Daily News Digest January 25, 2021

Daily News Digest Archives

Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 4 Years Ago and Did Nothing!:  Under Capitalism — Human Lives Don’t Matter  Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading  Racism,  War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The future of Humanity Is Now At stake!Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the Banner Headline: “There Is No Peace”During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: 1.Austerity,2. Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 3.  The Iron Heel!    For Decades, Blacks Have Been Subjected to The Iron Heel!   Currently, the US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply It to Everyone!

Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Now Leads the World In  Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World!

Always Remember:  That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he Established, in writing,  the United States Capitalist Austerity Program. —  The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!

Democracy?: As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%,  Only the 1% Voted For Austerity!   The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who, Profit From Austerity!!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.!   Socialism Means True Democracy, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!

Images  of the Day:

Cartoon by KAL$6,472,299,00,000Quotes 0f the Day:

Trump Was a Machiavellian President: Commandment 2. Niccolo Machiavelli counselled his Italian Prince to claim everything, concede nothing and, if defeated, allege fraud. — The New Ten Commandments

Videos of the Day:

From Standing Rock And J20 to the Us Capitol: Who Gets Treated Like the Enemy? When police roll out the red carpet for far-right insurgents and reserve tear gas and rubber bullets for Black, Indigenous, and social justice protestors, what is to be done?

United States:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Reublicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich. Rax the Rich!  — They Can Afford To Pay

Rights Advocates Alarmed by US Spy Agency’s Purchase of Warrantless Phone Location Data “Congress must end this lawless practice and require the government to get a warrant for our location data, regardless of its source.” Digital rights advocates reacted with alarm to a report published Friday detailing how Defense Intelligence Agency analysts in recent years bought databases of U.S. smartphone location data without first obtaining warrants. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is part of the Department of Defense and is tasked with informing military and civilian policymakers about the activities and intentions of foreign governments and nonstate actors. By Brett Wilkins

Everywhere You Look, American Empire Is Crumbling If you need proof that the last superpower, our very own empire, is indeed crumbling, consider the year we’ve just lived through, not to mention the first few weeks of 2021. If you need proof that the last superpower, our very own empire, is indeed crumbling, consider the year we’ve just lived through, not to mention the first few weeks of 2021.If you need proof that the last superpower, our very own empire, is indeed crumbling, consider the year we’ve just lived through, not to mention the first few weeks of 2021. By Rebecca GordonEnvironment:

The Greatest Failure of the Left!: All of the socialist.communist organization can from coalitions against wars, but they can not/have not joined/fom a coalition fo Ecosocialism!:  Ecosocialism Vs. “Green” Capitalism What path to save the planet? The global environmental crisis may seem abstract to some unless they’re fleeing deadly fires or ferocious storms. These disasters appear to be local and can be hard to connect to each other. But scientists worldwide, in overwhelming numbers, say that fossil fuel use and other unregulated industrial production are causing disastrous, intensifying global heating, deforestation and pollution. Millions of species have been eradicated and human settlement has come too close to wild animal populations. The worldwide spread of Covid-19 is just the latest result of all this.The crisis is existential, and urgent. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in 2018 that we had only about 12 years to contain global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times, in order to avoid the most catastrophic harm. This was a call for dramatic change. By Dennis Sanders

Burning Questions About the Future of Pacific Northwest Forests Climate change has played an overarching role in the blazes, but a perfect storm of government mismanagement – privatization, lax enforcement, and outright corruption – has contributed a major share In a year filled with wildfire, which started with Australian and Amazonian forests burning with horrifying scope and severity and continued this past September as the smoke from America’s vast wildfires circled the globe — the dire implications of the climate crisis have become a reality for many. By Rebecca White

 Herbicides And Butterflys

“Monarchs are considered to be a flagship species for conservation. This is a warning bell,” says Rayor. “Monarchs themselves are not an endangered species right now, but as their habitat is disrupted or destroyed, their migratory phenomena is becoming endangered.” In the laboratory tests, monarchs fed milkweed leaves dusted with so-called transformed pollen from a Bt-corn hybrid ate less, grew more slowly and suffered a higher mortality rate, the researchers report. Nearly half of these larvae died, while all of the monarch caterpillars fed leaves dusted with nontransformed corn pollen or fed leaves without corn pollen survived the study. — Toxic Pollen From Widely Planted, Genetically Modified Corn Can Kill Monarch Butterflies, Cornell Study Shows (1999)

Monarch Butterfly Population Moves Closer to Extinction Researchers say the number of western monarch butterflies win tering along the California coast has plummeted to a record low, putting the orange-and-black insects closer to extinction The number of western monarch butterflies wintering along the California coast has plummeted precipitously to a record low, putting the orange-and-black insects closer to extinction, researchers announced Tuesday. An annual winter count by the Xerces Society recorded fewer than 2,000 butterflies, a massive decline from the tens of thousands tallied in recent years and the millions that clustered in trees from Northern California’s Marin County to San Diego County in the south in the 1980s. By Olga R. RodriguezRobert Hunziker: Complex Life Threatened Throughout the world, scientists are speaking out like never before. They’re talking about an emergency situation of the health of the planet threatening “complex life,” including, by default, human life. It’s scary stuff. On this subject, America’s green NGOs prefer to address the danger by sticking to a middle ground, don’t scare people, too much doom and gloom backfires, turns people off, it’s counterproductive.

Reality ‘Starting to Sink In,’ Says McKibben, After European Investment Bank Chief Admits ‘Gas Is Over’ “There’s nothing clean about gas—it’s not a ‘transition fuel’ or a ‘bridge fuel,’ it’s a dirty fossil fuel just like coal and oil,” said Greenpeace EU. “It’s time to stop bankrolling the #ClimateEmergency and stop public money back gas projects.” By Jon QueallyHow Hemp Can Help to Moderate the Climate Crisis “Hemp can be a lifesaver: it is naturally resistant to fire, providing greater protection against blazes overwhelming residential high-rise blocks” There are high hopes that new technology and novel materials may save the world from the worst of the climate crisis. Fine. But don’t forget some of the old remedies − like hemp. In the UK, hemp used to be a common crop which it was a patriotic duty to grow. In 1535 the English king, Henry the Eighth, required all farmers to sow a quarter of an acre (1,000 square metres) of hemp for every 60 acres they owned. That was because hemp, one of the fastest-growing plants in the world, was recognised then for its value as a building material. Its reputation is now often tarnished by its relationship to cannabis, and it is usually called industrial hemp to distinguish it from its recreational and medicinal cousin.mn Industrial hemp remains useful for many purposes, including construction, and not least as a substitute for concrete, the enormously carbon-intensive substance which is often the builders’ first choice. By Alex KirbyCrisis in the Amazon: A Planetary Challenge Crisis in the Amazon: A Planetary Challenge Can the world’s most important rain forest be saved? The continued monstrous burning of the Amazon rain forest under the Bolsonaro government is a threat not just to the Indigenous and other people who live there but to everyone around the world.  The Global Ecosocialist Network is pleased to present an important meeting on the desperate crisis in the Amazon, featuring three very distinguished speakers discussing what is happening and what must be done.A CONVERSATION WITH: Michael Lowy, author of Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe; Sabrina Fernandes, of Subverta – PSOL, creator and producer of Tese Onze; Sônia Guajajara, executive coordinator of the Association of Indigenous People of Brazil and former vice-presidential candidate. Live Broadcast Saturday, February 6.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Labor:

Economy:

Richard D. Wolff: How Capitalism’s Dogged Defenders and Propagandists Defend It From Criticism The more victims and critics of capitalism coalesce and thereby strengthen one another, the more that economic system is questioned and challenged. That in turn provokes capitalism’s defenders. They increasingly resort to attaching qualifying adjectives to capitalism and deflecting criticisms onto them. They say that the capitalism they support is a particular kind of capitalism. Their support depends on whether or not certain adjectives are attached to capitalism. For example, is it “free market” capitalism (minimum or no government intervention)? Similarly, is it perfectly competitive, conscious, compassionate, socially responsible, progressive, or still other qualifying adjectives? Defenders of capitalism criticize kinds of capitalism that lack the particular adjectives that matter most to them. Many defenders go a step further: kinds of capitalism lacking those adjectives are not “really” capitalism at all.

Rob Urie: The Economy Was Broken Before the Pandemic Hit With a new government taking office, optimism regarding the capacity of government to ‘work’ again abounds. The Biden administration is making a host of program proposals that if enacted, will benefit a lot of people. However, as laid out below, the meta-problem of a crashed, dysfunctional economy that was patched over in 2009, but never repaired, persists. This was the subtext of rising political tensions before the pandemic arrived. In fact, most readers will be surprised by how off-kilter ‘the economy’ was a decade into an alleged recovery.

Shadow Government Statistics Money Supply [Systemic Risk] has been updated – January 11th Week M1 year-to-year growth soared to an all-time high 72.3%. – Pending Publication

  • Pandemic-Driven U.S. Economic Collapse Continues in a Hardening, Protracted “L”-Shaped Non-Recovery

  • Severe Systemic Structural Damage from the Shutdown Will Forestall Meaningful Economic Rebound into 2022 or Beyond, Irrespective of Coronavirus Treatments and Vaccines

  • Panicked, Unlimited Federal Reserve Money Creation and Federal Government Deficit Spending Continue and Will Expand, Triggering With Fundamental Dollar Debasement Intensifying, Holding Physical Gold and Silver Protects the Purchasing Power of One’s Assets

World:

Brazilians Take To the Streets Asking Impeachment for Bolsonaro At least 87 caravans will travel across the five regions of the country to denounce Bolsonaro’s irresponsibility regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Brazil’s social movements and trade unions carry out a nationwide protest on Saturday demanding impeachment for president Jair Bolsonaro.teleSUR correspondent in Brazil Jgnacio Lemus reports that demonstrators from at least 70 municipalities including the capitals of all states have mobilized in caravans to request impeachment for Bolsonaro; the extension of financial help that was approved by Congress as well as the immediate vaccination against the COVID-19 pandemic.Education, Health, Science, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who pass universal healthcare for themselves, but cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People  Vote on Healthcare 

Why Neoliberal Leaders Who Failed to Protect Their Countries From COVID-19 Must Be Investigated Warnings that the oxygen supply was running out in the city of Manaus, Brazil, came to local and federal government officials a week before the calamity led to the deaths by asphyxiation of patients afflicted with COVID-19. No modern state—such as Brazil—should have to admit that it did nothing when these warnings came in and simply allowed its own citizens to die for no reason. A Supreme Court judge and the solicitor general have demanded that the Brazilian government act, but this has not moved Jair Bolsonaro’s administration. Everything about this story—detailed in Solicitor General José Levi do Amaral’s report—reveals the rot of privatization and incompetence. By Noam Chomsky and Vijay PrashadThe ‘Extendibles’: Under Capitalism Black, Elderly, and the Poor Are ‘Extendible Victims’ of the Coronavirus Pandemic!:  Bare-Knuckle Capitalism has No Place in Nursing Homes Privatized profit-making in homes caring for the elderly When it became clear last fall that the province’s long-term care (LTC) homes were about to be engulfed by the second wave of the pandemic, the Ford government swung into action.  Wasting no time, it promptly introduced legislation — legislation that gave the corporate owners of long-term care homes extra protection from lawsuits that were accumulating against them.   Tragically, the province has shown no such speed or dedication to the task of providing extra protection — or much protection at all — to the elderly people who live in these homes and who, unlike the corporate owners, really are helpless to defend themselves. By Linda McQuaig