Daily News Digest January 24, 2022
Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines are Free For the Whole World!
Images of the Day:
Filibuster
Free Market Capitalism
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:
In short, while Zinn’s book is an impressive compendium of events, the most critical question remains unanswered: why did all these movements fail? The empiricist method can state facts, but it is helpless to explain why events turned out the way they did. On the other hand, Zinn’s moralism is a brand of philosophical idealism, where Zinn projects subjective morality on history and creates abstract schemas for a future “neighborly socialism.” Empiricism and idealism are intertwined in an eclectic melange. It would be a grave mistake to ignore the facts. But facts are not in themselves sufficient. A doctor, for example, must not merely catalog the symptoms of illnesses. Above all, it is necessary to understand diseases’ inner workings and how to treat them. Likewise, Marxism aims to understand history and society as a science, using empirical evidence to draw theoretical generalizations from historical experience. As Hegel said in his Introduction to the Philosophy of History: “It is, in fact, the wish for rational insight, not the ambition to amass a mere heap of acquisitions, that should be presupposed in every case as possessing the mind of the learner in the study of science.” Marxists seek to gain scientific insight into the inner workings of history, economics, and the class struggle. But we don’t stop there. We don’t simply want to understand the world around us—we want to change it. Which philosophical method to adopt is not a sterile academic debate but determines our actions in the real world. Empiricism leads to an acceptance of appearances, while dialectical materialism, the philosophy of Marxism, allows us to penetrate the surface of events and even to anticipate events before they take us by surprise. Our task is not merely to describe the past but to draw the necessary lessons from history and use it to fight for the socialist transformation of society. Marx explained this nearly 180 years ago when he wrote that “philosophers have always interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it.” Let us do just that and put an end to this cruel system once and for all. — A Marxist Appraisal of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of The United States”
Videos of the Day:
Bree Newsome Bass: “Capitalism Has to Collapse” (Audio)
How Do You Defeat Voter Suppression Tactics? The 12th Amendment is one of the horror shows of our Constitution. If you think that the Electoral College is unfair and a bad idea, that ain’t nothing compared to the 12th Amendment. What the 12th Amendment says is that if no one gets enough electoral votes, if no one gets 270 electoral votes unchallenged, then the choice of president switches to the House of Representatives. And it’s not one Congressperson, one vote, which reflects the population of the US; it would be one state, one vote. So California, New York, and Connecticut each get one vote. So does Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota. And DC won’t get any vote. At the moment there’s a Republican majority of 27 states, in which case the Republican, presumably Donald Trump, would win.
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. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford to Pay!
The Republican and Democratic Parties Today By Barry Sheppard and Malik Miah What Trump represents is what Marxists call Bonapartism, when in a period where the capitalist parties are deadlocked in feuding and disarray, a strong man emerges who promises to set things right through autocratic means. These can take diffent forms, from outright dictatorship and the dispersal of the legislature to virtual autocracy with bourgeois democratic trappings, like what is happening in Hungary today under Victor Organ, who Trump has praised and endorsed for re-election, and his spokespeople have visited. In any case Trump and Trumpism represents an anti-democratic danger, as we are seeing developing in much of the world.
Draft Order Shows Trump Considered Using Military to Seize Voting Machines “This was part of the records that Trump was fighting to keep from the January 6th committee,” one government watchdog noted. One of the pieces of evidence that Donald Trump unsuccessfully fought to keep out of the hands of the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol shows that the former Republican president considered ordering soldiers to seize voting machines across the nation following his 2020 election loss, a document published Friday by Politico revealed
After a Year of Biden, Why Do We Still Have Trump’s Foreign Policy? President Biden and the Democrats were highly critical of President Trump’s foreign policy, so it was reasonable to expect that Biden would quickly remedy its worst impacts. As a senior member of the Obama administration, Biden surely needed no schooling on Obama’s diplomatic agreements with Cuba and Iran, both of which began to resolve long-standing foreign policy problems and provided models for the renewed emphasis on diplomacy that Biden was promising. Tragically for America and the world, Biden has failed to restore Obama’s progressive initiatives, and has instead doubled down on many of Trump’s most dangerous and destabilizing policies. It is especially ironic and sad that a president who ran so stridently on being different from Trump has been so reluctant to reverse his regressive policies. Now the Democrats’ failure to deliver on their promises with respect to both domestic and foreign policy is undermining their prospects in November’s midterm election. Here is our assessment of Biden’s handling of ten critical foreign policy issues:
Biden Outpaced Trump on Drilling Permits in First Year “Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires ending new fossil fuel extraction,” said one advocate, “but Biden is racing in the opposite direction.” Despite President Joe Biden’s promise to phase out federal leasing for fossil fuel extraction, his administration approved more permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first year than the Trump administration did in 2017.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
‘Atrocious’: Biden Renominates Chevron Lawyer First Chosen by Trump Human rights attorney Steven Donziger noted that the president’s pick for the federal bench “was paid millions… to help jail me, attack Indigenous peoples, and cover up a massive oil spill in the Amazon.” President Joe Biden this week quietly renominated a Trump-selected federal judge whose law firm represented the oil behemoth Chevron in its yearslong legal assault on environmental and human rights attorney Steven Donziger.
Global Food In Crisis: World’s Farms at a Breaking Point Almost 10% of the 8 billion people on earth are already undernourished with 3 billion lacking healthy diets, and the land and water resources farmers rely on stressed to “a breaking point.” And by 2050 there will be 2 billion more mouths to feed, warns a new report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). For now, farmers have been able to boost agricultural productivity by irrigating more land and applying heavier doses of fertilizer and pesticides. But the report says these practices are not sustainable: They have eroded and degraded soil while polluting and depleting water supplies and shrinking the world’s forests.
Civil rights/Black Liberation:
Members of White Supremacist Groups are Cops!: Every President. Since 2006, has been aware of White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement! Trump’s January 6 incretion proves that nothing was done! Despite the lack of statistics on cases of infiltration identified by law enforcement and the Department of Defense, a significant percentage of military personnel view white supremacists as a greater threat than North Korea, Afghanistan, immigration, Iraq, and American domestic protest movements. According to alarming data obtained by the Institute for Veterans and Military Families, one-third of active-duty personnel reported signs of white supremacists within the ranks—with two-thirds of minority service members characterizing the issue as particularly acute. Clearly, military personnel know something the general public doesn’t. — Dismantling White Supremacist Infiltration of the Military and Law Enforcement
Inequality is killing one person every four seconds!: Global Wealth Inequality Is Deadly A graduated wealth tax on people with $5 million or more would raise $2.5 trillion annually. Oxfam reported this week that the world’s ten richest men saw their wealth double during the pandemic—from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion–while the incomes of 99% of the world’s population dropped. “Widening economic, gender, and racial inequalities—as well as the inequality that exists between countries—are tearing our world apart,” Oxfam declared. Meanwhile, for the second year in a row, the World Economic Forum’s Davos conference is being held virtually due to the pandemic. Billionaires and millionaires are traditionally invited to Davos to offer insights into the problems of the day, from catastrophic climate change to COVID-19. Beyond this virtual sanctum, in the real world, Oxfam notes, inequality is killing one person every four seconds.
Labor:
Economy:
JPMorgan’s Board Made Jamie Dimon a Billionaire as the Bank Rigged Markets, Laundered Money, and Admitted to Five Felony CountsYesterday’s headline making the rounds was that JPMorgan Chase’s Board had given its Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, a pay raise to $34.5 million for 2021 that was 10 percent more than 2020.That headline provides an instructive lesson in what passes for breaking news today at mainstream media outlets when it comes to Wall Street’s megabanks. The majority of Americans aren’t outraged and demanding that Congress reform Wall Street because mainstream media has overtly decided to keep the public in the dark.
World:
The Pipeline at the Center of Geopolitical Drama Nord Stream 2 is looming over escalating Russian-Ukraine tensions. Russia has gathered troops along the Ukrainian border, Washington and Moscow engaged in a week of high-stakes negotiations, and NATO and European allies are trying to avoid a conflict that seems more likely by the day. In this frightening morass, there’s one low-key wild card: a long-running energy infrastructure project that some consider an economic project, others consider a geopolitical tool of Russia, and that is a combination of all of those and more. The project in question is Nord Stream 2, an $11 billion Russian-owned pipeline that has Washington in a difficult position with some of its European allies, divided other European countries among themselves, and weakened Ukraine. When it’s up and running, Nord Stream 2 will bring natural gas from Russia to Europe. It is laid alongside Nord Stream 1, which flows from Russia along the Baltic Sea and directly into Germany. Experts said the pipeline will not dramatically increase Russian natural gas imports to Europe, but it could reroute it — meaning more natural gas will flow directly to Germany and potentially bypass other existing pipelines that run through other European countries. Most significantly, Ukraine. he United States sees the pipeline as a Russian geopolitical tool to undermine Europe’s energy and national security. Ukraine definitely sees it this way too and wants the pipeline stopped. Once Nord Stream 2 is online, Russia will no longer need to pay transit fees to send gas through Ukraine, and both Russia and Europe have less need to rely on the pipeline that runs through Ukraine. “The thinking is that as long as that remains a critical transit corridor for Russian supplies to get to market, Russia maybe is less likely to interfere or to disrupt that source of transit,” said Emily Holland, assistant professor in the Russia Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College.
Education, Health, 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!
Lives of People With Disabilities, Including Mine, Are Just as Worthy as Others As a vaccinated but immunocompromised person, I was not “encouraged”—and deeply saddened—by a recent choice of words by the CDC director. Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, there’s been a disturbing caveat to the casualty reports. Many of the dead, the reports say, had “comorbidities”—other conditions that left them especially vulnerable to the virus.This is true, and it needs to factor into our public health response. Instead, it’s often used to suggest that the loss of these lives is somehow less serious—and more acceptable.
COVID Shows It’s Time to End the Pharmaceutical Industry The only way out of this pandemic is a global prioritization of public health above profit. Eighty-four million Americans remain unvaccinated against COVID-19. Nearly no one has knocked on their doors to explain why a vaccine is a good idea. Even at this late date, now is a good time to start. As with COVID testing, thousands of newly hired community health workers are needed to hit the streets and back roads to convince people that vaccines are safe and necessary. Daily conversations, some over the course of many weeks, are needed to turn millions of skeptics or the disconnected into participants. This would be the kind of program the Biden administration proposed, if still in an inadequate form, for contact tracing before the inauguration and never pursued after.Certainly, the ongoing bloodbath — only inches deep but wide as a lake — isn’t just a matter of the present administration. Trump’s vindictive inaction helped kill half a million Americans the first year of the outbreak. Biden’s smug insufficiency, however, will likely add another half a million by spring. But more pointedly, it’s as much a matter of the U.S.’s structural decline that produced the holes in our public health coverage. Beginning nearly 50 years ago, public health was increasingly abandoned or monetized under the neoliberal program.