US Empire Overextended as Latin America Rejects Attacks Against Cuba

US Marks One Million Dead From COVID, Marcos Jr. Elected In Corruption Plagued Elections, Location Data Brokers Endanger Abortion Patients

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Dr. Margaret Flowers, Co-Founder of Popular Resistance Director of the Health Over Profit for Everyone Campaign to discuss the US reaching one million deaths from COVID and the failure of the US federal government to provide any sort of mitigation strategy for the virus, how the pandemic has exposed the faults and failures of both the US healthcare system and the inherent inhumanity of the capitalist system, the serious issues of burnout in the medical community that has led to an exodus of medical professionals, and how this crisis could spark a sense of urgency among health professionals to demand a system that actually focuses on health and not on profit.

In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Joe Iosbaker, co-chair of the Labor Committee of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and Adrian Bon i facio, national chairperson of Anakbayan to discuss the victory of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the Philippines presidential election and concerns about corruption that surround the election, Marcos Jr.’s political record and what his win will mean for the Philippines, the legacy of the Marcos family in the Philippines and the role that current president Rodrigo Duterte has played in the renewed rise of Marcos, and what lies ahead for the Philippines in the immediate aftermath of the election.

In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by technologist Chris Garaffa, the editor of TechforthePeople.org, co-host of the ReBoot podcast to discuss data brokers selling location data of people who visit abortion clinincs and the extreme danger that easy access to that data poses to abortion patients, the CDC’s purchase of the location data of millions of smartphone users to track the effectiveness of lockdown measures and its specific targeting of the Navajo nation, and the casting of John Deere’s ability to break its own machinery remotely as a feel-good story amid the war in Ukraine.

Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Dr. Gerald Horne, Moores Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, and author of dozens of books, including his upcoming piece “The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas Slavery & Jim Crow and the Roots of U.S. Fascism” to discuss the Supreme Court’s leaked decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and restrict the right to abortion, the implications for the conditions of struggle after the recent French elections which reelected Emmanuel Macron to the presidency and upcoming parliamentary elections that could make Jean-Luc Melenchon the prime minister, Sinn Fein’s historic victory in recent Northern Irish elections and the response of the UK to Sinn Fein’s victory, and the overextension of the US empire as Latin America resists US attempts to exclude Cuba from the Summit of the Americas and continues its proxy war in Ukraine.

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