Daily News Digest June 21, 2022
Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines, Like the Salk Polio Vaccine, are Free For the Whole World! The Covid Pandemic is Not Over! Yesterday(6/16), in the U.S.. There Were Over 96,374 and Two Days Ago, There Were Over 119,909 New Covid CaseS
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!
Quotes of the Day:
In a polite nod of deference to US law, the proposed law states that an offence is committed when a person “obtains, copies, records or retains protected information, or discloses or provides access to protected information” for a purpose “that they know, or ought reasonably to know, is prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom” and if “the foreign power condition is met”. The requirement there is that the act is “carried out for or on behalf of a foreign power”, including instances where “an indirect relationship” exists. Assange has 14 days to appeal this insidious rubber stamping of judicially sanctioned brutality. His legal team are hoping to use the High Court as the route to highlight the political dimension of the case and draw attention back to the way the extradition law was read. If the defence fail, Assange will be sent across the Atlantic, entrusted to officials, some of whom considered murdering him, to be made an example of. It will be the clarion call to regimes across the world that punishing a publisher is something supposed liberal democracies can do as well, and as deviously, as anybody else. — Predictable Monstrosities: Priti Patel Approves Assange’s Extradition
Who is Chesa Boudin? His grandfather Leonard, an idol of mine, was born into a socialist family, married a wife of poetry and became brother-in-law to legendary leftist journalist I. F. Stone. Very much the Clarence Darrow of his generation, over the course of his 50-year battle for equality, justice and the right to dissent, his clients were a veritable who’s who of those despised for the arrogance of their voice and the daring of their step; among them Julian Bond, Paul Robeson, Benjamin Spock, William Sloane Coffin and Daniel Ellsberg. During the height of McCarthyism, he represented those hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to prove their fidelity to the United States; along the way he toppled the provision of the Taft-Hartley Act that compelled union leaders to swear under oath that they were not Communists. Among his other ground-breaking civil rights cases, he prevailed in the Supreme Court against a law that held those who refused to be drafted could by routine fiat alone be stripped of citizenship. He represented Cuban interests in the United States for over 30 years and the Central Bank of Iran during the hysteria of the Iran hostage crisis. —Chesa Boudin Did Not Lose . . . We Did
Videos:
Michael Hudson: Economic Rent and Exploitation Part 1 Par II
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!
Ralph Nader: U.S. Senate – From Partisan (GOP) Swamp to a Bipartisan Graveyard for Democracy Since January 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed 412 bills (See: Congress.gov) and sent them to the Senate. Unfortunately, the Senate hasn’t acted. “What?” you say, “don’t the Democrats control both Chambers of Congress?” Sure, by the barest of margins. Handcuffed by the filibuster, a Senate rule (not a federal law) requires 60 votes to pass legislation in what Senators of yore called the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” “Nonsense,” says veteran Rep. John Larson (D-CT). The Democrats can hold public hearings, report bills to the Senate floor and then make the Republicans filibuster. Let the GOP sweat a days-long filibuster of a bill establishing a $15 minimum wage. Imagine the national TV coverage with Democrats rebutting the cruel or lying orations by megamillionaire Senator Mitch McConnell and his minions. As has been the practice for years, the Republican minority members in the Senate merely sent the majority leader an email threatening a filibuster (“extended debate” is the euphuism) and the majority leader placed the bills from the House in limbo.
Chris Hedges: The Global Ruling Class, Endless War, and the Culture of Mass Death The global ruling class is cementing into place a world where they govern without accountability, we are reduced to serfdom, the climate crisis accelerates, and mass death is normalized. It is hard to be sanguine about the future. The breakdown of the ecosystem is well documented. So is the refusal of the global ruling elite to pursue measures that might mitigate the devastation. We accelerate the extraction of fossil fuels, wallow in profligate consumption, including our consumption of livestock, and make new wars as if we are gripped by a Freudian death wish. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—Conquest, War, Famine and Death—gallop into the 21rst century. Those who rule, servants of corporations and the global billionaire class, accompany the suicidal folly by cementing into place corporate tyranny. The plan is not to reform. It is to perpetuate the corporate pillage. This pillage, more and more onerous for the global population, necessitates a new totalitarianism, one where the billionaire class lives in opulence, workers are serfs, rights such as privacy and due process are abolished, Big Brother watches us all the time, war is the chief business of the state, dissent is criminalized and those displaced by conflicts and climate breakdown are barred entry into the climate fortresses in the global north. Portions of the human species, the most privileged, will, in theory, hold out a little longer before they succumb to the great die off.
Only Radical Changes Will Make Rents Affordable The affordable rental housing situation in the US has been in crisis from as early as the 1960s, and it has only worsened over time. Without a radically new approach, we can not expect to solve the problem. T. he US needs to adopt European-style social housing and also make rental assistance an entitlement. Social housing is not-for-profit affordable housing that includes the working and middle classes. Unlike social housing, public housing in the US shelters impoverished families in government-owned housing often without the funds necessary for maintenance, cleanliness, and safety.
‘Sad Day for Western Democracy’: Chomsky, Ellsberg, Others Denounce Assange Extradition “The U.K.’s decision to extradite Julian Assange to the nation that plotted to assassinate him—the nation that wants to imprison him for 175 years for publishing truthful information in the public interest—is an abomination.”
‘Poverty Is Violence!’ Thousands of Demonstrators in DC Demand Economic Justice “Poverty is a policy choice and we will hold our leaders accountable.“ “We are the 140 million poor and low-wealth people, standing together to declare we won’t be silent anymore,” said Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s campaign. “We are the 140 million poor and low-wealth people, standing together to declare we won’t be silent anymore,” said Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the campaign. “Poverty is a policy choice and we will hold our leaders accountable.”
Biden’s Policy Increasingly Looks Like Trump’s Middle East Strategy The U.S. leader is reportedly planning to offer a security pact—similar to the Abraham Accords finalized under his predecessor—to the autocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. “ EPA’s failure to act on the science… has real-world adverse health consequences for farmworkers, the public, and ecosystems.”: ‘Major
Trump Allies Paid Millions to Jan. 6 Rally Organizers Since 2020 Former President Donald Trump’s political operation and Republican Party committees have paid over $12.6 million to individuals and firms that organized the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that preceded the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol since the start of the 2020 election, a new OpenSecrets analysis found. The full extent of the payments from the Trump campaign political operations to rally organizers during the 2020 election and around the rally in early 2021 remains a mystery because the campaign’s top vendor was American Made Media Consultants LLC, a firm created by Trump campaign aides to act as a clearinghouse for its spending. Trump’s campaign and joint fundraising committee routed more than $771 million through the firm, hiding details of those payments — including information about the identities of some people paid by the campaign and how much money changed hands. January 6 Hearings The congressional hearings investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol are a diversion for desperate democrats. They also ignore the constant threat of mob violence caused by racist feelings of aggrievement.
US Constitution: Bad Medicine for Children Public health is about curative, rehabilitative, and especially preventative healthcare for everybody, no exclusions. Failed public health was on display during the Covid-19 pandemic. “The United States has the highest rate of COVID-19 deaths per capita” among 11 high-income countries, according to one infectious disease specialist.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
Logging Yosemite Will Make It More, Not Less, Vulnerable to Fire The Fresno Bee’s Editorial Board has gone on record opposing the lawsuit, by the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute, against a huge commercial logging project in Yosemite National Park. But the Editorial Board relies upon a scientifically discredited study by logging interests that blatantly manipulated data to promote a false and economically self-serving “overgrown forests” narrative. While it may seem counter-intuitive to some people, the truth is that the strong weight of scientific evidence and opinion indicates that removing live and dead trees from forests does not stop or curb wildfires, and often increases overall fire severity. In fact, more than 200 of the nation’s top climate scientists and ecologists recently concluded the following: We have watched as one large wildfire after another has swept through tens of thousands of acres where commercial thinning had previously occurred due to extreme fire weather driven by climate change. Removing trees can alter a forest’s microclimate, and can often increase fire intensity. In contrast, forests protected from logging, and those with high carbon biomass and carbon storage, more often burn at equal or lower intensities when fires do occur.
Our Bodies, Societies and Planet Are Inflamed for the Same Reasons Activist, filmmaker and bestselling author Raj Patel was dressed as a genetically modified tomato when he met Rupa Marya, MD, more than a decade ago. They were at a protest organized against pesticide use, and Marya—who is a musician as well as a physician—was playing a show at the event with her world-touring band Rupa and the April Fishes. Patel says the two quickly became friends. Patel is a widely published author, perhaps best known for his New York Times and international bestselling book, The Value of Nothing. He is also a filmmaker as well as a research professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. Marya is an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), whose research investigates the intersections of social structures and illness, and the impacts of the culture of colonialism on health. She is also executive director and board chair for the Deep Medicine Circle, a women of color-led, worker-directed 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the San Francisco Bay Area, focused on decolonizing farming and restoring relationships with nature through food. Recently, Marya and Patel coauthored the book Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, published in 2021 through Macmilla
Victory’: Court Orders EPA Review of Glyphosate’s Cancer and Endangered Species Risks “While it comes too late for many farmworkers and landscapers who suffer after glyphosate exposure, we are grateful for the court’s ruling,” said a representative for one plaintiff. A federal appeals court on Friday issued a ruling on the weedkiller glyphosate that the coalition involved with the case called “a historic victory for farmworkers and the environment.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review its conclusions about the safety of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, a popular herbicide created by Monsanto—which Bayer acquired in 2018.
Buckle Up! The Arctic’s Sizzling The Arctic is turning into a dream come true for doomsayers. It’s heating way too fast! Nostradamus is dancing in the street. Record-smashing Arctic temperatures may brighten the outlook for those who thrive, actually enjoy, disaster scenarios, but the great majority of people only get off on disasters in a movie theater, not in the wide open spaces at the top of the world. Even Hollywood itself could never possibly capture the moment, the drama, the heightened level of deep concern of flabbergasted scientists, as temperatures in the Arctic skyrocket.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Economy:
Michael Roberts Blog: It’s official. The New York Federal Bank has released the results of latest forecasting model. It now reckons that there is an 80% chance of a recession in the rest of 2022 and into 2023. Indeed, it expects US real GDP to contract -0.6% in 2022 and -0.5% in 2023. The NY Fed reckons that the Fed’s tightening monetary policy “is a drag on real activity over the next few quarters, but it has a limited effect on the projected course of inflation due to the flatness of the model’s estimated Phillips curve.” Re: The New York Fed DSGE Model Forecast—June 2022
The New York Fed DSGE Model Forecast—June 2022 The New York Fed model forecasts use data released through 2022:Q1, augmented for 2022:Q2 with the median forecasts for real GDP growth and core PCE inflation from the May release of the Philadelphia Fed’s Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF), as well as the yields on 10-year Treasury securities and Baa corporate bonds based on 2022:Q2 averages up to May 27. In addition, for 2021:Q4 and each subsequent quarter, the expected federal funds rate between one and six quarters into the future is restricted to equal the corresponding median point forecast from the latest available Survey of Primary Dealers (SPD) in that quarter. For the current projection, this is the May 2022 SPD. The model’s outlook is considerably more pessimistic than it was in March. It projects inflation to remain elevated in 2022 at 3.8 percent, up a full percentage point relative to March, and to decline only gradually toward 2 percent thereafter (2.5 and 2.1 percent in 2023 and 2024, respectively). This disinflation path is accompanied by a not-so-soft landing: the model predicts modestly negative GDP growth in both 2022 (-0.6 percent versus 0.9 percent in March) and 2023 (-0.5 percent versus 1.2 percent). According to the model, the probability of a soft landing—defined as four-quarter GDP growth staying positive over the next ten quarters—is only about 10 percent. Conversely, the chances of a hard landing—defined to include at least one quarter in the next ten in which four-quarter GDP growth dips below -1 percent, as occurred during the 1990 recession—are about 80 percent.
A Tightening World It’s been a big week for the major central banks. First, the European Central Bank (ECB) called an emergency meeting because government bond yields were rising sharply in the more indebted Eurozone economies like Italy and Spain. That threatens to deliver a new sovereign debt crisis as happened after the Great Recession from 2010-2014, leading to the Greek nightmare. The ECB is now looking for ways to fund the weaker Eurozone governments by buying more of their debt and ‘printing’ money to do it. Ironically, having just announced that it had ended quantitative easing (QE) and looked to raise interest rates in July in order to control accelerating inflation, the ECB now had to revert back to QE for the likes of Italy.
After Crypto Money Piled into Campaign Coffers of Senators Lummis and Gillibrand, They Introduced a Sweetheart Legislative Bill for Crypto On June 7, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York who sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee which oversees commodities, and Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming who sits on the Senate Banking Committee which oversees Wall Street and trading, introduced a bill as an early Christmas present to the crypto industry. It carries the Alice in Wonderland title of the Responsible Financial Innovation Act. In reality, it is an irresponsible piece of legislation whose sponsorship by these two women only makes sense when you understand that their campaign coffers are being stuffed with money from the crypto industry. Let’s start with Lummis. A $5800 donation is not a big deal to every member of Congress. But it is a big deal to a Senator from Wyoming, a state whose population is less than 600,000.
World:
Incredible News’: Global Applause as Leftist Gustavo Petro Wins Colombian Presidency Brazilian presidential frontrunner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Petro’s victory “strengthens democracy and progressive forces in Latin America.” Former guerrilla fighter and longtime lawmaker Gustavo Petro defeated a millionaire businessman viewed as Colombia’s Donald Trump on Sunday to become the South American nation’s first leftist president-elect, riding a wave of mass anger over inequality, poverty, and the corruption of the right-wing political establishment.
As Investigation Continues, Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips Remembered From Brazil to Britain “The relentless violence against environmental defenders and investigative journalists,” one expert wrote of Brazil, “offers a window into the scale of environmental crime and its monumental toll on natural and human ecosystems.” As police in Brazil revealed Sunday that more suspects have been identified in the murder investigation of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips, they were remembered around the world for their commitment to Indigenous people and the Amazon rainforest.
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!
US For-Profit Health System Is a Mass Killer We could stop murdering our own population en masse by adopting a single-payer healthcare. Imagine waking up to a headline that reads, “Atlanta Demolished by Nuclear Bomb,” and learning that the city’s 498,715 residents were dead. The shock to our society would be unimaginable. And yet, we just learned that the American health system killed more people than that in the last two years alone and hardly anyone noticed. The fact that we’ve also wasted more than a trillion dollars barely merits an afterthought. The figures are laid out in a new report from the National Academy of Sciences. The goal of the report is to calculate how many lives we could have saved and how much less money we would have spent if a single-payer health system had been in place before the COVID-19 pandemic.