Daily News Digest October 15, 2020

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 very future of Humanity Is Now At stake!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! And Now the Total Caronavirs Deaths in the United  States are Over 20%  of the Total Deaths in the Entire 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:

Bendib: Good People

Quotes 0f the Day:

When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. — John Maynard Keynes

The end-result of all this number crunching: Of that $13.871-trillion increase in inflation- and population-adjusted household wealth, $12.078 trillion went to the nation’s wealthiest 10 percent, leaving just $1.793 trillion to the bottom 90 percent. Within that $12.078 trillion for the top 10 percent, $8.537 trillion went to the top 1 percent, $5.519 trillion to the top 0.1 percent, and $3.201 trillion to the top 0.01 percent. And the 400 wealthiest Americans? They pulled down $1.314 trillion of the increase.Unfortunately, this obscene inequality appears likely to get worse. As the 2006-to-2018 period ended — and after our top 1 percent had already grabbed an appallingly outsized portion of the wealth created during those dozen years — the Trump tax act enacted at the end of 2017 went into effect, a giant giveaway to the top 1 percent. — Inequality in America: Far Beyond Extreme

Sytematic Environment Racism: Who Gets Dump On, What Gets Cleanedup!:

The backlog of Superfund sites awaiting funding for cleanup, meanwhile, has now grown to 34, the highest number in 15 years, as Trump has proposed cutting the Superfund budget by $112 million in fiscal year 2021. Trump’s latest budget proposal also included a 70 percent reduction in EPA spending on environmental justice programs, which aim to support low-income and minority neighborhoods disproportionately affected by environmental problems, from $9.5 million to $2.7 million. Even though Superfund sites are more likely to be located in communities where most residents aren’t white, one environmental nonprofit reported in late 2019 that 65 percent of the 55 sites the Trump administration had targeted for expedited cleanup were in majority white neighborhoods. Ten of those sites were in communities that were more than 90 percent white. — The Report From the Center For Health, Environment and Justice Found.

Videos of the Day:

The Real News Network and Project Censored Present – ‘United States of Distraction: Fighting the Fake News Invasion’

Philly Activists Occupy and Win Control of Vacant Homes

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!

‘Look for Power in the Shadows’: Watch Sheldon Whitehouse Shine Light on ‘Dark Money Operation’ Behind GOP Supreme Court Takeover“Something is not right around the court. And dark money has a lot to do with it. Special interests have a lot to do with it.” Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse used his 30 minutes of allotted time during Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing not to ask questions of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett—who repeatedly dodged the straightforward questions of other lawmakers—but to deliver a detailed presentation on the sprawling “dark money operation” fueling the right-wing takeover of the U.S. judicial system. By Jake Johnson

Opus Dei’s Influence on the U.S. JudiciaryLeonard Leo can take credit for installing four Supreme Court justices” – John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. “As executive vice president of the Federalist Society, Leo has been the quiet architect of a pivotal shift to the right throughout the federal judiciary” including “dozens of lower court federal judges across the country.” It was Leo who prepared Trump’s “list of judges and the people that he’s put on the bench.”Leo is on the board of directors of Opus Dei’s Catholic Information Center located at 15th and K Street, two blocks from the White House. The Center is “a rallying point for ultra-conservative Catholics eager for a voice in the secular halls of government power” and “advances a hard-right political agenda,” according to Church and State, Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s magazine.“Leonard Leo can take credit for installing four Supreme Court justices” – John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. “As executive vice president of the Federalist Society, Leo has been the quiet architect of a pivotal shift to the right throughout the federal judiciary” including “dozens of lower court federal judges across the country.”It was Leo who prepared Trump’s “list of judges and the people that he’s put on the bench.” Leo is on the board of directors of Opus Dei’s Catholic Information Center located at 15th and K Street, two blocks from the White House. The Center is “a rallying point for ultra-conservative Catholics eager for a voice in the secular halls of government power” and “advances a hard-right political agenda,” according to Church and State, Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s magazine. By Betty Clermont  (Amy Coney Barrett was also on  Lenard Leo’s list of potential Surpreme Court Judges, that he summited to Trump.)

Environment:

The Arctic is in a Death Spiral. How Much Longer Will it Exist? The region is unravelling faster than anyone could once have predicted. But there may still be time to act The great thaw: global heating upends life on Arctic permafrost – photo essay At the end of July, 40% of the 4,000-year-old Milne Ice Shelf, located on the north-western edge of Ellesmere Island, calved into the sea. Canada’s last fully intact ice shelf was no more. On the other side of the island, the most northerly in Canada, the St Patrick’s Bay ice caps completely disappeared. By Gloria Dickie It is the Nature Capitalism to Put Profits Before The Habitat For Humanity! These 2100 Billionaires Must be Held Responsible For the Destruction of Our Habitat!:  To the 2,100 Billionaires of Earth, You Alone Can Save The Planet — Do It  It’s Time to Invest in the Planet’s Future.  Yanomami elder Davi Kopenawa once said that we in the civilized world were beholden to “sad leaves” — money, money on whose altar we have practically slain the only life-supporting planet of this kind in the universe. In your hands flows the wealth of the wealthiest 1 percent of the human species and yet in your hands revolves more than 50 percent of the world’s wealth. None of the United Nations biodiversity targets have been met, that is why your actions to help the green zones of the planet may mean survival or not for all future generations. Some of you are generous and many of you give to your favorite causes. But now the earth is in shambles. You need to give as if your life and soul depended on it. More than give. You need to restore life. Or you will find yourself in an early 21st century version of Jean Paul Sartre’s masterpiece “No Exit.” How you respond will determine whether we make it to 2030, let alone 2050, forget about the 22nd century. The earth is simply in enormous jeopardy. Some of you took off to New Zealand to get away from it all. Some of you hunkered down in bunkers, waiting for the worst of the coronavirus to dissipate, a time worthy of a zombie apocalypse. I hope it was fun. You endured. But eventually you surfaced and came up to breathe. Welcome back. The rest of the world was waiting for your imminent return. By Cyril ChristoCivil Rights/Black Liberation:

To Decolonize Indigenous Lands, We Must Also Abolish Police and Prisons Abolishing the systems and institutions that propagate white supremacy is the most important step toward decolonization. he movement to decolonize Indigenous lands is intimately connected to the movement to abolish police and prisons. As the idea of decolonization is discussed among wider circles, we must recognize this interconnectedness, especially in the midst of a resurgent Black Lives Matter movement that calls for the defunding — and, in fact, the dismantling — of police. Both decolonization and abolition are not simply seeking an end result. Instead they are continuous creative processes: an imagining of life beyond prisons and the theft of land. They require creativity and a willingness to move beyond the structures of white supremacy that impact all of our lives on a scale from the local to the global, and occupy the “common-sense” perceptions of the world around us. When statements are made such as, “We can give land back” or “We can exist without prisons,” some people are perplexed, others are scared, and some will defiantly argue that it is not possible. Imagining a world beyond what we know and experience on a daily basis can be extremely difficult.  By Charles Sepulveda Civil Rights Advocates Warn Supreme Court Order—a Victory for Trump—Will Result in ‘Irreversible Damage to 2020 Census’ Justice Sonya Sotomayor issued a dissent warning the “harms caused by rushing this year’s census count are irreparable” and that “respondents will suffer their lasting impact for at least the next 10 years.” In a victory for President Donald Trump and a blow to civil rights, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the administration can order the Census Bureau to halt this year’s count of the nation’s population prematurely.  Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which represented the plaintiff’s in the suit in question, National Urban League, et al. vs. Ross, said the court’s majority order (pdf) was a “disappointing” decision that “will result in irreversible damage to the 2020 Census.””We know the Bureau has indicated that it takes several days to terminate the enumeration process,” said Clarke. “As we explore options, we will continue to push undercounted communities in states such as Louisiana and Mississippi to participate while the counting process remains open and active. This fight is about ensuring that our nation’s hard-to-count populations, including Black people, communities of color, immigrants and other vulnerable populations were captured in the count.”

Labor:

Economy:

IMF Warns of Global Debt Catastrophe The world’s poorest countries are going through a vicious cycle of spiralling debt. The coronavirus epidemic has added a further heavy burden to their state coffers. These mainly raw material producing countries were already struggling to deal with the collapse in raw material prices, and this latest crisis makes the situation completely untenable, which has major implications for the advanced capitalist countries as well. According to the Jubilee Debt Campaign, 52 countries in the world are already in a debt crisis, with another 63 at risk. The IMF estimates that debt ratios of “emerging” countries are likely to increase by 10 percentage points of GDP this year. By Niklas Albin Svensson

FinCEN Files: The Capitalists Are Stealing Even More Money than Realized The FinCEN investigation, which tracked over $2 trillion in illicit funds that banks had knowingly transacted, illuminates the level of collusion between the government and financial sectors. More banking reforms haven’t provided respite from money-laundering. Instead they have increased profit for the banks — and misery for the working class. t’s been two weeks since the FinCEN investigation went public. A team of investigative reporters, spanning several news organizations and spearheaded by Buzzfeed News, looked at 2,100 confidential documents filed by banks to follow global money flows, thereby unearthing layers of financial corruption and collusion between private banks and government agencies. The findings show that reforms and regulations are insufficient to curtail these activities, which are inextricably tied to capitalism. The investigation looked at suspicious activity reports, or SARs, filed by banks highlighting suspicious transactions to FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, an agency within the U.S. Department of the Treasury. While millions of reports have been filed — and all reports are made available to U.S. law enforcement agencies and other government entities — few, if any, have been acted upon.  By  M.K. KumarSenator Whitehouse Named Names in Dark Money Tutorial at Amy Barrett’s Confirmation Hearing You could hear a lot of throat clearing from the live mic at the table where Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett sat yesterday as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) brilliantly exposed the tentacles of the corporate and fossil fuels money that was attempting to ram her onto the U.S. Supreme Court. (See the full video of the presentation by Whitehouse below.) As a former U.S. Attorney for the Justice Department and former Attorney General of Rhode Island, Whitehouse knows corruption when he sees it. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

#EndSARS: Nigerian masses on the move – end capitalist oppression and exploitation! For days, protests have rocked cities across Nigeria. It is organised around #EndSARS, a movement that is calling for a complete ban of the so-called “anti-robbery” wing of the Nigerian Police, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS – no relation to the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2). Set up in the mid-90s to combat incidences of armed robbery, which had become rampant as a result of deepening poverty under the corrupt military regimes, SARS has since then metamorphosed into a dreaded force associated with all sorts of evils. By Omoakin AdisaVenezuela’s Ability to Fight COVID-19 is Badly Hamstrung by the 31 Metric Tons of Gold Stolen From Its Treasury Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have died unnecessary deaths because of the denial of trade in medicines and medical equipment; this has challenged the already fragile system during the pandemic. To allow these unilateral sanctions by the United States, and its pursuit of regime change in Venezuela, to define the way Venezuela can fight the virus and the disease is shocking. “Collective penalties,” says the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), “are prohibited.” By Vijay Prashad – Carmen Navas Reyes

Map of the COVID-19 outbreak in Venezuela. Image Source: LuisZ9 – Own work, data from Prodavinci – CC0

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 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

The GOP Is Pursuing a Public Slaughter Strategy, Known to Some as ‘Herd Immunity’ People are acting shocked—shocked, I tell you!—that the Trump/GOP strategy on coronavirus is essentially one of promoting herd immunity with the possible downside of as many as 2.5 million dead Americans. We shouldn’t be surprised. It’s simply the logical extension of conservative policies on pretty much everything for the past 90 years—policies that have killed a hell of a lot more than just 2.5 million people. By Thom Hartmann

‘It’s a Silent Killer’: Fears of Legionella Grow Amid Pandemic Legionella in water is sickening and sometimes killing Americans, with the current reopening of buildings prompting fresh concerns Legionella in water is sickening and sometimes killing Americans, with the current reopening of buildings prompting fresh concerns  By Lynne Peeples