Advertisements are ramping up, words are becoming fiercer, and skeletons are coming out of candidates’ closets. This game is nothing new, yet we play it all the time. What does it mean to vote? What does the election spectacle do for us? Within a bourgeois fantasy, it is to elect a person who is totally accountable to the community they represent. I mean . . . this is the ideal, an ideal which has material consequences. The fantasies are, in some perverted way, a reality. The structures and institutions we all engage with organize around these principles rooted in anti-blackness . . .
Joe Biden
For Haitian Asylum Seekers, Biden is the More Effective Evil
For many 2020 voters of Presidential candidate Joe Biden and Vice-Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, their historic electoral win would symbolize a drastic change from the vituperative language and callous policies that came to define the chaotic and destructive Trump years. Whether it was the Trump administration’s criminalization of asylum seekers, separation of mother and child at the border through their cruel “zero tolerance” strategy, reduction in refugee resettlement, or use of xenophobic rhetoric before racializing a viral disease like COVID-19 that would stoke rampant Sinophobia, a more “compassionate” approach was promised by his would-be successors. However, as the late journalist . . .
How the US is Using Taiwan to Provoke a War with China
When the US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan on 2 August 2022, it predictably enraged China because the island of Taiwan is part of China. The visit was a condescending challenge to China (especially when it was backed up by a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group and military jets). The Pentagon provided fighter jets as escorts for Pelosi’s congressional visit with an increased US naval presence. Two aircraft carriers, two amphibious assault ships, 36 warships and three submarines were in the vicinity of Taiwan. US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, declared that America’s armed . . .
Class Struggle & Higher Education
The revived discourse around student loan forgiveness has created a forest for the tree moment, yet again, in how the masses react to what is purported to be incremental “wins.” The Biden administration recently announced that the federal government will forgive $10,000 in student loan debt for Americans making less than $125,000 annually as well as extend the student loan repayment moratorium. This announcement is in stark difference to the campaign Biden ran on, yet this offering is being oversold by mainstream media pundits and journalists ultimately causing mass confusion about what is happening in and with higher education. Granted, . . .
Biden Gaslights Us With $10,000 Student Loan Forgiveness
Just as I suspected, Biden is announcing that he will approve the cancellation of $10,000 in federal student loan debt. I guess Biden is expecting some kind of returns on his efforts in the midterm elections, but I seem to recall his campaign promise to “Forgive all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt from two- and four-year public colleges and universities and private Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) for debt holders earning up to $125,000.” That’s directly from the Biden/Harris campaign website as confirmed by Politifact and their Biden Promise Tracker (which you should definitely check . . .
The January 6th Scam
The January 6th hearings preach to the democrats’ choir, divert attention from the country’s most pressing needs, and keep the name Donald Trump in the public collective consciousness for the most cynical of reasons. . . .
Complicity, Imperialism, & the Summit of the Americas
The U.S. excluded Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from the recent Summit of the Americas held in Los Angeles. While there was widespread condemnation against the U.S., only six heads of state had the courage to decline the invitation. An opportunity to strike a blow against U.S. imperialism was lost. And so it was that another historical opportunity was missed by the countries of the Caribbean, Central and South America, with the exception of a few who had the courage to take a stand. The majority of leaders from the region, those who Maurice Bishop so aptly called “yard fowls”, and . . .
The Empire’s “Front Yard” and the Monroe Doctrine
We used to talk about, when I was a kid in college, about “America’s backyard.” It’s not America’s backyard. Everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard. And we’re equal people. We don’t dictate what happens in any other part of that — of this continent or the South American continent. We have to work very hard on it. But the trouble is: we’re having great difficulty making up for the mistakes that were made the last four years, and it’s going to take some time. Remarks by President Biden in Press Conference JANUARY 19, 2022 The claims . . .