Daily News Digest January 18, 2022
Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines are Free For the Whole World!
Images of the Day:
Native AmericanGenocide Chapter 5000: Lakota Massacre
Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Ws 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!
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”, is Still True for Today’s World!
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!
Quotes of the Day:
In the US in 2021, there was inflation around 7%, and this has led to a lot of discussion about what is causing the inflation, why there’s inflation. Professor Hudson has pointed out for many years that inflation in the US and other countries is often measured in a very strange way that doesn’t include housing prices, and it doesn’t include what he calls the FIRE sector: finance, insurance and real estate. So today we’ll talk about the rising rates of inflation and what corporate media outlets are missing about the story. — Inflation and Illegal Repo Loans
In dramatic contrast to Perry’s and Friedly’s conclusions about Malcolm X’s assassination, is a book by Washington Post staff writer Karl Evanzz titled, The Judas Factor (Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York, 1992. 389 pp., $22.95). In this book, Evanzz documents how the intelligence community, the CIA, the FBI, and the New York Police Bureau of Special Services (BOSSI) using agents provocateurs and infiltrators; set the stage for the assassination of Malcolm X. It outlines the motives for their actions. Evanzz spent 15 years researching over 300,000 pages of declassified FBI and CIA documents. From Page 214 of The Judas Factor: (A few days after Malcolm X’s press conference announcing his split from the NOI) “William C. Sullivan (FBI) contacted the directors of BOSSI and asked them to recruit several African Americans to infiltrate Malcolm X’s new organization. Among the directors at the time were two men who later would play key roles in the scandal that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation: Anthony Ulasewicz, the infamous bagman of Watergate, and Nixon advisor John J. Caulfield. “Ulasewicz was all too happy to comply with Sullivan’s request. Malcolm X had been a thorn in the New York Police Department’s side for more than a decade. He told Sullivan that he would have officers ready to infiltrate Malcolm X’s new organizations within thirty days. “While Sullivan was coordinating the domestic counterintelligence program against Malcolm X with BOSSI, the CIA initiated a similar program to determine the extent of Malcolm X’s influence with Third World leaders. ’ What do we have on Malcolm X?’ a CIA official wrote in an inter-office memo dated March 10. The request for information had come from the U.S. State Department. The official ordered a clerk to run a thorough check in the CIA’s database to determine which Third World countries seemed receptive to Malcolm X. . .” — The Assassinations of M.L.K. Jr. and Malcolm X
Videos of the Day:
The US Journalism Crisis is a Democracy Crisis
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. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford to Pay!
An All-Out War on Democracy Is Now Underway in the US In this ominous historical moment, clarity about how we got here and where we are now is vital. “A rosy view of the USA’s future is only possible when ignoring history in real time.” The final big legislative achievement of 2021 was a bill authorizing $768 billion in military spending for the next fiscal year. President Biden signed it two days after the Christmas holiday glorifying the Prince of Peace.” Dollar figures can look abstract on a screen, but they indicate the extent of the mania. Biden had asked for “only” $12 billion more than President Trump’s bloated military budget of the previous year—but that wasn’t enough for the bipartisan hawkery in the House and Senate, which provided a boost of $37 billion instead. Overall, military spending accounts for about half of the federal government’s total discretionary spending—while programs for helping instead of killing are on short rations at many local, state, and national government agencies. It’s a nonstop trend of reinforcing the warfare state in sync with warped neoliberal priorities. While outsized profits keep benefiting the upper class and enriching the already obscenely rich, the cascading effects of extreme income inequality are drowning the hopes of the many.
United States Total Coronavirus Deaths: 873,564
Biden Urged to Fire Covid Response Chief Over ‘Damning’ Failures “Zients has failed to provide the materials necessary to improve the U.S. response, or the guidance necessary to keep the pandemic under control,” argued one critic. President Joe Biden is coming under growing pressure to fire White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients—a former private equity executive with no public health background—as the administration continues to face criticism over its slow-moving and inadequate efforts to combat Covid-19.
Is Biden in the Midst of a World Historic Crime Against Humanity? Kabul-based journalist Masood Shnizai discusses the devastating effects of the ongoing U.S. sanctions against Afghanistan. The normally reserved International Committee of the Red Cross recently made a surprisingly direct statement about the unfolding economic and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. They said, “Can the international community” — meaning the U.S. — “hold 39 million people hostage to the fact that they do not want to recognise the authorities that are now in place in Kabul and in Afghanistan?”
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
Climate Scientists: Ban Solar Geoengineering The risks are poorly understood and can never be fully known’ The following open letter was issued by an international coalition of prominent scientists and governance scholars on January 17, 2022. It calls for an international treaty to outlaw attempts to reduce global heating by blocking sunlight from reaching earth. Sixteen of the signatories are co-authors of Solar geoengineering: The case for an international non-use agreement, published simultaneously in the journal WIREs Climate Change. That paper concludes: “Solar geoengineering is not necessary. Neither is it desirable, ethical, or politically governable in the current context. With the normalization of solar geoengineering research moving on with rapid speed, a strong political message to block these technologies is needed. And this message must come soon.”
Civil rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Economy:
Nomura, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs Received a Cumulative $8 Trillion from the Fed’s Emergency Repo Loans in Fourth Quarter of 2019 The Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 ordered the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an investigative body for Congress, to audit the Fed’s alphabet soup of emergency lending programs conducted during and after the 2008 financial crisis. The GAO found that a cumulative $16.1 trillion had been pumped out to Wall Street firms by the Fed – at super cheap interest rates. The GAO provided data for the peak amounts outstanding and also a cumulative total. Why is a cumulative total essential and relevant? Because one institution in 2008, Citigroup, was insolvent for much of the time the Fed was flooding it with cheap loans. (Under law, the Fed is not allowed to make loans to an insolvent institution.) And when an insolvent institution is getting loans rolled over and over by the Fed for a span of two and a half years, at interest rates frequently below one percent when the market wouldn’t loan it money at even double-digit interest rates, it’s highly relevant to know the cumulative tally of just how much Citigroup got from the Fed. According to the GAO, that tally came to $2.5 trillion for just some of these Fed loan programs. (See page 131 of the GAO study here.)
World:
Iranian Teachers Take to the Streets: “You Will Soon be Overthrown!” “You bastards of Iranian history! By god, you shall be overthrown!” These were words of warning from a teacher in Shiraz, who participated in yet another wave of national protests in Iran (read our previous coverage here). Below, we publish the full text of the teacher’s speech, which reflects the rising anger of the Iranian working class.
Education, Health, 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 they 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!
Colleges Accused of Conspiring to Make Low-Income Students Pay More Sixteen universities – including six in the Ivy League – are accused in a lawsuit of having engaged in price fixing and unfairly limiting financial aid by using a shared methodology to calculate the financial need of applicants. The schools in question have declined to comment or said only that they’ve done nothing wrong. Here, Robert Massa, a professor of higher education at the University of Southern California, provides insights into what the case is about. Is this the latest ‘admissions scandal’?
Omicron: ‘The Fastest-Spreading Virus In History’ The new variant has traversed the planet in a single month, stunning experts. But uncertainty remains over whether it is less serious for unvaccinated people and the immunocompromised Omicron is the fastest-spreading virus known to humankind. Barely a month after its detection in southern Africa, the new variant of the coronavirus was already dominant in countries around the world, with more cases than ever before. “It’s an incredibly rapid spread,” said physician Roby Bhattacharyya, an infectious disease expert at Massachusetts General Hospital (USA). To demonstrate omicron’s infectious power, Bhattacharyya has done a back-of-the-envelope calculation to imagine what a race between omicron and measles, another of the world’s most-contagious viruses, would look like. One person with measles infects 15 others on average if none are vaccinated, compared to the six people infected by omicron. But the key lies in the so-called “generation time”: i.e. the number of days that elapse between when the first person is infectious and when those they infect also become infectious. With measles, that takes about 12 days. In the case of omicron, this only takes four to five days. “One case of measles would cause 15 cases within 12 days. One case of omicron would give rise to another six at four days, 36 cases at eight days and 216 after 12 days,” explained Bhattacharyya.
Where’s the Data? The Missing Link in the U.S. Response to Covid-19 I’ve been tuning in regularly to the Covid Grand Rounds from the University of California San Francisco Department of Medicine – a public program aired every couple of weeks on YouTube. I’ve come to trust the moderator and the guests—experts all, from different corners of the medical world. Thus, when this week’s guest–a leading researcher in molecular medicine had sharp words for the Biden administration’s failure to collect critical data on Covid cases, I paid attention. Appearing in a January 13 presentation, Eric Topol, editor-in-chief of Medscape and holder of an endowed chair at Scripps Research, said, “We have pathetic data systems…For example, right now we want to know if these Omicron boosters– how well they’re working to prevent hospitalization and deaths. And when do they wane? Those people who are getting hospitalized who had a third shot—what’s going on there? We were promised by the CDC in May that they would track every breakthrough hospitalization and death. Never happened. And so we don’t have critical data. We have 150,000 plus people in the hospital, and I have BEGGED at the HHS level that we have granular data on each of those people—their vaccination status, which vaccine, when they got it, their age, their co-existing conditions, and all the basal stuff, and they say, ‘We’re going to look into it.’ Even though it can be mandated by HHS authority. So we have just a dreadful situation here where we don’t have real-time captured data. The only data that gets posted on the CDC is a month old and it’s de minimis about things like hospitalizations or deaths. And this is unacceptable. If you’re going to go in a pandemic and try to deliver guidance, you have to have data. That’s how you develop trust. Not only does the U.S. not have a reliable system for collecting this data but, he said “there’s no seeming will to get one. And that is distressing, and has to change.”