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! And Now the Total Caronavirs Deaths in the United States are Over 20% of the Total Death in the Entire World!
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 War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The very future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
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, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
“Clearly, this is something that is hurting from the standpoint of economics and the standpoint of things that have nothing to do with the virus,” Fauci asserted. “But unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery economically is not going to happen.” A Politico/Morning Consult poll, released on April 15, found that 81% of respondents believe the U.S. should “continue to social distance for as long as is needed to curb the spread of coronavirus.” So, the protestors are in the minority. But even so, they could cost people their lives — and hurt the economy — by promoting the spread of coronanavirus. Fauci, on “Good Morning, America,” warned, “What you do if you jump the gun and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you’re going to set yourself back. So, as painful as it is to go by the careful guidelines of gradually phasing into a reopening, it’s going to backfire. That’s the problem.” — Dr. Anthony Fauci Warns: Anti-Coronavirus Lockdown Protests are Going to ‘Backfire’
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.
The White House — The House Of Crony Capitalism!: Company With Ties To Trump Receives Millions From Small Business Loan Program While many small businesses have found it difficult or impossible to get one of the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program loans, a company owned by a prominent Chicago family with close ties to the Trump administration was able to get a $5.5 million loan under the program, according to documents the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Ronald Gidwitz, who was appointed in 2018, was then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign finance chair for Illinois in the 2016 presidential campaign. According to filings with the SEC, Gidwitz’s family owns the majority of Continental Materials Corp., which secured the 1% interest loan. By Robert Benincasa
Vietnam to Ship 450,000 Protective Suits to United States! Vietnam has expedited the shipment of 450,000 DuPont protective suits to the United States to help healthcare professionals there fight the coronavirus, the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi said on Wednesday. “The first of two initial shipments of over 450,000 made-in-Vietnam DuPont protective suits arrived in U.S. Strategic National Stockpile on April 8,” the Embassy said in a statement
The White House Has Erected A Blockade Stopping States and Hospitals From Getting Coronavirus PPE The White House Has Erected A Blockade Stopping States and Hospitals From Getting Coronavirus PPE Whenever you start to think that the federal government under Donald Trump has hit a moral bottom, it finds a new way to shock and horrify. Over the last few weeks, it has started to appear as though, in addition to abandoning the states to their own devices in a time of national emergency, the federal government has effectively erected a blockade — like that which the Union used to choke off the supply chains of the Confederacy during the Civil War — to prevent delivery of critical medical equipment to states desperately in need. At the very least, federal authorities have made governors and hospital executives all around the country operate in fear that shipments of necessary supplies will be seized along the way. In a time of pandemic, having evacuated federal responsibility, the White House is functionally waging a war against state leadership and the initiative of local hospitals to secure what they need to provide sufficient treatment. By David Wallace-Wells
Environment:
Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) Pollution Health effects Breathing air with a high concentration of NO2 can irritate airways in the human respiratory system. Such exposures over short periods can aggravate respiratory diseases, particularly asthma, leading to respiratory symptoms (such as coughing, wheezing or difficulty breathing), hospital admissions and visits to emergency rooms. Longer exposures to elevated concentrations of NO2 may contribute to the development of asthma and potentially increase susceptibility to respiratory infections. People with asthma, as well as children and the elderly are generally at greater risk for the health effects of NO2. NO2 along with other NOx reacts with other chemicals in the air to form both particulate matter and ozone. Both of these are also harmful when inhaled due to effects on the respiratory system.
With Less Air Pollution Staying at Home Is Staying Alive!: Assessing Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) Levels As a Contributing Factor to Coronavirus (COVID-19) Fatality Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is an ambient trace-gas result of both natural and anthropogenic processes. Long-term exposure to NO2 may cause a wide spectrum of severe health problems such as hypertension, diabetes, heart and cardiovascular diseases and even death. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between long-term exposure to NO2 and coronavirus fatality. The Sentinel-5P is used for mapping the tropospheric NO2 distribution and the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis for evaluating the atmospheric capability to disperse the pollution. The spatial analysis has been conducted on a regional scale and combined with the number of death cases taken from 66 administrative regions in Italy, Spain, France and Germany. Results show that out of the 4443 fatality cases, 3487 (78%) were in five regions located in north Italy and central Spain. Additionally, the same five regions show the highest NO2 concentrations combined with downwards airflow which prevent an efficient dispersion of air pollution. These results indicate that the long-term exposure to this pollutant may be one of the most important contributors to fatality caused by the COVID-19 virus in these regions and maybe across the whole world.
Climate Change Multiplies the Threats of Infectious Diseases . . . “Climate change didn’t cause the pandemic, and climate change directly causes very few of them,” Hayhoe told Truthout. “But what climate change does is it interacts with, and in many cases has the potential to exacerbate the impacts.” For those well-versed in the mechanics of climate change, this comes as no surprise — scientists, policy makers and other experts have long acknowledged the links between global warming and the spread of infectious diseases, promulgating the sorts of findings described in the wide-ranging 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, detailing what efforts are needed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. By Daniel Ross
A Move Away From Development Focused On Aggregate GDP Growth to differentiate among sectors that can grow and need investment (the so-called critical publicsectors, and clean energy, education, health and more) and sectors that need to radically degrowdue to their fundamental unsustainability or their role in driving continuous and excessive consumption (especially private sector oil, gas, Mining, Advertising, And So Forth);
An Economic Framework Focused On Redistribution, which establishes a universal basic income rooted in a universal social policy system, a strong progressive taxation of income, profits and wealth, reduced working hours and job sharing, and recognizes care work and essential public services such as health and education for their intrinsic value;
Agricultural Transformation Towards Regenerative Agriculture based on biodiversity conservation, sustainable and mostly local and vegetarian food production, as well as fair agricultural employment conditions and wages;
Reduction Of Consumption And Travel, with a drastic shift from luxury and wasteful consumption and travel to basic, necessary, sustainable and satisfying consumption and travel;
Debt Cancellation,especially for workers and small business owners and for countries in the global south (both from richer countries and international financial institutions).
Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
In light of the two-decade long “war on terror” and a longer history of imperial violence unleashed on countries around the world, using war metaphors for the COVID-19 crisis actually perpetuates the indifference many U.S. citizens feel toward the victims of its imperial wars. For example, the term “war on terror” identifies no clear enemy, and its imprecise nature has allowed U.S. forces to carry out extraordinary renditions and to torture and kill anyone it deems the enemy. Similarly, to think of the virus as an invisible enemy entering the U.S. from outside allows the state to carry out violence indiscriminately against perceived enemies and hide the inadequate measures the state has taken to protect the most vulnerable.We’ve already seen in previous decades how the “war on drugs” criminalized racial minorities in the United States while distracting from U.S.-backed “low-intensity” conflicts in Central America. Today, survivors of those conflicts and their descendants are perishing in overcrowded prisons and Immigration and Customs Enforcement migrant jails. The language of war and invasion from outside veils the racist and classist response of the state to the present crisis, and ignores the realities of why a disproportionate number of African Americans are dying from COVID-19.
Decolonizing” Science in Multi-Language Africa South African communicator and journalist Sibusiso Biyelawrote an article on “decolonizing” science so that it is accessible to the country’s many indigenous language groups. “What’s most important for me is the idea of democratizing science, so that more people will be participating in it,” said Biyela. It’s important that Africans “learn the skills that come of science, such as critical thinking and skepticism.
Public Housing Neglect Creates Lethal Trap “You have these areas that are not clean and, on top of that, you have folks that don’t have access to health care because of racism and capitalism,” said Philip McHarris, a Yale University doctoral student active in public housing. McHarris wrote an article for Essencetitled, “Public Housing Residents May Be Some Of The Hardest Hit by the COVID-19 Outbreak.”
Covid-19 and the Black Working Class “Social distancing is sometimes not an option for us,” said New York City activist Betty Davisat a Black is Back Coalition national teleconference. “When they close the schools, many working class people don’t have a partner, so they have to rely on extended family.” Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela called Covid-19 “a colonial virus. Colonialism is when somebody else controls every aspect of your life,” including your ability to resist a pandemic.
When a Virus Exposes Environmental Injustice Reducing air pollution isn’t just something to strive for. COVID-19 is illustrating why it’s a moral imperative. While the disease is present in all five boroughs of New York City, COVID-19 cases aren’t distributed equally within each of those boroughs. A maprecently released by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene broke down confirmed cases by ZIP code, and the results are shockingly clear: The coronavirus is disproportionately affecting low-income neighborhoods, which in New York also tend to be communities of color. It’s not just New York City. In New Mexico, Native Americans account for almost 37 percent of positive COVID-19 cases, even though they represent just 11 percent of the state’s population. In Illinois, African-Americans are dying from the virus at five times the rate of white residents. In Louisiana, where African-Americans make up just under a third of the population, they account for 70 percent of its pandemic deaths. In Oregon, in Utah, in Alabama, in Georgia, in Michigan and many other states, the data coming in are all telling different versions of the same story: People of color are suffering—and dying—from this disease at alarmingly high rates.
Labor:
Trump Says He’s Aiming to Shield Corporations From Legal Liability for Workers Who Contract Covid-19 on the Job “Businesses are asking for the right to expose their workers to fatal risks with no consequences. It’s bad economics and bad policy.” President Donald Trump said during a press briefing Monday evening that his administration is aiming to shield corporations from legal responsibility for workers who contract the novel coronavirus on the job, a move that the Chamber of Commerce and right-wing advocacy groups are aggressively lobbying for as the White House pushes to reopen the U.S. economy against the warnings of public health experts. By Jake Johnson
Economy:
Oil Price Collapse Delivers a Loud Warning “Biggest” or “fastest” declines in history are becoming routine characterizations in business media of everything from stocks to unemployment claims to U.S. Treasury yields and now to commodity prices. You’d have to go back to the 1930s and the Great Depression to find as many similar references. And there was one other key characteristic that defined the early 1930s and now: unprecedented wealth inequality that had been manufactured by Wall Street running an institutionalized wealth transfer system that culminated in a stock market crash that erased 90 percent of the stock market’s value from 1929 to 1932, By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Trump’s Beijing Problem: Starting a New Cold War by If Joe Biden should become the next president of the United States, there are many serious international situations that require the diplomatic tools of the Department of State and not the coercive tools of the Department of Defense. The erratic and unpredictable policies of Donald Trump over the past three years have compromised numerous political arrangements with both allies and adversaries and, in the case of Sino-American relations, have placed us on a glide path toward a “cold war” and possible confrontation between two of the largest military and economic powers in the global community By Melvin GoodmanHealth, 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 to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People Vote on Healthcare!
It is not a coincidence that the United States has 2.5 times more prison cells than it does hospital beds. More than 2 million prisoners, disproportionately African Americans and people of color, remain at high risk behind bars; immigrants remain locked up in migrant jails, which were horrific before the outbreak of COVID-19; those without homes remain on the streets, vulnerable to infection and police sweeps; and Asian immigrants and Asian Americans alike face increased attacks as the president of the United States keeps calling COVID-19 a “Chinese virus.” — Declaring War on a Virus Ignores the Neoliberal Policies That Put Us Here
Deepwater Horizon: BP’s SECOND Blowout Just 17 months before the Deepwater Horizon destroyed 600 miles of Gulf Coast, BP covered up a nearly identical blowout in the Caspian Sea.Watch: Chelsea Manning and the Deepwater Horizon Killings
Black Agenda Radio for Week of April 20, 2020 Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare: