Daily News Digest January 30, 2023
Images:
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:
Let us remember that the Serbian question provided the formal pretext for the beginning of WWI, with the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on 28 June 1914. As Popovič correctly points out in his letter to Rakovsky: “For us it was clear that, as far as the conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary was concerned, our country was obviously in a defensive position. Austria had been carrying on a policy of conquest against Serbia long before the latter became an independent state. (…) [b]asically Serbia is defending its life and its independence, which Austria was constantly threatening even before the Sarajevo assassination. And if Social Democracy had a legitimate right to vote for war anywhere, then certainly that was the case in Serbia above all.” This was exactly the same appraisal made by Lenin of this question in his famous pamphlet ‘The Collapse of the Second International’ (May-June 1915): “In the present war the national element is represented only by Serbia’s war against Austria (which, by the way, was noted in the resolution of our Party’s Berne Conference). It is only in Serbia and among the Serbs that we can find a national-liberation movement of long standing, embracing millions, ‘the masses of the people’, a movement of which the present war of Serbia against Austria is a ‘continuation’. If this war were an isolated one, i.e., if it were not connected with the general European war, with the selfish and predatory aims of Britain, Russia, etc., it would have been the duty of all socialists to desire the success of the Serbian bourgeoisie as this is the only correct and absolutely inevitable conclusion to be drawn from the national element in the present war. — The Position of Serbian Socialists During WWI
Meanwhile, the underlying drought conditions have persisted across the west, even as dry conditions improved significantly after the storms, according to the US Drought Monitor. “While this last round of rain has helped return smaller reservoirs to the historical averages, many of the larger reservoirs still remain below the historical average for this time of year,” Deborah Bathke of the National Drought Mitigation Center wrote in the latest update. “It’s too early to tell if the wet weather is enough to end the drought.” — Storms Dumped Snow on California. Will it Bring a Reprieve From the Drought?
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Scott Ritter. Video 2023-01-27. Tanks
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
Yesterday, we were 30 seconds to Doomaday. Today, it should be 20 seconds to Doomsday!: Russia Warns US Delivery of Depleted Uranium Arms to Ukraine Would Be Akin to Use of Nukes “We would regard it as the use of ‘dirty nuclear bombs’ against Russia, with all the consequences that entails,” a Russian official said as the U.S. and Germany prepare to send tanks and armored vehicles capable of firing depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine. A Russian official this week responded to the Biden administration’s refusal to rule out sending depleted uranium anti-tank munitions to Ukraine by warning that deployment of such weapons—which have been linked to birth defects, miscarriages, and cancer—would be regarded by Moscow as use of “dirty nuclear bombs.”According to a White House transcript published after a Wednesday press call, an unnamed senior Biden administration official would not say when a reporter repeatedly asked whether the United States would provide armor-piercing depleted uranium (DU) ammunition for the Bradley Fighting Vehicles that are part of a recently announced $2.85 billion aid package to Ukraine. The Bradleys, as well as the U.S. Abrams and German Leopard tanks and Marder infantry fighting vehicles Ukraine is set to receive, can fire armor-piercing shells with uranium cores.
White House Refuses to Say Whether Ukraine Will Receive Toxic Depleted Uranium Ammo Biden official wouldn’t disclose whether Bradley Fighting Vehicles will be equipped with the anti-tank rounds, linked to cancer and birth defects.
The White House is unwilling to say whether the U.S. will provide depleted uranium anti-tank rounds to Ukraine, according to the transcript of a press briefing, despite decades of research suggesting the weapon causes cancer and birth defects long after the fighting ends. At a background briefing on January 25, an unnamed reporter asked the unnamed “senior administration officials” at the session whether the Bradley Fighting Vehicles now being sent to aid in Ukraine’s defense against Russia would come armed with the 25 mm armor-piercing depleted uranium rounds they’re capable of firing. As the reporter noted, firing these radioactive rounds “is part of what makes them the ‘tank killer’ that Pentagon officials called them.” The administration official who responded declined to answer, saying, “I’m not going to get into the technical specifics.”
For A country, upon which bombs and agent orange were dropped upon it, war never ends!: On 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War’s End, We Must Not Forget Its Brutality Although the war is over, trauma remains for many Vietnamese people, and the fight against imperialism rages on. Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords — signed on January 27, 1973 — that ended the U.S. war against Vietnam. Many in the U.S., such as American war veterans and refugees from southeast Asia, still live with the war’s traumatic legacies. But for others, it is an increasingly distant thing — something known less through living memory and more through Hollywood mythology and somber monuments. This is less so in Vietnam, where most of the war occurred, and where its legacy remains soaked in the nation’s very soil and is seen in the bodies of even the young. Bomb craters still litter the land. The remains of hundreds of thousands of soldiers are still missing. Nearly endless amounts of unexploded ordnance remain in the ground: More than 100,000 people have been injured or killed by them since 1975. These bombs still explode today, maiming and killing those born well after the war ended.
As Housing Crisis Deepens, Corporate Landlords Applaud ‘Weak’ Biden Renter Protections “The Biden administration has apparently decided to assume that corporate landlords are good-faith actors with their tenants’ best interests at heart, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, and just plain common sense. Economic justice advocates on Thursday said that to determine the strength of the Biden administration’s new nonbinding push for renter protections from the federal and state governments and private sector, one needs to look only at the elated response from corporate landlords. The Revolving Door Project (RDP) pointed to comments from the National Apartment Association (NAA) and the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), lobbying groups that represents landlords, that followed the White House’s unveiling on Wednesday of its “Resident-Centered Housing Challenge” and “Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights.”
After the Tanks and Then Warplanes, What’s Next in Ukraine? By repeatedly escalating their own weapons supplies in order to defeat Russia’s conventional forces, while suggesting that Russian threats of escalating in turn by unconventional means are empty, the West is openly challenging Russia to make good on its threats. Immediately after the United States and Germany announced that they are sending main battle tanks to Ukraine — immediately, without any pretense of a decent interval — the Ukrainian government, backed by some East European members of NATO, has raised a demand for the latest U.S. fighter jets; and discussions of this within NATO are reportedly already under way.
Patrick Lawrence: Biden’s Secret Stash If this president didn’t know he was in possession of classified documents, in some cases for more than a decade, he simply is not qualified to hold any public office allowing him such access. There are two things I love about the mess our more or less senile president finds himself in as his hoard of classified documents comes to light in a rolling barrage of revelations. One is the mainstream media’s quite unbelievable faith in the American public’s stupidity. Does anything more persuasively measure the stupidity of these media? Joe “My Corvette’s in the Garage” Biden howls with indignity when Donald Trump gets caught with classified files at Mar–a–Lago, his Florida estate. Then our serving president is discovered with his own stashes of secret documents here, there, and everywhere.
The Iron Heel in Georgia: Georgia’s GOP Gov. Signs Order to Prep National Guard for Police Brutality Protests While the move comes after law enforcement in Georgia killed a “Cop City” protester, one official said it is a “purely precautionary” measure before the anticipated release of video footage from an arrest in Tennessee. Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency through at least February 9 that will enable him to deploy up to 1,000 National Guard troops “as necessary.” The order follows protests in Atlanta after 26-year-old forest defender Manuel “Tortuguita” Teran was shot dead last week during a multi-agency raid on an encampment to oppose construction of Cop City, a nearby law enforcement training center. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), which is investigating the case, has said Teran was killed after he shot and wounded a state trooper.
An Elegy from Hell: Pompeo Smears Khashoggi . . . Pompeo, who served as CIA director and secretary of state under President Donald Trump, has excreted a new book: Never Give An Inch: Fighting for the America I Love. Pompeo may love America, but he does not love Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist Saudi Arabia murdered in their Istanbul consulate on October 2, 2018. US intelligence concluded that Khashoggi, an outspoken critic of Saudi Arabia, had been assassinated on the direct orders of Saudi strongman Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (popularly known as “MBS”). In Never Give An Inch, Pompeo, a hack politician with presidential ambitions, exhumes Khashoggi’s corpse and pisses on it. Pompeo writes that Khashoggi “didn’t deserve to die, but we need to be clear about who he was—and too many in the media were not.” Khashoggi, Pompeo writes, was an “activist,” not a journalist. He accuses the media of portraying Khashoggi as “a Saudi Arabian Bob Woodward who was martyred for bravely criticizing the Saudi royal family through his opinion articles in the Washington Post.” Pompeo also accuses Khashoggi of being “cozy” with the Muslim Brotherhood (Khashoggi had been a member of the Brotherhood, but quit in the 1980s).
FTC Urged to Crack Down on Egg Industry’s ‘Organized Theft’ “Contrary to industry narratives, the increase in the price of eggs has not been an ‘act of God,'” says Farm Action. “It has been simple profiteering. As U.S. egg producers rake in record profits amid soaring prices, a farmer-led advocacy group focused on building a just and sustainable food system on Thursday implored the Federal Trade Commission to “promptly open an investigation into the egg industry, prosecute any violations of the antitrust laws it finds within, and ultimately, get the American people their money back.” Just before testifying at an open meeting of the FTC, Farm Action sent a letter to agency chair Lina Khan detailing its “concerns over apparent price gouging, price coordination, and other unfair or deceptive acts or practices by dominant producers of eggs such as Cal-Maine Foods, Rose Acre Farms, Versova Holdings, and Hillandale Farms, among others.”
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!
Kill Capitalism Before It Kills Us “It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and then of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism” Turning the Planet into a Giant Greenhouse Gas Chamber – Fredric Jameson, The Seeds of Time, 1994. A recent episode of the archetypal progressive media outlet Democracy Now (DN) was dedicated to arguing the obviously accurate fact that recent extreme and lethal weather — more frequent and extreme storms, rainfalls, floods, snowfalls, heat, drought — are the result of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change and most especially from the excessive burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas). Reflecting on recent deadly flooding in California, a UCLA climate scientist explained to DN what has long been well known in his field: “All weather events {today} are evolving in the context of a changed climate… The question is, really, to what extent is climate change influencing certain kinds of events, not really whether it is in the first place….in this case, we know that the primary link between climate change and extreme precipitation events is through a fairly basic fundamental principle of atmospheric thermodynamics. That sounds complicated, but it just comes down to the fact that the atmosphere has a much higher capacity to hold water vapor when it’s warmer. In fact, the increase in the water vapor-holding capacity of the atmosphere is exponential, even for a linear or an incremental warming.”
Reaching 1.5°C of Global Heating by 2024 Isn’t Even the Whole Story Does anyone out there still believe that our current system of growth at all costs is symbiotic with our existence? With the warmer El Niño climate pattern about to replace the colder La Niña in the Pacific Ocean at the end of the year, we are about to get a real glimpse into our collective future. While our governments have been pretending to focus on a distant 2050 target to limit warming to 2.7°F (1.5°C), there is a 50:50 chance that we will reach the landmark temporarily by next year. Sadly, this isn’t the extent of our problems. In 2009, scientists from the Stockholm Resilience Center identified nine planetary boundaries: including climate change – whose thresholds we could not cross if we wished to continue with human civilization. Spoiler alert: humanity is not listening. (It should state that capitalism isn’y listing! — RS)
Civil Rights Black Liberation:
Labor:
Economy:
Alternate Gross Domestic Product Chart The SGS-Alternate GDP reflects the inflation-adjusted, or real, year-to-year GDP change, adjusted for distortions in government inflation usage and methodological changes that have resulted in a built-in upside bias to official reporting.
Shadow Government Statistics Daily Update January 27th to 30th
- LATEST NUMBERS: Mixed economic readings promise renewed and intensifying issues ahead with both the Economy and Inflation, despite some happy headlines. The good news is that headline Fourth-Quarter 2022 Real GDP came in at a relatively stable, near-consensus 2.9%, slightly easier than the 3.2% of Third-Quarter 2022, but rebounding from respective First- and Second-Quarter 2022 annualized quarterly GDP contractions of 1.6% (-1.6%) and 0.6% (-0.6%). The bad news is that the special factors that boosted Second-Half 2022 headline economic activity are not likely to repeat, while virtually all the major domestic domestic economic indicators continue to signal a deepening, underlying Recession.
- Consider in the latest postings of the more-meaningful economic numbers that today’s Final January 2023 Consumer Sentiment held shy by 35.7% (-35.7%) of ever recovering pre-Pandemic levels, while yesterday’s December 2022 Real New Orders for Durable Goods (Ex-Commercial Aircraft) showed a second consecutive quarterly contraction, following deepening quarterly and/or annual declines in the latest Real Retail Sales, Industrial Production, Real Construction Spending, Building Permits, Housing Starts and Existing and New Home Sales.
- Following two consecutive fundamental quarterly contractions in First-Half 2022 GDP and two consecutive gimmicked quarterly gains of roughly three percent in Second-Half 2022 GDP, underlying, those earlier, more-meaningful headline U.S. economic series remain in serious trouble, likely returning the headline quarterly real GDP to renewed quarterly contractions, at least in the next several quarters of reporting.
- RECENT NEWS: (January 26th) 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 followed 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.
Numerous Big Law Firms Had Zero Ties to Sam Bankman-Fried; So Why Did John Ray Hire Two Deeply Conflicted Law Firms? A battle between Big Law firm Sullivan & Cromwell and the U.S. Trustee (who represents the U.S. Department of Justice in the bankruptcy proceedings) is heating up for a hearing scheduled for February 6. The hearing will take arguments for and against why Sullivan & Cromwell should not be allowed to investigate its own past conduct in the serial frauds that prosecutors have alleged occurred at Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto companies. Since the FTX bankruptcy filing on November 11, Sullivan & Cromwell has been functioning as lead counsel for the bankruptcy estate and was officially appointed to that position by the court on January 20, despite what looks like fatal conflicts to a growing number of observers.
World:
UK: The Iron Heel: Controlling and Coercive Behaviour What does democracy mean, under governments like this? Don’t let them talk to you about freedom. This government is stripping out fundamental liberties with the speed and determination you would expect in the aftermath of a military coup. Knowing that their days in office are numbered, the Conservatives seem to be snuffing out democracy as quickly as they can. Even before the latest amendment, the public order bill was the most repressive legislation of the modern era, potentially criminalising all meaningful protest. If Rishi Sunak’s new proposal is passed, protests can be stopped before they begin on the grounds that they might be “disruptive”. Disruptive protest was redefined by last year’s Police Act to include noise. Now the definition is being further extended to incorporate “slow marching”. This Minority Report amendment puts us on the wrong side of the law before we even raise our hands in objection. At the same time, the government is rushing an anti-union bill through parliament that could roll back a century of progress in the workplace. It permits the business secretary, Grant Shapps, to demand “minimum service levels” in the public and service sectors. As the scope of this demand is not defined by the bill, “minimum service levels” are whatever he says they are. His arbitrary powers could, in effect, make industrial action illegal. This legislation is justified by the government on the grounds that ambulance strikes “result in patchy emergency care for the British people”. Emergency care is patchy all right, but not as a result of strikes. Long waits for ambulances, critical incidents in hospitals, schools heading towards bankruptcy, railways in permanent meltdown and rivers full of shit are the result not of industrial action but of gross misrule by a government that has starved public services of funds while failing to demand effective minimum service levels from private providers.
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!