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Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines are Free For the Whole World
Image of the Day:
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:
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others. — Frederick Douglass, “If There is No Struggle, There is No Progress”
Videos of the Day:
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!
US Is Effectively Stealing Billions From a Nation Ravaged by a US-Initiated War Biden acknowledges that Afghanistan is in crisis, but U.S. policies are making the situation worse. President Joe Biden recently declared a national emergency in the name of addressing the dual threats of the massive humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan, as well as “the potential for a deepening economic collapse in Afghanistan.” He was right to do so. In sharp contrast, his decision to unilaterally assert the U.S.’s authority to redistribute $7.1 billion of Afghanistan’s frozen funds as it sees fit was dead wrong. In declaring the national emergency, the president laid out his administration’s vision for Afghanistan’s funds should U.S. courts voice their approval: that half be made available, pending litigation, to the families of 9/11 victims who have claims against the Taliban for its role in harboring al-Qaeda. The remaining $3.5 billion would go towards humanitarian efforts.
Child Poverty Increased by 41 Percent After Monthly Tax Credits Expired! More than one in six children now live in poverty, versus one in eight children in December. from conservative Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (West Virginia) has resulted in a massive increase in the childhood poverty rate throughout the U.S.
Lessons from January 6th: an Inside Job Over a year after the harum-scarum storming of the U.S. Capitol, there is ample evidence that it was an inside job. Not only was the security detail intentionally minimized to the extreme, but decisions were made at the highest levels of the chain of command to allow a right-wing mob to rampage through the building. At the forefront of this antidemocratic horde, as we shall see, there were fascist or semi-fascist organizations whose leadership has multiple direct ties to the military and intelligence agencies. All of this raises fundamental questions regarding the true nature of the U.S. government and its relationship to fascism. Unfortunately, two false narratives concerning January 6th dominate the corporate media. On the one hand, the Democratic Party and its press allies have run a mawkish faith-in-government campaign, presenting themselves as the last great guardians of ‘our sacred democracy,’ while refusing to aggressively combat the fascist threat and back-peddling on all of Biden’s more progressive campaign promises. On the other hand, the Trump camp and its media have concocted a self-serving narrative according to which the storming of the Capitol was a false flag operation that lured ‘patriots’ into a trap, leading to the prosecution of innocent, freedom-loving MAGAs in the ‘second war on terror.’ Through an incredible act of ideological transubstantiation, which is unfortunately a common feature of white supremacy, the rioting antidemocratic mob is thereby transformed into victims rather than perpetrators of violence.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
Anothers Cartastophe Ready to Happen! US Reactors Dangerously Operating Using Counterfeit Parts The lead paragraph from Reuters was originally correct: “Most, if not all, U.S. nuclear power plants contain counterfeit or fraudulent parts, potentially increasing the risk of a safety failure…”. This hair-raising news is just one of the shocking findings in a set of seven reports released February 10 by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Office of Inspector General (OIG), now headed by Robert J. Feitel. Among the findings of the first of the seven reports were: 1. “Counterfeit, fraudulent, and suspect items (CFSI) are present in operating plants”; 2. “The extent of CFSI in operating plants is unknown because the NRC does not usually require licensees to track CFSI” … “if done at all, tracking is voluntary and methods and data quality vary among licensees”; 3. The questionable “termination of [some] rulemaking in 2016 that addressed CFSI oversight concerns”; and 4. “Department of Energy staff identified more than 100 incidents involving CFSI in FY 2021 alone, including 5 incidents involving safety-significant components.”
Dangerously Awash in Chemicals Man-made chemicals have exceeded the limits of safety for the planet. This statement comes from the first-ever major scientific warning based upon a study of the dangers posed by the flood of chemicals across the globe as three hundred fifty thousand (350,000) chemicals slosh throughout the planet. “We have overwhelming evidence of negative impacts on Earth systems, including biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles,” according to Bethanie Carney Almroth, University of Gothenburg. (Source: Marc Préel, Plastic, Chemical Pollution beyond Planet’s Safe Limit: Study, Phys.org, February 15, 2022, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University)
Civil Rights/BlackLiberation
Labor:
Shadow Government Statistics: Payroll Employment and Unemployment January 2022 U.3 Unemployment notched higher to 4.0% (3.98%) from 3.9% (3.89%) in December 2021, while headline Payroll Employment numbers gyrated wildly in their annual benchmarking, savaged by massive Pandemic distortions and disruptions, which continue to intensify (Bureau of Labor Statistics – BLS). Despite some extreme annual benchmark revisions to Payrolls, January 2022 Payroll Employment held shy by 1.9% (-1.9%) of ever recovering its February 2020 Pre-Pandemic Peak. Under intensifying Pandemic disruption and distortions, the annual Payroll Employment benchmarking was extraordinarily volatile, with seasonally adjusted aggregate Payrolls revising massively lower in 2020 and 2021, for the June to November periods, and with intervening upside revisions from January through May 2021. That said, the headline level of January 2022 Payroll Employment remained shy by 1.89% (-1.89%) of ever recovering its Pre-Pandemic Peak. Discussed in the BUSINESS CYCLE Section, such remains shy of the Payroll growth troughs seen in several historical recessions; how can the U.S. economy (i.e. GDP) be recovered? PLEASE NOTE: Graphs and extended analysis of the benchmark-revised Payroll Employment detail, both pre- and post-Pandemic, follow in the pending Commentary. Separately, after 23 months of Pandemic surveying the BLS still cannot render a meaningful Pandemic Unemployment Rate, given likely ongoing, but no longer reported misclassification of some “unemployed” persons as “employed,” while being unable to include in the Household Survey people who are unemployed due to the Pandemic, but who do not meet “definitional standards” to be counted as unemployed. Per the BLS January 2022 Report: “In January, 6.0 million persons reported that they had been ‘unable to work because their employer closed or lost business due to the pandemic’ -— that is, they did not work at all or worked fewer hours at some point in the 4 weeks preceding the survey due to the pandemic. This measure is considerably higher than the level of 3.1 million in December…” The BLS added: “Among those not in the Labor Force in January, 1.8 million persons were ‘prevented from looking for work due to the pandemic,’ up from 1.1 million in the prior month. (To be counted as unemployed, by definition, individuals must be actively looking for work or on temporary layoff.)” The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the seasonally adjusted headline U.3 unemployment rate at 4.0% (3.98%) in January 2020, up from 3.9% (3.89%) in December 2021, but down from 4.2% (4.20%) in November. The headline broader U.6 unemployment rate was 7.1% (7.12%) in January 2020, down from 7.3% (7.25%) in December 2021, and from 7.7% (7.74%) in November. Effective with the January 2022 reporting, the BLS no longer formally estimates the count of the understated unemployed in its monthly survey. The ShadowStats Ongoing Alternate Unemployment Estimate for January 2022 reflected a continuing migration of short-term discouraged workers in U.6 to the netherworld of the long-term discouraged workers (those no longer counted by the BLS, subsequent to the allotted one year of permissible discouragement). Including those long-term discouraged/ displaced workers, on top of U.3 and U.6, the January 2022 ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment Rate held at 24.5%, against 24.5% in December, down from 24.7% in November and 25.0% in October. The latest Unemployment Rates are posted and graphed on the ALTERNATE DATA Tab (above). January 2022 ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment held at 24.5%
Economy:
Banks Sink – Throwing More Cold Water on All That Talk that Megabanks Are a Great Investment There are apparently stock-picking analysts across Wall Street pumping out buy recommendations on stocks to the public who have never cast their eyes on those chilling derivative charts published quarterly by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. If the analysts had cast their eyes on those charts, the last thing they would be recommending right now are megabank stocks. We’re talking specifically about JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, which, together, control approximately 90 percent of the hundreds of trillions of dollars (notional/face amount) in derivatives held by all 4,900 banks and bank holding companies in the U.S.We’re also talking about the foreign banks that are significant derivative counterparties to these and other banks — such as Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Nomura and Barclays.
World:
The Awakening of the Turkish Working Class The workers of Turkey are beginning to make the ruling class tremble. A strike wave is rapidly spreading across the country. Beginning among some of the most precariously employed workers, it has spread from factory to factory. From 6 January to 14 February, there have been 65 strikes across Turkey, with new strikes erupting every day. As the strike wave has progressed, it has threatened to draw in the heavy battalions of the working class, and has already brought in workers from Erdoğan’s own heartland. A severe economic crisis is gripping the whole country, and the ruling class is attempting to make the workers pay for it. They have been left with no choice but to fight back.
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!
Yesterday on the US Covid Battlefield 2, 184people died!: Official New Covid Policy: Pretend It Isn’t Happening America, we are told, is done with covid. Who tells us? Businessmen, the politicians they purchase, economists, pundits, pollsters and know-it-alls of every stripe. People want to “get back to normal,” these experts say. They want to “live with the virus.” Unfortunately, the virus doesn’t want to live with them. It wants to kill them. But no matter. Corporate media blares the message of its masters: get back to work – preferably for low pay; go out and spend money on those products whose prices companies just jacked up, masked or maskless, who cares? And if you contract the virus, kindly don’t make a fuss about our dysfunctional health care non-system. It’s there to turn a profit, you see, and this business of healing people, well, that’s not what the insurance companies signed on for. So if you get really sick, please, don’t bother anyone, especially all those people “living with the virus,” just die quietly at home.
The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back Again and again, private interests have strip public goods of their power to lift people up, diminishing democracy, furthering inequality, and separating us from each other. Cohen and Milaelian link a broad spectrum of issues and raise important questions about who controls the public things we all rely on. They expose the hidden crisis of privatization and propose a road map for taking our world back. As people reach for social justice and better lives, they create public goods—free education, public health, open parks, clean water, and many others—that must be kept out of the market. When private interests take over, they strip public goods of their power to lift people up, creating instead a tool to diminish democracy, further inequality, and separate us from each other. The Privatization of Everything, by the founder of In the Public Interest, an organization dedicated to shared prosperity and the common good, chronicles the efforts to turn our public goods into private profit centers. Ever since Ronald Reagan labeled government a dangerous threat, privatization has touched every aspect of our lives, from water and trash collection to the justice system and the military.
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!