Daily News Digest January 6, 2022
Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines are Free For the Whole World!
Images of the Day:
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:
Here’s the awful truth: even if every person, every automobile, and every factory suddenly emitted zero emissions, the earth would still be headed—head first and at full speed—toward total disaster for one major reason: the US military. — Barry Sanders
Karl Marx explained long ago that, under capitalism, the introduction of new machinery inevitably leads to a growth in unemployment and longer hours for those who still have jobs. Millions of workers will be faced with losing their employment as a result of automation, and the new technology that will render them redundant. — Alan Woods’ New Year’s Message 2022: I Saw It in the Movies
Videos of the Day:
What Drove a West Virginia Democrat To Storm the Capitol On January 6? Four years after being elected to the Parkersburg City Council with help from progressives, Eric Barber was all in for Trump.
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
‘Can’t Afford’ Build Back Better? US Billionaires Saw $1 Trillion Wealth Boom in 2021 Alone A new analysis shows that Sen. Ron Wyden’s proposed tax on billionaires “would be more than enough to cover the expansion of the child tax credit in the Build Back Better Act.” ‘Pandemic Profiteering, Plain and Simple’: Walmart and Kroger Hike Prices for Covid Tests
Disaster Carpitalism:‘Pandemic Profiteering, Plain and Simple’: Walmart and Kroger Hike Prices for Covid Tests “Companies will not simply decide to take less of a profit during a health crisis unless we make them.” Walmart and Kroger are raising prices for one of the more widely used at-home coronavirus tests, leading critics to accuse the U.S. retailers of exploiting an Omicron-fueled surge in demand for the kits to pad their bottom lines.
Environment:
Ecosocialism or Ecocide!
Unless Stopped, Capitalism is Dashing Towards Ecocide: Production Gap Report
Executive Summary: Fossil Fuel Cuts: Promises Vs Plans The Production Gap Report, published jointly by the United Nations Environmental Program and several major environmental research institutions, tracks the discrepancy between governments’ planned fossil fuel production and global production levels consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C or 2°C. Key Findings:
- Governments plan to produce more than twice the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.
- The production gap has remained largely unchanged since our first analysis in 2019. Global fossil fuel production must start declining immediately and steeply to be consistent with limiting long-term warming to 1.5°C.
- Most major oil and gas producers are planning on increasing production out to 2030 or beyond, and several major coal producers are planning on continuing or increasing production. G20 countries have directed more new funding to fossil fuels than clean energy since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. International public finance for the production of fossil fuels from G20 countries and multilateral development banks (MDBs) has significantly decreased in recent years.
- Governments have a primary role to play in closing the production gap and in ensuring that the transition away from fossil fuels is just and equitable.
In 2022, We All Need to Look Up If Christmas wildfires don’t make America act on climate, maybe a hit Hollywood movie will? Some strange, otherworldly things happened across America this Christmas season, as 2021 finally ground to a conclusion. For example, in the small town of Unalaska, Alaska (yes, that’s really its name … I did a double-take, too!), children woke up on Christmas morning to full stockings and a balmy temperature of 56 degrees—the highest ever posted in the state on the holiday.
California’s Cap-and-Trade System Proves Limits of Market-Based Climate Action California is not making sufficient progress to meet the 2030 emissions goals. With current policies, it could take easily at least a couple more decades before the 2030 goals are met.
The Inept Democrats are Paving the way for Trumpisn!: How to Fight the Next Coup As we approach the first anniversary of the attack on the United States congress, it is imperative to understand that the threat to democracy is not over. As details about the full scope of the scheme to undermine the presidential election of 2019 emerge, it becomes even more important to understand that the coup did not end that day. Most commentary informed by concern about the threat to US democracy focuses on countering voter suppression and strengthening voter rights across the country. For example, in a recent article the New York Times editorial board argued that the Democratic Party should end the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation, and admonished Republican leaders to respect the republic by combatting the extremists in their midst. These arguments are a response to the recent behavior of the Republican Party: following Trump’s insistence that the vote was stolen, the party has spent the last year advancing voter suppression laws and gerrymandering voting districts to ensure Trump’s return to power.
The Green Deceit of Deep Sea Mining Here’s the problem: the ‘green future’ he’s selling us is a lie, because what Barron fails to divulge in his upbeat sales pitch, is the ecological upheaval that his company’s plans would surely wreak.The Metals Company plans to mine the seabed for polymetallic nodules; potato-sized objects containing metals like nickel, copper, and cobalt; essential in the production of the lithium-ion batteries being used for electric cars and (so-called) renewable energy storage. They’re located (among other places) in the Clarion-Clipperton zone, an area of the Pacific Ocean equivalent in size to the entire Indian Subcontinent. The seabed here (despite the claims of company officials) isn’t simply a ‘vast marine desert’, it’s home to a wide variety of species whose existence depends upon the presence of these nodules.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Environmental Racism in San Francisco:
Federal, state and local officials acknowledge that parts of the shipyard were contaminated during the Cold War, when ships were brought there after atomic-bomb tests. But they’ve long denied any link between local health concerns and the shipyard, where developers have spent years working with the city and the Navy on a plan to clean the site and build 12,000 new homes, millions of square feet of office space and hundreds of acres of parks. — Is Hunters Point Sick? Meet The Doctor Screening Residents for Toxins in S.F.’S Biggest Development Battle
Is Hunters Point Sick? Meet The Doctor Screening Residents for Toxins in S.F.’S Biggest Development Battle Ahimsa Porter Sumchai is a physician, but her Bayview clinic looks more like a detective’s office. Color-coded maps of the nearby Hunters Point Naval Shipyard are the key to her investigation into the lives and deaths of people like her dad, George Donald Porter. The former longshoreman died of lung disease in 1992. His death, his family alleged in a lawsuit that was later settled, stemmed from exposure to asbestos at the old shipyard.Today, Sumchai uses brightly colored pins to map other potentially hazardous chemicals that she detects in people who live and work near the shipyard: yellow for uranium, green for cesium, white for strontium and so on. A second map charts illnesses reported by some of her volunteers, from breast cancer to lung disease to brain tumors.
2004: Did You Know Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Still Has Radioactive “Hot Spots” Since World WarII?
Labor:
Leon Trotsky foretold the ‘Partnership’ Between the Trade Bureaucracy and the Boss:
From Leon Trotsky and the Iron Heel: One must accentuate especially the role which Jack London attributes to the labor bureaucracy and to the labor aristocracy in the further fate of mankind. Thanks to their support, the American plutocracy not only succeeds in defeating the workers’ insurrection but also in keeping its iron dictatorship during the following three centuries. We will not dispute with the poet the delay which can but seem to us too long. However, it is not a question of Jack London’s pessimism, but of his passionate effort to shake those who are lulled by routine, to force them to open their eyes and to see what is and what approaches. The artist is audaciously utilizing the methods of hyperbole. He is bringing the tendencies rooted in capitalism: of oppression, cruelty, bestiality, betrayal, to their extreme expression. He is operating with centuries in order to measure the tyrannical will of the exploiters and the treacherous rôle of the labor bureaucracy. But his most “romantic” hyperboles are finally much more realistic than the bookkeeper-like calculations of the so-called “sober politicians.” It is easy to imagine with what a condescending perplexity the official socialist thinking of that time met Jack London’s menacing prophecies. If one took the trouble to look over the reviews of The Iron Heel at that time in the German Neue Zeit and Vorwärts, in the Austrian Kampf and Arbeiterzeitung, as well as in the other socialist publications of Europe and America, he could easily convince himself that the thirty-year-old “romanticist” saw incomparably more clearly and farther than all the social-democratic leaders of that time taken together. But Jack London bears comparison in this domain not only with the reformists. One can say with assurance that in 1907 not one of the revolutionary Marxists, not excluding Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, imagined so fully the ominous perspective of the alliance between finance capital and labor aristocracy. This suffices in itself to determine the specific weight of the novel.
Due the Labor Bureaucracy’s collaboration with the Boss, Real Wages Have Been Cut Over 100% Since1974! — Wages Have Not Kept Up With Inflation! Since the Neoliberal Labor Bureaucracy declared itself to be in a (Domestic) Partnership With the Boss’ (‘Bedding the Boss!’)! was fully institutionalized starting in the mid-1990s, this ‘partnership’ gave birth to the one, two, three, etc. .. wage tier system! Selling out the futures of future young workers entering the labor force. And, since the lowest union wage is immediately the highest non-union wage, this wage tier system cut the wages of the entire working class! When I was a union official, I called this system labors rush to the bottom! As in graphically shown in this: Shadow Government Statistics Graph.Economy:Shadow Government Statisttics Week Wages Real Average Weekly Earnings (1965 to Nov 2021)
Economy:
World:
Nuclear War Over Ukraine? Bankrupt America is in no position to fight for Ukraine. How many American soldiers will die in the battle for Luhansk? Or Kerch? Not 1 in 1,000 Americans could find these drab Ukrainian (formerly Russian) industrial cities on a map. How many Americans are aware that a unit of the Florida National Guard is stationed in western Ukraine, of all places? It’s just a training mission, says the Pentagon. Right. Training how to pick oranges. This from the ‘invincible’ US military (I used to be a member) that got its backside whipped in Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan.
Britain: What Strategy For the Left in The Trade Unions? A number of key unions have seen seismic shifts to the left in recent months, as workers turn to the industrial front for action. To beat the bosses, the left needs a strategy for united action, as part of the struggle for workers’ power. “When the time is ripe things will move there with enormous speed and energy, but it may take a while till that point is reached.” Frederick Engels Over the last six months important changes have taken place within the trade unions.
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
Disaster Capitalism: Institutionalized Greed: Shareholders and Large Investment Funds
