Daily News Digest January 25, 2022

Daily News Digest Archives

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

WHO Chief: ‘Dangerous’ to Assume Omicron Is Last Variant “On the contrary, globally the conditions are ideal for more variants to emerge,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The director-general of the World Health Organization on Monday cautioned the international community against accepting the increasingly common view that peaking Omicron cases signals the approaching end of the global Covid-19 pandemic, which is still killing more than 8,000 people a day.

Images of the Day:

Americans Who Shoulder the Burden 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:

 “These so-called ‘pharmaceutical industry leaders’ have no right to take legal actions against me. They have been overcharging the general population for years, simply because they are greedy and wish to fill their pockets with money. Instead of doing what’s best for the American people, they feed off of people in need and sell medications at a price that is five-times more expensive than what it costs to produce them. It’s time we put an end to this. This is why I’ve decided to bring Eagle Hemp CBD Gummies to market and make it easily affordable to millions of people that suffer from either physical or emotional pain. I vouch for the effectiveness of Eagle Hemp CBD Gummies, as it can truly help individuals manage their afflictions.” — Willie Nelson

Videos of the Day:

Chris Hedges: On Contact: Slaughterhouse On the show, Chris Hedges discusses America’s meat industry with Gail Eisnitz, chief investigator for the Humane Farming Association. The huge industrial slaughterhouses in the United States transport overcrowded animals, smeared with their own urine and feces, in trucks over long distances without water or ventilation in the summer and without heat in the winter. Many animals arrive dead, sometimes frozen to the sides of the trucks where a chain has to be wrapped around them to pry them loose. They are tossed onto a pile of other animal carcasses. Animals barely able to walk from the trucks into the chute to be slaughtered are beaten to death with a lead pipe. The killing is done so quickly – 200 to 400 cattle can be killed in an hour, or 3,000 to 5,000 per day – that when animals are skinned they are sometimes still alive, forcing workers to thrust a knife into the head to sever its spinal cord. Slaughterhouse work is also some of the most hazardous in the country, with 36% of workers incurring serious injuries. Those who are disabled, losing fingers and even limbs in the machinery used to kill the animals, are usually fired and replaced by undocumented workers who have neither job protection nor legal recourse. On top of this, the federal inspection system and enforcement to prevent contaminated meat from being sold to the public has been gutted, essentially permitting the meat industry to regulate itself. This has resulted in numerous E. coli and salmonella outbreaks among meat consumers.

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!

Yes, It’s Easier to Get Birth Control Than It Was In the 1970s—But Women Still Need Abortion Care “Expanding access will require definitive new federal and state action, including implementing policies that guarantee better healthcare access.”Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!

“Far from just ideological, the different colours allocated to different types of hydrogen made from different sources of energy will be all important in future carbon constrained global trade.     “A recent peer-reviewed paper from Cornell’s Robert Howarth and Stanford’s Mark Jacobson examined the ‘lifecycle’ greenhouse gas emissions from blue hydrogen and found there was ‘no way’ it could be classed as ‘green.’ “Conversely, the study found that hydrogen produced from gas – even with carbon capture – was significantly worse for the climate than burning coal or gas directly, due to the significant extra energy required for processes to produce hydrogen and power carbon capture and storage.” —Sandra Steingraber, Australian hydrogen market achieves key export milestone – but with the wrong colour Australian hydrogen market achieves key export milestone – but with the wrong colour

‘Do Look Up!’: Scientists issue Dire Warning: Chemical Pollution now Exceeds Safe Planetary Limit  In 2009, an international team of researchers identified nine planetary boundaries that maintain the remarkably stable state Earth has remained within for 10,000 years — since the dawn of civilisation. These boundaries include greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, the ozone layer, an intact biosphere and freshwater. The researchers quantified the boundaries that influence Earth’s stability and concluded in 2015 that human activity has breached four of them. Greenhouse gas emissions are pushing the global climate into a new, hotter state, species extinctions threaten the biosphere’s integrity, the conversion of forests to farmland has degraded the quality of land and industrial and agricultural processes have radically altered natural cycles of phosphorus and nitrogen.

 Capitalist Deliberate Indifference Policy= Crumbling Capitalist Infrastructure:  PG&E Should Be Broken Up Over Probation ‘Crime Spree’: Judge The utility is emerging from probation this week as “a continuing menace” to Californians, said a federal judge. A federal judge who has overseen Pacific Gas & Electric’s soon-to-expire felony probation is calling for the California utility company to be broken up, warning that PG&E is emerging from its five-year probationary period as “a continuing menace” to the state. Noting that PG&E pled guilty to dozens of manslaughter charges and caused more than 30 wildfires since entering probation in 2017, U.S. District Judge William Alsup wrote in a report last week that he “mustacknowledge failure” in his attempt to rehabilitate the  company..Dangerous Heat Across the Globe The planet is heating up like never before, as “ground temperatures” hit all-time records in the Northern Hemisphere as well as the Southern Hemisphere, and ocean temperatures threaten the world’s major fisheries of the Far North, which are imperiled beyond any known historical precedent. (See- The Oceans Are Overheating, January 14, 2022)  According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) July 2021 was the hottest month in recorded history for the world. The European Union (EU) satellite system also confirmed that the past seven years have been the hottest on record. Too much heat brings unanticipated problems of unexpected scale, putting decades of legacy infrastructure at risk of malfunctioning and/or total collapse. Nobody expected so much trouble to start so soon. Nobody anticipated such massive record-breaking back-to-back heat, north and south, to hit so soon on the heels of only 1.2C above estimated baseline for global warming.

Nuclear Waste Risks Can be “Minimized” and Other Myths There are geniuses amongst us. We just didn’t know it. They are the supporters of nuclear power, who, according to the Associated Press, “say the risks can be minimized” when it comes to the perpetual and unsolved problem of long-lived, high-level radioactive waste — the main by-product of generating electricity using nuclear power. . . . The mantra about solving the nuclear waste problem has been repeated since the dawn of the Nuclear Age, coming up on 80 years this December. That was when, on December 2, 1942, the first cupful of radioactive waste was generated, a result of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction achieved at the Chicago Pile-1 by Enrico Fermi and his team.     At that time, scientists knew that radioactive waste was a problem, but assumed it would be solved later. Well, here we are at “later” and it’s still unsolved. Now, “minimizing” rather than solving the problem is apparently justification enough to keep using this dangerous technology.

Civil rights/Black Liberation:

How the Pandemic’s Unequal Toll on People of Color Underlines US Health Inequities From the earliest days of the pandemic, COVID-19 has wrought a far higher toll in communities of color than in the general population – thrusting the long-standing issue of health disparities in the U.S. into the attention of public health officials and the general public. Even though non-Hispanic white people make up 60% of the population, racial and ethnic minorities in the United States have borne significantly higher risks of COVID-19 infections than white people, as well as hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19.

My Son Was Incarcerated at 13. Six Years Later, It’s Clear the State Failed Him. As COVID-19 numbers spike among children across the country, parents are understandably growing more and more worried about their kids. While families, teachers and lawmakers all struggle to navigate keeping young people safe amid a constantly evolving pandemic, one group of children gets increasingly neglected from care: those in the incarceration system. I should know — my son was incarcerated by the state six years ago at the young age of 13 and remains under the OJJ’s “care” at Swanson youth prison in Monroe, Louisiana.   Louisiana notoriously has one of the worst youth incarceration systems in the country. Amid a pandemic, the conditions at youth prisons have become all the more inhumane. At Swanson, where my son is held, the facility claimed that they kept up with sanitization, but my son was in the infirmary with COVID for three months, and they refused to share any information about his well-being. I later learned there were times he could not eat or breathe. I still worry about his general health because he has told me about mold in the showers, which makes it clear that the prison is not a clean or safe place. I’m sure every parent can understand how traumatizing is for me to not know the state of my child’s health.

Labor:

Economy:

A Look at What Happened in 2018 When the Fed Raised Interest Rates Four Times A Look at What Happened in 2018 When the Fed Raised Interest Rates Four Times Bloomberg News ran this headline over the weekend: “U.S. Stocks Historically Deliver Strong Gains in Fed Hike Cycles.” For a reminder to our readers of what happened in 2018, the last time the Fed gently tapped its foot on the brake four times, we’ve listed below some of the headlines we ran in 2018 at Wall Street On Parade. The Fed was not at all aggressive with rate hikes in 2018: it gently raised the Fed Funds rate by a quarter of a point on March 22, June 14, September 27 and December 20.

World:

Leaked Report Suggests Impunity for IDF Troops in Deadly Stop of Palestinian-AmericanElder “This is a policy: Israel does not prosecute those responsible for harming Palestinians, thus making their lives miserable,” said the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Human rights advocates reacted angrily Sunday to a leaked report suggesting that no Israeli soldiers are likely to be charged in connection with the fatal detention of an elderly Palestinian-American man by occupation forces in a West Bank town earlier this month.

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!

Pandemic Accommodations Proved We Can Vastly Expand Disability Access If We Try  Significant accommodations were offered once the pandemic started affecting the capitalist class.  The COVID pandemic has been a traumatic and revelatory historic experience for everyone, but especially so for disabled communities. On one hand, the virus appears to have had a disproportionately deadly impact on disabled people, and the government’s relentless push to restore “normal” business activities — already oppressive for disabled people — is cruelly discriminatory for those with immunocompromising conditions.     At the same time, governments and businesses have responded to the pandemic with flexible schedules and remote meetings that offer a glimpse into how readily society could provide accommodations to meet the needs of disabled workers and students. And as millions of previously nondisabled people find themselves applying for Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) remote work accommodations or disability benefits due to “long COVID” symptoms, there is potential for building unprecedented levels of support for disability rights and justice.