Jerusalem is not for sale, your conspiracy will not pass, Abbas reacts to Trump’s Middle East proposal

Countercurrents | January 29, 2020

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has slammed U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East “peace” plan, declaring “Jerusalem is not for sale”. Abbas warned that the “conspiracy deal will not pass.”

“Your conspiracy deal will not pass and the Palestinian people will reject it,” Abbas warned on Tuesday after Trump unveiled his long-awaited plan for peace between Israel and Palestine.

Calling it “impossible” for Palestinians to “accept a state without Jerusalem,” which would remain the U.S.-recognized capital of Israel under Trump’s plan, Abbas made his feelings absolutely clear on the matter.

China’s coronavirus response shows what’s possible when people come before profits

by C. J. Atkins

People’s World | January 26, 2020

Medical workers of the Communist Party branch organization at the Union Hospital of the Tongi Medical College participate in a ceremony to form an “assault team” to battle the virus. | Cheng Min / Xinhua via AP

SINGAPORE—The usually celebratory atmosphere of Lunar New Year was markedly more subdued across Asia this weekend as government officials in China fought to contain the outbreak of a deadly new coronavirus that has, as of this writing, infected nearly 2,700 and taken the lives of more than 80. Unprecedented efforts are being made to halt the spread of the pneumonia-like respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus, which is believed to have originated in a seafood market where illegal wildlife meat was sold.

Three more cases in the U.S. were confirmed Sunday, two in California and one in Arizona, according to information released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Two earlier cases were confirmed in Chicago and Washington state. The CDC said it is monitoring just over 100 patients in 26 states for possible infection.

Wuhan seafood market may not be source of coronavirus spreading globally

 Countercurrents | January 28, 2020

New research suggests that the Wuhan coronavirus, which has killed at least 100 people, may not have originated in the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market in Wuhan, Hubei, China.

The virus is zoonotic, meaning it can be passed from animals to humans. So experts thought people in Wuhan likely caught the virus from snakes in a wet market, where meat is sold alongside live animals, often in poorly regulated conditions.

Battling with beans and rice: Food sovereignty as a defense against US imperialism

Friends of the ATC | January 23, 2020

An interview with Carlos Rodriguez Valera, team member of the ATC and facilitator at IALA Mesoamerica (pictured above [left] with IALA students Blanca and Juan Alfonso). This interview is part of a series of testimonies taken by Friends of the ATC on the July 2019 delegation. Check out the IALA students’ illustrated testimonies in English and Spanish here.

What’s your name and where are you from?

My name is Carlos Alberto Rodriguez Valera, and I am from Venezuela. Currently I live in Nicaragua, primarily with the objective of preparing myself politically. I was part of the construction of IALA (Latin American Agroecological Institute) in Venezuela and I came to Nicaragua to be part of the construction of IALA Mesoamérica. I also have my family here. So now I have countless responsibilities with the ATC, with IALA, and with my family. And also a commitment to the Sandinista Front. We may not work for the state, we don’t depend on the state, but we do defend a just cause. And the government of Comandante Daniel Ortega is a just cause.

Venezuela Must Remain Vigilant & On Guard Against US Hybrid Warfare

OneWorld | January 22, 2020

The jewel on the crown of all political divisions for the US strategy would have been a split between the military and the government like had happened in Bolivia. This is not the case in Venezuela. But this is not the time for Venezuelans to be relaxed.

A meme circulating on social media shows the distraught gaze of Venezuela’s opposition member Juan Guaidó with a caption that says in part, “he is not a head of State, he has no army, he has no ministers, he never participated in presidential elections, he was a ‘guarimbero’ [violent rioter] and he is called interim president.” None of that can be argued. But as of January 5, Guaidó is also no longer the president of the National Assembly. Despite a theatrical take over of the NA chamber and proclaiming to still be the president – well documented on video – in reality he lost that position to a rival opposition leader. We have already described that as the most public display of the split between competing opposition groups.

Uprising in Chile is legacy of dashed hopes and bitter defeat

by W. T. Whitney Jr.

People’s World | January 29, 2020

Demonstrators take cover behind homemade shields during clashes with police in Santiago, Chile, Jan. 17, 2020. Chile has been roiled by continuing street protests since Oct. 18, when a student protest over an increase in subway fares turned into a much larger and broader movement with a long list of demands that largely focus on inequality. | Fernando Llano / AP

Santiago high school students were the spark. Rejecting a fare hike, they jumped over subway toll barriers on Oct. 18, 2019. Students filled the streets all over. Police action led to injuries and arrests. Some 1.2 million people occupied Plaza Italia in Santiago a week later. After three months, on Jan. 18, Santiago marchers arriving from three plazas demonstrated outside the Moneda Palace, the seat of Chile’s president. Protests took place in 19 other cities.

Aggrieved Chileans have demonstrated and marched throughout the country, week after week. They’ve staged three general strikes. One writer refers to Chile’s “most intense and most massive social uprising.” All along, students have marched in the front lines. Students mobilized massively in 2011.

Predictive analytics: How capitalism’s “knowledge economy” profiles us all

by Joel Wendland-liu

People’s World | January 20, 2020

Dermalog Identification Systems GmbH via AP Images

“Communicative capitalism,” writes the communist philosopher Jodi Dean, refers to a phase of knowledge- and technology-based commodity production in which information on a massive scale is produced, gathered, and sold for profit. What we now call the “information society” or “knowledge economy” sees the large-scale proletarianization of often highly-educated people in low-paying (often low-skilled) jobs, precariously scraping by to pay student loans, cover health insurance, and living paycheck to paycheck, wondering what happened to the “American Dream.”

Another more insidious feature of communicative capitalism is the role of technology companies in exploiting the participatory features of the knowledge economy (especially social media, digitized personal information archives, search engines, and online shopping) to harvest, store, organize, and sell consumer information to other companies. We all know something happens to the information we share on Facebook, input into Amazon or Google when we search, and are rarely surprised anymore when we see ads in our feeds and email for commodities that are similar to what we’ve searched for.

Natural disasters cost $232 bln in 2019

At a loss of $2.98 tln, 2009-2019 was the costliest decade

by Kiran Pandey

Down To Earth | January 28, 2020

The global economy suffered a loss of $232 billion (Rs 16.5 lakh crore) due to natural disasters in 2019, according to a January 2020 report. The year turned out to be the eighth-costliest in terms of weather-related disasters, adjusting for inflation.

Weather-related disasters, or events caused by ‘atmospheric-driven scenarios’, in fact caused most of the damage at $229 billion — 17 per cent above the 21st century average.

How hot is hot: Advanced models forecast up to 5.6°C global warming

Climate models earlier didn’t account for heat trapped by clouds

by Pushp Bajaj

Global average temperature, previously estimated to rise between 1.4 degree Celsius C and 4.5°C from pre-industrial levels, is expected to rise further due to previously underestimated impact of clouds on the climate, a new study published in the Geophysical Research Letters journal said.

Drawing from projections by 27 advanced climate models, the study said the global average temperature would eventually increase between 1.8°C and 5.6°C. This means that the higher estimate is at least 1°C higher than previously thought.

FACE OF AN ECONOMY: U.S.: A tale of the homeless

A Journal of People report

Media reports regularly bring to light the homeless problem in a capitalist economy – the United States. These reports bring forward issues from daily life instead of “sophisticated”, abstract discussions, which often mystify burning issues related to the common people’s life in capitalist economies. These reports are much useful to the commoners to learn facts of capitalism than the “sophisticated discussions” by the famous on-line and print editions of famous Marxist journals.

An Independent (UK) report by Josh Marcus on January 24, 2020 said: Inside the mile-long California homeless camp that is tearing a town apart as Silicon Valley house prices soar.