Recruitment of veterans by extremists may increase, top Democrat warns


Chair of House veterans affairs committee holding hearings on issue highlighted by veterans’ participation in US Capitol attack

Mark Takano: ‘Targeting of veterans by violent extremist groups is a problem and it could become a bigger problem.’ 

Photograph: Michael Brochstein/Sopa Images/Rex/Shutterstock

Sergio Olmos
Sun 16 Jan 2022 

A top US lawmaker who heads a congressional committee investigating the targeting of veterans by extremist groups has warned that the problem is a serious one and could get bigger unless it is effectively combated.

In an interview with the Guardian Mark Takano, a Democratic congressman from California, said he was concerned about the recruiting strategy being deployed by violent rightwing extremist groups, especially in America’s increasingly fraught political climate in the wake of the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.


Leader of Oath Keepers militia group faces sedition charge over Capitol attack

Takano is the chairman of the House veteran affairs committee, which has begun hearings into the rising threat to veterans. The first of three hearings occurred in October last year, but Takano has been concerned about the threat for years.

“Targeting of veterans by violent extremist groups is a problem and it could become a bigger problem if we don’t understand what’s involved and the dimensions of it,” Takano said.

Takano said the issue was bipartisan and the definition of extremism did not favor liberal or conservative. “We define extremism not by the content of the ideology of the group, but whether a group espouses, advocates, endorses or promotes violence as a way to achieve their ends,” said Takano.
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But he was clear the current threat of veteran recruitment comes more from the extremist right.

“We are seeing that this violence is occurring to a far greater degree among rightwing groups, especially within the last six years,” said Takano. “As far as we can tell, rightwing extremist groups are the ones targeting veterans for recruitment. And there’s not really any evidence that we’re seeing that leftwing groups are targeting veterans,” said Takano.

Data shows violent attacks from rightwing groups in the United States are significantly more prevalent than from leftwing or international or Islamist terrorist groups. An analysis by the Center for International Strategic Studies, a non-partisan thinktank, looked at 893 terrorist plots and attacks in the United States between January 1994 and May 2020.

It found that “far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators, including from far-left networks and individuals inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.”

The report also found that “‘rightwing extremists perpetrated two-thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90% between January 1 and May 8, 2020.”

The 738 defendants charged in the 6 January attack on the Capitol include 81 with ties to the military, while five were active-duty service members. Air force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot dead by police while attempting to break into the House chamber. Recently, three retired army generals wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post warning of the threat of a coup in the 2024 US election, saying it could succeed with the aid of rogue military elements.

Takano’s committee conducted its first hearing in October. “We looked into how and why veterans were being recruited by violent, extreme groups: at the history and the track record of groups like the Proud Boys, Three Percent militia, Oath Keepers, Boogaloo Boys and others,” said Takano.


Takano said extremist groups see an advantage in having veterans in their ranks. “In that sense they are a greater target for recruitment than non-veteran Americans,” said Takano.

Takano described friction in addressing the problem among some Republican lawmakers on his committee. “At least two members … wouldn’t even engage the subject,” said Takano. “When it came for their turn, they didn’t ask the witnesses any questions, including the witness that was chosen by the Republican team.

“The two members instead just used their five minutes to attack me for holding the hearing,” said Takano.

Takano sees the issues that leave veterans vulnerable to extremism as being the same as for the general population. “The things that contribute to veterans being vulnerable are the same things that affect all Americans: social isolation, addictions, mental health issues and emotional trauma,” said Takano.

“We need to recognise that there is a problem that we have politically motivated violent extremist groups that are targeting veterans. We need to look at ways that we can protect veterans,” he added.

THIRD WORLD USA

Expanding Medicaid for new moms could save lives. But in Mississippi, it’s a battle.

As Mississippi awaits a Supreme Court ruling on a 15-week abortion ban, politicians are weighing a proposal that aims to prevent deaths of babies and moms.

Mississippi doctors say pregnancy is the first time some of their patients have had access to health insurance as adults. But coverage typically ends 60 days after they give birth. NBC News / Getty

Jan. 16, 2022
By Bracey Harris

JACKSON, Miss. — In 2019, then-Gov. Phil Bryant proclaimed that he wanted Mississippi to be “the safest place for an unborn child in America.”

In Bryant’s view, that meant signing some of the strictest abortion laws in the country. One of them, the state’s 15-week abortion ban, is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, with national implications for abortion rights.


The same year Bryant made the declaration, a group of physicians in Mississippi released recommendations aimed at preventing maternal and infant deaths in a state with the highest infant mortality rate in the country.

One change that the state’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee advocated in 2019 was to allow women to keep their Medicaid health insurance coverage for a year after they give birth, rather than being cut off after 60 days, which is the current policy. The group of physicians found that almost 40 percent of pregnancy-related deaths in the state occurred more than six weeks after women gave birth.

Dr. Charlene Collier, an OB-GYN practicing in Mississippi’s capital and co-chair of the Maternal Mortality Review Committee, is still waiting for that potentially lifesaving measure to be adopted.

“In Mississippi, there’s been a lot of focus on the issues of abortion and restricting that, but there’s no commensurate efforts to improve birth outcomes for pregnant women and babies in the state,” she said.

Supreme Court hears Mississippi abortion case that challenges Roe v. Wade

DEC. 1, 202102:27



Many of the mothers insured by Mississippi’s Medicaid program are among the state’s poorest residents and cannot afford medical care after the 60-day cutoff. The resulting decisions they make to delay or forgo needed treatment can come at the expense of their lives. Almost two-thirds of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mississippi is one of 12 states that have not expanded Medicaid access under the Affordable Care Act, which would offer another pathway for women in poverty to gain health insurance coverage. Among Southern states that have also not expanded Medicaid, at least three — Georgia, Texas and South Carolina — have extended, or sought to lengthen, health insurance coverage for new mothers for at least six months.

But in Mississippi, efforts to offer women a full year of postpartum Medicaid coverage have failed. A proposal to do so last year was scrapped as legislators argued over a separate issue: how much control the governor’s office should have over the state Medicaid agency, according to the Mississippi Free Press.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers are trying again this legislative session and have filed bills in the Senate and the House to expand benefits. Both chambers will face a deadline of Feb. 1 to bring the proposal up for a committee vote.

A bill filed by state Senate Medicaid Committee Chairman Kevin Blackwell, a Republican, would make permanent a temporary extension of Medicaid for postpartum women that went into effect in 2020 as part of the federally declared coronavirus emergency. The legislation has the backing of Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.

“Access to healthcare during and after pregnancy is crucial, protecting the lives of mothers and their children,” Hosemann, a Republican, said in a statement.

But the legislation could face a tougher challenge in the House, where Republican leaders have been more vocal about other priorities. They have focused on teacher pay raises and eliminating Mississippi’s income tax as top goals. Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, made no mention of a Medicaid expansion in his 18-page budget recommendation.

A spokesperson for Reeves did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Speaker of the House Philip Gunn did not comment, and House Medicaid Committee Chairman Joey Hood did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Robert Johnson, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said he suspects some representatives have shied away from publicly supporting the measure because of the thorny debate surrounding a broader Medicaid expansion, which would provide coverage to the working poor. Gunn and Reeves are on record in opposition.

“Sadly enough, everyone ought to just jump on board,” Johnson said, “but there’s a whole apprehension about it being a lead into Medicaid expansion.”

Yet he said he feels more confident about the chances of advancing conversations on the proposal this year, given bipartisan support some Republican initiatives, such as tax cuts and teacher pay raises, have won early in the session.

The impact of the bill’s passage would be far-reaching. In 2017, almost 70 percent of pregnancies in Mississippi were covered by Medicaid.

Statewide, policy experts and physicians say, the consequences of inaction are unforgiving: children growing up without their moms and communities scarred by the loss of their youngest members.


The state has the highest infant mortality rate in the country, with about 9 deaths per 1,000 births in 2019, and a higher than average maternal mortality rate, with 33 deaths per 100,000 births from 2013 to 2016. During the same period, maternal mortality rates for Black women in Mississippi were nearly three times as high as those of white women.

“It’s obvious to the Legislature, these statistics are not new,” Collier said. “It’s just the will to act upon them.”

Dr. Edith Smith Rayford has seen that the need for specialized care some of her patients receive in pregnancy does not dissipate at two months after they give birth.

As an OB-GYN at a federally qualified health center in Jackson, she cares for patients who fall into the post-60-day coverage gap. Pregnancy is often the first time women have reliable access to health care as adults, Collier and other doctors said. Some learn they have diabetes or high blood pressure, which can pose risks for women and their babies during pregnancy as well as after birth.

“It’s tough, especially when people have chronic health problems,” Smith Rayford said.

Her office is in a hallway featuring a bulletin board covered in pictures of newborns the center has helped welcome. The images often elicit smiles.

But she said there’s a dread that can set in as patients approach their 60-day cutoff and their providers scramble to find them a Plan B in the country’s poorest state, which has weak health care support for its most vulnerable people.

Pregnant women who sought treatment through Medicaid for health problems that might otherwise have gone untreated have few options for continuing to receive medical care after they’ve given birth. For the patient who started seeing a cardiologist during pregnancy, now there’s the question of who will take them on without insurance. For the mom who needed expensive medications, there are new out-of-pocket costs that may be impossible to pay.

“Sometimes, I am diagnosing things for the first time in pregnancy,” said Dr. Nina Ragunanthan, an OB-GYN based in the Mississippi Delta.

One of her patients developed preeclampsia in pregnancy and later required close care for severe depression, which the patient was able to receive because of the temporary Medicaid extension under the federal Covid-19 emergency.

“If after 60 days, we didn’t have coverage for those things, there’s no way she could afford medicines and therapy on her own,” Ragunanthan said. “She would have lost access to care. That is detrimental to the moms and their infants who need healthy moms.”

Seven months after giving birth to her daughter, Nye’Keya Smith is able to have counseling sessions and doctor’s visits paid for through the temporary Medicaid extension.

Smith’s daughter Brooklyn arrived early. Smith spent days in the hospital recovering, while Brooklyn was closely monitored in the NICU for almost three months.

“I didn’t know if she would make it,” she said. “I could only hold her for so many hours. I got really discouraged.”

The experience left her shaken, and she sought help for postpartum depression. Last month, she went to a therapy session, one of many since her daughter’s arrival, that she credited with improving her mental health. The job she recently accepted as a certified nursing assistant does not guarantee insurance, and she said she’s thankful that she has a safety net through the temporarily expanded postpartum Medicaid coverage.

“I’m able to just walk in when I need to,” she said.

But it’s not clear how much longer coverage for moms like her will last. And for now, Mississippi doesn’t have an answer for what will happen when it runs out.

FACT CHECK

Trump’s Covid and Election Falsehoods at Arizona Rally

The former president falsely claimed that white Americans were being denied the Covid-19 vaccine, among other inaccuracies.

Former President Donald J. Trump returned to Arizona on Saturday, delivering a speech that underlined the extent to which he has elevated fringe beliefs.

Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

By Linda Qiu
Jan. 16, 2022

WASHINGTON — During a rally in Arizona on Saturday, former President Donald J. Trump repeated his lie that the 2020 election was stolen and made other false claims about the pandemic and the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 last year. Here’s a fact check.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID

“The left is now rationing lifesaving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating, just denigrating, white people to determine who lives and who dies. If you’re white, you don’t get the vaccine, or if you’re white, you don’t get therapeutics.”

False. 

There is no evidence that white Americans are being denied access to vaccines or treatments.

Mr. Trump referred to a Wall Street Journal opinion column criticizing New York State’s guidelines on two limited antiviral treatments that ask health providers to prioritize the therapies for immunocompromised patients and those with risk factors. The guidelines, which were released in late December, said, “Nonwhite race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity should be considered a risk factor, as longstanding systemic health and social inequities have contributed to an increased risk of severe illness and death from Covid-19.”

State officials have defended their guidelines by citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which show that Black, Hispanic and Native Americans are about twice as likely to die from Covid-19 than white Americans. A spokeswoman for New York State’s Department of Health told Fox News that race did not disqualify patients from treatment but that the guidelines instead considered race as one risk factor.

In New York, white residents are more likely to be vaccinated than Black residents, which is in line with most of the country.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID

“Why did Nancy Pelosi and the Capitol Police reject the more than 10,000 National Guard troops or soldiers that I authorized to help control the enormous crowd that I knew was coming?”

False. 

There is no evidence that Mr. Trump ever made a request for 10,000 National Guard troops or that Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected such a demand. The speaker of the House does not control the National Guard.

Vanity Fair reported that Mr. Trump had floated the 10,000 figure to the acting defense secretary at the time, Christopher C. Miller, the night before Jan. 6, 2021, when Mr. Trump’s loyalists stormed the Capitol in a bid to stop the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s election victory. According to Mr. Miller, Mr. Trump had suggested 10,000 National Guard troops were required to contain the crowd he anticipated for his rally that day.

But there is no record of Mr. Trump making that request. The Pentagon’s timeline of events leading up to the riot notes that the Defense Department reviewed a plan to activate 340 members of the District of Columbia’s National Guard, “if asked.” But the timeline makes no mention of a request for 10,000 troops by Mr. Trump. Nor did a Pentagon inspector general report on the breach, which instead referred to suggestions by Mr. Trump that his rally on Jan. 6 had been conducted safely. A Pentagon spokesman also told The Washington Post that it had “no record of such an order being given.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID

“So we lost, they say, by 10,000 and yet they flagged more than — listen to these numbers — 57,000 highly suspicious ballots for further investigation, one. Twenty-three thousand, three hundred and forty-four mail-in ballots were counted despite the person no longer living at that address — little, little problem. Five thousand people appear to have voted in more than one county.”

False. 

Mr. Trump lost the state of Arizona by about 10,500 votes, but his claim of tens of thousands of fraudulent votes is baseless. These figures are based on a report by Cyber Ninjas, a company Republicans hired to examine voting in the state.

Election officials have said that the claims the company raised are not evidence of fraud. For example, Cyber Ninjas found that tens of thousands of voters did not live at addresses recorded by a specific commercial database, but election officials have noted that college students, military personnel or people who own vacation homes could have different addresses than those listed in the database. Similarly, the company’s claims of double voting could be explained by the mere fact that many Arizona residents have the same name or birth year.

Moreover, Cyber Ninjas’ audit showed that in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, Mr. Biden had 99 additional votes and Mr. Trump had 261 fewer votes.



Linda Qiu is a fact-check reporter, based in Washington. She came to The Times in 2017 from the fact-checking service PolitiFact. @ylindaqiu

USA

Omicron closing day care centers in droves as parents are 'just trying to stay afloat'

Alia Wong, USA TODAY

Sun., January 16, 2022, 

If you’re a working parent with young kids, chances are the new year hasn’t been as happy as you’d hoped. Omicron is raging, guidance is constantly changing, vaccines aren't approved for little children and coronavirus test kits are in short supply.

Reliable, affordable child care options are scarce. Centers cancel classes or close altogether as employees call in sick or leave their jobs. COVID-19 cases crop up at day cares, where internal spread used to be somewhat limited.

“You had so many programs that were under the impression that they weathered the worst of the storm,” said Rhian Evans Allvin, CEO of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. “Now they're back in program-delivery crisis, and they're back in economic crisis.”

Sammie Boatright, a teacher for 3-year-olds at Small World of Learning day care in Abilene, Texas, assists a student in reading a book Tuesday.

How does COVID-19 affect me? Don’t miss an update with the Coronavirus Watch newsletter.

It's hard to quantify how widespread child care disruptions are. Data is hard to come by because the sector is essentially composed of a bunch of small businesses. The statistics that do exist – supported by mounting complaints on social media, flurries of texts between working parents and interviews from around the country – suggest closures are again on the rise after months of relative stability. They're driven by the surge in COVID-19 cases and staffing issues.

One such statistic comes from Zach Parolin, a professor of social policy at Italy’s Bocconi University. Since the start of the pandemic, he and his co-researcher used anonymized cellphone data from more than 40 million users to track visits to schools and child care centers in the USA. When the total number of monthly visits to a child care center is more than 50% lower than it was in 2019, the researchers count that as a disruption.

Last month, 28% of formal child care centers experienced a decline of at least that much , according to the researchers' dataset. That was the highest rate since June.

‘I have to just put my career on hold'

Monica Cox, mother of a 3-year-old in Ohio, said it feels like she’s running a day care out of her home. She never expected she’d be at this stage in her life – in her 40s, a distinguished professor of engineering, a small-business owner – spending so many workdays caring for a toddler. Her son’s actual day care center is winding down its latest closure in a string of several due to positive cases.

Cox and her husband, a teacher, must coordinate their busy schedules so they can take care of their toddler when he can't be at day care. They often end up taking sick days. Cox, who works from home, has grown accustomed to working in the early mornings and late evenings, so she can tend to her son during the day. She admitted her work performance has suffered.

“Something is telling me not to push myself at a level that I used to push myself because I don't know how long I have to sustain this,” she said.

Taylor Sims’ daughter Eleanor was born prematurely with a heart issue in April 2020 and hadn’t spent much time around other children until last fall. That's when Sims and her husband decided, in consultation with their doctor, that it was safe enough to enroll Eleanor in day care. Sims, a graduate student at the University of Michigan, was relieved she’d finally have some time to make progress on her history doctorate – she’d had to postpone its completion.

She and her husband, a pastor and adjunct professor, settled on day care three days a week partly because of the cost. Three days was better than nothing. “Day care is really the only place she goes to protect our work time,” she said.

Looking back, Sims said three days feel like a luxury: Eleanor has spent almost half of those days at home. Some days, she woke up with a runny nose – a typical toddler affliction – which often meant the family had to seek a coronavirus test and await results, per health guidelines and day care rules or out of abundance of caution.

On other days, staffing issues or positive cases forced the day care to cancel classes, including this week and right before Christmas. (The center, like many providers, technically subscribes to a 10-day quarantine period rather than the revised guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but “it’s all a little ad hoc,” Sims said.)

Starla Owens, center, picks up her 11-month-old daughter, Cherish, while Terita Carey, director of Childcare Wonderland in Columbus, Ohio, puts a coat on her nephew on Nov. 19, 2021.

“It's day by day, not knowing if it's going to be open,” Sims said. “If she can't go on Tuesday, it's like, ‘OK, I hope she can go tomorrow.’ Before we know it, the week is over.” The missed class time amounts to lots of wasted money: Their university-subsidized tuition is charged monthly, whether Eleanor attends class or not.

K-12 schools have 'test-to-stay': What about day care centers?

It also amounts to a harsh reality that, Sims has begun to accept, is here to stay.

“I’m definitely not making progress (on my Ph.D.) – I’m just trying to stay afloat,” Sims said. “I have to just put my career on hold. There's no other way to phrase it. My husband is super accommodating, but his job is the one that pays the bills. Mine's not. So I’m trying to triage in that way and be realistic that this isn't ending any time soon.”

Day care disruptions hurt economy

At the height of the pandemic's shutdowns, more than 2 in 3 of the country’s formal child care centers were closed or operating at reduced capacity, according to Parolin’s data. Disruptions lessened, reaching their lowest rates in the pandemic last summer. That continued until December, as the omicron surge took off, though disruption rates are still just a fraction of what they were in April 2020.

All the while, child care's economic crisis continued to brew.

According to data collected last fall by ​​the University of Oregon’s RAPID-EC project, which surveys families about issues such as well-being and child care, 1 in 5 parents said they experienced disruptions to their child care, whether through a home-based provider or a center. More than two-thirds of those disruptions happened because the provider didn’t have enough staff.

Lynne Costic, the retired owner of Myah's Just 4 Kids Learning Center, moves furniture out of the center's location in downtown Peoria, Ill., on Dec. 30, 2021. The day care, which opened in 2007, is closing because of a shortage of teachers. Costic says the extra furniture and supplies will go into storage or be moved to the second Myah's location.

Child care workers have long been overburdened and underpaid, contributing to high turnover in the industry even before the pandemic. Limited public investment in early learning has meant many providers are either in debt or charge tuition rates that are out of reach for middle-income families. Few centers can afford to pay their workers more than minimum wage, let alone give them health insurance.

“Child care was already on incredibly unstable footing well before the pandemic,” said Lily Roberts, the managing director for economic policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.

Some economists argue the “Great Resignation” is a misnomer. Rather, it’s “the Great Upgrade.”

“People are not resigning their jobs, by and large, to sit at home – that's not financially possible for families,” Roberts said. “What they're doing is they're finding work where they feel safer. They're finding work that pays better. They're finding work where they have more control over the hours.”

There's a consequence: “It leads to gaps in the workforces that they're leaving behind,” Roberts said. “And it's a really challenging cycle for people who are on the receiving end of those services” – services such as child care and people such as parents who need it.

Women, who tend to take on the brunt of parenting duties, have left the workforce in droves since the start of the pandemic. Women’s participation in the workforce, according to the latest jobs report, is at the lowest rate it's been since 1991.

Child care problems have skyrocketed during COVID-19: Women have paid the price.

The American Rescue Plan, a federal package of coronavirus relief, allocated $39 billion for child care, most of it in the form of “stabilization funds” that could be used for expenses ranging from payroll to protective masks. That cash infusion, which is running out, wasn’t a permanent answer to instability in the sector, Roberts said. In a survey conducted last summer, nearly half of providers said they would’ve probably closed without help, including the Paycheck Protection Program and COVID-19 relief money.

Disruptions could hit families even harder now that they no longer receive monthly deposits as part of Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief package, which expanded the child tax credit. The program expired last month after Congress failed to extend it.

You can still get child credit on your tax return: Look out for this IRS letter.

Research suggests those payments helped reduce food insecurity and increased families’ ability to pay down debt. They helped soften the toll of child care disruptions, whether because parents used them to pay for emergency babysitting or offset the lost wages from taking off work.

The child care sector will continue free-falling, experts said, unless there’s a concerted, national effort to elevate early learning and raise the wages of its workers.

“We can't just keep patching over a system that's not working,” Roberts said. “We need to really infuse that system with money and programs that make it a real right in this country to have access to child care.”

Working parents were already scrambling: Then COVID-19 made child care deserts even worse.

 

This one-two punch from China and Russia marks the end of American adventurism

Syria’s inclusion in the Belt and Road Initiative is the final act in a long saga against American imperialism that shows how China and Russia can effectively counter U.S. intervention in the future.

Bradley Blankenship

is a Prague-based American journalist, columnist and political commentator. He has a syndicated column at CGTN and is a freelance reporter for international news agencies including Xinhua News Agency. Follow him on Twitter @BradBlank_

FILE PHOTO. © Getty Images / Gokhan Sahin

Damascus officially joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on Wednesday, which will provide a massive lifeline to the country that has been torn to shreds after more than a decade of war and Western sanctions. But more than this, this development has set a precedent that will fundamentally change the geopolitical landscape. 

This is because the decade-spanning Syrian conflict has hosted several proxy conflicts, which has invariably left the United States and its Western allies the losers. 

READ MORE: Blinken’s blinkered vision of Russia

For starters, while the conflict itself was, at least initially, part of the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, numerous sources (including U.S. government sources published by WikiLeaks) suggest that the United States had been seeking regime change in Syria long before then. There are also countless reports by very good journalists, including on RT, that have dug up these connections.

However, this attempt devolved so quickly, and was so futile and messy, that the U.S. had ended up siding with the very terrorists it sought to destroy in the wake of 9/11. Syria was almost completely overrun by the likes of Islamic State (formerly ISIS; the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and was on the verge of becoming a terror nexus – until Russia intervened in September 2015.

This was not a Russian invasion per se, but a legitimate intervention based on an invitation from Syrian President Bashar Assad. I was actually in college when this happened and remember discussing on my radio show how huge of a deal this was. Another major power was cleaning up America’s mess with boots on the ground. 

From then until now, the UN-recognized Syrian government has managed to regain virtually all its territory, and extremist elements like the Islamic State group have been pushed back. There remain a few holdouts, for example, near the Turkish border and in the country’s southeast still occupied by U.S. forces, but the difficulty faced in the country’s attempt to get back to normal has to do with external forces.

There’s the diplomatic side, but, since Syria has continued as a UN member, this has primarily been a regional issue. Syria’s membership in the Arab League was suspended in 2011 as the conflict began, however it’s highly anticipated that it will be readmitted very soon – perhaps even at the group’s next summit in March. 

Other welcoming signs of Syria’s normalization are the fact that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain both reopened their Syrian embassies, Jordan reopened its border with Syria in September and the global law enforcement body Interpol readmitted Syria to its ranks in October. 

But the main problem for a true normalization of Syria on the world stage is its access to international finance and trade, which has been nearly impossible thanks to U.S.-led sanctions, including the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019, called the Caesar Act. 

Journalists have reported since the implementation of these latest sanctions that they have actually been more detrimental to the country than the war itself, and this corrosive effect has also extended to the country’s neighbors, like Lebanon. Never mind the intended effects of these sanctions, the reality is that they are artificially placing the country in a position where rebuilding from this devastating war is impossible. 

Enter China. As the second-largest economy in the world and the driving force behind the greatest global infrastructure and development drive in history, the BRI is a natural fit for Syria. It will help the country rebuild, rebound and provide win-win opportunities for both countries while also likely bringing the conflict, finally, to an end. It is the quintessential example of how America bombs and China builds. 

While that is certainly something on its own, in the context of how this U.S.-led foreign intervention was resisted largely thanks to Russia, I believe it shows a sort of one-two punch that can and will be repeated. 

Even if this was not coordinated originally, it is a precedent I believe both Moscow and Beijing should and undoubtedly will apply elsewhere. It goes to show that Washington’s military and economic aggression can both be countered if Russia and China work in tandem as a bulwark against unilateralism. It’s for this reason I believe Syria will be the graveyard of American adventurism. 

Covid kills poor as rich get richer – report

Oxfam says that the poor have died from vaccine inequality and a lack of access to treatment

(FILE PHOTO) Photo by Luke Dray/Getty Images

Oxfam, a charity confederation, has said that while the wealth of the world’s top 10 richest people has doubled during the pandemic, the poor around the globe continue to suffer due to a dearth of vaccines and treatment.

In a report published on Monday, Oxfam claimed that a 99% windfall tax on the pandemic gains of the world’s 10 richest men would raise enough money to pay for vaccines for everyone on the planet. 

“A 99% one-off windfall tax on the Covid-19 wealth gains of the 10 richest men alone would generate $812bn,” the report states, noting these 10 men have six times more money than the poorest 3.1 billion people.

The report, titled ‘Inequality kills’, claims that the rich have profited from structural and systemic policy choices which are skewed in their favor. Meanwhile, the poor have been directedly harmed by these decisions.

“Millions of people would still be alive today if they had had a vaccine – but they are dead, denied a chance while big pharmaceutical corporations continue to hold monopoly control of these technologies,” Oxfam said.

The charity claims that billionaires have thrived through the pandemic and that fiscal and monetary stimulus measures have contributed to their wealth as the stock market boomed. 

“Vaccines were meant to end this pandemic, yet rich governments allowed pharma billionaires and monopolies to cut off the supply to billions of people. The result is that every kind of inequality imaginable risks rising. The predictability of it is sickening. The consequences of it kill,” Oxfam International Executive Director Gabriela Bucher said in the report.

Oxfam adds that the proportion of those who die from Covid-19 in developing countries is roughly double that in wealthy nations.

The report was released ahead of this week’s virtual World Economic Forum meetings, traditionally held in Davos, where leaders will discuss global challenges.

Pandemic reversing improvements in wealth inequality, World Bank says

Temporary reprieve from surge in inequality erased by Covid-19 policies

Homeless people in Los Angeles' Skid Row © AFP / Apu Gomes\\\\\\\\\\Governments’ responses to Covid-19 are reversing gains made in combating global inequality, according to a World Bank report. It found the virus was disproportionately affecting the poor and warned the fallout would worsen.

World Bank President David Malpass explained that the situation arose from a confluence of negative factors, leading to a perfect storm of economic depression. “The world economy is simultaneously facing Covid-19, inflation, and policy uncertainty, with government spending and monetary policies in uncharted territory,” he said.

Noting that “booming asset prices” are bolstering the bank accounts of the rich even as job losses and massive inflation have torpedoed any growth within the poorest population groups, the Bank warned that such an “increasing divergence of fortunes” was “especially troubling given the possibility of social discontent in developing countries.” Spikes in some commodity prices – such as the fuel hike in Kazakhstan – can trigger popular outrage on such a level that it threatens governments’ control.Government-mandated shutdowns were the primary reason for a spike in poverty rates that has affected populations around the world, the report stated. Government spending, deficits, and debt have soared to “record highs” compared to GDP, and countries are reluctant to raise interest rates lest their populations prove to be unable to withstand the economic shock.

Worse, the effects of the Covid-19 shutdowns are likely to echo through multiple generations, as children’s educational development has suffered due to school closures – especially those in low-income families who particularly struggled to access remote learning, the Bank’s report warns.

Malpass insisted that mass vaccination and “concerted international action and a comprehensive set of national policy responses” were the only ways for his institution to correct the problems it helped cause. Chief among his recommendations was a call for accelerated debt relief efforts, and while he stressed the importance of carbon taxes and other climate-change policies, he acknowledged that now was perhaps not the time to raise fuel prices.

Both the Bank and the International Monetary Fund were strong proponents of lockdowns. Echoing a similar offer from the IMF, the World Bank reportedly told Belarus in early 2020 that it could receive a significant amount of relief funding in exchange for modeling its Covid-19 control measures on those of Italy, which at the time was under a strict lockdown. When President Alexander Lukashenko declined to lock down his country, the bank warned Minsk’s economy would “face a severe shock” that year – a carrot/stick approach often seen in that institution's dealings.

 

Lee Camp: The silver bullet to ending poverty that we choose to ignore

Basic income has been tried successfully countless times. So why the hell isn’t the US government implementing it?

Lee Camp is the host of the hit comedy news show Redacted Tonight. 

His new book, ‘Bullet Points and Punch Lines’, is available at 

LeeCampBook.com, 

His stand-up comedy special can be streamed for free at

 LeeCampAmerican.com.

FILE PHOTO. © Getty Images / Spencer Platt/

This article was originally published by Scheerpost.

Here’s how the world should operate in simple terms: A certain country or region or city or township or Hobbit hole tries something in order to help their society or group or hovel – if it works, other places then do it. If it doesn’t work, other places don’t do it. It’s like when you were a kid and you saw your brother slide down the banister and rack himself on the newel post – You then thought, “Maybe that activity is not for me.” But if he didn’t nail himself in the jewels, you probably thought, “I think I’ll try that.” 

That’s how the United States government should work, but it doesn’t. For-profit healthcare, corporate personhood, the drug war, funding terrorists overseas that we call “moderate rebels,” etc. – all of these things have been tried, they fu***n’ suck every time, and we keep doing them. The U.S. continually racks itself on the newel post all day long and then responds, “I think I’ll try that again.” 

But the reverse should be true also – if a city or country anywhere in the world tries something and it works great, we should do it.

This brings me to Universal Basic Income: everybody receiving money from a government simply for being a citizen, no questions asked. It’s high time we try it in the US and see whether it works. Oh wait, I just remembered – it’s been tried countless times and worked every damn time. How do I know that? …Reading. 

As Rutger Bregman details in his book “Utopia For Realists,” UBI has been tried many times — in Canada, Alaska, Africa, the US, Europe, and more. Even backwards lawless lands like North Carolina have experimented with it.

There was a study in Britain where 13 men who had lived on the streets for years were given £3,000 each (about $4,500 at the time). Did they use it for hundreds of pricey almond milk lattes, or giant bags of crack, or maybe just wad it up into balls and wipe themselves with them? Nope, turns out they didn’t do any of those things. Eighteen months after receiving the money, over half were no longer homeless, and all of them had improved their lives significantly.

As Bregman noted, “Even The Economist had to conclude that ‘the most efficient way to spend money on the homeless might be to give it to them.’”

No! We can’t possibly do that! We here in the US have to take the money meant to help the homeless and launder it through all kinds of plans and incentives and bureaucratic digestive tracts that result in one out of every 100 people in extreme poverty receiving a gift certificate for a free basket of breadsticks at Arby’s. 

In another program Bregman describes, everybody in a village in Kenya was given $500, about a year’s wages. Several months later, the village had been completely transformed. People had better jobs, sturdier home structures, and healthier kids. “In Namibia figures for malnutrition took a nosedive (from 42% to 10%), as did those for truancy (from 40% to nothing) and crime (down by 42%),” writes Bregman. 

So, basically there’s almost a silver bullet to ending poverty and decreasing crime. Well, we better avoid it like the plague. Let’s go back to giving homeless people a can of soup and a pair of mismatched socks. If they collect enough cans and socks, they can build a house out of them!

The point is basic income has been tested numerous times. By 2010, there were income transfer programs for 110 million families in 45 different countries. In North Carolina, in 2001 the Cherokee were getting $6,000 a year per family thanks to a casino they had built. When that started, for most of those families that money took them out of extreme poverty, and the Cherokee children saw drastic changes. Their crime rates, behavioral issues, and alcohol abuse went down significantly. The money literally changed their lives. (And sure, all casinos are based on drunk people spending money they don’t have on machines they don’t know are rigged in hopes of getting money they will never get. But you can’t get mad at the Cherokee because that’s also the basic definition of capitalism: Drunk people spending money we don’t have on machines we don’t know are rigged in hopes of getting money we’ll never get.) 

The University of Manchester summarized many UBI programs in poor African communities. They found, overall, the money was put to good use: Poverty decreased, and while the programs cost less than other so-called solutions, there were myriad long-term benefits that impacted  health and safety. How shocking! The thing we know works seems to work! (Hopefully somebody can study this a little more and find out if it works.)

Bregman then writes of NGO workers, “So why send over to Africa expensive white folks in SUVs when we can simply hand over their salaries to the poor?” Great point. At the very least, let’s give away the SUVs. 

The latest basic income “test” reported-on last month in Fast Company showed that it worked yet again in Hudson, NY. Despite all of these successful trials, people still argue, “We can’t have basic income because the poor will just use it for beer and cigarettes!” Well, first of all – So what? The world’s on fire. Beer and cigarettes sound like just what the doctor ordered. In fact, I think we’re at the point when we can call alcohol and tobacco survival foods. (I am a longtime supporter of Universal Basic Beer and Cigarettes.) 

But perhaps more importantly, as Bregman notes, “A major study by the World Bank demonstrated that in 82% of all researched cases in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, alcohol and tobacco consumption actually declined.” Declined? Well, then I have to say these poor people have their priorities completely wrong.

Another major argument against UBI is, “It’s not fair. Giving people money for doing nothing simply isn’t fair.” My response to that is twofold. First, it actually is fair because the money would go to literally everyone. Hence the word “universal” in the name. (It would be weird to have something called “Universal Basic Income” that only went to a vintage clothing store clerk named Stanley.) Secondly, who told you fairness mattered in life? Who told you fairness has anything to do with our stupid world? There’s no fairness. In the first three seconds you come out of the womb, life is not fair. You’re covered in blood and mucus, some doctor slaps you on the ass, and you’re told your name is something you’ve never even heard before! Completely unfair. You’re just lying there going, “Chet? My name’s CHET?!” 

Some people are born rich as sh*t.

Some people are born poor as sh*t.

Some people are born hot as sh*t. (I mean, not as a baby but… later. You get the point.) 

Some people are born in wealthy areas with safe streets, good schools and clean water.

Some people are born in poverty with crime-ridden streets, terrible schools, and water that has a crispy film on the top like a cancerous crème brulée.

In our society, on average, men get paid more than women, white people get paid more than Black people and Native people, and most everyone gets paid more than ugly people. (I’m not even kidding – ugly people earn up to 15% less per hour in the workplace.)

Society. Is. Not. Fair. 

So if I say that universal basic income would solve several of society’s problems and someone responds that UBI’s not fair, they’re being completely illogical. It’s like if I said a law against killing endangered species would save the exotic birds, and you retort, “But we can’t do that because it’s not purple.”

Besides, perhaps giving people a better shot at life, a better shot at not struggling day-in and day-out, perhaps that’s actually more fair than this shitstorm we have now.

Another argument against UBI is that it will make people lazy. And I would agree with that except… it’s not true. Studies show it doesn’t make people work less and even if it did, I would say, “GOOD!” Under capitalism you are born free, but then you spend the rest of your existence trying to rent back your life from corporate rulers. So if UBI decreases that slavery by a percentage point, that’s a good thing. 

And the final argument against UBI is that we can’t afford it. Well, as Bregman notes, “Eradicating poverty in the U.S. would cost only $175 billion, less than 1% of the GDP. That’s roughly a quarter of the U.S. military spending.” 

So not only do we have enough money, but we also would be saving hundreds of billions in the form of services we wouldn’t need anymore. We’d have a more physically and mentally healthy population, decreased crime and abuse, etc. All told, we would save so much more than we would lose. And even if we didn’t – I DON’T CARE! I WANT TO END POVERTY! 

Anyway, it’s time for universal basic income. Technology advances exponentially. Most jobs will disappear. And instead of demanding more wage slavery, we should work less and have universal basic income. Will UBI solve all the problems of capitalism? Absolutely not. It’s the first of many steps toward helping people realize the capitalistic market economy is a guaranteed death spiral that we have the power to stop.