Redeye 6/8

Capitalism kills in more ways than one
JACC Heart Failure, 5/2022–The aim of this study was to assess trends in heart failure (HF) hospitalizations among young adults. The National Inpatient Sample database was analyzed to identify adults aged 18 to 45 years who were hospitalized for HF between 2004 and 2018.
Black adults (50.1 percent) had a significantly higher proportion of HF hospitalizations compared with White (31.9 percent) and Hispanic adults (12.2 percent) throughout the study period. Nearly half of patients (45.8 percent) lived in zip codes in the lowest quartile of national household income.
German Green Party joins the war train
Der Spiegel, 5/6–The Greens have long been regarded as peace-loving idealists. They are now among the loudest voices calling for heavy weapons to be delivered to Ukraine and have placed considerable pressure on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to do so. The pacifists of yore have gone quiet and now the talk is of tanks and howitzers.
With his long hair, most Germans had until now viewed…[Green Party Parliamentarian Anton] Hofreiter as the epitome of the incorrigible hippy. Such is the situation this spring: Hofreiter, the Ph.D. botanist who can name all the plants and flowers while walking through Berlin's Tiergarten park, is now Hofreiter the weapons expert, who lectures on munitions calibers and crews of infantry fighting vehicles.
Instead of playing the pacifists and slamming on the brakes when it comes to delivering heavy weaponry to Ukraine, the Greens are the ones who are calling for more, upping the pressure on their partners, particularly the SPD, in the process.
Squad votes for New Green War
Unherd.com, 5/13–The $40 billion foreign aid package to Ukraine — the second and largest aid package proposed by the Biden administration — nearly shuttled through Congress at a speed not seen since the New Deal era…members of The Squad, the Democrats’ most prominent progressive group in Congress, have been curiously silent on the issue. …no members of the Squad (or any Democrat) voted against [the bill]...only Cori Bush…chose to speak out about the bill. There has been a Ukraine-shaped blind spot for most of The Squad since war broke out…Indeed, it was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who first commented on the war in February 23 when she tweeted:
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is indefensible...any military action must take place with Congressional approval.
Capitalists will starve millions this year
Economist, 5/19–Ukraine’s exports of grain and oilseeds have mostly stopped and Russia’s are threatened. Together, the two countries supply 12% of traded calories. Wheat prices, up 53% since the start of the year, jumped a further 6% on May 16th, after India said it would suspend exports because of an alarming heatwave.
The high cost of staple foods has already raised the number of people who cannot be sure of getting enough to eat by 440m, to 1.6bn. Nearly 250m are on the brink of famine. If, as is likely, the war drags on and supplies from Russia and Ukraine are limited, hundreds of millions more people could fall into poverty. Political unrest will spread, children will be stunted and people will starve.
Nuclear war coming our way
Foreign Affairs, 5/20–Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has raised the specter of nuclear war…But if China attempted to forcibly invade Taiwan and the United States came to Taipei’s aid, the threat of escalation could outstrip even the current nerve-wracking situation in Europe.
A recent war game, conducted by the Center for a New American Security…demonstrated just how quickly such a conflict could escalate…The game demonstrated that China’s military modernization and expansion of its nuclear arsenal—not to mention the importance Beijing places on unification with Taiwan—mean that, in the real world, a fight between China and the United States could very well go nuclear.
China has historically possessed only a few hundred ground-based nuclear weapons. But last year, nuclear scholars…identified three missile silo fields under construction in the Xinjiang region…The U.S. Department of Defense projects that by 2030, China will have around 1,000 deliverable warheads…Based on these projections, Chinese leaders may believe that as early as five years from now the PLA will have made enough conventional and nuclear gains that it could fight and win a war to unify with Taiwan.