Democrats Won’t Restore Abortion Rights But a People’s Movement Can

NATO Meets To Plan Two Front War, Scotland May Face Another Independence Referendum, How The IMF Makes Africa Sicker

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Sputnik News journalist and correspondent Wyatt Reed to discuss the recently concluded NATO summit and the new military hardware and troop movements promised by NATO to Ukraine, the ascension of FInland and Sweden to the NATO alliance and how Turkey has effectively dictated the policy of the countries toward Kurdish groups, a new strategic document from NATO that names China as a challenge to its hegemony as a broader trend toward a new cold war against China continues, and Biden’s reaffirmation of the US and NATO commitment to fight to the last Ukrainian as working people in the US and all over the world suffer the economic consequences.

In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Dr. Kenneth Surin, Professor emeritus and former Director of the Center for European Studies at Duke University to discuss the potential for another independence referendum in Scotland after Nicola Sturgeon announced plans for the vote, the obstacles that a referendum would face in the courts and why Sturgeon may have announced these plans despite its expected failure, why the issue of Scottish independence presents much to gain politically as the government in London grows increasingly unpopular, and how the issue of Brexit complicates the possibility of independence for Scotland and how attitudes toward it have changed since the vote.

In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Dian Maria Blandina, a medical doctor, researcher, and health activist to discuss how the IMF and its debt regime prevent countries on the African continent from putting up an adequate response on the African continent, how these loans have played in the related issue of vaccine apartheid and the hoarding of vaccines by rich countries, how the conditions put on IMF loans promote austerity in countries that receive loans and how that move to austerity promotes instability through IMF riots, and what the impact of these loans means for the future of pandemic response and public health on the African continent.

Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Ted Rall, award-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist, and author of the graphic novel, "The Stringer," to discuss the need to build a movement of poor and working people to fight back against the Supreme Court’s decision to strip the right to an abortion from millions of people, the mainstream media’s coverage of the conflict in Ukraine and the skewed version of reality that it creates to hide the reality of the conflict, and why the Democrats reliance on the abortion issue to propel them to electoral success is a doomed strategy.

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