Daily News Digest June 22, 2010

Images Of the Day:

Carlos Latuff: New Israeli Government, Same Israeli ApartheidAnother Example of Capitalism as a Failed System: World CaAnpilalism Was 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”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:

NATO threat to Russia:  As the Cold War was ending, Reagan assured Gorbachev that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would not expand to the east. Another promise not kept.    The US led the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics over the following years.     In 1999, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were incorporated into NATO. In 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined. In 2009, Albania and Croatia were added. In 2017, Montenegro and then North Macedonia were included.     NATO is not an economic alliance, but a military one, and is now openly described in Washington as an “anti-Russia alliance”.     Three countries now being considered for incorporation into this alliance: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia and Ukraine.     “Red lines” were drawn at the Biden-Putin meeting. Two were emphasised. In one, Putin threatened war if Ukraine — with its large border with Russia — became part of NATO. He also said that in the event of a Ukrainian offensive against Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, Russia will fight.     If Georgia is made a member of NATO, this could also lead to war with Russia, as there is conflict between Russia and Georgia over two small enclaves of Russians in Georgia. NATO members also pledge to fight together in any war involving other NATO countries.     Biden’s “red line” concerns ransom-ware cyber attacks on US companies by criminal organisations the US believes are operating in Russia.      Biden threatened that unless Russia stops these groups from targeting essential industries in the US, US cyber warfare capabilities will be launched against Russian industries, including its oil and gas pipelines serving Europe.   Neither the US nor Russia wants a nuclear war. But the continued arms race and the vast nuclear arsenals held by both — and potential complications if any of the other nuclear powers should blunder into use of such weapons — means this Sword of Damocles remains held over the world.Nuclear weapons should be abolished.       The US could begin this process by declaring it wants to do this, and bringing the other nuclear powers together to achieve abolition. The US, as the most powerful nuclear power, could do this, but refuses. It wants to keep the nuclear threat alive as part of preserving and possibly expanding its global empire. —United States: The Biden-Putin Meeting and the Nuclear Threat

Videos of the Day:

Socialist Pedro Castillo Won Peru’s Election, But Coup Fears Grow as Fujimori Falsely Claims Fraud

Yanis Varoufakis: Capitalist Nations Bailed Out Banks While Skimping on Funds to Vaccinate Humanity

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 ownershipof the Reublicrats, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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.  Tax the Rich!  — They Can Afford To Pay!

United States: The Biden-Putin Meeting and the Nuclear Threat  At their recent meeting in Geneva, United States President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to discuss the control of nuclear weapons     Before looking at decisions the US took in recent years that have increased the danger of nuclear war, it is useful to recall how the nuclear age began.     The US developed the first atomic bomb at the end of World War II, following research led by physicist J Robert Oppenheimer After he saw the horror caused by the first uses of the weapon, a shaken Oppenheimer said: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” The quote is from the Hindu god Vishnu in the Bhagavad Gita.     The US first used the nuclear weapon to bomb two cities in Japan — Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.President Harry Truman — who ordered the bombings — lied at first, saying the US had bombed military targets. In reality, the targets were the civilians in the two cities. According to Japan, hundreds of thousands of people were killed instantly, and many others died over time from radiation poisoning and cancers. The US puts the figure much lower.     The US government then convinced the majority of the US population that the bombings were necessary to save American soldiers’ lives — a myth most Americans believe today. By Barry Sheppard How America’s 50 Largest Inherited-Wealth Dynasties Accelerate Inequality A new IPS/Inequality.org report finds that the U.S. continues to suffer from the extreme and growing wealth and power of inherited-wealth family dynasties – and the growth of their extreme wealth accelerated during the pandemic. The report, “Silver Spoon Oligarchs: How America’s 50 Largest Inherited-Wealth Dynasties Accelerate Inequality,” tracks the 50 wealthiest families from 1983 to 2020 using data from Forbes.  IP  S researchers found that by 2020, the 50 families had amassed $1.2 trillion in assets. For the 27 families on the Forbes 400 list in 1983, their combined wealth had grown by 1,007 percent, from $80.2 billion to $903.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars, and for the  five wealthiest dynastic families, their wealth increased by a median 2,484 percent during 37 years. The Walton family led the pack with an increase of 4,320 percent, while the Mars candy family saw its wealth increase 3,517 percent. By  Chuck CollinSWhy the Neoliberal Drive to Privatize Everything Is Running Out of Gas  Today’s declining U.S. capitalism can no longer repeat its previous bland celebrations of private enterprises and free markets. Too much is going wrong, provoking criticism, and deepening divisions across U.S. society. The last time U.S. capitalism stumbled this badly—the Great Depression of the 1930s—public health did not suffer massive failure at the same time. Yet, then too, criticism of capitalism reached far, wide, and deep. By Richard D. Wolff

Environment: Necropolitics in the Amazon As usual, the Amazon is on the frontlines of the war for the appropriation of the natural world. Most people when they hear ‘Amazon’, think only of Brazil. And while the situation in that country certainly is alarming, the battlefields of the Amazon region span northern Bolivia, various departments of Peru, several areas of Ecuador and southern Colombia and Venezuela By Eduardo GudynasCivil Rights/Black Liberation: 

 Labor:

Economy:

 Marx’s law of Profitability After Capital The Global Marxism series organized by SSK in Korea has delivered a number of important presentations and papers on aspects of Marxist economics. I participated in the second round with a paper on the Economics of Modern Imperialism. Recently Hideto Akashi of Komazawa University, Tokyo returned to the fray with a presentation on Marx’s law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. By Michael Roberts

Shadow Government Statistics Flash Commentary, Issue No. 1460b Unfolding Numbers Show a Much Weaker Economy than Previously Advertised

• Fundamentals Could Not Be Stronger for Gold and Silver, nor Weaker for the U.S. Dollar and Stocks, Despite Fed or Market Nonsense to the Contrary
• There Is No V-Shaped Recovery
• Battered, Non-Recovered May 2021 Payrolls and Unemployment Confirmed a Still-Ravaged Economy on Par With the Great Depression
• Severely Negative Annual Revisions to Industrial Production Mean the Economy Was in Recession Well Before the Pandemic Hit
• Business-Cycle Conditions Are Collapsing Rapidly, Amidst an Extreme Acceleration in Inflation
• 2021 Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) Could Spike to a 40-Year High, Based on Potential Third-Quarter 2021 CPI-W
• Bureau of Labor Statistics Reveals It Cannot Measure the CPI Properly, At Present
• FOMC Has Trouble Forecasting Inflation One Quarter Ahead, Let Alone Two Years Ahead
• Despite Talk of “Tightening” in 2022 or 2023, FOMC Is “Easing” Anew in Its Latest Actions

Overview

• June FOMC Indicated Possible Tightening for Late-2022 or 2023
• In Response, the U.S. Dollar Rallied, and Stocks and Gold Got Clobbered
• The Economy Has Not Been Stabilized; It Is Not Close to a Full Rebound or Recovery
• Downside Reporting Surprises Loom for Headline Activity
• Surging Money Supply Growth Is a Major Factor in Spiking Inflation
• Yet, Against Potential Systemic Collapse, the Fed Has Little Choice but to Keep Printing Money
• Where The Fed Might Want to Cut Back on Its Monetary Stimulus, It Had Not Done So as of June

 Experts Have Been Warning for Months of an Unprecedented Stock Market Bubble Set to Explode One thing is for sure. When the current stock market bubble does eventually crash, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is not going to be able to sit before Congress and tell lawmakers that nobody could have seen it coming. Wall Street veterans have gone on record repeatedly in recent months to warn of a coming crash. Last week Michael Burry, who heads the hedge fund Scion Asset Management and was immortalized in “The Big Short” movie for making a fortune shorting subprime debt before it collapsed in the 2008 crash, took to Twitter with the latest of these warnings. (The Tweets were subsequently deleted after they were heavily publicized in the business media and retweeted.)  One thing is for sure. When the current stock market bubble does eventually crash, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is not going to be able to sit before Congress and tell lawmakers that nobody could have seen it coming. Wall Street veterans have gone on record repeatedly in recent months to warn of a coming crash.Last week Michael Burry, who heads the hedge fund Scion Asset Management and was immortalized in “The Big Short” movie for making a fortune shorting subprime debt before it collapsed in the 2008 crash, took to Twitter with the latest of these warnings. (The Tweets were subsequently deleted after they were heavily publicized in the business media and retweeted.) By Pam Martens and Russ Martens 
World:

Turkey: Erdogan and the “deep state” For over two months now, the Turkish state and president Erdogan’s regime have faced attacks from a seemingly unlikely source. Sedat Peker, a notorious mafia boss in exile, with a long record of criminal activity and of intriguingly short jail sentences, has released a video almost every Sunday for the past two months in which he claims to expose the details of connections between important AKP officials, the Turkish state, and organised crime. By Florian Keller

Education, Health, Science, 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! 

FYI: On The Nation Magazine’s Anti-War positions:  During the Korean War, In Order to Express His Opposition to the Korean War, I.F. Stones had to leave The Nation Magazine and Start the I. F. Stone’s Weekly

Statement By  the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC)

We are the Camp of Peace and Anti-Imperialism By the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC)     Gilbert Achcar’s article in The Nation entitled, How to Avoid the ‘Anti-Imperialism’ of Fools, argues that the anti-imperialism of the peace movement has changed over time.  During the time of the Vietnam War, he contends, we all opposed U.S. imperialism’s involvement, but today is different. The peace movement today is wrong to oppose U.S. imperialist interventions in Syria, Libya and other countries, in Achcar’s opinion.  In his attack piece, he specifically condemns three organizations,the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) and the U.S. Peace Council, both based in the United States, and the Stop the Wars Coalition from Britain. All three include leaders who have been active in the peace movement from the Vietnam War era to the present. All three have remained consistent in condemning U.S. imperialism’s wars around the world, including its drone wars, sanction wars, CIA Special Operation wars, privatized mercenary army wars and embargo/blockade wars.       It is not the trajectory of the anti-imperialists that has been inconsistent and needs to be examined but the journey of Achcar himself, from his opposition to the Vietnam War to his support to U.S. and British imperialism, which even includes training British military personnel. (1)(2)

Supporting UN/U.S. “No Fly Zones”

Achcar believes that “defense of democratic rights” should be the “paramount principle of the left,” not the struggle against imperialism.  In this pursuit of “democratic rights,” he believes imperialist powers such as the United State and Britain can play a positive role through “humanitarian” interventions such as No Fly Zones.  For example, Achcar supported the UN Security Council “No Fly Zone” resolution on Libya that helped destroy that nation. Achcar, proudly asserted that “It took very few days for NATO to deprive [President Muammar] Gadhafi of much of his air force and tanks.” Tragically, the U.S. “humanitarian” pretext for the saturation bombing of Libya, as with the “weapons of mass destruction” pretext employed to devastate Iraq, proved to be a CIA invention.     Achcar correctly stated that much of the anti-imperialist left opposed the UN Security Council No Fly Zone resolution that paved the way for Libya’s destruction. Today, Libya has been reduced to a failed state with the U.S. military backing the faction of a local dictator intent on securing control of Libya’s oil for imperialist exploitation.

U.S. Pretext in Defending “Democratic Rights”

When Achcar talks about “defense of democratic rights,” he is using the same rational that the imperialist countries always employ when they bomb, invade, sanction or organize coups against poor nations, whether they be Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Libya or Syria. If the imperialists succeed, the governments that follow are never democratic. Instead, they are installed to serve the interest of Washington and Wall Street.

We in the antiwar movement believe that whenever the U.S. intervenes to overthrow the government of a poor and oppressed nation it is a violation of that nation’s fundamental right of self-determination. We reject the reactionary notion of U.S. imperialism as the world cop. We state this unequivocally, whether we agree or disagree with the policies of the country under U.S. attack.

The Right to Self-determination

Our support to the right of poor and oppressed nations to self-determination, that is, to be free from U.S. imperialist war and intervention is unconditional. When Syria is attacked and devastated by the combined forces engaged in a U.S./NATO orchestrated war including Israel, Turkey and the Gulf State monarchies, who finance and deploy tens of thousands of mercenaries, we stand 100 percent opposed. We demand U.S. Out Now! U.S., Hands Off! And we support Syria’s right to defend itself, including to seek help from its allies, Iran and Russia.

U.S. troops and their proxies now occupy the Northeast oil producing area of Syria and Syrian oil is being sold by them.  They have destroyed and occupied much the grain producing area and they have imposed harsh sanctions.  U.S. weapons are in the hands of terrorist forces in Syria, including the Al Nusra Front which was the Al Qaeda affiliate in that country.  The U.S. has been involved in the training of anti-Assad forces; they and their allies like Israel and NATO countries have bombed Syria and have facilitated tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries entering the country to bring down the Syrian government. Yet Achcar contends the U.S. role in Syria is minor.

No to all U.S. imperialist wars!

The U.S. today is by far the main imperialist power in the world.  At $1 trillion annually, its military budget comes close to equaling the total of all other nations combined.  It has the most nuclear weapons. It has started a new arena for war by creating the multi-billion-dollar Space Force. The U.S. has troops in some 172 countries(3) and about 20 times the number of foreign military bases as all other countries combined. Therefore, we in the United States, in the belly of the beast, have a special obligation to build a strong anti-imperialist, antiwar movement and oppose all U.S. military interventions.  Gilbert Achcar and The Nation seem to take us to task for that. The role of Gilbert Achcar and others who call themselves socialists but support U.S. and Western intervention around the world, is to weaken and undermines our movement.  They lend “left cover” to U.S. interventions; their arguments bolster the false idea that the U.S. intervenes anywhere for humanitarian reasons.

We call upon our movement to reject the arguments of Gilbert Achcar and others like him and to continue to oppose U.S. interventions around the world.

United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC)  UNACpeace.org