While the screens broadcast live the attacks by the armed forces of the Russian Federation in Kiev, opinologists and opportunists of various stripes expose their partial points of view regarding the conflict. On the agenda of the big media corporations, Vladimir Putin’s hostility occupies a preponderant place that transcends the international politics sections, sneaking in wherever the viewer pays attention to him. The yardstick with which the Russian invasion is measured is not the same with which they were measured each of the invasions carried out by the United States throughout its history. The justification for the attacks perpetrated by the country that perceives itself as free and democratic, has always found ways of acceptance through the followers willing to transcribe history in the most convenient way for the interests of the quintessential capitalist homeland. So much so, that even the weapons of mass destruction -and the smoking pistols out of Colin Powell’s imagination- thought they saw the viewers who were inoculated with the idea of ”the need” to bomb Iraq; invasion “in the name of Freedom” that left hundreds of thousands of civilians massacred, and a country in pieces.
But what concerns us today is not Russia or Ukraine; not at least in this article that aims to carve out a niche for itself amid so much bombardment of war news that has permeated the front pages since last Thursday, burying in the ruins those other “bad news” that -unjustifiably- have been discarded, minimized or made invisible.
Shortly before the escalation of the war took on apocalyptic dimensions, the American newspaper The Washington Post published information that gave an account of a tragedy resulting from the inequality and brutality generated by savage capitalism. “The number of children in the United States living in poverty increased dramatically after just one month without payment of the expanded child tax credit.”
According to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, 3.7 million more children were living in poverty in Januaryan increase of 41% over December, when families received their last check.
After the end of the social program that covered the basic needs of millions of vulnerable families, 3.7 million children have become part of the ranks of hunger and misery in the United States. The expiration of President Joe Biden’s expanded child benefit late last year has sent the child poverty rate skyrocketing from 12 percent to 17 percent. Nearly four million children are now in poverty. And of them, the largest percentage are Afro-descendants.
The White House is now immersed in other battles. And growing child poverty is not high on the agenda of freedom fighters. Joe Biden signed the law that includes the increase in defense spending for the year 2022, a budget of 768.2 billion dollars that reflects the true priority of Washington.
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