Daily News Digest February 25, 2022
Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines are Free For the Whole World
Image of the Day:
The Western and Kremlin Views of the Crisis 
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:
To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come.”The violent infrastructure of this nation is like a noxious vine with destructive results for us all, but few connect this to other rising forms of violence in the U.S. Russian-speaking Ukrainians, under economic blockade by Kyiv for seven years, are fighting for their survival. The “massing” army we seldom hear about are the thirteen Ukrainian army brigades laying siege to Donbas: an estimated 150,000 troops. If they attack, the provocation to Russia will almost certainly mean war. In 2015, brokered by the Germans and French, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France met in Minsk and signed an interim peace deal. Ukraine agreed to offer autonomy to Donbas, now the self declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The Minsk agreement has never been given a chance. In Britain, the line, amplified by Boris Johnson, is that Ukraine is being “dictated to” by world leaders. For its part, Britain is arming Ukraine and training its army. Since the first Cold War, NATO has effectively marched right up to Russia’s most sensitive border having demonstrated its bloody aggression in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and broken solemn promises to pull back. Having dragged European “allies” into American wars that do not concern them, the great unspoken is that NATO itself is the real threat to European security. In Britain, a state and media xenophobia is triggered at the very mention of “Russia”. Mark the knee-jerk hostility with which the BBC reports Russia. Why? Is it because the restoration of imperial mythology demands, above all, a permanent enemy? Certainly, we deserve better. — John Pilger, War In Europe And The Rise of Raw Propaganda
From the Conclusion of Alan Woods’ Essay— Imperialist Hypocrisy and the Invasion of Ukraine: What attitude should we take? The present situation has inevitably been met by an intensified barrage of propaganda in the prostitute media. The aim of this is not at all to promote the interests and well-being of the people of Ukraine. On the contrary, their interests have been cynically sacrificed on the altar of imperialism. It is imperative that we maintain a firm class position and do not allow ourselves to be dragged along by the lying imperialist propaganda machine. Do we support Vladimir Putin and the Russian oligarchy whose interests he backs? No, Putin is no friend of the working class, either in Russia, Ukraine or anywhere else. The invasion of Ukraine is merely a continuation of his own cynical and reactionary agenda. But that is not the question we should ask ourselves at this time. The question is: can we in any shape or form appear to be in the same camp as US and British imperialism? Can we associate ourselves, directly or indirectly with NATO, that reactionary imperialist gang? Or with Boris Johnson and the war-monger Liz Truss, or that Blairite traitor Starmer? It is the task of the Russian working class to deal with Putin. Our fight is against imperialism, NATO and our own reactionary Tory government and those miserable so-called Labour leaders who are its partners in crime. As Lenin always insisted: the main enemy is at home. It is high time we reminded ourselves of that fact.
Black Alliance for Peace Ukraine: What does this have to do with Black people? What can We Do? As we have outlined here, NATO is a white power organization. Once you understand this, you have to start looking at all the messaging around you and decide to not align yourself in support of the U.S./NATO in the affairs of other nations. The U.S. has never gone anywhere else in the world in support of human rights or out of the goodness of its heart. It is always about the domination of resources. As Western countries stick together to attempt to push Russia out of the world economy, it would be wise to consider that this will likely have an effect on the cost of certain goods, like gas and various food products inside of the U.S. Get outside, have conversations with your neighbors and figure out ways that you can support each other in advance. You also need to think about how much money goes toward financing these wars. It’s billions of dollars that you are told every day do not exist in order to ensure everyone has access to healthcare, housing, education, and food. Every day, your tax dollars are being squandered in countries you’ve never been to. This is not by accident. It’s not because the system is “flawed.” This is how capitalism works. Capitalism requires infinite profit growth in order to expand and maintain itself. That is why it is the #1 priority of the U.S. to ensure it keeps its grip around the throat of the rest of the world and its resources. The Lowcountry Action Committee wants you to consider the importance of organization right now. Black people in the U.S. must begin to see ourselves as a nation within a nation. Our interests are not aligned with the white capitalists that enslaved our ancestors and continue to keep our neighborhoods destitute and torn apart. We must begin to organize toward self-determination, meaning, we need to begin working together to build institutions of our own. Institutions that can feed us, house us, educate our children, provide medical care, etc, as we watch the United States crumble and lose its grip on the world. We never signed up for life under capitalism and imperialism, and we have the right to refuse it. We are African people, connected to the rest of the oppressed people of the world, and as Pan-Africanists, we see the value in assisting our siblings on the continent of Africa, which is oppressed by the U.S./NATO, in fighting back against the beast from within. A free and united Africa works to our benefit. Imagine what this kind of power could look like in the context of a unified, socialist Africa that is able to step in and declare the sovereignty of its people and nations inside of its borders and around the world? From Somalia to the Caribbean to Africans in the Americas. We are our own liberators! Instead of joking around and wrapping ourselves in the U.S. flag, we must begin to figure out how to use this moment of tension between the dominating world powers to our benefit.
Videos of the Day:
Ukraine’s Hyper-Nationalist Military Summer Camp for Kids | NBC Left Field In 2014, a group of armed Ukrainian civilians known as the Azov Battalion banded together to fight pro-Russian separatists for control of the country. Three years later, they’ve been absorbed by the National Guard of Ukraine, and when they’re not engaged in the ongoing conflict, they run an annual children’s summer camp featuring pro-Ukrainian campfire songs, rigorous military drills, and a hardline stance on national identity.
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!
Chris Hedges: The Chronicle of a War Foretold After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a near universal understanding among political leaders that NATO expansion would be a foolish provocation against Russia. How naive we were to think the military-industrial complex would allow such sanity to prevail. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a near universal understanding among political leaders that NATO expansion would be a foolish provocation against Russia. How naive we were to think the military-industrial complex would allow such sanity to prevail. . . . Gorbachev reached out to Washington and Europe to build a new security pact that would include Russia. Secretary of State James Baker in the Reagan administration, along with the West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, assured the Soviet leader that if Germany was unified NATO would not be extended beyond the new borders. The commitment not to expand NATO, also made by Great Britain and France, appeared to herald a new global order. We saw the peace dividend dangled before us, the promise that the massive expenditures on weapons that characterized the Cold War would be converted into expenditures on social programs and infrastructures that had long been neglected to feed the insatiable appetite of the military.
The American Political Process is Disconnected From Economic Reality The growing disconnect between the capitalist system and the economic realities plaguing the United States is now nearing completion. On the ground, the accumulated problems of U.S. capitalism undermine its empire and challenge its very future. Meanwhile, the ever-deepening inequalities of wealth and income conjure up images of ancient Egypt’s pharaohs. Three economic crashes opening the new century (2000, 2008, and 2020) have shaken the system; so have the two wars America lost against very poor countries in the Middle East: Afghanistan and Iraq. The worst public health crisis in a century during the COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed how unprepared U.S. capitalism was and is, thereby imposing massive new human and financial costs lasting into the future.
Marjorie Cohn: US Stokes Tensions With Russia by Building Military Base 100 Miles From Border When the base is operational, Russia will be surrounded by NATO missiles in Poland, Romania and the Baltics. On February 21, after Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), he sent troops into those regions to carry out what he called “peacekeeping functions.” This was undertaken in response to actions that Russia characterized as a Ukranian government offensive. During the previous weekend, Ukraine had significantly increased fire against residential sections of DPR and LPR, reportedly launching 1,600 projectiles and killing civilians. Nikolai Pankov, deputy Russian defense minister, said that Ukraine has 60,000 troops prepared to attack DPR and LPR, an intention Ukraine has denied.
Facebook Allows praise of Neo-Nazi Ukrainian Battalion If it Fights Russian Invasion The reversal raises questions about Facebook’s blacklist-based content moderation, which critics say lacks nuance and context. Facebook will temporarily allow its billions of users to praise the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi military unit previously banned from being freely discussed under the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, The Intercept has learned. The policy shift, made this week, is pegged to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and preceding military escalations. The Azov Battalion, which functions as an armed wing of the broader Ukrainian white nationalist Azov movement, began as a volunteer anti-Russia militia before formally joining the Ukrainian National Guard in 2014; the regiment is known for its hardcore right-wing ultranationalism and the neo-Nazi ideology pervasive among its members. Though it has in recent years downplayed its neo-Nazi sympathies, the group’s affinities are not subtle: Azov soldiers march and train wearing uniforms bearing icons of the Third Reich; its leadership has reportedly courted American alt-right and neo-Nazi elements; and in 2010, the battalion’s first commander and a former Ukrainian parliamentarian, Andriy Biletsky, stated that Ukraine’s national purpose was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].” With Russian forces reportedly moving rapidly against targets throughout Ukraine, Facebook’s blunt, list-based approach to moderation puts the company in a bind: What happens when a group you’ve deemed too dangerous to freely discuss is defending its country against a full-scale assault?
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
“Iowa has a Poop Problem.”: Factory Farms Destroy Ecosystems Factory farms are the Grim Reapers of civilization, inhumanely penning up and slaughtering cows, pigs, and chickens by the tens of millions, as well as unintentionally, but effectively, poisoning, maiming and/or killing birds, insects, amphibians, mammals, and crucial life-supporting ecosystems that are key to human life. And, it’s legal. Factory farms have suddenly arisen out of nowhere, e.g., in Iowa “the state’s number of concentrated animal feed operations, known as CAFOs, grew from 722 in 2001 to more than 10,000 in 2017, according to a study on the industry by two retired University of Iowa professors.” (Source: Environmentalists Make Long-Shot Attempt to Ban New Factory Farms, Pew Trust, February 19, 2021). The first sentence of the Pew Trust article reads; “Iowa has a poop problem.”
Civil Rights/BlackLiberation:
Survivors of a Deadly Attack on a Portland Protest Were Victimized Twice: First by the Gunman, Then by the Police Victims of a right-wing gunman’s shooting spree in Portland said it was unprovoked. Why did the police make the attack sound like a shootout? Prosecutors in Portland, Oregon, charged a right-wing gunman with murder on Tuesday, three days after he opened fire on a group of unarmed women who were directing traffic along the route of a protest march against police violence. The gunman, Benjamin Smith, 43, killed a 60-year-old woman and wounded three other women and one man before a volunteer security guard for the protest ended the rampage by shooting the attacker in the hip.When Portland police officers arrived at the scene of the rampage, however, they were skeptical of the testimony from the victims and other witnesses that the attack had been unprovoked, and they arrested the volunteer security guard after he described his role and surrendered his automatic pistol. The next day the Portland Police Bureau outraged survivors of the attack and their allies in the racial justice community by issuing a press release that wrongly stated that the incident had “started with a confrontation between an armed homeowner and armed protesters.” The police also claimed that a lack of cooperation from protesters who witnessed or recorded the shootings meant that “investigators are trying to put this puzzle together without having all the pieces.”
Black Agenda Report
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist New York Bail Reform Fight Black legislators in New York are defending their legislation which reduces the use of cash bail. In so doing they protect the legal and human rights of Black people in that state.
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist Why the Russian Federation Recognized the Independence Movements in the Donbas Recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics is a direct result of U.S. efforts to contain Russian economically and militarily
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor The American Left’s China Exception: The Case of Dave Zirin Anti-China propaganda is often spread by those who call themselves leftists but who are in fact liberal imperialists.
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor H.R. 6600 Would Impose More Harsh and Illegal US Sanctions, this time on Ethiopia and Eritrea House Resolution 6600 , the misnamed Ethiopia Stabilization, Peace, and Democracy Act, has moved from the House Foreign Affairs Committee to the House floor. It would impose harsh sanctions not only on Ethiopia but also on its neighbor and close ally Eritrea. The two countries are working together to defend themselves against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, commonly known as the TPLF.
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence The Hoosier State hero’s baaaaack— saving Amerikkka from the woke left!
Djibo Sobukwe NATO and Africa: A Relationship of Colonial Violence and Structural White Supremacy NATO is the means of continuing colonial aggressions against African countries.
Bryce Greene What You Should Really Know About Ukraine Events in Ukraine have been stoked by US/UK war propaganda. Journalistic standards have been replaced with evidence free narratives meant to get public support for acts of aggression.
Alan MacLeod Documents Reveal US Gov’t Spent $22M Promoting Anti-Russia Narrative in Ukraine and Abroad
Alan MacLeod
Documents Reveal US Gov’t Spent $22M Promoting Anti-Russia Narrative in Ukraine and Abroad The National Endowment for Democracy can claim it is in the business of democracy promotion. In reality, it does anything but that, unless “democracy” is entirely synonymous with elite U.S.
Labor:
Russian Labor Confederation: Workers “on Both Sides” Will Suffer Most From War With Ukraine under attack, a Russian labor confederation boasting an estimated two million members on Friday called for a “cessation of military action” and “renewal of peaceful dialogue” between officials in Moscow and Kyiv, arguing that workers in both countries are the victims of war. “The Confederation of Labor of Russia [KTR], as a part of the international trade union movement, considering its direct responsibilities to the working people of Russia, Ukraine, and the whole world, and recognizing its role in promoting and ensuring peace between peoples, is extremely disturbed at the events now taking place,” the organization consisting of more than 20 unions said in a statement.
No to War With Ukraine! Against Russian Military Intervention! The following is a statement by Russian comrades of the International Marxist Tendency, denouncing the invasion of Ukraine that began in the early hours of today. Against military intervention! Against chauvinism! No war between the peoples, no peace between the classes! Read the original in Russian here. Also, this statement should be read in conjunction with the previous one by our Russian comrades, and the latest analysis by marxist.com editor Alan Woods.
Economy:
The Wealth of Nations Marx’s first sentence in Capital Volume One is: “The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as an “immense accumulation of commodities”, its unit being a single commodity.” (Moore and Aveling translation). So, from the beginning, Marx makes a distinction between wealth in societies and how it appears in the capitalist mode of production. And in Grundrisse, Marx explains what he means by ‘wealth’: “when the limited bourgeois form is stripped away, what is wealth other than the universality of human needs, capacities, pleasures, productive forces etc., created through universal exchange? The full development of human mastery over the forces of nature, those of so-called nature as well as of humanity’s own nature?” (p488). For the pioneer of capitalist economics, Adam Smith, the wealth of nations is to be found in the accumulation of commodities. But for Marx, wealth is more than just a collection of commodities owned by capital and valued in money. That is the form that wealth takes under capitalism. Wealth is the accumulation of products and activities that meets human needs; ie the accumulation of use values. And those use values include natural resources as well as the products of human labour. Under capitalism, the meaning and substance of wealth is restricted to the value of commodities produced for sale and profit, accumulated as capital and measured in money -the universal measure of human labour time involved in commodity production. This meaning of wealth excludes human social needs as well as the impact on wealth from environmental degradation, pollution, exploitation and inequalities. These are not accounted for the capitalist accumulation of private wealth. Because of that, capitalist economies are not only destructive and wasteful; capitalism is unfit for the purpose of delivering real wealth to humanity.
Putin Thought of Everything – Except a Crash of 45 Percent on the Moscow Stock Exchange and Big Russian Companies Losing Half their Market Value Donald Trump may think Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “genius” for his Ukraine strategy, but the shareholders of the largest publicly traded companies in Russia may have a different assessment today. After Putin ordered a wide scale invasion of Ukraine overnight, the Moscow Stock Exchange (MOEX) posted a notice that “it had suspended trading on all its markets until further notice.” The Russian oligarchs must have howled because a subsequent notice indicated it would restore trading at 10:00 a.m. Moscow time.
World:
John Pilger: War In Europe and The Rise og Raw Propaganda On 16 December, the United Nations tabled a resolution that called for “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism”. The only nations to vote against it were the United States and Ukraine. Almost every Russian knows that it was across the plains of Ukraine’s “borderland” that Hitler’s divisions swept from the west in 1941, bolstered by Ukraine’s Nazi cultists and collaborators. The result was more than 20 million Russian dead. Setting aside the manoeuvres and cynicism of geopolitics, whomever the players, this historical memory is the driving force behind Russia’s respect-seeking, self-protective security proposals, which were published in Moscow in the week the UN voted 130-2 to outlaw Nazism. They are: On 16 December, the United Nations tabled a resolution that called for “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism”. The only nations to vote against it were the United States and Ukraine. Almost every Russian knows that it was across the plains of Ukraine’s “borderland” that Hitler’s divisions swept from the west in 1941, bolstered by Ukraine’s Nazi cultists and collaborators. The result was more than 20 million Russian dead. Setting aside the manoeuvres and cynicism of geopolitics, whomever the players, this historical memory is the driving force behind Russia’s respect-seeking, self-protective security proposals, which were published in Moscow in the week the UN voted 130-2 to outlaw Nazism. They are:
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NATO guarantees that it will not deploy missiles in nations bordering Russia. (They are already in place from Slovenia to Romania, with Poland to follow)
- NATO to stop military and naval exercises in nations and seas bordering Russia.
- Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.the West and Russia to sign a binding East-West security pact.
- The landmark treaty between the US and Russia covering intermediate-range nuclear weapons to be restored. (The US abandoned it in 2019)
Puerto Rican Unionists Protest Austerity, Look at US Responsibility In Puerto Rico on February 18, thousands of publicly employed union workers, retired workers, and university students took part in a national strike and march that spread throughout the island. The largest concentration filled streets in San Juan. Demonstrators made noise and marched behind a long banner saying “People before Debt” “Salary Justice,” Dignified Retirement, “Collective Bargaining,” and “No Privatization.” Their demands grew out of actions of the U.S. government’s Financial Control Board (FCB) which was created under the authority of the U.S. Congress’s PROMESA Act of 2016. The island’s government was bankrupt at the time and the FCB was charged with negotiating with creditors and implementing austerity in Puerto Rico.
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!
‘Band-Aid on a Tumor’: Critics Blast Biden Rebrand of Trump’s Medicare Privatization Scheme “Changing t he name doesn’t change the fact that the Direct Contracting program is backdoor privatization of Medicare,” said one progressive advocate. Rejecting pressure to terminate the program in its entirety, the Biden administration on Thursday announced it is redesigning a Trump-era experiment that physicians and progressive lawmakers have criticized as a scheme to fully privatize Medicare.