U.S. thugs deport Haitian workers

Al Jazeera, 5/17–The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has called on the United States to stop forcibly returning Haitians to their home country, which is facing a months-long surge in gang violence and continued political instability…UNHCR urged US President Joe Biden’s administration “to refrain from forcibly returning Haitians who may face life-threatening risks or further displacement” in the Caribbean nation. The call after the UN agency said “another US deportation flight landed in Haiti” on Thursday…
It marks the second such deportation flight from the US to Haiti in the past month. On April 18, the US government sent about 50 Haitian nationals back to the country in a move that drew immediate condemnation from rights groups.

Evidence of U.S. ruling class at work

Washington Post, 5/16–A group of billionaires and business titans working to shape U.S. public opinion of the war in Gaza privately pressed New York City’s mayor last month to send police to disperse pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University…Business executives including Kind snack company founder Daniel Lubetzky, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, billionaire Len Blavatnik and real estate investor Joseph Sitt held a Zoom video call…with Mayor Eric Adams (D), about a week after the mayor first sent New York police to Columbia’s campus, a log of chat messages shows…some attendees discussed making political donations to Adams, as well as how the chat group’s members could pressure Columbia’s president and trustees to permit the mayor to send police to the campus to handle protesters…Some members also offered to pay for private investigators to assist New York police in handling the protests, the chat log shows — an offer a member of the group reported in the chat that Adams accepted…The messages describing the call with Adams were among thousands logged in a WhatsApp chat among some of the nation’s most prominent business leaders and financiers, including former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital and brother of Jared Kushner, former president Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

French bosses desperate to hold on to overseas assets

BBC, 5/17–Hundreds of French police reinforcements have arrived in New Caledonia amid rioting that has left five people dead in the Pacific Ocean territory. French High Commissioner Louis Le Franc said officers had been deployed to "regain control of all the areas that we have lost". The unrest erupted this week after lawmakers in Paris voted to change electoral rolls to allow more French residents to vote. Indigenous leaders say the move will dilute the political influence of the native people…French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said 1,000 extra police were joining the 1,700 personnel already there.

Under the 1998 Nouméa Accord, France agreed to give the territory more political autonomy…More than 40,000 French nationals have moved to New Caledonia since. This week, the National Assembly in Paris proposed granting voting rights to French residents who have lived in the territory for 10 years. 

Warmakers prep for world war 3 and making working class pay for it 

Financial Times, 4/26– How did the term capitalism arise? … [a]ccording to Michael Sonenscher, a British historian, the term emerged first in 18th-century Europe in connection with war finance… Sonenscher notes … [i]n French, someone who lent money to a branch of the French royal government was called a capitalist (capitaliste)… 

…[R]ising geopolitical conflict sparked a 7 percent, inflation-adjusted rise in defense spending last year to a record $2.4 trillion (about $7,400 per person in the US) … Rishi Sunak, UK prime minister, this week put Britain’s defense industry on a “war footing” … 

…[H]istory shows that governments almost never tell voters the true cost of war, or how they intend to pay for it … The Watson Institute estimates that in the U.S. there has been $8 trillion (about $25,000 per person in the US) in military outlay since 2001, which was “paid for almost entirely by borrowing”. Absent early repayment via massive tax rises, miraculous growth and/or default, “interest payments could total over $6.5 trillion (about $20,000 per person in the US) by the 2050s.”