Daily News Digest July 22, 2021

Images of the Day:

Bendib: Asleep At The Wheel

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:

On July 13, a CBS news local affiliate station reported that in Provincetown, Massachusetts, “entire homes of visitors over the Fourth have tested positive, despite being fully vaccinated.” The effectiveness of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is also coming under scrutiny. Yankee players and staff were vaccinated with the J&J vaccine in early April. On May 13, the MLB announced that a Yankee player, three coaches and four members of the travelling staff (all fully vaccinated) had tested positive for COVID-19. Just last Thursday evening, July 15, the Yankees had to cancel a game with the Boston Red Sox when six Yankee players tested positive for COVID-19. ESPN reported that “the majority had received a COVID-19 vaccine and were asymptomatic.” — Markets Plunge on Monday on Growing Reports of Fully Vaccinated People Getting Delta Strain of COVID-19

Videos of the Day:

On Contact: Pandemic 2 On the show this week, in the second of a two-part interview, Chris Hedges continues his discussion with philosopher Slavoj Zizek about the social, political and psychological consequences of prolonged lockdowns and social distancing, as well as the mass illness and death caused by the pandemic. In his new book, ‘Pandemic 2: Chronicles of a Time Lost,’ Zizek argues the failure of global capitalism to cope with the pandemic presages, he fears, a systems collapse, a dress rehearsal for a frightening new form of authoritarianism in which the world is starkly divided between the elites and the rest of us. “…[T]he return to normality thus becomes the supreme psychotic gesture, the sign of collective madness,” Zizek writes.

Russia Tests Hypersonic Missile in the Arctic, To US Alarm

The Russian Navy has test-fired the Zircon hypersonic missile in Arctic waters, which the US called a “destabilizing” move. Former Pentagon official Michael Maloof joins IQ to discuss.
The Bank of England is blocking Venezuela’s access to its $2 billion in gold reserves, saying the UK recognizes Juan Guaido as legitimate president, Alex Mihailovich reports.
Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos made space tourism history with his Blue Origin capsule, John Huddy reports, while Caleb Maupin brings us earthside reactions

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 ownershipof the Reublicrats, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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!

‘Nothing Says Tax the Rich Like a Recreational Billionaire Space Race’: Critics Denounce Bezos Flight “If there was any economic justice in the world,” said one critic, the U.S. would have imposed “a $100 billion re-entry tax on Jeff Bezos upon his return from outer space.”

Biden Must Take Executive Action to Affirm That Clean Water Is a Human Right The U.S. Senate recently passed the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act. The legislation creates a $35 billion fund that will allow states and tribes to make urgently needed upgrades to their water systems, with additional considerations made for frontline communities. This kind of commitment to commitment to environmental justice is welcome, but also long overdue.

Environment:

Drastic Measures Needed to Curb Plastic Pollution in Oceans by 2050 Speaking to Salon in April, John Hocevar — the Oceans Campaign Director for Greenpeace USA — brought the horrors of plastic pollution to vivid life by describing one of its more heartbreaking consequences: the suffering it inflicts on innocent sea creatures. “We’ve seen pictures of whales washed up on beaches with their stomachs full of plastic bags or sea turtles with straws up their noses or albatrosses dead with stomachs full of bottle caps and lighters and other bits of plastic,” Hocevar explained. “Sharks and turtles will take a bite out of a plastic bottle at sea or sea turtles often might be entangled in plastic bags or choke on them because plastic bags can resemble a jellyfish, a major source of food.” Now, a report on plastic pollution, written by Pew Charitable Trusts and endorsed by the U.N. undersecretary-general, says the world needs to implement drastic measures to make sure no new plastic enters the ocean as of 2050, which is a major goal of 19 countries and the European Union. The report was released in tandem with a peer-reviewed analysis of an “evidence-based, comprehensive, integrated, and economically attractive pathway to greatly reduce plastic pollution entering our ocean” which was published in Science. The report describes itself as a “roadmap” to reduce plastic pollution on a global scale to the extent that the oceans suffer no more of it.

IEA Warns CO2 Emissions Set to Climb to ‘All-Time High’ as Rich Nations Skimp on Clean Energy The Paris-based agency slammed rich governments for promising to “build back better” but refusing to “put their money where their mouth is.

Black Liberation/Civil Rights:

How Harper’s Magazzine Undermines the Struggle Against White Supremacy When the latest issue of Harper’s arrived in my mailbox in June, white racist grievances had reached a fever-pitch. The University of North Carolina had refused tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, Critical Race Theory had become a bogeyman like Communism was in the 1950s, and Republican state governments were working overtime to pass Jim Crow type voting laws. Instead of standing up to these racist threats, the magazine decided to publish a nearly 5,600 word attack on the 1619 Project by Princeton history professor Matthew Karp titled “History As End: 1619, 1776, and the politics of the past.” While the article is behind a paywall, you can register for one free article a month.

Labor:

Economy:

Markets Plunge on Monday on Growing Reports of Fully Vaccinated People Getting Delta Strain of COVID-19 Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 725.8 points out of fear that there will be renewed business restrictions to deal with spiking COVID cases in all 50 stes in the U.S.. On July 8 the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention jointly released an unequivocal statement on the COVID-19 vaccines that are in use in the United States. The statement read in part: “People who are fully vaccinated are protected from severe disease and death, including from the variants currently circulating in the country such as Delta. People who are not vaccinated remain at risk. Virtually all COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths are among those who are unvaccinated.”. . . . That statement is now coming under growing scrutiny as evidence mounts of fully vaccinated Americans getting COVID-19, with hundreds ending up in the hospital. (An individual is considered “fully vaccinated” two weeks after receiving the second dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, or two weeks after receiving the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.) By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

The Greatest Threat to Britain Isn’t China or Russia, It’s Boris Johnson The lifeblood of intelligence agencies is threat inflation: exaggerating the gravity of the dangers menacing the public, and calling for harsher laws to cope with them. MI5 director general Ken McCallum did his best to follow this tradition in his annual speech this week, in which he explained the security risks facing Britain.

Latin America Hails Castillo’s Proclamation as Peru’s President Mexico’s President congratulated the Peruvian electoral authorities and people “for having defended the popular will and democratic institutions”. On Monday, international organizations and Latin American governments hailed the proclamation of leftist political leader Pedro Castillo as president-elect of Peru.

If You Grew Up With the U.S. Blockade as a Cuban, You Might Understand the Recent Protests Differently During the early morning of July 17, Johana Tablada joined tens of thousands of Cubans as they gathered along the Malecón boulevard in Havana to stand with the Cuban Revolution. “We are human beings who live, work, suffer, and struggle for a better Cuba,” she told us. “We are not bots or troll farms or anything like that.” She referred to what has been called the Bay of Tweets, a social media campaign developed in Miami, Florida, that attempted to inflame Cuba’s social problems into a political crisis

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!