Daily News Digest March 28, 2022
Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines, Like the Salk Polio Vaccine, are Free For the Whole World
Images of the Day:
Latuff: The Usual Double Standard!
Ecocide: Kill the Corporation Before It Kills Us
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:
And now for the critique. The book points to a significant ontological crack in our social sciences, where nature has been ‘othered’ and treated as an unlimited resource to be used and dumped upon; only now do we learn about its limitations and experience its revenge. Like the fiction we call money, the social construction of the corporation and its subsequent devastation of society and nature also point to a deep cultural flaw in modernity – the focus on materialism, individualism and endless pursuit of sensual desires and personal ‘happiness’ — Book Review: Ecocide: Kill the Corporation Before it Kills Us. David
Videos of the Day:
TK Mashup: the Media Campaign to Protect Joe Biden Passes the Point of Absurdity A development in the infamous laptop story further proves the “Russian Disinformation” tale was itself disinformation, shaming a herd of craven media stenographers.
Former Secretary Of State Madeleine Albright Said Sanctions Against Iraq That Killed 500,000 Kids Was “Worth It.” I watched the interview and thought she’d find a way not to answer, obfuscate, blame Saddam, or change the subject. Nope. She went all in. Killing kids was ok with her.
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!
Interview: The Blowback from Sanctions on Russia
Michael Hudson Well, one is to serve very much like a protective tariff on the sanctioned country. For instance, when America made sanctions on European trade with Russia, Lithuania dutifully stopped exporting cheese to Russia. Well, the result is that Russia set up its own cheese’s sector, and now it’s self-sufficient in cheese. If you sanction a country, you force it to become more self-reliant and across the board, from agriculture to dairy products to technology, Russia is forced to become more self-reliant and at the same time to depend much more on trade with China for the things that it is still not self-reliant in. So America is bringing about exactly the opposite of what it intended. It’s hopeless to somehow isolate Russia and then be able to go after China without Russia. And instead, what it’s doing is integrating the Eurasian core, Russia and China, exactly the policy that Henry Kissinger warned against going all the way back to Mackinder a century ago that said, Eurasia is the world island, Russia and China could be the whole world centre. That’s what the fight is all about. Well, American sanctions are driving Russia and China together, and America has gone to China and said, Please don’t support Russia. It most recently, on Monday, March 14, Jake Sullivan came out and told China, we will sanction countries that break our sanctions against Russia. And basically, China said, fine. You know, we’ll just break off all the trade between East and West now and the East, Eurasia is pretty much self-sufficient. The West is not self-sufficient since it began to industrialise, and it’s heavily dependent on Russia for not only oil and gas, but palladium and many raw materials. So the sanctions are ending up driving a wedge between the European countries
If ‘BiPartisan” Biden had the Will and Diseire he Could Cut Drug Costs! Biden Executive Order Could Finally Lower Drug Prices A mostly overlooked provision in President Biden’s executive order on economic competition breathes new life into a powerful tool to lower the cost of individual prescription drugs. If it follows through, the Biden administration would be the first to commandeer patents of excessively priced drugs, ensuring they are offered to patients at an affordable price.
‘Ukrainian Blood on Their Hands’: Analysis Details How Big Oil Funded Putin’s War Chest “Fossil fuels are the currency of despots, dictators, and warmongers. Our global reliance on oil and gas is not only killing our planet but also making the world a less safe and equal place.”
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!
Book Review: Ecocide: Kill the Corporation Before it Kills Us. David Whyte. Multinational corporations are newly created ‘countries’ of the world, with turnover higher than the Gross National Product (GNP) of many countries put together – examples being Google, Facebook, Shell or Monsanto. Unlike countries, however, their responsibility and accountability to society are weak at best, and virtually non-existent when it comes to nature – our Planet Earth. Ecocide, a new book by David Whyte, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Liverpool, argues that corporations are a critical yet neglected cause of our global environmental crisis. The problems they create are wired into their DNA of shareholder primacy and profit or wealth maximisation – a phenomenon now acknowledged widely as financialisation. Furthermore, the corporate veil of limited liability and responsibility, and their concentration of political and structural power, enables corporations to shop between jurisdictions, playing a game of tax, offshore secrecy and regulatory arbitrage to evade environmental responsibility
There is No Future Under Capitalism! — Profits Come Before Humanity’s Survivial! — World Capitalism Has Decided to Commit Ecocide!: Big Banks, Insurers Fail to Back Net-Zero Promises with Oil and Gas Restrictions Although many of the world’s biggest financial institutions have been vocal about their climate commitments, fewer than half of them have introduced policies to restrict new oil and gas investments or phase out existing ones, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis released earlier this week by Reclaim Finance and more than a dozen advocacy groups. The Oil and Gas Policy Tracker reviewed the governance policies of 60 banks, 60 investment institutions, and 30 insurers, including 74 members of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) announced with great fanfare at last year’s COP 26 climate summit. “More than half of the companies—including 20 of the GFANZ members—have no policies governing their oil and gas business,” BNN Bloomberg reports. “Just five companies, all banks, have quit or limited financing oil and gas expansion, according to the research,” and only 14 restrict both conventional and unconventional fossil fuels, Paris-based Reclaim Finance says.
“The current system is widening the inequality gap—it has no place in our society.”: Youth Strikes Worldwide Demand Climate Action That Centers ‘People Not Profit’ “We live in a broken system, one where the richest 1% of the world population are responsible for more than twice the pollution as the poorest 50%. That’s why we strike.” From Dhaka, Bangladesh to Turin, Italy and beyond, youth climate strikers took to the streets across the globe Friday to demand that political leaders stop ignoring the scientific community’s deafening alarm bells and take action to slash carbon emissions before it’s too late.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Economy:
Shadow Government StatisticsAlternate U.S. Dollar Index Chart The SGS Financial-Weighted Dollar Index reflects a composite value of the foreign-exchange-weighted U.S. dollar, weighted by the proportionate trading volume of the USD versus the six highest volume currencies: EUR, JPY, GBP, CHF, AUD, CAD. The FRB Trade-Weighted Dollar is the Major Currency Index published by the Federal Reserve, with the USD weighted by respective merchandise trade volume against the same currencies. See the July 2005 Reporting Focus: Financial and Trade-Weighted U.S. Dollar Indices for the methodology.
Two Dow Stocks, Two Cultures of Corruption: Boeing versus JPMorgan Chase Boeing and JPMorgan Chase are two of the component stocks of the 30-stock index known as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is broadly considered to be a barometer of the growth prospects of the U.S. economy. Both companies have been criminally charged by the U.S. Department of Justice in the recent past. (In the case of JPMorgan Chase, it has been charged with an unprecedented five criminal felony counts since 2014.) Both companies were part of badly conceived mergers that headed them toward a culture of corruption. On January 7 of last year, the U.S. Department of Justice entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with Boeing over a one-count criminal charge of a conspiracy to defraud the United States. Acting Assistant Attorney General David P. Burns of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said this about Boeing’s conduct: “The tragic crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 exposed fraudulent and deceptive conduct by employees of one of the world’s leading commercial airplane manufacturers. Boeing’s employees chose the path of profit over candor by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 Max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception. This resolution holds Boeing accountable for its employees’ criminal misconduct, addresses the financial impact to Boeing’s airline customers, and hopefully provides some measure of compensation to the crash-victims’ families and beneficiaries.”
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!
Our Governments Have Chosen Capitalism Over Preparing for Next COVID Surge In refusing to prioritize preparation for the next COVID surge, our leaders are sacrificing the most vulnerable. I can even pinpoint the day this COVID feedback loop began to eat itself, and us: March 20, 2020. On that day, the first of what became a flood tide of jowly capitalists went on the cable news networks with the demand that “low-risk,” low-wage workers should go back to work and just let the virus “burn through” their ranks. The intervening months have descended into a lethal tug of war between people who believe the science and are willing to take precautions to avoid even more mass death, and the “my freedom” people who are willing to let COVID carry off millions of people rather than subject themselves to the gross tyranny of… masks and reasonable health measures? If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not believed it possible, and would have walked out of any movie daring to peddle such nonsense in a script. The script itself, while absurd, is also simplicity itself: Endure a lethal COVID surge, but don’t prepare for the next one — and meanwhile, actively stand down current defenses so people go to work and spend money because, “It’s over!” NOPE, another mass wave of death followed by another wave of too-late restrictions followed by another surge of bleak depression and despair.
US Sanctions Prevent Global Covid Vaccinations!
Sanctioned Countries in the Global COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign: The Forgotten 70% COVAX, the global initiative on COVID-19 vaccines, has set the target of achieving a COVID-19 vaccination coverage of up to 30% of the population of 135 countries in 2 years. Here, we argue that COVAX should anticipate important and unforeseen challenges with regard to sanctioned countries. For those, COVAX needs to provide a higher percentage of the vaccines. Otherwise, the problems of vaccination will linger, risking the advent of new variants and preventing an effective global response in reigning the pandemic under control.Second, most sanctioned countries are not in a position to procure the remaining 70% of the COVID vaccines. Exporters or their banks may not authorize the transactions with them, again due to de-risking. After a wave of heavy sanctions enforcement actions by the US Treasury, seeing global banks paying fines entering into the billions of US dollars, all global banks increasingly avoid any transactions with US-sanctioned countries, like Iran and Venezuela [7]. UNICEF data [8] shows that while non-sanctioned countries directly purchase from multiple suppliers, global pharmaceutical companies declined the sales to sanctioned countries: none of them signed a supply agreement with Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea, Venezuela or Iran, and only one supplied to Myanmar but only for 25% of the population.
China, Not COVAX, Led Vaccine Exports to the World’s Middle Income Countries in 2021 While China’s rigorous management of virus risks at home has received considerable attention, particularly as it hosts the 2022 winter Olympics, it’s massive vaccine effort abroad has been underreported. In fact, as of end 2021, Beijing had supplied more COVID vaccines to low- and middle-income countries than the WHO co-sponsored COVAX facility. Against the constant press scrutiny of global rollouts of vaccines from the big name western pharma companies, like Pfizer, Moderna and Oxford/BioNTech, China’s major role in increasing COVID-19 vaccine coverage globally has been largely overlooked – by the global health community as well as donors. In fact, as of end 2021, Beijing had supplied nearly 1.3 billion doses to low- and middle-income countries – more than the WHO and Gavi co-sponsored COVAX global facility, which has so far relied mainly on vaccines licensed by Western countries. Moreover, manufacturing of Chinese vaccines has been further expanded through co-production partnerships with a number of middle-income countries.
Cuba Pledges “Lifesaving Package” Of Covid-19 Vaccine Support o Global South at Progressive International Briefing The Cuban government has announced advanced plans to deliver tens of millions of doses of homegrown Covid-19 vaccines to the Global South, described as “lifesaving” by the head of the Progressive International’s delegation to the Caribbean nation. Despite the US embargo, Cuba has received funding from The Central American Bank for Economic Integration, which, according to Reuters, is sufficient to produce the 200 million doses. Yesterday (Monday 24 January) at a press briefing in Havana, Dr Vicente Vérez Bencomo, Director General of the Finley Institute of Vaccines said, “they could produce 120 million doses in one year alone.”
At the briefing, the Cuban government announced its plan to get these doses into the arms of those who need them in the Global South, including: Solidarity prices for Covid-19 vaccines for low-income countries’, Technology transfer where possible for production in low-income countries., and Extending medical brigades to build medical capacity and training for vaccine distribution in partner countries