Images:

5 Scorching Cartoons About Worsening Climate Change

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!apitalism as a Failed System: World Capitalism 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:

How can Ignorance be Strength?: Ignorance is therefore strength as it is the willing ignorance of the people who ignore obvious contradictions. They fail to investigate such inconsistencies as a non-existent war with an ever changing enemy. It is this ignorance that maintains the power of the government and the seeming coherence of the the society.

Today’s modern-day loan sharks are no longer lurking on street corners, threatening violence to collect their payments. Today’s loan sharks wear expensive suits and work on Wall Street, where they make hundreds of millions of dollars in total compensation by charging sky-high fees and usurious interest rates, and head financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and American Express. Last year, credit-card companies raked in nearly $180 billion in revenue from interest and fees. This year, they are expected to charge Americans $122 billion in interest payments alone. Despite the fact that banks can borrow money today at less than 2.5 percent from the Federal Reserve, the median credit-card interest rate today for consumers is an astounding 21.36 percent. — Senator Bernie Sanders’ and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Plan to Stop Big Banks and Payday Lenders from Ripping Off Americans

Videos/Podcasts of the Day:

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!)

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 D. Brandeis Quotes

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. MLK, Beyond Vietnam

Ignorance is Strength: ‘Free the Books,’ Say Opponents of New Florida Law as Teachers Remove or Cover Libraries “Florida considers books to be more dangerous to students than assault rifles,” noted one observer. “This is truly a dystopian state.” Teachers in at least one Florida county this week began removing or covering books in their classrooms to avoid running afoul of a new law requiring every volume to be vetted by a state-trained “media specialist”—violation of which could result in felony charges. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports the Manatee County School District has directed teachers to remove all books that have not been approved by a specialist, who will ensure that all titles are “free of pornography,” are “appropriate for the age level and group,” and contain no “unsolicited theories that may lead to student indoctrination.

The Pentagon’s Massive Intelligence Failure on China: Climate Change At a time when California has just been battered in a singular fashion by punishing winds and massive rainstorms delivered by a moisture-laden “atmospheric river” flowing over large parts of the state while much of the rest of the country has suffered from severe, often lethal floods, tornadoes, or snowstorms, it should be self-evident that climate change constitutes a vital threat to our security. Given the secrecy typically accorded to the military and the inclination of government officials to skew data to satisfy the preferences of those in power, intelligence failures are anything but unusual in this country’s security affairs. In 2003, for instance, President George W. Bush invaded Iraq based on claims — later found to be baseless— that its leader, Saddam Hussein, was developing or already possessed weapons of mass destruction. Similarly, the instant collapse of the Afghan government in August 2021, when the U.S. completed the withdrawal of its forces from that country, came as a shock only because of wildly optimistic intelligence estimates of that government’s strength. Now, the Department of Defense has delivered another massive intelligence failure, this time on China’s future threat to American security. The Pentagon is required by law to provide Congress and the public with an annual report on “military and security developments involving the People’s Republic of China,” or PRC, over the next 20 years. The 2022 version, 196 pages of detailed information published last November 29th, focused on its current and future military threat to the United States. In two decades, so we’re assured, China’s military — the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA — will be superbly equipped to counter Washington should a conflict arise over Taiwan or navigation rights in the South China Sea. But here’s the shocking thing: in those nearly 200 pages of analysis, there wasn’t a single word — not one — devoted to China’s role in what will pose the most pressing threat to our security in the years to come: runaway climate change.

Which Veterans Affairs Locations Are Conducting Psychedelic Clinical Trials? For the first time in nearly half a century, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs has opened a number of its locations for clinical trials of psychedelic drugs. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has opened a number of its locations for clinical trials of drugs such as MDMA and psilocybin in the last year. This development marks the first time in nearly half a century that the VA has been directly involved in the clinical research of psychedelic drugs. Historic government research of psychedelics largely ended around 1970 when the Controlled Substances Act became law and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) stopped funding studies into the drugs’ therapeutic potentials. Investigations through the 1970s into the Central Intelligence Agency’s Project MK-Ultra — which consisted of a number of abuses and human rights violations — cast a further dark cloud over government research of psychedelics. (The government did have psychedelic cluster bombs stockpiled long after the therapeutic research drought began, though, only destroying them in 1989.)

Is the Reason Some Wealthy People Oppose Democracy Deeper Than We Think? Why are America’s plutocrats funding efforts to weaken our democracy and replace it with plutocracy and oligarchy? Is it just about money? Or is there something much deeper that most Americans rarely even consider? An extraordinary investigative report from documented.net tells how morbidly rich families, their companies, and their personal foundations are funding efforts to limit or restrict democracy across the United States. In an article co-published with The Guardian, they noted: “The advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, the powerful conservative think tank based in Washington, spent more than $5m on lobbying in 2021 as it worked to block federal voting rights legislation and advance an ambitious plan to spread its far-right agenda calling for aggressive voter suppression measures in battleground states.”

Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!

Exxon Got Rich, We Got Played When I was a teenager, I knew global warming was caused by fossil fuels. So did Exxon. For decades, Exxon has been hiding the truth about the climate crisis, burying their own scientific reports. From 1970 to 2003, the oil company ran studies that accurately predicted the disastrous consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels. They modeled out the alarming reality of the disasters we are living in. They knew that continuing to burn oil would lead to the forest fires that burnt my friend’s house to the ground, the floods that destroyed the coastal California city I lived in, and the drought that threatens the water supply of the high-altitude desert where I worked for 10 years. Exxon could have prevented the horrifying floods that put one-third of Pakistan underwater and forced 33 million people out of their homes. Instead, they lied.

450+ Climate Groups to UN: ‘No COP Overseen by a Fossil Fuel Executive’ Can Be Legitimate “Appointing a petrol company executive as president of COP28 is an effrontery several orders of magnitude beyond anything that happened before in the history of the U.N. climate process.” A global network of more than 450 climate justice organizations said Thursday that the upcoming COP28 talks in United Arab Emirates will—like the United Nations climate conferences before it—end in failure as long as the fossil fuel industry is allowed to influence and dictate the terms of the event. The Kick Big Polluters Out network raised particular concern over the UAE’s recent appointment of Sultan Al Jaber, head of the country’s state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), to preside over the end-of-year talks—a decision that climate campaigners said throws the integrity and seriousness of COP28 into further question.

Big Oil Asks US Supreme Court to Reinstate Offshore Fracking in California “The decision to halt fracking was exceedingly well-reasoned, and I hope the court rejects the oil industry’s reckless attempt to overturn the 9th Circuit’s ruling,” said one campaigner. The American Petroleum Institute and a pair of oil companies filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday in a bid to overturn a lower federal court ruling that blocked fracking in public waters off California’s coast. “The decision to halt fracking was exceedingly well-reasoned, and I hope the court rejects the oil industry’s reckless attempt to overturn the 9th Circuit’s ruling,” Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), said in a statement. “Fracking is dangerous to whales, sea otters, and other marine wildlife, and this dirty, harmful technique has no place in our ocean.”

Civil Rights Black Liberation:

You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught How U.S. History Textbooks and Prominent American Universities Justified Slavery, Perpetuated Racial Stereotypes and Promoted White Supremacy.

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. You’ve got to be taught to be afraid, Of people whose eyes are oddly made. And people whose skin is a different shade, .You’ve got to be carefully taught. . . .

With these haunting words from the 1949 Broadway musical “South Pacific” by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Donald Yacovone opens his startling new book “Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity” (Pantheon). Equally revealing, and an important partner to Yacovone’s book, is Jessica Blatt’s “Race and the Making of American Political Science” (University of Pennsylvania). These impressive books describe how the institution of American education trained its teachers and taught its students to believe slavery was good for the enslaved, that Reconstruction was a disaster, that African Americans were innately inferior and that the destiny of the United States was to be ruled by the descendants of White Europeans. These books would have been welcome whenever they appeared, but they take on added urgency today as Republicans in Congress and several state legislatures across the country actively seek to turn back the clock by passing new laws to erase history and reimpose a white supremacist narrative in American education and by banning certain books and curriculums because they offer a thorough account of the ongoing struggle throughout American history to overcome racism, sexism, homophobia, and bigotry.

As The Pentagon Fails its Fifth Audit in a Row: The War Profiteers Overseeing US Pentagon Spending The foxes are guarding the hen house when it comes to billions under review by the Commission on the National Defense Strategy. Earlier this month, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees named eight commissioners who will review President Joe Biden’s National Defense Strategy and provide recommendations for its implementation. But the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, which is tasked with “examin[ing] the assumptions, objectives, defense investments, force posture and structure, operational concepts, and military risks of the NDS,” according to the Armed Services Committees, is largely comprised of individuals with financial ties to the weapons industry and U.S. government contractors, raising questions about whether the commission will take a critical eye to contractors who receive $400 billion of the $858 billion FY2023 defense budge

Labor:

Economy:

Michela Tindera OK. So central banks took this more aggressive stance in 2022. So what’s this mean for the economy in 2023? Martin Wolf Well, the economies, though to different degrees, are all hit by two shocks simultaneously, and they’re related. There’s a real shock because the price of energy has gone up so much. And that makes households and most businesses, except for energy businesses, much poorer, so they can’t afford to spend as much. And that itself is recessionary. And then on top of that, we’ve got central banks hiking interest rates that makes it more expensive to borrow. It’s gonna make quite a few people bankrupt, I would guess. And that’s also recessionary. So these two shocks coming together — the real shock of the energy prices and the monetary shock of higher interest rates — is gonna slow demand rather strongly. And in some cases, it will certainly generate recessions. — Martin Wolf on the Cconomy in 2023

Shadow Government Statistics Daily Update: January 25th to 26th

· LATEST NUMBERS: The extraordinary flight to liquidity in “Basic M1” (Currency plus Demand Deposits [checking accounts]) held in place in December 2022, at a 52-year high, providing the driving force behind the monetary-based inflation.

· December 2022 Money Supply text here has been updated, with the numbers posted and graphed on the Alternate Data tab [as noted there, those graphs show change versus the Pre-Pandemic Trough]. Full graphs follow in the Subscriber-only e-mail updates, with expanded coverage pending in Commentary No. 1461.

· With aggregate M2 down by 1.3% (-1.3%) year-to-year in December, albeit still 37.2% above Pre-Pandemic levels, again, it is the liquidity flowing from “Basic M1,” up 6% year-to-year, but holding at a 119% gain versus its Pre-Pandemic Trough (PPT) that continues to drive the Inflation problem.

A Federal Agency Wants to Hear Directly from the Public about Bad Practices at Credit Card Companies Yesterday, the federal watchdog agency – the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) – announced that it wants to hear directly from the public on credit card practices. But since “the public” also includes all of the folks that are paid to carry water for the credit card industry, the voice of the average Joe and Jane is highly likely to be overwhelmed by industry sycophants, as is typically the case. Thus, we are asking our readers to give this matter some careful thought, as we outline below, and if you are so inclined, send your comments to the good folks at the CFPB using this link they have set up. The public has until April 24, 2023 to submit comments but we ask that you do so promptly. Topic 1: The Same Banks that Were Bailed Out by the U.S. Taxpayers in 2008 with Below-Market Rate Loans as Low as Less than Half of One Percent Are Now Charging those Same Taxpayers as High as 13 to 18 Percent (or Higher) on Credit Cards

Serious New Issues Emerge in Sullivan & Cromwell’s Deeply Conflicted Role in the FTX Bankruptcy Case We don’t know what kind of legal kryptonite the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law is bestowing on its graduates but one young alumnus appears to be fearless about whom he takes on. Marshal Hoda, the young attorney from a one-man office in Houston, who is representing two customers of the collapsed FTX crypto exchange, tested out his super powers in a January 20 hearing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. Hoda is pitched against the 900-attorney Big Law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell in one of the most closely-watched (and bizarrely conflicted) bankruptcy cases in U.S. history.

World:

Administrative Detention As a Tool of Oppression and Domination For decades, the Israeli occupation authorities have systematically utilized administrative detention to indefinitely hold Palestinians without charge or fair trial based on “secret information.” Reappropriating a colonial practice established during the British Mandate era, the Israeli occupation has established an administrative detention scheme under three laws: (1) Article 285 of Military Order 1651, which is part of the military legislation they apply to the West Bank, (2) the Internment of Unlawful Combatants Law, which they have used against residents of the Gaza Strip since 2005, and (3) the Emergency Powers (Detentions) law, which they can apply to individuals holding Israeli citizenship.[1]. Israeli military commanders consistently issue Palestinians administrative detention orders under this scheme for “security reasons” based solely on “secret evidence.” Once the order is issued, the detainee can be held for up to six months with indefinite renewals without ever receiving a charge or trial nor being informed of the evidence against them. These indefinite, baseless administrative detentions take a major psychological toll on detainees. This psychological effect is weaponized by Israeli forces to exact revenge on Palestinians. The occupation authorities will deliberately withhold the length of the detention, only informing detainees their detention was renewed on the day they thought they would be released. Furthermore, administrative detention orders are often targeted at former prisoners, children, and the elderly and sick.

Peru Sees Possible Transformative Change, and US Intervention Critics of U.S. interference in Latin America and the Caribbean may soon realize, is such is not the case now, that Peru has a compelling claim on their attention. The massive popular resistance emerging now amid political crisis looks to be sustainable into the future. Meanwhile, a reactionary political class obstinately defends its privileges, and the U.S. government is aroused. This new mobilization of Peru’s long-oppressed majority population manifested initially as the force behind left-leaning presidential candidate Pedro Castillo’s surprise second-round election victory on June 6, 2021. It exploded again following the coup that removed Castillo on December 7, 2022.

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!