Starting with an interesting discussion Graham Elwood had.
I think we have all learned some reality during the pandemic. As We The People suffered, our government worked to provide millions and millions to the rich. Our government did not work to protect us. Even now, as rates of COVID have increased in Los Angeles, the federal government rushing to insist the pandemic is over.
They really screw us over and over. And maybe this will translate into us demanding more as the workers who do keep the country afloat.
This is from John V. Walsh (COUNTERPUNCH):
2014 saw two pivotal events that led to the current conflict in Ukraine.
The first, familiar to all, was the coup in Ukraine in which a democratically elected government was overthrown at the direction of the United States and with the assistance of neo-Nazi elements which Ukraine has long harbored.
Shortly thereafter the first shots in the present war were fired on the Russian-sympathetic Donbass region by the newly installed Ukrainian government. The shelling of the Donbass which claimed 14,000 lives has continued for 8 years, despite attempts at a cease-fire under the Minsk accords which Russia, France and Germany agreed upon but Ukraine backed by the US refused to implement. On February 24, 2022, Russia finally responded to the slaughter in Donbass and the threat of NATO on its doorstep.
The second pivotal event of 2014 was less noticed and in fact rarely mentioned in the Western mainstream media. In November of that year according to the IMF, China’s GDP surpassed that of the U.S. in purchasing power parity terms (PPP GDP). (This measure of GDP is calculated and published by the IMF, World Bank and even the CIA. Students of international relations like economics Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, Graham Allison and many others consider this metric the best measure of a nation’s comparative economic power.) One person who took note and who often mentions China’s standing in the PPP-GDP ranking is none other than Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
From one point of view, the Russian action in Ukraine represents a decisive turn away from the hostile West to the more dynamic East and the Global South. This follows decades of importuning the West for a peaceful relationship since the Cold War’s end. As Russia makes its Pivot to the East, it is doing its best to ensure that its Western border with Ukraine is secured.
Following the Russian action in Ukraine, the inevitable U.S. sanctions poured onto Russia. China refused to join them and refused to condemn Russia. This was no surprise; after all Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China had been drawing ever closer for years, most notably with trade denominated in ruble-renminbi exchange, thus moving toward independence from the West’s dollar dominated trade regime.
If you talk reality about Urkaine, they try to censor you. No one is allowed to talk about 2014, for example, not among the corporate media.
This is Sabby Sabs and I especially enjoyed the Glenn Greenwald segment.
And be sure to check out Ava and C.I.'s "TV: GRACE AND FRANKIE winds down while THE OFFER never should have started ."
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Monday, May 2, 20225. Dust storms again in Iraq (and in Joe Biden's mind as well) and much more.
Whores got their weekend with a DC event that should have been retired long ago. Court jester Trevor Noah made joes about8 inflat8ion and US President Joe Biden lapped it up.
Yes, they are laughing at the American people. Yes, it's disgusting.
Joe's got jokes because, well, he is a joke. How wonderful that, as American struggle to deal with the out of control inflation, that he can laugh and shuck and jive.
Joe Biden is a horrible leader. And jokes about "Cinderella's castle" don't8 improve his standing, they only make him look even more senile.
May Day fell the day after Joe Biden's buffoonery. While he was shucking and jiving, David North (WSWS) pointed out):
This year’s May Day is being held under extraordinary circumstances. The world stands on the precipice of a nuclear world war that threatens the extinction of life on this planet. The challenge of May Day 2022 is to make this celebration of the international unity of the working class the beginning of a global movement of the broad mass of the world’s population to stop the criminal and reckless escalation of the NATO-Russia war toward nuclear conflict and force its end.
The organization, development and victory of this movement requires a clear understanding of the causes of the war and the interests that it serves.
The International Committee of the Fourth International, the World Party of Socialist Revolution, unequivocally denounces US and European imperialism for instigating the conflict with Russia. This is not a war in defense of democracy in Ukraine or anywhere else in the world. It is a war whose aim is the redivision of the world, that is, a new allocation of the material resources of the globe.
Russia has become a target of US imperialism not because of the Putin regime’s autocratic character, but because, first, its defense of the interests of the Russian capitalists collide with the drive of the United States for global hegemony, which is centered on its preparations for war with China; and, second, the vast expanse of Russian territory is the source of immensely valuable and strategically critical raw materials, metals and minerals—gold, platinum, palladium, zinc, bauxite, nickel, mercury, manganese, chromium, uranium, iron ore, cobalt and iridium, to name only a few—that the United States is determined to bring under its control.
The other major imperialist powers allied with the United States are, likewise, pursuing their own reactionary economic and geostrategic interests. The conflict in Ukraine has provided German imperialism—which waged a war of extermination against the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1945—with the opportunity to undertake the most massive rearmament campaign since the collapse of the Nazi regime. As always, British imperialism is eager to participate in an American-led war, hoping that its “special relationship” with the United States will entitle it to a favorable distribution of the spoils of war. The French imperialists hope that by sanctioning, however reluctantly, the American war against Russia, the United States will not interfere with French operations in Africa. Even the lesser powers of the NATO alliance expect to be repaid for their endorsement of the US-led war. Poland, for example, has not forgotten that Lviv was once the Polish city of Lwow.
As for the United States’ invocation of the sacred right of Ukraine, as a sovereign nation, to join NATO if it so chooses, Washington does not recognize the extension of that right to any country whose national defense interests are viewed as a threat to American security. Even as the crisis unfolds in Ukraine, the United States is threatening military action to stop the Solomon Islands—6,000 miles away from the American West Coast—from entering into a defensive relationship with China.
Joe supports the Nazi government in Ukraine that he and Barack Obama installed back in 2014 as they trashed the results of the election. The government is a menace to many but Joe wants to back it because, well, he's senile.
Jason Melanovski (WSWS) reports:
As the NATO proxy war against Russia rages in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian government is carrying out a campaign of domestic repression against alleged “collaborators” and “traitors” in order to bolster its pro-war agenda and eliminate any opposition that may favor a negotiated peace with Moscow to end the war.
Last week the Kyiv Independent reported that “a hunt for alleged collaborators is underway in recaptured parts of the country.” The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) along with the national and local police, territorial defense units and the State Emergency Service, are leading the hunt for suspects.
According to the Kyiv Independent, the SBU had already arrested 33 suspects in Kiev by April 7, and by April 15, over 300 alleged collaborators had been arrested.
It is unclear how the SBU is able to deduce exactly who collaborated with the Russian forces other than relying on the testimony of neighbors.
Such an approach leaves the door wide open for the settling of petty grievances between neighbors and the arrest and jailing—or perhaps worse—of innocent Ukrainians who are not enthusiastic supporters of a NATO-backed war that is destroying large parts of an already impoverished country.
The report comes on the heels of the revelation that Kiev was supplied with advanced face-scanning technology by the American firm Clearview AI and that such technology was already being used to identify dead Russian soldiers and scan the faces of Ukrainian citizens in order to find “traitors.”
That's the government that Joe Biden and billions of US tax dollars are supporting. It's outrageous that US tax dollars are used to prop up that oppressive regime to begin with but8 at a time when Americans are facing huge inflation, it's outrageous.
As a ma8n we did a ZOOM w8ith weeks ago pointed out, he's Diamond Joe Biden, grabbing the check to pay for dinner with his new pals while his own children are back home starving.
He's so out of touch, he doesn't even realize it.
Meanwhile, the British government is being pressured to demand the release of one of their citiens from Iraq. No, not the over 80-year-old who just died in custody and was leading the tour and no one seems to know the name of. The other one. Th eone whose family sure does get a lot of press on. Robert Pether hasn't had as much press since Iraq put him beind bars as this man has had in the last three days.
The enw move is to push him as a modern day Indiana Jone1
Problems?
Indiana wasn't British. Indiana wasn't a geologist who worked for Big Oil. Indiana had a doctorate Archaeology.
The Brit was trying to leave Iraq with what he says were shards that
someone gave him persmission for but which Iraq argues were historical
artifacts. And anyone with a basic education, knows you dont try to
leave a country with shards of anything -- especially not a country that
the UK has already plundered repeatedly for decades.
Once again, dust storms throughout Iraq.
NNA reports, "Clouds of yellow dust covered most of southern Iraq, including the capital, Baghdad, and is expected to continue until Monday, according to the Meteorological Department." Australian ASSOCIATED PRESS adds, "Iraq's state news agency INA reported that five Iraqi provinces including Baghdad and Najaf were shrouded in dust storms on Sunday, causing an unspecified number of people to suffer serious breathing-related problems."
AFP is again reporting "dozens" have been hospitalized. They never learn and AFP hires journalists who lack basic counting skills. See April 9th's "AFP needs to learn to count -- over 429 is not 'dozens'." As AFP again runs with ''dozens'' despite, again, the number being much, much higher. In Najaf alone, ALSUMARIA reports 500 people were hospitalized. And the Health Department of Najaf is the source for the 500 figure. And Sal al-Din province counts 152 people hospitalized. That's just two areas and it's 652. That's not "dozens."
BOL NEWS notes, "In April, Iraq was pummelling by a succession of severe storms, which grounded flights in Baghdad, Najaf, and Irbil and hospitalized hundreds." Yes, and it's the first day of May and already hundreds have been hospitalized.
Ruth Tweets:
Marcello G Tweets:
In other news, MEDYA NEWS reports:
After it’s been revealed on Wednesday that two European journalists were arrested by Iraqi troops on the 20th of April, a colleague of one of the journalists said to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that the journalist was arrested while he was covering issues affecting the Yazidis in Iraq.
Soldiers with the Iraqi 20th Infantry Division arrested Matej Kavčič, a Slovenian freelance reporter, on the 20th of April at an army checkpoint in the city of Sinjar (Shengal), the hometown of the Yazidis.
While Kavčič identified himself as a journalist, Iraqi troops brought him to a nearby military facility, where they confiscated his phone and questioned him, according to a report by CPJ.
Marlene Förster, a German national, who was traveling with Kavčič, was also detained in the process.
Iraqi authorities allege that the pair ‘pretended to work as journalists’, and accused them of collaborating with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated a ‘terrorist group’ in neighbouring Turkey and in the European Union.
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