Daily News Digest January 3, 2023
Images:
The scene in Brasília a Few Hours Before Lula’s Inauguration Supporters Still Streaming Onto the Esplanade. 
Capitalism is Dangerous to One’s Health!: Steve Bell on the Health Secretary’s Claims About NHS Unions 
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!
Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Has Been Aware of the Comming Catastrophe of Global Warming Over 5 Decades 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 very future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
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:
Racial Hatred?: You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught You’ve got to be taught To hate and fear, You’ve got to be taught From year to year, It’s got to be drummed In your dear little ear, You’ve got to be carefully taught. . . .
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”!
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Chris Hedges: 2023 Book TV Interview Chris Hedges joins Book TV for an interview and live question call-in on C-SPAN 2 C-SPAN 2’s Book TV hosted ScheerPost columnist, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges on Jan.1 for an interview and live question call-in from the audience. The conversation dove into Hedges’ latest books since his last appearance on the program in 2012, including “America: The Farewell Tour,” “The Greatest Evil Is War,” and more. Click the link below to watch the interview below on C-SPAN’s site.
The Truth About Cell Phone & Wireless Radiation Dr. Devra Davis
Rapid Fire – What Brain and Sperm Share and Why Care | Dr. Devra Davis
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 Republicrats 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 the poor and gives to the Rich. Rax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay! Both Parties Support U.S. Capitalism’s Wars! (The Only War the Democrats Opposed was the Civil War!):
Woe for the Children Maimed, Displaced, and Killed by the Merchants of War Phil Berrigan’s challenge must become ours: “Meet me at the Pentagon!” Or at its corporate outposts. Days after a U.S. warplane bombed a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing forty-two people, twenty-four of them patients, the international president of MSF, Dr. Joanne Liu walked through the wreckage and prepared to deliver condolences to family members of those who had been killed. A brief video, taped in October, 2015, captures her nearly unutterable sadness as she speaks about a family who, the day before the bombing, had been prepared to bring their daughter home. Doctors had helped the young girl recover, but because war was raging outside the hospital, administrators recommended that the family come the next day. “She’s safer here,” they said.
Environment — Ecosocialism or Ecocide:
Review of Disconnect: The Truth about Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family (Deva) Davis makes a strong case in her book that we’ve underplayed the possible threat from cell phones for too long…Time and again, she shows the way that industry has been able to twist science just enough to stave off the possibility of any regulation.”—Time Magazine “Disconnect will surprise many and anger some. It tells all too human stories behind the science and engineering of cell phones and raises important unresolved questions about this universal technology.”—Frank A. Barnes, Professor, University of Colorado at Boulder, Member of the National Academy of Engineering. “A critically important book that is a must-read for parents and policy-makers. A surprising, well—documented, and compelling call for action.”—Phil Lee, M.D., former United States assistant secretary for health, Chancellor Emeritus, University of California, San Francisco. “An amazing and important book that must be read to be believed. Are these devices safe for humans? The ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach of the industry is irresponsible at best, criminal at worst. Read and learn why and how to protect yourself and your loved ones.”—Mark Hyman, M.D., author of The UltraMind Solution, Chairman, The Institute for Functional Medicine. “A brilliant and courageous tour de force by one of our nation’s leading environmental health experts. Davis provides a detailed exposé that forces us all to take a good, hard look at what we know and what we don’t know about cell phones.” —Ronald B. Herberman, M.D., Founding Director Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. “Devra Davis has written a book that will change the way the world thinks about cell phones and the potential public health disaster they represent.”—Carlos Santos—Burgoa, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., Past President, International Society for Environmental Epidemiology
Civil Rights Black Liberation:
Let 2023 Be the Year of Dismantling Incarceration I asked organizers working to dismantle incarceration what is giving them hope for 2023. Here’s what they shared. Over the past year, organizers across the country have been working nonstop to free people from jails and prisons — and yet, of course, millions remain behind bars. Faced with this reality, it can be easy to slip into discouragement at the outset of a new year. But long-time abolitionist organizer and author Mariame Kaba reminds us that “hope is a discipline” — one we must practice even when the horizon is cloudy, when the new year brings no clarity, no easy optimism.
Labor:
Economy:
Michael Roberts Blog: I’ve called the decade of the 2010s one of a Long Depression for the major economies. So far, the decade of the 2020s has been even worse: the COVID pandemic; worsening global warming and disasters; war in Ukraine; huge falls in living standards from rocketing inflation and now an impending slump in 2023. As Marx once said to Engels: “May I wish you in advance every happiness for the New Year. If it’s anything like the old one, I, for my part, would sooner consign it to the devil.”— Marx to Engels, 27 December 1861
World:
Planning Mass Protest at UK Parliament, Extinction Rebellion Halts Disruptive Tactics The group’s U.K. arm announced a New Year’s resolution: leaving “the locks, glue, and paint behind” to organize a demonstration of 100,000 people and pressure the government to take climate action. In preparation for a nonviolent mass direct action planned for April that Extinction Rebellion says will be “impossible” for policymakers to ignore, the global climate movement’s United Kingdom arm on Sunday announced a resolution for the new year: temporarily ending its headline-grabbing, disruptive tactics including gluing protesters to government buildings and rush-hour trains and blocking traffic to draw attention to the climate crisis. The U.K. group will no longer use “public disruption as a primary tactic,” saying in a statement that “what’s needed now most is to disrupt the abuse of power and imbalance, to bring about a transition to a fair society that works together to end the fossil fuel era.”
Brazil Celebrates Lula’s Return as Right-Wing Reign of Bolsonaro Comes to an End Hundreds of thousands took to the street to welcome the leftist leader back to elected office. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets across Brazil on Sunday to celebrate the inauguration of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose return to the nation’s highest office also marked the exit of far-right Jair Bolsonaro who left his country and arrived in the U.S. state of Florida ahead of the weekend’s transfer of power.
Health Education 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 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
I’m Immunocompromised. Here’s How I Feel About Masking in 2023. “The virus is mutating faster than the medication can keep up. This makes things especially dangerous for people like me.”
The hardest part of all this is that no one seems to care whether I live or die. . . . While this was scary to hear, the upside was that I was eligible for Evusheld. Evusheld is “pre-exposure prophylaxis,” which means that it helps to prevent COVID infection and has been approved for emergency use in people that don’t respond to the vaccine or have had severe reactions in the past. A few months after I received the two shots, (one right after the other), the FDA announced that Evusheld is not very effective against the newest variants that make up the majority of new infections. About 72 percent of new COVID cases in the U.S. are caused by omicron subvariants BQ.1, BQ.1.1, XBB and XBB.1, strains that scientists call the most resistant to date. It’s not just Evusheld that the variants are rendering ineffective. One comfort that high-risk people previously had was that if we got COVID we could at least get monoclonal antibodies to help our bodies fight the infection. However, a December 13, 2022, study found that “all clinical monoclonal antibodies were rendered inactive against these variants.” The virus is mutating faster than the medication can keep up. This makes things especially dangerous for people like me.