Liberal bosses move further toward fascism in Atlanta
The Intercept, 5/31–…a heavily armed Atlanta Police Department SWAT team raided a house in Atlanta and arrested three of its residents. Their crime? Organizing legal support and bail funds for protesters and activists who have faced indiscriminate arrest and overreaching charges in the struggle to stop the construction of a vast police training facility — dubbed Cop City — atop a forest in Atlanta. In a joint operation with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, or GBI, Atlanta cops charged Marlon Scott Kautz, Adele Maclean, and Savannah Patterson — all board members of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund — with “money laundering” and “charity fraud.”
A total of 42 activists are currently facing state domestic terror charges on the flimsiest of police claims, while three others face hefty felony intimidation charges for distributing flyers that named a police officer connected to the brutal police killing of 26-year-old forest defender Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán.
Proxy war in Somalia continues
France24, 6/4–Some 54 Ugandan peacekeepers died when militants besieged an African Union base in Somalia last week, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni said, in one of the worst recent attacks by Al-Shabaab jihadists in the war-torn country…The toll is one of the heaviest yet since pro-government forces backed by the AU force known as ATMIS launched an offensive against Al-Shabaab last August.
Al-Shabaab, which has been waging a deadly insurgency against Somalia's fragile central government for more than a decade, claimed responsibility for the May 26 attack, saying it had overrun the base and killed 137 soldiers…The militants drove a car laden with explosives into the base in Bulo Marer, 120 kilometres (75 miles) southwest of the capital Mogadishu, leading to a gunfight, local residents and a Somali military commander told AFP…In a report to the UN Security Council in February, UN chief Antonio Guterres said 2022 was the deadliest year for civilians in Somalia since 2017, largely as a result of Al-Shabaab attacks.
Analysis of war preparations in China and in U.S.
Der Spiegel, 6/2–George Yeo, the former foreign minister of Singapore, discusses the ongoing power struggle in the Pacific region…China is on its way to becoming the world's biggest economy. It will be a comprehensive power and the United States feels threatened by it. It sees a threat to its global dominance and is trying everything to slow down China, and even to bring it down if possible.
China's push towards nuclear weapons has to do with its need for a second-strike capability, i.e. the possibility of responding to a nuclear attack with a counter-strike. The Chinese know that the U.S. wants to deny them this ability. The U.S., on the other hand, senses that without its nuclear deterrent capability, China is likely to prevail in a conventional war over Taiwan. So they want to be able to threaten China with a nuclear attack…one of the reasons why there is so much interest in the South China Sea. Not so much because of the freedom of navigation, which has never been an issue, but because of submarine warfare. China’s view is: Let's assume our opponent can locate every one of our ballistic-armed nuclear submarines. Well, then I'll increase my warhead count from 500 to 1,000, maybe even to 1,500. Because even if the other side destroys 95 percent of them, I'll still have some to hit back with.
U.S. workers are not doing well
AJPH, 6/1–Increases in U.S. life expectancy slowed from 1950 to 1954 and 1955 to 1973, accelerated from 1974 to 1982, and progressively deteriorated from 1983 to 2009, 2010 to 2019, and 2020 to 2021 (–0.97 years/annum). Other countries experienced faster growth in each phase except 1974 to 1982. During 1933 to 2021, 56 countries on 6 continents surpassed US life expectancy. Growth in U.S. life expectancy was slowest in Midwest and South Central states…The U.S. life expectancy disadvantage began in the 1950s and has steadily worsened over the past 4 decades. Dozens of globally diverse countries have outperformed the United States. Causal factors appear to have been concentrated in the Midwest and South.
