Instagram And Facebook Remove Posts Offering Abortion Pills

https://popularresistance.org/instagram-and-facebook-remove-posts-offering-abortion-pills/





By Amanda Seitz, Associated Press. July 1, 2022





Facebook and Instagram have begun promptly removing posts that offer abortion pills to women who may not be able to access them following a Supreme Court decision that stripped away constitutional protections for the procedure.

Such social media posts ostensibly aimed to help women living in states where preexisting laws banning abortion suddenly snapped into effect on Friday. That’s when the high court overruled Roe v. Wade, its 1973 decision that declared access to abortion a constitutional right.

Memes and status updates explaining how women could legally obtain abortion pills in the mail exploded across social platforms. Some even offered to mail the prescriptions to women living in states that now ban the procedure.

Almost immediately, Facebook and Instagram began removing some of these posts, just as millions across the U.S. were searching for clarity around abortion access. General mentions of abortion pills, as well as posts mentioning specific versions such as mifepristone and misoprostol, suddenly spiked Friday morning across Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and TV broadcasts, according to an analysis by the media intelligence firm Zignal Labs.

By Sunday, Zignal had counted more than 250,000 such mentions.

The AP obtained a screenshot on Friday of one Instagram post from a woman who offered to purchase or forward abortion pills through the mail, minutes after the court ruled to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.

“DM me if you want to order abortion pills, but want them sent to my address instead of yours,” the post on Instagram read.

Instagram took it down within moments. Vice Media first reported on Monday that Meta, the parent of both Facebook and Instagram, was taking down posts about abortion pills.

On Monday, an AP reporter tested how the company would respond to a similar post on Facebook, writing: “If you send me your address, I will mail you abortion pills.”

The post was removed within one minute.

The Facebook account was immediately put on a “warning” status for the post, which Facebook said violated its standards on “guns, animals and other regulated goods.”

Yet, when the AP reporter made the same exact post but swapped out the words “abortion pills” for “a gun,” the post remained untouched. A post with the same exact offer to mail “weed” was also left up and not considered a violation.

Marijuana is illegal under federal law and it is illegal to send it through the mail.

Abortion pills, however, can legally be obtained through the mail after an online consultation from prescribers who have undergone certification and training.

In an email, a Meta spokesperson pointed to company policies that prohibit the sale of certain items, including guns, alcohol, drugs and pharmaceuticals. The company did not explain the apparent discrepancies in its enforcement of that policy.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed in a tweet Monday that the company will not allow individuals to gift or sell pharmaceuticals on its platform, but will allow content that shares information on how to access pills. Stone acknowledged some problems with enforcing that policy across its platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram.

“We’ve discovered some instances of incorrect enforcement and are correcting these,” Stone said in the tweet.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Friday that states should not ban mifepristone, the medication used to induce an abortion.

“States may not ban mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy,” Garland said in a Friday statement.

But some Republicans have already tried to stop their residents from obtaining abortion pills through the mail, with some states like West Virginia and Tennessee prohibiting providers from prescribing the medication through telemedicine consultation.

Supreme Court Restricts EPA’s Ability To Fight Climate Crisis

https://popularresistance.org/supreme-court-restricts-epas-ability-to-fight-climate-crisis/



By Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. July 1, 2022



The Supreme Court has restricted the ability of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to fight the climate crisis.

In a 6 to 3 ruling on Thursday, the nation’s highest court ruled that the Clean Air Agency does not empower the EPA to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants without prior Congressional approval. Yet the decision comes on the heels of a global sweep of early heat waves that have made the necessity of climate action ever more apparent.

“Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change,” Justice Elana Kagan wrote in a scathing dissent. “And let’s say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the Court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions. The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.”




The decision could have wide-ranging implications for the federal government’s ability to regulate not just greenhouse gas emissions but other matters of public and environmental health, yet it all revolves around a policy that is no longer in place.

The initial case, West Virginia v. EPA, was a response to the Obama-era Clean Power Plan requiring states to reduce power emissions by transitioning away from coal plants, as AP News explained. West Virginia and other Republican-led states argued that the EPA should not be able to impose a major economic shift by targeting coal plants without the say-so of elected officials, as The Guardian explained. The Supreme Court blocked the plan from going into effect while the lawsuits continued, and the Trump administration’s EPA then jettisoned it entirely and took a more limited approach, according to AP News. This, in turn, was challenged by mostly Democratic states and struck down by a federal appeals court in Washington. In the end, market forces ultimately achieved the emissions reductions that the Obama administration had sought with its initial plan, as coal plants shut down on their own.

“West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency is a case about an environmental regulation that no longer exists, that never took effect, and that would not have accomplished very much if it had taken effect,” Vox’s Ian Millhiser wrote.

Yet the decision could have major impacts for the regulatory state. In his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts agreed that major social or economic shifts should be dictated by Congress, not federal agencies.

“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day,’” he wrote. “But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme. A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body.”

The decision was entirely along ideological lines, with the five other conservative judges siding with Roberts and the two other liberals siding with Kagan, as CNBC reported.

The Biden administration has set a goal of eliminating power sector emissions — which are currently around 30 percent of the U.S. total — by 2035, according to AP News. Its plan to actually deal with those emissions is supposed to be completed by the end of this year.“This is another devastating decision from the Court that aims to take our country backwards,” White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan said in a statement reported by Reuters. “While the Court’s decision risks damaging our ability to keep our air clean and combat climate change, President Biden will not relent in using the authorities that he has under law to protect public health and tackle the climate change crisis.”

The decision also comes as Congress has consistently failed to enact meaningful climate legislation, as a recent attempt was stymied by Republican Senators and Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, The Guardian noted.

“By insisting instead that an agency can promulgate an important and significant climate rule only by showing ‘clear congressional authorization’ at a time when the court knows that Congress is effectively dysfunctional, the court threatens to upend the national government’s ability to safeguard the public health and welfare at the very moment when the United States, and all nations, are facing our greatest environmental challenge of all: climate change,” Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus told The New York Times.

The decision is part of a broader trend by the current court to limit the regulatory authority of federal agencies. In recent decisions, it also shot down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s ability to halt evictions during the coronavirus pandemic and the ability of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to enforce COVID-19 vaccination mandates for large employers.

“This court in one term has basically dismantled the administrative state,” City University of New York law professor Rebecca Bratspies told Vox.

In response to the ruling, environmental groups urged both the EPA and Congress to keep working to reduce emissions.

“EPA has no choice. It must make do with the authority it retains to quickly advance as robust a set of power plant standards as it can,” Union of Concerned Scientists President Johanna Chao Kreilick said in a statement emailed to EcoWatch. “However, climate action cannot stop there. Congress must expeditiously enact robust and equitable clean energy and climate legislation. As the mounting toll borne by communities across the country and around the world makes clear, climate change is here, today, and there’s no time left to waste.”

Healthcare Workers’ Struggles Continue Across The US

https://popularresistance.org/health-care-workers-struggles-continue-across-the-us/




By WSWS. July 1, 2022



Nurses and other health care workers across the nation are rising up in a growing wave of strikes and protests against understaffing, lack of crucial supplies, exhausting workloads and the erosion of their living standards by the sharp rise in inflation.

Conditions for health care workers around the world have been greatly worsened by the response of the ruling class to the pandemic. Many are leaving the profession, further deepening the crisis. According to a March 24 report in Healthcare IT News, 90 percent of US nurses are considering leaving the profession.

Not only must nurses handle inhuman levels of stress at work, but they are also facing criminal prosecution as they struggle to perform their duties safely under impossible conditions. The case of RaDonda Vaught, who was arrested after a fatal medication error, was met with a mass mobilization of nurses which was able keep her from having to serve prison time. But nurses continue to be victimized, as can be seen in the case of Michelle Heughins and over 100 nursing home workers in Ohio .

The growing struggles of health care workers is producing a direct collision with the pro-corporate unions, which have done nothing to oppose these conditions and are instead working to suppress and block opposition. Nurses unions are seeking instead to promote inadequate legislation, such as national nurse-to-patient ratios, Bernie Sanders’ dead-in-the-water “Medicare for All” bill and workplace violence legislation will do nothing to address critical issues for health care workers across the nation.

Nurses in the US have taken an important step by forming a national steering committee to build rank-and-file committees in every hospital and health care facility to fight the victimization of medical workers. To learn more and form a rank-and-file committee in your hospital or workplace, please send in your information here and a member of the steering committee will reach out to you.

Below are a selection of the major developments across the United States.
Portland, Oregon

The Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) announced Thursday afternoon a new tentative agreement for 1,600 nurses at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center. While the union loudly claimed this a “NURSE VICTORY,” the reality is this is a victory for the ONA, which now has an opportunity to avoid a strike, set for July 11.

As of this writing, the actual contract has yet to be sent to the rank-and-file membership. On social media, ONA Vice-President Jessica Lobell confirmed that the contract signing bonus was removed in the final version of the tentative agreement.

Lobell also signaled that there would not be other major gains for nurses, while simultaneously trying to undercut the need for a strike, stating, “I cannot emphasize enough that we will not get everything we want in this round no matter if we strike or not.”
Northern California

At Seton Medical Center in Daly City, 300 nurses went on a two-day strike on June 22- 23. Seton nurses have been in contract negotiations since December 2021, and nurses told WSWS reporters that they are working without basic supplies, such as fresh linens, bath wipes and diapers. Nurses also stated they are frequently forced to work around broken equipment, such as elevators and CT machines.

Staffing is inadequate, with nurses reporting that they are out of the legally mandated state ratios on a daily basis and are asked in addition to perform duties of other workers such as transporters and janitors to cover shortages. These intolerable conditions have led to roughly 80 nurses leaving the hospital within the last two years.

June 18 also marked two months since a one-day strike by roughly 8,000 nurses at 15 Sutter Health facilities across the region. Nurses were then locked out for an additional five days after the strike by hospital administrators and have now been on the job without a contract for an entire year. The California Nurses Association (CNA) was compelled to call the strike after a nearly unanimous strike authorization vote in March. The hospital’s contract proposal included a pitiful 2 percent annual wage increase and did not address nurses’ concerns over inadequate staffing and personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies.
Newark, New Jersey

More than 300 nurses, respiratory therapists, radiology technicians and other workers have returned to their jobs at Saint Michael’s Medical Center in Newark, New Jersey, after a strike of nearly four and a half weeks. The Jersey Nurses Economic Security Organization (JNESO) used thoroughly undemocratic means to end the strike and impose an austerity contract on the workers.

According to the deal, workers will receive annual raises of only 3 percent, less than half the current rate of inflation. Another cruel aspect of the contract is that these workers have been saddled with a health insurance plan with high co-pays and a $5,700 deductible.

From the beginning, JNESO focused its efforts on isolating the strike as it conducted closed-door negotiations with management under the auspices of a federal mediator. The union never paid a cent in strike pay, never called on workers at other hospitals owned by Prime Healthcare or even workers at other Newark hospitals to support the Saint Michael’s workers.
Twin Cities, Minnesota

One month has passed since contracts expired for 12,500 nurses in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro region. The Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) has only called for informational picketing and is remaining quiet about the status of contract talks.

In addition, contracts for some 2,500 nurses at Essentia and St. Luke’s hospitals expired on June 30. Nurses at two other smaller regional hospitals in Moose Lake and Hastings also have contracts that have recently expired, bringing the total amount of nurses working without a contract in the Twin Cities region to 15,000. The MNA has yet to even call for a strike vote, instead calling only for limited “informational pickets” to let workers blow off steam.

The MNA is also working to keep opposition safely directed behind the Democratic Party. The “Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act,” which is stalled in the state legislature, does not even address staffing ratios but only establishes state-controlled “staffing committees,” which will do nothing to address the conditions nurses face.
San Diego, California

At Palomar Health in San Diego, 3,000 nurses and health care workers—who had voted by 96 percent to strike—had their strike called off at the last minute by the CNA and Caregivers and Healthcare Employees Union (CHEU). They announced a sellout tentative agreement and rushed a vote, leaving workers with little to no time to fully review the contract.

The union is boasting about “strong” health and safety “language,” the establishment of “committees” where “RNs and caregivers meet with management to address patient care concerns.” The establishment of these committees will do nothing to actually deal with insufficient staff-to-patient ratios, allowing burnout rates to increase and endangering patients. The contract also contained a paltry 10.25 percent minimum wage “raise” over the life of the contract, which comes out to approximately 3.41 percent per year, far below skyrocketing inflation rates.
Los Angeles, California

After a planned strike was called off at the last minute at Long Beach Medical Center/Miller’s Children’s & Women’s Hospital last Wednesday, the CNA managed to push through a concessions contract. As is common practice for the union, workers could not review the full text of the contract until the day of the vote.

While the union has praised the contract for securing staffing increases, there is little beyond the promise of a “professional practice committee,” an advisory body of nurses connected to the union which will hold meetings on the issue of staffing shortages.

On June 23, 1,000 Los Angeles Kaiser nurses also went on a one-day strike. Kaiser LA nurses have been working without a contract since September of last year and report that staffing is so dire they are unable to care for patients safely and rarely take regular lunch breaks
Ann Arbor, Michigan

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, the contract for 6,200 nurses at Michigan Medicine expired on June 30. The management of the hospital affiliated with University of Michigan is determined to impose a concessionary contract with pay increases that do not keep pace with inflation, relentless mandatory overtime and an oppressive on-call system.

After months of negotiations, the Michigan Nurses Association (MNA) and University of Michigan Professional Nurse Council (UMPNC) have done nothing to mobilize the strength of nurses, instead isolating nurses from other workers in the same hospital system as well as nurses at other hospitals across the state who suffer under the same conditions.

The nurses unions have attempted to direct opposition among nurses into dead-end appeals to the millionaires and billionaires on the university’s board of regents. Refusing to mobilize the strength of the nurses, the UMPNC has not called for a strike authorization vote, telling their membership that hospital management will not back down from its demands for concessions. Instead, they have arranged for an informational picket on July 16, over two weeks after the expiration of their contract.

Machinists’ Retirees 751 Resolve To End ACO REACH

https://popularresistance.org/machinists-retirees-751-resolve-to-end-aco-reach/



By Kay Tillow, Popular Resistance. July 1, 2022



On June 13th the International Association of Machinists IAM 751 Retirement Club voted overwhelmingly to end the privatization of Medicare and to send their resolution to their congressional delegation, to President Biden, and to Secretary Xavier Becerra at Health and Human Services.

Machinists’ District 751 represents 27,000 members who work at Boeing and some smaller shops across the state of Washington. It is one of the largest organizations within the IAM.

The privatization scheme the 751 Retirement Club opposes is ACO REACH, formerly called direct contracting entities (DCE). It is a pilot program in which seniors who chose traditional Medicare are placed, without their consent, into plans that are run by insurance companies, private equity, and venture capitalists who can take as high as 40% in overhead and profit from the Medicare program.

These plans can be implemented across all of Medicare without a vote from Congress. Officials in charge of the program have said they intend to have all the traditional Medicare beneficiaries in such for-profit programs by 2030.

Tom Lux, who lives just north of Seattle and is Treasurer of the 751 Retirement Club, brought the resolution before the Club at its regular business meeting. Lux worked at the Everett Plant of Boeing and then on the staff of the union’s training and safety program

Lux explained that he first spoke with the retiree legislative representative who was fully supportive of the resolution against ACO REACH and agreed to present it, but he was unable to attend the meeting so Lux made the presentation.

“I talked about the Medicare direct contracting pilot program that Trump initiated where equity firms and insurance companies could come in and basically buy up clinics and medical facilities and move people over to that private system without having to really notify them or explain to Medicare recipients that they were now in a different system,” Lux told the members.

“I mentioned that there is about $1.6 trillion in the Medicare Trust Fund that these private equity firms and insurance companies are just waiting to get at—to make a profit—and I emphasized that the idea was that they wanted to make a profit off of health care even though people who are in traditional Medicare are there because they don’t want the profit motive in their health system.”

The Biden administration has announced that the direct contracting entities pilot will be replaced at the end of the year by ACO REACH, a new name for a program that has essentially the same characteristics of bringing private equity and profits between seniors and their physicians.

“I feel that the Biden administration is getting bad advice,” Lux told the members. “They basically just tweaked some of the direct contracting language and now call it ACO REACH. I explained that was an acronym and that pilot will begin in January 2023, if we don’t stop it. I mentioned that public health advocates across the country see almost no difference between ACO REACH and Trump’s direct contracting that’s basically privatizing the last public health system that we have.”

Following discussion and some questions which Lux answered, the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the resolution.

Lux was aware of the issue because he is also a member of the Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action (PSARA) which has spearheaded an educational program around ACO REACH. Lux is urging other retiree organizations and unions to pass a resolution and take action to get their congressional delegation to join in opposition to ACO REACH.

“We have to educate our members on what is going on, and we have to let the administration know that we do not want any type of privatization of traditional Medicare, in fact we should be looking to improve it. When they say this is an improvement, we do not agree with that assessment at all,” he concluded.

(Please sign the petition to President Biden asking for an end to ACO REACH, and forward any resolutions passed to nursenpo@aol.com so that your action can inspire others.)

(Text of the IAM 751 Retirement Club Resolution)
RESOLUTION TO STOP PRIVATIZING OUR MEDICARE SYSTEM

Whereas, since 1965 Medicare has been our national health care system for seniors and the disabled in the United States; and

Whereas, traditional Medicare holds sacred the relationship between Medicare beneficiaries and their chosen health care provider; and

Whereas, traditional Medicare, is a public good, and should not be privatized; and

Whereas, the Trump administration opened the door to the complete privatization of Medicare through a Direct Contracting pilot program allowing private equity firms, insurance companies, and corporate health businesses to directly contract to provide Medicare services; and

Whereas, the prospect of Wall Street getting a piece of what is projected to be $ 1.6 trillion of annual Medicare spending by 2028 has led to a rush to buy-up Accountable Care Organizations for managing Medicare services; and

Whereas, the Biden administration ended the Direct Contracting pilot and rebranded it as the ACO REACH (Accountable Care Organization Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health) pilot to begin in January of 2023; and

Whereas, public health advocates across the country see little difference between ACO REACH and the Direct Contracting pilot, since both pilot programs allow third party private entities to wedge themselves between patients and their healthcare providers and to draw down the Medicare Trust Fund by making huge profits in several ways, including weakening services for Medicare beneficiaries; now therefore be it

Resolved, that the 751 Retirement Club goes on record against the privatization of our Medicare system, and for terminating the ACO REACH pilot program, and closing the door on third party entities in our Medicare system; and be it further

Resolved, that the 751 Retirement Club send a copy of this Resolution to our two US Senators and Congressional House members in their jurisdiction, as well as to President Biden and to the Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra.

Studying The Venezuelan Approach To Learning

https://popularresistance.org/studying-the-venezuelan-approach-to-learning/



By Logan Williams, Orinoco Tribune.

July 1, 202


As educators across the globe have begun to examine alternative forms of schooling post-covid, it is time to examine the revolutionary, egalitarian and innovative Bolivarian education system.

The merits of the Bolivarian system are plain to see through the country having one of the highest educational progress rates in Latin America and a truly comprehensive system funded by the Venezuelan government led by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

In order to understand the Venezuelan education system, it is necessary to examine both its foundations and the reality of education under the illegal US sanctions.
The foundations of the alternative

In the decades preceding the successful election of Hugo Chavez, education in Venezuela was not prioritized.

Governments effectively abandoned education in the rural and working-class areas for the exploitation of oil in the 1920s and later prioritized a neoliberal economic shift which saw government spending on education fall by 37 per cent between 1990-96 to only $118 dollars per capita.

The ideological shift in the 1990s saw the introduction of school registration fees which reinforced the barriers restricting the ability of working-class and rural students to enter education.

As a result of this neglect, throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the governments led by Chavez prioritized the reintroduction of educating the rural and working classes largely due to the movement’s ideological founder Simon Bolivar, who argued that “a people advance in step with their education.”

The prioritization of education within the Chavista governments is reflected in Chavez’s core belief that the eradication of illiteracy was a key weapon in the fight to eradicate poverty in Venezuela.

As well as Chavez’s ideological motivations it is possible to identify a more personal motivation through his reflections upon his own schooling in the countryside. Chavez stated: “I never wanted to move away from my home, but I had to go … Those who didn’t leave stayed behind and stagnated.”

Despite the material and international difficulties faced by the revolutionary Bolivarian government following the unsuccessful coup attempt and oil strike of 2002, the Bolivarian government would go on to launch 12 missions to tackle and eradicate poverty across Venezuela in 2003.

The first of these missions was Mission Robinson I, named in honor of Simon Bolivar’s teacher and close friend Simon Rodriguez whose own education project was formed “to colonize America with its own inhabitants” to avoid the American peoples becoming enslaved to a foreign power as they once had under the Spanish.

Mission Robinson I sought to address illiteracy as the Chavista government identified it was a key factor in a life of poverty. In order to tackle the issue of illiteracy, the Venezuelan government invited hundreds of Cuban literacy experts to design and deliver a program to teach citizens to read and write utilizing a system of corresponding numbers. By 2004, over 1.3 million citizens had taken part and in late 2005 Unesco declared Venezuela as being illiteracy-free due to Mission Robinson I.

Following the successful completion of Mission Robinson I, Chavez and his education minister Aristobulo Isturiz launched Mission Robinson II which sought to teach citizens everything they required to pass grade six (British Year 6) within a two-year time frame.

Most of Mission Robinson II was taught by Venezuelan volunteers and through government-provided resources such as personal libraries, TV and VCR sets within each home.

The success of these programs was identified by human rights group Provea which stated “both missions comply with the state’s obligations to guarantee the right to education and within this, to fight illiteracy. The project awakened a popular motivation and participation across society as can be seen following the Cuba Literacy Campaign of 1961.”
Education under the revolution

As well as the launch of revolutionary literacy programs across the country, the Bolivarian government sought to radically reform schooling through the launch of the Bolivarian Schools project.

This project sought to reform existing schools in inner cities and build new ones in communities long neglected by previous neoliberal governments. The project was formed around six key ideals which has since formed the bedrock of Bolivarian schooling. These ideals are as follows:

They seek to transform the children into participatory, critical and integrated individuals who identify with their national identity.

They are participatory and democratic where all members of the school community participate in the decision-making and execution of school activities. They are at the service of the community

They promote social justice and thus seek to ensure that all children complete their schooling.

They are examples of permanent pedagogical renovation, where the school is converted into a space for the dialogue of knowledge and cultural productions.

They fight against educational exclusion.

The six key ideals were formed to ensure that education was harmonized with the world of work and creation of a “new man” for a new Bolivarian society.

This revolution in schooling saw a transition away from an education system based around “encyclopedic knowledge that is based in memorization of details which are removed from the mentality of the adolescents and from their real-life problems,” towards one based on “integration, assuming that science is a means of making sense of the problems of society and never an end of its own.”

These key pedagogical reforms in turn transformed the day-to-day provision of lessons into one formed on the bedrock of practical applications rather than narrow disciplinary fields.

This would see the tuition of humanities and science instead of history and geography and biology, chemistry and physics respectively.

These changes reflect a revolutionary departure from Western educational methods in favor of a system designed explicitly to meet the needs of contemporary Venezuela.

It is logical therefore for British educators, progressives, socialists and trade unionists alike to seek to learn lessons from the Bolivarian education system due to its role in defeating illiteracy and tackling poverty throughout the Venezuelan population.

We must continue to build support for the people of Venezuela and opposition to the cruel and illegal sanctions inflicted by the US government which have caused the deaths of thousands of Venezuelans by building and supporting the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign as well as urging our trade union branches to affiliate and support initiatives launched by progressives in the region.

Alito's Anti Roe V Wade Logic Could End Federal Law

https://www.opednews.com/articles/Alito-s-Anti-Roe-V-Wade-Lo-by-Rob-Kall-Anti-abortion_Supreme-Court-SCOTUS-220704-249.html







Justice Alito argues that Roe V Wade is anti-democratic, because it takes away the right of states to make regulations. This sets an insanely dangerous precedent.



2022.06.24 Roe v Wade Overturned - SCOTUS, Washington, DC USA 175 143227
(Image by tedeytan) Details DMCA




If Roe V Wade can be overturned because it hinders states rights, then any and all federal regulations and laws can also be reversed by this grotesque Thomas Supreme Court. These could include; same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, the right to contraception, right to sexual intimacy, even the right to interstate travel.

There is good reason to believe that the malignant Thomas SCOTUS will indeed wreak much further havoc on American Democracy, turning it into a Christian Taliban fascist state-- a Talibanate?

The six Taliban justices are a threat not to US democracy but to the future of human progress. Something must be done and I am fairly certain that the current Democratic leadership-- Biden, Pelosi, Schumer-- are far from capable of doing what must be done to address the problem. Sadly, the American people know it. These must be a radical takeover of the Democratic party for any worthwhile solutions to be accomplished.

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Rob Kall Social Media Pages:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization













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Who's Murdering Immigrants? It's No Mystery.

https://www.opednews.com/articles/Who-s-Murdering-Immigrants-by-Thomas-Knapp-Immigrants_Murder-220704-249.html







New-colossus-emma-lazarus-stat ue-of-liberty NPS.
(Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org), Author: photographer - National Park Service, Poem Emma Lazarus) Details Source DMCA






It's a grisly affair: Dozens of immigrants locked in a semi-trailer in San Antonio, Texas, apparently abandoned by those attempting to smuggle them into the United States. After their cries for help were heard and rescuers arrived, 48 were found dead at the scene, four more died shortly thereafter, and 16 were hospitalized.

US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas pronounces himself "heartbroken," but doesn't seem inclined to apologize for the "unprecedented" operation he launched less than three weeks ago in "an all-of-government effort to attack the smuggling organizations." As of that time, DHS bragged, nearly 2,000 smugglers had been arrested in the previous eight weeks.

Texas governor Greg Abbott declares that "these deaths are on [US president Joe] Biden" -- not because Biden is ultimately responsible for the "unprecedented operation" leading directly to outcomes like this, but because (in Abbott's vivid imagination, anyway) Biden pursues "open border" policies.

But if the US government pursued the "open borders" policy mandated in its Constitution, those immigrants wouldn't have been locked in a semi-trailer in the first place, nor would their drivers have abandoned them, presumably after suspecting that they were immediate targets of Mayorkas's "unprecedented operation."

Instead, they'd have arrived in the US alive, in good health, and without fear of abduction by Mayorkas's or Abbott's thugs.

They'd have arrived the way any of us arrive anywhere -- on foot, by bicycle or scooter, motorcycle, car, bus, plane -- and largely, like all of us, without incident.



Why didn't they? Because American politicians know that supporting government lawlessness on immigration gets them votes.

A vote for a non-"open borders" politician -- these days, that means pretty much any Republican or Democrat -- is a vote for mass murder.

If you happen to believe in a deity who watches and judges us, remember that the next time you fill out a ballot.





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