Redeye on the news...July 19, 2023

​​Another racist assault by kkkops on Black workers
Washington Post, 6/15–Six sheriff’s deputies responding to a report of drug activity at a Mississippi home in January deactivated their body cameras before forcibly entering the house…Once inside, the…deputies allegedly handcuffed two Black men and subjected them to a night of abuse. While Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker were subdued, the deputies beat them, hurled racist slurs and repeatedly used Tasers on the men…The deputies, who are White, also waterboarded Jenkins and Parker, pelted them with eggs and attempted to sexually assault them with a sex toy…The encounter ended nearly two hours later when a deputy placed a gun in Jenkins’s mouth and shot him, permanently injuring his face…Jenkins was transported by medics to the University of Mississippi Medical Center and received several surgeries, according to the lawsuit. Parker was arrested and transported to the Rankin County Jail on a charge of possession of drug paraphernalia…

Capitalism is always at war with workers
Al Jazeera, 7/3–The number of women who died within a year after pregnancy more than doubled between 1999 and 2019 in the United States, a new study has found, with the highest number of deaths recorded among Black women. The study, published on Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at maternal deaths between 1999 and 2019 — but not the COVID-19 pandemic spike — for every U.S. state and five racial and ethnic groups. There were an estimated 1,210 maternal deaths in 2019, compared with 505 in 1999, the researchers found.Overall, the number of deaths per 100,000 live births rose from 12.7 to 32.2 in that 20-year span, while the number of deaths among Black women increased from 26.7 to 55.4. The greatest jump over time was seen among American Indian and Alaska Native women, however – from 14 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1999 to 49.2 in 2009.

East Asia bosses realize fewer babies is a problem
Economist, 6/30–Ultra-low birth rates and stiff resistance to immigration produce shrinking populations: according to the United Nations, the four East Asian territories will see their combined populations shrink by 28% between 2020 and 2075. During the same period, their combined share of global gdp is projected to drop from 26.7% to 17.4%, according to Goldman Sachs…political leaders see families as an urgent policy priority.
Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has promised “a national policy system to boost birth rates” and launched a national effort to promote “new-era marriage culture.” Japan’s low birth rate leaves it “on the brink of whether it can continue to function as a society,” according to its prime minister, Kishida Fumio…Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea’s president, called his country’s birth rate a “crucial national agenda” in need of an “emergency mindset.” Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, has called its declining birth rate a “national-security problem”... Mr Paul Chang, a sociologist at Harvard University argues: “The changes are driven by anxieties, social problems and social conflicts,” not the triumph of the individual.

Big Fascists rediscover need for centralized war production
Foreign Affairs, 7/3–Weeks after the fighting began, the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued that the United States and its allies are “serving as the ‘arsenal of democracy,’...But this lofty rhetoric does not match the reality on the ground. Shortages in production, inadequate labor pools, and interruptions in supply chains have hamstrung the United States’ ability to deliver weapons to Ukraine and enhance the country’s defense capabilities more broadly. These problems have much to do with the history of the U.S. defense industry since World War II…Back then, the industry was predominantly a government-run business. President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal emphasized economic regulation and relied on “alphabet agencies” such as the Works Progress Administration to boost employment, paving the way for later wartime contracting. New Deal agencies inspired the creation of the War Production Board in 1942, which mobilized business and rationed resources for the battlefront…The government owned nearly 90 percent of the productive capacity of aircraft, ships, and guns and ammunition.