https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G9Jf1nEU20
Monday, March 22, 2021
Tucker Carlson Says US Is Overcrowded With Immigrants And He Wants More Western Babies Being Born
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvKWWzMxe9I
FINANCIAL PRESS FEARS BRAZILIANS WILL ELECT PRESIDENT OF THEIR CHOICE
By Alan Macleod, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
March 20, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/financial-press-fears-brazilians-will-elect-president-of-their-choice/
The Brazilian Supreme Court this month dismissed all charges against former President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva. A towering figure in national politics, Lula was the country’s president for eight years between 2003 and 2011. He was later convicted on highly dubious corruption charges and spent 18 months in prison, where his plight drew worldwide attention, making him, in the estimation of Noam Chomsky, the “world’s most prominent political prisoner.”
Lula’s incarceration directly led to far-right authoritarian Jair Bolsonaro coming to power, as Lula, the overwhelming favorite in the polls, was barred from running against him. Sergio Moro, the judge who imprisoned Lula—and secretly worked with the prosecution to convict him—became President Bolsonaro’s justice minister. The journalist who exposed Moro’s secret dealings, Glenn Greenwald, was charged with cybercrimes as a result of his reporting. (The charges were later dismissed.)
The Supreme Court’s ruling leaves Lula free to run against Bolsonaro in 2022—and gives Brazilians a chance to vote for the leader of their choice. But far from celebrating the news, the financial press is very disappointed that the world’s most popular politician is finally free again. “Stock Exchange Loses 4% and Dollar Rises After Lula Charges Annulled,” ran Forbes Brasil’s headline (3/8/21). “Markets Reacted Badly to the Announcement,” wrote the Financial Times (3/8/21).
Also seemingly disconsolate at the news was Reuters (3/9/21), who went with “Brazil Markets, on Shaky Foundations, Rocked by Lula Bombshell,” telling readers that investors were “gasping for air.” The report quoted a former central banker saying that Lula’s release would have “dire consequences.” Not for people or democracy—Reuters was not interested in that—but for “asset prices in general.”
“Lula’s Comeback Adds to Long List of Brazil Investor Woes,” read Bloomberg’s headline (3/9/21). Its article quoted one consultant warning that Lula “will seek revenge, and he will blame the markets, the media and business leaders for the downfall of the Workers’ Party.” Why these institutions are not to blame was not explained.
The financial press has long been afraid of what Lula’s liberty would mean for the profits of its readers. The “worst-case scenario,” Forbes (11/10/19) wrote in 2019, would be if he returned to politics and began “rabble rousing” people against Bolsonaro. What he had already done in undermining confidence in the administration was “deeply irresponsible,” reporter Kenneth Rapoza wrote, noting that his criticism of the government that was then imprisoning him merely increased “polarization” and “pain” throughout the country.
A great many articles characterized Lula as “polarizing”—a media codeword used extensively in reporting on the Global South, meaning “enacting policies rich people don’t like.” CNBC (3/8/21), for instance, explained that the decision to drop charges against Lula would “polarize voters,” and that financial markets were “roiled” by the latest news.
This is in complete contrast to two years ago, when the financial press lauded the election of the fascist Bolsonaro (FAIR.org, 10/31/18). The Financial Times (10/8/18) and CNBC (10/2/18) both noted that markets were “cheering” Bolsonaro’s lead in the polls, while Bloomberg (10/30/18) excitedly reported that he would be an “extraordinarily pro-business” president. “Jair Bolsonaro is a dangerous populist, with some good ideas,” said the Economist (1/5/19). It was the Wall Street Journal (10/29/18) that went furthest, however, endorsing him as a “credible” “reformer” and an “antidote” to the greed and corruption of Lula’s Workers’ Party.
Since then, corporate media have cooled on Bolsonaro: not because of his openly declared racism, sexism, homophobia or nostalgia for dictatorship, but mostly because he has failed to fully carry out many of his promised “reforms”—another media codeword for pro-business policies which usually hurt the majority (FAIR.org, 2/16/18, 5/8/16; CounterSpin, 8/28/15, 11/29/18). What Bolsonaro’s “reforms” entailed, JP Morgan (12/13/19) helpfully explained: a firesale of state-owned assets, huge cuts to public pensions, tax cuts for the wealthy and wage reductions for state employees.
Even worse, Lula’s release, the press explained, would close the door on these policies. As CNBC wrote (3/8/21):
Financial analysts said the prospect of Lula candidacy would likely drive Bolsonaro to abandon economic reforms he ran on in 2018 and further embrace populist measures to shore up support.
To decode this: CNBC and others who similarly predicted the end of Bolsonaro’s reform agenda (Financial Times, 3/8/21; Bloomberg, 3/9/21, Reuters, 3/9/21), were tacitly admitting that free-market shock therapy is exceptionally unpopular, and has no chance of implementation unless all credible opposition to it is forcefully suppressed.
If this were purely about profits, Lula should not generate such antagonism. “The financial press’ hostility and fear is pointless,” Brazilian journalist Nathalia Urban told FAIR:
The market performed well with him for the eight years he was president, and with Dilma Rousseff for six years afterwards. If the market wants to make money by investing in production and having a strong consumer market, it has to like a government that has one of its pillars to increase the power of expenditure of the working class.
Instead, it is Lula’s position as an independent actor who has consistently stymied US imperial ambitions in Latin America and beyond that is the real problem. Washington was also deeply implicated in his arrest and imprisonment, although corporate media have been hesitant to explore this connection (FAIR.org, 3/8/21).
The dismay over the freeing of the world’s most prominent political prisoner illustrates the opposition of the business press to human rights and the rule of law. Financial media were all too happy to see a far-right authoritarian gain power, as long as he implemented pro-rich policies. No matter what the evidence, the press’ response suggests they think that they still believe democracy just isn’t good for business.
THE HOUSING CRISIS: ONE YEAR AFTER LOCKDOWN
By David Rovics, Counterpunch.
March 20, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/the-housing-crisis-one-year-after-lockdown/
All the folks moving to Portland from California or New York and talking about how great the real estate prices are here may not know it (note: I was once one of them), but this city is the most rent-burdened city in the United States, and it exists within a country that, like this city, is undergoing multiple long-term crises, one of which is a housing crisis. The housing crisis, like so many other crises, got much worse one year ago this week, when the country, and much of the rest of the world, shut down.
Although this is a city that lost half of its Black population to the rise in the cost of housing between the years of 2000 and 2010 alone, according to census data, one year ago this week, if we talked about the housing crisis as one neck-deep in institutional racism, we would often be met by blank stares. One year on, the fact that there is racial discrimination in the real estate and rental markets, and the fact that housing justice is also a question of racial justice is largely accepted as self-evident in mainstream circles.
Less examined are the outrageous levels of profiteering on the backs of pretty much the whole of the society, led by a class of super-rich oligarchs, in their quest for ever more profits, as they systematically engineer a constant rise in the cost of buying or renting housing, across the country, as real wages continue to stagnate, nowhere near rising along with the cost of housing, except among corporate executives, investors, and a select strata of six-figure workers. But this entire phenomenon of sucking the wealth of society constantly upwards, towards the corporate landed gentry, is finally receiving at least a bit more widespread scrutiny than it has received in a very long time — if not nearly enough of it.
To be clear, it’s easy to see that we are in the midst of an epic struggle. Several major genies have come out of their bottles, and they’re not going to just go away now. How all of this unfolds is unknown, because “unknown” is the nature of the future. But it’s been a year since the lockdown, and a long three months since I’ve written anything on the class war that we call the housing crisis (not that I wasn’t thinking about it much of that time, and reposting articles about related news on anti-social media).
Of course, a major development since I wrote about what was at the time the most recent iteration of eviction moratorium and renter assistance legislation in the state of Oregon, in late December, is the Biden administration managed to take office, and even managed to squeak in with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. As I write, the latest round of stimulus checks are arriving in bank accounts across the country, unemployment assistance for gig workers like me has been extended until early September, and a new child tax credit is apparently going to lift tens of millions of families in this country out of poverty over the next year, including mine, with an unprecedented, almost two trillion dollar government spending package. (Unprecedented, but only equal to what we normally spend on the military during a two-year period.)
What we have seen up til now, prior to the lockdown, and more so since the lockdown, is a dramatic rise in the number of people living in tents on the sidewalk or in broken-down cars on the street, a dramatic rise in young adults moving back in with their parents, and a rise in evictions. The rise in evictions has been hugely mitigated by local, state, and federal eviction bans that have come and gone over the past year, depending on the locality. Although caused in particular by a combination of an already burdensome cost of housing combined with low wages, when those wages were in so many cases lost entirely, eviction bans and government aid have so far prevented the “eviction tsunami” that the business press has been concerned about. Concerned, of course, for reasons of capitalism’s self-preservation in the face of this unacceptably high degree of societal chaos, if not out of empathy for the millions of people who face the horrors of eviction in a typical, non-pandemic year in this country, who are normally ignored by the corporate media.
Now, we don’t have a $15-an-hour minimum wage, but significant amounts of aid is coming in, which will significantly affect the lives of many people. First of all, this needs to be acknowledged. Government response to the pandemic was largely a disaster, economic aid for suffering people has been too limited and badly apportioned, but now there’s a lot more of it, and it’s going to make a difference.
If we take a moment to reflect on the situation and consider the future for the still-very-much-ongoing housing crisis in the US, among other crises, we can wonder whether this new stimulus package would have passed if Biden and Harris had not won the election, and we can wonder whether it would have been as significant as it is if not for a year dominated by constant domestic unrest. And we can ask what forms of unrest might have been more influential than others, in inspiring such generosity from that gang of several hundred millionaires (with a nice little squad of righteous progressives) that we call the US Congress.
Regardless of how we got here or why this happened — by which I mean how this society got into such a stratified mess, and how the government got inspired to spend so much money to try to get us part of the way out of it — what we can be sure of, according to copious precedent, is that any solution to the housing crisis that just involves paying the back rent is no solution at all. Even canceling all rent and postponing all mortgages for everyone during the whole of 2020, none of which is remotely on the Congressional agenda, wouldn’t solve any long-term problems.
This is because the housing crisis predates the Covid crisis, so getting us back to where we were in 2019 would mean returning us to the housing crisis we were in already. But were the rental and other housing assistance to be sufficient to meet the need that’s out there — and as far as I understand, even with this new spending package, it isn’t — then what the corporate landlords and their management companies would do is raise all the rents. Those who have studied history are aware that one of the biggest friends of the labor unions during the early years of the industrial revolution in New York City were the landlords who owned the buildings the workers lived in. Why? If they were paid better, the landlords could charge more rent.
Meaning, of course, that most of the extra tax money raised, most of the new government debt incurred, even if it is ostensibly being spent in the name of keeping the housing-insecure housed, among other things, is ultimately just going to make the rich richer. And if there’s more aid, that’s just more money to be funneled upwards.
So what’s the solution, if not aid? Control over costs. Only this can prevent the landlords from just charging more, as we earn more, or get more government aid, or institute a universal basic income, or whatever other such programs come along. A lack of good regulation of the housing market will inevitably sabotage all such efforts.
Of course, regulating the landlords means regulating the very corporate entities that spend the money that gets most of the politicians from both parties elected in the first place, in this auction that we call democracy, so changing policies around regulating what landlords can charge — or even questioning whether and to what degree anyone should be allowed to practice this particular form of business enterprise, of running little monopolies that “provide housing” for people who would otherwise have none – is inevitably going to be extremely controversial among the kleptocracy. So getting this kind of regulation passed requires lots of resistance. Even more resistance than was required to get the $1.9 trillion bailout passed.
And what kind of resistance is that of which I speak? People will, have, and do argue about points like this endlessly. Did all the burning buildings in cities across the country inspire politicians to spend more to alleviate poverty and address institutional racism and other endemic problems, or would the politicians be even more inspired towards egalitarianism if all the protests had been permitted marches and candle-lit vigils? Unknown.
But if we are assessing the housing struggle and wondering where to go from here, I think there are some important observations to be made about the recent past, that speak to where we might focus efforts in the future.
There are many tenants unions and other networks cropping up all over the country that are focusing on a wide variety of issues of concern to renters, but if we were to boil their efforts down to two major demands, they would be the demand for actually affordable housing in the form of real, effective rent control legislation, and the demand for an end to the practice of forced eviction, and any threats to that effect. In other rich countries housing is a guaranteed right, rent control is widespread and practiced effectively, much housing is cooperative or government-owned, and well-maintained, and forced evictions are extremely rare.
Here in Portland, the scene around the Red House on Mississippi Avenue has, overall, been a great example of the potential for eviction defense tactics to change the whole equation when it comes to whether or how often the authorities, real estate investors, landlords, etc., will consider carrying out forced evictions or foreclosures. There is clear reason to believe the local authorities are far less enthusiastic about carrying out forced evictions since their failed effort to evict the residents there in north Portland, in the latter days of 2020.
While there are many cliquish aspects to the elements of the autonomous scene that tend to be attracted to the history and practice of eviction defense — and that’s true in the US and in other countries as well — I think we can say unequivocally that when several dozen people (with the potential of quickly becoming a couple hundred people) are committed enough to risk arrest and police violence, among other things, by re-occupying a house after an eviction was carried out, and then by occupying streets in the neighborhood around the house, setting up fencing and tire spikes to prevent vehicular assaults as people did around the Red House, then we will affect policy moving forward.
Aside from the importance of inclusiveness, and the effectiveness of the various forms of civil disobedience practiced in the course of the Red House eviction resistance, there are other things to note about how events unfolded here in Portland over the course of the past year that might help us think about the next moves.
There are clearly many reasons for Portland being one of the flashpoints of resistance over the past year in the US, and also one of those places where resistance around race and housing most naturally intertwined. I wouldn’t want to under-emphasize the importance of factors like the cost of rent relative to the average wage here (what they call “rent burden”), which, as I mentioned earlier, is the nation’s highest, or the long history of housing discrimination against people of color here. But I think an important psychological element on this front is that so many of the people here, activists or not, moved here after being priced out of New York City, Seattle, or California, and this experience colors their perspective on everything. Many of them — us — feel like we have nowhere else to go, in many ways. Cornered.
Another factor that seems worth noting is the way the local movement organized itself into different blocs responsible for different activities related to maintaining a social movement, from feeding people to caring for their wounds to fixing their cars to providing legal support to providing sound at protests. This phenomenon was not limited to Portland, of course, but was more of an organized thing in some places than in others.
Especially since the January 6th Capitol siege, people, organizations and networks across the political spectrum have been losing their social media accounts. I personally know many people around the world who are solid members of the left, not the sort to be making death threats or spreading outrageous conspiracies, who have lost their Facebook or Twitter accounts in the past few months. Long before all this deplatforming was a big news item in early 2021, the movement in Portland was actively pivoting to stop relying so much on the corporate platforms. Although Twitter is still a very useful place to stay abreast of happenings on the street here if you follow the right accounts of grassroots activists and journalists, activists in Portland increasingly do their communicating in private Signal groups and other more protected spaces, less vulnerable to disappearing at the whim of a Silicon Valley billionaire.
One of these blocs, essentially, has been an initiative I’ve been very involved with called PEER — Portland Emergency Eviction Response. There are several other groups, or committees within larger organizations, involved with doing very much the same sort of thing, such as the eviction defense committee within Portland Tenants United, which itself is part of a broader network of tenants unions that has recently formed, the Autonomous Tenants Union.
On PEER’s website folks can sign up to receive text alerts about evictions that may be happening. PTU’s eviction defense group has a similar setup. PEER’s web and text operation is very intentionally set up independently of any major corporate platforms. Anyone who can receive a text message can sign up, anonymously. As things continue to develop with Big Tech and Big Data, along with the suspensions of so many social media accounts, it becomes more and more clear how important it is for essential communication, and lots else, to be, as much as possible, independent of corporate platforms, and at least slightly less subject to mass surveillance.
As these networks here have been growing, we have made a very conscious effort to plaster the town with stickers. Posters, too, but especially stickers. They last much longer — sometimes months, in prominent places around town. We have focused our stickering campaigns on neighborhoods and parks where protests happen often, as well as near Class C apartment complexes, which can be found all over Portland, in some parts more than others.
The focus on physical media is because we don’t want to just communicate online, and we feel that the physical presence of such messages around town has a different sort of impact than a post on the web. It’s also not subject to Facebook’s insidious algorithms or censorship efforts. The slightly illegal nature of spreading the word by putting stickers on public property, such as on the otherwise blank, shiny steel backs of the many signs poking out of the sidewalks, seems to have a somewhat comforting effect on many people who may be wondering who these eviction defense people are. Whoever they are, they like to deface public property, so maybe they’re OK. The medium communicates as much as the message does.
As the person responsible for answering PEER’s email, I have developed the distinct impression that there are a few folks around town who identify with this nascent eviction defense squad much the same way people who feed the hungry in public parks without a permit identify as Food Not Bombs. In either case, what some people are identifying with is simply a tactic, more than anything else. In the case of Food Not Bombs, you needn’t have met anyone else engaged in the practice, necessarily — if you’re feeding people for free in a public place and risking arrest by doing so, that’s more or less the whole shtick.
And if you believe in eviction abolition, and risking arrest by trespassing or perhaps engaging in other forms of civil disobedience in order to keep people housed, rather than pitched onto the sidewalk, then you’re a PEER of mine and others. It’s just the basic concept of solidarity, coordinated by text mob, rather than the old tin horns of the Rent Strike Wars in the 1840’s, or the telephone trees in the age of the land line.
Or to put this whole update into one sentence:
However big or well-targeted the bailout may be, in all likelihood, lasting change won’t happen until we take on the corporate investor landlord class, demonstrate how much support this cause has, stop business as usual, and force the politicians to pass the kind of legislation that will control the rent, now — not in some capitalist’s imagined future.
STARVE THE PENTAGON, FEED THE PEOPLE
By Tristan Guyette, Commondreams.
March 19, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/starve-the-pentagon-feed-the-people/
It’s Time We Stop Prioritizing Weapons Before Citizens And Re-Evaluate Our Funding Of Nuclear Weapons.
NOTE: It was the Obama-Biden administration that started the $1 trillion program to ‘upgrade’ the US’ nuclear weapons.
Policymakers insist that they cannot afford to provide relief to millions of Americans struggling during a pandemic, cannot afford to provide universal health care, and cannot find funds for education. Despite this, the massive National Defense Authorization Act passes each year in an allegedly bipartisan fashion.
As Democratic Representatives Barbara Lee of California, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, and Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts state in a letter sent to President Biden, “Our federal budget is a statement of our national values, and part of undoing the damage of the last four years is re-evaluating our spending priorities as a nation. That re-evaluation should begin with the Department of Defense.”
The budget for 2021 clocked in at more than $740 billion. Passed during the throes of the pandemic in mid-2020, Congress awarded $130 billion more than requested for the nuclear-armed Columbia class submarine program. While these same legislators whittled down the second round of stimulus payments to Americans to $600, they simultaneously lined defense contractor’s pockets.
These priorities, putting weapons before citizens, are clearly to the detriment of not just those living in the United States, but to those across the globe. The Pentagon intends to request more funding for nuclear weapons this year as part of a Trump Administration-mandated revival of sea-launched cruise missiles, a program that had been retired more than a decade ago under President Obama.
These weapons would eventually equip the Navy with twenty to thirty nuclear-armed submarines, doubling its current fleet size, while also increasing the risk of a mistake or miscalculation, and aggravating relations with China further.
In addition to sea-launched missiles, the Pentagon is also planning to modernize ground-based strategic defense systems despite compelling evidence that this is unnecessary. Located in states such as Nebraska and Colorado, this system replaces intercontinental ballistic missiles, though both are often referred to as the nuclear sponge, based on a strategy of drawing incoming domestic attacks away from major cities.
In essence, the United States has designated these states as sitting ducks, ready to soak up a nuclear attack. Representatives of these states claim the jobs are worth the risk, yet only 18 percent of Americans agree. Not only does the perpetuation of these weapons put these communities at risk, the contract benefits a single manufacturer: Northrop Grumman.
A small portion of the National Defense Authorization Act funds go toward mitigating the damage these nuclear weapons have already caused, by funding retrospective solutions such as cleanup, health care, and victim compensation. Communities impacted by nuclear weapons see little progress year after year, despite the evidence of ongoing harm.
In 2019, reports emerged that the Runit dome was cracking, allowing radioactive waste to seep into the surrounding Pacific ocean. The Runit dome was constructed in 1977 as a temporary measure to contain thousands of gallons of nuclear waste remaining from tests the United States conducted on atolls in the Pacific Ocean from the 1940s to the 1950s. Few improvements have been made since, and U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly denied responsibility.
Despite agreeing to pay $150 million in restitution in 1986, a 2010 hearing makes it clear only a fraction has so far been paid out, decades later.
As climate change causes the tides to rise, Runit will only deteriorate further, and other nuclear waste storage solutions, many near rising tides as well, are at similar risk. The United States has designated Yucca mountain, a space sacred to the Western Shoshone Nation, as a final resting place for U.S. nuclear waste, but protests at the local and legislative levels have stalled construction. This waste has been shuffled around the country while it waits for a final destination, often spending periods of time stored in lower-income areas where residents’ protests are dismissed.
The treatment of the Marshallese underscores a hard truth about U.S. nuclear policy: the abandonment of its long list of victims, spanning from veterans to Indigenous communities. Groups subjected to nuclear fallout from testing, called downwinders, have faced similar neglect from the government that exposed them.
Nearly every year, amendments are offered to the National Defense Authorization Act that would expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, another half-measure offered to victims of nuclear pollution, yet nearly all have failed.
This act, which is set to expire in 2022 unless it’s renewed, currently provides a one-time payment of $50,000 to $100,000 to a select group of victims that does not include New Mexican downwinders. These small payments are a drop in the bucket when one considers the lifetime of various cancers many victims experience. New Mexico, the birthplace of the nuclear age, has documented decades of proof that the nuclear fallout from the Trinity test caused a range of cancers, reproductive issues, and health concerns identical to those of other fallout victims in the included states: Utah, Nevada, and Arizona.
Even if this act is renewed before its expiration next year, it leaves hundreds of thousands of victims and their family members—who are often left to carry the financial burden—behind, including those on the Marshall Islands.
Nuclear weapons pose a grave threat to the climate; they would, if used, rapidly accelerate climate change and cause a nuclear winter. Their very existence and proliferation are a threat to the well-being of the planet. Countless people have already suffered due to the creation of our current arsenal, and expanding it, during a pandemic no less, is a cruel testament to the values of our lawmakers.
Standalone bills have been introduced to solve many of these issues, but they are often championed primarily by representatives from impacted states, or fiercely opposed when money is on the line. The Invest in Cures Before Missiles Act, introduced by Democratic Representatives Ro Khanna of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, shifts funding away from modernizing the ICBM systems and into COVID-19 response. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Representative Joe Courtney of Connecticut have also introduced a bill to halt funding for Trump’s revival of sea-launched cruise missiles.
The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2022 poses a unique opportunity to seize agency over the defense budget and lobby representatives to support amendments such as those that provide compensation for downwinders and move funds away from expensive, redundant weapons programs.
The Biden Administration, in its first defense request, would do well to heed Lee, Pocan, and Auchincloss’s call.
Krystal Ball: Pharma Greed And Biden Cronyism Risking Our Lives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHknIMNaHB0
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