Daily News Digest April 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:
Critical Race Theory
Terrifying: 
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:
Huge Iceberg Looms Over Canada’s Newfoundland Coast – BBC News
Pod Cast: Steven Donziger Vs. Big Oil This week, after nearly 1,000 days of arbitrary detention, the environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger was released from house arrest. On this week’s podcast, Donziger talks to Intercept investigative reporter Sharon Lerner and Ryan Grim about his battle with Chevron over land contamination in Ecuador.
Quotes of the Day:
To avert climate catastrophe, the main emitters must drastically cut emissions starting this year,” Guterres tweeted in April 2022, adding that the most important actions for governments to take are ending humanity’s fossil fuel “addiction” and scaling up renewable energy. “Every second counts. It’s time for urgent #ClimateAction,” he added. — UN Secretary-General António Guterres says Climate action is “Urgent.”
Meanwhile, many countries are now increasing arms spending and investing resources in more and more dangerous weapons. The United States has just approved its biggest-ever defense budget. These resources used for weapons are all resources not used for health, education, housing or environmental protection. This is a perilous and dangerous time. Watching the horror play out and then preparing for more conflicts in the future will not ensure the climate crisis, poverty crisis or food supply is addressed. It’s up to all of us to build and support movements that can chart another course for peace, security and justice for all. — Jeremy Corbyn: Now, Let Us Talk Peace
Here’s a link to a video produced by the Forest Service to rationalize more logging. The video promotes a lot of misinformation about wildfire. In this video it claims today’s forests are much denser than historic conditions due to fire suppression and other factors. However, that view is challenged by some scientists arguing that the methods used to deduct forest density are flawed. . . . The agency implies fewer trees are killed in areas with substantial logging, but it never counts the trees it kills with chainsaws. Recent studies suggest that more total trees are destroyed by thinning and fire than from fires alone if you include all the trees removed by chainsaw medicine. The snags resulting from a large blaze store carbon for decades, not to mention the charcoal in the soil, and roots, all of which also store carbon. There are still snags from the 1910 Great Burn surviving and storing carbon more than a hundred years after this 3.5 million acre blaze. By contrast, logging and wood processing releases carbon immediately (i.e., climate-warming gases) into the atmosphere. Logging releases three times the carbon as a wildfire on a per-acre basis and ten times the carbon of wildfire and insects combined. By contrast, wildfires release a relatively small amount of carbon. — More Forest Service Snake Oil on the Bitterroot
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!
Ukraine Crisis: Biden Fans the Flames of War In a shock announcement, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has told Russian state media: “NATO, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy.” In an uncharacteristically angry tone, he accused NATO of fighting a proxy war by supplying military aid to Ukraine, just at a time when western defence ministers have gathered in Germany for US-hosted talks on supporting Ukraine through what one US general called a “very critical” few weeks. In a shock announcement, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has told Russian state media: “NATO, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy.” In an uncharacteristically angry tone, he accused NATO of fighting a proxy war by supplying military aid to Ukraine, just at a time when western defence ministers have gathered in Germany for US-hosted talks on supporting Ukraine through what one US general called a “very critical” few weeks.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
The Ecocidal Ukraine War: Energy War in Europe Intensifies as Russia Cuts Off Gas Supply to Poland, Bulgaria Russia’s move “makes it clearer than ever that Europe needs to move quickly to reduce its reliance on Russian energy,” said the head of the International Energy Agency. European gas prices surged Wednesday after Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom cut off the supply of gas to NATO members Poland and Bulgaria, a move seen as a significant escalation of what has been dubbed a “fossil fuel war” between Moscow and the West. Announced two months into Russia’s deadly assault on Ukraine, Gazprom’s decision came weeks after the United States halted fossil fuel imports from Russia and vowed to help European nations end their reliance on Russian oil and gas.
Capitalism’s Recycling Lie Plastics and Fossil Fuels Plastics began to hit the American marketplace in bulk in the 1950s. According to the EIA, “plastics are produced from natural gas, feedstocks derived from natural gas processing, and feedstocks derived from crude oil refining.” As a result, the sale of plastics represents a significant source of revenue for the big oil companies. But in the early 1980s, the oil industry ran into a problem: it was not selling enough plastic to turn a profit. Research internal to the oil industry, uncovered by NPR two years ago, discovered one reason why: plastic was identified with pollution in the minds of consumers. People didn’t want to buy products they knew would simply end up in the environment, their neighborhoods, or water supply. At the same time, legislation was being proposed at the local, state, and federal levels to regulate the use of plastics and limit the effects of plastics pollution on the environment. This presented a major problem to the source of big oil’s profits. So, in a series of boardroom meetings, oil executives came up with a solution: change how plastics are marketed. If people think that plastics can be recycled, if people think that they can combat pollution by recycling, then people will buy more plastic. The problem is that plastic is incredibly difficult—read: unprofitable under capitalism—to recycle. Plastic is not a uniform material. There are many different types, which must be sorted and broken down before being reformed and reused, a complicated process in and of itself. Further, plastic materials degrade with each reuse. In short, it is cheaper to produce new plastic from oil than to recycle old plastic
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Black Agenda Radio April 22, 2022 with Margaret Kimberley Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights Jaribu Hill is Director of the Mississippi Workers Center for Human Rights, which is hosting a workers memorial day webinar entitled “No one should have to die to make a living” on Saturday, April…
Economy:
A Major Recession is Coming, Deutsche Bank Warns Deutsche Bank raised eyebrows earlier this month by becoming the first major bank to forecast a US recession, albeit a “mild” one. Now, it’s warning of a deeper downturn caused by the Federal Reserve’s quest to knock down stubbornly high inflation. “We will get a major recession,” Deutsche Bank economists wrote in a report to clients on Tuesday. The problem, according to the bank, is that while inflation may be peaking, it will take a “long time” before it gets back down to the Fed’s goal of 2%. That suggests the central bank will raise interest rates so aggressively that it hurts the economy.
Has Globalisation Ended? Apart from inflation and war, what grips current economic thought is the apparent failure of what mainstream economics likes to call ‘globalisation’. What mainstream economics means by globalisation is the expansion of trade and capital flows freely across borders. In 2000, the IMF identified four basic aspects of globalisation: trade and transactions, migration capital and investment movements,and movement of people, and the dissemination of knowledge. All these components apparently took off from the early 1980s as part of the ‘neoliberal’ reversal of previous national macro-management policies adopted by governments in the environment of the Bretton Woods world economic order (ie US hegemony). Then the call was to break down tariff barriers, quotas and other trade restrictions and allow the multi-nationals to trade ‘freely’ and to switch their investments abroad to cheap labour areas to boost profitability. This would lead to global expansion and harmonious development of the productive forces and resources of the world, it was claimed. There was nothing new in this phenomenon. There have been periods of increased trade and capital export before since capitalism became the dominant mode of production in the major economies by the mid-19th century. In 1848, the authors of the Communist Manifesto noted the increasing level of national inter-dependence brought on by capitalism and predicted the universal character of the modern world society: “The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed…. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.”
Global Megabanks Are Tanking – The Same Ones the Fed Bailed Out in 2019 As long-term readers of Wall Street On Parade know well, we have regularly warned that the failure of Congress to meaningfully reform Wall Street by restoring the Glass-Steagall Act poses a national security threat to our nation in times of crisis. Instead of meaningful reform, Congress has stood by and watched the Fed bail out the global banks repeatedly since 2008 – either with direct loans or by keeping interest rates artificially low (“administered rates”) or through trillions of dollars in asset purchases from the banks (what the Fed prefers to call Quantitative Easing). The Fed’s balance sheet has ballooned from less than $1 trillion before the financial crisis in 2008 to $9 trillion today as a result of its willingness to perpetually bail out Wall Street. American taxpayers are on the hook for 98 percent of the Fed’s balance sheet and thus have a critical interest in demanding both transparency and accountability from the Fed. In the fall of 2019 there was no war in Ukraine, there was no pandemic. But for still undisclosed reasons, the Fed decided to funnel trillions of dollars in cumulative repo loans to the trading units of U.S. megabanks and their foreign counterparties. The Fed’s repo loans stretched from September 17, 2019 through July 2, 2020. The Fed has begun releasing the names of the banks and the amounts they had borrowed on a quarterly basis, following a two-year lag. There has been an unprecedented mainstream media news blackout of this information.
World:
Reformism to Warmongering: A Slippery Slope On 9 April, a group called Stand With Ukraine held a small demonstration in London. Despite receiving support from a number of trade unions, only a few hundred people took part. In true Orwellian fashion, this so-called anti-war solidarity demonstration was filled with hair-raising, warmongering rhetoric. Slogans included: “arm, arm, arm Ukraine!”, and participants were reportedly inviting NATO to “call Putin’s bluff”, i.e. to launch a full-blown military intervention and spark World War III.
Now, Let Us Talk Peace With Russian shells raining down on Ukrainian cities, an uneasy ceasefire in Yemen, the attack on Palestinians at prayer in Jerusalem and many other conflicts around the world, it might seem to some to be inappropriate to talk about peace. When a war is going on, though, it is absolutely the time to talk about peace. How else can we prevent even further loss of life or yet more millions forced into refuge somewhere else in the world? It is welcome that at last the United Nations has taken an initiative with the welcome request by Secretary-General António Guterres for face-to-face meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. There must be an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine followed by a Russian troop withdrawal and agreement between Russia and Ukraine on future security arrangements.
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!