Daily News Digest January 2, 2023
Images:
Best Image of 2020 : When Bodies Start Stacking Up From Climate Change-Related Disasters, Will These Monsters be Held to Account?
Best Images of December 2020:
Bendib: The SEC Foxes For these suits going through the SEC’s revolving door, ethics rules are for the birds.
Kinda Over the ‘Founding Fathers Intent’
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:
Wars have been waged for conquest, for plunder. In the middle ages the feudal lords, who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine–whenever one of those feudal lords wished to enrich himself, then he made war on another. Why? They wanted to enlarge their domains. They wanted to increase their power, their wealth, and so they declared war upon each other. But they did not go to war any more than the Wall Street junkers go to war. (Applause.) The feudal lords, the barons, the economic predecessors of the modern capitalist, they declared all the wars. Who fought their battles? Their miserable serfs. And the serfs had been taught to believe that when their masters declared and waged war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another, and to cut one another’s throats, to murder one another for the profit and the glory of the plutocrats, the barons, the lords who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the war; the subject class has always fought the battles; the master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, and the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose–including their lives. (Applause.) They have always taught you that it is your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at a command. But in all of the history of the world you, the people, never had a voice in declaring war. — Eugene V. Deb’s Canton Speech, 1918
In climate terms, 2022 was an avalanche of phenomena of historical scale. Society is unable to process this and the media doesn’t interpret and express what is happening, and doesn’t critically assess it, in particular by omitting the causes of what is happening. We are already living in Planet B.
These devastating facts should not be interpreted as demotivating. Quite the opposite. We don’t have time for that. We are living absolutely extraordinary times. Nothing will stay the same, no matter how much individuals, classes or entire societies wish it. Knowing reality is the first step to act, but we need to act, harder than ever, faster than ever. Capitalist institutions have only one plan, which they repeat every day: accept collapse. The strength of the youth that mobilize shows us the way, but the youth cannot walk alone. In a society where meanness and cowardice are promoted, where we are only told that we have to get by or look for opportunities to get rich, we need to regain our courage, because the narratives of the past are useless for the extraordinary times in which we live. We need to stop the road to collapse. We need to be brave, courageous, bold like many other societies and generations had to.
Yes, we can change. Yes, we are responsible for where we live. Yes, we have courage. Yes, we are millions of people who will not accept to stand by and watch while the future is thrown down a cliff. Yes, we will fight to win. — The Year 2022 Displayed the Woeful Shortcomings of Humankind
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
The Forecast For 2023 is Hot! 2023 is forecast to be a hotter year than 2022, according to the UK’s Met Office weather service. Why? Well, an unusual three-year-long weather pattern that typically has a cooling effect on our planet should finally come to an end next year. On top of that, global average temperatures are expected to rise as greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb.
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!):
Patrick Lawrence: The Souls of Ukrainian Folk As Kyiv prepares to persecute the souls of its own people, it seems we are about to witness just how inhumane this project has been from the outset. The U.S.–cultivated coup in Kyiv not quite nine years ago, when a small minority of Ukrainians deposed a duly elected president in the name of democracy, was indecent enough. Who would have guessed that the indecencies would go on and on and on to the point the fanatical regime now running the country would go after the very souls of its own people? The first post-coup act passed in the Rada, Ukraine’s legislature, back in February 2014 was to ban use of the Russian language in official contexts. The regime subsequently shut down opposition newspapers and broadcast media, outlawed opposition parties, and imprisoned opposition leaders and journalists. Periodic arrests, assassinations and constant persecutions at the hands of openly neo–Nazi paramilitaries and death squads became something close to the norm. Now things take a yet more diabolic turn. When Volodymyr Zelensky announced plans earlier this month to ban the long-established Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian president signaled that his regime intends to intervene into the religious allegiances and beliefs—the very psyches, indeed—of that considerable portion of the population that looks to the Russian Orthodox Church for spiritual guidance.
Best Government That Money Can Buy: ‘Why Are These Conflicts Allowed?’ Corporate Giving to Group Tied to Supreme Court Sparks Concern “You want to ‘preserve #SCOTUS history’?'” said one watchdog group. “Hire a curatorial staff. Don’t run a pay-for-play.” Both alarm and concern were expressed Saturday in response to new reporting about a charitable group with close ties to the U.S. Supreme Court that has been soliciting and accepting donations from corporate interests and far-right activists with cases before the court. The New York Timesexposé focused on the activities and fundraising of the Supreme Court Historical Society, a nonprofit that claims its mission is “dedicated to the collection and preservation” of the Court’s history.
What the US Would Look Like if It Operated Like Israel In this future Christian Zionist America, the U.S. has invaded Canada and occupied British Columbia, including Vancouver and the Great Bear Rainforest, a First Nations reserve. What would the United States be like if it was like Israel? After the most recent election is held, the president comes out and says that settling North America is the exclusive privilege of white Christians. He is determined to make some parts of the U.S. whiter and more Christian by giving incentives for people to move there. He names Detroit and the south side of Chicago, the state of Hawaii, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole oil-rich lands in Oklahoma.
US, Israel Vote No as UN Approves World Court Resolution on Illegal Occupation “The time has come for Israel to be a state subject to law,” said a spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority, “and to be held accountable for its ongoing crimes against our people.” The General Assembly of the United Nations on Friday approved a resolution that asks the International Court of Justice to issue an opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. The resolution passed with a final vote of 87 in favor, 26 opposed, and 53 nations abstaining. Among those opposed to the measure were the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
Why Do They Flee? The current mass exodus of people from Central America to the United States, with the daily headline-grabbing stories of numerous children involuntarily separated from their parents, means it’s time to remind my readers once again of one of the primary causes of these periodic mass migrations. Those in the US generally opposed to immigration make it a point to declare or imply that the United States does not have any legal or moral obligation to take in these Latinos. This is not true. The United States does indeed have the obligation because many of the immigrants, in addition to fleeing from drug violence, are escaping an economic situation in their homeland directly made hopeless by American interventionist policy. It’s not that these people prefer to live in the United States. They’d much rather remain with their families and friends, be able to speak their native language at all times, and avoid the hardships imposed upon them by American police and other right-wingers. But whenever a progressive government comes to power in Latin America or threatens to do so, a government sincerely committed to fighting poverty, the United States helps to suppress the movement and/or supports the country’s right-wing and military in staging a coup. This has been the case in Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Honduras.
Pharma Giants to Hike 350+ US Drug Prices in the New Year: Analysis “Why? Because they can. Big Pharma does not care about us.” Global pharmaceutical giants plan to hike U.S. prices for hundreds of drugs next month in anticipation of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which will allow Medicare to negotiate the cost of certain drugs starting in 2026, an analysis published Friday revealed. The analysis, conducted by the healthcare research company 3 Axis Advisors and reported on by Reuters, said that Big Pharma corporations including Pfizer, AstraZeneca PLC, and Sanofi SA are set to raise the list prices—which do not include any rebates—on over 350 drugs early in January.
The Southwest Airlines Meltdown: Capitalism, Climate Change, and Christmas Unless we make drastic changes to how we live, including how we travel, we will all be stranded, not at airports, but on this, our only, rapidly heating planet. Climate Change, Christmas and Capitalism chaotically converged with an epic operational failure at Southwest Airlines that stranded thousands of holiday travelers and airline staff at airports for days. Winter Storm Elliott slammed the continental United States with snow, pelting winds and freezing cold arctic air in what meteorologists call a “bomb cyclone.” Air travel was understandably impacted, but the scale of the disruption at Southwest was many times greater than other airlines, accounting for an estimated 90% of the tens of thousands of canceled flights. Central to this travel catastrophe are the deregulation of the airline industry during the late 1970s, during the Carter administration, and the decision by Southwest executives to prioritize their investors over customers and staff.
Environment — Ecosocialism or Ecocide:
Whenever the government provides opportunities in privileges for white people and rich people they call it “subsidized” when they do it for Negro and poor people they call it “welfare.” The fact that is the everybody in this country lives on welfare. Suburbia was built with federally subsidized credit. And highways that take our white brothers out to the suburbs were built with federally subsidized money to the tune of 90 percent. Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all to often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That’s the problem. — “The Minister to the Valley,” February 23, 1968, From the archives of the SCLC.
Book Review: “The Value of a Whale” — Green Capitalism and the Limits of Market-Based Solutions Adrienne Buller’s The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism is an illuminating and wide-ranging interrogation of the shortcomings of market-driven responses to our climate and ecological crises. She deftly explains how a number of wonky quantitative models and market-based “solutions” — from William Nordhaus’s Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy (DICE) models to so-called biodiversity offsets — fail to provide any meaningful insights or remedies in the face of the unpredictability of the climate system and the unquantifiability of earth’s ecosystems. This disconnect is aptly illustrated in the anecdote from which the book derives its title: a research team at the IMF has recently priced great whales at $2 million each, owing to their bodily carbon sequestration capacity and their ecotourism value. This sounds awfully nice, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much to counteract a precipitous decline in whale populations.
The Year 2022 Displayed the Woeful Shortcomings of Humankind War, famine, disease, and climate disasters made this year one feel like standing on the edge of apocalypse. A year that started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and is ending with famine in Africa, while still spreading death and misery through an enduring pandemic and a deteriorating climate crisis — 2022 has been an apocalyptic warning of the frailty of our planet and the woeful shortcomings of humankind.Beyond the stark statistics of millions of people displaced by war and natural disasters, it has been a 12 months that tragically highlighted our global interconnections and how a confluence of events and trends can bring another year of record levels of hunger. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians (numbers given by the UN and involved parties vary enormously) have been killed in Ukraine since Russia launched war on February 24. More than 7.8 million Ukrainians have fled the country. Billions of dollars have been spent on armaments. The most worrying statistic of the year, the one that assures us that what happened in 2022 is not fleeting, is the fact that the record for global-scale greenhouse gas emissions has been broken again. With a 1% increase over 2021, the decrease in emissions that occurred during the pandemic has already been surpassed. The year’s increase was led by the burning of more fossil fuels, particularly in the United States and India.
No More Dire Warnings: It’s Time to Fight to Win Yes, we have courage. Yes, we are millions of people who will not accept to stand by and watch while the future is thrown down a cliff. We need to put it clearly: 2022 was an unyielding disaster. The effects of what happened this year will echo for decades to centuries, but far from there being any lessons learned from it, what the managers of global capitalism are doing is trying to make next year even worse. The most worrying statistic of the year, the one that assures us that what happened in 2022 is not fleeting, is the fact that the record for global-scale greenhouse gas emissions has been broken again. With a 1% increase over 2021, the decrease in emissions that occurred during the pandemic has already been surpassed. The year’s increase was led by the burning of more fossil fuels, particularly in the United States and India.
The US Saw Some of Its Worst Climate Disasters in 2022 This year might provide a glimpse of our near future, as these extreme climate events become more frequent. The year 2022 will be remembered across the U.S. for its devastating flooding and storms — and also for its extreme heat waves and droughts. By October, the U.S. had already seen 15 disasters causing more than US$1 billion in damage each, well above the average. The year started and ended with widespread severe winter storms from Texas to Maine, affecting tens of million of people and causing significant damages. Then, March set the record for the most reported tornadoes in the month — 233.
Extreme Cold Is Caused by Global Warming Last Friday, with this recent bomb cyclone, 53.7% of the nation was covered in snow; more than any time since record-keeping began—as the oil industry knowingly lies to us and rakes in profits. . . . While Buffalo is famous for the intensity of its winter storms, this appears to be worse than anything in recorded history both there and across much of the rest of the nation. It seems Biblical: in Texas, bats are freezing and falling from trees; in Florida cold-stunned iguanas are raining down from palm trees onto unsuspecting pedestrians
As Lease Sale Flops, Environmentalists Vow to Keep Fighting for Cook Inlet “Today’s outcome reinforces that fossil fuel development in Cook Inlet is no longer a sound investment,” said one campaigner. “Alaskans know our climate crisis is no joke and are ready to move beyond the fossil fuel era. Environmentalists in Alaska and beyond pointed to the oil and gas industry’s lack of interest in a Friday lease sale for nearly a million acres of seafloor as the latest evidence that the U.S. must move beyond fossil fuels and protect the Cook Inlet. The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced that Hilcorp Alaska LLC submitted the sole bid, offering $63,983 for one of the 93 available blocks. That lease may be granted after a 90-day review process.
Civil Rights Black Liberation:
Whenever the government provides opportunities in privileges for white people and rich people they call it “subsidized” when they do it for Negro and poor people they call it “welfare.” The fact that is the everybody in this country lives on welfare. Suburbia was built with federally subsidized credit. And highways that take our white brothers out to the suburbs were built with federally subsidized money to the tune of 90 percent. Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all to often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That’s the problem. — “The Minister to the Valley,” February 23, 1968, From the archives of the SCLC.
Labor:
Some of the Biggest Labor Contracts Are Expiring in 2023 Workers are hoping to take advantage of a tight labor market to win big raises to help cope with inflation. Negotiations will take place in 2023 for some of the biggest contracts in the labor movement, including at UPS and the Big Three automakers. Workers are hoping to take advantage of a tight labor market to reverse years of concessions and win big raises to help cope with inflation. New leaders in the Teamsters, and potentially the Auto Workers (UAW), have promised to put up a more aggressive fight.
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics Daily Update December 30th to January 3rd Best Wishes to All for an Extraordinarily Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year! — PENDING: Today’s Subscriber-Only e-mail update provides a preview of the Gold Price – Inflation Relationship and related text and graphs from next week’s Subscriber-only Commentary No. 1461 Year-End 2022 Review and Year-Ahead 2023 Preview.
World:
The IMT in 2022: “The Fire That Bends the Iron, Tempers the Steel” The year 2022 has been a year in which much of the inflammable material in world politics – accumulating and smouldering over decades – has burst into flames. War, hunger, mass displacement and spiralling prices torment humanity. Meanwhile, we have seen industrial unrest, revolutions, and accompanying them, coups, counter-revolutions and repression. But to recall a folk expression: “The fire that bends the iron, tempers the steel.” Among the most-advanced layers of the working class – and especially the youth – this period is creating an increasingly revolutionary, determined and harder mood. There has therefore never been a better time to build the forces of Marxism; to gather and train the cadres of the future revolutionary army of the world working class that will overthrow this system and create socialism. That is the purpose of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). We believe the advances that the IMT has made in the last year prove precisely how fertile the opportunities are out there for Marxists, if we are willing to grasp them. And to demonstrate this point, we’ve put together a short round-up of the IMT’s activities throughout the year.
A Year of Global Displacement This year’s record-breaking global displacement crisis calls for immigration policies that reflect our humanity, not cruelty This year had the unwelcome distinction of being the first to see over 100 million people displaced worldwide. Such a staggering milestone reminds us that greater efforts are needed to address the underlying causes forcing so many innocent people to flee their homes. Even more alarming, this milestone was reached by the middle of the year. Over 50 million people were internally displaced within their own countries, over 30 million were refugees forced to flee their countries, and some 4.3 million were stateless. More than 70 percent of all refugees came from five countries mired in violent conflict: Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and South Sudan. Climate-related emergencies, meanwhile — including severe floods in Pakistan and drought in Somalia — contributed heavily to the growing number of people internally displaced.
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