift in appreciation of violence.

Instead this unusual display of class consciousness reflects two things. First, the reaction is due to the shift in who bore the cost of violence. Class under-resourced; Black, Indigenous, Latinx and people of color; women; and queer and trans people are the normal recipients of societal violence. Wealthy, cishet, white men in positions of power are not. Wealthy, white communities are conditioned to expect protection, and the revocation of that sheltering is rare.

Second, the working classes are weary from surviving an unnecessarily violent and unjust society. We live amid staggering class, race, and gender-based stratification and life and death stakes everyday. The ruling class profits from our blood, sweat, and tears. And yet, when one of the elite passes, they want us to give them more. They ask us to give them our love. Yet, they remain calloused to our pain and ignore our pleas for fairness.

We, as a community, might ask, how are the elite and their apologists not appalled by a harm-rich system that normalizes the idea that humans are only as valuable as their economic worth?

We all deserve the same sanctity of life given to wealthy insiders. However, when it comes to many of our social systems, such as healthcare, respect and care are not institutionalized; instead, harm is normalized. We see “out-sized returns” to private equity investors.

Recently, a magician performed at a kid’s birthday party. Magic tricks work through deception. A magician distracts the audience to hide what else they are doing. Similar dynamics play out in our public life. The wealth gap continues to grow, yet we voted in a billionaire to be president. The public is shamed for failing to appropriately sympathize with Brian Thompson and his family, yet everyday targeted attacks and systemic neglect accumulate to harm and render disposable historically and strategically marginalized communities, such as class under-resourced, BIPOC, women, and trans and queer people.

Let us stop this charade. Our healthcare system is not pro-health. The World Health Organization (WHO) names universal healthcare as a worldwide goal. The United States has not complied. Most Americans are insured through private companies. Many Americans struggle to pay for healthcare, they postpone receiving care, and are in medical debt. The healthcare system has practices, such as using AI to deny a high number of healthcare claims, which put profits over people. There is something deeply inhumane and harmful about this disregard for health in a healthcare system. It may not be illegal, but it is savage.

The elite and their apologists ask, “How could they not be appalled by Thompson’s murder?” Instead we, as a community, might ask, how are the elite and their apologists not appalled by a harm-rich system that normalizes the idea that humans are only as valuable as their economic worth? Decades ago, Larry Summers, currently on the board of directors of OpenAI, famously wrote that people who produce less are more expendable. This classist ideology pervades our healthcare system.

To honor Brian Thompson, and to ensure his death is not in vain, we can engage in the needed conversation about the extreme depravity of our healthcare system which his death revitalized. A path forward that reforms a calloused healthcare system can provide benefits to all of us. Those among us who deeply mourn Brian’s death can take solace that it can impart a legacy of positive, sustainable, and overdue social change. Those among us who view Mangione’s action as predictable, if not understandable, can appreciate the same reform.

To be sure, there are people who claim that human fallibility is a predestined curse that we cannot overcome, that we are born sinners and that we cannot do better than prioritize greed over care of each other, even within our healthcare system. There will be those of us who feel that disproportionate wealth is a triumph and that our healthcare should reflect the position we hold in our socioeconomic system. However, 73 countries have universal healthcare, including China, Russia, Mexico and Canada. Us Americans are also worthy.

Wealthy and powerful people are the most protected against societal harms, and they also have disproportionate control over them. We need the CEOs, billionaires, and other power elites to do better. The system does not have a great way to hold those in charge accountable for bad behavior. Can they figure out a way to hold themselves accountable? Can they reorganize to prioritize care, a virtue, over greed, a vice, in our healthcare system? If they are immune to this self-correcting recovery, we need to organize around collective action, such as voting, for example for single-payer healthcare, because our lives depend on it. We don’t want anyone dying in the street. We also don’t want anyone dying or in pain due to a broken so-called healthcare system.

Original article by Megan Thiele Strong republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingSupport for Luigi Mangione Reflects Working Class Weariness of Top-Down Violence

26 Climate-Fueled Extreme Weather Events Killed at Least 3,700 People in 2024: Report

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Residents collect garbage and debris to burn in the town of Acoua after Cyclone Chido wreaked havoc on the French island territory of Mayotte on December 25, 2024. (Photo: Patrick Meinhardt/AFP via Getty Images)

“This exceptional year of extreme weather shows how dangerous life has already become… and highlights the urgency of moving away from planet-heating fossil fuels as quickly as possible.”

Just over two dozen climate-fueled extreme weather events killed at least 3,700 people worldwide and displaced millions in 2024, according to a report published Friday as the hottest year on record drew to a close.

The new analysis from World Weather Attribution (WWA) and Climate Central states that extreme weather “reached dangerous new heights in 2024” as “record-breaking temperatures fueled unrelenting heatwaves, drought, wildfire, storms, and floods that killed thousands of people and forced millions from their homes.”

“This exceptional year of extreme weather shows how dangerous life has already become with 1.3°C of human-induced warming, and highlights the urgency of moving away from planet-heating fossil fuels as quickly as possible,” said the two organizations, which examined 26 destructive weather events that occurred in 2024—a fraction of the hundreds that took place globally this year.

Those 26 events—from Hurricane Helene in the United States to the typhoon that hammered the Philippines, China, and Taiwan— caused close to 4,000 deaths, according to WWA and Climate Central.

“It’s likely the total number of people killed in extreme weather events intensified by climate change this year is in the tens, or hundreds of thousands,” the analysis states.

“Extremes will continue to worsen with every fraction of a degree of fossil fuel warming.”

Around the world, the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency added, on average, 41 additional days of dangerous heat this year, Climate Central found.

“The countries that experienced the highest number of dangerous heat days are overwhelmingly small island and developing states, who are highly vulnerable and considered to be on the frontlines of climate change,” the analysis says.

WWA and Climate Central said their findings should spur global action to shift away from fossil fuel, the burning of which is “the primary reason extreme weather is becoming more severe,” they said.

“Extremes will continue to worsen with every fraction of a degree of fossil fuel warming,” WWA and Climate Central added. “A rapid move to renewable energy will help make the world a safer, healthier, wealthier, and more stable place.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading26 Climate-Fueled Extreme Weather Events Killed at Least 3,700 People in 2024: Report