Mexican citizens turn to AMLO recall process

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO8ypzXeHKE

 

 

The Levers Of Power Are Also Triggers

By Patrick Carey, Popular Resistance.
April 9, 2022



https://popularresistance.org/the-levers-of-power-are-also-triggers/






The gruesome atrocities, posted on social media by groups like the Nazi Azov Regiment and the Georgian Militia, are a direct result of the UK and US pushing for more militarism in Ukraine, endorsing hostility towards Russians and extending the conflict by pouring the arms into the hands of these very groups.

The long standing US/UK/NATO project of destabilising the region with the purpose of bringing down the Russian state has actually brought about conditions in which these horrific incidents can occur.

I see clearly that no-one can support the West in the Ukraine conflict without supporting the war there and the ghastly consequences of that war. It is not good enough for liberals and so called socialists to bleat the “aid” mantra when part of that package is “lethal aid”!

The deliberate strategy of the US and its allies from the outset, manifest in the declared intentions coming from the American and British protagonists’ own mouths, and going right back to Hilary Clinton, Brzezinski, and Carter, is of long duration. The plans were there from the beginning; and now the pouring of “lethal aid” into the country and the arming and training of insurgent and Nazi militias has borne ghastly fruit.

Biden’s restatement of the Plan in his recent regime change speech in Poland, “for God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power!”, was endorsed by British Prime Minister Johnson in the Commons just days ago when he agreed with the comment of Johnny Mercer, Tory former minister, in “consigning Vladimir Putin to the dustbin of history where he belongs”.

France and Germany, although still supporting the blatant militarism of the US and U.K., have appeared somewhat more open to the avenue of diplomacy. They have been targeted by the Polish government for being “too soft”. The Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said “Germany, like France, has a strong bias in Moscow’s favour”. (Die Welt). He added that “Poland is not pleased with Germany’s role in Europe”.

In a Guardian article of 3rd April Simon Tisdall writes “Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, is “over-eagerly” pushing for a negotiated deal at the risk, British officials claim, of overriding Kyiv’s best interests.”

Kyiv’s best interests naturally are those which coincide with the US and UK faction in the NATO alliance.

Tisdall’s suggestion that the West’s anti-Russian momentum is stalling is significant and, from my perspective, hopeful. Although Tisdall clearly doesn’t like it, comparing Putin “the deluded, paranoid war criminal” with the “motley crew” of “unreliable western politicians”.

As for going back to the 2014 CIA instigated far-right coup and a now 8-year civil war, as one Twitter comment put it “Airbrushing that out of the story, as Western media does, amounts to deliberate deception”.

The CIA links to and training programme of the neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine stretch back as long, according to the study completed in 2021 by the George Washington University IERES Occasional Papers, no. 11, September 2021 Transnational History of the Far Right Series, republished here https://www.illiberalism.org/far-right-group-made-its-home-in-ukraines-major-western-military-training-hub/

The US and CIA were not alone. In the study the role of countries like the UK, Canada and France in the military training of far right extremist groups and individuals, such as the Ukrainian cross-regiment officer group Centuria, is exposed.

Those who claim human rights as grounds of their acceptance of the US/UK/NATO narrative need now to examine their de facto endorsement of Ukrainian Nazis and these horrific actions that have come to light in recent days.

Shocking videos of tortures and murders of Russian prisoners of war by Ukrainian nationalist militants surfacing on social media have staggeringly undermined the grandstanding on war crimes by Kiev’s “Western partners” who are now exposed as culpable supporters, armourers and trainers of these very murderers.

Ukrainian fascists themselves are posting their atrocities on social media; the ostensible purpose is obscene self-glorification and to sow terror. They also testify inadvertently to admissions of egregious violations of the Geneva Convention, which has resulted in some nervousness on the part of the Ukrainian government; and no doubt measures will be taken to stem the flow in a damage limitation exercise.





However, it is ultimately fortunate, albeit shockingly so, that governments may control mainline media but cannot control the internet nor keep the monsters from damning themselves on it.

US Charitable Donations Are Funding Displacement Of Palestinians

By Mohammed Khatib, Truthout.
April 9, 2022



https://popularresistance.org/us-charitable-donations-are-funding-displacement-of-palestinians/



Several gunshot bangs pierced the sky. Israeli soldiers shot a Palestinian protester with live ammunition. Chants and cheers from Israeli settlers from Modi’in Illit rang out through the air as they stood upon a mound of dirt overlooking the Israeli apartheid wall. Israeli soldiers fired multiple rounds of tear gas into the crowds. As protesters scattered to evade the gas and live fire, young volunteer Palestinian paramedics darted through the tear gas to quickly grab and attend to the injured. That five minutes of Palestinian nonviolent resistance on April 1, 2022, captured the essence of Land Day: Despite facing the heavy hand of the Israeli military, Palestinian protesters and international solidarity activists refused to leave their land.

It’s been 46 years since Land Day, a day when Palestinians organized en masse against the Israeli government’s program of colonization and Indigenous erasure. On March 30, 1976, Palestinians took to their ancestral lands as an act of sumud, of steadfastness, organizing a general strike and protest marches in response to the Israeli government’s decision to confiscate another 20,000 dunams (about 5,000 acres) of Palestinian land in the Galilee. The Israeli state had already taken some 75,000 dunums from the Indigenous communities the previous decade.

Every year since then, many of us have taken time at the end of March to remember the lives of the Palestinian protesters that Israel killed that day: Khair Muhammad Yasin from Arrabeh; Raja Hussein Abu Riya, Khader Abd Khalaila and Khadija Shuwahna from Sakhnin; Muhsin Yusuf Taha from Kafr Kana and Rafat Zuhairi from Nur Shams.

In the Palestinian village of Bil’in, our community honors Land Day and our own family members who resisted Israel’s attempt to take our lands — Bassem Abu Rahma, Islam Bornat and Jawaher Abu Rahma — who were all murdered by Israeli forces.

Land Day has always been a point of national unity, bringing together Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line to resist Israeli colonization. Back in 1976, when the first Land Day occurred, Palestinians understood full well that the land grab by the Israeli government served several purposes. First, the intent was to expand the Jewish-only settlement of Carmiel in the north as a tactic to limit the natural growth of Palestinian towns. Israel’s planning regime has always operated on the premise that by taking away the lands of the surrounding Palestinian villages, the communities would have nowhere left to build — that those families would eventually leave for a life outside of historic Palestine.

Today, it is easy to see this tactic play out over and over again, whether in the expansions of the Har Homa, Gilo and Efrat settlements that sealed in and cut off Bethlehem, or in the building up of the settlements in the Jordan Valley to push Palestinians into ethnic enclaves. For our community of Bil’in, a community of fewer than 3,000 people, Israel has used myriad colonial tactics to take over our land to expand the Modi’in and surrounding outposts. Secondly, taking the land not only restricted the geographical area, but it also transferred material wealth from the local communities to the settlers that came from abroad. This took away millions and millions of dollars of generational wealth that would have otherwise been passed down from generation to generation.

So for the communities of northern Palestine calling for mass mobilization to preserve their lands — Sakhnin, Arrabeh, Deir Hanna, and others — their future was paramount. Like Palestinians have been doing for generations, they took to the streets knowing that they would face the heavy-handed violence of the Israeli state — and that some would likely pay for their resistance to colonial violence with their lives.

As Palestinians made this call to resist, leaders within the Israeli government and significant figures of the Israeli public made demands to “crush” our resolve. On March 28, 1976, the Israeli Minister of Police Shlomo Hillel declared that officers were “ready to break the Arab villages.” Israeli newspapers attempted to delegitimize the resistance, called it “a Moscow-led operation to destroy the state.” Others branded it as a violent, racist movement. Then-Minister of Education Zevulun Hammer described Palestinians “as being a cancer unto the land” — land that had always belonged to Palestinians. With Israel’s general public calling for open violence against these Palestinian communities, days before the protest was even to be held, Israel sent a heavy military presence to the villages, including armored cars. Every Palestinian knew that attending the protest was risking their lives. Not only were they facing physical assaults from the Israeli forces, they were also facing the financial risk of consequences by their Israeli employers for standing up for their own basic human rights.

In Bil’in, we have continued this tradition of steadfast resistance to colonization. Starting in 2005, residents of the community have organized weekly protests against the construction of the apartheid wall and Israeli land theft, literally putting our bodies on the line to defend our lands and illustrate the depth to which we are dedicated to Palestinian rights and self-determination. We have continued on despite the massive personal losses we have endured, including the deaths of our friends and family members, as a result of the violence we face in taking this public stand against Israeli settler-colonialism. We know that without being willing to risk sacrifices of time, energy, resources, and even our bodies and lives, we will not be able to protect — let alone decolonize — an inch of our land.

We have initiated the Campaign to Defund Racism in honor of this tradition, and in light of the vital need to address the structures that allow Israeli settlement to continue. This campaign seeks to stop the exploitation of U.S. charitable status to fund the Israeli settler movement. The campaign addresses the financing of Israeli settler-colonialism, and responds to the decades-long battle to protect our lands and resources from the Galilee to Sheikh Jarrah to Bil’in to the Naqab. As settler organizations coordinate the theft of church properties in Jerusalem and build pressure on the state to displace Naqab Bedouins, we need our allies to take a proactive approach to change the laws in their communities to support our struggle on the ground.

These settler organizations — the Israel Land Fund, Ateret Cohanim, Regavim, and others — are the organizations that use hundreds of millions of dollars to shape Israel’s program of Indigenous displacement. Look at Regavim, which is using U.S. charitable dollars to evict the community of Khan Ahmar. Ateret Cohanim is taking over the Petra Hotel at the Jaffa Gate. Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem and founder of the Israeli Land Fund, Arieh King, targets the families of Sheikh Jarrah.

The Palestinians who are most at risk are calling on U.S. attorneys general to enforce the policies guiding charitable funding, cutting off the material resources of the settler organizations that are systematically and discriminatorily targeting our families for displacement. As Palestinians continue to sacrifice their livelihoods and risk their lives to protest and challenge Israel’s system of apartheid and settler colonialism, we are calling on people of conscience in the United States to stand in solidarity with vulnerable Palestinian communities. U.S. residents can join us in calling on their local representatives and elected officials, demanding that they take action to ensure that U.S. charitable donations are not financing ethnic cleansing and forced displacement.

Obama Reminds Us That Democrats Remain The More Effective Evil

https://popularresistance.org/barack-obama-reminds-us-that-the-democrats-remain-the-more-effective-evil-of-imperialism/










By Danny Haiphong, The Chronicles of Haiphong.


April 9, 2022
Educate!

Obama’s First Visit To The White House Since His Presidency Was Celebrated By The Neoliberal Establishment.

But His True Legacy Should Not Be Forgotten.

On April 5th, Barack Obama visited the White House to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Democratic Party loyalists expressed great enthusiasm for Obama’s return to the White House over social media. Congressional Democrats flocked around the former President and took full advantage of the photo opportunity. President Joe Biden also used the occasion to announce an Executive Order that will allow about 200,000 people to gain access to the ACA marketplace beginning in 2023. An atmosphere of confidence surrounded the White House despite Biden’s recent polling numbers which suggest that the Democrats find themselves mired in a crisis of legitimacy.

That Obama’s popularity remains high is a reminder of the Democratic Party’s role as the more effective evil of imperialism. Under Obama, endless austerity and war reigned supreme. Some notable achievements of the “first Black President” include:
The transfer of trillions of public wealth into private hands via the bail out of Wall Street.
The bombing and destruction of Libya in 2011, the most prosperous African country at the time.
A world historic refugee crisis that was precipitated by U.S. wars on Syria, Somalia, and across the Middle East and North Africa.
The mass privatization of public education through Obama’s DOE policy, Race to the Top.
The Affordable Care Act, which provided public subsidies for the very private health insurance monopolies that created the healthcare crisis in the United States.
The failure of Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ) to use its powers under the Fair Sentencing Act to release thousands of prisoners convicted under racist War on Drug policies.
The creation and enforcement of a “Kill List” which unilaterally targeted Muslims for assassination and drone strike, including U.S. citizens.
The expansion of the surveillance state to include the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens by the military and the unprecedented prosecution of whistleblowers.
The deportation of 2.5 million undocumented people also known as “immigrants.”
The reckless military encirclement of Russia and China, a policy that threatens to bring about a World War III scenario currently taking shape under Joe Biden.

This just scratches the surface of what the Obama era wrought on the people and the planet. In 2016, I wrote a ten-part series that expounds upon Obama’s policies and their significance to the class struggle. Part ten of the series concluded that Obama was a weapon of counterinsurgency wielded by the ruling class to neutralize the most left-leaning section of the U.S. population: Black America. Black politics moved furthest to the right than at any other point in history. Anti-war activists abandoned the peace movement and the entire left was consumed by a state of Obama-mania which has yet to recede fully.




This is evidenced by the fact that Biden and the Democrats continue to escape mass protest for their ongoing role in expanding the deportation, military, and policing regimes. Austerity and endless war are rarely attributed to Joe Biden despite his decades-long career in facilitating the immiseration of the working class. However, the political landscape isn’t completely hopeless. Under Obama, Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter arose out of the disillusionment created by the Democratic Party administration. Biden’s plummeting public approval rating, the rise of organized labor, and the U.S.’s self-imposed isolation on the global stage presents positive and legitimate threats to the empire’s hegemony.

Democratic Party regimes have politicized countless millions about the realities of the U.S. empire, including myself. The eradication of welfare, the enormous expansion of mass incarceration, and the whitewashing of U.S. militarism were staples of the Clinton era. The deregulation of Wall Street plunged my family into enormous debt. My father refinanced our childhood home twice to help pay it off only to watch his children take on enormous student loan debt. Clinton’s War on Drugs relegated a number of my Black peers to a criminalized and impoverished existence.

Still, many in the liberal and left-leaning working class believed their lives were better off under Bill Clinton’s rule. People were propagandized to believe that the U.S. was a more peaceful and prosperous place even as the Democrats were building a bipartisan machinery of endless war and austerity. Obama only worsened the situation. The Democrats under Obama were able to expand the imperialist regime of exploitation and war to lengths that the GOP could only have dreamt of at the time. Only Obama could bomb an African country amid the Occupy Wall Street uprisings and escape without significant consequences to his reputation or legitimacy.

It was in this moment that I realized that the Democratic Party was the more effective evil of the U.S. imperialist system. It was a lonely period, one where the Left was more likely to defend Obama than oppose wars or attribute the ongoing decline in living standards to his administration. But Joe Biden’s flailing administration is pregnant with possibilities and challenges. Mass support for progressive, socialist-ish policies like Medicare for All exists alongside a hesitation among large sections of the Left to confront Joe Biden head on. Biden’s escalations with Russia threaten a global conflagration and have done little to increase confidence in his administration.

Joe Biden is merely a placeholder presidency. He was chosen by the elite to eradicate the threat of Bernie Sanders-style reform and give the Democrats time to find a suitable corporate candidate. Biden possesses neither Obama’s capacity to lie to the people nor the protection that the reputation of being the “first Black President” affords. In many ways, Obama’s presidency was the last gasp of U.S. imperialism from the standpoint of public relations.

Obama’s appearance at the White House further reminds us that nothing will change until self-described leftists confront the Democratic Party’s role as the more effective servant of imperialism and corporate power. The Biden era offers an opportunity to do just that. But for any movement to be successful, leftists will need to build an army of politically educated revolutionaries willing to face down the demons spawned under 8-years of Obama-mania. The first commitment of a revolutionary is to the truth. This means that exposing Obama’s true legacy and how it has brought humanity to its current moment of crisis is one of our central tasks in the struggle against the bipartisan consensus on war and austerity spearheaded by the Biden administration.

Ukrainian Tochka-U Missile Killed Dozens At Kramatorsk Train Station

https://popularresistance.org/ukrainian-tochka-u-missile-killed-dozens-at-kramatorsk-train-station/










By Moon of Alabama.


April 9, 2022
Educate!


The current top headline of the New York Times is:


Live Updates: Russia Strikes Train Station, Ukraine Says, as Thousands Flee From East

“Dozens” were feared dead and injured, a local official said, after a missile strike in Kramatorsk, which had been a main point of evacuation for people trying to leave eastern Ukraine.

CNN quotes an Ukrainian military official who described it as an Iskander missile strike:


Two missiles struck the station, according to the head of Ukraine’s national rail system, Oleksandr Kamyshin. Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of Donetsk regional military administration, said the Russian military used Iskander short-range ballistic missiles.

A pro-Ukrainian twitter account also describes this as a result of the missile attack (the time stamp is UTC+2):



The same account describes this as the remains of the booster section of the missile that hit the train station:



The picture in full size:



Another view of the debris from a different account:



A check with Tineye proves that the pictures above have not be published earlier. They are new.

The booster section of a missile typically departs from the war head in mid-flight and lands separately. However, the booster section shown in the above pictures is from a Tochka-U missile.

Here are pictures from GlobalSecurity.org of the SS-21 SCARAB (9K79 Tochka) system. The booster section is the aft half to the right:



When unfolded the fins and the grid stabilizers are clearly identifiable.



Russia, unlike the Ukraine, is no longer using Tochka-U missiles. They have been replaced by Iskandar missile systems. As the not recently edited Wikipedia entry about Tochka operators says:


Russia – 220 launchers. Missile systems have been upgraded since 2004 (replacing the onboard automated control systems) and are scheduled to be replaced by the 9K720 Iskander missiles by 2020

In a March 16 press release Russia denied that its forces still use Tochka-U missiles:


UNITED NATIONS, March 16. /TASS/. Tochka-U tactical missiles are not in service in Russian Armed Forces, Russian mission to the UN said in its letter to the UN Security Council and General Assembly.

“Given the proven record of the Kiev regime promoting false allegations and fake evidence, it should be noted that Tochka-U tactical missiles are not in service in the Russian Armed Forces,” the letter says.

Ukraine, which has retained some 90 launcher systems for Tochka-U missiles from Soviet times, has recently fired several of these against Russian and Donbas forces.

I have failed to find any recent reports of the use of Tochka missiles by Russian forces.

This clipping from the most recent Southfront map shows Kramatorsk right in the middle and not immediately near the frontline.



A current situation report says that Russia has recently systematically disabled train tracks along the Ukrainian supply lines to the Donbas front:


As the big showdown in Donbass looms, a lot of forces are pouring in on both sides. Russia has shifted strategies and is now striking railway stations and reinforcement hubs / corridors, as many have hoped it would do. Overnight there were several reports of important railway hubs being hit by missiles. One near Zhytomir, which is possibly the single most important reinforcement hub to the frontlines in all of western Ukraine. Reinforcements being sent to frontlines were reportedly destroyed in the strike, though there’s no visual confirmation. And another in Kharkov region – just south, in Lozovaya – which evoked a video message plea from the Kharkov mayor who said railways were hit, oil has run out, but pleaded for people not to flee (presumably because the militants who control him need citizens to use as hostages / human shields just like in Mariupol).



Of note is that so far all Russian attacks on train junctions were reported to have happened at night time.

As Russia has already interrupted the train lines west of Kramatorsk, and thereby stopped resupplies to it, it has no need to attack Kramatorsk station at all.

It is therefore almost assured that it was a Ukrainian missile that today hit Kramatorsk station. It was either aimed badly, went off course or was intentionally aimed at it for propaganda purposes. (The ‘for the children’ marking in Russian on the booster section may point to the later cause.)

We have no further information for us to decide which is the case.

Venezuela’s Economy Will Grow 20% In 2022, Despite Illegal US Sanctions

By Ben Norton, Multipolarista.
April 9, 2022



https://popularresistance.org/venezuelas-economy-will-grow-20-in-2022-despite-illegal-us-sanctions-predicts-western-bank/


Major Switzerland-based bank Credit Suisse forecasts Venezuela’s real GDP growth to be 20% in 2022 and 8% in 2023.

This is despite an illegal US blockade, which starved the government of 99% of its revenue, according to the top UN expert on sanctions.

The major Switzerland-based bank Credit Suisse has predicted that Venezuela’s real GDP growth will be 20% in 2022.

The prominent Western financial institution also forecasted that Venezuela’s real GDP will increase by an additional 8% in 2023.

These predictions come despite an illegal US blockade imposed on Venezuela, which has starved the government of revenue, locked it out of the international financial system, and fueled an economic crisis.

The top United Nations expert on sanctions estimated that the Venezuelan government lost 99% of its revenue due to the Western unilateral coercive measures, which are illegal under international law.

“Unilateral sanctions increasingly imposed by the United States, the European Union and other countries have exacerbated the [economic crisis],” stated Alena Douhan, the UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, after she took a two-week fact-finding trip to Venezuela in February 2021.

“The Government’s revenue was reported to shrink by 99% with the country currently living on 1% of its pre-sanctions income,” Douhan wrote, adding, “Remittances from abroad have decreased due to the blocking of state assets and the complexity of – and impediments to – bank transfers.”

“The hardening of sanctions faced by the country since 2015 undermines the potential positive impact of the current reforms as well as the state’s capacity to maintain infrastructure and implement social projects,” the UN expert warned.

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves and its economy is heavily dependent on production, but the US blockade has made it very difficult for Caracas to export its crude. Many countries, even US allies, fear being hit by Washington’s secondary sanctions if they trade with Venezuela.

Yet despite these suffocating and illegal Western sanctions, Venezuela’s economy is back on the path toward growth.

Ecuador’s leftist former president Rafael Correa tweeted a screenshot of an April 6, 2022 Credit Suisse report on Venezuela, which appears to be private, predicting 20% growth in 2022 and 8% growth in 2023.

“These are not typos!” the Swiss bank wrote. “If we are accurate, these might end up being among the strongest growth prints globally for these years.”




In addition to being an influential politician, Correa is a renowned economist, with a PhD in economics.

Correa and some of his former officials have provided economic advising to the Venezuelan government during this difficult period under blockade by the United States.

In 2015, President Barack Obama signed an executive order declaring Venezuela to be a supposed “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

This executive order opened the floodgate for the US government to impose grueling sanctions on Venezuela.

In 2019, President Donald Trump escalated the already existing US sanctions on Venezuela into a full-on embargo. Washington and several European capitals also illegally froze and/or seized all of Caracas’ foreign assets, worth billions of dollars.

This brutal economic warfare supplemented a coup attempt that the United States was leading in Venezuela, forcing allies to recognize unelected right-wing opposition politician Juan Guaidó as supposed “interim president” of the country.

Washington was ultimately unable to topple Venezuela’s democratically elected president, Nicolás Maduro, of the United Socialist Party (PSUV), which was founded by revolutionary former president Hugo Chávez.

But the relentless US economic war on Venezuela did stoke a crisis of runaway inflation.

The Chavista government has managed to rein in this hyperinflation. Venezuela’s inflation was just 1.7% in February 2022 – lower than other countries in Latin America.

Credit Suisse’s prediction of 20% Venezuelan growth in 2022 and 8% more in 2023 shows that the worst of this US-fueled economic crisis has passed.

Part of this recovery can be attributed to the massive rise in the price of oil.

Venezuela’s economy is very dependent on oil exports, and has been for a century, since well before leftist Hugo Chávez became president in 1999 and subsequently launched the Bolivarian Revolution.

Credit Suisse said its forecast “is largely based on the expectation that [Venezuela’s] oil GDP will rise more than 20%.”

In March and April 2021, the price of a barrel of crude oil was around $20. By March and April 2022, it had skyrocketed to more than $100.

But the Venezuelan government has put significant energy and resources into diversifying its economy beyond oil production.

China, Russia, and Iran have also helped Venezuela find economic alternatives and soften the destructive impact of illegal Western sanctions.

Black Political Distraction

By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report.
April 9, 2022



https://popularresistance.org/black-political-distraction/




Having a new Black SCOTUS justice or bringing Barack Obama out of retirement for a photo opportunity won’t raise Joe Biden’s poll numbers or stave off defeat in the mid-term elections.

Only fulfilling campaign promises and giving the people what they need will help Biden and the democrats.

The Black political class and the democratic party are once again infantilizing Black voters instead of giving them what they need and want. They pass useless legislation and stage political performances because they have lost the trust of the people. Biden’s poll numbers continue to drop. He now has a lackluster 40 percent approval rating for the simple reason that he hasn’t done what he promised during his 2020 presidential campaign.

Biden said he would provide student loan debt relief, raise the minimum wage, and improve the government response to the covid crisis. His friends in corporate media covered for him by claiming that stimulus and child tax credit payments would “cut child poverty in half.” That claim was never true and now that tax credit is gone along with the much touted Build Back Better legislation. Not only does covid continue to kill, with 1 million dead in the past two years, but the millions of Americans who are uninsured no longer have free treatment, testing, or vaccinations.

The Black political class have so little to show for their efforts that they now resort to passing legislation so meaningless that it insults the collective intelligence of Black people. One example is the passage of the Emmett Till Anti Lynching bill. Congress failed to pass anti-lynching legislation when the public murder of Black people was a common occurrence. But now the lynchers are not local white citizens councils and Ku Klux Klan members. It is the police who kill an average of three people every day, and one of those persons will be Black.

Despite this continuing bloodshed committed against their constituents, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has never even attempted to pass legislation which would protect the public from summary police execution. There is plenty of kente cloth and posturing but the CBC go along with Biden’s plan to add $30 billion in funding to states and localities to hire more police, the people who actually commit lynch law in this country.

When they aren’t virtue signaling about lynching, Black politicians are passing legislation about hairstyles. The legislation, Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair (CROWN Act) would prohibit discrimination against people with natural hair. The House of Representatives passed the CROWN Act but it faces what is called an uncertain future in the Senate. That means it probably won’t be taken up at all.

No Black person is in favor of hair based discrimination, but there are far more important issues that need to be addressed. The democrats are rightfully worried about the November 2022 mid-term elections and are in danger of losing control of the House. Their response is what one would expect from a faux leftish party.

They bring out their faux leftish former president, Barack Obama . Obama appeared at the white house to celebrate the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare. Obamacare enshrined corporate control over health care and gave people the right to purchase insurance which is too expensive. Medicaid expansion was the most important aspect of Obamacare but it was never accepted by most of the southern states, the region with the largest Black population.

Pulling out the Barack Obama card didn’t help Hillary Clinton secure votes where she needed them in 2016. Similarly, his presence is unlikely to help Biden in 2022. Biden and the democrats are hamstrung by their reliance on the oligarchic class, the people he promised, “Nothing will fundamentally change.” They won’t allow Build Back Better or student loan debt relief or universal health care and so the people go without what they need the most. Thus the CROWN Act is born.

The problem for Biden and the democrats is that the entire political system is in disrepute. They post on Twitter about expensive health care and give the impression they will actually do something about this crisis. But they can’t fool all the people all the time. Inflation is eating away at the well being of millions of people. The party in power takes a hit when times are hard. Ridiculous propaganda about “Putin’s price hike” won’t get the votes they need.

Senator Cory Booker may wax elegiac about the CROWN Act, or move Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown-Jackson to tears with maudlin oratory, but those performances won’t move the needle as much as democrats hope. Booker and his colleagues are joined at the hip with Biden and none of them even go through the motions of asking a hard question.

Ultimately the people are the losers, getting none of what they need while being fed very obvious propaganda. It is true that nothing has fundamentally changed. Black voters know it and they will not fall for the charade on Election Day.