AMERICAN PROPAGANDA

PATRICE GREANVILLE—LITERALLY MILES OF CARS WAITING FOR FOOD HAS BECOME ANOTHER SEARING IMAGE OF LIFE IN AMERICA THESE DAYS. Jimmy Dore properly calls them, “poverty traffic.” And they are popping up all over the country, including in once “proud” libertarian cultures like Texas. 

Major crises, like this “trifecta” of a pandemic, economic implosion and political bankruptcy, reveal in stark relief the shortcomings of any major social system, and so it is with America’s “Way of Life,” its beloved capitalism. While Congress and the White House have done literally NOTHING to assist the tens of millions thrown into complete destitution, it is the people who spontaneously organise themselves to help each other, and they do. Mind you, this is not charity, per se; this is people properly and promptly doing what needs to be done to solve a social problem. There is solidarity here, and a lesson that we hope will not be forgotten: the people really don’t need the capitalist structure oppressing their lives.

JONATHAN COOK—Why was Extinction Rebellion, a non-violent, civil disobedience group, included alongside neo-Nazis and Islamic jihadists? A whole page is dedicated to the threat posed by Extinction Rebellion. The guide explains that the organisation’s activism is rooted in an “anti-establishment philosophy that seeks system change”. That is, environmental activism risks making apparent – especially to the young – the causal connection between the economic system and damage to the environment. Once the story broke, the police hastily rowed back, claiming that Extinction Rebellion’s inclusion was a mistake. But more recently establishment efforts to decouple capitalism from its catastrophic externalities have grown more explicit.

THE ISTER—In 2003, Khodorkovsky was criminally prosecuted by Putin for tax evasion and fraud for which he ended up serving 10 years in prison. His protege Leonid Nevzlin was convicted of ordering multiple contract murders on Khodorkovsky’s behalf, and sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia. Associate Platon Lebedev was also convicted and imprisoned. This wave of prosecution sent a message and gave Putin a strong position, which was used to negotiate a “grand bargain” with the remaining oligarchs: they retained most of their existing assets in return for alignment with Putin’s vertical rule of Russia. The era of financial gangsterism from the 1990s was over.

FRANCIS LEE—The rot in the current Guardian newspaper began with the conversion of what was once a campaigning left-of-centre political publication into a straightforward business journal with a centre-right political orientation; this happened earlier in this century when the Scott Trust was rebranded as the Scott Trust Limited, along with the Guardian Media Group – GMG – both of whom became registered as a commercial company by decamping to the tax haven of the Cayman Islands British Overseas Territory, for tax reasons – i.e. tax avoidance.

Joe Biden is not likely to lift the blatantly illegal US siege of Venezuela, says Leo Flores on The Grayzone. In fact, his imperialist posture toward Caracas may signify a worsening f tensions between the two countries and their allies. In this episode, Red Lines host Anya Parampil speaks with Leo Flores, the Latin American Campaign Coordinator for CODEPINK, about what the election of Joe Biden will mean for US Venezuela policy. They also discuss Venezuela’s upcoming parliamentary elections and the fractured state of the country’s opposition.