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Not Even COVID-19 Could Slow Down Nuclear Spending
Nine countries currently possess nuclear weapons: the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), these countries collectively spent $72.6 billion in 2020 on nukes.
The U.S. was responsible for just over half, at $37.4 billion. And the Congressional Budget Office shows U.S. nuclear spending is anticipated to soon increase sharply due to plans for technological upgrades, rising to $41.2 billion next year and totaling $634 billion during the 10 years from 2021-2030.
The Intercept explains how, as Daniel Ellsberg remarked, “It’s very profitable to prepare for omnicide.”
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Joe Biden’s Mixed Signals on Press Freedom
On Friday, The New York Times revealed that when the Biden Justice Department disclosed ongoing attempts to seize email records from four Times reporters to executives at the paper in March, they also imposed a gag order, preventing those executives from sharing the information, even with their colleagues at the Times, covers Columbia Journalism Review.
A federal court lifted the order on Friday, the White House denied knowledge of the matter until Saturday, and on the same day, the Justice Department announced it will discontinue the practice of seizing reporters’ records during leak investigations.
The Justice Department’s seizure of journalists’ records “has a long, sordid history in American politics.” The Biden administration’s reversal of the policy signals a philosophical shift, but a true reversal will require them to keep heir word.
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Nobody Should Be Celebrating the Affordable Care Act
The Affordable Care Act fortified the political supremacy of the insurance industry—one that many Americans hate. Now the ACA is proving that this political “win,” as Democrats have lauded it, “preserves a problem, steamrolls alternatives, and makes a crisis more difficult to fix.”
For Jacobin, Izzy Winner David Sirota explains how the ACA “works.” As millions of Americans lost their health insurance last year, six health insurance CEOs were paid a combined $120 million, boosting industry profits and executive pay. Some of these earnings amount to over $150 million of campaign donations funneled to Democrats since Obamacare was first enacted.
Sirota writes of the policy’s enduring consequences, “we don’t have to just accept that the best we can hope for is a policy that funnels more cash to private insurance companies in exchange for smaller and smaller discount coupons for more and more expensive medical care.”
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Corporations Are Trying to Co-opt Mindfulness to Avoid Meeting Workers’ Needs
A rising trend in the corporate landscape encourages workers to engage in activities including mindfulness and meditation to manage work-related stress and improve performance.
Author Ron Purser coined this phenomenon “McMindfulness,” identified by the co-opting of Buddhist spiritual traditions by corporations, schools, and even the military and police departments, in order to persuade and manipulate workers into conformity. These programs promote the toxic idea that individuals must adapt to unfair and dangerous working conditions.
Amazon is one such corporation employing the practice, in its WorkingWell program. The company has also aimed to manipulate employees and consumers with a recent “native” ad in the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post. The ad brags about workers’ $15 an hour wage, despite Amazon’s financial support for groups that strenuously oppose a $15 minimum wage, its quashing of union organizing, and degrading working conditions.
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How Bankruptcy Lets Oil and Gas Companies Evade Cleanup Rules ( Grist)
A battle to decide who must clean up hundreds of oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico is playing out in a bankruptcy court in southern Texas. The decision involves Fieldwood Energy, an offshore drilling company trying to avoid over $7 billion in environmental cleanup; several major oil companies including Chevron and BP; and the Department of the Interior.
The Department of the Interior has been filing objections to Fieldwood’s plan to use its bankruptcy to split assets and doge responsibility for cleaning up its unprofitable assets, including more than 1,170 wells, 280 pipelines, and 270 drilling platforms. This infrastructure poses several risks to the environment and human safety, including oil and gas leaks and explosions, reports Grist.
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Amnesty Says Paltry G7 Climate Plans ‘A Devastating, Mass-Scale Assault on Human Rights’
Ahead of this week’s G7 summit, Amnesty International called out wealthy nations’ inadequate climate action plans as a massive human rights failure. The organization delivered a blueprint for policymakers to change course to uphold their international obligations.
“These are not administrative failures, they are a devastating, mass-scale assault on human rights,” said Chiara Liguori, Amnesty International’s Human Rights and Environment policy advisor. This assessment came alongside the release of Amnesty’s new policy brief, Stop Burning Our Rights, which asserts that wealthier nations, who predominantly fueled the climate crisis, must lead global efforts to net zero emissions.
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In Other News
1. Congress communications hit by ransomware attack (The Independent)
2. How America Fractured Into Four Parts (The Atlantic)
3. Spreading Vaccine Fears, And Cashing In (HuffPost)
4. ANOM: Hundreds arrested in massive global crime sting using messaging app (BBC)
5. Massive internet outage hits websites including Amazon, gov.uk and Guardian (The Guardian)
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