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On this day, 5 March, in 2013, a great revolutionary finally succumbed to cancer and passed away. He was only 58 years old. The socialist world will forever be grateful to the people, government and doctors of Cuba who did all they could to try and defeat the cancer and other opportunistic respiratory infections which finally killed this great revolutionary. Today, we are assembled on this platform to celebrate the life and times of this great socialist revolutionary.

Commandant Raphael Hugo Chvez Frias was born on 28 July 1954 and died on 5 March 2013. Comrade Hugo Chvez was president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, apart from a very short time in April 2002.

Today we will look to five areas of Comrade Chvezs life that demonstrate that he was a true visionary leader of the working class.

Chvez knew that his primary theatre of revolutionary struggles was, of course, Venezuela, but, he was alert always to the fact that Venezuela alone in Latin America and the world could not succeed to establish a sustainable socialist project if the rest of Latin America and the whole world remained chained to capitalism.

Comrade Chvezs internationalism made him instrumental in the setting up of the Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the Bank of the South and, of course, the regional television network TeleSUR.

It is not true that Chvez did this great international work because he was using oil to achieve narrow Venezuelan interests. Chvez was always aware that the United States imperialist interests and stranglehold on Latin America could not be defeated in one country alone, no matter how revolutionary its people and leaders of such a country could be.

For example, Chvez was well aware how the US economic blockade on Cuba was in fact economic genocide performed on Cuba by the US government and its capitalists. He knew Venezuela would suffer the same fate.

After the collapse of the Union of the Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union in 1991, a fundamental lesson no socialist or communist could ignore was the historic fact that to defeat capitalism, the working class and all oppressed peoples of the world needed to be organised in a world revolutionary movement to overthrow the world capitalist system. No single country on its own could achieve and sustain socialism, let alone advance to communism.

The reason is very simple: capitalism is a world system; to defeat it, it must be fought at a world level. While revolutions against capitalism must and can start in one country, the working class and all oppressed and dominated peoples of the world must also rise up everywhere and fight to destroy the world capitalist system.

Chvez understood this international character of the struggle for socialism very well, and so he moved swiftly to unite the desperate peoples of Latin America, so that together they could defend themselves against the rapacious imperialism of the United States in the region.

This is one powerful lesson we must learn and celebrate about Commandant Hugo Chvez: our struggles for emancipation, while being fought at a local and national level, are bound to fail if we at the same time do not forge a global movement against the world capitalist system!

Even without achieving socialism, it is possible to fight mass poverty, unemployment, extreme inequalities and the indignities these capitalist evils cause millions of human beings to suffer on Earth. We cannot completely win these fights under capitalism, but we can reduce the levels of suffering.

Chvez demonstrated in practice that there is no excuse for allowing the wealth of any country to benefit a tiny minority and their imperialist backers. He embarked upon an ambitious nationalisation project, crucially of the Venezuelan oil resources.

People love ideas, stories, poetry reading and writing books. But people dont eat ideas. They eat food, need houses to live in, must have clothes to wear, their children must go to schools well fed, and everyone needs water and good health. Chvez understood that with or without socialism, the majority of the Venezuelans who are the working class and indigenous people needed these basic things of life.

Chvez did not wait until Venezuela achieved socialism to redistribute wealth. He went ahead and did it inside the Venezuelan capitalist system.

In the shortest time, destitution, illiteracy, hunger, homelessness, access to clinics and hospitals were improved, and he improved the quality of lives for millions of Venezuelans such that even the UN could not pretend not to see that Venezuela was changing for the better.

To struggle every day to improve the quality of life of the working and impoverished masses is the revolutionary responsibility of every socialist activist whatever the ideological and political system of the country in which we live. The masses in fact may only listen to us, and fight with us for socialism because they will know by our example while in a capitalist system what good things we can achieve together with them, when we defeat capitalism and create socialism.

Chvez taught us to dedicate our lives fighting even for the smallest victories for the working masses and the impoverished inside capitalism, without losing sight of our goal for a socialist society through the socialist revolution.

On radio, television and Twitter, Chvez was not afraid to directly speak with and to the people of his country. He was not happy and comfortable to hide behind official press statements and one-way, Address to the Nation or Letter from the President, hide-and-seek tactics.

To learn what was happening in his country, he did not just depend on his intelligence, security and military establishment: he had direct personal conversations with his people.

He enjoyed listening, learning and directly talking with the masses through the mass media means of communication and rallies. This way, he knew exactly what the burning questions of the day among all the classes of the people in his country were.

This is why his election victories saw him successively increase his votes for most of the time he stood as president of Venezuela the masses knew him, and he knew them very well. In fact, this is what annoyed the US and the world capitalist system: here was a socialist and he was winning elections!

To counter the capitalist lies about Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution, Chvez instigated the birth of several newspapers and powerful TV, TeleSUR, a regional Latin American television broadcaster. Without a dedicated revolutionary media and press, it is almost impossible to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the working and impoverished masses capitalism will always reach them first!

Hugo Chvez was a career soldier who, in fact, became a revolutionary while serving in the Venezuelan army and believe it or not hunting down Marxist guerrillas opposed to the government he was serving!

He read everything he could lay his hands on, on the history of Latin America and its revolutionary traditions and the world communist movement including, but not limited to, Simn Bolvar, Simn Rodrguez, Ezequiel Zamora, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Vladimir Lenin, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and many others.

This rich literature and knowledge armed him with both revolutionary and theoretical strategic tools to navigate the complex political and economic world system in which Venezuela was immersed.

Ultimately he worked hard to unite the disparate Left parties and movements in Venezuela into what later became the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, in short PSUV. This is the party in power in Venezuela today.

Without this self-education and preparation and how Chvez used this to build the PSUV, it is possible that by now the US with its crippling sanctions and sponsorship of sabotage and insurrection would have completely destroyed the revolution in Venezuela.

Without revolutionary theory, it is impossible to have a revolutionary movement. Chvez understood this, and he armed the working class, through his daily contact and mass media, with a thorough knowledge of the capitalist class system in Venezuela and US imperialism and its intentions in Venezuela.

Chvez combined revolutionary theory with revolutionary practice and fought and lived for the success of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.

We must learn the obvious fact that without the weapon of revolutionary knowledge, it is impossible to wage a successful revolution. Our first duty, therefore, is to learn, to educate ourselves, through both theory and concrete participation in the daily struggles of the working masses and the impoverished.

Today, we have many socialists in our trade unions and social movements who preach their Marxism at work and in workshops but are patriarchal savages in their homes. We have so-called socialists who steal money from their organisations to enrich themselves. Laziness, hatred of hard work, fear of suffering and hardships these are the most important characteristics of so-called socialists of today. Love of comfort, luxury, a good time, idleness: this is the quality of revolutionary life many so-called socialist revolutionaries live or aspire to live today.

We have socialists who, with just a little money, all the socialism evaporates from their heads and they start singing from the capitalist bible. We have so-called socialists who hate working-class democracy and worker control. We have so-called socialists who are such hopeless cowards they hate any talk of the idea of the dictatorship of the working class as the most complete and thorough democracy. We have so-called socialists who think that capitalism can be destroyed through elections!

Chvez was the opposite of this. He was a fearless, principled, consistent and courageous revolutionary. He was prepared at all times to lay down his life for the struggle for a full life for the working class, the indigenous people and all the people of Venezuela, and therefore, for the working class of the world. He was never afraid to pick up arms against the capitalist system. He was not a thief. He was always ready to make the highest sacrifice, including sacrificing his own life.

He understood that to defeat the ruling class he had to set up working-class and popular-power structures among and for the masses. Through a referendum, he had the old Constitution amended to allow for the birth of the Constituent Assembly, which became the centre of power. Together with a loyal army, it is this assembly today that holds Venezuela together. Chvez was a democrat.

The Venezuelan revolution cannot be defended just via conference and congress resolutions of solidarity. We need to fight capitalism directly in our countries this is the best way to increase the world socialist forces against capitalism.

This is a lightly edited speech delivered by Andrew Chirwa on 5 March 2021.

See the rest here:
Hugo Chvez united the workers of the world - newframe.com

The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates used the terms endemic and epidemic to distinguish between diseases that were always present in a population and diseases that only occurred during certain parts of a year or at yearly or even greater intervals.

In epidemiological terms, endemic means the constant presence and prevalence of a disease within a population in a certain geographic area. It refers to a state when a disease reaches a level that most of the population has developed immunity. They can develop secondary infections though these are often mild. Children usually become the primary cases because they are nave (not previously exposed) to the virus.

Certain influenzas and viruses that cause the common cold are thought to be endemic. Some endemic viruses have been eradicated by vaccines and public health measures. Two historical examples are smallpox and rinderpest.

However, the recent use of the term endemicity by the ruling class and bourgeois scientists has little to do with its epidemiological understanding and everything to do with a fatalistic response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In much the same way that repeated lockdowns and reopenings have inured some people to accept the permanence of the virus, the talk of the virus becoming endemic is employed against any further mitigation efforts which impinge on profit accumulation.

Regardless of such defeatist conceptions, the pandemic remains in its early and acute phase, with significant potential to infect a vast portion of the globes population that has not yet been exposed to the coronavirus. A cohesive international strategy employing the public health tools that are within our grasp could bring the contagion under control before it becomes endemic, at the cost of millions of lives.

These nihilistic conceptions being promoted by the bourgeois press and some scientists to justify dispensing with all mitigation efforts and allowing the pandemic free rein are dangerous to the working class. They would use the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines to anaesthetize the public against the impending catastrophe, although this is only possible in a handful of wealthy countries where vaccine supplies are ample.

At the World Health Organizations March 22 COVID-19 press briefing, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned, The inequitable distribution of vaccines is not just a moral outrage, its also economically and epidemiologically self-defeating. Some countries are racing to vaccinate their entire populations while other countries have nothing. This may buy short-term security, but it is a false sense of security.

Executive Director of WHOs Health Emergencies Programme Dr. Mike Ryan reaffirmed the director-generals warnings, stating, The formula for this may be boring, it may not be attractive; there are no silver bullets, but we have got to get back to strong, comprehensive, strategic approaches to the control of COVID that include vaccination as one of those strategies. Im afraid were all trying to grasp at straws. Were trying to find the golden solutions and we just get enough vaccine, and we push enough vaccine into people and thats going to take care of it. Im sorry: its not! There arent enough vaccines in the world, and theyre distributed terribly iniquitously. In fact, we have missed a huge opportunity to bring vaccines on board as a comprehensive measure. Its not being implemented in a systematic way. Its a failed opportunity and, as the D-G says, is not only a catastrophic moral failure, but its an epidemiologic failure and its a failure in public health practice.

The lack of any significant measures to eradicate the virus, combined with the economic devastation for much of the working class, encourages a pessimistic outlook to which even principled scientists are not immune. As the virus ravages the world population, with its seven-day infection rates increasing by 400 percent from February 28 through March 5, the ruling class utilizes the fatigue felt by the population through repeated shutdowns and reopenings to establish a rationale for living with the virus. This has been willful.

Still, the response of some cities and nations in the course of the pandemic has proven that the SARS-CoV-2 can be eradicated. When the contagion first struck Italy in February of 2020, causing a massive health care crisis and inundating their health systems, the town of Vo, a commune in the Province of Padua in the Italian Veneto region, an hour west of Venice, was placed in a strict 14-day lockdown, with all 3,270 people being tested for the virus multiple times. Positive cases were quarantined and treated. In a matter of a few weeks the virus was eradicated from the town.

Testing, contact tracing and quarantiningprecisely the methods used in Vowere employed in all nations that have managed to rein in the virus. As of March 22, 2021, Taiwan, a country of 24 million people, has had 1,006 reported infections and 10 deaths. In Singapore, home to five million people, new cases have remained in the single or low double digits since October 2020.

The science of public health and the tools for eradicating the virus have always been available, but the decision to allow the virus to spread unchecked with nothing more than vaccines made available to a tiny percentage of the developed world is part of a conscious decision which, without the revolutionary intervention by the international working class, can lead to the virus becoming endemic.

However, this is not merely rhetorical. There is a sea of death between the two terms, eradication and endemicity. Reaching endemicity means that the majority of the worlds population will contract the virus, which at its present lethality means tens of millions more lives lost. The arithmetic is inexorable: If billions contract COVID-19, with a death rate approximating two percent, then 20 million people will die for every billion people infected.

This does not even begin to take into consideration the numerous and more deadly variants. The present horrors in Brazil are demonstrating that prior infections with previous strains of SARS-COV-2 do not necessarily protect the population from the new and more virulent variants.

The drive to label the pandemic as inevitable has been a bipartisan effort. The media is flooded with articles to misguide readers that public health and science itself are helpless to prevent the disease. A few examples include a February 17 piece in USA Today, which utilized model data from Emory University and Penn State University scientists to suggest that if the novel coronavirus continues to circulate in the general population and most people are exposed to it from childhood, it could be added to the list of common colds.

The researchers who completed the Emory/Penn State study lament: One year after its emergence, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has become so widespread that there is little hope of elimination.

On February 16, Nature printed a survey it conducted, where 89 percent of scientists polled expressed their concerns that COVID-19 is likely to be endemic in pockets of the global population. Disregarding the persistent efforts of Dr. Michael Osterholm to inform the Biden administration on a correct policy to eradicate COVID-19, the magazine highlighted one of Osterholms quotes: Eradicating this virus right now from the world is a lot like trying to plan the construction of a stepping-stone pathway to the Moon. Its unrealistic.

It should be of no surprise to anyone that a significant section of scientists has become resigned to accepting COVID-19 as an ineradicable disease. It points to nothing more than their disillusion with the inaction of world governments, as schools and businesses throughout the world have essentially opened their doors.

Fundamentally, it expresses the inevitability of the virus reaching a state of endemicity under capitalism and rules out the possibility of a working class movement and socialist revolution that could halt the virus in a matter of weeks with coordinated global action, as part of a larger struggle in the fight for socialism, where the lives and interests of the working masses around the globe are prioritized.

One year of the COVID-19 pandemic: A disaster caused by capitalism

The COVID-19 pandemic is a turning point in world history, an event comparable in scale and impact to the Great Depression and the two world wars.

What is invariably left out of these press releases is the criminal policy of the ruling class across the globe, that has ignored the warnings of epidemiologists and scientists as it interfered with their priority for profit accumulation.

With remarkable foresight, in late spring of last year, as countries were prematurely reopening commerce, Dr. Mike Ryan lambasted the world governments for lifting restrictions under conditions of persistent and rampant transmission of the virus, without systems in place to even detect it, let alone trace and quarantine the infected, warning this would produce a vicious cycle of public health disaster followed by economic disaster followed by public health disaster.

There is, however, a growing chorus of scientists who are putting forward a call to eradicate the coronavirus. The Zero COVID policy, first articulated by Independent SAGE, a group that rivals the British governments official Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE), argues for the proven public health measures that can halt the spread of COVID-19. They call for lockdowns, with compensation for those economically affected, improved testing and contact tracing, and argue that the pandemic can be suppressed with public health measures.

A leading advocate is Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, an epidemiologist who is a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. She has spoken out scathingly on the UK plans to come out of lockdown so quickly. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, after implementing the strictest lockdown measures on January 4 to stem the disastrous tide of infections and deaths during the winter surge, was in no time demanding again for school reopenings by early March. Dr. Gurdasani called it a shockingly negligent strategy and very clearly a policy of tolerable deaths, while speaking to Channel 5 News on February 22.

Gurdasani cited predictions forecasted by the Imperial College that even under the best conditions of three to four million doses of the vaccine rolled out a week, opening schools on March 4 would increase the Effective Reproduction Rate (Rt) to above 1, resulting in 30,000 to 60,000 more deaths. She warned of the dangers of the virus mutating to threaten vaccine effectiveness, under a high rate of transmission, as has already happened with the South African variant.

Aoife McLysaght, of the Molecular Evolution Lab in Dublin, Ireland, spoke on a pinned Tweet, of the need to fight for Zero COVID, which would allow us to go about our lives in a normal way. Commenting on the danger of relying solely on vaccines as new variants emerge, McLysaght warned of a whole new pandemic arriving at our shores.

The science put forward is an indictment of world governments inaction, including the Johnson administration in Britain, which allowed the unchecked spread of the emergence in southeast England of a more virulent form of the virus, lineage B.1.1.7 which spreads 30-80 percent faster than the wild strain. In Brazil, the policies of the fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro have allowed the dominance of the P.1 strain of the coronavirus, which is up to 2.5 times more transmissible and has a potential to reinfect up to 63 percent. The health care systems in Brazil are buckling under the gravity of so much severe disease and death. Already, spillovers into neighboring countries like Peru, Chile and Uruguay are causing new surges in these regions.

While the growing group of principled scientists who call for the Zero COVID strategy have laid out the salient policies and make a case for mitigation efforts, what is lacking entirely is a socialist perspective. Fundamentally, Zero COVID accepts the current mode of production. It argues for a more humane capitalism, for improved public health measures under the current framework of a system which itself has produced the pandemic. The profit motive has reigned supreme and the indifference to human lives is the logical outcome of a class policy in the interests of the worlds elite. The Zero COVID policy is correct on a scientific basis but lacks a political strategy to achieve these necessary aims. Inevitably, these scientists have become auxiliary consultants to capitalist agencies.

The only social force that is capable of preventing SARS-CoV-2 from becoming endemic is the international working class, which must organize itself and build its leadership in order to carry out a fight for socialism and against the homicidal policies carried out by the ruling elites around the globe. Armed with a socialist perspective and program, the global working class can not only eradicate SARS-CoV-2 but many more viruses and horrors which have been allowed by the ruling class to persistfrom measles to hepatitis, to hunger and homelessness.

Saturday, April 3

150 years since the Paris Commune

Join us for a discussion of the first time in history that the working class took power. Streamed at wsws.org/live.

Here is the original post:
The antiscientific campaign to promote living with the virus - WSWS

The colossal implications of one of the largest container ships in the world, the Ever Given, running aground and blocking Egypts Suez Canal have been felt internationally.

The huge container ship, wedged across the canal since last Tuesday during a seasonal sandstorm, was finally freed from the shoreline in the early hours of this morning by tugboats. Efforts to fully refloat it are ongoing at the time of writing.

The blockage of a vital artery of the world economy by a single shipan accident waiting to happenreveals fundamental aspects of modern society.

The ship is owned by the Japanese company Shoei Kisen Kaisha, operated by the Taiwanese company Evergreen Marine Corporation, flagged in Panama and carrying goods worth $89 million.

Production and economic activity have become internationally integrated to an unprecedented extent, linking the working class in every country into a powerful interconnected network, such that the disruption of a single major transit hub quickly makes itself felt throughout the globe.

Almost 50 percent of the vessels that transit the Suez Canal are container ships carrying car components, appliances, apparel and consumer electronics to and from continents. Goods heading for Europe will themselves be integrated into components to be shipped to the Americas and the rest of the world, often for final assembly elsewhere.

However, under the irrational, anarchic capitalist social order, with the world divided into rival nation states, there has been virtually no serious preparations for an event like the Suez Canal jam, which has long been predicted, given the huge expansion in the number and size of container mega-ships.

With more than 450 vessels now waiting at either end of the canal, analysts believe that the insurance industry could be facing claims in excess of $100 million. However, the final bill, including compensation for delays, loss of revenue for the Suez Canal Authority (SCA), potential damage to cargo and the cost of refloating the ship, could include sums even higher.

While the precise causes of the Ever Given accident have yet to be determined, it points to the incompetence and corruption endemic in the Egyptian state apparatus. The SCA, the state-owned and largely military-run corporation responsible for the operation and maintenance of the Suez Canal, including its computerized traffic management system, pilots and dredging, has sought to downplay the severity of the incident and is unable to say how long it will take to unblock the canal. The chief of the SCA, Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, has already announced that the agency is discussing compensation for the waiting ships, implying negligence on the SCAs part.

But the global implications are far greater. Analysts are warning that the blockage threatens a severe disruption to global trade supplies, with massive repercussions on global supply chains that now rely on minimal levels of stocks commensurate with just-in-time production techniques, and consequences for workers jobs and consumer prices. It is likely to further fuel national antagonisms.

The Suez Canal is one of the worlds busiest waterways, linking the Indian Ocean, the Red and Mediterranean Seas. The canal is traversed by 19,000 vessels a year, carrying $10 billion of goods every day, or an estimated 13 percent of global trade by volume, and around 10 percent of the worlds oil, mostly between Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

As sea trade has grown, the size of container ships has also grown, driven by the need to lower shipping costs and achieve economies of scale. The average size of container ships is now five times larger than just 20 years ago, paving the way for both fewer ships and enormous cost reductions, to the extent vessels capable of carrying 20,000 20-foot equivalent containers are operated with a crew of just 20. But such ships are too deep and large to transit some shipping routes, such as the Panama Canal, or dock at some port quays, requiring significant investment to accommodate the ships, handle their loading and unloading and manage the scheduling to avoid port congestion.

With the Suez Canal blocked, some ships began to divert around the southern tip of Africa, a much more hazardous route, adding up to two weeks to the journey and with higher labour and fuel costs. This in turn will exacerbate the shortage of containers and container ships and create delays, shortages of goods and higher prices, with oil prices rising 7 percent in response to the news of the blockage. A report published by the German insurer Allianz Global estimated the bottleneck could cost global trade $6 billion to $10 billion a week.

Smaller tankers and oil products, like naphtha (a liquid fuel) and fuel oil exports from Europe to Asiaabout 20 percent of Asias naphtha is supplied by the Mediterranean and Black Sea via the Suez Canalwill also be affected if the canal remains blocked for several weeks.

The traffic jam in the Suez, when eventually freed up, will in turn lead to further congestion and disorganization as ships flood into ports which are already overstretched due to the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Suez Canal event also emerges amid severely hampered supply chains, including widespread shortages of semiconductors, a key component in cars, smartphones, PCs, tablets and TVs, the brutal winter storm in Texas last month, slowing production of plastic goods, and a major backlog of container ships in Southern California ports.

The blockage of the Suez Canal threatens a further intensification of geopolitical tensions under conditions in which numerous flashpoints exist and have been multiplying. Ships forced to reroute from the Red Sea towards South Africas Cape of Good Hope face the threat of piracy off the coasts of East Africa and West Africa, which have seen an increase in pirate kidnappings in recent months, leading several shipping companies to call on the US Navy to provide escorts.

Russian Foreign Ministry official Nikolai Korchunov argued the need for the development of new shipping routes, including a northern sea route through the Arctic Ocean, which has itself become the focus of increasing geopolitical conflicts as the adjacent countries seek to assert their territorial claims to secure access to the vast energy reserves and rare materials that are believed to be in the Arctic region.

Today, the global nature of capitalism is beyond dispute, as is the reactionary nation-state system that is driving the worlds major capitalist powers ever closer to global war and increasing social inequality at home, while preparing dictatorial forms of rule.

Capitalism has demonstrated over and over again that it is impervious to science and reason, criminally irrational and utterly opposed to addressing any social problems even as it demands ever fatter profits. Coming amid the pandemic, which has already killed 2.7 million people worldwide, it only confirms the necessity of abolishing the capitalist system and replacing it with an internationally coordinated, rationally and scientifically directed system of economic planning, based on equality and the satisfaction of human need: socialism.

Saturday, April 3

150 years since the Paris Commune

Join us for a discussion of the first time in history that the working class took power. Streamed at wsws.org/live.

Link:
The Suez Canal blockage and the globalization of production - WSWS

Happy 2021 opening day in Major League Baseball to you all!

Its time for a full season of MLB action after an abbreviated 2020, and to kick things off, were not doing a traditional power rankings.

Instead, as weve done with the NBA, were asking the question: if you have MLB.TV, which teams would you want to watch the most? Thats right, its another round of watchability rankings, which is a very unscientific combination of star power, the fun youll have watching the team, and maybe some oh boy, is this squad going to be a train wreck?

So away we go:

Im extremely intrigued by third base prospect KeBryan Hayes and for fantasy purposes in deep leagues, Ill take a flier on Colin Moran. But while they start a rebuild, this is the least watchable team in the Majors.

Why arent they in last? For starters, Miguel Cabrera is 134 hits away from 3,000 for his storied career, so well want to tune in for that chase when it heats up.

For another, there are some young arms Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize among them to keep an eye on. But the Tigers are NOT going to be good this year.

I will be very much interested in tuning in to see Trey Mancini mashing again after battling and beating colon cancer. And if you like offense, theres more of that here too with Ryan Mountcastle and Anthony Santander.

Ill call this: Do you like offense? Part II. Theres Joey Gallo either striking out or hitting big bombs. Theres some speed from Leody Taveras. Maybe theres a David Dahl breakout coming after his days in Colorado ended.

But pitching? Itll be a long season from that point of view.

The buzz over hyped prospect Jarred Kelenic has gotten LOUD, so this feels like a good spot for a team that will probably be among the bottom-dwellers, although they do have Ty France (who hit .309 last season), former first-round pick Taylor Trammell and, oh yeah, AL rookie of the year Kyle Lewis. Also: is THIS the year Justus Sheffield starts putting together a breakout?

Hmm. Maybe they should be higher?

Will they be worse than some of the teams lower on this list? Probably not.

But this is a team full of vets thats also trying to look toward the future. So while Ill tune in to see Mike Yastrzemski and Mauricio Dubon mash, Im not exactly getting excited about Evan Longoria, Brandon Crawford and past-his-prime Buster Posey.

A bad team with some fun youngsters > a mediocre older team. Fantasy baseball managers can turn their noses up at Adalberto Mondesi (note: please dont), but dude has stolen 91 bases in his past three seasons. Whit Merrifield continues to be one of the more well-rounded players in the game. Can Jorge Soler get back to his 2019 form when he nearly hit 50 dingers?

Oh and I CANT WAIT for Bobby Witt Jr. to come up.

Underrated, even here. Zac Gallen when hes healthy is one of the best young arms in baseball, Josh Rojas has been hot all spring, Ketel Marte is a season removed from .329-32-92 and 10 swipes, Tim Locastro is speedy Ill tune in!

The pitching stinks, blah blah blah, whatever.

Trevor Story is still there (for now), and hes a superstar. And you know youre going to get all kinds of offensive fireworks in Colorado, so I dont expect anything different given the lineup filled with names like Raimel Tapia, Ryan McMahon, Brendan Rodgers, C.J. Cron (can he hit 40 in the mountain air?) and vet Charlie Blackmon.

(Whispers) I dont think last year was a fluke.

Now, that doesnt mean theyre making the playoffs. All those jokes before the abbreviated 2020 season turned into a reality as the small-sample-size Marlins made the postseason.

What Im saying is: among the young, rebuilding teams, this ones the one I want to tune in for the most (and as a New York Mets fan, Ill see them plenty!). From the promise of Jazz Chisholm to a starting staff that we could be talking about as the best in the game in a few years, Im in.

I am aware Im going to get destroyed by North Siders for this one, but heres the thing: its sort of a known quantity. And while thats not the worst thing, it takes the level of excitement down.

Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo arent in their primes. The pitching staff is good (I love Kyle Hendricks and Zach Davies but theyre not known for their electric stuff. This is a team built for defense). Javier Baez is still so much fun to watch, but Im just not that excited beyond him.

I love Wrigley, though. Does that help?

Another team whose fanbase will no doubt write me angry letters/tweets.

But from a watchability standpoint, I think theres better out there right now. And this is zero offense to Rafael Devers, Xander Bogaerts and J.D. Martinez (the latter of whom will hopefully get back to hitting .300 and sending baseballs into orbit). Im also hopeful that this is finally the year Franchy Corderos sweet swing makes an impact. The return of Chris Sale is intriguing.

That said, Im more into the teams below.

I want so badly to throw this team higher with a great mix of young pitchers (Luis Castillo in the rotation and Tejay Antone, Amir Garrett) and a group of hitters who play in a park made for dingers. And then theres Joey Votto, who may be older but is still entertaining.

While they might be not that great from a standings point of view, theyll be more entertaining than the teams above.

This is where it gets extremely tough for me. There are an endless amount of storylines here: Ageless Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright. Jack Flaherty and Jordan Hicks dazzling on the mound. Is Nolan Arenado going to prove playing outside of Denver will work? Are Dylan Carlson and Tyler ONeill the real deal?

Theres also some real flop potential here and the schadenfreude that comes with it for non-Cards fans. This might be rating them too low.

Three words: Bryce. Harper. Swing.

Thats a good reason to watch this team. So is Aaron Nola pitching but whatever. Star power counts for a lot in these rankings.

With the As, its always a fun, weird ride, a how did they do that?! kind of feeling when you see them contend. And they could do it again this year with Matt Olson, Matt Chapman and two of my favorite young hurlers in Frankie Montas and Jesus Luzardo.

Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes are one of baseballs best young 1-2 punches. Devin Williams and Josh Hader out of the bullpen are a nightmare for opponents. And thats before we get to former MVP Christian Yelich.

Also, Keston Hiura might be a star.

Heres a team with fun but train-wreck potential now that Francisco Lindor is gone Jose Ramirez is still terrific and dont underestimate Eddie Rosario and Franmil Reyes. The bullpen has three amazing arms. Shane Bieber, Zach Plesac and Aaron Civale are all great. As a Mets fan, I can tell you Andres Gimenez is going to be awesome.

But they might be bad after so many years of contending.

That offense, oh my goodness, THAT OFFENSE! Cavan Biggio, Bo Bichette, Vlad Guerrero Jr. (maybe THIS is the year he hits a million homers), Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Teoscar Hernandez, Rowdy Tellez and new addition George Springer. WHEWWWWWWWWWWW.

The pitching is very iffy. So very watchable up to that point.

I hate myself for putting them this low. Were talking about Mike Trout, who is still the games biggest superstar. Were also talking about the chance to watch Shohei Ohtani become a two-way stud on the mound and at the plate.

But the Angels arent going to be very good. That holds them back.

Juan Soto. Trea Turner. Even if theyre not what they once were, lets add Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg into the mix. A real fun team to follow.

Just a top-to-bottom fun team to watch, as Nelson Cruz continues to crush baseballs at the age of 40, Byron Buxton continues his breakout, Miguel Sano does the same and a staff that now has Kenta Maeda as its ace.

The team you love to hate gets this high ranking for that very reason, although they also happen to be a very, very talented team you love to hate.

Goodness, this team is just so fun. Between Randy Arozarenas breakout last year to Brandon Lowes huge 2020, the possibility of Wander Franco coming up this year and the how the heck do they keep doing this?! feeling I love it all.

Fine. Im biased. Whatever.

But Francisco Lindor is a superstar. Pete Alonso hits baseballs very, very far. Jacob deGrom is the best pitcher in the game. Steve Cohens tweets are amazing. And of course, with this team, theres always the chance it falls apart. Welp.

One of the best young groups of players in the league may be about to explode. Even with Eloy Jimenez out with injury, Andrew Vaughn might be a terrific replacement. Luis Robert, Yoan Moncada, Nick Madrigal, Luis Giolito this team is STACKED.

And I live for Tim Anderson batflips.

The question: how will Tony La Russa manage this team? Ill be watching for that, too.

So much of this ranking is because of Ronald Acuna, but lets give some love to Marcell Ozuna, Freddie Freeman and the rest of this lineup. Their pitching staff is mega-deep and filled with young future stars Max Fried, Mike Soroka and Ian Anderson. Whats not to love?

As usual, the powerhouse to watch with a lineup that can mash 1-through-9. Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton hitting balls is a thrill. The pitching is superior. A well-oiled machine. Why arent they higher? Some thoughts below.

Of course. Its like watching an All-Star game every night. Thats it.

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MLB rankings: All 30 teams on Opening Day ranked by watchability - For The Win

Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images Bill Polian

The NFL Draft tea leaves are pointing toward one of two things for the New York Giants with the 11th overall pick an impact defender or an offensive lineman.

Hall of Famer Bill Polian, a six-time NFL Executive of the Year, knows which path he would choose.

The key to the Giants is the offensive line. Unless they get that solved the weapons wont mean a thing, Polian said on the Colin Cowherd Podcast. They have got to protect him and theyve got to be able to block for the run. Thats job 1 and I suspect theyll address it in the draft.

The Giants spent three draft picks on the offensive line a season ago left tackle Andrew Thomas (No. 4 overall), Tackle Matt Peart (Round 3/No. 99) and guard Shane Lemieux (Round 5/No. 150).

The line showed some promise, but still finished 21st in Football Outsiders Adjusted Line Yards run-blocking stat and 27th in FOs Adjusted Sack Rate measure. Having lost starting right guard Kevin Zeitler due to salary cap constraints and with Cameron Fleming, last seasons starting right tackle, not having been re-signed, the Giants now have to re-configure that side of their line.

They added wide receivers Kenny Golladay and John Ross, along with veteran tight end Kyle Rudolph in free agency in hopes of boosting last seasons 31st-ranked offense.

They have re-structured the offensive coaching staff to help that young line. Rob Sale is the new offensive line coach. Freddie Kitchens moves from tight ends coach to senior offensive assistant with responsibility for helping Sale. The Giants have also added Pat Flaherty, the teams offensive line coach during the Tom Coughlin years, as a consultant.

Now, they need to find more talent.

Would they use the 11th pick on offensive tackle Penei Sewell if he somehow falls to that spot, which might not be inconceivable if five quarterbacks are taken in the first 10 picks, or Rashawn Slater of Northwestern?

Will they wait until Day 2, where several potential starting guards should be available?

We get our answer in just a few short weeks.

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Bill Polian: Giants have to add to offensive line SB Nation Sports - Reverb MSN Music