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What Does a "Racist Country" Look Like Anyway?

America is not a racist country,” Republican senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said in his party’s official response to President Biden’s address to the nation on April 28. There are reasons that should have been a laugh line: Biden did not say America was a “racist country,” the Black senator was rebutting the president’s call for racial justice across all ethnicities, and the reality is that America was founded as a country in which owning and selling Black people was justified and legalized on the basis of the racist doctrine that they were part of an inferior race. Scott didn’t get a laugh. He wasn’t trying to be funny. He was being intellectually dishonest and uttering a coded racist call to the white supremacist cohort of the Republican party that he is tolerant of their different, racist point of view. That’s where denial takes you, into crazy-land.

Palestine’s Moment of Reckoning: On Abbas’ Dangerous Decision to ‘Postpone’ Elections

The decision on April 30 by Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, to ‘postpone’ Palestinian elections, which would have been the first in 15 years, will deepen Palestinian division and could, potentially, signal the collapse of the Fatah Movement, at least in its current form. 

STEALING CHAPLIN: Film Review

British director Paul Tanter’s droll Stealing Chaplin may be a comedy that will keep audiences laughing from beginning to end, but the other movie it reminds me of is screenwriter Kemp Powers’ One Night in Miami. Although the latter is a heavy-hitting drama, the fanciful stories of both Miami and Stealing are loosely inspired by real life events. In the case of the former, following his 1964 championship bout with Sonny Liston, Muhammad Ali really did spend much of the rest of the evening with Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke in a Miami motel room. Little is known of what those titans said and did that evening, but this actual, historic incident kindled Powers’ powers of imagination to conjure up what may have come to pass, which was dramatized onstage by L.A.’s Rogue Machine in 2013 and onscreen last year.

Mapping Militarism 2021

This year’s annual update to World BEYOND War’s Mapping Militarism project uses a completely new mapping system developed by our Technology Director Marc Eliot Stein. We think it does a better job than ever of displaying the data of warmaking and peacemaking on maps of the world. And it makes use of new data reporting on the latest trends.

When you visit the Mapping Militarism site, you will find seven sections linked across the top, most of which contain multiple maps listed down the lefthand side. Each map’s data can be seen in map view or list view, and the data in list view can be ordered by any column you click on. Most of the maps/lists have data for a number of years, and you can scroll back through the past to see what’s changed. Every map includes a link to the source of the data.

The maps included are as follows:

Left, Play Hardball & Say NO to Biden’s Military Budget

While we can applaud many of President Biden’s domestic efforts—from repealing the Muslim ban to tackling broken infrastructure to pushing for swift COVID relief and an American Families Plan, his foreign policies keep us up at night as “The Return of the Neocons” plays in our head like a bad B movie.

 

To Biden’s credit, during the first 100 days of his term we rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, extended the START arms control treaty with Russia another five years, restored aid to the dispossessed Palestinians, reversed Trump’s Executive Order criminalizing cooperation with the International Criminal Court, and appointed experienced negotiator Robert Malley special envoy to Iran.

 

Water

 

I would like to announce the publication of a book, which discusses the relationships between water and life. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link:

 

http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Water-by-John-Scales-Av…

 

The United Nations' World Water Day

 

On its home-page for World Water Day the United Nations points out the following facts:

 

“Today, 1 in 3 people live without safe drinking water.

 

“By 2050, up to 5.7 billion people could be living in areas where water is scarce for at least one month a year.

 

“Climate-resilient water supply and sanitation could save the lives of more than 360,000 infants every year.

 

“If we limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, we could cut climate-induced water stress by up to 50%.

 

“Extreme weather has caused more than 90% of major disasters over the last decade.

 

U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan: 1989 vs. 2021

BANGKOK, Thailand -- President Biden's announced withdrawal from
Afghanistan will be the second time since 1989 that the U.S. retreats
from that country -- and twice after years of boosting war but losing
control over Islamist insurgents.

When previously enthusiastic, then-Senator Joe Biden arrived in Kabul
in January 2002 in response to 9/11, he voiced a gung-ho call for U.S.
military involvement.

"Make it clear, I'm not talking about [international] peace keepers.
I'm not talking about [U.N.] blue helmets. I'm talking about people
who shoot and kill people," the senator told reporters on January 12,
2002, standing in front of the embassy in a cold, clear, bone-dry
winter breeze.

"I'm talking about people who are a bunch of bad asses who will come
in here with guns, and understand that they don't have to check with
anybody before they return fire.

"I am talking about pursuers. I'm talking about a tough, rough,
militarily controlled -- no 'sign-off by' -- no diplomatic requirement
to determine whether they can return fire.

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