Daily News Digest April 12, 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:
We’re Still In A Pandemic. Don’t Drop Your Guard Now. 
Capitalist World Mourning the White Refugees
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:
Tariq Ali on Russia’s War in Ukraine & Europe’s Double Standard on Accepting Refugees
Quotes of the Day:
Michael Roberts Blog: At a NATO foreign ministers meeting last week, at which non-NATO countries Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Japan were specially invited, the NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg made the following comments: “Beijing has decided to support Russia and question the right of countries to self-determination and to choose their own path”. “China must pay a price for its support for Russia.” The main topic of the next NATO meeting in June “will be to expand the sphere of its influence into Asia”, which is why the four foreign ministers from that region were invited. “This is now for the U.S. one Eurasian theater. We’re looking at the challenge of both Russia and China [in the] long term in similar ways,” said Heather Conley, head of the German Marshall Fund think tank. “We’re going to have to have a NATO that prioritizes collective defense for Europe while at the same time being able to build greater partnerships and bridging mechanisms to our Indo-Pacific allies.”
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!
Don’t Drop Your Guard: Public Health Experts Raise Alarm Amid Capitol Hill Covid-19 Outbreak. The federal government’s messaging on Covid-19 community levels may be giving the public a false sense of confidence, one doctor cautioned, calling for public masking when cases are surging. Public health experts on Sunday warned that the U.S. public may not be getting a full, accurate picture of their risk of contracting the coronavirus—and their need to take precautions like masking in public indoor spaces—as a number of high-profile Covid-19 cases were reported on Capitol Hill several weeks after mitigation efforts were largely droppedin cities across the country. The federal government’s messaging on Covid-19 community levels may be giving the public a false sense of confidence, one doctor cautioned, calling for public masking when cases are surging.
How the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement Post-WWII was Bought and Paid for by the CIA In part 1 of this series Fact Checking the Fact Checkers, the question was posed “why does Ukraine seem to have so many Nazis nowadays?” In that paper we were led to the further question “is the United States and possibly NATO involved in the funding, training and political support of neo-Nazism in Ukraine and if so, for what purpose?” It was concluded that in order to answer such questions
Former NATO Military Analyst Blows the Whistle on West’s Ukraine Invasion Narrative Jacques Baud, a NATO expert, denounces western coverage of the Ukraine invasion. PART ONE: ON THE ROAD TO WAR For years, from Mali to Afghanistan, I worked for peace and risked my life for it. It is therefore not a question of justifying the war, but of understanding what led us to it. I note that the “experts” who take turns on the television sets analyze the situation based on dubious information, most often hypotheses turned into facts, and therefore we no longer manage to understand what is happening. That’s how you create panic.
U.S. Didn’t Expect Major Explosions When sn Isis Bomb Factory Was Bombed Military documents reveal a flawed “collateral damage estimate” before an airstrike that killed scores of Iraqis in 2015. When the u.s. military was planning an airstrike on an Islamic State bomb factory in Iraq, it failed to adequately consider the possibility of secondary explosions from munitions stored there, according to military documents that have been hiding in plain sight for several months. The bomb factory in the city of Hawija reportedly contained more than 18,000 kilograms of explosive material — and secondary explosions from the 2015 airstrike killed scores of Iraqis and damaged or destroyed thousands of homes. One of the survivors later told an interviewer from the Iraqi NGO Al-Ghad League for Woman and Child Care, “I thought it was a nuclear bomb.” In the wake of the carnage, the chief of targets for U.S. Central Command insisted in an email, included in a detailed follow-up assessment of the attack by military investigators, that the strike had been conducted by the book, including the pre-attack “collateral damage estimate,” or CDE. “My targeteers actually spent hours working and reworking this target just to make the CDE ‘executable,’” he wrote in the email. “This was a perfectly accurate CDE call,” he insisted, emphasizing in another email that “CDE Methodology does not account for secondary explosions.”
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
Scientists Hit the Streets A revolutionary slogan by climate scientists “1.5C is Dead – Climate Revolution Now!” emblazoned the streets of the world on April 6th spawned by the Sixth Assessment Report, Mitigation of Climate Change, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released April 4th. Overnight, civil disobedience by climate scientists erupted in 25 countries on every continent enraged that the IPCC report was “watered down” at the behest of governments that are “unwilling to phase out fossil fuels.” Wednesday, April 6th will go down in history, as Global Warming Bastille Day marked by the world’s largest ever protests by scientists sick and tired of mealy-mouthed responses by governments that cater to the fossil fuel wealth syndrome that intentionally misled the public and pays off politicians to keep pumping oil regardless of massive ecological destruction.
The Capitalist Road Taken: Agri-Business Most Go!: Organic Regenerative Farming Remains Key for Our Sustainable Future We need to make sure that regenerative farming drives real and meaningful change, and that it isn’t hijacked by those seeking to greenwash. There’s a buzz around regenerative agriculture. The concept is capturing the imagination of farmers, policy makers and, increasingly, the public.
. . . Recently, agriculture ecologists, who are aware of the “treadmill”, have been advocating a different model for farm production. This model is based on smaller farms rotating crops and breeding livestock. This is a natural (organic) method of controlling weeds, insects, and bacteria that feed on farm produce. Until recently, there have been no large-scale models to demonstrate the alternative form of agriculture. Unfortunately, the “Socialist Block” model also embarked on the “chemical road” for agricultural production along with “forced collectivizations”. The Soviet Union was an underdeveloped country with little technological skills that basically copied the science and the agricultural models found in the Industrialized countries. In the Soviet Union there was no science or mechanism to do otherwise and still feed the population in the context of a civil war and a blockade. In the case of Cuba, the chemical models of both the United States and the Soviet Union was continued. The 38-year economic blockade of Cuba hampered the development of the Cuban economy. To the credit of the Cuban Revolution they did not carry out any forced collectivizations. They did copy the Soviet model of large chemically dependent state farms. When the “Socialist Block” stopped all trade with Cuba, the Cuban economy was severely crippled. They could no longer import the amount of oil, fertilizers, and pesticides to continue large-scale mechanized food production. They had to move in the direction of the alternative model of agriculture that I previously described. In response to a huge drop in pesticide and fertilizer imports, Cuban agriculture is being transformed. Cuba is presently undertaking the largest national conversion from conventional agriculture to large-scale alternative farming in history. — Organic Farming — Cuba: “The Road Not Taken”: The Other Cuban Revolution — Roland Sheppard (1999)
IPCC Report’s Analysis of Fossil Fuel Industry Excluded From Policymakers’ Brief . . . The role of the fossil fuel industry is highlighted throughout the report’s nearly 3,000 pages, but researchers note it was mysteriously absent from the “Summary for Policymakers” — traditionally the first part of the report that’s released and often attracts the most media attention. An earlier draft of the summary leaked to the Guardian, however, described the fossil fuel industry and others invested in a high-carbon economy as “vested interests” that have actively worked against climate policy, noting: “Factors limiting ambitious transformation include structural barriers, an incremental rather than systemic approach, lack of coordination, inertia, lock-in to infrastructure and assets, and lock-in as a consequence of vested interests, regulatory inertia, and lack of technological capabilities and human resources.” Brulle, whose research is cited multiple times in the report, was dismayed to see the cut. “The scientists clearly did their job and provided ample material on climate obstruction activities in the report,” he says. “The political process of creating the Summary for Policymakers ended up editing all of this information out.”
West Virginians Lead Blockade of Coal Plant That Made Manchin Rich “This is what the fight for a habitable planet looks like in real time.” Organizers of the “Coal Baron Blockade” protest which targeted right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s coal empire Saturday afternoon reported that state police almost immediately began arresting campaigners who assembled in Grant Town, West Virginia. “Sen. Joe Manchin’s policies hurt poor people and hurt our environment so deeply that activists are ready to put themselves on the line,” tweeted the Poor People’s Campaign, which joined grassroots group West Virginia Rising and other organizations in the blockade.
Millions of Bird Deaths As US Hit by Avian Flu Outbreak US officials believe nearly 24m poultry birds, mostly chickens and turkeys, have died of flu since virus strain identified in February Millions of birds have died in the US in recent weeks, because of a contagious strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza, popularly known as bird flu.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Malik Miah: United States: Black Workers Sue Tesla Over Systemic Racism California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed a lawsuit against Tesla Inc on February 9, accusing the company of entrenched racism in its Californian factory. The DFEH’s lawsuit is a powerful indictment of racism at Tesla. Filed on behalf of more than 4000 former and current Black employees, the lawsuit makes 13 legal claims against Tesla. It alleges Black workers experience ongoing racial harassment, including slurs and intimidation, and workplace segregation into the lowest level roles.
Labor:
FRED Chart Employed Full Time: Median Usual Weekly Real Earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over is $367.00 a week or $11.68 per hour.
Economy:
News Blackout: On the First Day of the Fed’s Money Market Fund Bailouts, JPMorgan Funds Borrowed $8.97 Billion – 32 Percent of the Total On Thursday, March 31, the Federal Reserve released the names of the Wall Street trading houses and the amounts they had borrowed under three of the Fed’s emergency bailout programs. The data included the Fed’s repo loans for the first quarter of 2020 — the Fed is releasing the repo loan information after a two-year lag on a quarter-by-quarter basis, thus obfuscating a clear snapshot for the life of the program; the Fed’s Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF); and the Fed’s Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (MMLF). The Fed also released on March 31 the transaction details for its Commercial Paper Funding Facility but that essentially just showed which commercial paper had become toxic on Wall Street while the other three programs illustrated which units of the mega global banks had become illiquid and needed Fed bailouts stretching over many months.
World:
Why Hasn’t the US Been Kicked Off of the UN Human Rights Council? The United Nations General Assembly voted 93-24 with 58 abstentions to drop the Russian Federation from membership on the UN Human Rights Council, based on allegations and grisly videos and photos appearing to show execution-style slayings of civilians in Ukraine by Russian troops. While there are calls for independent investigations into those allegations, the US and NATO member state governments have been pushing the claim that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine including the major war crime of invading another country, the unasked question in the US media is: Why hasn’t the US been kicked out of the Human Rights Council for similar war crimes that aren’t at all allegations, but are well documented fact? Why indeed, for all the accusations that Russian President Vladimir Putin is himself a war criminal responsible for all these crimes, haven’t a number of US presidents still living been accused of war crimes?
Health, Education. and Wealfare:
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! COVID-19.”