theAnalysis.news

Many progressives are ignoring U.S. aggression around the world despite its involvement in many wars and expanding arsenal of nuclear weapons. Medea Benjamin joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news.

Brazil's president Bolsonaro continues to deny the Covid crisis, as Lula's return to politics creates shockwaves from the favelas to Wall St.

Brazil's president Bolsonaro continues to deny the Covid crisis, as Lula's return to politics creates shockwaves from the favelas to Wall St.

Paul Jay

Hi, I'm Paul Jay, and welcome to theAnalysis.news. Please don't forget the 'donate' button at the top of the Web page, and there's a 'subscribe' button on YouTube. And if you're watching on YouTube, you can come on over to the Web page and donate, and be right back.

Brazil is mired in perhaps the worst COVID crisis on the planet, as President Bolsonaro continues to deny there even is a crisis. He's making Trump look rational as COVID cases and death continue to surge in the largest country of South America and the ninth largest economy in the world. In the midst of such calamity, former President Lula da Silva was declared eligible to run for president in 2022. As a judge of the Supreme Court he essentially found, he was railroaded into jail by another Supreme Court judge who went on to be Bolsonaro's Minister of Justice.

The possibility of Lula running again for president—and he already leads in most polls even though he hasn't said for sure he's even going to run—has caused shockwaves from deep in the Brazilian favelas to offices at the top of Wall Street banks. Well, Lula lead a broad front against Bolsonaro. And if he wins, what kind of policies will he advocate?

In a recent speech to the Metalworkers' Union, Lula said, 'It's always important to reiterate, whenever you can, the planet is round. And Bolsonaro doesn't know it.' Well, has Brazil had enough of the insanity of Bolsonaro? Will he follow Trump out the presidential door in 2022? And if he loses the election, will he leave? Or will the Brazilian military intervene to stop a new era of Lula and the Brazilian left in power. That said, there was lots of criticism of Lula from the left as well while he was president. So if he wins, will he resist international finance or try to get along, as many people think he did too much of in the past?

Now joining us is Lorena Barberia. She's a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of São Paolo. Thanks very much for joining me, Lorena.

Lorena Barberia

Thanks. It's good to be with you tonight.

Paul Jay

So start with what's been going on. So there's a couple of decisions. The first judge that said that Lula could be retried, but for now, he can run again as president. But then there's another decision I think happened yesterday or today. So where are we at with this process?

Lorena Barberia

So we're in the process where . . . That's correct. After many, many months, it's very important to say that Lula has been outside of jail. He was freed several months ago. But since he was freed up to now, he's been very low profile in the media. He hasn't been granting interviews or giving major speeches because his case was under review and was awaiting a decision in the Supreme Court.

And a decision was made that found that the decision was really important because, as you explained, it allows for him to be able now to present himself for office if he wishes to come forward as a candidate in 2022. So that's a first decision.

But following very shortly after the decision regarding Lula, there was a second decision this week which was discussing the judge who originally made the decision that put Lula in prison, ruling that there was bias in the way that decision was made and in the way that the procedures that were undertaken in the investigation.

And so that second decision has also been very important because the judge who prosecuted Lula,

Brazil's president Bolsonaro continues to deny the Covid crisis, as Lula's return to politics creates shockwaves from the favelas to Wall St.

In Venezuela, brutal sanctions and the recognition of a phony president continue to wreak havoc. Biden has not implemented any real change to US policy towards the country. Historians Steve Ellner and Greg Wilpert discuss the reasons why.

In Venezuela, brutal sanctions and the recognition of a phony president continue to wreak havoc. Biden has not implemented any real change to US policy towards the country. Historians Steve Ellner and Greg Wilpert discuss the reasons why.

Transcript

Greg Wilpert

Welcome to theAnalysis, I'm Greg Wilpert. Recently, the Biden administration announced that Venezuelans living in the United States would be able to qualify for temporary protected status or TPS.

This means that about 300,000 Venezuelans could remain in the U.S. for another 18 months or longer if the program is extended. Also recently, Secretary of State Anthony  Blinken had a phone call with so-called interim president and hard-line opposition leader Juan Guaidó, where Blinken reaffirmed that the United States continues to recognize Ecuador as the legitimate president of Venezuela, even though he no longer leads Venezuela's national assembly and was never elected. The European Union, in contrast, withdrew its recognition of Guaidó following last December's legislative elections in Venezuela.

Joining me to discuss the recent developments in U.S. Venezuela relations is Steve Ellner. Steve is a retired history professor from Venezuela's Universidad de Oriente. Currently, he's an associate managing editor of the journal Latin American Perspectives and editor of the recently published book Latin American Extractivism: Dependancy, Resource Nationalism, and Resistance in Broad Perspective. Thanks for joining me today, Steve.

Steve Ellner

Thanks for having me on. Greg.

Greg Wilpert

So there have been a number of adjustments in U.S. policy towards Venezuela since Biden came into office, but there's also some important continuity, as I mentioned, the major change has been the TPS program, which Trump did not want to provide to Venezuelans, presumably because of his anti-immigration stance. He canceled TPS for all kinds of other nationalities, such as the Nicaraguans, Hondurans, et cetera, but then there are the sanctions and the recognition of Guaidó as President of Venezuela.

Now, how would you characterize the differences and the continuities between Biden's policies towards Venezuela and that of Trump?

Steve Ellner

Well Greg you pretty much said it all. The Biden administration claims that there is a new policy, that it's embarking on a new course in rejecting anything that Trump said stood for dead, but we really see how false that is with regard to foreign policy. With regard to domestic affairs it's a whole different ballgame, but with regard to foreign policy, nothing is really changing in a big way. Just to take one example, doesn't have to do directly with Venezuela. The military budget.

Trump just announced that the budget will remain the same, even though it increased by astronomical amounts during the four years of the Trump administration, but with regard to Venezuela, I mean, you pretty much said that the Biden administration claims it's embarking on a new approach, but it really isn't, with the exception of Venezuelan immigrants in the United States, but with regard to Venezuelan policy, with regard to Venezuela itself. Firstly, the Biden administration is maintaining the international sanctions which have caused so much suffering among the Venezuelan people.

In the second place, as you also mentioned, the Biden administration is continuing to recognize Juan Guaidó who's really sort of a bogus president, but the Biden administration recognizes him, even though, as you also said, the European Union is pulling their recognition of Guaidó,

In Venezuela, brutal sanctions and the recognition of a phony president continue to wreak havoc. Biden has not implemented any real change to US policy towards the country. Historians Steve Ellner and Greg Wilpert discuss the reasons why.

A new study says even six feet of separation is dangerous if schools reopen without updated ventilation systems. It adds children, where schools are open, can spread Covid into the community. Phillip Alvelda and Thomas Ferguson of INET join Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news

A new study says even six feet of separation is dangerous if schools reopen without updated ventilation systems. It adds children, where schools are open, can spread Covid into the community. Phillip Alvelda and Thomas Ferguson of INET join Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news

Paul Jay

Hi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to the Analysis News. Please don't forget there's a donate button at the top of the web page. If you're watching on YouTube, there's a subscribe button somewhere there and be back in a second.

There's been a tremendous pressure put on teachers across the United States, Canada and most of the world to return to in-school teaching.  Right-wing media in the United States has been unrelenting in their attacks on teachers unions, blaming them for unnecessarily risking negative psychological effects on children caused by continued school closures and the economic consequences of parents not returning to work. The Biden administration has joined the pressure campaign, calling for 100 percent of all schools to be reopened by this fall.

New guidelines from the CDC state that schools can return to more or less pre-Covid distancing between desks, saying that three feet is as safe as six feet.

Of course, the real question is, is six feet safe? CBS News reports the nation's largest teachers union sent a two page letter to the Biden administration on Tuesday questioning the decision to reduce the recommended social distancing in schools to three feet between students.

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.7 million member American Federation of Teachers, in her letter cited the study by the Institute for New Economic Thinking that stated "Contrary to the notion that even 3 feet of distancing is sufficient protection, and six feet is overkill, the critical safety issue is that students are all uniformly at risk in poorly ventilated rooms, no matter where they are or how they distance. With one infected person in an enclosed and poorly ventilated room, the coronavirus permeates the entire space, putting everyone inside at similar risk regardless of where they sit. The key corrective abatement measure necessary is wholesale improvement and ventilation, filtering, and HVAC systems. Nothing whatsoever in any of the cited studies supports safely moving students closer together, the report concludes. Reopening most schools now, before most schools have robust protective measures and don't yet have broad ability or finances to conduct frequent surveillance testing to prevent asymptomatic spreaders of the latest, more dangerous coronavirus variants from infecting their community, is thus very unwise."

Now joining us are two of the three authors of the study, Dr. Phillip Alvelda, who is the CEO and chairman of Brain Works Foundry Inc, a U.S. based developer of A.I. enhanced health care technologies and services. Prior to Brain Works, Dr. Albelda was a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Biological Technologies Office, where he developed and ran national scale R&D programs and technologies. And Thomas Ferguson joins us.

He is the Institute for New Economic Thinking's director of research projects and a member of its advisory board. He's a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Not able to join us is the third author, Dr Deepti Gurdasani, who did much of the research for the study and is a clinical epidemiologist and statistical geneticist and senior lecturer at the William Harvey Research Institute in London, and we hope to get her on sometime in the future.

All right. Let's start with the latest news, the CDC new guidance. Phillip, your paper says the new guidelines from the CDC on reopening schoo...

A new study says even six feet of separation is dangerous if schools reopen without updated ventilation systems. It adds children, where schools are open, can spread Covid into the community. Phillip Alvelda and Thomas Ferguson of INET join Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news