As I am a writer of novels of history and I'm doing a series on the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and they're going to be done from three different viewpoints Britain, France and the United States. In my first book The Tain a Dawn, which the Kennedy so kindly gave me a nice intro, the backstory of the whole book is the Nutca crisis. Now, has anybody here heard of the Nutca crisis? Now, you know why you never heard of the Nutca crisis? Because it was a war that never happened. It was a disagreement between major powers that was settled diplomatically largely to do-do fleet diplomacy. Now, I will begin. Now I'm going to backtrack from 1789. We're going to start at the end of the American Revolution or if you will as the British call it the American War. Britain, of course, was one of the losers. In 1783 she's awash in debt to the tune of 242 million pounds sterling. This young gentleman is called William Pitt the Younger. They call him William Pitt the Younger because his father William Pitt was also a Prime Minister of England and a very notable one. Mr. Pitt in December 1783 becomes Prime Minister of England. He is all of 24 years old. But not to be deterred. Mr. Pitt has been brought up in a political family. He's political savvy and he has the sense to surround himself with good advisors. So one of Mr. Pitt's main problems is the debt, the deficit. So what does he do? Raises a debt ceiling, raises taxes. He starts cutting down on leakages to the British Treasury like smuggling. What he does is he lowers tariffs on goods that are highly smuggling, smugglable, if there's such a word, I'll make it up if not, and lo and behold he brings more money into the Treasury that way. Mr. Pitt also has a something called a sinking fund where he sets aside the sum of one million pounds per year from the British budget in order to help pay this debt down faster. And by 1792 he's remarkably successful. British debt stunned to about 170 million pounds now. But Mr. Pitt is also interested in freedom of the seas, trade on the seas, particularly British trade on the seas. So what he's also doing, he's seen at the end of the war, the Navy is in a very bad shape. They've got to retire a lot of ships that are leaky, they're about ready to sink. The ships that he has, he's going to have to bring up to stuff, and he's going to have to build more ships because he found during the American Revolution the French fleet very nonchalantly sailed up the British, the English Channel and British could do nothing about it. Okay, next. King Louis the 16th of France. Now he's ostensibly one of the winners, right? He sided with the Americans. You know, he helped them win. But he's also got a sea of red ink to deal with. And like Mr. Pitt, he refuses to raise the debt ceiling. He refuses to raise taxes, even though in the period of the 1780s France is quadrupling her merchant trade, particularly in the Caribbean. But Louis, he's not a very strong king. When it comes to crises, he's like a deer in the headlights. He does nothing. And this doing nothing about the French debt is going to be one of the main factors, really. It helps bring about the French Revolution. Here we have Carlos the 4th of Spain. He's not a very strong ruler either. His father though, Carlos III, who was king during the American Revolution, was. And he was very keen on getting Spain back up to her number one power, her status as a number one power in Europe. And he did. He was able to retake Florida and the Norca from the British. Spain, by the way, had come in on the side of France via the family compact between the House of Bourbon of Spain and the House of Bourbon of France. So they're allies. They're related. They like each other. He helped Louis. And when a crisis comes, he's going to expect help from him. Catherine the Great. She's a woman, but let me tell you, she's not weak. Don't mess with that lady. She is out. She's been on the throne a long time. She's politically savvy. She's ruthless. You do well never to marry her, men. So she's she's out to expand Russian territory and trade. And she is out for the glory of Russia and the glory of Catherine, by the way, too. Okay, now Captain Cook during the American Revolution was on his third and final and fatal voyage of exploration. During this time, he makes a trip up to the Pacific Northwest. One of his reasons, of course, is to look for the famous Northwest Passage, see what's there, and he drops anchor at, all right, I'll just do it here, Nutka Sound. While he's trading with the Indians, one of whom is Makina, his father, the one that later we will see, he finds that they have some Spanish silver spoons and he's chuckling to himself, but at the same time he's chuckling to himself, he knows, ah, the Spanish have been here trading. The Spanish, by rights of the conquistadors, and the paper wall of 1492 and the Treaty of Tortesilla in 1493, have split up the whole of the area between Spain and Portugal, supposedly. And anyway, as far as they're Spain and Portugal are concerned. So Mr. Cook does what the captain, the Spanish captain, who had those spoons robbed didn't do. He sets foot on land at Nutka and he plants the British flag, I claim this land in the name of King George III of England. This is going to give the British a very substantial foothold and claim to that land. Now, in 1784, Mr. Cook is dead by now and we start trading. There's a lot of interest in trade. Sea otter pelts, they're very, very valuable. Even to the native people, only chiefs can wear these. The Europeans like them too. So in 84, Cook's journals are finally published from his final forage and he makes mention in there of the great trading capabilities between the American northeast coast of the Pacific and the China coast because Cook had also found that the Russians were trading up in that area with the fur pelts to China, albeit overland, because they were limited by a previous treaty with China. And that, you know, there's this great room here for England to trade too. There's money to be made, okay, and there's people to make money, legally or otherwise. Now on the legal side, we have Richard Cadman Etchies. He's a London merchant. He sees the potential for the fur trade. He sees the potential for the British whaling trade to expand in the Pacific and he sees the place, actually a potential dumping ground for British convicts, for criminals. It costs money to keep people in jail. They had Georgia when they had us, the United States, the colonies, and they dumped them there. They don't have that anymore. They want to get rid of them. So maybe he thinks that, you know, either there or someplace out there, we could get rid of the convicts. Now, Cadman Etchies goes about trading the right way. That's not him, by the way. I don't have a picture of him yet. He goes to the South Sea Company, who's one of the major traders and monopolist or duopolist who held the rights to trade for England in the Pacific and he gets a license from them. He goes to the East India Company, the other large monopolist trading company out there, and he gets permission. So he goes out and starts trading. Other people don't. Okay? Remember, this is the end of the American Revolution. A lot of naval personnel officers are let go because they're no longer needed. They're put on half pay. This man, John Meares, was one of them. He served honorably as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy during the American War, American Revolution. Now, Mr. Meares gets an idea, aha, I'll go out to India and see what can be done. So he does and he goes and he starts a company. He gets some backing, starts a company. He calls it the Bengal fur trading company and he sells from Calcutta in 1786 out to Newtka. Well, excuse me, not out to Newtka. First he sells up the coast and to a place called Cooks in Lit and he finds, lo and behold, the Russians are already there. They already have a trading center. Permanent one established year-round, 40 to 50 people, 40 to 50 men stationed there. So they can't go there. They've moved on down to Prince William Sound and he finds out that there's nobody there. But at the same time, he doesn't know the area. He stays too long.  By spring, he and the nine survivors of his crew are in very bad shape. They're rescued by another British trading ship under Captain Dixon. He very kindly gives them the medicine and the food they need and helps them. But Captain Dixon's superior doesn't like Mary's. He finds out that he has no pavers from anybody. He's got no permission, no how, no way to trade there. So he forces Mary's to pay a bond of 500 pounds and to leave that region and don't come back trading. Mr. Mary's repays the kindness for saving his life by suing Mr. Portlock. That's life. What can I say? But he doesn't end there. He does not end there. This man is an entrepreneur. He's on the make. He sees from what he's been there that there's a lot of money to be had. So he's going to go back. So he reinvents his company as the associated merchants and he comes back with some more ships. He also, in the course of time, 1788, bring Chinese carpenters and Smiths to Nuka and he builds a permanent establishment there. That's his first. He goes back. Now Mr. Mary's in 1789 means John Cadman Etchies, the brother of Richmond Cadman Etchies and they come to an arrangement. They're going to form a partnership and they call themselves the associated merchants trading to the northeast. And remember still Mr. Mary's, he's unlicensed. Etchies company, they're good to go. They've got all their papers in order. And in the meantime, there's a third person that comes into this. A Captain James Colette who has official papers from the Admiralty authorizing him to explore the area and also to trade there, which he does. Now, in the meantime, while this is going on, that comes France into the picture. Le Conte de la Pou is sent from France to the Pacific to explore the area and to see what, you know, how France can get more of the action there. During the course of the time, he sails up along the coast. He finds that the, he finds the Russians are now established at Cook Inlet. They have come from Petrov a Lusk on the Kamchatka to UN Alaska on the Aleutians and now they're moving up. Remember what I said about Catherine? She is determined to advance the goals and aims of Russia. She's on the move. So, he also finds from the Russians who are always happy to point fingers at someone else. I have the English or they have the English, they're trading, they're trading down there. So, he comes, sails back down to San Blas, the Spanish naval base of San Blas in Mexico, Pacific coast. And he tells the commander there, Captain Esteban José Martinez about this. Hey, do you know what's going on up there? Have you heard the story, you know, that Spain, Spain, their rights are being infringed upon? We're not going to talk about what the French are doing out there. No, no, no. But, you know, the Russians, the British, they're there. So, Captain Esteban, he is a great patriot. He loves Spain. He considers this an insult to the Spanish flag. He contacts the Viceroy of Mexico, Flores. He contacts the Viceroy of Superior, the Minister of the Indies. And he gets permission to take an expedition up there to see what's going on. And he does. And he finds out Steven Morrison will let the count told him. So, they're established. They've got, the Russians have six trading posts there now. Six. And in the meantime, he finds out, finds out from the Russians, remember the Russians, oh, well, you know, we're not the only ones, you know, don't blame us. Look at what the British are doing. He finds out that the British have a permanent establishment at Nookanau. It's not just training, it's a permanent establishment. This is considered an act by Spain of infringing on their claim to trading rights, to the exclusive trading rights in that area, the Pacific Coast of both Americas and the Pacific itself. They don't like this. So, Martinez comes back. He's made a commodore now. And he goes back with a frigate, the princessa, and a brig, back up to Nootka. And he's all set to capture some British ships. Now, the Spanish government has given him a writ that orders him to seize any ship that isn't Spanish in that area. Martinez finds some Americans trading there. Robert Gray in 1788 sailed from Boston to see what there was to see in that area too. And another ship under him has, sorry for two pictures, but, you know, two is better than one whatever. John Kendrick is there as well. And another ship under him. The two ships, the Columbia and the Lady Washington. So, when Martinez comes there, he finds Captain Kendrick. Captain Kendrick is a little bit political savvy, so he enters into a cross-site alliance with Martinez. He says, okay, look, you know, maybe I shouldn't be trading here, but you know about the British, and I'll help you when they come. So, and he does. The Spanish wait, Martinez waits, and he bags the British one by one. The first of the, of Mary's associated merchants to the Northwest ship comes the Iphigenia, and she's captained by William Douglas, and Martinez seizes her. But then Douglas pleads, oh, I'm only here. I'm not here to trade. Really, I'm not. Oh, my ship, my crew is so sick. My ship seems they need cocked after this long, hard voyage from Canton. Please help me. And then Martinez looks at the papers again, okay, they're off. Okay, get out of here. So then, so then come more ships. First, the Northwest America, she's just a small trading vessel, coastal trading vessel that Mary's had built and actually had shipped the parts and had built. The Chinese helped built her out there, and he seizes her, takes her, and renames her as a Spanish ship. Then along comes another ship, two ships actually, the Princess Royal and the Argonaut captain by James Colnett. And after a great deal of heated argument, particularly between Martinez and James Colnett, both of who are horse captains, both of who are high-handed, both of who are super patriots with the result that Martinez seizes those ships and prisons the captain and crew and he moves them back down to Spanish territories and some blasts. But unfortunately, he was a little bit too harsh because once he got them down into Spanish territory, eight of the sailors died because they'd been confined, it was too hot, they had not enough sufficient food and mosquitoes were terrible. After this, they relent a little bit, the British get better treatment. But in the meantime, word goes back to Spain. Obviously, the viceroy is going to let King Carlos and his very able Foreign Minister, Flor de Blanca, who he inherited from his father, know about what's going on out here. So by the time Transatlantic, you know, the trade and everything, getting the ships there, in January, finally of 1789, the incident of the Spanish, the English ships were seized there in July of 1789. Now, by January 1790, Count Flor de Blanca informs the British under Mr. Pitt and his cabinet that, you know, you have insulted the Spanish flag. You are trading, you have built a establishment on our territory. We will not have this. Initially, William Pitt lets his Foreign Minister, the Duke of Leeds, handle it. The Duke is very high-handed too, you know, off with her heads, type thing. So Pitt takes in, he steps in, and from then on, he handles the negotiation with Spain. He looks into it, he's very careful about looking into things because he wants to know, well, exactly what is, we're getting reports, there's a ship been seized, Englishmen have been brutally abused, and all we've been doing is trading piece of legal, what can you put, say. So in the meantime, Mr. Meary's comes back, he sails back to England, and he serves to inflame the situation more. Mr. Meary's is a very exaggerated teller of tales. He's the kind of man you never want to buy a used car for. So he goes back there, but Pitt gives him an edge, and yet it also makes him have to tread sort of the tightrope. What Pitt does is that he's going to demand from Spain, we want the right to trade out there. At the same time, England was also negotiating a treaty with Spain that she would get, give her access to her manufactured goods in Spanish ports in South America. So Pitt's not really interested in war. Carlos, you know, he's got something to get, they're not really interested in war, but they have to support, you know, they have to protect their interest. So what Mr. Pitt decides, and what Carlos decides, we're going to send the fleets to sea. Carlos, by the way, his father had been building up the Spanish fleet as well. They have about a capability of 64 ships of the line, Spain does. But England has been building up too, and Carlos is not full enough, he knows Spain alone cannot stand against England. So both countries now they're going to show a force. A fleet of 29 ships of the war is sent out under Admiral Lord Howe to cruise off Ushant. The Spanish fleet, 31 ships of the line is sent out to cruise. Howe has been given the instructions you're not to engage them, please, you know, you don't want war. In the meantime, Howe knows the Spanish fleet is out there somewhere. Remember, there's no radar, no aerial reconnaissance, no GPS, maybe it's just as well, there's no GPS, they've never found themselves anyway. But they're out there. So he sends instructions back to Pitt, you know, what do I do if I find them? Pitt immediately, he greens the cabinet meeting, he said, if you find them engaged, that's all we can do. And the same time, Pitt is also sent another squadron out to back up the existing squadrons, British squadrons on the Leewood Islands and Jamaica. So there's another third British squadron out there. So Spain's got theirs out. In the meantime, Carlos and Florida Bianca are desperately appealing behind the scenes to Louis of France. Remember, they're bound by treaty, they're bound by blood. Louis's a decent guy, even if he's a weakling. Yes, our arming 14 ships of the line secretly will send them to your aid. But Louis has a problem. In 1789, something broke out called the French Revolution. Louis's no longer living in luxury at Versailles in October of 1789. A women, a group of women, a large mob from Paris marched on Versailles and with the help of the National Guard, the French National Guard following and men who came out the next day, they forced the royal family to Paris where they will stay, except for an attempt to flight. So now the National Assembly, which is now the convocation of the French people, and they are taking more on to governing France and giving less to Louis, who before did not challenge Louis's right to conduct foreign relations and our war, and I'll say, hey, wait a minute, you did this behind our backs. We don't like this. We don't like this. We have to think about this. So this leaves, you know, Count Florida Bianca up in the air and then some negotiation and finally the National Assembly say, okay, we will. But in the meantime, Count Florida Bianca, who is definitely not pro-revolution, he is a monarchist of the First Order, has been again secretly dealing with Louis and also publicly informing the French National Assembly that you must treat your king more respectfully and give back to him some of his rights. This doesn't go over well. The French said, no, it's off the board. We're not helping you. So by October of 1790, the Spain knows she's not going to get any help from France. She's done what she could with England, so they come to a gentleman's agreement. 28th of October, 1790, Mr. Fitz Herbert, the representative of His Majesty King George III, meets with Count Florida Bianca in the palace, the Escorial in Madrid, and they signed the First Notka Convention, which is sort of to give each other, you know, take a breather and we'll send out our representatives, naval representatives, naval diplomats to that region, and they'll see, you know, what did Mr. Mary's buy, what didn't he buy from the Indians, how much, you know, and we'll negotiate. So Captain George VanCouver, famous British explorer. Actually, before this was going, this incident occurred, he was scheduled to go out in the discovery on a voyage of exploration to the Pacific Northwest, and that got postponed because of the Spanish armament, Spanish crisis, as they called it back then. So he sent out, again, in the discovery to negotiate with his Spanish counterpart, Captain Bodea Iquodva. Both of these men meet at Lutka. Basically what they do is they agree to disagree too. He said England is saying, Mary's bought several miles of land on this at Lutka. Captain Bodea said, no, no, you bought this much, he bought, and the Indians are saying, you didn't buy anything.  But in the meantime, unlike Colmet and Montinas, these two men get along very well. They entertain each other, board each other's ship, give them supper. Spanish gave the better dinners, by the way, and, you know, all goes well. VanCouver is going to stay out there for another four years. He's going to examine the territory up and down along the coast, even down through California. He's going to finally settle for all time that there is no Northwest passage that way, but he's also going to make a legend of himself. Bodea, other than this, we don't hear much of him. Okay, now there's going to be two more Lutka conventions before it's all over. One in February 12th, 1783, and the final one is in January 11th, 1794. Now, by January of 1794, both Spain and England are allied against France. They're fighting in what is called now the French Revolutionary Wars, which is before Napoleon. So trading out there is not a big deal anymore. So the Spanish send Brigadier General Miguel de Caldo de Alava out, and he sails in the same ship as Lieutenant Thomas Pierce, Royal Marines, who is now the commissioner after VanCouver there. So that's how he gets his credentials, and they sail in the ship. They landed in Utka. The Spanish formally lower the Spanish flag there. The British raise theirs and lower it, because they're just going to both back off. You know, we have the right to trade, but we're just, you know, neither of us are going to stay here. But Lieutenant Pierce gives the flag to the Indian Chief, Makena, and he says, oh, by the way, you raise this any time a British ship comes into port. So now what we have is peaceful resolution. The fleets have gone to sea, but nothing has happened. Thank God we've had some cool heads. We placed the hot heads who started this. And peace has happened. Spain is a sort of a sour note for her. This is a, she had lost the right to complete control of the Falkland Islands 20 years before this. Now she writes, her total grip on the Pacific is faltering. Not only that, her control over the Spanish colonies in South America is going to falter because those ideals of freedom, the America champion, and the French to a lesser degree, they're going to spread. You know, the Spanish colonies are going to say, you know, we don't need to be sending the treasure fleet to Spain every year. Let's keep what we own here. Let's have our own country, be our own countries. And then Spain gets involved, you know, goes from side to side. The following year, 1796, she's now fighting on the side of France against England. But she's going to decline, see her power greatly decline, so much so that Napoleon will come and relocate the Spanish royal family to Paris. England, she's on the rise. She's won the right to trade in the South Pacific, in the Pacific, excuse me, not just the South. She's interested in expanding trade. What's going to happen? Hurt settlements in Canada. Canada is going to go from sea to sea. The United States has established its right to trade there. And the Spanish are fearing that the United States would eventually expand their rights from sea to sea, which they do. And to take, ultimately, it's going to take two more treaties, peaceful acts, to establish who owns what in Pacific Northwest and Canada. They will be the Adams Owners Treaty of 1819 between Spain and the United States. And then, again, there will be the Oregon Treaty between the United States and England. And that is how it was settled. And I will leave you with a paraphrase of the words of Barry Go and his distant dominion. The wisdom of having a strong navy, useful alliances, adequate finances, sufficient material and ample manpower, coupled with a droid statesmanship, has again been revealed to the nation, i.e. England. These are necessary factors in securing and maintaining peace. Thank you. Other than the killing of Captain Cook with the Hawaiian islands, any part of the issue of this? The British ships would often winter, not all of them, but some would winter at the Hawaiian islands. Yes, it's a very good point. Thank you. Yeah. Because remember what happened to Mereys? He stayed too long and he got iced in. He can't get out. Who knows? Yes, sir. When did the Russians establish themselves in Alaska? Actually, they started under Peter the Great. That's soon. They started, as I said, the Kamchatka Peninsula, Petrovlovsk, and then they started moving up into the Aleutians in Alaska. That's where Cook found them. Catherine, she was moving. In 1785, she sent an armed Russian expedition under a captain who had served under Cook to the area to see where Russia could further move in. They did a lot of their work secretly. In the end, they surprised both the British and the Spanish at the wide extent of their trade because the treaty between Russia and China forbade Russia from dealing by sea. Russia had to do their trade over land to get to China. The Chinese didn't like it. What year was that? That treaty took place in 1648, I believe. They had been hampered, but they knew how to work around it. Yes, sir. How did Russia, they had to come all the way down to San Francisco from your mouth? The Russians, I don't think the Russians were quite, they were just doing it slowly, bit by bit, slowly and as I said quietly. They didn't want to attract attention to themselves. I don't know whether Russia, I don't know. Maybe had the British not been there, they might have. The Americans not been there, but as I said, we've got other people seeing the potential for trade, for the fur trade and welling in the area and they were moving in. What was the essence of the trade? It was mostly fur otter pelts at this time that they were getting, but they were also trading in bear, wolf, deer, raccoon and fox. As I said, the sea otter pelts were the ones that were the most highly valued. Okay, ask me. You might mention it up, the Russians and how feeding back then they were interested in some of the cities, areas that we care about in today's newspaper. Yes, Catherine was actively pushing into the Crimea, Georgia, the Ukraine, names we've heard of recently, they were doing the same thing back then. 1787, she's at war, second time with the Ottoman Empire.  Any other questions? All right, thank you very much. Thank you.


Now, I have to admit, when I was asked to write this lead-off, I puzzled to myself, how on earth can I make Joe Biden interesting for 45 minutes, arguably the most tedious man in politics, with the possible exception of Kier Stammer? But really the grey doddering stooge of Joe Biden is an embodiment and a reflection of the senile decay of US capitalism.  But it has to be said, the loudest sigh went up from the ruling class, because the madness of the Trump presidency was a colossal disruption to world trade, to world relations, but most importantly to the legitimacy of the US capitalist system. When Biden was billed as a safe pair of hands, he was going to restore normality in the aftermath of Trump and the COVID-19 pandemic, which of course is still going on. And bourgeois commentators all over the world gushed with praise for the new president. In the run-up to the election, the New York Times editorial board wrote the following, the former vice president is the leader our nation needs now. Biden's focus will be on healing divisions and rallying the nation around shared values. And liberal representatives of the establishment also hope that Biden would restore the standing of the so-called political center against the so-called populist right, but also, perhaps more importantly from their point of view, the left. Jonathan Friedland, a journalist noted for being wrong about essentially everything all the time, wrote in The Guardian, The true radical is not the fiery deliverer of revolutionary speeches or writer of maximalist manifestos. The true radical is the one who wins power and uses it for good. Biden has achieved more in two months than those who like to trumpet their radicalism manage in a lifetime. So this political center that Friedland and Co. vociferously defend in reality, using the term that Alan likes, which I think is very good, is a gigantic zero. It's collapsed given the extreme polarization of society. And we find ourselves now, 257 days into Biden's Build Back Better program, with his honeymoon pretty decidedly over. A recent university poll found that 38% of the US public approve of Biden's job performance and 53% disapprove. Just before jetting off to the COP26 summit in Glasgow, he admitted himself that his presidency is, I quote, on the line. This is not the phrase used by someone confident in their grip over the system. And the bourgeoisie have also started to sour on their white night. The FT wrote the following a month or two ago. A few weeks ago, Joe Biden's presidency was widely hailed as a triumph. All of a sudden, people are proclaiming Biden's failed presidency. The last few months have told us something worrying about this president. He's proud, inflexible, and he thinks he's much smarter than he really is. That's all true, of course. But the reality is that capitalism, US capitalism is incapable of guaranteeing a decent existence for American workers and youth, irrespective of who leads. Biden is a chosen representative, an establishment that is widely and deservedly despised. He's never hidden this. He promised his rich donors during his campaign trail. Again, I quote, nothing will fundamentally change if I win. The transforming consciousness and the rising class struggle that we're seeing in the United States is going to rock the country. It's already begun to rock the country. We saw this with the Black Lives Matter protests last year, the wave of strikes occurring this month. And these events are already fully exposing Biden to anyone who had any lingering illusions as a class enemy, not a lesser evil, but exactly the same evil as Trump with a slightly kinder face. Now, just cast your minds back to that election 2020. It was clear that the result was a vote against Trump rather than a vote for Biden. Despite being more or less directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans to COVID-19, despite setting the National Guard and militarized police against BLM protesters, Trump received 74 million votes. That's the highest ever for a Republican candidate and an incumbent. Biden promised to take the country back to the good old days under Obama. But these days were already a nightmare for millions of Americans. The blue wall states so-called like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, the former industrial states were treated like rotten burrs by the Democrats for decades. They were crushed by capitalists globalization and outsourcing. And the factories and mines were closed to be replaced with mass unemployment, poverty and epidemics of opioid dependency, obesity and mental health crises. These were places that had their dignity destroyed, had their hearts ripped out under the Democrats. And Trump flipped these states in 2016 by demagogically promising to make America great again. What did that mean to the working class Americans who voted Republican maybe for the first time in their lives? It meant reopening the mines and factories, reversing globalization and restoring dignity to big swathes of working families who felt ignored by the Washington elite. It was a lie. Trump is a huckster, but it was a compelling lie. And the Democrats, it's increasingly clear, are heavily discredited. During the historic boom of capitalism after World War II, presidents like FDR and Lyndon Johnson were able to grant some concessions to workers in the poor. And this coupled with a tendency to skew liberal on social issues like gay, black and women's rights meant the Democrats were often assumed to be more worker friendly or the lesser evil was a term that we hear a lot. But after decades of betrayals and disappointments, millions of Americans are fed up with the Democrats and rightly so. Now, Trump's core support base is in the hysterical small business owners, white collar professionals, picket fence retirees, other petty bourgeois reactionary riffraff. But he posed as an outsider to the corrupt Washington swamp. He was scrappy, he was determined, and he tapped into an anti-establishment mood amongst workers as well. And this is only possible because of the lack of a viable class independent alternative, a workers' party through which to fight for genuine reforms as the great American author and essayist Galvid Alputus. Americans were once again forced to choose between two right wings of the same party, the property party. Now, in both 2016 and 2020, the number of eligible voters who sat out the election altogether was higher than the number of votes that either candidate received individually. The majority felt that neither candidate represented them. And then as now, Biden was not especially popular. He's not an especially inspirational figure. Although I have to say, he recently gave a particularly good speech, really rivaling the Gettysburg address as far as presidential oratory goes. Now, he thought that Trump's speeches were occasionally a bit disjointed. Biden said, this was a few days ago, as one computer said, if you're on the train and they say portal bridge, you know you'd better make other plans. If you can interpret that, then you refine a political analyst than I will ever be. The guy seems half awake all the time. And his so-called progressive credentials are dubious to say the least. I won't dwell on this, but it's common knowledge that he compromised with segregationists while Delaware Senator in the 70s, he historically opposed abortion rights. He's got his fingerprints all over the so-called war on drugs that killed and incarcerated thousands of mostly black and Latino men in the 90s onwards. And he's fervently supported US military adventures abroad. And I think it reflects just how degenerate the Democrats are. You know, really the main bourgeois party, the party of Wall Street, that this is their man, this semi-senile, besuited mediocrity was the best they had to rally around. It just shows how bankrupt they are as a party. And of course, Biden was a major influence on Obama-era policies to bail out the fat cats behind the 2008 crash and the historic levels of deportation and incarceration of migrants of the US border under that administration. Not to mention the litany of accusations of inappropriate behavior and assaults of women over the course of his career. He came in fourth in the Iowa caucuses and fifth in the New Hampshire democratic primaries in 2020, well behind the self-described democratic socialist candidate Bernie Sanders. The ruling class knew at that moment that they needed a reliable puppet to rally behind, especially faced with the danger of Sanders, who at least in words, called for a revolution against the billionaire class and seemed to be on track for winning the Democrats ticket. So after those caucuses, all the other democratic primary candidates pulled out simultaneously for South Carolina and endorsed Biden, helped him to win that primary and gave his campaign the boost of momentum that it needed to win the nomination. The entire presidential run for Biden saw $1.5 billion in funding, mainly from super PACs, such as Priority's USA Action, including $145 million in so-called dark money donors, people who don't disclose the amounts that they contribute and this dwarfs the amount of money that was spent on Trump's campaign. The bourgeois also ran a furious media campaign attacking Trump and pressuring disappointed Sanders supporters to vote for the lesser evil. Sanders himself shamefully endorsed Biden. He led his supporters to the top of the hill and he led them all the way down again. And though the ruling class got their man elected to the light of the stock market, which rallied after the election, it was far too close for comfort. A few thousand votes across a few key states were really all that saved Biden. And after the election, Trump immediately spread the lie that it was stolen. He whipped up his support base into a frenzy that culminated with the storming of the Capitol building on the 6th of January. And this image of the embodiment of the US state under siege from a furious mob a few months after the genuinely insurrectionary BLM protest showed that far from a return to normality, Biden would inherit a highly polarized society in the middle of the deepest capitalist crisis in 300 years. But in the first few months of his presidency, Biden hit the ground running. He won a lot of plaudits for his so-called progressive economic measures. In reality, he had to spend a truckload of cash to rescue US capitalism from the crisis unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic. He immediately proposed $7 trillion in stimulus measures, including the 1.9 trillion COVID relief bill passed in March. But more than half of this money went to rescue businesses. And even the stimulus checks mailed to millions of ordinary Americans unable to work due to lockdowns learned their way back into the boss's pockets eventually in the form of rents, interest payments and so on. And the motive behind this spending, Biden's so-called Build Back Better Plan, is an altruism and it's certainly not communism as the Republicans seem to think and some Democrats too. It reflects the need to spend from above to avoid revolutionary explosions from below. Without those stimulus checks combined with an evictions moratorium, tens of millions of people would have found themselves staring down the barrel of abject poverty and homelessness. It showed the inability of the so-called free market, the invisible hand of the market that's supposed to be worshipped by the US projects to deal with a real crisis. The system would have collapsed had it not been propped up by the helping hand of the state. But now Biden's spending spree has ground to a halt, not helped by America's economic recovery falling below expectations and partly due to supply chain bottlenecks and the impact of the Delta variants of COVID dragging out the crisis. The Dems control the Senate more or less 50-50, which means that a few of their most right-wing representatives are able to hold any policy to ransom. An opposition from right-wing Democrats like West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema from Arizona means that Biden has had to slash two further spending bills intended to invest in America's creaking infrastructure, social services, and green technologies in half. So much for the left-wing Democrats. It's unclear exactly how much more Biden will have to shave off his spending plans to appease his own reactionary party, but neither is to say it wasn't clear that any agreement had been reached before he jetted off to Glasgow. But in truth, even Biden's original proposal of $3.5 trillion would have been grossly insufficient. And because there are no free lunches under capitalism, the unprecedented spending he's carried out so far has created a mountain of debts and it's raised the specter of inflation. About $10 trillion in total was pumped into the US economy last year. And in August this year, the public debt of the USA was around $28.43 trillion. Forbes predicts within a few years by 2029 it could reach $89 trillion. That's a debt-to-GDP ratio of 277%. This is dynamite in the economic foundations. And the super-loose fiscal policy of the Fed since 2008 went into overdrive in 2020 when an ocean of cash had to be printed and billions of borrows to fund COVID response measures. And predictably the inflation index rose to over 5% this month. And this is taking a huge bite out of ordinary Americans' wallets. In August, real personal income was below the pre-pandemic level of February 2020. This is not a recovery. No one feels this as a recovery, even if in real terms you could argue that it is a small recovery. And like a junkie, like a drug addict, going cold turkey could be fatal for US capitalism. Any attempt to tighten the money supply by raising interest rates could push the economy straight back into recession. So Biden's attempt to spend his way out of a hole on a capitalist basis has already come back to bite him. Keynesian spending cannot resolve this crisis. Only a massive program of expropriation, nationalization and investments under a democratically planned economy could do that. And obviously that's not on the agenda for Joe Biden. Now, in terms of foreign policy, it's still America first. Let's be very clear about that. Just with a slightly more polite veneer, Biden is still a loyal defender of the interests of US imperialism, which is drenched in blood from head to toe. For example, he reiterated his longstanding support for Israel's right to self-defense after the IDF launched a series of deadly airstrikes on Gaza in June. And he's maintained the vicious economic sanctions on Cuba, including all the new measures introduced by Donald Trump. But unlike in the past, Biden can't always rely on the US's military might to pursue his interests. So he's increasingly using economic and diplomatic warfare, tariffs, trade alliances, and what amounts to the export of unemployment. And this is actually very similar to Donald Trump's approach, just without the angry, scary Twitter posts. The relative decline of US imperialism means an unavoidable clash with rising powers like China, with whom the US now has a 70% trade deficit. But the damaged standing of the US on the world stage makes even these forms of so-called soft power harder to wield. Biden failed to assemble a united front of Western leaders against China of the recent G8 meeting in London, and he's butting heads with the US as traditional allies as the imperialists increasingly descend into internal bickering. The current period is marked by protectionism and the unraveling of globalization. That typifies and motivates Biden's policy on foreign affairs. The capitalist system is wracked by overproduction. So beg of thy neighbor economics and narrow national considerations are coming to the fore. To this process during the pandemic, for example, by maintaining wartime embargoes on COVID-19 products initiated by Donald Trump, which wreaked havoc with global supply chain to vaccine production, that led directly to hundreds of thousands of needless deaths because on the question of vaccine nationalism, once again, it was America first. And you also see this and the protectionist scramble for microchips in their components recently and the ham-fisted pivot away from France towards Australia over the nuclear submarine deals in the Pacific. But all of the contradictions of Biden's foreign policy were brought to a head by the Afghanistan withdrawal. And I know there's been a discussion on this already, so I won't go into it in depth. But needless to say, this was an historic humiliation, a humiliation for the mightiest imperialist power on Earth, one that shut the confidence of all its allies in U.S. military and political strength in general and the Biden presidency in particular. It's been quoted several times over the course of this event and it doesn't bear quoting enough. So in July, Biden said the following, the Taliban is not the South, I mean the North, the Vietnamese army. That was his mistake, not mine. There's going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. And in August, that is exactly what you saw. The Americans running with the tail between their legs, leaving thousands of personnel from their supposed allies in the lurch and wiping six percentage points off Biden's public approval. And this was a long-threatened defeat, a long-threatened chaotic withdrawal from a 20-year long war that severely undermined Biden's reputation for competence. But in reality, again, this incompetence just reflects the relative decline of U.S. imperialism, which has been going on for years and which really Biden's has inherited. Now, we shouldn't overstate this. The U.S. is still the world's foremost military and economic power, but it can no longer impose its authority on the will. Biden basically has inherited an empire in decline. But the withdrawal was actually popular with the U.S. public, who are sick of wasting trillions on losing wars while suffering increasingly brutal financial hardship at home. And this is also a factor in the changing strategy of the U.S. ruling class. They can't count on domestic support for foreign wars by whipping up jingoism anymore. I saw a tweet recently, which captured this mood. I apologize for the colorful language, and this is actually all written in capital letters, so I'll have to imagine that.    And I think that attitude really reflects changing consciousness in the U.S. public. The American dream has become a cruel joke for working people. The economy and society have been totally dislocated by the pandemic, which directly caused 750,000 U.S. deaths so far, that easily surpasses the total who died in the 1918 flu pandemic. And across the country, life expectancy has plummeted by nearly two years as the sharpest decline since 1943. But while COVID was the trigger, it wasn't the cause for this crisis. U.S. capitalism has never really recovered from the crisis that began in 2008, which at root is a crisis of chronic overproduction. Even before 2020, nearly 80% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck. And during the pandemic, GDP in America contracted at a 3.5% annualized rates. That's the biggest fall since 1946. 35% of households with children suffered from food insecurity. And 5.3 million more Americans now remain out of work than in February 2020. Again, so much for the recovery. As of June this year, 10 million renters and over 2 million homeowners are behind on housing payments. Biden promised a return to normality, but he's running headlong into the limits of the capitalist system in this state of crisis. Within his first few months in office, he'd already walked back on a whole host of promises to struggling and desperate working-class Americans. He dropped the $15 an hour minimum wage despite inflation gobbling up wages, and he's dropped his pledge to forgive student debt. The moratorium on evictions has ended, meaning 750,000 households could be evicted across the country before the end of the year. And despite the pandemic making an unanswerable case for free universal healthcare, Biden has fallen decisively on the side of big pharma in rejecting so-called single payer. And despite the Democrats and Biden's woke credentials, the situation for the most oppressed layers of society hasn't improved one jot under their watch. The recent Texas abortion ban approved by the Supreme Court was basically met with a shrug by the Democrats. Yeah, that's not great. Don't know what we can do about it. It was more or less their attitude. And despite cheap words of support from BLM, the police killings of black people haven't even slowed under Biden's presidency, because ultimately the problem lies in the racist oppressive nature of the bourgeois state itself, which Biden and the Democrats both represent and defend. And far from ending Trump's brutal border policy, the Biden administration arrested 170,000 migrants at the border in March alone. This is the highest number of any month in 15 years. Biden hasn't closed the camps. He's just recast them as holding facilities that are exactly the same. You've got kids crammed in there, facing the danger of infection from COVID, denied amenities like toothbrushes. It is exactly the same policy. And earlier this year, vice president Harris, you know, Bay Harris, gave a blunt warning to prospective migrants. She says, do not come, do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and protect our borders. And that was reconfirmed recently by images of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers on horseback, whipping Haitian migrants, fleeing the country, racked by turmoil after the assassination of their presidents. In short, Biden's mask has already fallen. Any illusions that this new presidency would fundamentally improve the lots of working class and oppressed people have been shattered. And when increasingly seeing a change in consciousness, a sea change in the USA, disillusionment and anger at the system are the order of the day and a desire for an alternative on the order of the day. A full 10% of the U.S. population took part in the BLM protests last year and 54% believed that burning down the police precinct in Minneapolis was justified. This was an act of insurrection that the majority of the U.S. public supported as justified. Now, of course, that movement was sparked specifically by police violence against black people, but it became a point of expression for a much more general simmering rage at the rotting state of society. And this is a move that affects the young of the new generation in particular. One poll found that 54% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 view capitalism negatively and 52% view socialism positively. So when Biden says, and I quote, pardon me, I don't think 500 billionaires are the reason we're in trouble. The folks at the top aren't the bad guys. He's utterly out of touch with the real mood, especially with the likes of Jeff Bezos taking a rocket to space. At the same time as millions of Americans suffer from disease, poverty, insecurity and precarity. Now, Biden launched a feeble attempt to capture some of the zeitgeist with his 23% billionaire tax on incomes on 800 of the absolute richest people in the States. But that was only in turn because the Democrats blocked an attempted rise on corporation tax. And the same democratic senators blocked this billionaire tax. They said it was too radical. A 23% income tax on 800 of the biggest fat cats was regarded as too radical by the so-called left-wing party in the USA. One unnamed party donor commented on this, what are we, socialists? And this shows where the loyalty of the Democrats lies. It's the polar opposite in its outlook to the resentful, anti-rich mood growing in society. We saw this mood begin to express itself on a mass scale during the Sanders campaigns for 2016 and 2020, powered by millions of enthusiastic, mainly young people and small individual donations rather than the big business backers and super PACs who threw their money at Hillary and Biden. And now, this month, Striketober, the great sleeping giants of the US labor movement is starting to awaken after a long period of dormancy. A major turning point in this was the 2018 strike by 35,000 teachers starting in West Virginia. And that was followed by a historic strike in General Motors in 2019. The pandemic cuts across this uptick in labor struggle for a period, but we're now seeing a huge wave of industrial action relative to the last period with 100,000 workers in the States voting to authorize strike action across a range of different sectors. A whole sweep, healthcare, construction, carpentry, coal mining, media and communications, food production and so on. Now these workers accepted huge sacrifices during the pandemic for the good of the nation. They were forced to choose between their work and their health or otherwise straight through on government handouts. And they're angry at the utter reckless incompetence of their ruling class. They're not prepared to accept the continuation of extreme exploitation following what were meant to be temporary, exceptional circumstances, especially when the rich have added two trillion dollars to their wealth over the course of a pandemic. So for example, you saw 30,000 nurses and healthcare workers for the Kaiser consortium striking after risking their lives against a pandemic that was exacerbated by the insane policies of the US ruling class. 3,600 healthcare workers died directly from COVID during the pandemic. And many spent 2020 in a blur of 24 hour shifts struggling from staff shortages to people abandon the profession totally burned out. But workers have also been emboldened by the job shortages that have emerged in the US economy caused again by the dislocating effect of the pandemic crisis. For the first time in a generation, working people in the States feel that they have the leverage, not the bosses, especially in sectors that are now booming. Thank you. Workers are demanding a slice of the pie. So coal miners for example in Alabama swallowed cuts while coal prices were low during the pandemic. But now prices are booming again because coal is used to power industry through much of the world and the economy is reopening much of the world. But the bosses aren't budging. A very bitter dispute is underway. The bosses actually sent strike breakers in a van to drive their vehicles into the miners' picket line sending a few of them to hospital. But nevertheless, the miners are holding firm and the farming equipment manufacturer John Deere recently reported record profits this year of $6 billion. The CEO, John C. May, rewarded himself with a $15 million annual salary. For context, that's 220 times that of an average John Deere employee. And the workers are simply not prepared to accept miserable wages and uncertainty any longer. One employee said, and I quote, after 30 years or more of giving your body to a company, moving 1,000 pound castings around or assembling tractors, it rips your body apart. It's not unreasonable to not want to have that worry in life of what if. And this is the thing. The American working class aren't asking for the moon. They're asking for reasonable wages and conditions after being called heroes, key workers, essential workers during a pandemic, risking their lives and livelihoods. They're simply asking what they're owed. And the bosses are not only saying no, they're enriching themselves even further. It's a double insults. More than 2,000 carpenters in Washington States also voted to strike. And the strike leader said the following. It has just been a kind of downward spiral. Wages aren't keeping up with the cost of anything, the cost of parking and the cost of housing, the cost of healthcare. We just feel like enough is enough. Work is at some Kellogg's plants all over the country are striking. Now, if you're like me, serial kept you alive during the pandemic. At least it was a key part of your diets. And serial sales went up massively last year. And the bosses' profits also went up by more than 8% in 2020 for Kellogg's. But rather than sharing those gains, they're attacking workers. They're threatening to sack workers and they're attacking paying conditions. And this came after Kellogg spent the pandemic squeezing their workers for every drop of profit. One striker said, we just work seven days a week, sometimes 100 to 130 days in a row. For 28 days, the machines run, then rest three days for cleaning. They don't even treat us as well as they do their machinery. I really enjoyed the session on Marxism and Cinema the other day. Has anyone ever seen the movie Network? It's one of my absolute favorites. And there's a bit where this furious, overworked news anchor, Howard Beale, has a mental breakdown on stage. And the thing he says reminds me of the aptitude of the American workers today.  And that's the American working class.  And this militancy is also bringing the new grassroots into conflict with the old layer of union bureaucrats who are doing everything they can to sell out and hold bat-bees struggles. The Carpenter Union tops ended their strike with a rotten deal a few weeks ago despite opposition from below. And we heard in a previous session about how the Iatzi tops narrowly averted the biggest Hollywood strike since World War II. Now a rank and file striker said correctly of this, the union leadership has taken on this market share philosophy over the years. And it's basically come to see itself as a labor broker, not a labor union. That absolutely typifies the attitude of the union leaders in the US in the past. The AFL-CIO has 12.5 million members and around 500 labor councils. This is the biggest trade union confederation in the States. And it's increasingly seeing an influx of younger, more radical layers of class fighters. It potentially wields enormous power, but the union tops see their role as negotiating deals behind the scenes with the bosses and leaning on a working class to make sure they keep their struggle in safe channels, working hand in glove with the Democratic Party to do that. But there's a sea change again. Grassroots members of the UAW Automotive Union and the Teamsters are fighting to push their unions in the direction of radical class struggle politics. They're trying to elect left-wing leaders and the demanding Democratic accountability from those leaders. And this is only the beginning of the beginning. Unionization is still low in the USA. But there's the highest level of public support for unions in decades, around 60, 70%. And the Democrats and labor leaders feel the way that the wind is blowing and are desperate to get out ahead of this radicalizing energy, which explains Biden's declared support for Amazon workers and the pro-acts, which was intended to make it easier for workers to unionize the strike, although it probably won't pass. And he knows that. It's a diversionary tactic, basically. No matter what they try though, the Democrats and labor leaders will struggle to co-opt and restrain the full strength of the US working class in the next period. And they've done nothing concrete to assist these strikes, which is going to increasingly expose them. Now, I'm running out of time, so I'll go on to my last point and perhaps the most important point. The main arguments for workers and youth to hold their noses and vote for Biden in 2020 was lesser evilism, as I said. The need to beat Trump at all costs. But Biden's brand of politics paved the way for Trump and it will continue to pave the road for the greater and greater evil. Trump also hasn't gone. He's still holding big rallies for the faithful and he's preparing to launch yet another presidential bid with even more hysterical and reactionary supporters in his base. In the US, every election is presented as this two horse race between the Democrats and the Republicans. If you don't support one, you must support the other. But Marxists don't see politics in these narrow terms. The question is, for us, does supporting the Democrats in any way advance the cause of working people or the fight for socialism? For us, politics is not just elections. Politics is the struggle between class interests. And based on all I've said, the Democrats and Biden are clearly agents of the bourgeoisie. They're enemies of working people. They represent a dead end for the left. Now, bodies like the Democratic Socialists of America, the DSA, and so-called progressives like New York Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, say Democrats are the only game in town and building up strength for progressive politics within the party allows you to drag it to the left and achieve change. But we're seeing the exact opposite of that. The squads are being dragged to the right. For example, AOC recently voted for continuing to fund Israel's Iron Dome despite speaking against it. And you've got that shameful display of Ilhan Omar calling Margaret Thatcher her idol during a Channel Four interview. These people aren't even left reformists. They're left liberals at best. And by tying themselves to the Democratic mass, Sanders, the DSA, AOC, the squad share responsibility for their failures at discrediting themselves amongst radical layers. I wish that I had it to hand. There's a fantastic quotes from the campaign manager of a so-called radical DSA Democrat who's running for Buffalo Mayor. And the campaign manager was basically asked why she's dropping her rhetoric about defending the police. And he says, well, you know, when she was an activist, she had to like speak truth to power and take on oppositional language. But now we're looking at a serious run for a serious political position. And you need to have a more level-headed and intelligent approach.  That's the attitude of the DSA. Some left reformists pundits internationally in Britain commented positively on Biden choosing to allegedly embrace the left rather than fighting them or trying to destroy them. The Starmer is done in the British Labour Party. So James Medway, another man's fain for being wrong about most things, and a former economic adviser to Jeremy Corbyn said the following, Biden didn't win from the moderate centre and then shift to the left. He took on important parts of the left programme and deliberately built the left into his coalition. Labour's own moderates and centre-ists should once again look to America for guidance. It's the voice of Corbynomics right there. So a few things. Firstly, Labour, the Labour rights recently lost control of the party. And they know that and they're desperate to crush and make an example of what remains of the left and the Corbyn movement. Actually winning elections is a secondary concern to them. If he thinks that's explained in their behaviour, he misunderstands what's going on. They want to destroy the left in the party. Biden, by co-opting these so-called left leaders, hopes to maintain a degree of credibility for the Democrats amongst the working class. What he wants to do is prevent the emergence of a genuine workers' party to the left of the Democrats. His objective is to keep the workers and youth who are radicalising in the States safely contained in the Democratic mire. American Left reformist journals like Jacobin talk about a so-called party surrogate, so running a left-wing party within a party. The DSA talk about a dirty break, so pushing with the formation of a new party at some point in the distant future. All of these ideas basically delay the essential task. I'm very proud to say that our comrades in the US stand alone for calling for a class-independent approach within the DSA. And some people say that building a left-wing party in America is impossible, that it's just too reactionary, too right-wing, could never be done. I'll offer an analogy. Not perfect one, but I think it's still useful. Britain in the 19th and early 20th century had two conservative liberal parties that took turns in power, the Tories and the Whigs, both ultimately representing the interests of British capitalism. But the formation of the Labour Party out of the trade union movement soon swept aside the liberal Whigs as workers and their millions found their aspirations better represented through a party of their own. Now, despite Labour's current rotten leadership and its history of betrayals, this was a massive step forward. And no one really saw it coming. And it happened very quickly that Whigs were relegated to third place in the matter of a decade or two. And such a development in the States would finally offer the possibility for a class-independent worker struggle in the political field in the US.  We'd enthusiastically participate. We'd agitate for a socialist solution to the dire problems of working people within a worker's party. We'd agitate for a transitional program demanding a genuine living wage tied strictly to inflation, for healthcare, for education, funded by expropriating the biggest American companies and billionaires. And such a party could already have existed and could have been started by Sanders in 2016. There was huge momentum behind Sanders' campaign and there was a cross-section of Trump supporters who also had a degree of respect and support for Sanders. Let's be clear about this, comrades. I don't mind saying this. Trump, in a distorted way, represented something potentially progressive, a rejection of the establishment, a rejection of the status quo. He sold it with lies and he himself is an arch-reactionary. But the only reason he was able to do that is because working-class Americans were jettisoning support for the status quo. And it would have been very different if such a party, if a left-wing workers' party had existed at the time. But instead Sanders capitulated to the pressure of lesser evilism and he ran on a Democratic ticket in the name of beating Trump. And of course, in the end, there was no way that the DNC were going to let him have their nomination anyway. But if he'd done that in 2016, if he'd decisively broken, I think that party would have been a powerful force in US politics right now. Can I say it would have won the last election? No, of course I can't say that. But I do think it would be a powerful alternative. I think that there would have been pressure placed upon the labor unions from their rank and file to break with support for the Democrats and put support towards this new party, a workers' party calling for a political revolution against the billionaire class. And ultimately, unless workers get a party of their own as night follows day, Trump or something worse will inevitably return. A workers' party coupled with this radicalizing labor movement led by fresh elements could have been a decisive factor in, for example, the Black Lives Matter movements. It could have reached out to those activists on the grounds. It could have led them into revolutionary class struggle against the entire rotten, racist, decrepit capitalist system. It could have given it political oversight and representation. It could have given it a program rooted in the working class. It would have given workers a voice and young anti-racist activists to voice in Capitol Hill, helping to build and generalize their struggle all across the country. This strike now, if a workers' party existed in America, it could provide direct political support to that strike. It could agitate for it in the political field. It could provide workers with the kind of ally in the political field that they have never had in US politics. And all those opportunities were squandered because the likes of Sanders and the squad didn't have the courage and conviction and trust in the working class to make that decisive break with the Democrats. All right, I'll finish now. The US is the most important country in the world from the perspective of class struggle. I don't mean that it's the best country. I mean, it's the nicest country. I don't mean that it has necessarily the most radical working class at this time, but it's the mightiest economy. It's the black hearts of world imperialism. And it has a very powerful and developed working class. And the main task of workers and youth in the belly of the beast of world imperialism is to fight a fierce struggle to turn their unions into fighting organizations and to win a party of their own. We're facing an incredibly tumultuous period in US politics. And ultimately, in the end, it'll be the ideas of Marxism and socialist revolution that will be decisive in determining the destiny of the American working class. I'm delighted to see the incredible turnout at our recent US Congress, for example. There's been huge gains made over the last period by our US comrades, and they've been the ones arguing consistently for a class independence, class struggle approach based on Marxist ideas. I'm sure that growth will continue. I'm sure I have faith that the tide of history is turning towards us. The fact that the White House had to release a document explaining why Marxism is wrong, why socialism is wrong, shows the ruling class is paranoid about the influence of Marxism. That explains what propaganda about the influence of Marxism in schools, at football games and the Super Bowl. It shows that they fear our ideas and they're right to fear ideas. They're right to fear our ideas because the future is with us. The future is with a socialist struggle to transform the USA into a socialist country, despite the worst fears of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Joe Biden is no friend of American workers and youth. He's our class enemy. We can rely on no one but our own forces, comrades. So for socialist revolution in the US today.


Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappie and it's a new year for love, life, and criticizing the heck out of somebody else's hard work. 2020 has brought us a new Unearthed Arcana, apparently the first of many, and we're gonna talk about it. So, if you haven't read the article yet, I highly suggest you look it up on the D&D website because I'm not about to bore you with statistical word vomit. If you're interested in that, I actually went over the whole Unearthed Arcana on my last Twitch stream, cord slash Davy Chappie. You should check it out. I play games and answer your burning questions every Tuesday and Saturday.  But with that out of the way, let's begin. So the first UA of 2020 has brought us subclasses for the barbarian, the monk, the paladin, and the warlock. A group of classes that have nothing to do with each other pass the fact that all of them need more lovin'. So good on you wizards. These subclasses come in the form of the path of the beast barbarian, the way of mercy monk, the oath of the watchers paladin, and the noble genie warlock. Starting off with the barbarian, the path of the beast represents a furry whose immediate family was made up of also furries, and now this barbarian is destined to carry on the family pride.  As a theme, I'm not super impressed by the beast man that they're going with, because let's be honest, animalistic barbarians is like the most overdone thing ever. But as a mechanical subclass, it seems nice. The healing on the natural bite weapon is a little annoying because barbarians have most of the damage that comes their way, so healing for 3, 4, and 5 is effectively healing for 6, 8, and 10 every turn, but it lowers the damage die from a d10 or a d12 to a d8, so I think it balances itself out. Other than that, it's a pretty bog standard barbarian that's ready to take on any furry con that it gets its hands on.  The way of mercy monks can usually be seen sporting plain cloaks and weird voodoo masks, which marks a first for Wizards of the Coast trying to tell me how to dress. It's my body, I'll do what I want. When you take up the way of mercy, you learn how to use the tools of the trade, you can backhand people to either heal them or hurt them harder, you can rip some major ass to poison people around you, and you can hit somebody in just the right spot to induce a near-death state for a minimum of 17 days during which that person is effectively immortal for no reason.  Under no circumstances at all can there be an ability in the game that lets the player walk up to the boss, karate chop their neck, and then spend 17 days thinking about what they're gonna do with the body before it wakes up. What I think the skill means is that enemies that are immune to paralyzed are also immune to this attack, but that's just speculation, the skill is poorly worded. Besides that, the hand of healing is cool, but being able to heal with flurry of blows at no extra cost is dumb, and I'm not sure why the way of mercy has so many straight up hostile abilities. Overall, the subclass is having some real balancing issues, and it needs to spend more time reflecting on itself to figure out what it wants in life. So I've been going pretty hard on these subclasses, but now I want to talk about the one that has me hyped like no other. The Oath of the Watchers Paladin is the coolest thing in the world, dude. It is a nightly order of brothers and sisters that has sworn itself to protect the material realm from those extra planar warriors that would see harm done onto it. They are the space TSA, but they actually do something. It don't matter what you are. Demon, get back in the abyss. Elemental, be a fridge or be nothing. Faye? No way. These guys are the best. And their skills keep up. Their channel divinity acts as either a turn extra planar creature, or they can steal their allies' minds from mental attacks for a minute. Their orability raises the initiative of their allies so that Faye don't even get a turn before they get royally stomped on. They can rebuke magic casters, like Faye. And their final ability turns them into the ultimate avatar of extra planar defense. You can see, fight, and banish all extra planar beings around you for the glory of the material realm, and then laugh in the faces of the ones that are next. Truly, this is the gods work. Don't touch this class at all. It's perfect and I love it. My only regret is that I already played a Paladin all the way up to level 20 in a year long campaign, so I'm gonna have to really push myself to play another one, because this subclass is just too cool. And finally, the weirdest and yet somehow most mechanically interesting subclass to come out of the first new UA is the Noble Genie. These types of warlocks are so in touch with their patron's vibe that they can carry around a small object, be it a lamp, an urn, a ring, a shoebox, the Aladdin 2004 special edition DVD case, that connects straight to the genie's pocket dimension, proving that when it comes to warlocks, you'll never have a friend like me. This vessel is the crux of the subclass's power, with the main gimmick being that the genie warlocks can shoot out a tether that'll connect with another member of the party, granting both sides abilities and effectively turning the tethered party member into that warlocks genie, which is pretty crazy. While affixed to this tether, you both are protected from an element, you can swap places when one of you is hit by an attack to let the other person take it. You can hit somebody with a cutscene that'll banish them to your genie's court where they'll spend time being chastised for not being robin williams. And your final ability calls out to your genie for aid, getting them to either heal you, hinder an enemy, or cast the legend lore spell on an object. The best part about that last ability is that you can get it back if you offer up a tithe of 500 gold, showing us that magical fantasy world or not, rich people get an easier time. Overall, while I like the paladin more, I do think that the noble genie has more interesting abilities. That swap out skill is cool as hell. And I've had players in my games that wanted to be more connected to each other in a mechanical sense, and what's more of a connection than shooting out ginges and keeping it hanging there for an uncomfortably long time. This article has been full of largely balanced classes, and while I'm still wary for the next article, my guard is never down, I do hope that this becomes the new normal so that we can all play our favorite subclasses without feeling like a bunch of munchkins. Buuuut that'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video, leave a like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell, join my discord, join my twitch, and maybe support me on patreon so that I can lower the amount of end credits that I have to give at the end of all these videos. But yeah, dabby out.


Telephone conversation between President Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on November 29, 1963, at 1.40 p.m. Yes? J. Edgar Hoover on 2192. Are you familiar with this proposed group that they're trying to put together on this study of your report and other things, two from the House, two from the Senate, somebody in the court, a couple outsiders? No, I haven't heard of that. I've seen the reports on the Senate investigating committee that they've been talking about. Yeah, well, we think if we don't have, I want to get by just with dear file in your report. I think it would be very, very bad to have a rash of investigations. Well, the only way we can stop them is probably to point a high level one to evaluate your report. Yeah. And put somebody that's pretty good on it, that I can select out of the government and tell the House and Senate not to go ahead with the investigation. Yes.  It'd be a three ring circus. Yes. What do you think about Alan Dulles? I think he would be a good man. What do you think about John McCloy? I'm not as enthusiastic about McCloy. I knew him back in the Paterson when Paterson was down here, the secretary thing. He's a good man. But I'm not so certain as to the matter of the publicity that he might seek on it. What about General Nordstein? A good man. I guess Boggs has started in the House. I thought maybe it might try to get Boggs and Jerry forward in the House. Maybe try to get Dick Russell and maybe Cooper in the Senate. Yes, I think so. I don't know if you know anything of any reason. Just talking to me and you're going to talk to Black brothers. Yes. I don't know what there is, any reason. Any there. I thought Russell could kind of look after the general situation. See that the state's in their relationship. Russell would be an excellent man. And I thought Cooper might look after the liberal group. Was that? Cooper. Oh, yeah. So they wouldn't think that he's a pretty judicious fellow. But he's a pretty liberal fellow. Yes. I wouldn't want Chad. No, no. I thought he was a pretty good fellow. A savage place to the fumpage. Cooper's kind of border state. Yes. It's not the South. It's not the North. That's right. Do you know Ford from Michigan? I know of him but I don't know him. I saw him on TV the other night for the first time. He handled himself well on that. Do you know Boggs? Oh, yes, I know Boggs. He's kind of off in the resolution. That's what I know. Yes. Yes. I know him.  I have. I tell you, I sure appreciate that. I didn't ask for it because I knew you had to run your business better than anybody else. And I just want to tell you, though, that we consider him as high class as you do. And it's a mighty gracious thing to do. And we'd be mighty happy. We salute you for knowing how to pick good men. Well, that's about a nice view of the presidency. We hope to have this thing wrapped up today. But we probably won't get it before the first of the week. This angle at Mexico is giving us a great deal of trouble. Because the stories there of this man, Oswald getting $6,500 from the Cuban Embassy. And then coming back to this country with it, we're not able to prove that fact. The information was that he was there on the 18th of September in Mexico City. And we are able to prove conclusively he was in New Orleans that day. Now, then they changed the date. The story came in changing the date to the 28th of September. And he was in Mexico City on the 28th. Now, the Mexican police have again arrested this woman, Durán, who's a member of the Cuban Embassy. And we'll hold her for two or three more days. And we've got to confront her with the original informant who stole the money past, so he says. And we're also going to put the lie detector test on him.  Can you pay attention to the lie detector test? I would not pay 100% attention to them. All that they are is a psychological asset in an investigation. I wouldn't want to be a part of sending a man to the chair on a lie detector. For instance, we have found many cases where we've used them in a bank where there's been embezzlement. And a person will confess before the lie detector test is finished. A more or less fearful of the fact that the lie detector test will show them guilty. Psychologically, there's that advantage because it's a misnomer to call it a lie detector because what it really is, it's the evaluation of the chart that is made by this machine. And that evaluation is made by a human being. And any human being can be apt to make the wrong interpretation. So I would not, to myself, go on that alone if, on the other hand, if this fellow Oswald had lived and had taken the lie detector test and it had shown definitely that he had done these various things together with the evidence that we very definitely have. It would have just added that much more strength to it. There's no question, but the T is the man. Now, the fingerprints are the things that we have. This fellow Rubinstein down there, he is offered to take the lie detector test but his lawyer got a big cost consultant first. And I doubt whether the lawyer will allow it. He's one of these criminal lawyers from the west coast and somewhat like an Everett Bennett Williams type and almost as much of a shyster. Have you got any relationship between the two here? Between Rubinstein? At the present time, we have not. There was a story down there. When he ran his bar and stuff like that. There was a story that this fellow had been in this nightclub, that he had this cheese joint that he had, but that has not been able to be confirmed. Now, this fellow Rubinstein is a very shady character, has a bad record, street brawler, fighter and that sort of thing. And in the place in Dallas, if a fellow came in there and couldn't pay his bill completely, Rubinstein would beat the very devil out of him and throw him out of the place. He was that kind of a fellow. He didn't drink, didn't smoke, boasted about that. He is what I would put in the category, one of his equal maniacs. He likes to be in the limelight. He knew all the police in that white light district where the joints are down there. And he also let them come in, see the show, get the food and get the liquor and so forth. That's how I think he got into police headquarters because they accepted him as kind of a police character hanging around police headquarters. And for that reason raised with no question. Of course, they never made any move as the pictures show, even when they saw him approaching this fellow and got up right to him and pressed his pistol against Oswald's stomach. Neither of the police officers on either side made any move to push him away or to grab him. It wasn't until after the gun was fired that they then moved. Now, of course, that is not the highest degree of efficiency, so to say. Secondly, the chief of police admits that he moved him in the morning as a convenience and at the request of the motion picture people who wanted to have daylight. He should have moved him at night, but he didn't. And, I mean, those derelictions in that phase but so far as Tyre, Rubenstein and Oswald together, we haven't yet done so that a number of stores come in. We've tried Oswald into the Civil Liberties Union in New York, membership into that, and of course into this thing, this Cuban Fair Play Committee, which was pro-Castro and dominated by communism and financed to some extent by the Castro government. How many shots were fired? Three. Any of them fired at me? All three at the present. All three at the present, and we have them. Two of the shots fired at the president were splendid, but they had characteristics on them so that our ballistic expert was able to prove that they were fired by this gun. The third shot, which hit the president, he was hit for the first and the third. The second shot hit the governor.  And in trying to massage his heart at the hospital on the way to the hospital, they apparently loosened that and it fell on to the stretcher, and we recovered that. And we have that, and we have the gun here also. Were they aiming at the president? They were aiming directly at the president. There's no question about that. This telescopic lens, which I've looked through, it brings a person as close to you as if they were sitting right beside you. And we also have tested the fact that you could fire those three shots of a fire within three seconds. There's been some stories going around in the papers and so forth that must have been more than one man, but of course no one man could fire those shots in the time that they were fired. We've just proved that by the actual test that we've made. How did it happen that they hit Connelly? Connelly turned. Connelly turned to the president when the first shot was fired. And I think in that turning, it was where he got hit. He had to turn, he probably wouldn't have got hit. I think that's very likely. Did the president get hit the second one? No, the president wasn't hit with the second one. I'll say if Connelly hadn't been his way. Oh yes, yes. The president, no doubt, would have been hit. He'd been hit three times. He'd been hit three times. On the fifth floor of that building where we found the gun and the wrapping paper in which the gun was wrapped, had been wrapped, and upon which we found the full fingerprints of this man, Oswald. On that floor, we found the three empty shells that had been fired and one shell that had not been fired. In other words, there were four shells apparently. And he had fired three but didn't fire the fourth one. And through the gun aside, he came down and at the entrance of the building, he was stopped by a police officer and some, worked as some manager in the building, told the police officer, well, he's all right, he works for you. He needn't hold him, so they let him go. That's how he got out. And then he got on a bus. The bus driver has identified him and went out to his home and got a hold of a jacket that he bought it for some purpose and came back downtown, walking downtown. And the police officer who was killed stopped him, not knowing who he was and not knowing whether he was the man, but they were just on suspicion. And he fired, of course, and killed the police officer. Then he walked out and walked about. You can prove that. Oh yes, oh yes, we can prove that. Then he walked about another two blocks and went to the theater. And the woman at the theater window selling the ticket, was so suspicious of where he was acting. And she said he was carrying a gun. He had a revolver at that time with which he had killed the police officer. He went into the theater and she notified the police. And the police and our man, our man went in there and located this particular man. We had quite a struggle with him. He fought like a regular lion.  But he apparently had come down the five flights of steps from the fifth floor. So far as we found out, the elevator was not used, although he could have used it.  Well, your conclusion is that he's the one that did it. B, the man he's after, was the president. C, he would have hit him three times, except the governor turned. I think that's correct. Four, that there's no connection between he and Ruby that you can detect now. And five, whether he was connected with a Cuban operation with money you were trying to... That's what we're trying to nail down now. Because he was strongly pro-Castro. He was strongly anti-American. And he had been in correspondence, which we have, with the Soviet Embassy here in Washington and with the Americans of the Liberty Union and with this committee for the very play to Cuba, we have copies of the correspondence. So we've got him nailed down in his contact with them. None of those letters I have are dealt with any indication of violence or contemplated assassination. They were dealing with the matter of a visa for his wife to go back to Russia. Now, there's one angle of this thing that I'm hopeful to get some word on today. This woman, his wife, has been very hostile. She would not cooperate. She speaks Russian and Russian only. She did say to us yesterday down there that we could give her assurance that she would be allowed to remain in this country. She might cooperate. I told our agents down there to give her that assurance that she could stay in this country. And I sent a Russian-speaking agent in to Dallas last night to interview her so that we'll... We've got her now and whether she knows anything or talks anything, I don't know. I, of course, don't know. Where did he work in the building on this same floor? He had access on all floors. But where was his office? Well, he didn't have any particular office. Order came in for certain books, and some books would be on the first floor, second floor, third floor, and so forth. But he didn't have any particular place he stationed? No, he had no particular place that they were stationed at all. He was just a general packer of the requisition that came in for school books from the Dallas schools, I have. And therefore, he had access, perfectly proper access, to the fifth floor and to the sixth floor. Usually, most of the employees were down on lower floors. Did anybody hear anybody saying on the fifth floor? Yes, they were seen on the fifth floor by one of the workmen. They had before the assassination took place. He was seen there. Did you get a picture of him shooting? No, no. There was no picture taken of him shooting. What was his picture at that Dallas old $25. That was a picture taken of the parade and showing Mrs. Kennedy climbing out of the back seat. You see, there was no Secret Service man standing on the back of the car. Usually, the presidential car in the past has had steps on the back next to the bumpers, and they have usually been one on either side standing on those steps at the back bumper. Whether the president asked for that not be done, we don't know. And the bubble top was not up, but the bubble top wasn't worth a damn anyway because it made entirely a plastic. And much to my surprise, the Secret Service do not have any armored cars. Do you have a bulletproof car? Yes, I do. I think you most certainly should have one. Most certainly should. Because I won here. We have one in New York. We use it for different purposes. I use a tear for myself. And if we have any rage to make or have to surround a place where everybody's hitting in, we use the bulletproof car on that. Because you can bulletproof the entire car, including the glass. But it means that the top has to remain up. You could never let the top down. It looks exactly like any other car, but I do think you ought to have a bulletproof car. But I was surprised the other day when I made inquiry. All that I understand the Secret Service has had has had two cars with metal plates underneath the car to take care of a hand grenade or a bomb that might be thrown out and roll along the street. Well, of course, we don't do those things in this country. In Europe, that's the way they assassinate heads of state with bombs. They've been after General De Gaulle, you know, with that sort of thing. But in this country, all of our assassinations have been with guns. And for that reason, I think very definitely I was very much surprised when I learned that this bubble-top thing was not bulletproof in any respect and that the plastic top to it was down. The President had insisted upon that so that he could stand up and wave to the crowd. It seems to me that the President ought to always be in a bulletproof car. It certainly would prevent anything like this ever happening again. It doesn't mean you could have a thousand Secret Service men on guard and still a sniper can snipe you from up in the window if you were exposed like the President was. But he can't do it if you have a solid bulletproof top to it as it should be. You mean I ride around my ranch? How to be in a bulletproof car? Well, I would certainly think so. Mr. President, thinking that that car down at your ranch, the little car that we rode around in when I was down there, I think it ought to be bulletproof. I think it ought to be done very quietly. There's a concern that is out, I think, in Cincinnati where we have our cars bulletproof. I think we've got four. We've got one on the West Coast, one in New York and one here. And I think it can be done quietly without any publicity being given to it or any pictures being taken of it if it's handled properly. But I think you ought to have, because on that ranch, it's perfectly easy for somebody to get onto the ranch. I think those entrances all ought to be guarded, don't you? Well, I think follow me. I think follow me. I think you've got to recognize, you've got to really almost be in the capacity of a so-called prisoner. Because without that security, anything can be done. We've got a lot of letters and phone calls over the last three or four or five days. We've got one about this parade the other day that they were going to try to kill you there. And I talked with the attorney general about it. I was very much opposed to that marching from the White House. Well, each secretary should go not to which family that's what Bobby told me. Well, I heard of it. I talked with the secret service and they were very much opposed to it. I was very much opposed to it because it was even worse than down there at Dallas. You walked down the center of the street. And somebody on the sidewalk would dash out. I noticed even on Pennsylvania Avenue I viewed the procession coming back from the Capitol and while they had police sign along the curb stone looking at the crowd when the parade came along the police turned around and looked at the parade which was the worst thing to do. It also had a line of soldiers but they were looking at the parade. I'm going to take every precaution I can and I want to talk to you and I wish you'd put down your thoughts on that a little bit because you're more than the head of the federal bureau as far as I'm concerned. You're my brother and personal friend and you have been for 25, 30 years. I know you just want to have me at home. Absolutely not. So you just, I've got more confidence. Absolutely not. I've got more confidence in your judgment than anybody in town so you just put out some of the roadblocks and I will put out some of the things you think will happen and I won't involve you in court here get you in jurisdictional disputes or anything but I'd like to at least advocate them as my opinion. I'll be very glad to indeed. I certainly appreciate your confidence. Thank you. Bye.


Yankees on Yes. Welcome to Opening Day continues now with one reporter talking to another. Here's Meredith Morakovits with her friend Susan Waldman. Yes is 20 years old this year. And as everyone knows, I'm the Clubhouse reporter currently, but you were the first Clubhouse reporter for Yes. There has only been a total of three of us over the 20 years. And I have to ask you how different was it when you first started?  We were the only people. So I would walk in and I'd be able to do whatever I wanted. And we had in the old stadium, the greatest setup, there was a room to the side right next to the Clubhouse that it had a big mural along the back wall. And Fred Hickman, who was the first guy who was pre and post on the network, he was in Stanford. And I would just bring people in and we would talk and it was great. There was no ESPN 2, 3, 4, 5, no CNN, no anything else, it was just us.  And it was so personal. Once Andy Pettit came in, he had just pitched a great game and he had his little boys and they're all grown men with their own kids now. And one was on one knee and one was on another knee and we were all talking for a while. And it was just great. And then there was the night that Jason Giobbi was the star of the game. And all of a sudden in the middle of the interview, we had to stop because Mr. Steinbrenner thought that it would be bad to show his tattoos on his arm because he didn't want children watching it.  And he's putting on a T-shirt and we went back to it. And I think my favorite one was when Roger Clemens got his 300th. The whole family was there. And I said, can we get a phone and have it set up? And cause his mom, Mama Bess, who was one of the great women of all time, she couldn't travel, she was very sick. And we had a phone on the table and Roger came in with Deb and the kids who were all little boys and all of a sudden the phone rang. And there was Mama Bess and she was crying and Roger was crying and I was crying. It was so personal and so great. Do you remember the first day when Yes came on the air, your first interview? Because speaking to people that had been there from the beginning, they said they didn't know if this network was gonna last a day, a week, a month, a year, it was really up in the air at first. Do you know who my first interview was? Who? It was Joe Torrey and it's in the Hall of Fame. Because that picture of me and Joe Torrey with the Yes microphone and it was the first one. When you walk into the women in baseball room in Cooperstown, there's this giant mural of all these women and then the lower left-hand corner is Joe and me. Yes, so yes I do remember and I still have that jacket. It's the blue leather jacket that I wear all the time. It's a great little jacket.