Daily News Digest March 29, 2092
Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines, Like the Salk Polio Vaccine, are Free For the Whole World
Images 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:
The disparate and often racist treatment of refugees of war is starkly apparent as the crisis unfolds in Ukraine. With 24/7 coverage, Western media has not missed an opportunity to garner sympathy for the nearly 2 million disproportionately white Ukrainians currently fleeing the war. No one is denying that their situation is devastating and heartbreaking. What is in question, however, is why the same Western media gave little to no coverage of the 1.5 million other Ukrainian refugees forced to flee their homes to escape bombing and shelling by their own government following the 2014 U.S.-instigated, right-wing coup d’etat. The U.N. reports that at least 14,000 people have died as a result of internal conflicts inside Ukraine since 2014, but little was reported on this by corporate media. The United States’ 20-year war in Afghanistan left that country in devastation and turned one in 10 Afghan people into refugees. Yet Western media paid scant attention to the 2.6 million Afghan refugees. Nor did they have much sympathy for the 6.7 million refugees forced to flee Syria, as the result of 10 years of civil war, largely fueled by the U.S. arming forces to oppose President Bashar Assad. In describing the media attention focused on Ukrainians, one racist NBC News correspondent actually said: “These are not refugees from Syria; these are refugees from Ukraine . . . They’re Christian; they’re white; they’re very similar.” — U.S. Racist Hypocrisy On Refugee Crisis
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. Taxthe Rich! — They Can Afford to Pay!
Using Department of Energy data, Crawford found that the U.S. military is a major polluter. Since the beginning of the Global War on Terror in 2001, the military has produced more than 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases. — Using Department of Energy data, Crawford found that the U.S. military is a major polluter. Since the beginning of the Global War on Terror in 2001, the military has produced more than 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases. — The U.S. Military Emits More Carbon Dioxide Into the Atmosphere Than Entire Countries Like Denmark or Portugal
Biden Increases Military Budget — Increases CO2 Into the Atmoshere!: Biden Asks Congress to Approve Record $813 Billion in Military Spending “The hawks in Washington want to jack up the military budget and use Ukraine as an excuse,” warned one analyst. Rebuffing progressive lawmakers’ calls for Pentagon spending cuts, President Joe Biden on Monday is set to unveil a budget blueprint for the next fiscal year that includes a record $813.3 billion in funds for the U.S. military apparatus, a $31 billion increase from the current level.
Glen Greenwald: Biden’s Reckless Words Underscore the Dangers of the U.S.’s Use of Ukraine As a Proxy War As grave of a threat as deliberate war is, unintended escalation from miscommunication and misperception can be as bad. Biden is the perfect vessel for such risks.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!
The Grim Consequences of Sidelining Science: Nearly One Million US Covid Deaths and the Climate Crisis Nearly six decades ago, in 1963, US President John F. Kennedy told the National Academy of Sciences that science is “the most powerful means we have for the unification of knowledge.” He said it could help us “cut across boundaries,” to solve major problems. But today, COVID-19, climate change, and environmental injustice seem to have done the opposite by exacerbating the already horrific divides between rich and poor, cities and states, urban dwellers and rural residents, Democrats and Republicans, old and young, polluters and the polluted, the healthy and the immune-compromised, and last but hardly least, races and ethnicities. At this most critical juncture of public health and the fate of the planet, science and scientists have been reduced to a political punching bag. Nearly six decades ago, in 1963, US President John F. Kennedy told the National Academy of Sciences that science is “the most powerful means we have for the unification of knowledge.” He said it could help us “cut across boundaries,” to solve major problems. But today, COVID-19, climate change, and environmental injustice seem to have done the opposite by exacerbating the already horrific divides between rich and poor, cities and states, urban dwellers and rural residents, Democrats and Republicans, old and young, polluters and the polluted, the healthy and the immune-compromised, and last but hardly least, races and ethnicities.
3 Out of 4 People May Have Microplastics in Their Blood, New Study Sajs Microplastics, as their name suggests, are typically defined as plastic particles that are five millimeters or less across or in length. Because they often contain chemicals linked to illnesses like cancer and infertility, health experts agree that they should not be in our bodies, although they acknowledge that their exact impact has not been precisely quantified. More importantly, because plastic is used in a wide range of commonly used products, microplastics are absolutely everywhere — even in the plants that we eat, which can absorb them through their roots. Now a new study reveals that more than three out of four people may have microplastics in their blood.
$770 Billion For the Military—Poisoned Water for Military Families The Red Hill disaster is just one more example of the Department of Defense’s disregard for human lives when those lives get in the way of their expensive, deadly operations. Concerns from hundreds of military families living on the Joint Naval Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawai’i about foul-smelling drinking water were dismissed on November 29th, 2021, by Naval Commander Captain Erik Spitzer, who assured residents the water was safe to drink. Spitzer declared that he and his staff were drinking the water, so surely reports of a gasoline-like odor, cramps, and vomiting were nothing to worry about. Then, less than a week later, on December 5th, Spitzer took to Facebook to issue an apology.
Book Review: White Skin, Black Fuel On the Danger of Fossil Fascism The book does multiple things. It opens with a study of the far-right and fascist movements and looks at their “anti-climate politics” and asks “what would it mean to live in a world both hotter and further to the right” than it is today. It argues that the far-right’s fixation with anti-climate views is closely tied to its anti-immigration perspective and the way that developing capitalism associated technology (and particularly fossil fuel technologies) with white supremacy. The authors argue in the introduction: “[The book] traces lineages of resurfacing ideas and contends that white skin and black fuel have been coupled for long time — indeed, machines powered by fossil fuels were infused with racism from the very first moment of their global deployment. The European incubator for skin and fuel was an empire… It is out contention that one cannot understand recent developments [of the far right] or their possible continuation and aggravation, without such a longer view.”
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Chris Hedges: On Being Disappeared The entire archive of six years of my show On Contact has been removed by YouTube. The entire archive of On Contact, the Emmy-nominated show I hosted for six years for RT America and RT International, has been disappeared from YouTube. Gone is the interview with Nathaniel Philbrick on his book about George Washington. Gone is the discussion with Kai Bird on his biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Gone is my exploration with Professor Sam Slote from Trinity College Dublin of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Gone is the show with Benjamin Moser on his biography of Susan Sontag. Gone is the show with Stephen Kinzer on his book on John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles. Gone are the interviews with the social critics Cornel West, Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Gerald Horne, Wendy Brown, Paul Street, Gabriel Rockwell, Naomi Wolff and Slavoj Zizek. Gone are the interviews with the novelists Russell Banks and Salar Abdoh. Gone is the interview with Kevin Sharp, a former federal judge, on the case of Leonard Peltier. Gone are the interviews with economists David Harvey and Richard Wolff. Gone are the interviews with the combat veterans and West Point graduates Danny Sjursen and Eric Edstrom about our wars in the Middle East. Gone are the discussions with the journalists Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. Gone are the voices of those who are being persecuted and marginalized, including the human rights attorney Steven Donziger and the political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal.
Labor:
Economy:
Michael Roberts Blog: COVID poverty. A new World Bank/UNICEF report shows that the lost earnings from the COVID-19 pandemic have left globally adults in 1 in 4 households with children going a day or more without food in order to feed their children.
The War On Inflation: The Russian invasion of Ukraine grinds agonis ingly on with more dying and displaced and with further destruction of Ukrainian cities, farms and homes. Back in the major economies, there is another war brewing: the war on inflation. Inflation of consumer prices are now at 30-40 year highs with more to come. The COVID pandemic slump and now the Ukraine conflict has driven energy and food prices up to record highs. The war in Ukraine has gone global. Spiking commodity prices are on track to see their sharpest rises since 1970, sending a shock wave of suffering across the world as the prices of essential goods every human needs to survive are surging upwards. Wheat prices are up 60% since February. Food prices are now higher than during the global food crisis of 2008, which pushed 155 million people into extreme poverty. And the price inflation in these key areas has migrated into general price increase. Annual consumer price inflation (CPI) now stands at 7.9% in the US, 5.9% in the Eurozone; 6.2% in the UK and even Japan, long a deflating economy, now has an inflation rate of 1%. In the so-called emerging economies, inflation is even worse: India 6.1%; Russia 9.2%; Brazil 10.5%;, Argentina 52%; Turkey 54%.
The Money Trail to the Ginni Thomas Emails to Overturn Biden’s Election Leads to Charles Koch The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Bob Costa of CBS News have unleashed a fury of renewed interest in the work of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Last Thursday, Woodward and Costa set off a political firestorm when they released the contents of emails that Ginni Thomas, wife of the sitting Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, had sent to President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, in 2020, urging him to overturn the Biden election win and attempting to steer his efforts in that regard.
World:
Cuba Prepares for Disaster The September 2021 Scientific American included a description by the editors of the deplorable state of disaster relief in the US. They traced the root cause of problems with relief programs as their “focus on restoring private property,” which results in little attention to those “with the least capacity to deal with disasters.” The book Disaster Preparedness and Climate Change in Cuba: Adaptation and Management (2021) came out the next month. It traced the highly successful source of the island nation’s efforts to the way it put human welfare above property. This collection of 14 essays by Emily J. Kirk, Isabel Story, and Anna Clayfield is an extraordinary assemblage of articles, each addressing specific issues. Writers are well aware that Cuban approaches are adapted to the unique geography and history of the island. What readers should take away is not so much the specific actions of Cuba as its method of studying a wide array of approaches and actually putting the best into effect (as opposed to merely talking about their strengths and weaknesses). The book traces Cuba’s preparedness from the threat of a US invasion following its revolution through its resistance to hurricanes and diseases, which all laid the foundation for current adaptions to climate change.
India: Two-Day General Strike Begins! Today and tomorrow, workers across India will take part in a general strike, which the trade union leaders anticipate could involve over 200 million people. Demands include improved conditions and wages for workers, farmers and the poor; universal social security cover for informal workers; a halt to privatisations; and the scrapping of reactionary new labour laws. The following is text from a leaflet was produced by supporters of the IMT in India, explaining the background to the strike, offering their support, and calling for the unions to be transformed from top to bottom into instruments of class struggle against the rotten Modi regime, and the parasitic Indian capitalist system it represents.
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!
Keeping the Pandemic Alive of BiPharmas Pandemic Widfall Preofits! ‘Utter Travesty’: Uninsured Americans Will Now Be Charged $125 for a Single PCR Covid-19 Test Government funding cuts to key pandemic programs forced by GOP opposition arrive as progressives in Congress renew their push for Medicare for All. A major testing company in the United States announced this week that it will now charge people without Medicare, private coverage, or other insurance a $125 out-of-pocket charge to receive a Covid-19 PCR test—a fresh example of how the U.S. remains an outlier among wealthy nations for refusing to provide universal healthcare for its people.
The Pandemic Isn’t Over Yet, But Congress Is Willing to Gamble That It Is COVID cases are rising throughout Europe and Asia, leading some experts in the United States to wonder whether another wave is around the corner. Caseloads have been low in all 50 states following the Omicron spike in late 2021 and earlier this year, leading to a broad relaxation of mask mandates and a decrease in remote work options throughout the country. Nearly all Republicans in Congress, and many conservative Democrats, are pushing for a repeal of the continuing federal mask mandate on planes and public transportation. The spike in cases overseas is being driven by a subvariant of Omicron, known as BA.2. Early evidence suggests it may be even more transmissible than the initial variant, which caused record surges around the world. There’s also cause for cautious optimism, however, as it appears that immunity caused by the first variant extends to the new subvariant. Between vaccinations and boosters, and so-called “natural immunity” from a previous infection, the United States may have a wall of protection to prevent caseloads — and, more importantly, hospitalizations and deaths — from spiking in the coming months.