Daily News Digest April 22, 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:
Bendib: War Criminals R 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!
Videos of the Day:
How the War In Ukraine is Being Fought In the Media
The US Has Arrested Over 1 Million Asylum Seekers in the Past 6 Months
‘Journalism is not A Crime’: Outrage as Judge Approves Assange Extradition to Us
Quotes of the Day:
If extradited to the U.S. for trial, Assange will face … up to 175 years in prison for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes. — Marjorie Cohn
In The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man, Friedrich Engels wrote:“Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. …”In December 1999, when I first wrote my essay Whither Humanity? (The Environmental Crisis of Capitalism), there were some doubters, on the left, about the science of the article. However, the essay has held up quite well in the past eight years. Since that time , we now know that “Carbon dioxide rates have been accelerating — that the rate of increase in carbon dioxide emissions has more than doubled since the 1990s”! —Whither Humanity? The Environmental Crisis of Capitalism
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!
The United States Government, in Its attacks on freedom of the press, considers reporting on U.S. war cimes to be ‘Treasoness”: Outrage as Judge Approves Assange Extradition to US “Extraditing Julian Assange to face allegations of espionage for publishing classified information would set a dangerous precedent and leave journalists everywhere looking over their shoulders.” “The charges against Assange should never have been brought in the first place.”
The Chris Hedges Report: Dr. Cornel West on the Decay of the American Empire In this premiere episode of “The Chris Hedges Report,” Dr. West joins Chris Hedges to discuss the decay of the American empire, the struggle to show international solidarity in the face of escalating militarism, and what it means to examine this historical moment through a moral and spiritual lens.
Marjorie Cohn: After Undermining International Criminal Court, US Now Wants It to Charge Russians Although the United States has tried mightily to undermine the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it became operational in 2002, the U.S. government is now pushing for the ICC to prosecute Russian leaders for war crimes in Ukraine. Apparently, Washington thinks the ICC is reliable enough to try Russians but not to bring U.S. or Israeli officials to justice. On March 15, the Senate unanimously passed S. Res 546, which “encourages member states to petition the ICC or other appropriate international tribunal to take any appropriate steps to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Russian Armed Forces.”
With Humanity on the Brink, Should We Trust Deterrence Theory or Disarmament? As the US and the West provide weapons and other forms of defense or intelligence support to Ukraine, military and civilian leaders must guesstimate what Russia’s response will be. On Monday, the Pentagon announced the US will soon begin training the Ukrainian military in using howitzer artillery in an unnamed country. Presumably this will be in a NATO member state. If Russian intelligence found out where, might it attack to stop the howitzers from being deployed against Russian forces in Ukraine? Almost assuredly not, as that would trigger a wider war, invoking NATO’s self-defense provision, which would be catastrophic for Russia.
Title 42 Will Continue to Harm BIPOC Migrants Until End of May, Advocates Say Migrants seeking safety right now cannot wait that long for help and are likely to face expulsion in the meantime The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the termination of the harmful Title 42 expulsion policy on April 1, but immigration advocates are frustrated that the implementation won’t begin until May 23. According to the CDC website, the extra time is meant to implement COVID-19 mitigation protocols, including COVID-19 vaccinations for migrants and preparing for the resumption of regular migration under Title 8, which lists an extensive series of reasons why a person could be deported, including having committed a crime within five years of being admitted into the U.S., violating a protective order, and being found in possession of drugs. It was a welcome announcement for immigration advocates who have been fighting for the end of what they say is a racist policy. But advocates say many questions remain with regards to implementing the end of the policy and, most importantly, that migrants seeking safety cannot wait!
Matt Taibbi: America’s Intellectual No-Fly Zone From left to right, from Chomsky to Carlson, war-skeptical voices are being denounced at levels not seen since Iraq. There are two options with regard to Ukraine. As we know, one option is a negotiated settlement, which will offer Putin an escape, an ugly settlement. Is it within reach? We don’t know; you can only find out by trying and we’re refusing to try. But that’s one option. The other option is to make it explicit and clear to Putin and the small circle of men around him that you have no escape, you’re going to go to a war crimes trial no matter what you do. Boris Johnson just reiterated this: sanctions will go on no matter what you do. What does that mean? It means go ahead and obliterate Ukraine and go on to lay the basis for a terminal war. Those are the two options: and we’re picking the second and praising ourselves for heroism and doing it: fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
Scientist Rebellion
‘Loud and Clear’ Alarm Bells Over Extreme Heat in New Climate Adaptation Report Thousands of Canada’s most vulnerable citizens each year risk suffering and death by extreme heat over the next few decades without collective action to protect them, says a new report from the University of Waterloo’s Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation. The research identifies small towns and cities in southern B.C.—especially the Okanagan—the southern half of the prairie provinces, and the vast metropolitan areas that run from Windsor to Montreal as “red zones” that will be hardest hit by extreme heat events, with more than 17 million city dwellers at risk. “Canadian alarm bells should be ringing loud and clear in relation to extreme heat,” states the report. “While flood and fire may be Canada’s most costly natural disasters, extreme heat is the ‘silent killer’
Study Warns Use of Geoengineering to Fight Climate Crisis Risks Malaria Surge “Solar geoengineering would create regional trade-offs and potentially increases in malaria risk worldwide,” said the new study’s lead author. A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications warns that attempting to fight the climate crisis using geoengineering—a method often promoted by the fossil fuel industry—could have the devastating consequence of exposing a billion additional people in vulnerable countries to the mosquito-borne disease malaria.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Black Agenda Report
Margaret Kimberley The Ukraine Crisis Can’t Save Biden The U.S. propaganda victory over Russia will do Joe Biden and the democrats little good. Their willingness to act on their promises and meet the people’s needs will be the deciding factors in determining their political fate.
Ajamu Baraka Ukraine: A New Consensus on Whiteness?
The Biden administration and corporate media cover up the existence of white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine. They are disappeared from the official narrative in order to get public buy-in for U.S. policy.
Black Agenda Review MANIFESTO: Africa in the Post-War World, San Francisco, April 1945 When a new international order came into being with the organization of the United Nations in 1945, African people proposed their own visions for the post war world.
Danny Haiphong The Battle Against COVID-19 in Shanghai: A Human Rights Disaster? China’s “zero covid” strategy prevented the large number of deaths seen in the United States. But the challenges of stopping the Omicron variant in Shanghai, a city of 25 million people, presented immense challenges and created hardships for the people. Still, the United States is in no position to question the human rights record of China or any other country.
Ann Garrison Notes from Wartorn Ethiopia, Part II BAR contributing editor Ann Garrison continues her reporting from Ethiopia.
Roberto Sirvent BAR Book Forum: Colin Kaepernick’s “I Color Myself Different” In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Colin Kaepernick . Kaepernick is a professional NFL Super Bowl quarterback who fights oppression globally. He founded the Know Your Rights Camps to advance the liberation and well-being of Black and Brown people through education, self-empowerment, mass-mobilization, and the creation of new systems that elevate the next generation of change leaders. In 2020, he started Kaepernick Publishing to elevate a new generation of writers and creators through the development and publication of meaningful works of all genres with the focus of amplifying diverse views and voices. His book is I Color Myself Different .
Roberto Sirvent BAR Book Forum: Interview with Matthieu Chapman This week’s featured scholar is Matthieu Chapman . Dr. Chapman is Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz. His essay is “‘Away, You Ethiop!’: A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Denial of Black Affect—A Song to Underscore the Burning of Police Stations” .
Raymond Nat Turner The latest from BAR’s poet in residence.
Through the fire of fighting Amazon Workers…
Mark P. Fancher Patrick Lyoya’s Death Sentence for the Crime of “Contempt of White Cop” Police in the United States kill an average of three people every day and one of those persons will be Black. Patrick Lyoya was just one recent victim of police execution.
Black Community Hamburg
Statement: #AFRICANSFROMUA on Equal Treatment
Germany and other EU member states granted immediate temporary protection status to citizens of Ukraine, but Black refugees who also fled the war are experiencing unequal treatment.
Abayomi Azikiwe Our Case Against NATO: Africans and the Struggle Against Imperialism The Pentagon led political military alliance continues to serve as major impediment to peace, liberation and a just world system.
US Out of Africa Network AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #39 The latest AFRICOM Watch Bulletin provides analysis of coups in Africa and an nterview with journalist and activist Owei Lakemfa.
Alan MacLeod The Ouster Of Imran Khan: How Much Involvement Did the US Have in Pakistan’s Coup?
Imran Khan joins the long list of deposed prime ministers and underscores the reality that, in Pakistan, whoever the people elect, the U.S.-backed military is always in charge.
Labor:
Economy:
War Dims Global Economic Outlook as Inflation Accelerates The effects of the war will propagate far and wide, adding to price pressures and exacerbating significant policy challenges. Global economic prospects have been severely set back, largely because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This crisis unfolds even as the global economy has not yet fully recovered from the pandemic. Even before the war, inflation in many countries had been rising due to supply-demand imbalances and policy support during the pandemic, prompting a tightening of monetary policy. The latest lockdowns in China could cause new bottlenecks in global supply chains. In this context, beyond its immediate and tragic humanitarian impact, the war will slow economic growth and increase inflation. Overall economic risks have risen sharply, and policy tradeoffs have become even more challenging.
Biden Has Nominated a Man from the Sandy Weill/Robert Rubin/Tim Geithner School of Wall Street Hubris to Head Regulation at the Fed In addition to being a law professor at the University of Michigan, Michael Barr also holds the title as the “Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of Public Policy at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.” The Ford School sits in a building called the Joan and Sanford Weill Hall, which was given that name as the result of a $5 million donation from the Weills. To anyone who hasn’t been in a coma since the Wall Street crash of 2008 – an event that sent the U.S. economy into the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression – an affiliation with the name “Weill” should have been an automatic disqualifier for any position in the Biden administration even remotely connected to regulating Wall Street.
While JPMorgan Chase Was Getting Trillions of Dollars in Loans at Almost Zero Percent Interest from the Fed, It Was Charging Americans Hit by the Pandemic 17 Percent on their Credit Cards Under just three of the emergency bailout programs offered by the Fed to Wall Street, units of the megabank JPMorgan Chase tapped over $6 trillion in cumulative (term-adjusted) loans from September 17, 2019 through the first quarter of 2020. That figure will definitely go higher as the Fed is releasing the names of the banks and the amounts they borrowed on a quarterly basis for its repo loan program. Thus far, the numbers stack up as follows: a trading unit of JPMorgan Chase borrowed $6.19 trillion from the Fed’s repo loan program from September 17, 2019 through March 31, 2020. (Those are cumulative, term-adjusted figures.) A significant chunk of that money was borrowed at interest rates as low as 0.10 percent. The loans were collateralized with mostly treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS).
World:
The Rise of the Socialist Movement (Mugimendu Sozialista) IN THE Basque Country The comrades of the International Marxist Tendency are looking at with enormous interest and sympathy at the Socialist Movement in the Basque Country, which promotes the emergence of a mass communist movement, and defends the international character of socialism. We publish here a brief article on the characteristics of this extraordinary occurrence, and its current development
How Hypersonic Weapons Work Russia used a hypersonic missile against a Ukrainian arms depot in the western part of the country on March 18, 2022. That might sound scary, but the technology the Russians used is not particularly advanced. However, next-generation hypersonic missiles that Russia, China and the U.S. are developing do pose a significant threat to national and global security. I am an aerospace engineer who studies space and defense systems, including hypersonic systems. These new systems pose an important challenge due to their maneuverability all along their trajectory. Because their flight paths can change as they travel, these missiles must be tracked throughout their flight. A second important challenge stems from the fact that they operate in a different region of the atmosphere from other existing threats. The new hypersonic weapons fly much higher than slower subsonic missiles but much lower than intercontinental ballistic missiles. The U.S. and its allies do not have good tracking coverage for this in-between region, nor does Russia or China.
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!