CAPITALISM 

The divide between the poor and the rich is known to many and for centuries. Yet the truth goes without meaningful notice by many. The divide’s political meaning mostly goes without discussion. Still the fact of this divide should be told and re-told. The following reports say about the divide.

A Los Angeles Times Editorial – Not even beach parking lots can be off-limits in a study of sites for temporary homeless housing – (Sun, May 23, 2021) – said:

“Among the many obstacles to providing shelter and housing for homeless people is finding available land. Private property is often too expensive for the city of Los Angeles to buy for housing, so there is a constant search by city officials to locate publicly owned land that is empty or underutilized and can be transformed into safe camping grounds, tiny-house villages or more permanent housing.

Myanmar: a battleground of the New Cold War against China

IMPERIALISM 

Kenny Coyle

Morning Star | May 27, 2021

Anti-coup protesters march during a demonstration in Yangon, Myanmar

DURING World War II, the British colony of Burma, sitting between British-ruled India and war-torn China, became a key military theatre, pitting Allied forces against Japan.

Today Myanmar is embroiled in conflict once again. While this time the principal factors are internal, there are wider geopolitical dimensions. In particular, Myanmar has become a battleground within the wider New Cold War against China.

A Communist Party of Burma (CPB) spokesman told the Morning Star: “We used to say that Burma’s importance to the world’s great powers lies in the geographical position it occupies.

The Disintegrated States of America

USA IN DECLINE

Pepe Escobar

Thankfully, considering its urgent message, Martyanov’s book is finally being widely read. It’s already an Amazon bestseller.

Andrei Martyanov is in a class by himself. A third wave baby boomer, born in the early 1960s in Baku, in the Caucasus, then part of the former USSR, he’s arguably the foremost military analyst in the Russian sphere, living and working in the US, writing in English for a global audience, and always excelling in his Reminiscence of the Future blog.

I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing Martyanov’s previous two books. In Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning, nearly three years ago he conclusively proved, among other things, how the missile gap between the US and Russia was a “technological abyss”, and how the Khinzal was “a complete game-changer geopolitically, strategically, operationally, tactically and psychologically”.

He extensively mapped “the final arrival of a completely new paradigm” in warfare and military technology. This review is included in my own Asia Times e-book Shadow play.

Then came The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs, where he went one step beyond, explaining how this “revolution”, introduced at the Pentagon by the late Andrew Marshall, a.k.a. Yoda, the de facto inventor of the “pivot to Asia” concept, was in fact designed by Soviet military theoreticians way back in the 1970s, as MTR (Military-Technological Revolution).

As Anger Toward Belarus Mounts, Recall the 2013 Forced Landing of Bolivia’s Plane to Find Snowden

IMPERIALISM 

Glenn Greenwald

SUBSTACK | May 25, 2021

Bolivian President Evo Morales holds a press conference at the Vienna International Airport on July 3, 2013. Bolivian President Evo Morales angrily denied any wrongdoing on Wednesday after his plane was diverted to Vienna over suspicion fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden was on board. AFP PHOTO via Getty Images)

U.S. and E.U. governments are expressing outrage today over the forced landing by Belarus of a passenger jet flying over its airspace on its way to Lithuania. The Ryanair commercial jet, which took off from Athens and was carrying 171 passengers, was just a few miles from the Lithuanian border when a Belarusian MiG-29 fighter jet ordered the plane to make a U-turn and land in Minsk, the nation’s capital.

On board that Ryanair flight was a leading Belarusian opposition figure, 26-year-old Roman Protasevich, who, fearing arrest, had fled his country in 2019 to live in exile in neighboring Lithuania. The opposition figure had traveled to Athens to attend a conference on economics with Belarus’ primary opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and was attempting to return home to Lithuania when the plane was forcibly diverted.

Patents versus the People

INNOVATION CAPITALISM COVID-19 

Prabhat Patnaik

IDEAs | May 17, 2021

On October 2, 2020, even before any vaccines against Covid-19 had been approved, India and South Africa had proposed to the WTO that a temporary patent waiver should be granted on all such innovations. In the following months, 100 countries had supported this demand. And on May 5, the US, usually the most ardent defender of the patent system, agreed to a temporary patent waiver on anti-Covid vaccines, committing itself to “text-based negotiations at the WTO”.

The basic argument for such a move arises from the urgent need at present to expand vaccine production. A patent works by creating artificial scarcity so that prices are kept high for a longer period and the innovating firm can make profits that are large enough supposedly to recoup the investment made in developing the patented product, but the scarcity of vaccines is precisely what the world can ill-afford at present. When thousands are dying around the world, saving lives has priority over firms’ profits, for which patents on vaccines must be removed.

$150 billion of oil money has been stolen from Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003

IMPERIALISM 

Countercurrents | May 26, 2021

An estimated $150 billion of stolen money has been smuggled out of Iraq in corrupt deals since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi President Barham Salih said Sunday.

CNN and The New Arab reports said:

“Of the close to a thousand billion dollars made from oil since 2003, an estimated $150 billion of stolen money has been smuggled out of Iraq,” Salih said in a televised speech.

Six Months of Farmers’ Protest At Delhi Border

FARMERS’ ONGOING MOVEMENT IN INDIA

Harsh Thakor

Countercurrents | May 27, 2021

There could hardly have been a better celebration of six months of the Delhi farmers protest at Tikri border in Delhi completed today, with the flag of liberation shimmering at a crescendo, on the call for a bandh of Samyukti Kisan Morcha.An impact of an inferno or intensity of coal burning in a furnace was displayed at Tikri border by the farmers in the May 26^th protest by Bharatiya Kisan Union(Ugrahan).It was remarkable the manner it galvanised all the forces to crystallise such an event. The volume of revolutionary resistance was sung at it’s highest pitch, with the morale of a victorious army.

Cyclone Yaas is Another Reminder of The Urgent Need for Coming Together to Face Difficult Times

ENVIRONMENT 

Bharat Dogra

Countercurrents | May 27, 2021

One cyclone coming soon after another and that too in pandemic times need not and should not lead to a sense of helplessness. The country has  the capacity to overcome bigger challenges, and this has been revealed several times in the middle of great difficulties. In a more specific context,  frontline coastal states like Odisha and West Bengal have shown significant improvements in cyclone related preparations and rescue efforts. At the  level of its wide coastal region, the nation has improved the warning systems.

However we cannot afford to rest on our laurels. As there are definite and proven signs that  the threat from disasters in general and cyclones in particular in times of climate change is increasing, we need to improve our disaster-preparedness much more.

US Trying to Extradite Venezuelan Diplomat for the “Crime” of Securing Food for the Hungry: The Case of Alex Saab v. The Empire

IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION AGAINST VENEZUELA 

Roger D. Harris

The case of Alex Saab raises dangerous precedents in terms of extraterritorial judicial abuse, violation of diplomatic status, and even the use of torture to extract false confessions. This is according to Montréal-based international human rights lawyer John Philpot. He spoke on May 19 at a webinar sponsored by the Alliance for Global Justice and other groups about this example of the long reach of the US empire enforcing its deadly sanctions on some one third of humanity.

REPORT: Alex Saab Illegal Detention Setting Bad Precedent In Humanitarian Mission

IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION AGAINST VENEZUELA 

City Mirror News | May 24, 2021

On June 12, 2020, Venezuelan Special envoy and Ambassador to African union, Alex Saab, was on a humanitarian mission, flying from Caracas to Iran to procure food and gasoline for the Venezuelan CLAP food assistance program when he was arrested during a stopover in Cape Verde.

Saab was detained based on the request of the Donald Trump-led United State government over allegations of money laundering. Analysts have argued that the continued detention and the planned extradition of the diplomat to face charges in America is politically motivated.