Daily News Digest January 4, 2022
Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines are Free For the Whole World!
Images of the Day:
Laura Gray Cartoon From November 16, 1946, Depicting the Interchangeability of tthe Two Capitalist Parties. Things Have Not Changed!
Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Ws 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”, 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:
“On the whole, the Biden administration has rubber-stamped every major big-budget nuclear weapons system produced under the Trump administration,” Tierney told Truthout. He further criticized Biden for failing to miss “low-hanging fruit,” including opportunities to cancel a new “unnecessary and wasteful” submarine-launched ballistic missile nuclear warhead, a life-extension program for the outdated B-83 megaton gravity bomb, and “more useable” nuclear weapons. — One Year in, Biden’s Nuclear Policies Look a Lot Like Trump’s
From Hedges: The Unraveling of the American Empire : There is not a single case since 1941 when the coups, political assassinations, election fraud, black propaganda, blackmail, kidnapping, brutal counter-insurgency campaigns, U.S. sanctioned massacres, torture in global black sites, proxy wars or military interventions carried out by the United States resulted in the establishment of a democratic government. The two-decade-long wars in the Middle East, the greatest strategic blunder in American history, have only left in their wake one failed state after another. Yet, no one in the ruling class is held accountable. War, when it is waged to serve utopian absurdities, such as implanting a client government in Baghdad that will flip the region, including Iran, into U.S. protectorates, or when, as in Afghanistan, there is no vision at all, descends into a quagmire. The massive allocation of money and resources to the U.S. military, which includes Biden’s request for $715 billion for the Defense Department in fiscal year 2022, a $11.3 billion, or 1.6 percent increase, over 2021, is not in the end about national defense. The bloated military budget is designed, as Seymour Melman explained in his book, “The Permanent War Economy,” primarily to keep the American economy from collapsing. All we really make anymore are weapons. Once this is understood, perpetual war makes sense, at least for those who profit from it.
Videos of the Day:
“A Vaccine for the World”: U.S. Scientists Develop Low-Cost Shot to Inoculate Global South
Meet the Scientist Who Built a Cheap Rapid Test in March 2020. The FDA Never Approved It
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
Everything Democrats Didn’t Do in 2021 From protecting the vote to raising the minimum wage to action on global warming, in the past year, the Democrats did none of it. When Joe Biden was sworn in January 20, the Democrats had control of the presidency, Senate, and House of Representatives for the first time in over a decade. If politics worked the way we learn about it in school, Biden and his party would have seized this fleeting opportunity to pass his popular agenda and cement and expand their power. Instead, after a strong start with the American Rescue Plan, passed in March, the Democrats have puttered forward, slowly losing momentum and now appearing at a standstill. Here are all the things they could have done this year, in theory, but did not.
When the Government Violates the Law! — It’s Time for a Revolution!: Children With Disabilities Continue to Suffer From Congress’ 46-Year Failure to Comply With IDEA The federal government has yet to uphold its 1975 passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and it appears unlikely that it plans to change that any time soon. So today’s question is, in what year did the federal government actually start paying that 40%?
- 1977
- 1985
- 1999
- 2020
Actually, this is a trick question, because the correct answer is never. After all of these years, the federal government still has never complied with its own law and provided the promised 40% share of educating these kids. The closest it has come is 33% in 2009, but that was a short-lived burst of generosity. Since then, the IDEA funding level has fallen steadily.
Environment:
Ecosocialism or Ecocide!
In an article from the Guardian Unlimited in England, dated April 30, 2001, reported the same sad story of wanton death of children who have the misfortune to live downstream from nuclear power plants: Cancers blamed on nuclear power plant. James Meikle, Guardian health orrespondent, wrote: An apparent cluster of childhood cancers near a nuclear power station on the river Severn has been blamed on radiation from the plant. Chris Busby, a scientist, said he had uncovered evidence of significant levels of leukemia among children under four years old living near the aging Oldbury reactor. He believed cancer statistics for an area in and around nearby Chepstow, south Wales, between 1974 and 1990 revealed excessive numbers of myeloid leukemia, a condition usually linked to older people, and sometimes involving exposure to radiation. Three cases were recorded when there might have been expected either one or none. In all there had been seven cancers among under fours, one and a half times the national average. This mirrored a previously accepted leukemia cluster at Seascale, near the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria, where there were four deaths of children under 14 from 1950 to 1983. Dr. Busby, a member of the campaign group Green Audit, and adviser to the European parliament’s green group, said: “This is the discovery of a new nuclear site child leukemia cluster. The high level of myeloid leukemia suggests that radiation is the cause.” He believed older people living downstream from Oldbury were also more likely to suffer cancers. Defenders of the nuclear industry accept the existence of clusters but point out these also occur in areas where there are no plants. “British Nuclear Fuels said no one knew the cause of the Seascale cluster, but Dr. Busby’s work was never peer reviewed, and if his previous work was anything to go by, the study could be discounted.
Radioactive Contamination Is Seeping Into Drinking Water Around the U.S. When Jeni Knack moved to Simi Valley, California, in 2018, she had no idea that her family’s new home was within 5 miles of a former nuclear and rocket testing laboratory, perched atop a plateau and rife with contamination. Radioactive cesium-137, strontium-90, plutonium-239 and tritium, along with a mix of other toxic chemicals and heavy metals, are known to have been released at the industrial site through various spills, leaks, the use of open-air burn pits and a partial nuclear meltdown. Once Knack learned about the Santa Susana Field Laboratory and the unusual number of childhood cancer cases in the surrounding community, she couldn’t ignore it. Her family now only drinks water from a 5-gallon (19-liter) jug delivered by Sparkletts water service. In August, she began sending her 6-year-old daughter to kindergarten with two bottles of the water and instructions to not refill them at school, which is connected to the same Golden State Water Company that serves her home.
Industrialized Farming Has Unleashed an Insect Apocalypse What is driving the decline of insects? There are many factors, but clearly the industrialization of farming, particularly the move toward large-scale monoculture cropping dependent on a blizzard of pesticides is playing a major role. In 1962, three years before I was born, Rachel Carson warned us in her book Silent Spring that we were doing terrible damage to our planet. She would weep to see how much worse it has become. The problems with pesticides and fertilizers Carson highlighted have become far more acute. Some of these new pesticides, such as neonicotinoids, are thousands of times more toxic to insects than any that existed in Carson’s day. The U.S. in particular has an especially gung-ho attitude to pesticides, with U.S. farmers accounting for nearly 20 percent of all global use. About one-quarter of the pesticides used in the U.S. are now banned in the European Union due to concerns over risks to human or environmental health. The U.S. allows several pesticides now banned in China and Brazil, neither of which is famed for its sensitive.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
“Innocence Isn’t Enough”: Arizona Urges The Supreme Court to Send Barry Jones Back to Death Row The case has far-reaching implications: Should new evidence be ignored by the federal courts even when it exposes a wrongful conviction? Although the question before the court is highly technical, the decision in Jones’s case will have far-reaching implications for people in prison and on death row. For those who are innocent, the stakes are uniquely high: The justices are effectively deciding whether new evidence — like that presented at Jones’s 2017 evidentiary hearing — should be ignored by the federal courts, even when it exposes a wrongful conviction.
The Media Monopoly and the Police State Organizations!: Glen Greenwald: NBC News Uses Ex-FBI Official Frank Figliuzzi to Urge Assange’s Extradition, Hiding His Key Role The most dangerous, and under-discussed, development in corporate media is the spate of ex-security state agents now employed to deliver the “news.” Two of the television outlets on which American liberals rely most for their news — NBC News and CNN — have spent the last six years hiring a virtual army of former CIA operatives, FBI officials, NSA spies, Pentagon chiefs, and DOJ prosecutors to work in their newsrooms. The multiple ways in which journalism is fundamentally corrupted by this spectacle are all vividly illustrated by a new article from NBC News that urges the prosecution and extradition of Julian Assange, claiming that the WikiLeaks founder, once on U.S. soil, will finally provide the long-elusive proof that Donald Trump criminally conspired with Russia.
Labor:
Economy:
There’s a News Blackout on the Fed’s Naming of the Banks that Got Its Emergency Repo Loans; Some Journalists Appear to Be Under Gag Orders Four days ago, the Federal Reserve released the names of the banks that had received $4.5 trillion in cumulative loans in the last quarter of 2019 under its emergency repo loan operations for a liquidity crisis that has yet to be credibly explained. Among the largest borrowers were JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, three of the Wall Street banks that were at the center of the subprime and derivatives crisis in 2008 that brought down the U.S. economy. That’s blockbuster news. But as of 7 a.m. this morning, not one major business media outlet has reported the details of the Fed’s big reveal.On September 17, 2019, the Fed began making trillions of dollars a month in emergency repo loans to 24 trading houses on Wall Street. The Fed released on a daily basis the dollar amounts it was loaning, but withheld the names of the specific banks and how much they had borrowed. This made it impossible for the public to see which Wall Street firms were experiencing the most severe credit crisis.
World:
Germany: The Coalition Government Agreement To put it plainly: the coalition agreement of the traffic light government is a clear rejection of the 1.5° target; it is no longer even maintained in words. The climate target that the government wants to achieve is very softly formulated: Climate neutrality by 2045. Climate neutrality means that a process or activity does not affect the climate. This means that more CO2 can be emitted, as long as everything possible can be offset against it: additional CO2 sinks, rights from emissions trading, and so on. It is also said that the coal phase-out should take place by 2030, but only “ideally”, in other words: if it happens that way. There are no binding targets to guide government action. There is certainly no mechanism that the Federal Constitutional Court has called for in order not to jeopardize the future of the younger generations: namely, that interim targets be formulated that can be used to check whether the measures are sufficient or not. The replacement of fossil fuels is to be achieved exclusively by market-based means, i.e. by products that function on the basis of renewable energies forcing fossil fuels out of the market. This is clearly visible in the case of the internal combustion engine: there is no fixed date for its end, it is only said that it should disappear from the market as far as possible by 2030. Whether the climate turnaround works or not is thus placed in the hands of the corporations, and the state once again abandons its protective function.
Turned Tables: In Presidential Polls, Brazil’s Lula Leads Judge Who Locked Him Up Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Jair Bolsonaro, and Sergio Moro, three major candidates in Brazil’s 2022 election, have a turbulent and intertwined past.
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
Surprise Medical Bills Takes Effect, Critics Denounce For-Profit Healthcare “This law would not be needed if we had an everyone covered for everything, zero copay, federal single-payer healthcare system paid for by fair taxes.” While welcoming a federal ban on most surprise medical bills that went into effect on Saturday, Medicare for All advocates made clear that the new law, which crucially excludes ground ambulances, is only necessary because the United States lacks the superior alternative taken for granted in every other wealthy nation: a single-payer healthcare system.
One World or No World. Choose! The emergence of yet another COVID variant and a surge of new infections and restrictions have people wondering if this pandemic will ever end. We’ve known how to stop infectious disease transmission for over a century. The problem is that our profit-driven society is structured to a) promote the spread of infectious diseases and b) block effective measures to stop them. Consider the scale of the problem. COVID-19 spread so quickly around the globe because capitalism is an international economic system. Capitalists roam the globe to find the most favorable conditions for making profit and extracting capital. Computer components may be resourced in one country, manufactured in another country, assembled in a third, sold in a fourth, and serviced in a fifth. The entire process is coordinated through a ‘global supply chain’ that links resource extraction, manufacture, transportation, and distribution across the world. It also serves as a transmission belt for infectious disease. The tracking map from Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, showing the concentrations of infection in the US, mirrors similar maps from the Brookings Institution’s studies of concentrations of manufacturing, transportation hubs, and warehousing. This is yet another indication that this virus has moved through the circuits of capital and the humans that labor in them, and not solely by random “community” transmission.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Dashboard Offers a Real-Time Window on a Global Pandemic 