Daily News Digest March 31, 2021

Daily News Digest Archives

Image Of the Day:

aLisa Benson: Your Turm!Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism 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!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”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 0f the Day:

I have an idea. Maybe once we funnel even more funds into our new Space Force, we can bomb climate change into submission. Has anyone thought of that? It’s worth a try. You know what they say, “When your only tool is a hammer… every problem can totally be bombed!”     Point being, I want to say thank you, President Biden. Thank you for pushing us ever closer to extinction — in a unique and interesting way, you belligerent, warhawk, senile old bag of wrinkles.       Our government spends trillions upon trillions of dollars on various wars and war zones — recently adding outer space to the list — and meanwhile regular people, here on the ground, continue to suffer immensely.      One in three Americans had trouble paying their bills last year — but we’re sending guns to outer space.      Tens of millions have lost their employer-based health care coverage since the pandemic began—but we’re sending guns to outer space.     We can’t get vaccines and treatments to people who desperately need them during a pandemic—but we can get guns to outer space! …And at the end of the day, isn’t that all that matters? —Lee Camp: Why Biden’s Choice to Bomb Outer Space Is So Damn Excitin

Videos of the Day:

Fact Check: Joe Biden Has Advocated Cutting Social Security For 40 Years

Russia: Crisis, Protests and the Attitude of The Marxists 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

A Closer Look at Biden’s Immigration Plan for Central America Biden’s plan actually promotes an old economic development model that has long benefited U.S. corporations. It also aims to impose a distinctly militarized version of “security” on the people of that region. By Aviva Chomsky

Lee Camp: Why Biden’s Choice to Bomb Outer Space Is So Damn Excitin At a time of unprecedented crises, what Americans and the world needs most is obviously another arena for humans to annihilate each other in. President Biden has announced he will be continuing to build Donald Trump’s Space Force — an idea Trump probably dreamed up while high on some bizarre pills his special “doctor” gave him and had left the rubber cement jar open on his desk. The Space Force is the new branch of our military designed to conquer and kill things in outer space. That might not be word-for-word from their mission statement, but I’d wager it’s close. Pretty sure their jackets say, “Let’s kill some shit in space.” And, let’s face it — we don’t know what’s in outer space. But whatever it is, we know it needs to be killed.US Elections: “They Should Send Observers Over Here” In addition to proposing that foreign observers of U.S. elections be allowed access to the process equal to that afforded to U.S. observers elsewhere in the organization, the group had 34 further recommendations. Number one on the list, again unsurprisingly, was a review of our Electoral College system. The American political system is fundamentally off. By Tom Gallagher

Social Security is in Danger!: President Biden Must Fire Andrew Saul and David Black Immediately for Sabotaging Social Security Just because a new president is in the White House doesn’t mean these two holdovers have stopped acting as Donald Trump’s agents. By Alex Lawson 

Puerto Rico’s Multi-layered Crisis The recent elections in Puerto Rico produced some startling results: both a surge in the vote for progressive, including pro-independence, forces and a status plebiscite which has been hailed a “mandate” for statehood. In order to interpret these results, it is best to start with an overview of Puerto Rico’s recent past. Puerto Rico’s present situation can be described as a multi-layered crisis. Its main features are the chronic problems arising from the colonial and dependent nature of its economy; the crisis of that colonial economy since 2006; the debt crisis, officially recognized in 2015, resulting from the government’s response to that crisis; and the policies imposed by the Federal Oversight and Management Board since 2017. By Rafael Bernabe

Noam Chomsky: Biden’s Foreign Policy Is Largely Indistinguishable From Trump’s President Joe Biden’s domestic policies, especially on the economic front, are quite encouraging, offering plenty of hope for a better future. The same, however, cannot be said about the administration’s foreign policy agenda, as Noam Chomsky’s penetrating insights and astute analysis reveal in this exclusive interview for Truthout. Chomsky is a world-famous public intellectual, Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT and Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona.  By C.J. Polychroniou

Environment:

Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 29, 2021

Expect “Lip Service” from Biden on Immigration Reform We have already seen Joe Biden’s immigration policy, during his eight years as vice president under Barack “Deporter-in-Chief” Obama, said Deborah A., a national organizer with the trans immigration organization Black LBGTQIA+, or BLMP. “There will be a lot of lip service…and airbrush,” said Deborah A., ”but the only way to stop people from being caught in the detention-to-deportation pipeline is to end imperialism.” The BLMP is active in cities across the country.

US Black Elite Tied to Capitalism, Not Black Liberation “If we want to have Black liberation, we have to abolish capitalism to do that,” said Kandista Mallett, an activist and columnist for Teen Vogue magazine who authored a recent column titled, “The Black Elite are Obstacles Toward Black Liberation.” “Especially when we look at all that’s unfolding with Black Lives Matter now, it’s important for us to have a class analysis and to recognize that capitalism is just as much a threat to our communities as white supremacy,” said Mallett.

Audre Lorde’s Revolutionary Contribution to Black Political Thought Black poet and feminist Audre Lorde showed her socialist and revolutionary colors in the wake of the US invasion of Grenada, her parent’s birthplace, in 1983, said Jack Turner, professor of political science at the University of Washington and co-editor of “African American Political Thought: A Collected History.” Lorde “really started to see how the Grenada revolution could inspire a more transnational Black revolutionary presence within the western hemisphere, and as a result became a deep threat to the US State,” said Turner.

Labor:

Economy:

Shades of 2008: Derivative Bets Blow Up Archegos Hedge Fund; Inflict Billions in Losses on Global Banks The Archegos Capital Management hedge fund implosion has, thus far, delivered billions of dollars in losses to the shareholders of global banks Credit Suisse and Nomura, whose market values have plummeted; done serious reputational damage to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, both of whom are allowed to own federally-insured banks even after they came close to blowing themselves up in 2008 and surely would have without gargantuan secret bailouts from the Federal Reserve; cut the market value of ViacomCBS in half; dropped the market value of Discovery by 40 percent; shaved billions of dollars off the market value of major Wall Street banks yesterday as rumors ran wild about who is hiding losses; and raised critical questions, once again, about the competency of the Federal Reserve to supervise these federally-insured trading casinos. The Archegos meltdown has done one more thing. It has reminded the readers of Wall Street On Parade that our decade of hand-wringing over the dangerous brew of allowing federally-insured, deposit-taking banks to own tens of trillions of dollars in opaque, over-the-counter derivatives remains the biggest threat to the financial stability of the United States. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

Cuba Libre to be COVID-Libre: Five Vaccines and Counting… This pandemic has affirmed that public healthcare needs cannot be adequately met under a profit-based system. Indeed, it is the absence of the capitalist profit motive which underlies the outstanding domestic and international response to Covid-19 by socialist Cuba, which now has five vaccines in clinical trials and is set to be among the first nations to vaccinate its entire population.By reacting quickly and decisively, by mobilising its public healthcare system and world-leading biotech sector, Cuba has kept contagion and fatalities low. In 2020 Cuba confirmed a total of 12,225 coronavirus cases and 146 deaths in a population of 11.2 million, among the lowest rates in the Western Hemisphere. In November 2020, the airports were opened, leading to a surge with more infections in January 2021 than the whole of the previous year. By 24 March 2021, Cuba had registered fewer than 70,000 cases and 408 deaths. The death rate was 35 per million and the fatality rate was just 0.59% (2.2% worldwide; 2.9% in Britain). Within one year, 57 brigades of medical specialists from Cuba’s Henry Reeve International Contingent had treated 1.26 million Covid-19 patients in 40 countries; they joined 28,000 Cuban healthcare professionals already working in 66 countries. Cuba’s accomplishments are more extraordinary given that from 2017 onwards, the Trump administration punitively unleashed 240 new sanctions, actions and measures to tighten the 60-year blockade of Cuba, including nearly 50 additional measures during the pandemic which cost the health sector alone over $200 million. By Helen Yaffe 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 

Nature Magazine 11/09/15   A SARS-Like Cluster of Circulating Bat Coronaviruses Shows Potential for Human Emergence The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-CoV underscores the threat of cross-species transmission events leading to outbreaks in humans. Here we examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, SHC014-CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations¹. Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system², we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally, in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis. Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein. On the basis of these findings, we synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both in vitro and in vivo. Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.

Colleges Are Using COVID as a Pretext to Make Draconian Cuts to the Humanities COVID-19 is being used as a pretext to eviscerate departments at both public and private colleges throughout the U.S. When Pennsylvania resident Hali Rose Kohls was in high school, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to get a degree. But after visiting the Greensboro, North Carolina, campus of Guilford College in 2011, she changed her mind. She calls the seminar classes she attended “amazing” and says that the school’s Quaker values inspired her. As a double major in women’s, gender and sexuality studies, and sociology and anthropology, she found the “social justice-based liberal arts curriculum” eye-opening, and for several years after completing her degree, she sang the college’s praises to potential students.     But Kohls’s enthusiasm has flagged thanks to plans announced in late 2020 to plug a $7 million deficit by firing 36 people, including 15 tenured professors, and phasing out 19 of 42 majors, including math, political science, physics and modern languages. By Eleanor J. Bader

United States and China Obstain!: ‘United Action Is Needed’: World Leaders Champion Global Treaty for Pandemic Cooperation “The Covid-19 pandemic has been a stark and painful reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe.” The signers of the letter say that Covid-19 has made clear that “united action is needed” and expressed their collective belief “that nations should work together towards a new international treaty for pandemic preparedness and response.” The statement added that such “a renewed collective commitment would be a milestone in stepping up pandemic preparedness at the highest political level.” While the world’s two major powers—the United States and China—did not sign onto the letter, it was authored by over 20 heads of states from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and Central America as well as Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO). By Jon Queally