Daily News Digest May 17, 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:
Quotes of the Day:
The Objective Prerequisites for a Socialist Revolution The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat. The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism. Mankind’s productive forces stagnate. Already new inventions and improvements fail to raise the level of material wealth. Conjunctural crises under the conditions of the social crisis of the whole capitalist system inflict ever heavier deprivations and sufferings upon the masses. Growing unemployment, in its turn, deepens the financial crisis of the state and undermines the unstable monetary systems. Democratic regimes, as well as fascist, stagger on from one bankruptcy to another. —All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet “ripened” for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only “ripened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership. — The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International
In the late 1970s, OSHA administrators estimated that the agency’s proposed legislation would produce a 20 percent drop in cancer rates. Since all such regulations are a battle between businesses with their “Trade Secrets” and science independent of corporations, the proposed legislation to eliminate 20 percent of all cancers was never approved by the capitalist politicians. In fact, the current “body count” is that over 40 percent of the people in the United States will get cancer. Such is the tragedy of “Trade Secrets.” “Trade Secrets” Cancer and the Environment (What the Bill Moyers Program “Trade Secrets” Revealed)
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’s Silence is Deafening!: Biden’s Silence on an Intellectual Property Waiver Speaks Volumes The White House appears to have no plans to break Big Pharma’s stranglehold on global Covid-19 vaccines. The efforts to suspend intellectual property rules at the WTO were notably missing from the White House’s summit fact sheet.
US Imperialism’s Proxy War: Fighting Russia to the Last Drop of Ukrainian Blood “We’re not just at war to support the Ukrainians. We’re fundamentally at war, although somewhat through a proxy, with Russia, and it’s important that we win,” said US representative Seth Moulton during a Fox News appearance. He was perhaps being more frank than others, but the message has been coming loud and clear from official representatives of Biden’s administration. Asked what the US would consider success in the war, Biden’s Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said “we want to see Russia weakened”.
The Summit of the Americas Could be Biden’s Next Foreign Policy Embarrassment The grandly named Summit of the Americas is due to be held in Los Angeles next month, if the Biden administration can decide who to invite and what to talk about if they turn up. As things stand, Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina, Honduras and most of the Caribbean states have said they will not attend if Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are not included.
The Super Immunity of Our Fabulously Wealthy Corporate Dictators The Robber Barons of old have nothing on this new class of digital oligarchs. . . . Today’s corporate dictators are like no others, with unparalleled wealth towering over that held by Rockefeller and Carnegie (adjusted for inflation). Consider the sheer unchallenged power of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook (Meta), Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, the wannabe CEO of a going-private Twitter, Elon Musk, (unless the sinking Tesla stock ends the debt-deep acquisition price), and Sergey Brin and Larry Page still in control of Google. Despite recent stirrings, there are no companywide unions at these companies and the prospect for such is still in the distant future. These CEOs snap their fingers and their patsy Boards of Directors sign off on huge optimally priced stock options and other goodies. These CEOs don’t have to worry about their shareholders because like Zuckerberg, with a large portion of the shares, they have rigged their even larger control of voting shares giving them an unassailable shareholder majority.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocied
US Oil Refineries Spewing Cancer-Causing Benzene Into Communities, Report Finds Analysis shows alarming level of benzene at fence-line of facilities in Texas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Indiana and US Virgin Islands. Among the 12 refineries that emitted above the maximum level for benzene, five were in Texas, four in Louisiana, and one each in Pennsylvania, Indiana and the US Virgin Islands, a new analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project revealed on Thursday.
The Insect Crisis:The Fall Of The Tiny Empires That Run The World Three out of every four of known animal species are insects. Milman dives into the torrent of recent evidence that suggests this kaleidoscopic group of creatures is suffering the greatest existential crisis in its remarkable 400-million-year history. These losses further tear at the tapestry of life on our degraded planet: even insects we may dread, including the hated cockroach, or the stinging wasp, play crucial ecological roles, and their decline would profoundly shape our own story.
Jeremy Corbyn: It’s Not Enough to Resist, We Have to Build, Too In April, the UN’s climate scientists warned it’s “now or never” to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. You can almost hear them screaming at their keyboards, desperate for governments to actually do something, when they outline the need for “rapid, deep and immediate” cuts in CO2 emissions. But their words are not just a warning about the future; they describe the present reality for billions of people. South Asia is now into its third month of extreme heat, with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius day after day. And it’s not just South Asia that is sweltering. In March, both the Arctic and the Antarctic were 30 degrees Celsius and 40 degrees Celsius above their usual average temperatures, respectively. Ice is melting, and sea levels are rising. Thirty million people were displaced by climate shocks in 2020. And these shocks store up more strife to come by wrecking harvests.The supply chains that connect the world’s farms, mines, factories, shipping lanes, ports, warehouses, delivery networks and consumers are already massively disrupted, even before the full effects of climate breakdown are felt. In the heavily integrated global capitalist economy, disruption spells disaster. Already, more than 800 million people—1 in 10 people of the entire world’s population—go to bed hungry.
As the Planet Warms, Let’s Be Clear: We Are Sacrificing Lives for Profits The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recently dropped a bombshell announcement that should have garnered news headlines in the major global and U.S. media, but did not. New WMO research concludes that “[t]here is a 50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level for at least one of the next five years.”
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Thousands In U.S. March Under ‘Ban Off Our Bodies’ Banner for Abortion Rights Thousands of abortion rights supporters rallied across the United States on Saturday, angered by the prospect that the Supreme Court may soon overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide a half century ago. The protests kicked off what organizers predict will be a “summer of rage” ignited by the May 2 disclosure of a draft opinion showing the court’s conservative majority ready to reverse the 1973 ruling that established a woman’s constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy.
According to the Harvard Civil Rights Project, which recently was forced to move to UCLA, the public schools have become more separate and unequal— the consequences of the last two decades of resegregation along economic, ethnic and racist lines. Throughout this land, both the Republican and Democratic Parties are gentrifying the inner cities, in the service of big business, and the poor are being scattered to the winds. It is how the rich are handling unemployment and poverty in this country. Recently, Black U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) went to Africa to publicize the catastrophe of Aids in Africa. He should have also gone to the Black Communities in the United States and publicized the crisis of Aids in Black America, where nearly half of the million Americans, who are living with HIV today, are Black. In fact it has become a Black disease. — Roland Sheppard, The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights Movement
Despite Decades of Effort, US Schools are Still Not Racially Integrated Nearly seven decades after the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the court’s declared goal of integrated education is still not yet achieved. American society continues to grow more racially and ethnically diverse. But many of the nation’s public K-12 schools are not well integrated and are instead predominantly attended by students of one race or another.
Labor:
Economy:
Crypto UnTethered Last Thursday the $1.3tn cryptocurrency industry was hit heavily when ‘stablecoin’ Tether — a critical cog in the crypto market — briefly failed to maintain its link with the US dollar. A stablecoin is a crypto currency coin that is tied to an existing fiat currency, namely the US dollar, making it easy to switch (if expensively) between a crypto currency like bitcoin and an official currency like the dollar. Stablecoins are supposed to track real-world currencies and so play a central role in the stability of the broader crypto market by providing traders with a safe place to park their cash between making bets on volatile digital coins. But last week that one-to-one parity between Tether and the US dollar was broken and Tether’s price in dollar’s fell, if only briefly to 96c.
Crypto’s Crash: 100-to-1 Leverage Goes Poof! Crypto was in full-blown crash mode last week, wiping out more than $300 billion in market value. TerraUSD, a so-called stablecoin that is supposed to trade at a “stable” $1 value, crashed to a few cents on the dollar. Its sister cryptocurrency, Luna, likewise imploded. Then there was Bitcoin, which Warren Buffett has called “rat poison squared.” Bitcoin plunged further last week and is now down more than 30 percent year-to-date. So much for the hype that it would be an inflation hedge like gold.
World:
‘The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only “ripened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. . . . The turn is now to the 1% proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.’: Mass Protest Is Rising — Can It Confront Global Capitalism? Capitalism is pushing to expand on the backs of working masses who can tolerate no more hardship and deprivation. The world has entered an epoch of escalating class struggle and mass popular protest as the global economy teeters on the verge of recession and international tensions reach the boiling point in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Revolt took off around the globe in the aftermath of the 2008 world financial collapse that put an end to two decades of the “globalization boom.” Popular insurgencies have since escalated on the heels of the pandemic and, although particular movements may rise and fall, there is no letup in sight. The first four months of 2022 saw mass labor strikes and unionization drives breaking out in industries and countries around the world. Meanwhile, civil strife and political conflict are spreading. As inequality increases exponentially and mass hardship and deprivation spread, global capitalism appears to be emerging from the contagion in a dangerous new phase, placing the world in a perilous situation that borders on global civil war.
Sri Lanka: Counter-Revolution Provokes a Social Explosion On Monday 9 May, dramatic events rocked Sri Lanka. After months of economic turmoil, and weeks of mass mobilisations on the streets, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa made a desperate gamble to establish order and save his own political skin. But his brutal crackdown backfired in dramatic style. By nightfall, Mahinda was hiding in a naval base, whilst dozens of MPs’ residences were in flames. By the end of the day, eight people were dead including one MP and two police officers, and the hospitals were flooded with the injured. This is an important ‘before and after’ moment for the struggle. The more moderate layers have been left in a state of shock by the incidents of 9 May. Meanwhile, some of the self-appointed ‘leaders’ are preparing to sell a compromise. The most advanced layers of youth must not allow the lessons of these dramatic days pass by unlearned.
Hedges: The Israeli Execution of Al Jazeera Reporter Shireen Abu Akleh Israel, which shoots hundreds of Palestinians a year, routinely includes reporters and photographers on its target lists. Shireen Abu Akleh, the Al Jazeera reporter with more than two decades of experience covering armed conflicts, knew the protocol. She and other reporters remained last Wednesday in the open, clearly visible to Israeli snipers about 650 feet away in a building. Her flak jacket and helmet were emblazoned with the word “PRESS.”
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 Heslthcare!
IMF ‘Double Standard’ Displays Capitalism’s Inherent Inhumanity Human lives in the periphery are worth less than human lives in the metropolis For over two years now, the world has been facing a pandemic the like of which has not been seen for a century, and which has already taken 15 million lives according to the WHO, without being anywhere near an end. This is an unprecedented crisis for humanity as a whole, which requires a massive effort on the part of every government, especially governments in third world countries where the people are particularly vulnerable not just to the disease but also to the destitution it brings in its train.
Capitalism and Football: Sport Mirrors Society Whilst two of the world’s biggest clubs face off in this weekend’s FA Cup Final, smaller teams are in financial crisis. Corruption, inequality, and racism: These are the ugly sides of the ‘beautiful game’. We must kick capitalism out of football.