Daily News Digest February 11, 2022
Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines are Free For the Whole World
Image 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:
With eyes on ultimately empowering Medicare to leverage its prodigious purchasing power to negotiate lower U.S. medication prices, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar on Wednesday unveiled legislation that would let the federal health insurance program pay the same for prescription drugs as the Department of Veterans Affairs. — ‘Enough Is Enough’: Sanders, Klobuchar Unveil Bill to Slash Drug Prices in Half “
Videos of the Day:
Amy’s Kitchen Workers Speak Up About Workplace Injuries, Mistreatment, and Union Busting
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!
Having Learned Nothing From 900,000 Deaths, Governors Lift Mask Mandates The capitalists say it’s time to give up on COVID — even as the deaths keep coming. We’ve been here before, you and I, right here at the fulcrum between controlling COVID-19 and letting it run wild. Here we are again, swaddled in the dented surety that doing the same thing over and over will bring about a different conclusion, just because we really really want it to… wait, strike that: Just because capitalism really, really wants it to. The rest of that “we” is most of us, baggage stacked down in the dripping darkness of steerage, waiting for the next viral iceberg to smack this gilded, hollow ship in half, again. In March 2020, then-President Trump declared a national state of emergency over the pandemic, and an avalanche of states went under some version of a lockdown. Almost immediately, Trump began hectoring his own scientific experts to downplay the dangers of COVID-19 as he pushed to “reopen” the economy as soon as possible. It was a hard sell: Even as the jobless numbers swelled into the millions and businesses began closing all over, a clear majority of the country believed in the science of masking, cloistering and social distancing. Some 25,000 people had died from COVID by then, a number that, in our innocence, many of us found almost too appalling to contemplate. “Around two weeks ago,” I wrote in that late March 2020, “when the first wave of closures — the schools, the ballgames, the bars — began to roll across the country, a clock began ticking in my head. How long will it be, I wondered, before some rich person goes on TV and starts quacking about ‘getting the country going again,’ because they’re losing money? Flash-forward to this past Sunday morning, and wouldn’t you know it, some self-satisfied capitalist was on one of the cable networks arguing that ‘low-risk,’ low-wage workers (who are the economy even as they seldom benefit from the economy) should go back to work and just let the virus ‘burn through’ their ranks.”
No Time to Unmask!: United States Coronavirus Cases: 78,659,233, Deaths: 934,090
‘Peventivc Strike’ Means Invasion! Invading for ‘Peace’: These are the Only 3 Countries America Hasn’t Invaded The United States military gets around. There are the countries with which it’s gone to war – Iraq, Germany, and Japan. There are countries it helps protect – Turkey, Poland, and Bahrain. And there are countries most people don’t even know that America sends troops to, like Thailand, Pakistan, and Antarctica. The United States military gets around. There are the countries with which it’s gone to war – Iraq, Germany, and Japan. There are countries it helps protect – Turkey, Poland, and Bahrain. And there are countries most people don’t even know that America sends troops to, like Thailand, Pakistan, and Antarctica. 
How Can the US Accuse Any Nation of Violating ‘Rules-Based International Order’? Sometimes the hypocrisy of the US government, especially when it comes to foreign affairs, is just too much to let pass.The latest example of this is the Ukraine crisis, where the US pretty much stands all alone (unless you count Britain’s embattled and embarrassed Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who parrots US policy like a trained bird), accusing Russia not just of preparing for an “imminent invasion’ of Ukraine, but of violating international law and “rules-based international order,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken likes to put it. The Biden administration’s top diplomat has made repeatedly blasted both Russia for threatening Ukraine with an invasion by moving troops and equipment to its border and to the border between Ukraine and Belarus, Russia’s ally to the west, and China for its threats to Taiwan and for a rights crackdown in Hong Kong, a Chinese Special Administrative Region that had been promised 30 years or “no change” but was put under new stricter national security laws following violent student protests and university occupations in 2019-20.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!
Climate Change Is Suffocating Fish The ocean’s middle depths started losing oxygen at unnatural rates in 2021 Fish (American Geophysical Union, February 1, 2022) By 2080, around 7 0% of the world’s oceans could be suffocating from a lack of oxygen as a result of climate change, potentially impacting marine ecosystems worldwide, according to a new study. The new models find mid-ocean depths that support many fisheries worldwide are already losing oxygen at unnatural rates and passed a critical threshold of oxygen loss in 2021. Oceans carry dissolved oxygen as a gas, and just like land animals, aquatic animals need that oxygen to breathe. But as the oceans warm due to climate change, their water can hold less oxygen. Scientists have been tracking the oceans’ steady decline in oxygen for years, but the new study provides new pressing reasons to be concerned sooner rather than later.
Mountain Glaciers Hold Less Ice Than Previously Thought, It’s a Concern for Future Water Supplies Mountain glaciers are essential water sources for nearly a quarter of the global population. But figuring out just how much ice they hold – and how much water will be available as glaciers shrink in a warming world – has been notoriously difficult. In a new study, scientists mapped the speed of over 200,000 glaciers to get closer to an answer. They discovered that widely used estimates of glacier ice volume may be off by about 20% in terms of how much glaciers outside the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could contribute to sea level rise. Mathieu Morlighem, a leader in ice sheet modeling and a coauthor of the study, explains why the new results hold a warning for regions that rely on glaciers’ seasonal meltwater, but barely register in the big picture of rising seas.seasonal meltwater, but barely register in the big picture of rising seas.
Corporate Giants Accused of Exaggerating Climate Plans Corporate giants like Google, Amazon, Apple, Nestlé, Ikea, and Unilever stand accused of exaggerating the gains in their carbon reduction plans, in a scathing analysis that brands the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) as a “platform for greenwashing” that lets companies slip through the cracks. The Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor, published by the New Climate Institute and Carbon Market Watch, “finds that 25 of the world’s most valuable companies, which together accrued US$3.2 trillion in revenues in 2020 and accounted for 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, have climate plans that are weaker than how they’ve been marketed so far,” Bloomberg Green reports. “The report says that nearly half of the 25 businesses, including Nestlé SA and JBS SA, don’t have specific commitments to reduce emissions by their target net-zero year,” Bloomberg adds. “The remaining 13 plan to cut emissions across the value chain by 40% on average, rather than fully axe them as their pledges suggest.”
Great Barrier Reef on Brink of Further Mass Bleaching After ‘Shocking’ Marine Heat Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s recent US$700-million pledge for reef protection is a distraction from his reef-killing fossil agenda, environmentalists say, as scientists warn that another mass bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef is imminent after record-high marine temperatures in the spring. Scientists from America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are warning that unprecedented heat in the waters surrounding the 2,300-kilometre Reef from mid-September to mid-December have left the deeply-stressed ecosystem in immediate peril of another mass bleaching event—its sixth since 1998, writes Guardian Australia in an exclusive report.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
February Is Black History Monthe’
The Ethnic Cleansing of New Orleans 2008: A Requiem
When I first wrote “All They Will Call You Will Be ‘Refugees,’” for the San Francisco Bay View, right after the catastrophe of Katrina on September 2, 2005, I stated that “What is needed is a massive public works project, to rebuild this city—the birthplace of Jazz—to employ the people who have been disposed by Katrina and to rebuild this city from the ashes of the old!” I quoted Glen Ford of the Black Commentator radio station’s audio commentary on September 2, 2005, Will the ‘New’ New Orleans be Black? he expressed the problems and the process quite well:
One of the premiere Black cities in the nation faces catastrophe. There is no doubt in my mind that New Orleans will one day rise again from its below sea level foundations. The question is, will the new New Orleans remain the two-thirds Black city it was before the levees crumbled? Some would say it is unseemly to speak of politics and race in the presence of a massive calamity that has destroyed the lives and prospects of so many people from all backgrounds. But I beg to differ. As we have witnessed, over and over again, the rich and powerful are very quick to reward themselves as soon as disaster presents the opportunity. Remember that within days of 9/11, the Bush regime executed a multibillion dollar bailout for the airline industry. By the time you hear this commentary, they may have already used the New Orleans disaster to bail out the insurance industry—one of the richest businesses on the planet. But what of the people of New Orleans, 67 percent of whom are Black? New Orleans is a poor city. Twenty-eight percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Well over half are renters, and the median value of homes occupied by owners is only $87,000. From the early days of the flood, it was clear that much of the city’s housing stock would be irredeemably damaged. The insurance industry may get a windfall of federal relief, but the minority of New Orleans home owners will get very little—even if they are insured. The renting majority may get nothing. If the catastrophe in New Orleans reaches the apocalyptic dimensions towards which it appears to be headed, there will be massive displacement of the Black and poor. Poor people cannot afford to hang around on the fringes of a city until the powers-that-be come up with a plan to accommodate them back to the jurisdiction. And we all know that the prevailing model for urban development is to get rid of poor people. The disaster provides an opportunity to deploy this model in New Orleans on a citywide scale, under the guise of rebuilding the city and its infrastructure. In place of the jobs that have been washed away, there could be alternative employment through a huge, federally funded rebuilding effort. But this is George Bush’s federal government. Does anyone believe that the Bush men would mandate that priority employment go to the pre-flood, mostly Black population of the city. And the Black mayor of New Orleans is a Democrat in name only, a rich businessman, no friend of the poor. What we may see in the coming months is a massive displacement of Black New Orleans, to the four corners of the nation. The question that we must pose, repeatedly and in the strongest terms, is: Through whose vision, and in whose interest, will New Orleans rise again?. For Radio BC, I’m Glen Ford.”
Economy:
Shadow Government StatisticsAlternate Inflation Charts The CPI chart on the home page reflects our estimate of inflation for today as if it were calculated the same way it was in 1990. The CPI on the Alternate Data Series tab here reflects the CPI as if it were calculated using the methodologies in place in 1980. In general terms, methodological shifts in government reporting have depressed reported inflation, moving the concept of the CPI away from being a measure of the cost of living needed to maintain a constant standard of living
Shadow Government Statistics General Headlines:
- Pandemic-driven U.S. Economic Collapse continues to harden in a protracted “L”-shaped non-Recovery with a potential renewed Downturn
- Key Economic Series show not only that the Pandemic-driven Economic Collapse has been worse than headlined, but also that the still-unfolding Recovery has been much weaker than indicated.
- Severe Systemic structural damage from the Shutdown is forestalling meaningful Economic Rebound into 2023 or beyond, irrespective of Coronavirus vaccinations.
- Unlimited Federal Reserve Money Creation and Federal Government Deficit Spending likely will continue to accelerate domestic Inflation, despite headline FOMC “Tapering.”
- With fundamental U.S. Dollar debasement intensifying, holding physical Gold and Silver protects the purchasing power of One’s assets, irrespective of any near-term Central Bank or other machinations to the contrar
Activist Group Reports that Fed Chair Powell Traded During FOMC Restricted Periods: We Fact-Checked It and It’s True An anonymous activist group called Occupy the Fed reported in a Substack article on Sunday that Fed Chair Jerome Powell traded on the final day of a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on April 29, 2015, when he was a Fed Governor, and also on the final day of an FOMC meeting on December 11, 2019, when he was Fed Chair. Powell’s trading directly violates the Fed’s written policy which prohibits trading “during the period that begins at the start of the second Saturday (midnight) Eastern Time before the beginning of each FOMC meeting and ends at midnight Eastern Time on the last day of the meeting.” The FOMC meetings are typically when the most sensitive and market-moving information occurs at the Fed, including votes on hiking or lowering interest rates and other confidential actions.
World:
Ukraine: Some Observations on the National Question And Russian Intervention This document was written in December 2014 in the aftermath of the Euromaidan movement in Ukraine, the uprisings in Donetsk and Luhansk, and the Russian annexation of Crimea. At that time, the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) had been involved in launching the Solidarity with Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine (SARU) campaign. Meanwhile, several so-called Marxist organisations had capitulated to reactionary Ukrainian nationalism. As such, it was important to go back and provide some background to the historical development of the national question in Ukraine.
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!
Big Pharma Doesn’t Want the Covid Pandemic to End!: Documents Expose Pharma Effort to Kill Africa’s Covid Vaccine Project “To push for the termination of this lifesaving project in order to protect the interests of pharmaceutical companies is shameful,” said one advocate. Documents published Wednesday by a prominent medical journal reveal that a foundation representing the German company BioNTech—Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine partner—has been working behind the scenes to undercut African scientists’ burgeoning effort to produce an mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine.