Hard Pass

War is a Racket (The Profit That Fuels Warfare) -- ‘The Anti-war Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/49267624

If you have been following the Lemmyvision posts, then the sections in this article will be fairly familiar. We put this together to be a full summary/recap of our side of this year's event. Enjoy!

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There have now been 11 confirmed cases of hantavirus connected to an outbreak from the luxury cruise ship MV Hondius, which departed Argentina on April 1. Although transmission is difficult, three people have died, and with a mortality up to 40 percent, global spread would be devastating. It’s also no surprise that people are concerned — particularly since we are just six years out from the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, which showed us exactly how capitalism and the ruling class respond to pandemics.

The Hantavirus(es) and the Cruise

The hantaviruses are part of a group of viruses found primarily in rodents. And while humans typically acquire them in contact with rodent feces, the Andes strain can spread from human to human, though experts have claimed transmission in this way is very difficult. The virus has a six- to seven-week incubation period, which makes the virus harder to track and allows people to go long periods of time without exhibiting symptoms. All of this, plus the virus’s very high mortality rate, makes human to human transmission all the more concerning.

So if more people have been exposed, where are they now? The almost 150 passengers and crew members have mostly returned to their home countries around the world for ongoing intensive monitoring and treatment. The WHO has left it up to each country to determine necessary precautions which vary widely from strict quarantine in healthcare settings (Spain) to home quarantine (the Netherlands).

In the United States, 18 of the passengers are being treated at the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Center at the University of Nebraska Medical Center/Nebraska Medicine (UNMC) in Omaha. Another two passengers were taken to Emory University’s Serious Communicable Diseases unit in Atlanta. Peculiarly, and somewhat troublingly, while patients at UNMC are supposed to be monitored for 42 days, Dr. Brendan Jackson, the CDC’s acting director of high-consequence pathogens and pathology, recently said patients may be able to go home during the monitoring period, but only if they have support to isolate at home.

Most recently, U.S. officials said they were monitoring additional people across the country who were passengers on an April 25 flight from Johannesburg and exposed to someone known to have been infected, bringing the new total of those being monitored in the U.S. to 41.

The Spectre of Covid-19

As the hantavirus situation plays out, officials around the world, including in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, have repeatedly tried to reassure the public, downplaying the risk of large-scale spread. But there is plenty to still be concerned about. As the New York Times reports:

And this is just specifically related to disease response. Whether it is approving forever chemicals in pesticides, scraping the endangerment finding, or deciding that it will no longer evaluate the health impact and lives saved when regulating air pollution from new power plants, the Trump administration is not showing signs that it’s concerned about public health overall. But it’s not just the Trump administration — both parties are more than willing to sacrifice lives at the altars of imperialism (cough, Genocide Joe, cough) and capitalism.

As a physician who worked in hospitals throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, I’m inherently skeptical despite expert reassurances. Working in healthcare has provided me example after example reinforcing how little the ruling class cares about the health of the general population. And the pandemic showed us clearly that capitalism does not care about people unless they are generating profit.

During Covid’s peak, we saw how the bourgeoisie around the world were more than willing to reopen economies and force people back to work in order to keep the profit flowing. Hell, what do they care about any of us, to be honest? They know they can run to their luxury condos — or even their disaster bunkers — as we all are put at risk. It’s in this context that what to believe and not to believe around the response to the Andes virus is inevitably going to be blurred by how the bourgeoisie managed Covid-19.

Whether it’s downplaying the transmissibility of the disease, distorting the scientific data, or focusing on magic bullet solutions, capitalist states are making many of the same mistakes they made in 2020. Capitalism inevitably breeds crises, yet also tries to come up with profitable, commensurable “solutions” to the crises it generates all while avoiding any regulation that could slow profit accumulation.

Under this system, there’s an aura of “don’t worry about it, we can innovate our way to a solution.” Rising greenhouse gases driving us toward climate collapse? Don’t worry, we can just suck up pollution — or better yet, “blot out” the sun. During Covid’s peak, instead of making sure safety measures were in place and paying people to stay safe at home, the focus was put on rolling out vaccines as the magic bullet to reopen economies. All this while the virus continued to spread, leading to excess death and countless cases of long Covid. God forbid people be able to shelter in place or keep themselves safe as a deadly virus is on the loose. This would be too threatening to the system’s maximization of the extraction of surplus value.

Today, similar discussions are being thrown around with the hantavirus. From NBC to Forbes, the discussion is already leaning toward how a vaccine is in the works, and the risk of hantavirus is continually downplayed.

Hantavirus or Not, Capitalism Will Breed Pandemics

Whether this virus becomes the next devastating pandemic or not isn’t the real question. The real question is: what happens when — not if — the next one hits?

Under a global economic system that constantly places profit above public well-being, it’s only a matter of time before the next pandemic arrives. Covid-19 showed us this and the current reality only further confirms it. Whether it’s gutting public health programs, destroying the environment, funding genocides, or cutting CDC staffing while withdrawing from the WHO, the message is clear: health and well-being are secondary.

Hopefully the hantavirus outbreak does not continue to spread and it actually just serves as a warning shot. Regardless, as the ruling class continues to destroy ecosystems, push wildlife into closer contact with humans, and defund the very institutions meant to protect us, they are actively manufacturing the conditions for the next global health catastrophe.

And when that catastrophe comes, we can’t expect capitalism to save us. We’ll get the same playbook: reassuring lies, profit-driven “solutions,” and a ruling class that runs and hides in luxury enclaves while the rest of us are sacrificed at the altar of capital.

We cannot innovate our way out of this cycle. In the search for magic bullets to each pandemic, the reality remains: no magic bullet will fix a system that breeds pandemics for profit. We need a system that prioritizes human need over capital accumulation — a system of free, accessible healthcare for all, controlled by workers and patients rather than insurance companies and pharmaceutical executives. A system where the working class controls both healthcare and research institutions, along with media companies that disseminate public health information.

At the same time, we need massive investment in public health infrastructure, not austerity and cuts. We need an internationalist, coordinated response to disease, not one driven by profit and national interests. We need an end to the environmental destruction that fuels zoonotic disease emergence, and an end to the wars and poverty that create the conditions where pathogens thrive.

And we will have to fight for it — in our workplaces, in our unions, and in our communities, building the world we need, because the ruling class will never build it for us. The next pandemic is coming. The only question is whether we will be ready.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8519016

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/50032

Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito found themselves in the minority on Thursday, when the court ruled that telehealth access to the abortion drug mifepristone could continue, leaving the dissenting conservatives to foreshadow a future showdown over abortion rights.

Both justices railed against the decision, with Alito calling it a “scheme” to get around their ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson that eliminated the nationwide right to an abortion in 2022. Abortions have increased since their decision, Alito lamented, largely due to telehealth access.

In 2025, far more residents of states with total abortion bans received telehealth provisions of medication abortion than traveled out of state to receive care in places with fewer restrictions. And roughly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023 were medication abortions. But advocates warn that the dissents from Thomas and Alito highlight that the threat to abortion access still looms large.

“We’re breathing a sigh of relief. I would say that the immediate threat to mifepristone is over,” said Claire Teylouni, interim co-executive director of Reproductive Equity Now, “But it’s certainly clear from reading those dissents that the threat … is far from over.”

In his dissent, Thomas argues that the Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity law passed in 1873 that remains on the books but has not been enforced in decades, prohibits the mailing of abortion medication. “The Comstock Act bans using ‘the mails’ to ship any ‘drug … for producing abortion,’” Thomas wrote. “Applicants are not entitled to a stay of an adverse court order based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise.”

The Comstock Act originally prohibited the mailing of “obscene” materials, such as pornography, contraceptives, and any drug or device that can be used to produce an abortion. But legal scholars have argued that the law is unenforceable and unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds and other modern case law.

In 2022, a Department of Justice memo clarified that the law does not prohibit the mailing of drugs that could be used to perform an abortion because there is “an insufficient basis for concluding that the sender intends them to be used unlawfully.”

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Despite the memo and the fact that the Comstock Act has not been enforced in decades, conservatives, including Thomas and Alito, have been eager to use the law to push a national abortion ban.

“Enforcement of the Comstock Act has the potential to threaten the broader supply chain with regard to the reproductive health care system as a whole,” warned Teylouni. Arguably if enforced, the law could even jam up access to surgical tools used in abortion care and the shipping of abortion medication to states without bans.

Republican lawmakers have argued that the Comstock Act should be enforced by the courts to “prosecute those who obtain mifepristone through the mail.” In Project 2025, policy analysts similarly argue that the Department of Justice should enforce federal laws like Comstock to prohibit the mailing of abortion medication writ large.

President Donald Trump has previously claimed that he would not enforce the Comstock Act in this way, but advocates have seen troubling signs out of the administration about how they might eliminate access to mifepristone in other ways.

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“We’re focusing on some pressing threats that are already ongoing,” said Anna Bernstein, principal federal policy adviser at the reproductive and sexual health research organization Guttmacher Institute.

In late 2025, the Food and Drug Administration began a safety review of mifepristone, despite over 20 years of evidence that it’s a safe medication. Bernstein said her organization is keeping a close eye on the “politically motivated” review at the FDA, which she argues flies in the face of the science.

The combined regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol, the drug typically used in tandem with mifepristone to induce a medication abortion, carries a less than 1 percent risk of serious adverse events. Comparatively, the risk of maternal death associated with childbirth is roughly 14 times higher than the risk associated with abortion care.

But despite medical evidence of its safety, the threat to mifepristone from the FDA has increased in recent days. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned earlier this week, and he was replaced by Kyle Diamantas, a former lawyer.

Within hours of his appointment on Tuesday, Diamantas was reportedly on the phone with anti-abortion advocates reassuring them of his moral opposition to abortion. According to a press release sent from an anti-abortion advocate, regarding her conversation with Diamantas, she said that he promised that reviewing mifepristone would be a “top priority” and that he was “pro-life.”

“We continue to have concerns that the [review is] going to be politicized and not based in science and medicine,” said Teylouni.

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The Thursday ruling allows providers to continue to send mifepristone through the mail or to retail pharmacies, while the case plays out in the lower courts. Earlier this month, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had reinstated previous FDA requirements that mifepristone be dispensed in person, threatening telehealth access, a critical lifeline for abortion access for people in states with and without abortion bans.

The Supreme Court issued an initial ruling staying the appeals court decision earlier this month, which they extended on Monday, before making their final decision on Thursday to allow access to continue while the Louisiana v. FDA case plays out in court.

But a looming concern for advocates is that both the courts’ more politically attuned conservatives and members of the Trump administration could be waiting to make a move on abortion access until after the midterms in a ploy to avoid the disasters of the post-Dobbs elections.

“We’re definitely concerned, because we know that the Trump administration understands that it’s politically unfavorable to restrict access to abortion and to mifepristone,” said Guttmacher Institute’s Bernstein. “We’ve all seen the reports of them slow-walking to the midterms, and we know why politically they might want to do so.”

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While the Comstock Act serves as a significant threat to abortion access, advocates note that if mifepristone is no longer able to be sent through the mail, people can still access medication abortion care.

Mifepristone works by stopping the pregnancy from growing and initiates the separation of the embryo from the uterine lining. The other drug, misoprostol, causes contractions which expel the contents of the uterus.

Misoprostol can be safely and effectively used on its own to induce an abortion. However, the process of abortion “is prolonged when it’s with a misoprostol-alone protocol,” explained Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, a public health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health research coalition. “And patients report higher levels of side effects, so a lot of cramping and a lot more bleeding.”

Despite the small victory yesterday, Teylouni said that abortion advocates cannot afford to be “complacent” right now.

“This decision could have been the biggest blow to abortion access since the Dobbs decision,” she said. “Anti-abortion extremists are not going to stop attempting to ban abortion, and they want to see the Comstock Act invoked and enforced to limit telehealth prescribing again.”

The post A “Scheme” Against Dobbs: SCOTUS Dissent Hints at Next Phase of Abortion Rights Fight appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8519072

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/49688

This story was originally published by Grist.

Joseph Lee
Grist

As the Trump administration continues its push to secure critical minerals like lithium, the U.S. government and private corporations have ignored Indigenous peoples’ rights in Nevada. That’s according to a report released May 12 by Amnesty International, which is calling for the suspension of federal permits for all lithium mines in the state.

The Silver State has emerged as a key source of lithium, the main component in electric vehicle and other batteries. About 85 percent of the country’s known reserves are in Nevada, and several Indigenous nations and organizations, alongside environmentalists, have been fighting for years against its extraction and the environmental risks that creates, including water contamination and biodiversity loss. “This is our land,” said Fermina Stevens, a member of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone and the executive director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project. “We should have a say in what happens. But I know that they don’t want us there because Nevada is so rich in all of these minerals.”

The three projects Amnesty International highlights in its report are Thacker Pass Lithium Mine, Nevada North Lithium Project, and Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project. Each is located primarily on public land that the Western Shoshone and Paiute people consider unceded territory. Thacker Pass is under construction and Rhyolite Ridge is slated to begin construction this year, while Nevada North is in the exploratory phase.

Amnesty International’s report says all three are violating Indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior, and informed consent. That principle, known as FPIC, is an international standard that affirms Indigenous peoples’ right to approve or deny projects that impact their land and communities. Although the projects were approved by federal agencies, Amnesty International argues the review processes fell short of FPIC and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP.

“They’ve got to come down on the right side,” Mark Dummett, the organization’s head of business and human rights, said of the mining companies. “They’ve got to come down on the side of human rights, rather than getting the minerals at all costs.” He added that, regardless of domestic laws in the countries in which they operate, these firms must follow international human rights standards. The report also highlights the impact of the Trump administration’s push for deregulation, including fast-tracked permits and limited environmental review, which reduces the ability of Indigenous peoples to offer full consent.

In a statement, a spokesperson from the U.S. Department of Interior said, “The climate crazed activists behind this report are notorious for making baseless claims, repeatedly rejected by courts, as part of their pathetic rage against energy production that is not only bipartisan, but proven to benefit the American people.” They also said that a review of lithium projects in Nevada by the federal Bureau of Land Management included extensive environmental review and opportunity for tribal engagement.

Nevada is experiencing a lithium boom that has seen more than 20,000 claims filed. The report also comes amid global resistance by Indigenous peoples to “green transition” mining that they say comes at the expense of their land and rights. Given the increasing demand for minerals like lithium, cobalt, and copper, Dummett said that mining companies around the world are taking advantage of gaps in regulation and human rights enforcement. “The way that this mining has always taken place has been incredibly damaging to the environment and people,” Dummett said. “We don’t want to see the mistakes of the past repeated.”

Stevens said that although her people have experienced a long history of land theft and abuse by the U.S. government and corporations, consultation has grown even more perfunctory amid the worldwide drive for lithium, which has surged since the war in Iran. “War and the military complex is all that they can see,” she said. “And so they’re blinded to the things that are sacred, that are more important for human survival. And I just don’t think that they care about those things.”

Lithium Americas, the owner of the Thacker Pass mine, disputed many of the report’s claims in a response submitted to Amnesty International, including inadequate consultation, environmental risks, and violation of Indigenous rights. Its reply also noted that UNDRIP is not binding in the United States, but argued that the project complies with it anyway. “The Thacker Pass Project has the potential to significantly advance America’s electrification efforts, reduce carbon emissions, and strengthen domestic supply chains for critical minerals — strengthening America’s energy future. LAC has made stakeholder engagement, including with Tribes, an important part of the development of the Project,” its response reads.

A spokesperson for Ioneer, the owner of the Rhyolite Ridge project, said the company “respectfully but firmly disagrees with the findings released by Amnesty International,” and highlighted the company’s engagement with tribes. “We take great pride in our compliance with all U.S. legal requirements and remain committed to a transparent process that respects tribal sovereignty while delivering a reliable and secure domestic supply of critical minerals,” the spokesperson said.

Surge and Evolution, the owners of the Nevada North Lithium Project, did not respond to a request for comment, but in a response to Amnesty International, Evolution said, “We take all reasonable efforts to conduct proactive and ongoing engagement with Indigenous peoples.”

Indigenous leaders said they do not expect the mining companies to change, but will continue the fight to protect their land. “We can survive without technology, but we can’t survive without water,” Stevens said. “We can’t save the Earth through the energy transition while we’re simultaneously destroying biodiversity.”

The post Report: Nevada’s lithium boom comes at the expense of Indigenous rights appeared first on ICT.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.encryptionin.space/post/176398

Liberated from a slop post

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LETS GOOOO LMBO

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/52167452

May we anger libs forevermore (or at least until the revolution).