Associated Press:

U.S. life expectancy dropped for the second consecutive year in 2021, falling by nearly a year from 2020, according to a government report being released Wednesday.

In the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the estimated American lifespan has shortened by nearly three years. The last comparable decrease happened in the early 1940s, during the height of World War II.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials blamed COVID-19 for about half the decline in 2021, a year when vaccinations became widely available but new coronavirus variants caused waves of hospitalizations and deaths. Other contributors to the decline are longstanding problems: drug overdoses, heart disease, suicide and chronic liver disease.

“It’s a dismal situation. It was bad before and it’s gotten worse,” said Samuel Preston, a University of Pennsylvania demographer.

Craig Murray:

In short, it turns out Marx was right. The crisis of capitalism is now upon us. Neoliberalism (another word for designing state systems deliberately to lead to incredible concentrations of wealth amid general poverty) is coming to the end of its course. There are no palliative measures that will make the situation bearable. A radical change in the ownership of assets is the only thing that will address the situation – starting with public ownership of all energy companies, from hydrocarbon extractors like Shell and BP, through gas, electricity and fuel generators and manufacturers, distributors and retailers.

Nationalisation should be done properly, without compensating shareholders. If I had to choose between compensating the shareholders and imprisoning them, I would imprison them. I suggest we do neither.

That is only one sector and only the start. But it is a good start.

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The splitting of the political left by identity politics has been the go-to weapon of the state for several decades now. The replacement of horizontal class solidarity by vertical gender solidarity being the most obvious tool, epitomised by the notion that it was better to elect the multi millionaire, corrupt, neoliberal warmonger Hillary Clinton than the class politics espousing Bernie Sanders, simply because the warmonger was a woman.

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The Ukraine war is unusual in the attempt to enforce wartime levels of unanimity of narrative on the population, in western countries which are not only not combatants in the war, but not even formally allied to Ukraine. The United States was a party to the Vietnam War, but it was still possible for Americans to criticise that war without having all media access banned. Today you cannot criticise Ukraine in the state or corporate media at all, and your social media access is likely to be severely restricted unless you follow the official propaganda narrative.

This is the Establishment’s strongest method of control – the labeling of opposing opinion as “misinformation” or “disinformation”, even when there is no genuine evidential base that makes the official “facts” unassailable, as with Douma or the Skripals. To ask questions is stigmatised as traitorous and entirely illegitimate, while official journalists simply regurgitate government “information”.

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The neoliberal phase of super-capitalism has run its course. The gap between the wealthy and ordinary people has become so extreme that, even in the West, ordinary people no longer can afford to live decently. Consumerism has desperately depleted natural resources and accelerated climate change. The policy of perpetual war has finally undermined the world economy to a fatal degree.

The situation is not sustainable, but the global elite have no intention to give up sufficient of their massive wealth to make any difference. They seek to control society through the propaganda model and through increasing state repression of dissent, allied to an assault on “incorrect” thought by censorship of the internet and by populist demonisation. “Left” causes such as identity politics and protection from offence have been weaponised to support this suppression.

There is no democratic outlet for popular anger. The “opposition” parties which people can vote for are all under firm neoliberal, warmonger control. Democracy has ceased to present any effective choice that offers any hope of real change. The revival of interest in organised labour and the willingness of young people to engage in direct action in the field of climate change offer some avenues for activism, but it is too little, too late.

Die Zeit:

Deutschland und Frankreich sprechen sich gemeinsam gegen ein weitgehendes Einreise­verbot für russische Staatsbürgerinnen und Staatsbürger in die EU aus. „Wir sollten über kluge Wege nachdenken, um den wichtigen Hebel der Visaerteilung zu nutzen“, heißt es in einem an die anderen Mitgliedstaaten verschickten Positionspapier zum Treffen der Außenminister und Außen­ministerinnen der EU an diesem Dienstag und Mittwoch in Prag. Anträge russischer Staatsangehöriger sollten auf mögliche Sicherheitsrisiken genau geprüft werden. Gleichzeitig gelte, dass man den Einfluss, der von der unmittelbaren Erfahrung des Lebens in Demokratien ausgehen kann, nicht unterschätzen sollte. Dies beziehe sich insbesondere auf künftige Generationen.

Man wolle daher einen Rechtsrahmen beibehalten, der insbesondere Studierenden, Künstlerinnen, Wissenschaftlern und Fachkräften die Einreise in die EU ermögliche – unabhängig davon, ob ihnen eine politische Verfolgung drohen könnte.

Guardian:

More than 40% of Americans think civil war likely within a decade

More than two-fifths of Americans believe civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years, according to a new survey – a figure that increases to more than half among self-identified “strong Republicans”.

Amid heated rhetoric from supporters of Donald Trump, the findings, in research by YouGov and the Economist, follow similar results in other polls.

…

In the poll by YouGov and the Economist, 65% of all respondents said political violence had increased since the start of 2021. Slightly fewer, 62%, thought political violence would increase in the next few years.

Participants were also asked: “Looking ahead to the next 10 years, how likely do you think it is that there will be a civil war in this country?”

Among all US citizens, 43% said civil war was at least somewhat likely. Among strong Democrats and independents that figure was 40%. But among strong Republicans, 54% said civil war was at least somewhat likely.

Artem Sachuk, Vizepräsident der ukrainische Schachföderation, taz:

„Wenn wir alles, was mit Kultur und alltäglichem Leben zu tun hat, hintenanstellen, dann droht in Vergessenheit zu geraten, wofür wir hier eigentlich kämpfen.“

Michael Thumann, Die Zeit:

Niemals im Kalten Krieg hat der Westen die Grenzen dichtgemacht für verfolgte Sowjet­bürgerinnen und -bürger. Auch nicht für Esten, Litauerinnen oder Ukrainer. Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland gab sich ein großzügiges Asylrecht, weil die Naziverbrechen noch frisch waren und weil östlich der Elbe ein totalitäres sozialistisches System Millionen von Menschen quälte, brach und in Lager steckte. Die DDR baute eine Mauer, und die Sowjetunion verbarrikadierte ihre Grenzen. Sie schossen auf jeden, der gehen wollte. Der freie Westen aber blieb stets offen für verfolgte Menschen. Das ist unsere Glaubwürdigkeit, die es auch heute zu verteidigen gilt.

Sam Husseini:

In a remarkably unhinged analysis, NPR host Terry Gross and New York Times Magazine writer Robert Draper claimed that Russia is a communist country — as they went on about how detached from reality rightwing Republicans are.

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After I and others tweeted about this, NPR posted this correction:

POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In the audio version of this story, Terry Gross incorrectly states that Russia is a communist country, when she meant to say that Putin was the head of the KGB during the communist era.

Which almost makes it worse.

Hey, do you remember Pershing Summer? Remember the Reagan Administration, Grenada, El Salvador? I know I do. I also remember The Call and Modern Romans. Back there in 1983 I think Michael Been nailed it. Garth Hudson of The Band on keyboards. You know he remembered Nixon and Vietnam.

Die DDR war – aus russischer Sicht – ein vorbildliches Lager: deutsche Wertarbeit. Und aus unserer Ost-Berliner Innenperspektive galt im sozialistischen Weltlager die polnische Baracke, also unser Bruderland Polen, als die rebellischste, die ungarische als die lustigste und die ČSSR als die gemütlichste Baracke. Unsre DDR-Baracke aber hatte einen miesen Ruf als die sauberste und ordentlichste. Ulbrichts Fürstentum DDR galt als realsozialistischer Mustergarten, in dem jedes Radieschen nummeriert an seinem Platz stand.

—Wolf Biermann, »Warte nicht auf bessre Zeiten!«, (Berlin: Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH, 2016), 198.