RED EYE ON THE NEWS . . . January 4, 2023

Dominican Republic officials: gutter racists
Al Jazeera, 11/24/22–Authorities in the Dominican Republic have rounded up thousands of Haitian migrants — and anyone who looks like they could be from Haiti — and deported them to a country in the grips of deadly gang violence and instability, advocates say. The forced removals, which rights groups say have escalated this month, have drawn international criticism and calls for restraint amid reports that unaccompanied children, pregnant women and other vulnerable people are being deported.

Some deportees have never set foot in Haiti…Dominican police and armed forces are detaining Haitians in the streets as well as “all those who look like Haitians.” More than 20,000 people had been deported in a nine-day period this month…including some Dominican citizens with Haitian ancestry.

An official source with knowledge of the matter…approximately 40,000 people will be sent from the Dominican Republic to Haiti in November. That is in addition to the 60,000 who were deported in the past months…UNICEF said an estimated 1,800 unaccompanied minors were expelled from the country this year alone, a number the Dominican Republic denies.“These deportations have resulted in the separation of families. People with valid documents have been deported, people who were born here in the Dominican Republic have been deported, ...These aren’t deportations. It’s persecution based on race.”

European imperialists revise plan to rob workers in Africa
Der Spiegel, 11/11–Starting next year, a consortium led by BP [British Petroleum] is to begin extracting natural gas here on the border between Senegal and Mauritania…Extraction is planned to continue for 30 years, with the profits being divided up between the energy giants BP and Kosmos, and between the governments of Senegal and Mauritania…Processes that normally take years must be completed within just a few months in order to meet European demand as rapidly as possible and to profit from the high global prices...German Chancellor Olaf Scholz …noted…It is sensible…to "intensely pursue" cooperation in gas exploitation. Berlin is currently under pressure to quickly find alternatives to Russian natural gas, and the West African country is more than happy to jump into the breach…The mood marks a significant shift from last year, when European governments were singing the praises of the potential in Africa for renewable energies and warning against the exploitation of oil and gas.

Elon Musk joins the ranks of military contractors
CNBC, 12/5/22–Elon Musk’s SpaceX is expanding its Starlink satellite technology into military applications with a new business line called Starshield. Starshield is likely to further tap the company’s biggest U.S. government customer – the Pentagon – which already represents a high-value buyer of SpaceX’s launches and has shown significant interest in the capabilities of Starlink. Few details are available about the intended scope and capabilities of Starshield. On its website, SpaceX said the system will have “an initial focus” on three areas: Imagery, communications and “hosted payloads” – the third of which effectively offers government customers the company’s satellite bus (the body of the spacecraft) as a flexible platform. The Pentagon has already made clear that it’s willing to spend heavily to have companies build out next-generation satellite capabilities.

Academic study shows capitalist control of state policies
Cambridge University Press, 9/18/14–Who governs? Who really rules? To what extent is the broad body of U.S. citizens sovereign, semi-sovereign, or largely powerless? …it can loosely be divided into four families of theories: Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic-Elite Domination, and two types of interest-group pluralism—Majoritarian Pluralism, in which the interests of all citizens are more or less equally represented, and Biased Pluralism, in which corporations, business associations, and professional groups predominate. Each of these perspectives makes different predictions about the independent influence upon U.S. policy making of four sets of actors: the Average Citizen or “median voter,” Economic Elites, and Mass-based or Business-oriented Interest Groups or industries.

The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.