Daily News Digest March 17, 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:
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:
‘Keep Your Eye on the Prize’: An Ecosociast World!
Videos of the Day:
Wall Street’s Sleazy Profiteering Off Of Ukraine War – Even Infuriates NBC Host
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!
From The New Cold War Is Here to Stay, Until It Isn’t”: At the New York Times, Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin have been described as “children of the [old] Cold War” now involved in a “face off,” an “eyeball to eyeball” confrontation harkening back to John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev contesting Berlin and Cuba in “dramatic fashion” 60 years ago. (Never mind that the “drama” over Cuba nearly led to nuclear war and the possible end of most life on Earth.) Such breathless accounts make me think of the role Slim Pickens played as Major Kong in Stanley Kubrick’s famed film Dr. Strangelove, giddy with resolve, even relief of a kind, now that he and his B-52 crew are finally headed for nuclear combat with the Russkies. Whatever else one might say of the crisis in Ukraine, the new cold war dreamscape that Washington think tanks and the Pentagon helped promulgate over the last decade against Russia or China or both is here to stay. Consider that a calamity in its own right. The end of America’s failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the disastrous results of America’s Global War on Terror launched amid a barrage of lies and self-praise, might indeed have left an opening, however slight, for a shift away from colossal military budgets and creeping militarization. At the New York Times, Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin have been described as “children of the [old] Cold War” now involved in a “face off,” an “eyeball to eyeball” confrontation harkening back to John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev contesting Berlin and Cuba in “dramatic fashion” 60 years ago. (Never mind that the “drama” over Cuba nearly led to nuclear war and the possible end of most life on Earth.) Such breathless accounts make me think of the role Slim Pickens played as Major Kong in Stanley Kubrick’s famed film Dr. Strangelove, giddy with resolve, even relief of a kind, now that he and his B-52 crew are finally headed for nuclear combat with the Russkies. Whatever else one might say of the crisis in Ukraine, the new cold war dreamscape that Washington think tanks and the Pentagon helped promulgate over the last decade against Russia or China or both is here to stay. Consider that a calamity in its own right. The end of America’s failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the disastrous results of America’s Global War on Terror launched amid a barrage of lies and self-praise, might indeed have left an opening, however slight, for a shift away from colossal military budgets and creeping militarization.
Pax Americana Robber Baron Government: US Demoacacry is Rigged for the Opulent 1% Minority!: Democratic Shame: Supreme Court Wrong on Corruption With trust in government at an all-time low, it is time for leaders to enact real reforms to bring transparency and accountability to election spending. Stanley Greenberg recently described the current crisis of government legitimacy. He wrote that “the nexus of money and power, greased by special interest lobbyists and large campaign donations” means that “the game is rigged” and “the wealthy and big industries get policies that reinforce their advantage.” He quotes voters who say “we don’t have a representative government anymore.” Considering the federal government’s recent performance, and with Congress’s disapproval rating at an all time high of 82 percent, it’s a legitimate critique.
Let’s Just Say It Very Clearly: The US Supreme Court Is Corrupt!! Public outrage is building: the Court’s approval rating is now around 40%—Congress needs to act, before an entire branch of government sinks into an irredeemable Trump-fueled muck of corruption. So now, as expected after decades of taking big bucks for her rightwing work on behalf of America’s oligarchs, we learn that the wife of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Ginny Thomas, was in Trump’s January 6th “rally” up to her eyeballs. Let’s just say it right out loud: the US Supreme Court is corrupt. And Americans know it. No other federal court in the nation would allow a defendant in a case before them to fly a judge on a private Gulfstream luxury jet to a luxury hunting retreat in Louisiana and then, a week later, watch as that judge rules in that defendant’s favor.
Now is the Time to Apply the Windfall Taxes Act:Biggest Oil Giants Made ‘Eye-Popping’ $205 Billion in Profits in 2021: Report Now, fossil fuel giants are trying to “cash in on inflation and the crisis in Ukraine,” said one critic. While millions of working people have been hurt by surging gas prices, a new analysis out Tuesday shows that 25 of the world’s biggest fossil fuel corporations collectively pulled in an “eye-popping” $205 billion in profits last year—and Big Oil is exploiting Russia’s war on Ukraine to charge even more at the pump in 2022 and advance its financial interests.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
Now is the Time to Enforce Windfall Taxation Act Aginest Big Oils’ War Profiteers!!: Biggest Oil Giants Made ‘Eye-Popping’ $205 Billion in Profits in 2021: Report Now, fossil fuel giants are trying to “cash in on inflation and the crisis in Ukraine,” said one critic. While millions of working people have been hurt by surging gas prices, a new analysis out Tuesday shows that 25 of the world’s biggest fossil fuel corporations collectively pulled in an “eye-popping” $205 billion in profits last year—and Big Oil is exploiting Russia’s war on Ukraine to charge even more at the pump in 2022 and advance its financial interests. (While we are at it, Big Pharma’d Pandemic Profiteer should Also Be Taxed)
Civil Right/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Economy:
Michael Roberts Blog With food prices globally at a record high, the World Bank shows the share of income spent on food in regions of the world – people in the ‘Global South’ are being hit hardest.
FRED: Federal Debt Held by Federal Reserve Banks as Percent of Gross Domestic Product (HBFRGDQ188S)FRED: GDPNow
Federal Debt Held by Federal Reserve Banks as Percent of Gross Domestic Product (HBFRGDQ188S) 
Joint Russia-China Statement Articulates United Opposition to Western Alliance Today’s joint statement is a historic articulation of the major shift underway from the unipolar world that has existed since the fall of the Soviet Union. Robert Scheer has been studying, visiting, analyzing and reporting on Russia and China for six decades, including deep dives into the two countries’ complex, fraught history as neighboring powers with an often parallel history of peasant revolt, ascendent commun
The Fog of War Is Providing a Smoke Screen for Trading Losses at a Dangerously Unreformed Wall Street Nike can’t seem to take its own advice and “just do it.” On March 3 Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported that Nike was temporarily closing its more than 100 stores in Russia. The Wall Street Journal carried this statement from Nike: “We are deeply troubled by the devastating crisis in Ukraine and our thoughts are with all those impacted, including our employees, partners and their families in the region.” This sounds like something one might say following an act of nature – like a hurricane or a flood. It doesn’t sound appropriate for a barbaric bombing attack by Russian President Vladimir Putin on hospitals, schools and apartment buildings in Ukraine that had left hundreds of civilians dead at that point. The day after Nike’s statement to the press, we could find no official statement on Nike’s website to indicate that it was closing its stores. What we found instead on its Russian webpage was a listing of more than 100 stores in various cities in Russia. Some carried the notice “Temporarily closed,” but many others indicated that they were open.
World:
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!
The method of testing wastewater to detect virus levels within a whole population has been around since the days of polio, but it took a March 2020 outbreak of COVID-19 in Austria to turn the technique into a mainstay in the pandemic fight. In the U.S., where the last president fled even the idea of mass COVID testing for fear of harming his reelection campaign, wastewater testing has become one of the best and only ways to track viral trends among broad swaths of the population. That’s the good news. The bad news? The numbers are inching up, again. “A wastewater network that monitors for Covid-19 trends is warning that cases are once again rising in many parts of the U.S., according to an analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data,” reports Bloomberg News. “More than a third of the CDC’s wastewater sample sites across the U.S. showed rising Covid-19 trends in the period ending March 1 to March 10, though reported cases have stayed near a recent low.” — US Sewer Data and Surges Abroad Should Remind Us the Pandemic Isn’t Over
Save Lives: Socialize Big Pharma! In April 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) released an annual report, once again warning that little progress has been made in developing new, desperately needed antibiotics. Overlooked by most in the midst of the raging COVID pandemic, the report analyzed 43 antibiotics currently in the development pipeline. It found that precisely none of them address the 13 most dangerous resistant superbugs the WHO has identified, such as carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter bauma-nnii and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (carbapenems are the “last resort” antibiotics). The report also noted that of the 11 antibiotics approved since 2017, only two represent a novel class. The rest were simply derivatives of existing antibiotics—meaning that antimicrobial resistance could come quickly, rendering them less effective. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria is already a huge problem that will only grow exponentially worse without a new, effective class of antibiotics. Hundreds of thousands of people die as a result of antibiotic-resistant infections every year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 2.8 million antibiotic resistant infections occur in the US every year, with more than 35,000 deaths. A 2019 joint report by the UN, WHO, and World Organization for Animal Health stated that drug-resistant diseases could cause 10 million deaths a year by 2050.