Anti-Asian hate crimes on the rise

There has been a spike in hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans, especially Asian women.

The Manhattan DA’s office has 27 open hate crime cases related to anti-Asian hate crimes.

Across the US, anti-AAPI hate crime was up 339% last year.

Last August, Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition that tracks and responds to racially motivated hate crimes, said more than 9,000 anti-Asian incidents had been reported since March 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic spread to the US from China.

New York City has seen an alarming rise in violence against Asian Americans. Four have died.

They were: GuiYing Ma, 62, who was attacked by a man with a rock in Queens; Yao Pan Ma, 61, who was attacked while collecting cans in East Harlem; Michelle Go, 40, who was pushed on to subway tracks at Times Square; and Christina Yuna Lee, 35, who was stabbed 40 times in her Chinatown apartment.

[Read more…]

John Oliver on truck driving

On his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver describes what is going on in the truck driving industry. Trucks provide a vital service in the transportation of goods but the working conditions of drivers have been steadily declining over the years, as trucking company owners put the squeeze on them, and has resulted in a shortage of drivers as more and more people leave their jobs. He says that the turnover rate is an astounding 300%, which means that every year, an average of three people are rotating through one job. He says that the actual take home pay is much less than the the nominally high salaries that are quoted.

A long overdue event

Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed by the US senate on a 53-47 vote to fill the vacancy on the US Supreme Court that will be created when retiring justice Stephen Breyer steps down in July. It is quite incredible that it has taken so long to have a woman of color on the bench. I have not blogged about it because it was almost certain that she would be confirmed and there was nothing about her nomination that was controversial, as she was very much in the legal mainstream and had no skeletons in her closet.

But the Republican party of Trump decided to make up outlandish stuff about her . Why? Because that is what they do. And their task of persuading their rabid base that Jackson was unqualified and even evil was made easier by the fact she was a woman and a person of color because we know that white men have the best legal minds and that everyone else must be an imposter, right?
[Read more…]

Amazon takes a leaf from George Orwell’s 1984

In his book 1984, George Orwell imagines a dystopian society where the rulers control people by restricting their language. It appears that Amazon has decided that that policy need not just be used by governments but can also be used by big companies.

AMAZON WILL BLOCK and flag employee posts on a planned internal messaging app that contain keywords pertaining to labor unions, according to internal company documents reviewed by The Intercept. An automatic word monitor would also block a variety of terms that could represent potential critiques of Amazon’s working conditions, like “slave labor,” “prison,” and “plantation,” as well as “restrooms” — presumably related to reports of Amazon employees relieving themselves in bottles to meet punishing quotas.
[Read more…]

Sri Lanka in deep crisis

Overshadowed by other world news such as the war in Ukraine, Sri Lanka has been in a state of deep crisis. The proximate cause is the depletion of foreign currency reserves to below $1 billion which has resulted in the country being unable to pay for the imports of some of the most basic commodities like fuel for both vehicles and cooking, fertilizer, and essential foodstuffs such as milk and sugar. Surgeries have been suspended due to a shortage of medical supplies. As a result of the shortage of fuel, there have been daily power blackouts lasting up to 13 hours (except in the capital city Colombo because of course the wealthy who live in those areas must never be inconvenienced) and long lines of people waiting for hours and sometimes even overnight trying to purchase fuel and food and even then coming up empty.
[Read more…]

Amazon workers succeed in union effort

I was surprised and pleased that yesterday a majority of the 8,000 employees at one of the four Staten Island, NY Amazon warehouses voted in favor of forming a union by a margin of 2,654 to 2,131. A similar vote at a Bessemer, AL warehouse is too close to call at the moment. Even the latter stand-off is encouraging since Alabama is not a union-friendly region, unlike Staten Island.

Progressives hailed Friday’s unionization vote by employees at an Amazon warehouse in New York City as a historic victory for workers across the United States and an inspiring call to action for others seeking to organize.

“This is the catalyst for the revolution.”

In what’s being described as a “tremendous upset” of “David versus Goliath” proportions, employees at Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island—led by fired worker Chris Smalls—defeated a multimillion-dollar union-busting effort by one of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations and voted to form the Amazon Labor Union (ALU).

“It’s official,” ALU tweeted after the vote. “Amazon Labor Union is the first Amazon union in U.S. history. Power to the people!”

“This is the catalyst for the revolution,” Smalls, the ALU organizer and president, said while celebrating the vote.

[Read more…]

TV Review: The Plot to Overturn the Election

The so-called ‘Big Lie’, the idea that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election and that there was a major conspiracy to steal the election and give it to Joe Biden, is so preposterous that one has to be delusional to give it any credence. And yet, it seems like many Republicans have bought into it.

The excellent investigative journalism outfit ProPublica has combined with the PBS program Frontline to produce an absorbing 53-minute documentary in which correspondent A. C. Thompson (who has previously investigated hate groups) tracks down the origins of the Big Lie, the people behind it, and their goal of trying to rig future elections to get the results they want. Although I have been following this story closely, I learned a lot of new things about it.

The cowardly Alex Jones held in contempt for skipping depositions

The conspiracy theorist who created such acute distress for the families of those killed in the Sandy Hook massacre by spreading the lie that it was a hoax and thus inspired his rabid followers to persecute those families and make their lives a living hell, talks very tough. But it turns out that he is, like all bullies, a coward. He has been sued by the families and been ordered by the judge to attend a legal deposition and be questioned under oath but he did not show up, citing vague medical reasons, even though he was appearing on his show that same week. Jones is clearly trying to avoid a legal reckoning for his reckless and hateful instigation against the families. He has offered a settlement to the people suing him but they have refused, demanding that he appear in court.
[Read more…]

The awful Madeline Albright is dead

The first woman to occupy the position of US Secretary of State, that occurred during Bill Clinton’s presidency, died last week and there were many tributes to her for this achievement. While breaking down gender and other barriers is always a good thing, the fact is that Albright’s record was awful, though she fitted in perfectly with the Clintons’ neoliberal, so-called ‘liberal interventionist’, warmongering policies. Glossed over was her infamous comment in 1996 that the estimated deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to the cruel sanctions imposed by the US on that country was “worth it”. Here is the clip of her saying it, so casually and cold-bloodedly, that I will never forget it.

Jon Schwarz gives her the send-off that she really deserves by describing all that was wrong with her.
[Read more…]