ABOMINATIONS

CGTN—On October 1, 1950, a large crowd filled Tiananmen Square in Beijing. They were celebrating the first anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. However, the nascent state received letters from the leaders of two of its neighbors on the day – leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Kim Il Sung and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, asking for military assistance. How did this come about? CGTN’s documentary “Enemy on the Doorstep: China’s Involvement in the Korean War” shows you what was behind the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea, which defined history.

On June 12, 2020, Saab was on a mission as a special envoy of the Venezuelan government to procure food, fuel, and medicines from Iran, when his plane from Caracas to Tehran was diverted to Cabo Verde for a fueling stop. Saab’s arrest and subsequent detention at the bidding of the US is arbitrary, illegal, and irregular. Further, Saab has been denied treatment for his cancer condition.

Saab, the deputy Venezuelan ambassador to the African Union, is fighting extradition to the US for the “crime” of trying to procure humanitarian supplies in violation of illegal US sanctions. To date, Saab’s legal appeals to Cabo Verdean authorities for freedom have been either denied, rejected, or ignored. Under the Vienna Convention, a credentialed diplomat such as Saab has absolute immunity from arrest, even in the time of war.

DANNY HAIPHONG—The ASPI is a naked expression of the nexus between anti-China propaganda and military aggression. Just days after the formation of AUKUS, Australia’s Defense Minister Peter Dutton announced that ASPI would be opening an office in Washington DC . This move demonstrates clearly that a line in the sand is being drawn by US imperialism and its allies. Outright lies about China’s so-called “aggression” in its own seas or “human rights violations” within its own borders have sparked a racist flame within the white and Western-led imperialist order headed by the United States. Public opinion toward China has fallen dramatically within the imperialist countries in response to the non-stop propaganda blitz of a “China threat” led by think-tanks such as the ASPI.

PEPE ESCOBAR—The US federal report on prison labor actually states, unambiguously, that “all able-bodied sentenced prisoners” are required to work. The operative word is “required”.

UNICOR, which operates no less than 110 factories in 65 federal prisons, is blandly described as the trade name for the Federal Prison Industries (FPI) in the US, a “self-sustaining government corporation that sells market-priced services and quality goods made by inmates”. Including, of course, weapons for the industrial-military complex.

According to 2019 figures, the US government – which de facto operates the prison factories – funded ASPI with $1.37 million.

Unisystems, an IT firm that sells interphones for US prisons, also funded ASPI from 2005 to 2019. Inmate labor may be dirty cheap, but if they want to place a call to their lawyers or their family they need to shell out up to $24 for 15 minutes.

Objective economic analysis is difficult to come by in this heated political moment, with deep budget cuts that disproportionately affect the poor and working class while the top one percent of Americans continues to amass wealth at a record pace. Professor Richard D. Wolff’s academic work and public lectures warning of a crisis of capitalism preceded the current disaster. Wolff will discuss the fallout of the economic collapse and the ongoing struggle over who will bear the massive costs. THE NEW SCHOOL | http://www.newschool.edu Wolff is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is currently visiting professor in the graduate program in international affairs at The New School in New York City. Having accurately predicted the economic collapse of 2008, he is widely sought after as a commentator on the current financial crisis. Wolff is also noted for his ability to distill complex economic concepts and data into palatable, accessible language.