Working People Suffer From Climate Crisis as System Hastens Disaster

MS State Officials Commit Welfare Fraud, The Legacy of the Atomic Bomb and Nuclear War, Human Rights Abuses Committed Against Saharawis

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Bezal Jupiter, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation in Mississippi to discuss a real case of welfare fraud in Mississippi committed by the state Department of Human Resources, how the exorbitant amount of corruption committed by state officials contrasts with the stereotype of poor and working Mississippians as the perpetrators of welfare fraud, and how this scandal reveals the inadequacies of the welfare system and exposes the magnitude of exploitation suffered by Mississippians while the old boys club prospers.

In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Greg Mello, Executive Director of the Los Alamos Study Group in Albuquerque, New Mexico to discuss the UN conference on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the ongoing dangerous conflicts in Ukraine and Taiwan that could spark nuclear conflict, the anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and how the legacy of those bombings should be understood in today’s context, and the anti-Soviet sentiment that played a part in the development and use of the bomb.

In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Mahjoub Maliha, head of of external relations for CODESA, the Collective of Saharawi Human Rights Defenders in Western Sahara to discuss human rights abuses committed by Morocco against Saharawi civilians in occupied Western Sahara, how Western Sahara came to be occupied by Spain and later by Morocco and the resistance against colonization by Saharawis, and the many forms of violence that is imposed on Saharawis by the Moroccan occupation.

Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Esther Iverem, artist, author, independent journalist, and host and producer of On The Ground: Voices of Resistance from the Nation’s Capital, which you can listen to both as a podcast and on Pacifica Radio to discuss legislation passed by the Senate to expand benefits to veterans exposed to harmful chemicals by burn pits used to burn waste on US military bases and in combat operations and what it reveals about the military’s role in the climate crisis, the devil in the details of the budget deal struck between Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer that would streamline the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia, the reckless visit by Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in violation of the One China policy and decades of diplomatic agreements on the status of Taiwan as a part of China, and the repression against Black anti-imperialist voices for the crime of not going along with the Washington consensus on Russia's military operation in Ukraine.

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