Daily News Digest December 29, 2021

Daily News Digest December 29, 2021

Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines are Free For the Whole World!

Images of the Day:

5 Horseman of the Apocalypse Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Ws Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Thr eat 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”, is Still True for Today’s World!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 of the Day:

Wars Abroad — ‘Collateral Damage’ Coming Home to Roost:

What happened in this tragic killing of a young girl was that police adopted the same approach employed by the US military for assaults in its imperial wars: they went in prepared to “take out” a “bad actor” and placed concern about their own safety first. The civilians in the target zone were simply “collateral damage” in the wrong place at the wrong time. — The LAPD Murder of a 14-Year-Old Girl

Since much of the Texas border is privately owned, DPS has sent teams to ask landowners to sign agreements allowing them access to their land. The landowner is then listed as the “complainant” on the trespassing charges against migrants. DPS said it plans to extend these arrests to other counties but has yet to expand the initiative. Treviño Wright said the butterfly center, which is in Hidalgo County, has not signed an agreement allowing soldiers or DPS officers to patrol the center’s land. After discovering that someone had cut through the center’s barbed wire fence, Treviño Wright placed wildlife cameras at the location. Soon after, the center recorded footage of a soldier with a rifle appearing to examine the spot where Treviño Wright said the fence had been cut. Since then, she’s recorded footage of soldiers at the center several times, despite the “No Trespassing” signs posted.At press events, Abbott has said the flooding of border communities with police and military is necessary due to “the Biden administration’s open-border policies.” But Biden continues to enforce Title 42, an obscure public health regulation the Trump administration invoked to bar asylum-seekers from crossing during the pandemic. And this month, the Trump era’s “Remain in Mexico” program, which forces asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for their U.S. immigration court dates, was reinstated due to a federal court order. — Texas National Guard Filmed Trespassing During Border Operations

Videos of the Day:

On the Historical Origins of Christianity

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

Pax Americana Priorities — World Wars Trump World Health!: The Pentagon Just Got $778 Billion, But USAID Is Running Out of Money for Covid-19 Vaccines? “Why is there more money for the military-industrial complex… at the same time the U.S. is refusing to spend the $25 billion needed to make enough additional vaccines to vaccinate the world?” Sharply contrasting with the $778 billion in new military spending authorized Monday by President Joe Biden, the U.S. Agency for International Development reportedly can’t find the funds to pay for the Biden administration’s effort to help vaccinate the world’s population against Covid-19, according to two agency officials interviewed by Politico.

Two Years of COVID Have Forced Us to Recalibrate Our Concept of Hope According to a mid-December New York Times report, COVID-19 has killed one out of every 100 people over the age of 65 in the U.S. That age group makes up a staggering 75 percent majority of the more than 800,000 who have died since all this began. That amounts to some 600,000 families who have lost an elder, leaving an empty seat at the Christmas dinner table. Gloomy times all around. A small part of me envies those who have convinced themselves this is all a big nothing noise, or have just decided they are so over it, you guys. A fair portion of them might be sick or dead by springtime, especially those who remain willfully unvaccinated, but in this moment such flat denialism must be invigorating.

A Year in, Biden Hasn’t Fulfilled Promise to Repair Refugee Resettlement Program On June 20, 2020, World Refugee Day, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden made his most sweeping statement to date on how his administration would differ from his predecessor’s on the rights of migrants. Gone would be the “xenophobia and racism” that were “the unabashed tenets of Trump’s refugee and immigration policy.” Biden pledged to increase the cap on refugees allowed into the United States to 125,000 in his first year in office, and to restore “America’s historic role as leader in resettlement and defending the rights of refugees everywhere.” His first year did not go as promised. In the fiscal year ending in October 2021, the United States only resettled 11,411 refugees through regular channels. That’s 400 fewer than the previous fiscal year — which itself saw historically low resettlement — and far short of the 62,500 that Biden eventually ordered to be allowed to resettle in the United States in his first year in office. The U.S. has only released data for the first month of the new fiscal year, which shows 401 refugees have been resettled. Biden did finally raise the cap to 125,000, which, if met by the end of September 2022, would represent a massive turnaround not just over previous years, but of the last two decades: The last time the U.S. resettled more than 100,000 refugees was in 1994.

Big pharma executives don’t want us to look up at how they rip us off, as Americans struggle to pay $500 for the same insulin that Canadians can buy for $25: Why the Very Worst People Really Don’t Want Us to Look Up There’s never been a more important time to look up, wake up, and get active. On Christmas Eve, Louise and I watched on Netflix the brilliant Don’t Look Up! starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, written and produced by Adam McKay and David Sirota. It’s being lauded as a metaphor for how we’re dealing with climate change in the face of petrobillionaire- and corporate-funded disinformation campaigns, but it’s so much more than that: “Conservatives” on the Supreme Court don’t want Americans to look up at how they legalized political bribery with their 1970s Buckley and Bellotti and 2010 Citizens United decisions that have turned politicians into shills for the same billionaires and giant industries that spent millions putting them on the Court.

It Is ‘Strange,’ Says Greta Thunberg, That Biden Is Seen as a Climate Leader “The U.S. is actually expanding fossil fuel infrastructure,” the 18-year-old Swedish climate activist said in a new interview. In an interview published in The Washington Post Magazine on Monday, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said it is “strange” that some consider U.S. President Joe Biden a climate leader even as his administration fails to take the ambitious steps necessary to tackle the intensifying planetary crisis. When asked whether she is “inspired” by Biden or other world leaders, Thunberg pointed out that “the U.S. is actually expanding fossil fuel infrastructure” under the current administration.

Environment:

100 Years Ago Rosa Luxemburg Raised the Slogan: ‘Socialism of Barbarism!’ — Today the Slogan Should Be: ‘Ecosocialisn or Ecocide!’

Proof that People are ‘looking up!’ Climate Denial Satire “Don’t Look Up” Now Top Film on Netflix Worldwide “Absolutely love to see a climate movie hitting this huge a global audience on the world’s largest platform,” said journalist David Sirota, who co-created The new feature film “Don’t Look Up,” a dark comedy satirizing the complacency and mendacity of elites in the face of an existential threat to human civilization, is now the most popular movie on Netflix worldwide, according to data compiled by FlixPatrol.

Epa Official Prevented Staff From Warning Public About Widely Used Carcinogen In December 2019, a toxicologist at the Environmental Protection Agency was tasked with assessing a product that was about to be introduced to the market. As is often the case, the single product — a paint — contained several individual chemicals. One of them, a solvent known as arachlorobenzotrifluoride, or PCBTF, made up half of the product’s weight. There was ample evidence that PCBTF causes cancer. But after the toxicologist included the information in his report, a senior leader in the division removed it, according to documents EPA whistleblowers shared with The Intercept and submitted to the EPA inspector general. The deletion left the public with no way to know this widely used chemical was a carcino-gen.While the assessor worked in the EPA’s New Chemicals division, and the particular paint he was assessing was new, PCBTF is not. The most widely used solvent in the coatings and adhesives industry, PCBTF has been added to products since the 1960s and can be found in ink, caulk, cleaners, stain removal products, polyurethane finishes, primer, graffiti remover, paint for cars, steel and concrete, and garage floors. The chemical has also been used to make other chemicals, including dyes, pharmaceuticals, and pesticides. Each year, between 10 and 50 million pounds of PCBTF are used in the U.S., according to the most recent data from the EPA, and countless workers are exposed at both paint and car manufacturing plants.

Dangerous Petroleum-Contaminated Water Threatens Thousands in Hawai’I Military families have reported that they had been suffering from the effects of water contamination for months prior to November 28, 2021 when the U.S. Navy acknowledged that two water wells had been polluted from leaking 80-year massive jet fuel tanks.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

LAPD Releases Footage From Police Killing of 14-Year-Old Girl “Her death was preventable!” said civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who was hired to represent the family of 14-year-old Valentina Orellana-Peralta. The Los Angeles Police Department released video footage Monday showing the moment when an officer fatally shot 14-year-old Valentina Orellana-Peralta while firing three rifle rounds at an assault suspect inside a Burlington Coat Factory store in North Hollywood. Orellana-Peralta was with her mother trying on clothes in a Burlington dressing room on Thursday when she was shot and killed by an officer whose name has yet to be released by the LAPD. Police said Monday that a bullet bounced off the floor and went through the wall of the dressing room.

Labor:

Economy:

Shadow Government Statistics General Headlines

Pandemic-Driven U.S. Economic Collapse Continues to Harden in a Protracted “L”-Shaped Non-Recovery with a Potential Renewed Downturn
Key Economic Series Show Not Only That the Pandemic-Driven Economic Collapse Has Been Worse Than Headlined, But Also That the Still-Unfolding Recovery Has Been Much Weaker Than Indicated
Severe Systemic Structural Damage from the Shutdown Is Forestalling Meaningful Economic Rebound into 2023 or Beyond, Irrespective of the Advances in Coronavirus Vaccinations
Panicked, Unlimited Federal Reserve Money Creation and Federal Government Deficit Spending Continue and Likely Will Expand, Fueling Accelerating, Major Domestic Inflation
With Fundamental Dollar Debasement Intensifying, Holding Physical Gold and Silver Protects the Purchasing Power of One’s Assets, Irrespective of Any Near-Term Central Bank or Other Machinations to the Contrary

World:

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, democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard

Let the People Mike Lukovich

We Are Not Returning to “Normal.” 2022 Must Be a Year of Change COVID And The Variants: Just as experts predicted, the Delta and Omicron variants of COVID-19 arose in populous areas of the world where governments struggled to vaccinate enough people. Delta and its contagious mutations are believed to originate in India, and Omicron in South Africa — two countries that have been pleading with wealthy nations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to waive intellectual property protections for vaccines so cheaper generics could be produced at a mass scale for lower-income countries. Biden, facing mounting pressure and knowing full well that variants would shatter progress made toward ending the pandemic at home, eventually got behind the idea, but critics say the United States has not pushed forcefully enough at the WTO. International trade protections on vaccine patents, formulas and know-how remain, making pharmaceutical CEOs into billionaires with enough wealth to vaccinate lower-income countries where jabs largely remain out of reach. Today, vaccine makers — many of them originally funded by the U.S. and other wealthy governments to develop vaccines — still refuse to share their “recipes” with biotech firms in India and Africa, despite the efforts of dozens of nations, as well as public health and human rights groups across the world.