Today, the 24th of October, is an anniversary of an important historical event. It's an event known as Black Thursday, which was the event that sparked off the stock exchange collapse that sparked off events which led, eventually, to the Great Depression of the 1930s. And it's perhaps relevant to raise this point, because the IMF, for example, describes the present situation, it compares the present situation precisely to the Great Depression of the 1930s. And of course, at moments like this, moments of fundamental change, because that's what we're living in, a transcendental moment, I would say, in world history. And at moments like this, there's always a tendency to find some kind of point of reference, some kind of precedent or historical analogy, a little bit when you're in the sea and you're out of your depth, you're just trying to find some place to put your foot on solid ground. It's a kind of psychological necessity, I think, a kind of crutch, a psychological crutch to support us at the moment of extreme perplexity, where we don't know, really speaking, how to explain what's happening. But the fact of the matter is that one would look in vain, let's spell it out in a simple language, one would look in vain for any real historical piece of the present situation, because it doesn't exist. In reality, the situation that we're living through is quite unique in history. Let's begin, if you like, with what is self-evident, where everybody agrees with, everybody agrees that we're living through the deepest economic and social crisis in history. The Bank of England said that it was the deepest crisis in 300 years, and I think even that doesn't give, doesn't do full justice to the situation. And of course, what is striking in this situation is the complete perplexity of the strategists of capital, the complete inability of politicians and economists in particular to make any sense of the present situation. And of course, because of the inability to understand the nature of capitalist crisis, that's what it boils down to, they're also unable to provide any solutions or even put forward any coherent perspective. I see that the IF is predicting that the global economy this year, the last time I saw the prediction, will shrink by 3%. That's quite a serious decline by the way. But you see these economic, for all of these economic forecasts, which I have read by the World Bank and the IMF, are in fact entirely worthless. Apart from anything else, they are dependent on the evolution of the coronavirus, on the health front, which nobody can predict. And in point of fact, in order to fight anybody, if you're looking for a point of reference, I see that it's on the agenda, I happen to catch part of a very interesting discussion, you'd have to go back to the 14th century to the Black Death, which wiped out half the population of Europe. And incidentally, at that time, I think the point was made in the discussion, but I'll just repeat it here, you weren't all present at that discussion. At that time, many people thought that it was the end of the world had arrived. In reality, you could understand this feeling among people, perhaps even today, people have got that feeling that this is the end, that the end of the world has arrived. But in reality, you see, what was the case then? It was not the end of the world as such, but it was, if you like, the announcement, if you like, the declaration, that a definite socio-economic system called feudalism, that was certainly torturing towards its final crisis and collapse and death, if you like, and that actually occurred partly as a result of the fact, it wasn't the fundamental thing, but partly it certainly accelerated this process. In that sense, I suppose you could speak of an historical analogy, one historical analogy, which might be applicable to the present crisis to a certain extent, although not entirely, because frankly, all historical analogies, although they might be helpful, all analogies are frankly lame. Now, if you look at the, I find them quite amusing, if you look at the pages of the so-called serious bourgeois, economic, financial press, according to the bourgeois economists, everything's the fault of this damned coronavirus. It seems, according to these guys, that if it wasn't for that, everything, everything up to that point, they say was going fine. Everything was rosey in the gun. Now, you see, that's just not the case. And let's spell it out again in, in, in, in model syllabic expressions. Read my lips. Coronavirus is not the cause of the present crisis. Okay, let's establish that. The present crisis, the present economic world crisis began before the coronavirus was ever heard of last year, actually. The world economy was already slowing down sharply in China, for example, slowing down sharply. And the world economy at that time was already moving in the direction of a sharp contraction of a recession, as they call it. What is certainly true, and that's undeniable, it's self-evident, that the advent of the pandemic has certainly served to exacerbate the crisis. That's true. And accelerate all the processes. That's the most important point. And exacerbate all the contradictions in society and deepen the, the crisis to an incredible extent. I don't think there's any need here to, to, to dwell on, on the frightful human cost of the pandemic. I think that's fairly obvious. I won't give too many figures. I've got plenty of figures here. I'll try to limit it because it becomes a bit much. But according to the official figures, which are undoubtedly an underestimate, there are already at least 40 million cases, probably more than the last figure I saw. At least 40 million cases. And over a million people, at least, again, the figures are an underestimate, at least over a million people have already lost their lives. And tens of millions more, more of, of innocent men, women and children will lose their, their lives. Not just from the killer virus, by the way, but from other causes, from other diseases, and particularly from starvation. And that is, that's a question which has not been sufficiently emphasized. Yes, oh yes, there'll be many more deaths to come. You can be sure of it. You know, Lenin once said something which is undoubtedly true. He said the following, capitalism is horror without end. Oh yes. Oh yes, friends and comrades. Capitalism is horror without end. Always was. From the day it was born. And now those horrors have been multiplied a thousandfold by the present crisis. And by the way, the argument was they now tried to put forward. If it wasn't so serious, it would be comical that we're all in the same boat. You heard that one? We must all unite. Boris Johnson tells us, and Mr. Trump, oh I don't know about Trump, he's busy dividing the American nation. I'd better not say too much about that. But certainly, oh yes, we must unite in the battle, the war against the virus. Because we're all in the same boat. Are we? Are we really? The virus we are told that does not discriminate? Well, yes my friends, it certainly does discriminate. The figures show that perfectly clearly. The figures show quite clearly that the most vulnerable layers of society, the ones most affected in the most tragic and horrible way by the pandemic are not the rich and privileged who are protected. Well protected if it comes to that. But precisely the poor people, the poorest layers of society, they are the main victims. And therefore, let's spell it out. Let's call us be a dishevel. This pandemic is therefore a class question. A question of rich and poor. Oh yes, yes. And all the statistics and figures, horrific as they are, just serve to underline this fact. I hope perhaps to quote, if I've got time to quote, one or two of the most striking illustrations of this. Coronavirus has cruelly exposed the principal fault lines running through society. Because by the way, it's not race, although race can play a role because, because black and Asian people are poor. That's the reason, that's the reason that they're most exposed to this illness. The recent studies in Britain have appointed in that direction. It's not race. It's a class question. The main fault lines in society is not race as a matter of fact. It's not a question of identity politics. This miserable or counter revolutionary theory, by the way, entirely retrograde concept which serves to divide the working class. The main fault line, the only real fault line in society is the fault line between rich and poor. Be sure of it. And that's the argument that we must hammer home continually. The fault line between rich and poor, between haves and haves lot, haves not. Of course, things are not too bad. Things are rather rosy in the garden. If you happen to be the president of the United States, for example, Donald Trump, who now informs us that there's no need to worry about the virus. There is nothing. I mean, look at me. Yes, look at him. This multi-billionaire, this parasitic bastard in the White House. Yes, you wouldn't have much cause for trouble if you received the immediate attention of 20 different doctors and specialists that was rushed by helicopter to a specialist military hospital and pumped through the latest drugs, which despite what he says are not available to anybody because they're experimental, but they are available to Donald J. Trump, of course. So of course he wouldn't worry. Now he says, because this is an election campaign, which I won't say too much about, but I can't resist this observation. Now he promises that the new wonder drug, whatever that might be, is going to be given if he wins the presidency. It's going to be given out free to everybody. Now this is a strange promise to make for a man who's radically opposed to free medicine for poor people and to medicare and regard social medicine as communism, neither more nor less. In other words, it's a blatant lie like all the rest of Trump's rhetoric.  It's an insult to millions of people in the country, where a quarter of a million men, women and children have already died under the most appalling conditions, which we didn't have the benefit of experimental drugs and helicopters that would rush them to expensive hospitals. Many of them couldn't afford any hospital and died like dogs under miserable conditions. That's the fact of the matter. No, no, what the coronavirus has done has exposed completely the absolute inability of the capitalist market economy to guarantee even the most elementary of human rights, which is what? Not the right to vote. It's not even the right to work or have a house. It is the right to life. And that's what's coming in. That's what's being called into question by this terrible system. Incidentally, there's an old proverb, you know, you must know this, that it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good in this pandemic. I will show later on if I have time, I'll go to a few figures, which are very instructive. But this pandemic has been of colossal benefit to private medicine to the big drug companies who corner the market for, now they corner the market for the search for a vaccine. One of these companies I know, or Moderna, I think it's called, has received no less than $2.48 billion of committed taxpayers' money. For what? Well, you might well ask what they do with this money. There's no sign of any vaccine. That's for sure. And if when there is, quite eventually they will discover something, no doubt. But when it does come in, you can be sure it will be so expensive and profitable. It's the question of profit is the main thing, of course, that it will be beyond the reach of many poor people and many poor countries if it comes in, the rich countries are already cornering the market. In other words, this criminal system, that's what it is. This barbaric and cruel and criminal system puts the protection of profits of the few and puts the ability to live out of the reach of millions of people who are living in poverty. That's a simple fact. Yes, all the calculations exposes a system that protects the big monopolies and bankers and the profits of pharmaceutical corporations and favours the rich and privileged, like Donald J. Trump, while artificially restricting production and leaving the world's most of the world's population waiting longer for a necessary vaccine. And now, of course, you've got the second wave. All the brutal measures which they inflicted, the lockdowns and so on, have caused misery for countless millions of people. They've served for nothing. Now you have the second wave. Countries all over Europe, for example, are imposing quite painful restrictions on public life and bringing another public health emergency closer, just as winter approaches. Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic, they've all introduced the new restrictions, of course, including severe restrictions of democracy. And we have to watch out for that. We have to be careful that the ruling class, let's be clear about it, is undoubtedly using the excuse of the coronavirus to encroach upon democracies and restricts the rights of the working class, which we will, of course, resist by every means at all disposal. And of course, they have the brazen in insolence to blame all this on the people, on the population, on the alleged irresponsibility of the population when the population's received continual mixed messages telling them all kinds of different things. They don't know whether they're coming or going. And the fact of the matter is it's not the population, it's not the students and so on, is that they're trying to blame. The virus cases started to soar again after governments eased lockdowns in order to boost profits. That's the fact of the matter. And it's profit that comes first. If it's a question of people's lives and health against the interests of profit, well, of course, lives and health of the workers come a very poor second. And what's true of Britain and America, France, Germany and so on is a thousand times more true of the poor countries. They don't know what to call them. They say developing countries. I don't like that because it's it prettifies the real pathetic plight of these people. I don't like third world either, but anywhere they were, I can't find an adequate phrase. So we said the poor exploited backward countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America, where the virus is spreading rapidly on these countries are caught in a deadly downward spiral. Iraq is a case in point I noted the other day, but India, for example, that's colossal. I think the number of people infected now in India is approaching 8 million. I think it's the second after the United States now, if my memory serves me correctly. And by the way, to talk and just think about it, to talk about social distancing and regular hand washing and hygiene and the slums of Calcutta and Lagos is just a cruel joke. In places, I know these places. I've been there, I've seen them. Where millions of people are crowded together in sanitary slums in human conditions or else living on the streets. In India, since we're talking about India, the total workforce, I think, is 471 million. And out of that populace, not only 19% are covered by social security of any sort. Two thirds have got no formal employment contract. And at least 100 million are migrant workers, many of whom live on the streets. And the solution of Nairn and Mori, this monstrous swine, this reactionary bastard, to solve the problem of the disease, was to drive them off the streets, driving millions of poor people off the streets of Delhi, Mumbai, and so on, and into the countryside, sending them back home to their villages, which, of course, spread the pandemic like, well, that's the reason why it's grown in India. It was entirely predictable and inevitable. They spread the pandemic to villages and provinces who lack the most elementary health provisions, good heavens above, even regions which were previously unaffected by the virus, such as Kerala, which was relatively advanced by Indian standards, are now affected. And the human consequences, of course, are truly frightful, not only because of the disease, I insist. You see, for people, just imagine a poor person, a casual laborer or whatever, somebody that's a street vendor or whatever, it's scraping a few rupees in order to live, and living has been deprived. You'd be taken away from him without any compensation whatsoever. The choice he's got is either or she has got, because many are women. In fact, this disease hits the women harder than the men. There's a choice between risking your life by going to work, trying to find some kind of a living on the streets, or dying of starvation, slow death by starvation. That's the choice. That's the choice that people actually face in the year of our Lord 2020. Oh, yes. Millions of people are faced with death by disease or death by starvation. You don't believe me? Well, let's quote too many things. But the executive director of the World Food Program, David Bees, he warned that we run the risk, I quote, of a famine of biblical proportions. If you've read the Bible, you know what he's talking about. And what he's talking about is the number of people facing starvation in our world is more than doubled in the last few months. That's a fact. The World Food Program is increasing its food assistance to an unprecedented 138 million people who face desperate levels of hunger, face starvation in other words. Now, look, they talk about the Holocaust, you know, the murder of many of those who killed by starvation in the concentration camps or by the gas chambers in the monstrous regime of the Nazis. Yeah, but is this not a Holocaust also that the world is facing right now? A silent Holocaust, which threatens millions of people with death, and nothing is done to prevent it. On the contrary, they say they provide aid to these countries, but you analyze the figures, you'll find I've got them here somewhere. You will find that a large part of this so-called it goes back to the advanced capitalist countries in repayment of interest on debts and the debts of these poor countries, of course, are increasing exponentially. And therefore, they've been continually bled to death. I've got the figures you saw, and I might quote them. The economic consequences of this pandemic, in other words, the economic consequences are catastrophic. All countries are affected from the riches to the poorest. Between April and June of this year, the equivalent of 400 million full-time jobs were lost across the world. And many of these jobs, by the way, despite what they say, will not be recovered. So you're facing levels of unemployment the world has never seen before, with all the social tensions and problems that that grew. By the way, 400,000 compared to 25 million during the 208 financial crisis. So that's a vast increase. There's a huge collapse in living standards. Do I need to point that out? Income earned by workers globally fell 10% in the first nine months of this year, equivalent to the loss of over 3.5 trillion US dollars. So there's a savage wage cut. And I've got many other figures, which I won't quote. But you see, all of this, I think Sam hinted at this in his opening remark, this is creating an explosive situation everywhere without exception. Every single country in the world is faced with this collapse. And it's a huge polarization. That's the main thing to understand. This crisis is creating an unprecedented polarization of society between rich and poor. And the combustible period will not go away anytime soon. With this crisis, cause becomes effect and effect becomes cause in a kind of infernal downward spiral. That's what we're in present time. And there's no way out of this on a capitalist basis. I mean, look, look at it. Workers who don't work and there's many unemployed now have less to spend. Therefore, demand is reduced. If demand is reduced, capitalists can't sell their goods, profits fall, leading to further factory closures, unemployment and further falling revenues. In other words, as I say, a vicious circle, a downward spiral, which we're in. And therefore, if you read the financial press, I occasionally look at it. The pages of the financial times and other journals, they reflect a mood of black pessimism and even panic on the part of the ruling class who got no solution to this. I mean, last time around China, for a whole period, helped them out with the crisis. Now China itself is in crisis. I see lately they're talking a bit of a pickup. I don't think that's going to last. For one simple reason, you see, at one time, for the last 30 years, the Chinese economy was the main motor force of the world economy. That's the fact of the matter. But you see China, I was quite amused about, 25 years ago, I think I had an argument with the Spanish company, it was arguing that China would solve the problems of the capitalist world economy. I said, no, you're mistaken. And I pointed out to him at the time, that the colossal investment taking place in China, of course, would provide, so we say, oxygen to the world capitalist economy for a period. That's a doubt. But that very investment, you see, creates new contradictions. It has led to China building up a formidable industrial base with huge productive capacity. Yes, and this productive capacity, obviously, as I pointed out to my friend 25 years ago, would produce a mass of cheap commodities, which would have to be sold on the market. Yes, but internal demand in China cannot absorb this colossal productive potential, which finds its way out of the world market. And therefore China, and that remains the case, must export to survive. But the success of Chinese exports has provoked naturally a furious response from its competitors, particularly the USA, but also in Europe. That's the reason for the developing trade war between the USA and China. By the way, it isn't just the Republicans and Trump that have this anti-China business, Biden and the Democrats have got exactly the same way. The trade war with China is rooted in what I've just described, which it's got an objective basis and it's going to continue. And more than anything else, by the way, I haven't got time to develop it. It's not the purpose of this discussion. What alarms the boost for the economy is more than anything else is this, this threat to globalization. That's what they call threat to the, to the rather fragile fabric, the edifice of world trade, which has been painfully put together, what the so-called globalization for the last few decades. And which is the secret of the development of capitalism in the last few years. In other words, what I'm describing to you is that this period of growth in capitalism has now reached its limits and has gone into reverse. Dialectically, we'll deal with dialectics a bit later, but everything turns into the opposite. And this is now the case. Is there a solution to this? Well, yes, of course. There's always a solution, isn't there? You listen to the Keynesians and the smart guys and the reformists above all. It's very simple. Spend money. The state must spend more money. Yeah, sure. As if money grew on trees, my friends. As far as I'm away, my knowledge of trees is not that great, but I don't think that there's such a thing as a money tree after all, you know. But what is true is that, yes, out of desperation, sheer desperation that they're doing this, in order to prevent an immediate collapse, an immediate great depression, governments have spent colossal eye-watering sums of money, public money, to underwrite much of the initial losses of the capitalist. This is not meant for poor workers and unemployed, which is the story which they're spreading. These guys are not, they're not an atom of sentimentality and humanity in them. No, no, it's nothing to that. This is a huge unprecedented subsidy to big business, like in the states, the so-called CARES Act, I think it's called CARES, C-R-E-R-E-S. The coronavirus relief package has only helped those giant 133 large companies in the U.S.A. who've received, how much? Five billion, I think, yeah, eye-watering, isn't it? Five billion dollars from the Treasury Department and in Britain the same, oh yes.  Good God, they've just refused to give free school to kids who are going hungry in Britain, just imagine. Young children going hungry in Britain, which is a wealthy country, yeah, sure. Over the school holidays, they've refused out of their meanness and grasping and cruel character. Yes, and the same government that does that, doesn't show the same restraints when it comes to handing over billions to big business, that's right. Government stimulus packages in this country worth over 16 billion pounds, that's 20.6 billion dollars for our friends across the pond. I've gone directly into billionaire-owned companies, and of course these companies we know, I won't quote the figures, it's a fact. They do not pay tax, these parasites, these fat cats, they do not pay tax. That's why the state has got no money to pay for hospitals and schools and investigations into vaccines and things like this. Yeah, but that's the solution. You see, the state must spend money, yeah, but you see the trouble is the state, there's a fault in this Keynesian nonsense. 10 grand used to call it voodoo economics, I think that's a fairly accurate description. Yeah, it's like, can you not see the state difficulty here? Can you not see staring it in the face? I'll tell you what it is. The state has not got any money. The state has not got a bean, it hasn't got a scent. The only money you can get is from taxation, except the moment it's in free-for. Yeah, they get the money, how? By borrowing it, yeah, they borrow it, okay, but by borrowing it they're accumulating mountains of debt. The problem is, you see a little detail, the Keynesians and informants have forgotten about. Sooner or later, debts must be repaid and therefore that's a recipe for terrible oppression in the next period. There's no way out of this and everywhere you see the same thing. Incidentally, there's been a huge increase in the wealth of the wealthiest during the pandemic as they benefited the pandemic. That's a fact. Look, I quote one expert who should know about this, because she's a billionaire, Melinda Gates. I quote, this pandemic has magnified every existing inequality in our society. Yes, here, here, here, so say all of us. So say all of us. The superids have gained tremendously, I think, between, I've got the figures here somewhere. Yes, between April and July, billionaires grew their wealth by 27% from eight trillion. Yeah, a trillion is a million million, if you didn't know. Eight trillion dollars since the beginning of April, that's in the USA, I believe. You can quote similar figures at the same time, poverty is extreme poverty is increasing everywhere. And here's a quote from Karl Marx, which you should take note of a famous quote from Capital. I quote, accumulation of wealth at one pole. And at the same time, accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole. Is that not an accurate description of the presence of division? It is. These lines could have been written yesterday, my friends. And that shows precisely the brilliant nature of Marxism as a theory and as an explanation. And just compare that clarity, that wonderful profound clarity to the complete and absolutely confusion, the miserable confusion that the reformists, both by, so to say, both the right and the left varieties. What's the difference between them? Well, there's not a lot to be honest with you. The right reformists, of course, are direct, conscious agents of capitalism, agents from the bankers and capitalists infiltrated. They had the real interests in the Labour Party and the trade unions and so on. They consciously represent the interests of big business and the present system.  You see, what's the point? People in the past could see that there's some sense in reformism in Britain, which gave the national health, which is important, reform, of course, in the past. Yes, that's true. Reformism with reforms, that makes sense. Reformism without reforms, like the Blair crowd, you know, they actually did more damage to the national health than anybody else, even than any Tory government. That's a fact, which we should remind them of. These right-wing infiltrators, these Trojan horse in the Labour Party, they enthusiastically carry out the cuts, they do the dirty work. Of course, this serves to alienate the people from the Labour Party, but she has them and from them, even from politics in general, even in the states, you can see that, even in the present election, that's the paradox. That's why some workers, quite a few workers actually, this is, actually will vote for Trump because he seems somehow, in a peculiar way, because of his rhetoric and his demagoguery and so on, he seems somehow to represent something different to the Republicans and Democrats of the past, which they're sick and tired of. And they don't like Biden, even people that vote for Biden don't like him, but I think Tom will do that, so I won't enter into that. Yeah, but there is something about Trump, isn't there? You will excuse me for using an undiplomatic language, which is not fashionable of these days, of political correctness, but then I never have been politically correct, I don't suppose I ever will be. So there we are, you have to bear with it. He's got a pair of balls. He's got guts. Oh yes, give the man his due. Trump comes out like a fighter in the bowl out of his corner fighting. What a contrast with Biden, by the way, and with the weaklings, so the left is weak, they're so weak. The right are determined, bold, arrogant, insolent, they're always on the attack all the time. And the left, the left. Yeah, people talk to me about the left, I say what left? Where's the left for goodness sake? The left reformists, they show themselves to be completely hopeless, weak, vacillating. I would go so far as to say cowardly in many respects, timid, let's use a kinder word, timid then shall we say, timid. That's not an accident, nor is it a personal criticism, not a psychological question, it's a class question, it's a political question. The right wing and the right wing reformists, they're firm and they're bold because they know what, we know what they stand for.  The lefts, what do they stand for? Nobody knows. Nobody, they make nice speeches, nice noises, but the fact of the matter is, if you analyze these speeches, there's no real mention of socialism, no real plan to change society, no, no, no. They also, like the right wing, do not believe, they don't believe in the work, they have no confidence, no faith in the working class, they never talk about the working class, rather talk about identity politics and rubbish like that, okay. They have no confidence in the working class, no confidence in socialism, they've abandoned socialism years ago, that's the truth. They don't even talk about socialism as people did in the past, even before the world, the lefts did talk about socialism at least, but not anymore, they're not there. And Jeremy Corbyn, what can I say? I have some respect for the man after all, I mean fair play, he showed a certain amount of courage in standing up to the right wing for some time, but even he frankly has been a big let down, hasn't he? A big let down. The fact of the matter, you threw in the towel and that's such bad consequences. And now what does he talk to him? And so on and so on, I know John McDowell quite well. What are they talking about? Unity, we need unity with whom, I add, and even John said the other day, unity with the parliamentary data party, good God. These gangsters in the parliamentary data party, what's the matter? They spit in our face, now all we need to wipe it off and smile and say, yes, let's have unity, what are you talking about? Don't you understand these people are the enemy? And the only way to deal with them would have been a desolation, that's the argument, which they could have done and they didn't do. What's the explanation? I really groaned the other day when I saw a speech by Jeremy, by Jeremy Corbyn, yes. He says the reason we lost, he gave several reasons, was that the press was against us. Good heavens above, when is the press never, when is the press not being against us? And well, when were they ever before us? This is the capitalist press. Freedom of the press is a nonsense. Freedom of the press, when it's controlled by a handful of millionaires, always anti-labour, anti-working class, anti-trailion, always, always will be. Does that mean to say that we necessarily will be defeated? I tell you not and I'll tell you why I say that. Let's go back to Donald Trump.  But you've got to give him his credit. The mass media in the States were against Donald Trump. Trump, do you know that? I think he only had one national paper that supported it. They're all quite efficiently opposed to him because he represented the danger. He's a maverick. That's why they don't want him. They prefer Biden as a matter of fact, whether they get Biden, I don't know. They might, I suppose. But Trump stood up to the mass media. He stood up to them. You know, you've seen him on TV. Yeah, this is fake news. He attacked them, attacked CNN and so on. Now, if Jeremy Corbyn had showed half the gumption, one tenth of the gumption of Donald Trump in standing up to the press, in standing up to this vicious lie about anti-Semitism. I think we've been in a different position now, but I've said enough about that. All I will say is this, none of the present leaders of the Labour movement in Britain and internationally have the slightest understanding of the real seriousness or the real cause of the present crisis, which is a crisis of the capitalist system, exacerbated by the virus. Yeah, but that's not the cause. And the only way that we can defeat the virus and defeat or solve our problems is by waging war against this system, this unjust, this vicious, this corrupt, this vile system, this horror without end that Lenin referred to. And that means a serious struggle. Yes, but who's proposing a serious struggle? Of all the leaders. Where's their proposal? You know. And the fact of the matter is, first of all, in order to overthrow the system, to combat it successfully, you need to understand how it works. And the only way that you can arrive at such a scientific understanding is through a knowledge of Marxism, of dialectics in particular. Yes, only a knowledge of dialectics can help us to understand the present situation and understand that this is what they don't understand. Neither the ruling class nor the Labour leaders understand. Sooner or later, my friends, everything turns into its opposite. And that's just what's occurring right now. Sudden and sharp changes are implicit in the situation, and they are taking place. Changes, by the way, ultimately in the consciousness of the working class, which doesn't proceed in a straight line, nor is it an immediate thing, but it is taking place. You better believe it. Where do you see this? Some people think, by the way, you can only have revolutions in backward countries, in poor countries, and so not so, not so. Just look at the United States. I'm not going to say much about that. I'll leave that to my friend and comrade Tom Trotty. But just look at this marvellous insurrectionary movement in the States that took place a few months ago. That was a revolutionary development, if you like, and it's not finished by any manner, and not just in the States. Everywhere you look, look at Nigeria at the present time, where there's a revolutionary development movement taking place. Everywhere there's a movement, beneath the surface of apparent calm, everywhere you look, there's a mood of, there's a colossal building up of seething anger, rage, discontent, frustration, above all frustration, I would say, which must sooner or later find a way out, the same as the subterranean molten rock and so on, eventually finds a way in an explosive way of earthquakes and volcanic explosions. This expresses itself, of course, in different ways, in different countries and so on, but nevertheless, it's present in all countries, and this will take place. And therefore, what I would say is this, to sum up. The present leaders of the labour, the so-called leaders of the labour movement, both in Britain and everywhere, everywhere else, so not the slightest glimmering of understandings of the present situation, or what other crisis that is being prepared. They're hopelessly out of their breath, and they actually present an obstacle in the path of the working class. Yeah, but it's sooner or later this situation will change, the workers are not going to accept this. It's true at the present time there can be illusions that we're going to go, oh, I won't last forever, and then we'll go back to normal. Well, we will never go back to normal, actually, or rather, let me rephrase that. Sooner or later, the capitalist system always, by the way, the capitalist system always finds its way out, even the deepest crisis, that's not saying that the whole thing will collapse and you have a revolution automatically. The revolution requires the conscious movement of the working class, let's be clear about it. Okay, yes, but even when they find their way out of the crisis, you will not return to normality, or rather, there'll be a new normality based on years of vicious cuts, austerities, collapsing living standards, inequality, and further polarization of society, which eventually, ultimately, must place revolutionary movements on the order of the day. And therefore, I say that far from being pessimistic about the present situation, far from being gloomy and downcast on the contrary, we're completely optimistic about the future. Because because we understand the dialectical process, we understand the processes, the subterranean processes, which are taking place. And we understand also that the tide is beginning or ready to turn in our favor. It will turn in our favor. And once there's a movement of the working class, I think that all of these leaders and so they're going to be emptied out. Either they will begin to reflect the mood of anger that exists at which they don't at the moment, either they'll begin to reflect that or else they will be removed. They'll be kicked out and replaced by other people who will, more militant people. And in with that perspective, what is fundamental for us is to build the forces of Marxism and to build them, now that's the purpose of this school. It's not just to have a pleasant and educational few hours together. I hope it's, I hope it is that. Yes. But that's not the purpose of it, is to arm the cadres. We are soldiers in a revolutionary army, in a revolutionary international. And it, our main weapon at this stage is the weapon of ideas. Yes, we are, the IMT is small in numbers. That's true that we're still weaker than what we should be or would like to be. We are growing however and going quite rapidly at the present time and that will continue. Yes, but we are powerful and strong in one other respect. We have something with other other organizations much bigger than us. Do not have a very powerful weapon, a very powerful tool to change society and that is the marvelously profound ideas of Marxism. That's our main weapon at this particular stage and therefore it is the deepening of our understanding, the developing of the cadres that will ultimately guarantee our success. And therefore I say to you that I hope that you'll go away from this school, enthused, yes, and also inspired by a firm conviction that these are the ideas, these are the ideas and that this is the organization that shows you the way forward and we need your help. My friend, if you're not a member already, we need your help. We need you, yes, but I'll tell you something else, you need us because there's an isolated individual you're not going to go very far in life. No, no, but if we combine our forces, build the organization of Marxism, then the future of Marxism and of the working class will be assured. So therefore I say, long live the international Marxist tendency, workers of the world unite. Wonderful. Thank you, Alan. I'm sure if we were all in a room together, we would hear thunderous applause for that fantastic introduction. And as Alan mentioned at the end, if you're not yet a member of the international Marxist tendency, after tomorrow's discussions and panels, we'll be having a special meeting for people who are interested in joining and getting involved to find out a bit more about what that is and how you can join the international Marxist tendency. So if you've been inspired by the talks this weekend and want to get involved in the struggle for socialism, I would definitely urge you to attend that. So next in this session, we're going to hear live from the belly of the beast in New York, the world centre of imperialism, the United States of America, about the situation there. And much like we discussed in the charters' session yesterday, we're often told similar things about the American working class that were told about the British working class, that they've been bought off, they've been bourgeois-ified, that they're racist, that they have no interest in class struggle and that a revolution can never happen in that country. Nothing of course could be further from the truth. Alan said several times that he wasn't going to speak about America, but if you are interested in reading what he has to say about America, I would urge you to get a copy of this fantastic book. I've got a slightly vintage copy here. It's since been redesigned with a very snazzy cover, but this is available from WorldWed Books, Marxism and the USA, and it really puts paid to the myth that the class struggle is alien to the history of the American workers and really shines a spotlight on the fantastic militant struggles of the past. But we're here today to speak about the present and the future of the United States, so I will bring in next Tom who's going to talk to us about the upcoming elections, the choices faced by American workers and the perspectives for class struggle and revolution in America today. Thanks. Thanks, Comrade Chair, and thanks, Comrade Alan, for your wonderful lead-off. Just to give comrades a sense of the context of which this election is taking place in the next 10 days, I thought it was interesting to go back to a New York Times editorial that was written on Sunday, January 12, 2020. So this was published before the COVID pandemic was expanding around the United States, and it was before the sharpest parts of the recent economic slump that hit the United States. And just to remind everyone, the New York Times is considered the paper of record in the United States. It's the voice of the East Coast part of the ruling class. Well, they wrote the following. They said, we Americans are locked in political combat and focused on President Trump, but there is a cancer gnawing at the nation that predates Trump and is larger than him. Suicides are at their highest rate since World War II. One child in seven is living with a parent suffering from substance abuse. A baby is born every 15 minutes after prenatal exposure to opioids. America is slipping as a great power. We have deep structural problems that have been a half century in the making under both political parties and that are often transmitted from generation to generation. Only in America has life expectancy now fallen three years in a row for the first time in a century because of, quote, deaths of despair. That was the picture that the ruling class, at least a section of the ruling class, had of the United States of American capitalism. Now, they don't, they say structural problems. They don't name capitalism, but in a certain sense it's an understanding even by them that their own system is in decline. Their own system is deteriorating in abject decay. Now, if we fast forward to today after the COVID-19 pandemic is expanding, as of today in fact, more than 8.5 million Americans either have or have had COVID-19. Just yesterday we hit a one day record of more than 82,000 people, new people getting COVID-19 and more than 224,000 people have died in the United States from COVID-19 and on top of that we have the economic catastrophe that's facing the American working class. Eight million more Americans have now gone below the poverty line just since this past May. You have more than 20 million people unemployed and everywhere where people do have jobs they're facing cuts in hours and sometimes just outright cuts in their wages. Now, in this reelection campaign, Donald Trump is running for reelection, but we should remind everybody that in all of his main campaign promises that he made in 2016, none of them has he kept, none of them. For example, one of the things he said in 2016 was he's going to rebuild America, right? And the fact there's, has been no major public works since in the four years he's been in office. He also said he was going to repeat, repeal Obamacare, the healthcare system, and he was going to replace it with something better and cheaper. Not only has he failed to replace Obamacare, he doesn't even have a plan, he hasn't even presented an actual plan of what his better and cheaper healthcare plan was going to be. Donald Trump also promised that there was going to be expansion of manufacturing and industrial jobs and even expansion of coal mining, like there was going to be more people employed as coal miners in the United States. In fact, today, there are less coal miners employed in the United States than when he was elected. And if you look at manufacturing as a share of the American GDP, it's the lowest now that it's been in 73 years. Donald Trump also promised that he was going to get 4%, 5%, 6% GDP growth every year. Now, in the first three years of the Trump administration, that has not come true at all. It was less than 3% GDP growth. And then, of course, this year, we've seen a sharp slump where it's something like a 30% drop in GDP. So Trump has betrayed all of his promises and he has not expanded his base. He's actually lost some of his base. But as Alan correctly says, because of a lack of an alternative, because of the fact that he does pose demagogically as a challenge to the establishment, he's been able to hold on to the vast majority of the people who supported him. So that's one of the elements of this upcoming election. But this election raises a whole number of questions that are being discussed in the United States and that are being discussed elsewhere. And I just want to outline some of these questions that I'm going to tackle. First of all, what should socialists do in the election? Is voting for an independent left candidate? Is that a spoiler for Biden? Is that helping to elect Trump? If Biden gets elected, will that really defeat Trump and Trumpism? What will the Democrats do in office? Is there really a more progressive wing of the capitalist class? Will Trump try to stay in office if he loses the election? And what is the way forward to build a mass working class socialist party in the United States? So let's take up that first question. What should socialists do in this election? Is voting for a left candidate a spoiler for Biden? Well, the first thing I'd have to say is there's nothing to spoil. Stopping Biden from being the president is not stopping anything good from happening from the working class. And I'll deal with that later. But we do have a phenomena where many people on the left in the United States, including Bernie Sanders, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, many other people who claim to be socialists, even these ultra left sectarians are all saying that we have to vote for Joe Biden to stop Donald Trump. Some of them support Biden everywhere. Some of them say that we have to vote for Biden in what they call the swing states, the states that could go either for Biden or Trump. Now, I want us to be very clear about this. We oppose Donald Trump and we oppose his policies. But just as I was reading from the New York Times, most of the horrible things that the American working class is having to deal with, most of these things do not come from Donald Trump and do not come from his policies. They're systemic problems caused by this systemic crisis of capitalism. These are problems that they've dealt with under the Democrats and they've dealt with under Trump and they will deal with these problems again under a future Biden administration because the problem is the system. Ultimately, when the Titanic hit the iceberg and the ship was sinking, the issue was not to find a new captain for the ship. The issue was get off the sinking ship and the working class has to get off the sinking ship of American capitalism. That's what the left should really be talking about in this election. Now, if the polls are correct, right, if they're at least somewhat connected with reality, it looks like and if they don't change much in the next 10 days, it looks like Donald Trump will lose the election.  That's not what's going to happen. In fact, if Trump loses, the main reason he loses is because a lot of people are not happy with what's going on. They feel he didn't do what he said he was going to do and they want to throw him out. They want to throw the bum out. Most of the people, by the way, a lot of the people who are voting for Joe Biden, particularly among young people, are not voting for Biden. They're voting against Trump. Now, this brings up the question, why did Trump win in 2016? Why did that happen? And there's two main reasons that Trump won in 2016. First of all, the Democrats lost votes. They lost votes even though there was a growth in the population of the United States. Why did they lose votes? They lost votes because they were unpopular, because they were presiding over a declining American capitalism. They were not delivering the goods for the working class. Just to give you an example, if you look at what Clinton got in 2016, compared with what Obama got in 2012, as a whole, the Democrats lost 63,000 votes. But that's because the Democrats had already lost a lot of votes from what they had gained in 2008, because Clinton lost, got 3.4 million less votes in 2016 than the Democrats Obama had got in 2008. So that's a huge loss in votes. But then on top of that, we have to understand also another reason why Clinton lost was not because she got less votes than Donald Trump, but because of the electoral college. One of the basic principles of democracy is one person, one vote. But one person, one vote, is if that's the definition of democracy, there is no democracy in the United States. In the United States, you don't have democracy, you have the electoral college. The electoral college, along with the United States Senate, was set up as an institution that basically sets up a situation of bias against the working class, and it delutes the vote of the working class. It expands votes for states which have high populations that live in rural areas. For example, if you look at the United States as a whole, 25% of the population lives in rural areas. However, there are 50 states in the United States, and 13 of those 50 states, which is 26% of the states, have populations in those states that are 49% rural or more. To give you a concrete example, if you take a look at California, the state of California, overall 8% of that population lives in rural areas, or New York state as a whole, only 14% of the population lives in rural areas. But you take a look at a state like Wyoming, 66% of the population lives in rural areas. In other words, the fix is in. It's not one person, one vote, it's an anti-democratic system designed to be biased against the voting power of the working class. I can break it down in terms of electoral votes as well. Wyoming gets one electoral vote at one electoral college vote per every 184,000 people. But you take a state like New York, you get one electoral college vote per 669,000 people, and California gets one electoral college vote per 723,000 people. Clinton, in the last election, she got 66 million votes. Trump got almost 63 million votes, which is three million votes less than he, and yet he ends up becoming the president. This should explain that it was not the Russians that put Trump into power, it was the U.S. Constitution, because as far as I know, the Russians did not write the Constitution, which was written in 1787. Now, another issue that a lot of these left people bring up is that we can't spoil the election for Biden. We can't vote for these spoiler parties. The reason Clinton lost last time was because of the Green Party. That's absolutely also ridiculous. If you take a look at Pennsylvania, for example, take a look at the votes for the Democrats in Pennsylvania in 2008, and take a look at the votes for Clinton in Pennsylvania in 2016, between those eight years, even though there was a growth in population, the Democrats lost 300,000 votes. 300,000 votes. Now, what did the Green Party get in those elections? Well, they ran Ralph Nader in 2008. He got 41,500 votes, and then they ran Jill Stein in 2016, and she got almost 50,000 votes. She got 49,941 votes. So, a difference of 500 votes, that does not make up the 300,000 votes lost by the Democrats. Thanks, Kamin. So, the main thing that the left needs to do is to not create illusions in Biden and the Democrats that we would call for people in the election and voting is to vote for a protest candidate, like there's this small, tiny socialist people like Howie Hawkins are running as a socialist party and Green Party candidate, and another candidate running on the peace and freedom party in California, and we would say make a protest vote. But that's not the main thing. The main thing is to build an alternative, which I'll get to in a bit. Now, the second question let's take up is, if Biden gets elected, will that really defeat Trump or Trumpism? And what will the Democrats do in office? Is there really a more progressive wing of the capitalist class? Now, first of all, I think everybody should understand, Biden is supported by most of the American ruling class. There's probably a small wing, a real rabid wing that supports Trump, but the vast majority of the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, is supporting Biden. Not only within the Democratic Party, but there are people, they call them the anti-Trump Republicans. These are people who work for Ronald Reagan, for both George Bush's and for John McCain, and these people, because they're anti-Trump, they are supporting Joe Biden, these vicious right-wingers. That's the coalition that Joe Biden has to get into election. Now, what should we anticipate from a Biden administration? Well, as American capitalism is in decline, world capitalism is in decline, as Alan just explained, we can only imagine that austerity is coming. In fact, austerity is dictated not only by the decline in the system, but as Alan explained by the growing debt. Just the United States alone today, the national debt, the accumulated national debt is already bigger than the annual gross domestic product. That means if we took every penny from the economy this year and used it to pay off the national debt, we would still owe money. And this debt is growing as we speak. So a Biden Democrat, I'm sure, a Biden government I should say, is going to also try that theory of national unity, which of course, is a way to paralyze the working class. He's going to bring in these right-wing anti-Trump Republicans. He's going to bring in the regular Democrats. He might even bring in Bernie Sanders. He might even give Bernie Sanders a role in this, but that role will be to keep the working class passfied as they implement attacks on austerity. Now, you don't have to be a genius to know what the Democrats are going to do if they get back into office, because we can look at history. Let's just look at some recent Democratic Party governments in the United States. And I'm going to refer to the times when the Democrats had control of the presidency and both houses of Congress. You had the Democrats from 1977 to 1980 under Jimmy Carter. What did they do when they were in office? They started the austerity, they started the military buildup, and they started the deregulation of the economy. All of this was continued under Reagan afterwards, but it was started under Carter. Or we can look at the Democrats in 1991 and 1992 under Clinton. The biggest thing that they did in that time was they passed the infamous crime bill. And this crime bill has gotten a lot of notoriety. In fact, Trump has used this against Biden in the debate, because it led to the lock up of millions of poor and working class people in this country and through them in jail in those hideous conditions. Or we can even look at the recent 2009 and 2010 years under Obama when the Democrats controlled Congress. What did they do? The one thing they did was they passed what was called Obamacare, which was a healthcare plan, which was not universal, and it was not free at the point of service. In fact, some of the people covered under Obamacare, you have deductibles of five to $10,000 per year, which means you have to pay five to $10,000 per year of healthcare costs before the insurance kicks in. That healthcare plan, by the way, was based on the model of the Massachusetts healthcare plan under Mitt Romney and Republican Massachusetts who later runs against Obama. And as a result, the disappointment under Obama led to the resurgence of the right wing. You saw the Tea Party, and then eventually also Donald Trump came into this. So what are we expecting after this election? Right now, there's a pause on evictions because of the COVID situation. But after the elections are over, there's going to be millions of people evicted from their homes. The economic problems will continue. The Biden administration might have a very short honeymoon, but I don't think it's going to be very long and people will turn against them. And the problem is, is those people on the left who told people to vote for Biden, when the population starts to swing against the Biden administration, they will not go to those people on the left who told them to vote for Biden, who told them that things will be better. Maybe it won't be socialism, but things will be better on the Biden. People will be turned off to that. I also will say it will not defeat Trumpism or Trump, because Trump could run again in four years. Trumpism will be alive and well. There'll be some form of reaction, whether it's through Trump or some other person, which will make a comeback to capitalize on the anger that's developing under the Democrats. Now, there's also a question, this question has been posed, will Trump try to stay in office if he loses the election? Is he going to organize a coup? I can tell you there's no evidence that the U.S. military is going to impose a coup and impose Donald Trump on the population. That I don't think will happen. What I will say though, is that if there's a close election, there's going to be a lot of reasons for instability to unfold in the United States. First of all, there are attempts by the Trump appointed head of the post office to slow the mail, which could cause some mail in ballots not to be counted. You also have shenanigans going on in Georgia, Ohio, Texas and Florida, to stop people from voting. In a close election, those things can matter. Of course, a lot of this is organized and arranged by William Barr, the attorney general, and who's trying to intimidate people at the polls, etc. Now, even though we don't support Biden and we don't support the Democrats, we would fight along with anybody who fights for their democratic rights. As Allen said, if anybody wants to fight against these impediments and these attacks on the voting population, we would obviously tackle that. We also have to understand if there's a close election, you could have institutions such as the unelected Supreme Court or state legislatures try to play games like Pennsylvania has a Republican state legislature. If it's a close election, they could give the electors to Donald Trump, even if Biden wins by a close amount. They could just say, well, it's fraud or whatever. That could happen. So there could be all kinds of disputes like this. Inevitably, if there is a dispute in the electoral college and no president is elected, the election goes to the House of Representatives. But in the House of Representatives, it's not who controls the House that matters. It's because the Democrats have a majority in the House, but it's who controls each state's delegation because each state will have one vote. In other words, it's worse than the electoral college. So if Donald Trump were to be installed in that manner, if they were to be an attack on the popular vote in that way, I predict there'll be millions of people on the street who will object to that overrule of the popular vote and you'll have tremendous instability in the United States in that period. Now, I know my time is running out, so I just want to get to the final question, which is, what is the way forward to build a mass working class socialist party in the United States? We are in a time where this kind of party is destined to unfold in the next period. First of all, in the United States, as Sam was saying, the citadel of world capitalism and world imperialism, four out of 10 people believe in some form of socialism. Now, what they define as socialism is another question, but four in 10 people in the United States believe and are open to some form of socialism. If you look at millennials, a third of the millennial population is open to communism and this in this country where we're faced with all this constant propaganda and onslaught. We saw, for example, this, as Alan was talking about, this great movement against the murder of George Floyd. You saw demonstrations in 2,000 cities and towns throughout the 50 states, District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. When the population burned down the police precinct in Minneapolis after the killing of George Floyd, a majority of Americans thought that was justified. What happened to Donald Trump? He went running into his little bunker in the White House hiding so that the crowd would not find him. This is a time, this is a place where such a party can be built. The perspectives are there. Now, the question is, of course, Bernie, in order to make a mass party, you need mass forces. The labor leaders, unfortunately, are completely tied with the Democrats. They're not moving in this direction. Bernie Sanders could have built such a party in 2016. He could have built such a party this year. He had just in terms of financial donors. He had over 1.4 million financial donors. Never mind the activists and the voters and stuff. He could have done that. He didn't do that. So faced with that situation, what we can do is, at least in a more modest sense, is build the foundation for something in the future. Now, we say that the DSA, the Democratic Socialist America, which is the largest socialist organization, they're not big enough to create a mass party, but they could take some important steps forward to help to build the foundation of this kind of party. They have to start by taking a clear position on the election. DSA, unfortunately, they supported Bernie Sanders. Then when he dropped out, they didn't take a clear position. Many individuals in DSA are supporting Biden. So that's a mistake. They have to tell the truth to the working class. They have to warn them of what a Biden administration is going to do, warn them of what the Democrats are going to do. We also think they missed an opportunity. They are a big enough organization that they could have run five or 10 candidates in five or 10 congressional districts, which are heavily working class in this election. They may not have won these in these districts, but they couldn't run them independent of the Democrats, independent of the Republicans. And part of that could have been calling on the two DSA members who are in Congress already, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tili, calling on them to run independently. In addition to that, by the way, they should run on the idea that if they're elected, in fact, the two people who are elected should do this automatically, they should only accept the average wage of an average worker and donate the rest of their fat congressional salary into the movement. Congressmen make $174,000 a year, something like that, plus health benefits and other kinds of fringe benefits. The median family income in the United States is only $63,000. So they should start with that. If they ran independently of the Democrats or Republicans, they could run a class campaign calling for and explaining that only a worker's government will solve the problems in this country, and that we need jobs, we need higher wages, repeal of anti-union laws, and that we need to unite the working class to defeat racism. Now, you want to look for historical precedent in the United States for this? I will give you one. Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders, how did he become who he is? How did he become the person that became a nationally known politician? He never ran in the Democratic Party until he ran for president in 2016. If you look back in the 1970s, Bernie Sanders ran as a third party candidate for state office, at least four times in the 1970s. That built up some foundation and support, and then he was able to run as an independent for Mayor Burlington against both Democrats and Republicans, and he won. And then he ran for Congress as an independent socialist against both Democrats and Republicans. He lost the first race, but he beat the Democrats in the first. Then he finally ran and won in the second race. So it is possible to build an alternative, particularly when you know if the Democrats are going to get in power again, which is likely that you know the population would be swinging against them, and they're going to be looking for a real alternative. Now, if the left puts that forward, if they put forward... Yeah, I'll wrap it up. If the left put out those ideas, we could immediately recruit some of the more advanced layers, the workers and youth today, and we could also help to sow seeds in the minds of the larger parts of the working class for tomorrow when they draw some conclusions, when they live through the experience of a Democratic Party government, again, in Biden. So I'll end on this comment. What is the IMT doing? The IMT is doing just what I said. We are telling the truth. We're putting no illusions in the Democrats. We're saying to people, sure, vote. You want to vote? Vote for a protest party in this election. But the main thing is to get involved. We need a worker's government in order to get a worker's government with socialist policies. We're going to need a mass socialist party of the working class. In order to do that, we need to build a strong Marxist tendency. Your place is to help the IMT to build this for the future. The perspectives are there. American capitalism and its crisis is not going to just evaporate. It's not going to turn the corner any more than the pandemic is turning the corner right now. It's a serious problem that's going to be imposed on the population over the next period. And if you join with us, we can build an alternative. We can intervene in the struggles that are going to continue ahead, just like the big struggles that we saw this past spring and this past summer. And through that, out of that, we will be able to build a mass working class socialist party in the citadel of U.S. imperialism, U.S. capitalism. And when the working class has that party, the working class moves, nothing's going to stop it. We'll get to a socialist government in the United States. The world will be free. And I look forward to that day. Forward to socialism, comrades.


The perfect day for you, a warm hello in every sense of the word. The sun is out and football has a special place on this most idyllic of days, a fixture ahead of us to which we've all been looking forward for so very, very long, and it means so very, very much. The scene could not be more beautiful. The pitch looks terrific, the players are ready to get started, and we cannot wait for a contest that lies ahead. I have a question that this is one of the most striking structures in all of sport, the Allianz Arena. Well, this is the perfect game for all parties, not least the Neutrals who've just come to enjoy it. Well, under normal circumstances, this is a massive match-up, and I'm not totally in agreement with the view that friendlies tend to take the edge away. In my experience, if the opposition go at it full tilt, then you have to reciprocate. We'd like to see excitement and be entertained, but if it does go down the serious route, there'll still be lots to enjoy. Well, if you did just miss it, we are up and running already. Power! Oh, she's needed a better complex. Arsenal can defend those situations better by stopping the cross-route source. Mesut Erzal, Erzal plays it forward. Bayerine, who's ball, who's going to get that? Mesut Erzal, Obamaya. Just over, that's just plain unlucky. There were many, me included, who thought that was going in. Well, hello and welcome to what amounts to football heaven. It doesn't get a whole lot better than this. The conditions are utopian. The sky is blue, and the players are with us for a football match so widely and keenly anticipated. Truly, this is pristine, and the level of expectation and excitement is reflected in the smiling faces of the crowd. They know it means so much, and they also experience between them a great sense of privilege at being able to attend this most special of games. Truly, this is a remarkable stadium, the Allianz Arena, a symbol of cutting-edge technology and architectural perfection. Two high-profile, high-caliber teams. This is a welcome event for all these supporters. Well, and the normal set goes for goal! Hits off target, and by quite a way. Well, Peter, he clearly felt he was being invited to shoot, and it wasn't the worst decision he could have made. Granite, jack up. Just to point out, Peter, that the fullbacks are quite high. And what do they try to achieve? Well, it's obviously a move to push the opposition, wide man back, and give them more to think about. And that's Herzl, and that's Kolasinac. Played into the middle, got a throw in, and that's nice.  Whipped it, greatly! She's needed a better contract. I have to commend the win plate, but I have to condemn the defending. They've got to stop the cross.


So this is something people who start projects don't quite ask for, but it's what I think is the most important thing we can do to help them. At the end of the day, if something isn't forbidden by the laws of physics, then nothing can stop you from doing it, except knowing how. It's a matter of knowledge, not resources. If you know how to fundraise extremely well, you can do that. If you know how to hire extremely well, you can do that. If you know how to build amazing projects, you can do that. So at the end of the day, it's our knowledge as a network that is the most valuable resource we can offer to other groups. We do this by combining a set of guides and systems and resources and offering people's time through office hours, introductions, and so on to facilitate knowledge sharing. We are a YC company. We learned an enormous amount from the knowledge of that community. The YC community helped the world make it dramatically easier to start companies across all industries, and that came from knowledge sharing. I personally look back at the YC program, and the single most valuable thing that Protocol Labs got from YC was the valuable knowledge that compounded over time. The YC network produced tremendously valuable knowledge resources, and we want to do our part to contribute our knowledge in this domain to both the Protocol Labs network and the YC broader network. One of the key components that we also learned from YC and from universities and from many other organizations is the value of open office hours. In universities, if you are struggling with some problem, if you have a hard set of questions around some domain, or if you're working on new things and new projects and so on, and you want time with the amazing, super knowledgeable, deeply thoughtful faculty, the best pattern is to use an open office hour format. That's where faculty members would create and open time slots in their schedule and meet with whoever was there. It was sort of like form up outside of their office, and you would just meet with them, and usually in very small intervals, like five or 10 minutes so that many people could access that person. YC built on that and created the world-famous YC office hours, where many people contributed tremendous knowledge to many groups. We're doing that same structure in PL, although in this model anyone in the network can share knowledge to anybody else in the network. It's not just founders and investors and partners and so on, but it's really anybody across the network that has deeply valuable skills and knowledge that can contribute to other projects. We're doing this by structuring our office hours with a tool where you can list out your time slots and schedule meetings with folks. Over time, we think that this kind of structured mentorship and office hours can generate massive amounts of value for all of the projects out there. Again, whether they're companies, R&D projects, labs, or open source systems. I've had many people come to my office hours to ask about the beginnings of IPFS and how that got started, or how to tackle certain large-scale problems in an open source community. So it's not necessarily, it doesn't have to relate to businesses. We also want to provide our knowledge in a very hands-on way with a set of structured summits tuned to help teams level up, especially in important phase transitions. So think of those moments when teams' fundraise have now more capital and now are thinking about the next set of challenges, or when they have some important product launch that then shifts their organization into a new mode of operation. Those are great times to gather the knowledge of a set of experts across the network, the ones that are most relevant and have strongest connection to those teams, and have deep dives into the vast swaths of problems that that team is going to take on and help them think through their plans. We find, after doing this for a few years across many teams in our network, we find those summits generate an enormous amount of value for our teams and help save, in reality, months, quarters, or in some times, years. We also support the PL Network with deep knowledge in Web3, and we've compiled things like a Web3 start-up knowledge base and immense amount of questions answered and real-time support in discussion forums across IPFS, LibP2P, Filecoin, and more. This is a great way to disseminate information and also make real-time access to the experts that can help you solve and debug problems. We're also doing our work in public, and this is a really important kind of like talent or a skill that we've developed and really honed in the past year, which is actually executing in a network native way, doing our all hands openly and publishing them to the network, team planning and design docs in public notions and having weekly updates from every team so that you can understand the current challenges that they're facing and new opportunities to get involved. This is a great way for many teams to see real-time shifts in direction or trajectory or highlight new risks or challenges that they need support on. In PL Andres, many of our ResDev teams also are exporting a lot of their R&D knowledge around cryptography, distributed systems, and crypto economics to help many companies across the PL network harness these new breakthroughs and build their startups and projects based on these deep foundations. And so you'll see many of these labs contributing heavily to Filecoin improvement proposals to IPIPs in the IPFS ecosystem and really helping disseminate the deep research knowledge that's been honed in these world-class teams.


I just think it's you know he's a central figure in in our game growing to what it is today. More international than ever. Obviously a ton of Hispanic players making huge impacts in our in our game in our sport and and you know he's in a lot of ways a trailblazer that Hall of Famer amazing player amazing humanitarian. My mom and dad were actually in Puerto Rico. My dad was playing winter ball when when his plane went down. But I mean it's it's just one of those video images that you see of just the amazing graceful like this amazing wiry athlete and what he was able to do on the baseball field. One of those true five. I think five tool player probably originated with him. But you know to see where our game is today. He's certainly one of those trailblazers. Glad we're able to honor his legacy today. I know there's been discussion and it's been a little bit of a push for you like to see 21 retired. Do you think it should be retired. I'm I don't know. That's probably a bigger question. I'm I'm I'm excited that we're we're honoring him today. I know that people have been nominated for the award can wear where that number. Obviously people of Hispanic descent can wear it. We'll have patches honoring that whether it goes to the level of retiring. I would have no issue with that. But you know that's a that's a decision way above me. As far as this afternoon or this evening's game is concerned. No Gallo in the lineup. What went into that decision. Just a day.  But just a day. I'm wanting to kind of You know obviously between Luke and Guardi playing well and just kind of keeping those guys as fresh as I can while also keeping them playing regularly as well. And talk last night. Excuse me about taking that labor out. Did you talk to him at all about that that move and what you put your expectations are for him going forward. Yeah. Yeah. I mean yeah I talked to him after the game last night and Kind of leave it at that. But yeah don't plan on you know it's not something that I'm planning on doing necessarily. There are things that I that came up in the game last night that I felt it was necessary to to get him out of there last night. Karen did you have an issue with how he ran out that ground ball to third and the ace. A little bit. Yeah.


Hello and Namaste. The rise of MOOCs have also brought in large amount of discussions between researchers and practitioners who are trying to make better sense of this phenomenon. Most of the key discussion revolves around the challenges that MOOCs face in their current form. One of the most cited initial works on challenges faced in MOOCs was the paper by Doug Clough from Open University in UK that he presented in the third conference on Learning and Analytics in 2013. Titled MOOCs and Funnel of Participation, the paper provided an overview of the attrition problem in MOOCs that starts right from awareness till and goes on till the actual course completion. In a research commentary written in the journal Higher Education in 2014, two years after when most popular MOOCs were created, Gerard Fisher talks of the spectrum between the hype and underestimation and tries to present the challenges faced by initial versions of MOOCs. He highlights that most MOOCs till them were focusing more on delivering the content or the learning about agenda rather than focusing on existing research about pedagogy in online and distance learning. For example, enabling learners to think critically, asking deeper questions or encouraging diverse views, these were absent. In the paper that came in the journal Computers and Education in 2015, researchers from Glasgow Caledonian University evaluated 76 random MOOCs using an instrument that they created based on the best practices in online learning. The highlight of their findings is that most existing MOOCs lacked good instructional design. The problem of completion rates got much better traction thanks to the work by the researcher Katie Jordan from the Open University in UK who had created an interactive plot based on completion rates reported by several MOOCs from the years 2012 to 2015. She had put all these data in the public space through her website and the completion rates are mapped against other variables like assessment type and course length. Let us now pause for a minute and examine this graph little more carefully to see what exactly is the problem all about and one of its key implication that instructors should take away. As you see, the x-axis of the graph shows number of people enrolled in the course and the y-axis shows completion rates. Let us focus our attention at all the courses that have enrollment greater than 10,000 learners. Can you identify the completion rate region where you see the maximum concentration of these data points? And once you have identified this region, can you now calculate how large or small this number is actually? You can pause this video while you answer this question and resume once completed. So as evident from the graph, when the enrollments are greater than 10,000, the completion rates are maximum between 5 to 10%. This means that for a course of strength 10,000 roughly 500 to 1000 people completed. We know that 5 to 10% is a very small completion rate. You and I will agree that 500 to 1000 people completing a course is actually not a really small number. So the point to remember as a course instructor is that when you create a massive open online course, even the small completion rates are not exactly small numbers and we have to ensure that we cater to such diverse numbers who are actually active in the course. What you have seen till now are the evidences and analysis provided by the research community. But the evidences are not just limited to research and if you carefully search the internet, you can see that there are also blogs and discussions by people working in the online learning space as well as MOOC learners that highlight the various factors that contribute to the problem of high attrition or low completion rate. So some of these problems are like lack of connect, lack of any constructive feedback from the instructors, gradual loss of the interest due to intellectual challenge that they face in the course or lack of authentic context. As you see, most of them are unanimous on the need for a better pedagogy for MOOCs as we know of it now. Having summarized the various challenges, we should acknowledge that MOOCs are still a recent phenomenon and MOOC practices are continuously evolving with inputs from several stakeholders like the researchers, practitioners and administrators.


Welcome to 30 days of kindness we're going to share a new kindness prompt every day These will be little acts of kindness.  We can't wait to hear how you get on leave a comment or a like Comments make us smile Good luck and see you tomorrow. Bye


What's good y'all? It's your boy Rocks back again with another video. So we're gonna check out 10 times wwe got the elimination chamber There have been a few times in the past where the winner of the elimination chamber should have possibly went to somebody else at the time But then some man was like no it should probably be this person and since the elimination chamber is right around the corner Man, I definitely wanted to check this out for you guys, man So we're gonna go down memory lane and see some of these winners that didn't really make sense at the time Appreciate all the love and support you guys have shown on the channel and let's get right into this video Let me chambles It's time to put a bunch of wrestlers in a box shake the box like you're trying to get the seasoning right and then see Which ones fall out and land on WrestleMania in previous years WWE have used the elimination chamber to do last-minute desperate course corrections before the show of shows need to get the WWE Championship off edge and the World Heavyweight Championship onto him There's an elimination chamber for that need to get the belt off the undertaker so him and HPK can have a streak versus career match There's an elimination chamber for that need to absolutely destroy the prestige of the intercontinental title You better believe there's an elimination chamber for that. Sometimes wwe have got the chamber right? This is about the very much not that I'm Adam hailing from parts fun known and here are 10 times WWE got the elimination chamber wrong number 10 move Sasha in 2018 the first ever women's elimination chamber match was almost very good indeed It was bad made Alexa look like a strong champion at least but they also use the match to half-tell a story tell it quite badly And then not follow up on that story in any meaningful way picture this Sasha and Bailey team up to eliminate Alexa Bliss Guaranteeing a new champion then and only then after using her air quotes best friend help her get to the final two Sasha suddenly activates scar mode and turns In order to win the title setting up instead of Alexa versus sad night Jackson a less effective rerun of ivory versus China Sasha versus Bayley for the raw women's champion, you know what I Remember when that happened she turned on her before it happened. I was like Wait That would have been a better match at at WrestleMania for sure Ship at WrestleMania instead of this Sasha kicks Bailey into the stampede in gazelles before the final two happens Then manages to bollocks up eliminating Alexa with the portrayal instead only half paying off in the women's battle royal on the kickoff show Yeah, Naomi to punk out Bailey and win instead It was weird just feels like a waste of a pretty good portrayal spot number nine swagger wins for Merca Hey, at least we don't we go all that Glenn Beck exposure. It's totally worth it in 2013 Jack swagger reemerged into the upper midcard with a new manager in the form of Matthew Samity Sam and a new gimmick In the form of Fox news it was certainly very charged and hey sometimes said Colter had some very funny signs But ultimately we're still talking about main event Jack swagger here And those are four words that when put in that order open up a rift to the blandest circle of hell There was only one elimination chamber match of 2013 and in the field that included Chris Jericho Daniel Bryan and Randy Orton They went with send them back Jack who then proceeded to get busted for marijuana possession and lost a fairly mediocre match to Alberta del Rio WrestleMania 29, which is a very shit WrestleMania number eight. Shayna Baszler ruins everything on paper this rules in practice This absolutely could have ruled in actuality. This was a huge mess and it was so close What they could have done was this have Shayna Baszler enter the chamber at number five have her systematically murder Sarah Logan Ruby riot Natalia and live Morgan with her eliminating the whole field Just in time for her to look at Asuka stand there countdown ends Asuka walks out then give them five minutes as Asuka fights back But ultimately Shayna is too much of a monster and puts her down to what actually happened. I like that Actually, do you like that granted? I didn't have a problem. Well Initially, I didn't have a problem with her kind of running through everybody But at the same time I get how that kind of buries everyone in the process So it would make sense for her to come out like second to last Everyone's already kind of tired. She rips through them that have her come out against Asuka Which you know Asuka it comes off as a credible Person as well and have ultimately Shayna dispatch Asuka, which I think would have had a greater effect Granted is still didn't have matter in the grand scheme of things when it came to her winning the title win Honestly, I think she should have Against Becky at the time but still in real life was so close and yet so broken Shayna entered fourth killed Natalia Hogan and Ryder then waited around then live came in and immediately died or Waiting around yeah That's swathes of nothing as Shayna ran out of things to do in an empty ring and the fans got bored And we're too dead to react to Asuka coming in and then immediately dying as well a tiny change Turned what could have been an exciting series of murders into a slog so close and yet so far number seven Is stopped and speaking of big boss hoss monsters getting theirs in the elimination chamber 2018's main event saw not one not six not 12, but seven men step inside the Chambles Well six men and one abominable Strohman who eliminated the entire field for being beaten by thoroughly not over baby face Roman rain Of course, this was during that two-year window where WWE actually treated brawn like the hyper entertaining cartoon powerful monster With a penchant for ambulances and his own hands but WWE never pulled the trigger on this version of the monster among men Waiting until he cooled off significantly and also no fans were in attendance from to win Universal title from Goldberg to Literal silence. I mean considering how much the fans did not want to see Roman Reigns versus Lesnar at Mania 34 Why not just go with Strowman here pretend like no mercy and crown jewel never happened and feed Lesnar to brawn it's Here's the thing Think about that whole situation I think they ruined brawn in the sense of like he was just saying like they ruined him Honestly, they ruined him in a sense of him Kind of losing the Brock everybody was losing the Brock to build up Roman so Roman can win But ultimately they didn't even have him win at this at that particular WrestleMania. So it None of it really mattered. I don't even know who you would have win that to be honest with you Something it's anything other than Roman overcoming the odds once again.  You know what's great in wrestling character development You know that post-match bloodline angle at the Royal Rumble this year that pop is a result of slow consistent character development rewarding our investment with setups and payoffs when WWE were suffering from late stage Vince McMahon didn't really do That characters would twist and turn with little to no warning and here's a cracker jack example of that in early 2022 Alexa Bliss was going through therapy to try to cure her hot topic haunted doll whack-a-doo The segments were very slow burn for a while and then the company thought ah who cares and bought her back at elimination chamber And no one knew what the hell was happening with her character And suddenly she's cured said Michael Cole before bliss came down and sat on a swing inside a pod Laughing to herself like unpossessed people don't I don't think she's cured No, Corey Graves just another example how WWE really did not invest long-term in characters towards the end of Vince's time And hey speaking of number five biggie gets forgotten sticking with elimination chamber 2022 for a little bit And honestly grumbling about how WWE treated biggie as a main eventer is a bit of a waste of time at this point After all he's one of the most positive people in the world even now And if he's not mustering the energy to waste on being dropped like a bad habit Then why should we let it fester because we're wrestling fans and we're 80% fester on January 1st Biggie had his title reign prematurely ended by a man who didn't need another title reign and wasn't even in the F***ing match 24.  It was earlier immediately biggie was then demoted Never got a rematch for the title and was shipped off to Smackdown to rejoin New Day all the singles character work from 2021 instantly unwritten then WWE took the belt off Lesnar a few weeks later at the rumble Yeah, put it back on him a few weeks later at elimination chamber Yeah biggie wasn't involved in any of that that I want you to understand how dumb that booking is He won the championship in the match. He wasn't even supposed to be in Held the championship for about a month then lost it Then goes to another pay-per-view maybe a month later to only gain it back Why the why can you just at least have put him in this chamber match? There was six f***ing people in it You bollocks number four Goldberg loses to triple H's injured crotch. I wouldn't want to lose a match to triple H's penis I'm not afraid to say it the first elimination chamber match. It's five series 2002 was great fun concept top stars Lots of feuds blown off all at once and triple H dropping the title to a legend having a second run 2003 the second elimination chamber match was almost great lots of feuds a legend having a second run and would have ended The same way Goldberg was set to win the championship inside that big box having rocked everyone's dick clean off their bodies But sadly one penis was already injured and that was the problem triple H had torn his groin Yes I know they're different things and couldn't really wrestle instead of triple H getting squash dropping the title and then going back for it When he was healthy triple H successfully lobby to postpone Goldberg's coronation until the game was fighting fit So trips won the match instead with a single sledge hammer shot out of nowhere Suddenly making the unbeatable monster look totally beatable in the blink of an eye.  Ah to this day is one of those decisions. I just be like bro They should have gave the the championship to to Goldberg here. It only made sense It's Goldberg You could have got it back at a later time they Absolute Barlux from a man with compromise Barlux number three Miz wins lol in November 2010 The Miz cashed in money in the bank on Randy Orton on Raw and went on to have a bad title reign feuding with Jerry Lawler No, less what a fighting champion WWE stretched out that rain over six months in February 2021 over ten years later Mr. Mizanin's baby boy cashed in money in the bank on Drew McIntyre after his elimination chamber match and went on to have a Tire reign that at least this time they condensed into eight days I am not a Miz hater like Luke Luke hates the Miz instead He would attack him in public if he could this was a royal waste of time and of the money in the bank briefcase Which is to belong to Otis do you remember that yeah want to have Bobby Lashley win a WWE Championship match at Mania. That's fine Do that like have Lashley actually dethrone Drew at WrestleMania That would have been something something that didn't feel like a randomly cobbled together series of events with no rhyme or reason to them Yeah, I'm tired. Are you tired? I'm tired and hey while we're talking about Lashley number two Bobby Lashley is Extreme December to dismember 2006 the final nail in the coffin of each WWE brand having their own separate pay-per-views until of course WWE forgot that was bad and brought it back in 2016 for a few years before they remembered again Oh, that's bad before the branded pay-per-views making a comeback in 2026. I suppose anyway We all know this story ECW's first proper pay-per-view as WWE ECW was barely promoted Only two matches announced ahead of time sandwiched between Survivor Series and Armageddon and ending with Bobby Lashley Another John Cena copy paste but without the promo skills becoming face of a nostalgia brand He's never had anything to do with by beating the big show the former champion of a nostalgia brand that he had never anything to do With the whole extreme elimination chamber was booked Insanely Sabu removed from the match during the pay-per-view itself and replaced with Bob Holly lol Bind off almost immediately the only actual ECW star left RVD also binned off mid-match the crowd turned on it Hard it was a giant mess with the negative reaction leading to a block between Paul Heyman and Vince McMahon We saw Heyman leave the company for six years, and it's still not even the worst chamber match Let the wrong mark in the worst chamber match To say that WWE got this one wrong They weren't exactly to know that when they built the chamber for the intercontinental match in 2015 This chamber is going to be made out of wishes Wade Barrett pushed off Ziggler into mark Henry's pod window the window Like the plastic in a pair of 3d glasses and flops the floor like a redundant fish at that point a choice had to be made Restrain mark Henry because it wasn't time for his entrance and Dems the rules or treat the chamber like a hardcore match And there are no rules ultimately the callback stage was made to go with the second option Mark enters the match and oopsie. That's the wrong choice Don't get me wrong mark Henry politely waiting in his pod would have been a bit rubbish But maybe with enough officials running in smoke and mirrors bodyguards coming down to stop him from entering They might have avoided what happened next which is Everything Yeah, the match was thrown out of like they obviously had something playing and when that happened They had they're literally calling it on the fly now. No one knows what to do because it's like Uh He wasn't supposed to be out here.  What do you think is the biggest mistake? WW is made in and around the elimination chamber. Let us know in the comments Don't forget to like and share this video around if you enjoyed it and make sure to subscribe to parts fun known for more silly wrestling content jam that This was a good video man for me. It's gonna have to be Goldberg not winning I remember watching that and I was like, okay Goldberg's in WWE. They're treating him like they treated him in WCW Let's let's get this going let's get this going. He's literally running through everybody the spearing of Jericho through the Plexi of glass pod was one of the coolest spots. I had seen at that time, bro It's still one of the coolest spots because of JR's commentary like bro He was just destroying people the crowd was ready for it. You're thinking, okay This is gonna be the end of the Triple H era regime for now And come to find out he didn't want to pull the trigger because he wanted to be healthy He didn't want to get squashed You didn't have to have him get squashed per se granny cuz he couldn't do as much But I think the right thing is just putting the guy over should have put him over Granny you put it him over later, but it's not the same You put him over then you put him over at that moment and then it would have been like a holy shit And then you can try to get it back later on at some point but That to me is one of the greatest blunders of an elimination chamber in my personal opinion It's definitely up there, but comment down below. Let me know what were some of the greatest Blunders you guys can think of if it wasn't in this video for elimination chamber But I appreciate all the love and support roll to 150k and I am still your under speedy YouTube wrestling champion world