Daily News Digest March 10, 2020

Another Example of a Failed System:World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat a Year Ago and Did Nothing!

Daily News Digest Archives

Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under 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!

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 , thet the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!

Quotes of the Day:

Coronaviruses are divided into three genera (I to III), usually referred to as groups and based on serological cross-reactivity (218) (Table ​(Table1);1); more recent genome sequence analysis has confirmed this grouping (115). Group I coronaviruses include animal pathogens, such as TGEV of the pig, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), and feline infectious peritonitis virus (FIPV), as well as the human coronaviruses HCoV-229E and HKU1, which cause respiratory infections (see below). Group II also includes pathogens of veterinary relevance, such as BCoV, porcine hemagglutinating encephalomyelitis virus, and equine coronavirus, as well as human coronaviruses viruses OC43 and NL63, which, like HCoV-229E, also cause respiratory infections. Group II also includes viruses that infect both mice and rats. MHV is often studied as a prototype coronavirus; MHV is a group of highly related strains causing a variety of diseases, such as enteric disease, hepatitis, and respiratory disease, as well as encephalitis and chronic demyelination. Rat sialodacryoadenitis coronavirus also belongs to group II. There has been controversy about whether SARS-CoV defines a new group of coronaviruses or whether it is a distant member of group II (as discussed in “CORONAVIRUSES AS EMERGING PATHOGENS: SARS-CoV” below); given the data to date (113117), we have listed SARS-CoV in group II in Table ​Table1.1. Group III thus far includes only avian coronaviruses, such as IBV, turkey coronavirus, and pheasant coronavirus (38). Recently, using reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR), coronavirus sequences were detected in the graylag goose (Anser anser), feral pigeon (Columbia livia), and mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) (147); phylogenetic analyses of the replicase and nucleocapsid (N) sequences suggest that these viruses are members of group III, but as yet they have not been isolated or characterized. — Coronavirus Pathogenesis and the Emerging Pathogen Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (2005)

 Trump has fired many of the people who actually know how to coordinate government responses to epidemics. As Laurie Garrett reported in January, the president shut down the National Security Council’s global health security unit and cut $15 billion in national health spending, including funding for the management of infectious global diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Homeland Security, and HHS. At the CDC, the funding cuts to the global health section were so severe, Garrett wrote, that “the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10.” — Cronyism And Conflicts Of Interest in Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force

Videos of the Day:

Want to Build Class Solidarity? Learn to Talk About Race

Obama Laid the Foundation for Trump’s Attack on Bedrock Environmental Law

Obama Laid the Foundation for Trump’s Attack on Bedrock Environmental Law

Images of the Day:

Photo Series: Over One Million Women March in Santiago

Never Be Deceived! U.S.:

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 Republicrats 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.

The 9 years of savage terrorism imposed on 20 million people of Syria have brought untold suffering to the once peaceful, prosperous and secular nation. 600,000 Syrians have been massacred by ISIS and 50 AlQaeda linked hybrid terrorist armies consisting of 100000 jihadists brought into Syria from 108 countries since 2011.   Before Russia intervened in October 2015, 80% of Syrian territory was taken over by US sponsored covert army ISIS and alNusra forces. Idlib and eastern Syria are now the last remaining stronghold of US-AlQaeda coalition. The endless war drags on ‑— combined by years of brutal economic sanctions have further weakened Syrian economy and military that have fought a 9 yearlong hard battle against ISIS and AlQaeda. — That were funded trained and armed by the US and NATO members for the goal of regime change. — Facebook

Absolutely Chilling’: Reports From Frontlines of Coronavirus Outbreak Reveal Roadblocks to Testing, Lack of Safety Protocols “Recall that this refusal to test fits a pattern: This the same president who railed against attempts to count the dead in Puerto Rico post-Maria… Ignorance is a lethal political tool.” As President Donald Trump drew harsh rebukes Friday for downplaying the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S., accounts from people on the frontlines of the outbreak that’s affected more than 100,000 people worldwide so far revealed a “chilling” lack of urgency from the U.S. government regarding the need to contain the spread of the respiratory illness. On Thursday evening, Vice News journalist Julia Lindau returned from reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy, where more than 4,600 people have tested positive for the illness—only to pass through U.S. Customs without being screened for potentially having come into contact with the virus. By Julia Conley

Environment:

Is the U.S. Fracking Boom Based on Fraud? In a 2016 interview with Fraud Magazine, former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow explained what he thought made him so successful while at the former energy corporation that’s now infamous for financial scandal. “I think my ability to do structured financing, to finance things off-balance sheet and to find ways to manipulate financial statements — there’s no nice way to say it. Like I said at the conference, I was good at finding loopholes.” As Fastow explained, in finance, the difference between a loophole and fraud isn’t always easy to identify. And that may be something the U.S. fracking industry is working to its advantage. Fastow, the convicted fraudster, does admit that what they did at Enron misled investors. “We created something that was monstrously misleading, but any one of those deals alone wasn’t necessarily considered fraudulent,” he said. By Justin Mikulka

The Great Dismantling Of America’s National Parks is Under Way Under this administration, nothing is sacred as we watch the nation’s crown jewels being recut for the rings of robber barons.For more than 100 years, professional management of our national parks has been respected under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Yes, they have different priorities, the Democrats often expanding the system and the Republicans historically focused on building facilities in the parks for expanding visitation. But the career public servants of the National Park Service (NPS), charged with stewarding America’s most important places, such as the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and the Statue of Liberty, were left to do their jobs. By Jonathan B Jarvis and Destry Jarvis

Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:

Labor:

‘Chilling’: Erik Prince Recruited Ex-Spies to Help Project Veritas Infiltrate Groups ‘Hostile’ to Trump Agenda “They didn’t succeed in their attempt to hurt our union,” said American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, “but note what the right wing will do to try to eliminate workers’ voice.” By Jessica Corbett

Economy:

The Seeds of The Next Debt Crisis With debt levels already at a record high, coronavirus raises the risk of a credit crunch in a world of low interest rates Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach More information can be found here.   The shock that coronavirus has wrought on markets across the world coincides with a dangerous financial backdrop marked by spiralling global debt. According to the Institute of International Finance, a trade group, the ratio of global debt to gross domestic product hit an all-time high of over 322 per cent in the third quarter of 2019, with total debt reaching close to $253tn. The implication, if the virus continues to spread, is that any fragilities in the financial system have the potential to trigger a new debt crisis. In the short term the behaviour of credit markets will be critical. Despite the decline in bond yields and borrowing costs since the markets took fright, financial conditions have tightened for weaker corporate borrowers. Their access to bond markets has become more difficult. After Tuesday’s 50 basis-point cut, the US Federal Reserve’s policy rate of 1.0-1.25 per cent is still higher than the 0.8 per cent yield on the policy-sensitive two-year Treasury note. This inversion of the yield curve could intensify the squeeze, says Charles Dumas, chief economist of TS Lombard, if US banks now tighten credit while lending has become less profitable. By  John Plender

‘There Is Genuine Panic’: Fears of Global Financial Meltdown as Human Toll of Coronavirus Grows  “Trump won’t let people infected off of a cruise ship and into quarantine because he likes ‘the numbers being where they are.’ He’d rather keep the numbers down than help these folks. This is literally the worst person to be in charge in this moment.” —Jamil Smith, Rolling Stone President Donald Trump described as “the worst person to be in charge in this moment” as the number of known coronavirus cases in the U.S. topped 500 over the weekend. By Jake Johnson

Capitalist System In Meltdown The coronavirus has become the catalyst for a crash on the stock markets, with drastic slumps everywhere on ‘Black Monday’. The recent epidemic is a historical accident that has exposed the deep sickness in the capitalist system, which at any moment risks tipping into an even-deeper recession than 2008, Rob Sewell (editor of Socialist Appeal) explains. “People are running scared,” said Andrew Sullivan, director at Hong Kong brokerage Pearl Bridge Partners, as the capitalist system faces an economic meltdown. This is Black Monday all over again. Stock markets around the world, from London to Tokyo, are in free fall. Everything is pointing to a repeat of 2008 but on a higher level. In other words, we are on the verge of a deep world slump. By Rob Sewell“A Toothpick in a Tsunami”: US Big Oil Faces Bankruptcy as Prices Plunge 30% on Saudi Expansion Oil prices plummeted by 30% on Monday morning in Asia on news that Saudi Arabia intended actually to cut its prices and increase its production on April 1 to more than 10 million barrels a day. As a result, Asian markets also took a huge hit. Riyadh’s move came after President Vladimir Putin of Russia refused to reduce its oil exports in concert with OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) to support prices as the world economy slows down because of the threat of a pandemic spread of the novel coronavirus.  By Kiam Cole Stocks Slide On Wall Street Over Coronavirus and Oil Crash Stocks went into a steep slide Monday on Wall Street as a combination of coronavirus fears and a crash in oil prices spread alarm through the market, triggering the first automatic halt in trading in over two decades to let investors catch their breath.  The price of oil sank nearly 20% after Russia refused to roll back production in response to falling demand and Saudi Arabia signaled it will ramp up its own output. While low oil prices can translate into cheaper gasoline, they wreak havoc on energy companies and countries that count on petroleum revenue, including the No. 1 producer, the U.S. By Stan Choe

Dow Drops 2046 Points (7.9 Percent) in Morning Trade; Two Banks Tank We knew Fed Chair Jerome (Jay) Powell was not on solid footing last Tuesday when he answered a question at his press conference from Washington Post reporter, Heather Long. She wanted to know how he felt about “rising concern about credit markets and possible insolvencies and defaults either from businesses or individuals from the coronavirus.” Powell answered Long with this: “financial markets are functioning in an orderly manner and all that sort of thing.” That wasn’t true then and it certainly isn’t true as of noon today. The Fed Chair neglected to mention to Long that beginning on September 17, 2019, as a result  kf orderly market functioning, it had started pumping out hundreds of billions of dollars in super-cheap loans each week to trading houses on Wall Street – the first time it had made such repo loans since the financial crash of 2008. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

 Health, Science, Education, 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 ‘governn’, 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 the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People  Vote on Healthcare! 

The security of United States and the world depends on far more than throwing money at the Pentagon to deal with potential military challenges.  The spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) underscores this fact.      The Sustainable Defense Task Force, a group of former Congressional and Pentagon budget officials, ex-military officers, and non-governmental experts brought together by my organization, the Center for International Policy, makes the case for a more expansive view of security: “[T]he most urgent threats to U.S. security are non-military, and the proper national security tools ought to be non-military as well. [The threats] include climate change, which undermines frontiers, leads to unpredictable extreme weather, and fosters uncontrollable migration . . . global disease epidemics, which pose societal risks to all nations; and income and wealth gaps, which foster insecurity and conflict.” — To Save Lives, Shift Pentagon Spending to Public Health

                   Trump’s Mismanagement Helped Fuel Coronavirus Crisis Current and former administration officials blame the president for creating a no-bad-news atmosphere that stifled attempts to combat the outbreak. For six weeks behind the scenes, and now increasingly in public, Trump has undermined his administration’s own efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak — resisting attempts to plan for worst-case scenarios, overturning a public-health plan upon request from political allies and repeating only the warnings that he chose to hear. Members of Congress have grilled top officials like Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield over the government’s biggest mistake: failing to secure enough testing to head off a coronavirus outbreak in the United States. But many current and former Trump administration officials say the true management failure was Trump’s.  “It always ladders to the top,” said one person helping advise the administration’s response, who noted that Trump’s aides discouraged Azar from briefing the president about the coronavirus threat back in January. “Trump’s created an atmosphere where the judgment of his staff is that he shouldn’t need to know these things.” By Dan Diamond