The Darién Gap: A deadly extension of the US border

Al Jazeera English

This year, a record number of United States-bound migrants and refugees have risked their lives to cross the Darién Gap, the 66-mile mountainous stretch of spectacularly inhospitable jungle between Colombia and Panama. According to Panama’s National Migration Service, more than 151,000 people, including at least 21,000 minors, made the crossing between January and September.

The trek can take more than a week, with perils ranging from precipitous ravines and flash floods to vipers and ultra-poisonous spiders. There are also man-made contributions to the landscape, such as unexploded ordnance courtesy of the US military, which practised dropping bombs over the Darién as part of its Cold War mission to make the world safe for capitalism.

Then, as now, a world safe for capitalism is a pretty dangerous one for humans. And, as the US continues to maniacally fortify its borders to ensure that poor people will never have the same freedom of movement as corporate capital, that sociopathic policy plays out over migrant bodies more than a thousand miles away in the Darién Gap. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH. 

These Supreme Court cases could kill what remains of US democracy

 Al Jazeera English

In recent years, the United States Supreme Court has dutifully laboured to erode the protections guaranteed under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a civil rights era milestone that aimed to safeguard minority voters from racial discrimination. Now, six decades after the law’s passage, the country’s highest judicial body will decide whether to drop some of the few pretences to justice and equality in US electoral democracy that remain.

Keep in mind that this is the same conservative-majority court that recently brought us the evisceration of Roe v Wade and other assorted sociopathic rulings, such as the one enshrining the constitutional right to carry a gun outside the home. That, by the way, was just a month after the Uvalde elementary school mass killing of 19 children and two adults.

One of the high-profile cases that the Supreme Court is currently hearing deals with Alabama’s congressional redistricting map, which was implemented by that state’s Republican legislature following the census in 2020. The redistricting scheme is a rather transparent violation of the Voting Rights Act. While more than 27 percent of Alabama’s voting-age population is Black, deft cartographic manoeuvres have produced an arrangement in which African American voters have a realistic chance of electing a candidate they like in only one of the state’s seven congressional districts. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

US capitalism is bad for your mental health

 Al Jazeera English

When I was in high school in Texas in the late 1990s, running myself ragged with academic and extracurricular activities, I began suffering from acute panic attacks.

The first round lasted for six months, during which I experienced continuous shortness of breath, a berserk heart rate and the feeling that I had been wrenched out of reality and placed in a parallel and terrifying universe, where I was entirely alone and where no one would help me.

Having been raised in the ruthless system known as United States capitalism — in which the need for individual success had been hardwired into my brain — my terror was exacerbated by the assumption that I was dying or otherwise failing miserably at existence.

When the panic attacks resurfaced a few years later in college in New York, where hyperventilating in the bathroom quickly proved incompatible with attendance at lectures, I underwent a professional psychological evaluation. The doctor needed just 90 seconds before prescribing heavy-duty anxiety medication.

So it was that I briefly joined the ranks of Americans medicated to deal with mental health issues caused by, well, the US. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Brazil, it is time to wake up from your Bolsonaro nightmare

 Al Jazeera English

In the aftermath of Brazil’s last general election in 2018, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page celebrated the victory of Jair Bolsonaro – a former low-ranking army officer, far-right fringe politician, and fan of Brazil’s sadistic military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.

According to one bizarre article by the right-wing writer Mary Anastasia O’Grady, there was a simple explanation for the electoral triumph of the man that many analysts had compared with the then-president of the United States, Donald Trump. Despite the fact that Bolsonaro had been “labeled a racist, a misogynist, a homophobe, a fascist, an advocate of torture and an aspiring dictator”, he had prevailed, the piece argued, because Brazilians were “in the midst of a national awakening in which socialism – the alternative to a Bolsonaro presidency – has been put on trial”.

While a socialist presidency certainly beats fascist torture any day, “socialism” was in truth not even in the running in 2018. The Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) – whose candidate Bolsonaro defeated – is not socialist but rather centre-left, and has furthermore done its fair share to advance neoliberal capitalist interests over the years. Granted, the PT has also committed such flagrantly leftist crimes as helping to extricate millions of Brazilians from poverty and hunger, as transpired during the first decade of this century under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Now, it’s election time again in South America’s largest country – and folks may be in for another “awakening”. As Brazil votes tomorrow, Lula is back in the race, and is leading Bolsonaro in the polls (although, as Bloomberg reports, Goldman Sachs and concerned hedge funds have assured clients the election will be “tighter” than surveys suggest). READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.