Daily News Digest December 13, 2022

Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

Jack Ohman: Revenge of the Killer Robots!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:

I believe the Ukraine war media coverage is worse than in any other war I have witnessed because, for Europeans, fighting is closer to home and emotions are more fully engaged. Demonisation of Russia is total, which may be deserved, but is not a good approach for finding out what is really happening. — Patrick Cockburn

“Millions and likely tens of millions of Americans” will move for climate reasons through the end of the century, Jesse Keenan, an associate professor of real estate in Tulane University’s School of Architecture, told Yahoo News. “People move because of school districts, affordability, job opportunities. There are a lot of drivers, and I think it’s probably best to think about this as ‘climate is now one of those drivers.’”     In late October, a report by the United Nations concluded that average global temperatures are on track to warm by 2.1 to 2.9° Celsius by the year 2100. As a result, the world can expect a dramatic rise in chaotic, extreme weather events. That increase is already happening. In the 1980s, the U.S. was hit with a weather disaster totaling $1 billion in damages once every four months, on average. Thanks to steadily rising temperatures, they now occur every three weeks, according to a draft report of the latest National Climate Assessment, and they aren’t limited to any particular geographical region. — Finding safe Haven in the Climate Change Future: Alaska And Hawaii

Videos/Podcasts of the Day:

Scott Ritter: Talks Drones & New War Tactics In Ukraine/Russia

Scott Ritter 11 Dec – Russia Ukraine NATO special Military Operations Update

Moore V. Harper: Who has the Power to Set State Election Rules?

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!

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”  ― Louis Brandeis

John Kiriakou: The Lies Spies Tell About Assange The imprisoned publisher was attacked during a big-name counter-intelligence event in Washington this week with the same kind of innuendo that a larger gang, back in 2019, threw at the Hunter Biden laptop story.     I  attended a panel discussion at the National Press Club on Monday about the fate of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange.  The event happened to be at the National Press Club, but it was actually sponsored by the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security at George Mason University.     Hayden, the notorious former director of both the C.I.A. and the N.S.A., who oversaw the C.I.A.’s torture program during part of the George W. Bush administration, was front and center at the event.

Chips: the New Arms Race On December 6, US president Joe Biden joined Morris Chang, founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in Arizona for a symbolic “tool-in” ceremony to mark the latest step in the chipmaker’s investment in a new factory in the US.  TSMC is tripling its previously planned investment at its new Arizona plant to $40 billion, among the largest foreign investments in US history, as President Joe Biden visited and hailed the project.  TSMC is the leading hi-tech chipmaker in the world, with both China and the US importing their products to process their manufactures.  TSMC has become the battleground between the US and China in world trade and technology – with the added intensity of Taiwan being the hotspot for geopolitical conflict between the rising economic power of China and the (relative decline) of US dominance globally.

The End of Checks and Balances . . .There was/is one major problem with this structure. The designers of this structure seem to have assumed that the USA would always be open to a diversity of voices and their differing agendas would be worked out and result in balancing the desires of the assumed diversity of representation and guidance.    This assumption that there would be representation of diverse beliefs has always been subjected to some variable degrees of skepticism throughout the trials which mark the the growth of this enterprise. The so-called “Civil war” was possibly the most prominent example of how far skepticism and greed could drive people to try to destroy representation of diverse desires. I say “was” because there is today a belief system which is so widespread within the government that it is reducing almost all types of diversity to gimmicks which are used cynically by the members of the government to reinforce a singular predatory religiosity.

Sheriff Calls on Feds to Seize Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey’s Illegal Border Wall Equipment Federal authorities won’t act, but they are sympathetic, the sheriff said: “They’re feeding me information.”
David Hathaway, the sheriff in southern Arizona’s Santa Cruz County, is offering a simple solution to stop Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s illegal wall of shipping containers along the border: Federal agents should begin seizing vehicles associated with the project.     Hathaway’s county sits directly west of Cochise County, where Ducey has been dropping containers for the past month and a half despite federal officials repeatedly telling him that his actions are unauthorized and unlawful.      With federal authorities doing nothing to act on those warnings, Hathaway has vowed to arrest the governor’s contractors if they cross the county line into his turf.     That scenario would be unlikely, as the contract for the project has the governor’s wall stopping just shy of Hathaway’s jurisdiction. Convoys of Ducey’s contractors have, however, been racing through communities in Santa Cruz County for weeks now, hauling 40-foot shipping containers behind multi-ton pickup trucks at dangerous speeds. Hathaway said his department has received complaints from residents in the town of Elgin of Ducey’s drivers “barreling through town,” ignoring stop signs, and “flying past children.”

Environment — Ecosocialism or Ecocide: 

Ecosocialism Not Extinction!

Nuclear Power will never be Safe due to the radioactive nuclear waste,  without a way to safely store it!:     Reports of ‘Breakthrough’ in Fusion Power Fuels Hopes of Major Clean Energy Progress “If this is true, we are witnessing a moment of history: controlling the power source of the stars is the greatest technological challenge humanity has ever undertaken,” said one physicist. Citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the results, the Financial Times reported Sunday that scientists at a federal laboratory in California successfully produced “a net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time,” a milestone that the Biden administration is expected to announce publicly on Tuesday.

A Risky Gamble at Diablo Canyon More than 170 organizations objected to using federal subsidies to delay the closure of Diablo Canyon, which opened in 1984-85. But that didn’t stop the Department of Energy from recently awarding California a $1.1 billion subsidy to resuscitate Diablo Canyon Environmental groups concerned about cost and safety issues at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in San Luis Obispo County on California’s central coast thought they’d scored a big win in 2018, when a Joint Proposal was approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC)  to retire the aging plant by 2025. But like a zombie, Diablo Canyon’s operating life was resurrected until at least 2030 this past summer when California Governor Gavin Newsom rammed a last minute bill through the California legislature to keep the plant going.     Michael Peck – Diablo Canyon’s senior resident safety inspector from 2007-2012 – tells me the plant should’ve been shut down years ago due to a faulty licensing process that disregarded crucial seismic dataindicating the plant is vulnerable to a Fukushima type of nightmare.

The Invention of Green Colonialism Africa’s national parks were created by European imperial powers by forcibly evicting thousands of people from lands where they lived for centuries. Today, international conservation organizations continue to impose coercive models of “nature protection,” displacing local people, restricting access to resources, and criminalizing the use of the land. They are maintaining and extending a new type of imperial oppression: green colonialism.

Red List Calls Out ‘Perfect Storm of Unsustainable Human Activity Decimating Marine Life’ “As the world looks to the ongoing U.N. Biodiversity Conference to set the course for nature recovery, we simply cannot afford to fail,” said the head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. During the United Nations biodiversity summit in Montreal, an international conversation group on Friday highlighted how humanity is dangerously failing marine life with illegal and unsustainable fishing, pollution from agricultural and industrial runoff, and activities that drive up global temperatures.

Civil Rights Black Liberation:

Will America’s Forever Prison Finally Close on Biden’s Watch? As of December 8, 2022, Guantánamo Bay detention facility — a prison offshore of American justice and built for those detained in this country’s never-ending Global War on Terror — has been open for nearly 21 years (or, to be precise, 7,627 days). Thirteen years ago, I published a book, The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days. It told the story of the military officers and staff who received the prison’s initial detainees at that U.S. naval base on the island of Cuba early in 2002. Like the hundreds of prisoners that followed, they would largely be held without charges or trial for years on end.

 Labor:

Actually. the ‘Takeaways’ Started with President Kennedy’s “tax reform’, which increased taxes for the working class, and reduced taxes for the capitalist class 80 years ago!: The 50-Year Takeaway From Middle-Class America “We should be demanding that the labors and taxes of our parents and grandparents be compensated with free healthcare and education, and with guaranteed housing and mental healthcare for the most vulnerable among us.”     After 70 years of relentless technological progress initially funded and continually supported by public tax dollars, American society should at the very least be compensated with healthcare and free or low-cost higher education. Instead, through decades of financial manipulations orchestrated by neoliberal economists and financial experts, and political leaders, the tremendous wealth generated by our country’s productivity has been redirected to a special few who deem themselves innovators and self-made success stories.

Debt-Service Payments Put Biggest Squeeze on Poor Countries Since 2000 IDA Countries’ Debt-Service Payments Projected to Top $62 Billion in 2022 WASHINGTON, Dec. 6, 2022—The poorest countries eligible to borrow from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) now spend over a tenth of their export revenues to service their long-term public and publicly guaranteed external debt—the highest proportion since 2000, shortly after the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative was established, the World Bank’s new International Debt Report shows. The report highlights rising debt-related risks for all developing economies—low- as well as middle-income economies. At the end of 2021, the external debt of these economies totaled $9 trillion, more than double the amount a decade ago. During the same period, the total external debt of IDA countries, meanwhile, nearly tripled to $1 trillion. Rising interest rates and slowing global growth risk tipping a large number of countries into debt crises. About 60% of the poorest countries are already at high risk of debt distress or are already in distress.

Economy:

What Does the Fed’s Jerome Powell Have Up His Sleeve? The real goal of Fed policy: breaking inflation, the middle class, or the bubble economy? “There is no sense that inflation is coming  own,” said Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at a November 2 press conference—this despite eight months of aggressive interest rate hikes and “quantitative tightening.” On November 30, the stock market rallied when he said smaller interest rate increases are likely ahead and could start in December. But rates will still be increased, not cut. “By any standard, inflation remains much too high,” Powell said. “We will stay the course until the job is done.”  The Fed is doubling down on what appears to be a failed policy, driving the economy to the brink of recession without bringing prices down appreciably. Inflation results from “too much money chasing too few goods,” and the Fed has control over only the money—the “demand” side of the equation. Energy and food are the key inflation drivers, and they are on the supply side. As noted by Bloomberg columnist Ramesh Ponnuru in The Washington Post in March:

Shadow Government Statistics Daily Update December 12th to 13th

·     IN THE NEWS: Recent releases show that the FED boosted the November 2022 Monetary Base (see Federal Reserve Sections). Friday’s (December 9th)

·     University of Michigan early December 2022 Consumer Sentiment held shy by 41.5% (-41.5%) of ever recovering its pre-Pandemic peak. The November 2022 Producer Price Index Final Demand Goods Inflation softened year-to-year to 9.6%, from 10.5% in October, still up by a steepening 25.4% from its pre-Pandemic level. Tomorrow’s coverage is of the November 2022 CPI.

No One Trusts the FTX Bankruptcy Case: News Outlets Intervene; Justice Department Trustee Demands Independent Examiner; SEC Orders Disclosures Two days after the disgraced crypto exchange, FTX, filed its bankruptcy petition in Delaware bankruptcy court, Wall Street On Parade published an article explaining why it was problematic that the Big Law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell somehow managed to become the legal advisor on the FTX bankruptcy process despite its prior engagements with FTX and Alameda Research, the hedge fund owned by Sam Bankman-Fried, the co-founder and ousted CEO of FTX. We wrote at the time:    “The General Counsel of FTX.US, the FTX exchange serving customers in the U.S., is former Sullivan & Cromwell partner, Ryne Miller, who had co-chaired the law firm’s commodities, futures and derivatives group and worked at the law firm for eight years prior to joining this speculative, upstart crypto exchange…

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   

A New Term has Arisen: ‘Understaffing’! The reality is it cuts in employment and services. Capitalism no longer provides full health and services, while maintaining more profits!

 Key Agencies Are Shedding the Exact Employees They Need to Spend New Infrastructure Dollars

Widespread Understaffing of Nurses Increases Risk to Patients Emerging data support minimum nurse-to-patient ratios, but hospital administrations are reluctant to adopt them Over her 34-year nursing career Martha Kuhl, a pediatric oncology nurse at U.C.S.F. Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland in California, has seen her patient load more than double. She recalls one night shift when she was the lone nurse on duty with five patients. “These are all babies that can’t breathe,” she says. “I felt okay at four” but that last patient “sort of tipped it over the edge where I felt unsafe in being able to handle all of these patients.”     Kuhl’s description sounds like a worst-case scenario, but in fact she can recall several similar times where “it was impossible to give proper care” due to understaffing. Mounting data from hospitals nationwide are proving Kuhl correct: When staffing levels fall below certain nurse-to-patient ratios, the patients are more likely to suffer or even die.    In hospitals things tend to snowball. Patients there are already at a high risk for something to go wrong. “It’s sort of like planning for any potential disaster‑ it’s not a matter of if, it’s when,” says Bonnie Castillo, director of the Registered Nurses Response Network at National Nurses United (NNU), a nurses’ union. “If you have several patients, and one is having a sudden hemorrhage and one is having chest pain and the other is having a stroke or is choking, you have to have enough nurses that can deal with each of those instances and not place one above the other.”

A Public Health Crisis: Staffing Shortages in Health Care The health care provider shortage is more than an inconvenience, it’s a public health crisis. And it has been building since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Health care staffing shortages lead to poor patient outcomes that can include hospital-acquired infections, patient falls and increased chances of death, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Provider shortages in certain areas mean that large swaths of the population don’t have enough doctors or nurses to provide them with emergency care, treat their chronic illnesses or deliver their babies.     The issue of staffing shortages is one of the biggest challenges facing public health professionals. The problem is complex and has impacted the health care industry for decades. Yet it must be solved because the alternative — poor health outcomes for patients across the country — is untenable.