Daily News Digest February 4, 2022
Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines are Free For the Whole World
Image of the Day:
Bendib:Hiring Now
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:
Following the January 6th insurrection, in which hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of a free and fair democratic election, major corporations were quick to publicly condemn the violence and said they would stop bankrolling the Members of Congress who sought to block certification of the election results. They stated that these 147 members of the “Sedition Caucus” were to blame for perpetuating the Big Lie and therefore would not receive their campaign contributions. Nearly one year later, it has become clear that these promises were just lip service. Recent FEC filings show that major corporations and trade groups have already donated over $5.8 million to funds benefiting members of the Sedition Caucus. — Foreign-Influenced Corporate Spending Is Inherently Anti-Democratic
Videos of the Day:
Amnesty International Defends Report on Israeli Apartheid, Rejecting Criticism from U.S. & Israel
‘We’re At a Crisis Level’: Nurses Take On Union-Busting Bosses Over Short Staffing
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 th poor and gives to the Rich. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford to Pay!
Julian Assange Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize as Calls for His Release Grow Louder The Wikileaks founder who has spent more than 1,000 days in a British prison fighting extradition to the United States, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the third time Journalist and Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, as the movement calling for his unconditional release and against his extradition to the United States grows louder. Assange was nominated by several individuals, including members of parliament and former peace prize winners, responding to calls from Assange’s partner Stella Moris.
Pipeline Politics Hits Multipolar Realities: Nord Stream 2 and the Ukraine Crisis Since the 1960s when Europe first began importing Russian gas, Washington perceived Russian energy as a threat to US leadership and Europe’s energy security. More recently, with fracking, the US has become the world’s largest gas producer and a major exporter of LNG (liquefied natural gas). It wants to muscle in on Europe’s huge market, displacing Russian gas. With Nord Stream 2 completed and filled while it awaits German regulatory approval, the stakes are high. What is Centermost in United States/Ukraine/Russia War Buildups” As Russia squeezes supplies, a parade of tankers carrying liquefied natural gas is coming to Europe’s rescue. . . . The long-awaited energy battle between Rus sia, for decades the dominant gas exporter to Europe, and the United States, which for years has promoted its ability to export gas to customers, is at last playing out. Taking advantage of abundant gas from shale drilling, the United States has over the last six years grown from almost nothing to one of the world’s largest exporters of liquefied gas, along with Qatar and Austrarailia,
Money for War and the Planet’s Warming! $778 Billion and Counting: Who’s Paying for All This Pentagon Waste? (Hint: It’s You) It can’t be emphasized enough just how many taxpayer dollars are now being showered on the Pentagon. 2021 was another banner year for the military-industrial complex, as Congress signed off on a near-record $778 billion in spending for the Pentagon and related work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy. That was $25 billion more than the Pentagon had even asked for. Without a significant change of course, 2022 will once again be a banner year for Lockheed Martin and other top weapons makers at the expense of investing in programs necessary to combat urgent challenges from pandemics to climate change to global inequality/
Pipeline Politics Hits Multipolar Realities: Nord Stream 2 and the Ukraine Crisis Since the 1960s when Europe first began importing Russian gas, Washington perceived Russian energy as a threat to US leadership and Europe’s energy security. More recently, with fracking, the US has become the world’s largest gas producer and a major exporter of LNG (liquefied natural gas). It wants to muscle in on Europe’s huge market, displacing Russian gas. With Nord Stream 2 completed and filled while it awaits German regulatory approval, the stakes are high.
What is Centermost in United States/Ukraine/Russia War ‘Buildups’:Natural Gas Shipments, Mostly From U.S., Ease Europe’s Energy Crunch As Russia squeezes supplies, a parade of tankers carrying liquefied natural gas is coming to Europe’s rescue. As Russia squeezes supplies, a parade of tankers carrying liquefied natural gas is coming to Europe’s rescue. . . . The long-awaited energy battle between Rus sia, for decades the dominant gas exporter to Europe, and the United States, which for years has promoted its ability to export gas to customers, is at last playing out. Taking advantage of abundant gas from shale drilling, the United States has over the last six years grown from almost nothing to one of the world’s largest exporters of liquefied gas, along with Qatar and Australia.
The Pressure Campaign on Spotify to Remove Joe Rogan Reveals the Religion of Liberals:Censorship All factions, at certain points, succumb to the impulse to censor. But for the Democratic Party’s liberal adherents, silencing their adversaries has become their primary project. American liberals are obsessed with finding ways to silence and censor their adversaries. Every week, if not every day, they have new targets they want de-platformed, banned, silenced, and otherwise prevented from speaking or being heard (by “liberals,” I mean the term of self-description used by the dominant wing of the Democratic Party). For years, their preferred censorship tactic was to expand and distort the concept of “hate speech” to mean “views that make us uncomfortable,” and then demand that such “hateful” views be prohibited on that basis. For that reason, it is now common to hear Democrats assert, falsely, that the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech does not protect “hate speech.” Their political culture has long inculcated them to believe that they can comfortably silence whatever views they arbitrarily place into this category without being guilty of censorship.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!
War is ‘Defense’ and Environment Destruction!: The Pentagon Emits More Greenhouse Gases Than Any Other Part of the US Gov’t. Yet with few exceptions, the U.S. military’s significant contribution to climate change has received little attention. Although the Defense Department has significantly reduced its fossil fuel consumption since the early 2000s, it remains the world’s single largest consumer of oil — and as a result, one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters.
Plastic & Health: The Hidden Costs of a Plastic Planet (February Despite being one of the most pervasive materials on the planet, plastic and its impact on human health remain poorly understood. Yet exposure to plastic is expanding into new areas of the environment and food chain as existing plastic products fragment into smaller particles and concentrate toxic chemicals. As plastic production increases, this exposure will only grow. To date, research into the human health impacts of plastic have focused narrowly on specific moments in the plastic lifecycle, often on single products, processes, or exposure pathways. This approach fails to recognize that significant, complex, and intersecting human health impacts occur at every stage of the plastic lifecycle: from wellhead to refinery, from store shelves to human bodies, and from waste management to ongoing impacts as air, water, and soil pollution.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Black Agenda ReportMargaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist The U.S. Black Political Class and War
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist Crisis or Confusion? A Brief Guide for Black Folk on the Situation in Ukraine
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist Crisis or Confusion? A Brief Guide for Black Folk on the Situation in Ukraine
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor Casual Racism and the New Cold War
Editors, The Black Agenda Review DOCUMENT: Resolution on Neocolonialism, Cairo, 1961
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor Eritrea and the Tripartite Alliance in the Horn of Africa
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor BAR Book Forum: Ahjamu Umi’s “A Guide for Organizing Defense against White Supremacist, Patriarchal, and Fascist Violence”
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence R2P: Responsibility To Protect
Tunde Osazua AFRICOM Watch – February 2022
Jacqueline Luqman Iraq, or, Remembering Why they Hate Julian Assange
Dr.Wilmer J. Leon, III The Biden Administration: One Year in and We’re Still Left Out
Abayomi Azikiwe Burkina Faso Military Coup Reflects Wave of Insecurity in West Africa
Verene Shepherd The Maroons of Jamaica and their rights as Indigenous Peoples
Joe Pateman Africa and Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist Ukraine and U.S. War Propaganda
Labor:
Starbucks Union Organizing Spreads to 54 Stores in 19 States In labor news, the Workers United union says workers at 16 more Starbucks locations around the U.S. petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for union elections on Monday. That brings the number of Starbucks stores where workers are organizing to 54 across 19 states. In December, workers at a Buffalo Starbucks store successfully organized the first union of the coffee giant’s 9,000 U.S. locations
Workers United We Fight For What’s Right In The Workplace! We are a progressive and dynamic labor organization, shaped by our predecessor unions and leadership who are relentless in their pursuit for social and economic justice for all workers. We represent the aspirations and needs of our members, and work to empower our members to become leaders in their workplaces and communities as well. We are forward-thinkers, guided by lessons learned, determined to pave the way for future generations. We believe in justice, education, equity, compassion, and civility. These values guide us in all the work we do.We Are Committed To Our Members, Economic Justice, Social Justice, and Education
Chicago Public Schools Endanger Teachers, Staff, and Sturents: Firures Don’t Lie, But CPS Liars Can ‘Figure’: Bad Data: Officials Underreported COVID Numbers in Chicago Public Schools The inconsistency has sparked anger from parents who feel they are not being given a complete picture of the state of COVID in the classroom fter making an unannounced change in its COVID case reporting methods, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) administrators have underreported school-specific COVID-19 case numbers since the beginning of the year as parents, teachers, and City officials determined if it was safe to return to in-person learning during the Omicron surge. The inconsistency was discovered by a CPS parent and cloud engineer who has been tracking the numbers from home, and it has sparked anger from parents who feel they are not being given a complete picture of the state of COVID in their children’s schools.
Economy:
When Repos Blew Up in 2019, Hedge Funds Were $800 Billion Short U.S. Treasury Futures; Then Margins Blew Out New details have emerged to provide a fuller picture of the turmoil that was taking place in the dark corners of markets when the overnight repo market blew up on September 17, 2019 and the Fed had to run to the rescue with trillions of dollars in cumulative loans that went on for months. Imagine if you were the Federal Reserve and had been thoroughly disgraced by waging more than a two-year court battle to prevent the press in America from doing its job and publishing the granular details of the Fed’s 2007 to 2010 bailout of Wall Street and its foreign bank derivative counterparties. Then the Fed was further disgraced after losing the court battles when in 2011 the details of the $29 trillion bailout were published. Chances are that the Fed would not be anxious to let the public or Congress hear the latest details of bailing out hedge funds for the one percent that were using leverage of 50 to 1 obtained from the very banks the Fed is supposed to be be supervising.
New Book Takes a Hard Look at How Hedge Funds Have Designed Trades to Tap into the Fed’s Money Spigot As we reported on Monday, there’s a new book out from Simon & Schuster with the provocative title: The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy. The book, written by bestselling author Christopher Leonard, is sprinkled with eye popping revelations – particularly in regard to how hedge funds have been able to effectively mint billions by designing trades to take advantage of the Fed’s repo bailouts and quantitative easing.
World:
Capitalism in itd epoch of decay: ‘Disgrace’: EU Panned Over Plan to Label Gas, Nuclear Green It amounts to an “anti-science plan” that “represents the biggest greenwashing exercise of all time,” said Greenpeace E.U. campaigner Ariadna Rodrigo.
Instead of Freeing Palestinian Prisoners, New Scheme Aims at Punishing Their Families A scheme is underway to withhold or to reduce payments made by the Palestinian Authority to the families of Palestinian prisoners. According to Israeli media, the Biden Administration has requested that the PA entirely overhauls its support system of Palestinian prisoners. The Palestinian leadership had already expressed willingness to engage the US in a ‘discussion’.
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!
Warren Warns ‘Corporate Vultures’ Are Circling Medicare on Biden’s Watch The Massachusetts Democrat said Biden “must shut down the Direct Contracting model,” a Trump-era ploy to privatize Medicare.
US Covid Death Rate Marks ‘Dark Side of American Exceptionalism'” You know what every country on this graph except for the USA has?” asked one observer, pointing to a new analysis of U.S. coronavirus deaths. “Universal healthcare.”