Daily News Digest August 2, 2021
For Want of a Vaccine the Delta Variant Went Global!
When I was young I read For Want Of A Nail, The War Was Lost by enjamin Franklin the current global covid pandemic reminds me of that poem.
The importance of a global covid vaccine distribution has led to the Coronavirus — Delta Variant. The delta variant was first detected in India last October and it led to a massive second wave of Covid cases in the country. Since then, the highly infectious strain has spread globally. Now, the delta variant has usurped the previously dominant alpha variant, first detected in the U.K. last fall, and has prompted further waves of infections in Europe and an ominous incline in cases in the U.S.
These facts prove the need for a global vaccine! — Freeing the Vaccine!
Big Pharma and the 1%’s President Biden have put the US Awarded Big Pharma’s Patent Before the Rights of Humanity to Live!
If the Vaccine is not available to all, just like the Delta variant, new varients will appear, and will eventually lead to a vaccine immune new coronavirus variant!
The Only Obstacle is Big Pharma’s Quest for Global Profits!
The Need for A Global Covid Distribution has been proven by the Delta Variant!
The Vaccine Must Be Distributed to All Humanity!
Free the Vaccine Now! Or Tomorrow Will Be Too late For What Should Have Been Done Yesterday!
Patents are Preventing the Manufacture of Covid-19 Vaccines
Images of the Day:
Another Example of Capitalism as a Failed System: World CaAnpilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 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!
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!
Quotes of the Day:
“EPA’s half-completed, biased, and unlawful approval sacrifices the health of farmworkers and endangered species at the altar of Monsanto profits,” said George Kimbrell, legal director for CFS and counsel for the coalition. “The reckoning for Roundup is coming.” While EPA has declared that glyphosate does not cause cancer, the world’s foremost cancer authorities with the World Health Organization declared glyphosate to be ‘probably carcinogenic to humans’ in 2015. Over 40,000 lawsuits have been filed against the Monsanto (recently acquired by Bayer) by cancer victims asserting that exposure to Roundup caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma, including many farmworkers. Plaintiffs have prevailed in the three cases decided thus far, with victims awarded roughly $80 million in each case. — Farmworkers and Conservationists Sue EPA for Re-Approving Monsanto Cancer-Causing Pesticide
Why didn’t the agency catch Dow’s falsification? “EPA didn’t scrutinize it at the level I did,” Sheppard said. “The science is hard. And once a study has been around, who goes back and looks after it’s been accepted for 10, 15, or 20 years?” In an email, Kacey Birchmier, media relations manager for Corteva Agroscience, which now owns Dow, wrote that the company disagrees with the analysis and conclusions of Sheppard’s paper. “When used according to the label, chlorpyrifos is safe for all approved uses, as demonstrated by the more than 4,000 studies and reports examining the product in terms of health, safety and the environment,” Birchmier wrote. On one level, the story of the Coultson paper is simple: Decades ago, a seemingly small omission happened to slip past regulators. And yet the consequences of that one statistical sleight of hand, and the government’s failure to notice it, are immense. Between 1992 and 2017, chlorpyrifos was one of the most heavily used pesticides in the U.S., with some 450 million pounds of it sprayed on crops. Countless children and pregnant people were exposed to what we now know were unsafe levels. And those exposures have since been found to increase the risk of a wide range of neurodevelopmental problems in children, including ADHD and other attention disorders, autism, tremors, and intelligence deficits, as well as memory and motor problems. Although the true toll of that brain damage is incalculable, pediatrician and environmental health researcher Leonardo Trasande estimates that exposure to organophosphate pesticides, the class to which chlorpyrifos belongs, caused children born in the U.S. in a single year — 2010 — to collectively lose 1.8 million IQ points, costing the country $44.7 billion in productivity, education, and health costs. — The Department of Yes — How Pesticide Companies Corrupted the EPA and Poisoned America
Videos of the Day:
Human Rights Watch Accuses Israel of Apparent War Crimes in Gaza Assault; Urges ICC Probe
Anti-BDS Jewish Orgs Back Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Sales Ban in Settlements Despite Israeli Pressure
“People Are Outraged”: General Strike in Guatemala Denounces Corruption & Mishandling of Pandemic
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, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay!
Joe Biden’s Hollow Resistance: Words vs. Deeds The president is increasingly at odds with leaders of the voting rights movement, who see a contrast between his soaring language and his willingness to push Congress to pass federal legislation. — New York Times, July 22, 2021 Joe Biden’s approval rating has fallen to 50%, his lowest so far. The drop is richly deserved. Do not be surprised to see it to fall further. Consistent with his long corporate and imperialist record and with his 2019 promise to Wall Street election investors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he became president, Biden is following in Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s footsteps by providing yet more evidence for Sheldon Wolin’s thesis on what could be expected if a member of the Inauthentic Opposition party – the Democrats – could make into the White House. “Should Democrats somehow be elected,” Wolin wrote as Obama’s star rose in the early spring of 2008, they would do nothing to “alter significantly the direction of society” or “substantially revers[e] the drift rightwards. … The timidity of a Democratic Party mesmerized by centrist precepts,” Wolin wrote, “points to the crucial fact that for the poor, minorities, the working class and anti-corporatists there is no opposition party working on their behalf.”
Environment:
Chomsky: We Need Genuine International Cooperation to Tackle the Climate Crisis We need global action to tame the climate crisis or else we will face apocalyptic consequences, says Noam Chomsky.
Achal Prabhala: How the West Is Keeping the Covid-19 Pandemic From Ending On the latest “Scheer Intelligence” episode, the activist speaks to Robert Scheer from India about wealthy countries’ reluctance to end global vaccine apartheid. Even though thousands of Covid-19 vaccines are being administered daily, the delta variant of the coronavirus is wreaking havoc around the world. This is in large part, say activists like Achal Prabhala, due to wealthy countries’ reluctance to address global vaccine apartheid and put an end once and for all to the pandemic. Prabhala, the head of AccessIBSA, has written numerous articles for the New York Times, The Atlantic, Project Syndicate and elsewhere, advocating for equitable distribution of vaccines, their recipes and technologies. Most recently, he and several other activists spoke to In These Times about the many different ways rich countries, like the U.S., can proactively address vaccine shortages in most of the world.
Latest from the Energy Corp. Protection Agency (EPA) EPA Approval of PFAS for Fracking May Spell a New Health Crisis for Communities
- Toxic PFAS Chemicals Found in 100% of Breast Milk Samples
- PFAS Should Be Classified As Carcinogens, Researchers Say
For over a month, noxious wastewater has been leaching across the ground on Ashley Watt’s family ranch in the Permian Basin in West Texas where she lives and raises cattle. It started in mid-June, when a well Chevron Corps drilled in the 1960s (and plugged with cement in the 1990s before abandoning it) burst open. The well spewed what Watt described on Twitter as “super concentrated brine and benzene” into her water supply, the Pecos River Basin alluvial aquifer.
This is not an ‘historic victory’, It Grower will continue to poison farmworkers!: ‘Historic Victory’: Bayer to End US Residential Sales of Glyphosate-Based Herbicides “As agricultural, large-scale use of this toxic pesticide continues, our farmworkers remain at risk. It’s time for EPA to act and ban glyphosate for all uses.”
A Missed Opportunity: Rights of Nature Removed From New Draft of Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework This removal is not only a missed opportunity, but also hinders the framework’s capacity to implement transformative change to regress rampant biodiversity loss as well as encourage systemic change that is desperately needed in our environmental crisis. A Missed Opportunity: Rights of Nature Removed From New Draft of Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. This removal is not only a missed opportunity, but also hinders the framework’s capacity to implement transformative change to regress rampant biodiversity loss as well as encourage systemic change that is desperately needed in our environmental crisis. On July 12, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Secretariat released the first draft of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, deleting what is arguably the most important enabling condition: “to consider, where appropriate, the rights of nature,” replacing this language with “employing rights-based approaches.” This framework would have been the first international treaty to recognize Nature’s rights.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Margaret Kimberley: Glen Ford’s Journalism Fought for Black Liberation and Against Imperialism I had the honor of working with the late Glen Ford for nearly 20 years. His passing has created a huge void not just for Black Agenda Report (BAR), the site we co-founded with the late Bruce Dixon, but for all of Black politics and left media. Ford identified his political and journalistic stance with both, having created the tagline: “News, commentary and analysis from the black left” for BAR. He was the consummate journalist, a man who demanded rigorous analysis of himself and others, and he lived by the dictum of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. Ford co-founded a publication in line with his core values: He did not suffer fools gladly, succumb to corporate media and government narratives, or feel obligated to change his politics in order to elevate the Black face in a high place.
Labor:
Treacherous Role Of The Labor Bureaucracy!: One must accentuate especially the role which Jack London attributes to the labor bureaucracy and to the labor aristocracy in the further fate of mankind. Thanks to their support, the American plutocracy not only succeeds in defeating the workers’ insurrection but also in keeping its iron dictatorship during the following three centuries. We will not dispute with the poet the delay which can but seem to us too long. However, it is not a question of Jack London’s pessimism, but of his passionate effort to shake those who are lulled by routine, to force them to open their eyes and to see what is and what approaches. The artist is audaciously utilizing the methods of hyperbole. He is bringing the tendencies rooted in capitalism: of oppression, cruelty, bestiality, betrayal, to their extreme expression. He is operating with centuries in order to measure the tyrannical will of the exploiters and the treacherous rôle of the labor bureaucracy! — Leon Trotsky and the Iron Heel
Striking Alabama Coal Miners Hit Streets Of NYC To Protest Corporate Greed Striking Alabama Coal Miner Mike Wright says workers at Warrior Met Coal are taking their calls for fair pay and benefits to the NYC headquarters of their company’s biggest investor: BlackRock
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics Daily Update (July 30th to August 2nd, Annualized Real Second-Quarter 2021 GDP Growth Came in at an 6.5%, Somewhat Shy of Expectations, With GDP Inflation at a 40-Year Peak; Benchmark Revisions Showed Slower Growth in 2018, but No New Downturn [see Latest Numbers]
- Preliminary July 2021 Monetary Base Numbers All Hit New Historic Levels or Cycle-High Annual Growth • July FOMC Policies Were Unchanged
- June 2021 “Basic M1” Money Supply Surged to a Record 87.8% Gain Versus Its Pre-Pandemic Trough, Up from 81.1% in May; All Money Supply and Monetary Base Dollar Levels Are at Historic Highs and at Record- or Cycle-High Growth [See the SYSTEMIC RISK Section for FOMC and Money Supply Details] •
- The Still-Unfolding “Recession-Depression” Recovery Remains Well Shy of Its Pre-Recession Peak, as Reflected in Payroll Employment, For Example (See the Economic Headlines and coverage in the Latest Numbers Section)
- COMBINED IMPACT: Reflecting the Surge in Money, June CPI and PPI Inflation Have Exploded, Well in Excess of Consensus Expectations, While Faltering Business Activity Has Begun to Intensify Anew
World:
World Perspectives 2021: A Global Epoch Of Revolution is Being Prepared This document was approved by delegates at the 2021 World Congress of the International Marxist Tendency (full report here). It provides our general analysis of the main processes taking place in world politics, at a time marked by unprecedented crisis and turmoil. With dynamite in the foundations of the world economy and the COVID-19 pandemic still casting a shadow over the global situation, all roads lead to intensified class struggle.
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!
‘A Very Serious Threat’: CDC Document Warns Delta Variant Is as Contagious as Chickenpox “People need to understand that we’re not crying wolf here,” said the CDC director. “It’s one of the most transmissible viruses we know about.”