Daily News Digest March 2, 2022
Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines, Like the Salk Polio Vaccine, are Free For the Whole World
Image of the Day:
When you are told that a radioactive substance is a small percentage of ‘Natural Background Radiation,’ remember that, before WWII, ‘Natural Background Radiation’ was close to zero. (See the Below Graph)
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:
From” There Are No ‘Safe Radiation’ Levels!: Since the Dawning of the Atomic Age to 1970, ‘Natural Background Radiation’ had Increased Over 600%!: And when you think of the nuclear testing that has been done, since 1970, Gernoble, Fukushima, and of today’s wars and the use of depleted Uranium it has kept increasing. For example, this quote From, The Queen’s Death Star Depleted Uranium Measured in British Atmosphere from Battlefields in the Middle East, shows how depleted uranium spread worldwide after the “Shock & Awe” bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq: “ The Sunday Times Online, February 19, 2006, reported on a shocking scientific study authored by British scientists Dr. Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan: “Did the use of Uranium weapons in Gulf War 2 result in contamination of Europe? Evidence from the measurements of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Aldermaston, Berkshire, UK”. The highest levels of depleted uranium ever measured in the atmosphere in Britain, were transported on air currents from the Middle East and Central Asia; of special significance were those from the Tora Bora bombing in Afghanistan in 2001, and the “Shock & Awe” bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq in 2003. Out of concern for the public, the official British government air monitoring facility, known as the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), at Aldermaston was established years ago, to measure radioactive emissions from British nuclear power plants and atomic weapons facilities.”
Videos of the Day:
Critics Denounce Racist Double Standard of Western Media’s Ukraine Coverage
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!
America Defeats Germany for the Third Time in a Century My old boss Herman Kahn, with whom I worked at the Hudson Institute in the 1970s, had a set speech that he would give at public meetings. He said that back in high school in Los Angeles, his teachers would say what most liberals were saying in the 1940s and 50s: “Wars never solved anything.” It was as if they never changed anything – and therefore shouldn’t be fought. Herman disagreed, and made lists of all sorts of things that wars had solved in world history, or at least changed. He was right, and of course that is the aim of both sides in today’s New Cold War confrontation in Ukraine. The question to ask is what today’s New Cold War is trying to change or “solve.” To answer this question, it helps to ask who initiates the war. There always are two sides – the attacker and the attacked. The attacker intends certain consequences, and the attacked looks for unintended consequences of which they can take advantage. In this case, both sides have their dueling sets of intended consequences and special interests.
“Low-Yield” Nuclear Weapons Could Pose Greater Threat of Nuclear War Investment in low-yield nuclear weapons is a terrifying shift toward making actual use of the weapons more imaginable. Each year on March 1, Marshallese around the world mark Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day to commemorate all who have suffered and seek justice following 67 U.S. nuclear weapons tests at Bikini and Enewetak Atolls in the Marshall Islands (1946-58). On that day in 1954, the U.S. conducted its largest ever nuclear detonation, the Castle Bravo test, a 15-megaton thermonuclear bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The Bravo shot caused widespread suffering in the Marshall Islands and spread radioactive fallout around the world. Sixty-eight years later, the United States and eight other nations continue to spend extraordinary sums — over $72 billion total in 2020 — on maintaining, expanding and modernizing their nuclear arsenals. While the overall number of nuclear weapons has been reduced dramatically from a Cold War peak of more than 70,000, today the U.S. and Russia possess 90 percent of the approximately 12,700 remaining nuclear weapons.
Poll Shows Majority of US Voters Blame Corporate Profiteering for Inflation New polling results published Monday show that a majority of U.S. voters see corporate profiteering as a key driver of inflation and support a federal crackdown on companies that are “unfairly” pushing costs onto consumers. Conducted by Data for Progress and released by the Groundwork Collaborative, the survey found that 63% of U.S. voters—including 51% of Republicans, 76% of Democrats, and 62% of Independents—believe that “large corporations are taking advantage of the pandemic to raise prices unfairly on consumers and increase profits.”
A Return to Laissez-Faire Capitalism? Health and Safety Regulations are Law, the Surpreme Court has No Right to Decide!: SCOTUS Hears ‘Dangerous Attack’ on EPA Power to Curb Climate Pollution “It was grotesque to hear Big Coal’s lawyers argue for tying EPA’s hands,” said one critic, “even as the world’s scientists warn of a bigger, worsening swath of human suffering.” As global scientists on Monday reiterated the necessity of bold climate action, lawyers for coal companies and Republican-led states tried to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to strip the Biden administration of its authority to regulate planet-heating pollution from power plants.
So This Is What It Looks Like When the Corporate Media Opposes a War Major American media outlets oppose military aggression… unless the United States is doing it. While covering Russia’s horrific aggression in Ukraine, there is a real focus—as there always should be—on civilian victims of war. Today, the focus on that essential aspect of the Russian invasion is prominent and continuous—from civilian deaths to the trauma felt by civilians as missiles strike nearby. Unfortunately, there was virtually no focus on civilian death and agony when it was the U.S. military launching the invasions. After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 on false pretenses—made possible by U.S. mainstream media complicity that I witnessed firsthand—civilian deaths were largely ignored and undercounted through the years.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
Breaking: 3.3 Billion People ‘Highly Vulnerable’, 1.5°C Still Brings ‘Unavoidable’ Hazard, as Brief Window for Climate Action Rapidly Closes Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would still cause “unavoidable increases in multiple climate hazards” for the 3.3 to 3.6 billion people whose living conditions make them vulnerable to those impacts, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, in an exhaustive overview of the latest science on climate impacts and adaptation strategies released today. Across the thousands of studies that went into the IPCC Summary for Policymakers (SPM) published this morning, “the cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal,” the Geneva-based UN agency concludes. “Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health,” and any further delay in drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.” Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would still cause “unavoidable increases in multiple climate hazards” for the 3.3 to 3.6 billion people whose living conditions make them vulnerable to those impacts, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, in an exhaustive overview of the latest science on climate impacts and adaptation strategies released today. The Energy Mix will be out tomorrow with a special report on the full IPCC release. Click here to subscribe. Across the thousands of studies that went into the IPCC Summary for Policymakers (SPM) published this morning, “the cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal,” the Geneva-based UN agency concludes. “Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health,” and any further delay in drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”
IPCC Impact Report: Scientists Issue ‘Dire Warning’ On Climate Human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world, despite efforts to reduce the risks. People and ecosystems least able to cope are being hardest hit, said scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released today.
Civil Rights/BlackLiberation:
But we must see that the struggle today is much more difficult. It’s more difficult today because we are struggling now for genuine equality. And it’s much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee a livable income and a good solid job. It’s much easier to guarantee the right to vote than it is to guarantee the right to live in sanitary, decent housing conditions. It is much easier to integrate a public park than it is to make genuine, quality, integrated education a reality. And so today we are struggling for something which says we demand genuine equality. . . . And I finally said to him that it’s a nice thing to say to people that you ought to lift yourself by your own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. And the fact is that millions of Negroes, as a result of centuries of denial and neglect, have been left bootless. And they find themselves impoverished aliens in this affluent society. And there is a great deal that the society can and must do if the Negro is to gain the economic security that he needs. Now one of the answers, it seems to me, is a guaranteed annual income, a guaranteed minimum income for all people and for all families of our country. It seems to me that the Civil Rights Movement must now begin to organize for the guaranteed annual income. Begin to organize people all over our country and mobilize forces so that we can bring to the attention of our nation this need, and this something which I believe will go a long, long way toward dealing with the Negro’s economic problem and the economic problem which many other poor people confront in our nation. — MlK: The Other America Speech
Labor:
The Majority of Workers Do Not Earn a ‘Livable Income’!: Gig Greed – Racing to Lower the Floor I used to think that ‘gig’ referred to gigabytes, and gig workers were mostly app-based drivers and food deliverers. Not so! A ‘gig’ is any job that lasts a specific period of time. Gig work includes contract or project-based work, freelance work, and temporary work. Also called a ‘side-hustle,’ gig jobs are now the only option for increasing numbers of workers. A ‘gig economy’ is one where temporary or contract jobs are more common than full-time, permanent jobs. According to one survey, the gig workforce is growing three times faster than the traditional salaried workforce, and is set to overtake it in the next five years. Currently, 36 percent of US workers do contract work, with one in ten doing app-based gig work, and federal agencies employ 2.6 times more contract employees than salaried ones. In Canada, more than one in three businesses employ gig workers. Gig workers can be found in every sector of the economy, including resource extraction, agriculture, construction, manufacture, transportation, education, and health-care. Employers promote the flexibility of gig work and brag that professionals prefer it for that reason. Most workers do not have that choice. The cost of basic necessities such as food, accommodation, and transportation are not flexible; they are fixed and rising, so workers’ wages must also be fixed and rising. Gig workers typically earn 58 percent less than full-time employees, and are more likely to be immigrant, racialized, and vulnerable to employer wage-theft (not being paid for their work).
Economy:
Russia: From Sanctions to Slump? The economic war between the US-led NATO group and Russia is hotting up alongside the real war in Ukraine itself. In response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the US and Europe have upped the ante in imposing economic sanctions. The first of these was the suspension of any dealings with several leading Russian banks, including the two largest, Sberbank and VTB. However, it was significant that the sanctions excluded Gazprombank, the major Russian lender to energy export companies. Clearly, the West does not want to disrupt oil and gas exports through sanctions, when Germany alone relies on 40% of its energy from Russian imports. As a result, the NATO sanctions package has substantial exceptions. Most notably, while it sanctions major Russian financial institutions, it exempts certain transactions with those institutions related to energy and agricultural commodities, which account for nearly two-thirds of total exports. Significantly, Italy successfully lobbied to exempt the sale of Italian Gucci bags to Russia’s rich from the export ban!
World:
The Ukrainian War: An Internationalist Class Position – IMT Statement The first casualty of war is truth. This is also the case of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Marxists need to be able to cut through the fog of lies and war propaganda and analyse the real reasons behind the conflict; what has caused it; and the real interests that lie behind the excuses and justifications of the different parties involved. Above all, we must do so from the point of view of the interests of the world working class. While we oppose Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, we do so for our own reasons, which we will explain here, and which have nothing to do with the scandalous hue and cry of the prostitute media. It should go without saying that our first duty is to expose the disgusting lies and the hypocrisy of the US and western imperialism. They loudly denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the grounds that it violates “national sovereignty” and “international law”. These statements reek of hypocrisy. US imperialism and its European lackeys are precisely the ones with a long and bloody history of violating national sovereignty and so-called international law.
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!
Ku Klux Climate: Coal, Petro-Palingenesis, and the Historical Materialism of Fossil Fascism We live in a dangerous time when a far-right more powerful than at any time since 1945 is doing all it can to accelerate the capitalist project to turn our planet into a giant Greenhouse Gas chamber. The last United States president, the “instinctive fascist” Donald Trump, believed that anthropogenic (really capitalogenic) global warming was a hoax and did everything he could to end limits on fossil fuel production. Brazil’s current president, the demented pandemo-fascist Jar Bosonaro, has sadistically opened up the Amazon – the lungs of the planet – to enrich agro-industrial profiteers. Climate-denialist far-right parties have marched into key energy and climate-related offices in Europe, from Sweden and Norway to Spain, Poland, and Hungary. As the world tips into climate catastrophe, anti-immigrant parties who promote the unchecked extraction and burning of fossil fuels are surging in the name of white supremacy and national regeneration. Even while climate crisis begins to collapse civilization before our very eyes, right-wing forces have surfaced absurdly and dangerously claiming to possess the purported real solutions to the supposed real problems: closing European and US borders to “save the nation(s)” from nonwhite immigrants and clearing out Indigenous tribes from rural Brazil.