Daily News Digest April 1, 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:
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!
Videos of the Day:
Refugees of Color Fleeing Ukraine Held in Migrant Jails in Poland and Estonia
Quotes of the Day:
Big Energy/U.S. Capitalism Hask Made a Conscious Decision to Commit Humanicide, Rather Than Lose Their Profit Making Enterprises: ” The panelists examined the corporate genesis of the climate denial movement and the many methods of influence that have been utilized to stall effective climate change policy. Using documents and analysis found on Climate Files, Davies recounted how the largest oil majors, including Shell and Exxon, had extensive internal knowledge about climate change science and impacts decades before it became a topic of global concern. Rather than addressing the threat that their product posed to the world, the documents show that the fossil fuel industry engaged and funded a climate change countermovement to deny the urgency their own scientists knew to be true. — The Climate Change Countermovement: Brown University Report and Panel (2019)
Stanford-Led Study: Methane Leaks Are Far Worse Than Estimates, At Least in New Mexico, But There’s Hope Using airborne sensors that see methane in the air, Stanford researchers say leaks are more worrisome than thought, but hope lies in the sensing technology itself. The amount of methane – a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide over 100 years – leaking from a huge U.S. oil and gas producing region is several times greater than the federal government estimates, according to a new study led by Stanford University. Using airborne sensors able to detect methane leaks from individual oil and gas production facilities, the researchers studied the Permian Basin in New Mexico, one of the most expansive and highest-producing oil and gas regions in the world. They estimate that more than 9 percent of all methane produced in the region is being leaked into the skies, several-fold higher than Environmental Protection Agency estimates and well above those in the published literature. The EPA puts leaks at 1.4 percent of production on a national basis.
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!
Biden Promised to Stop Supporting Saudi Aggression in Yemen. He Lied. Almost 400,000 people have died during the seven-year-long war in Yemen which began with an unprovoked attack in 2015 led by Saudi Arabia. The Saudis’ objective was to restore the government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi who the year before had been overthrown by Yemen’s Houthi rebels (invariably referred to as “Iran-backed” in US media). Biden’s old boss, President Barack Obama, took the US into the Yemen war in order to mollify the Arab states who were angry over Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. The Obama and Trump Administrations provided the Saudi-led coalition (“SLC”) with invaluable assistance: intelligence sharing, logistics, target spotting, arms sales, replacement spare parts for coalition warplanes, and (until November 2018) in-flight refueling for coalition warplanes.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
The rainforests of the Amazon have long been known as “the lungs of the planet,” yet that may no longer be the case. The region’s forests produce more than a billion tons of CO2 a year, which means that they now emit more carbon than they absorb, according to new research. The main reasons for the reversal in the Amazon’s role as a major carbon sink include continued deforestation and unrelenting climate change, according to the scientists who conducted nearly 600 vertical profiling measurements by help of small airplanes some 4,500 meters above the forest to monitor concentrations of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide at four sites between 2010 and 2018. — The Amazon is no Longer a Carbon Sink. It’s a ‘Carbon Source’
Destruction of Amazon Rainforest Accelerates as Elections Loom in Brazil Deforestation of the Amazon, a major carbon sink, is a threat to Indigenous people and life everywhere. Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far right president, is launching a reelection bid and currently trailing in the polls behind former president and liberal rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro and conservative lawmakers have worked to slash environmental protections and promote development of the Amazon rainforest, where deforestation appears to be accelerating as Brazil prepares for elections in October. Deforestation is a major cause of climate change and a threat to Indigenous people who are organizing to resist land grabs and toxic pollution from illegal mines. To learn more, Truthout’s Mike Ludwig interviewed Romulo Batista, an environmental activist based in Manaus, a Brazilian city nestled in the Amazon rainforest.
Toxic Tuesdays: Cadmium Cadmium is a heavy metal found naturally in the earth’s crust. It is usually found as a mineral combined with other elements such as oxygen, chlorine, or sulfur. Cadmium is used in many industries and is essential in the production of batteries, certain alloys, coatings, solar cells, plastic stabilizers, and pigments. It is also found in significant quantities in cigarette smoke. Mining and other similar industrial activities are the main source of cadmium in the environment. Once released, cadmium and cadmium compounds are relatively water soluble and, as a result, are more mobile in most mediums such as soil and water. Furthermore, they are generally more bioavailable and tend to accumulate in plant and animal life. Because of this, the main source of cadmium exposure in non-smokers is their diet. Among smokers, cigarette smoke is the main source of exposure, with numerous studies identifying cadmium blood levels 4-5 times higher than the normal population. Cadmium is toxic to humans, affecting multiple organs/systems including the kidneys, bones and lungs. Additionally, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies cadmium as a Class 1 carcinogen. Cadmium bioaccumulates in the human body, especially in the kidneys. The accumulation of cadmium in the kidneys leads to loss of kidney function due to decreased reabsorption of proteins, glucose, and amino acids. Skeletal damage in both human and animals exposed to high levels of cadmium has been observed, while chronic obstructive airway disease has been documented among workers.
Fossil Execs Have Their Own Definition of ‘Energy Transition’ Both climate scientists and Big Oil executives use the term “energy transition,” but they generally mean very different things by the phrase, and they wield it to profoundly different ends—though some find seeds for hope in the linguistic common ground. When climate scientists refer to the energy transition, they mean “a rapid phasing out of fossil fuels and the immediate scaling up of cleaner energy sources like wind, solar, and nuclear,” writes the New York Times. [Well, often not nuclear—Ed.]. But fossil executives typically use it to mean “a continued use of fossil fuels, with a greater reliance on natural gas rather than coal, and a hope that new technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration can contain or reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses they produce.”
Bankers Lie About Fossil Fuel Finance Despite promising cuts, the world’s biggest banks pour trillions into oil, gas and coal The 13th annual Banking on Climate Chaos report exposes the stark disparity between public climate commitments being made by the world’s largest banks, and the reality of business-as-usual financing to the fossil fuel industry. To be blunt: when the big banks promised to cut funding to oil, gas and coal, they were lying.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Margaret Kimberley Biden Means What He Says Joe Biden may appear to be a confused old man when he blurts out whatever comes to mind. But his outbursts shouldn’t be ignored. They always reveal his plans.
Ajamu Baraka Ukraine: The Afghanistan Model for the Consolidation of the Global White Supremacist Movement The Biden administration is dusting off the same playbook that gave arms and money to jihadists in Afghanistan and Syria. Now the beneficiaries of American foreign policy largesse are white supremacists from around the world who have made their way to Ukraine.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review DOCUMENT: An Act for the Abolition of Slavery [and for Compensating White Slaveowners], 1833
The recent visit of members of the British “royal family” to Belize, Jamaica, and the Bahamas drew attention to longstanding issues and unsettled accounts concerning slavery, colonialism, and independence in the Caribbean.
Madeleine Albright is Dead, but Intersectional Imperialism is Alive and Well The late Madeleine Albright was the first female Secretary of State. Her actions in office repeated the U.S. imperative to interfere in the affairs of other countries and resulted in the deaths of thousands of people.
Raymond Nat Turner The latest from BAR’s poet in residence: Papa Cop Danny Haiphong Erica Caines New McCarthyism Silences the Black and Other Radical Left Socialists, anti-imperialists, anti-war activists, Black radicals, and other independent alternative voices who challenge mainstream media and its political culture are being explicitly targeted by Liberals and Big Tech in a censorship campaign Roberto Sirvent: Interview with Samantha N. Sheppard This week, we interview Roberto Sirvent This week’s featured scholar is Sara-Maria Sorentino. Sorentino is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama. Her article is “Mistresses as Masters?: The Textual Pleasures of the Plantation Present.”
Kevin Edmonds Elections in Haiti: Legitimizing Imperialism and Killing Democracy? As the white rulers of Haiti push for illegitimate elections, can the “Montana Accord”- an agreement among some civil society groups to return democracy to Haiti – offer a way out of the country’s neocolonial predicament?
Jelin Esau Jules Haiti: A Grassroots Analysis on the State of Affairs Since the Assassination of de facto President Jovenel Moïse
March 29, 2022 – Haitian community activists are out in the streets to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Haitian constitution, drafted after the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship, and to protest rising insecurity, and foreign imperial control of Haiti. Below is a grassroots analysis of the political situation on the ground.
Abayomi Azikiwe Tens of Thousands Threatened with Property Tax Foreclosures in Detroit
March 31 has been designated as the deadline for Wayne County residents to pay back property taxes from 2019 and earlier despite the failure to provide adequate assistance to working and impoverished households.
TelesurColombian Vice-Presidential Candidate Gets Death Threat
Colombian Vice Presidential candidate Francia Marquez is again threatened by right wing groups in that country. She demands that president Ivan Duque protect her and others leaders as well.
Joe Lauria Pentagon Drops Truth Bombs to Stave Off War With Russia Leaked stories from the Pentagon have exposed how mainstream media reports Russia’s conduct in the Ukraine war, in a bid to counter propaganda intended to get NATO into the conflict.
Roger Stoll Divided World: The UN Condemnation of Russia is Endorsed by Countries Run by the Richest, Oldest, Whitest People on Earth But Only 41% of the World’s Population The UN General Assembly vote on Russia’s intervention in Ukraine indicates that most of the world’s people do not condemn this action. The reality is a far cry from U.S. claims that Russia is isolated from the world. community.
Labor:
($upport For the Aplication of the Iron Heel?!—R.S.): The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Page Is Back to Propping Up Bad Actors: This Time It’s the Wife of Clarence Thomas While the vast majority of news outlets around the country are calling for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases involving the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board has penned this headline today over yet one more of its radical-right editorials: “Justice Thomas Shouldn’t Recuse.” (We’d link to the article but there’s a paywall.). To support its position, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board writes this about the wife of Clarence Thomas, Ginni (Virginia) Thomas, whose recently released emails to Trump-era White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows have exposed her as attempting to steer the White House in how to overturn the election of Biden: “The right answer is that Ginni Thomas is no threat to the Court, no matter how bizarre her views about the 2020 election. She doesn’t sit on the Court, and there is no reason to believe her personal political views influence the judicial impartiality of Justice Thomas.”
World:
War, Exodus and Demographic Deficit There has been a huge exodus of Ukrainians into neighbouring countries fleeing the war in their country: three million and counting. Just as in Syria and in other countries engulfed by war, there has been a refugee disaster. But this latest exodus from Ukraine adds to the millions who have already left in the last 30 years. Even before the Ukraine-Russia conflict, there was a rising demographic deficit in Ukraine and most of Eastern Europe, including Russia. Eastern Europe’s population has been shrinking like no other regional population in modern history. Many war ridden countries like Syria have suffered significant population loss but a population drop throughout a whole region and over decades has never been observed in the world since the 1950s. The UN estimates that there are about 292 million people in Eastern Europe, and that’s 18 million less than in the early 1990s, or more than the population of the Netherlands disappearing from the region.
There Is a Major Food Crisis Looming in the Middle East Interrupted wheat supplies from the world’s ‘bread basket’ will profoundly affect a region already in economic turmoil. The crisis provoked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is upending the global political order and underlying trade structures. A good part of the trade disruption stems from the leading roles of Russia and Ukraine as exporters of wheat and other food staples. According to the U.N. Trade and Development Agency, the two countries account for 27 percent of wheat exports and 53 percent of sunflower oil and seeds worldwide. Russia is also a key global supplier of fertilizers and hydrocarbons.
China’s Evolving Energy Policies in Africa China has been issuing a number of new policies on its approach to climate and energy. In 2021, the Chinese government announced that it would end the financing of coal-fired power plants overseas. In early 2022, it issued new environmental guidelines on its overseas investments. Toward Africa in particular, Beijing has signaled equally significant shifts. At the December 2021 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation ministerial, China substantially reduced its infrastructure investments in Africa for the next three years. It also cut its assistance in agriculture, climate, health, peace and security, and trade promotion by 80 percent and in capacity-building by 90 percent. At the same time, the Vision 2035 document released in conjunction with the ministerial promised “a new green growth model for common eco-development of China and Africa.”
French elections: France Insoumise – Where We Agree, and Where We Must Go Further! In the April 2017 French presidential election, Révolution, the French section of the International Marxist Tendency, critically supported the candidacy of Jean-Luc Mélenchon of France Insoumise (FI). Five years later, the French Marxists will again support FI in the upcoming elections (which begin on 10 April), despite maintaining their criticisms of its and Mélenchon’s limitations. In this article (written at the beginning of the year), they explain their position.
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 End of Globalization As We Know It Good morning. Today is the second of three Unhedged x Chartbook collaborations with Adam Tooze. Adam is on the cover of New York magazine this week, which means Ethan and I are famous by proxy. The topic this week is “The End of Globalisation As We Know It”. There has been a loose nexus of arguments cutting across geopolitics, finance and economics in recent years, which suggests that the status quo of the past 30 or 40 years is changing. Old: liberal democracy and free trade rising, low interest rates, low inflation and high equity valuations, especially for technology. New: populism, trade barriers, higher rates and inflation and valuations under pressure