Billionaire Gains During Pandemic a Cause for Action, Not Despair

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Maurice Carney, co-founder and Executive Director of Friends of the Congo to discuss the anniversary of the assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba by Belgian and US forces, the pan-African vision that he had and why that posed a threat to the United States, the theft of Lumuba’s remains and how it connects to historic theft from the African continent, and the role of the US government and corporations in the continued exploitation of the Congo.

In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Brian Mier, co-editor of Brasil Wire and author of Year of Lead: Washington, Wall Street and the New Imperialism in Brazil to discuss the political outlook in Brazil as it faces its presidential election later this year, the struggles that the Jair Bolsonaro faces as he tries to maintain his power, Steve Bannon and his movement’s attention to Brazil and its upcoming election and Bannon’s interest in the election, and the US interest in securing alliances in Latin America as it pursues a new cold war against Russia and China.

In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Chris Garaffa, the editor of TechforthePeople.org to discuss Russia’s arrest of key members of the REvil ransomware gang and skewed corporate media coverage of the arrests, models of governance of artificial intelligence coming out of China and what it means for the use of the technology, and more surveillance programs between home surveillance systems and police and the dangerous intrusions of privacy that such programs pose.

Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by James Early, Former Director of Cultural Heritage Policy at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Smithsonian Institution and board member of the Institute for Policy Studies to discuss the abstraction of Martin Luther King Jr. and the working-class character of his movement, the obscene accumulation of wealth by billionaires during the pandemic as working and poor people suffer its impacts, and the bailout to corporations that contributed to the massive transfer of wealth seen during the pandemic.