Daily News Digest April 4, 2023
Capitalism is Now a Worldwide Threat to Humanity! It is on the Fast Track to Global Warming and/or Nuclear War Catastrophes!
Images of the Day:
Have Your Fake Cake and Eat It?!
Hunger in the United States of America affects millions of Americans, including some who are middle class, or who are in households where all adults are in work. The United States produces far more food than it needs for domestic consumption—hunger within the U.S. is caused by some Americans having insufficient money to buy food for themselves or their families. Additional causes of hunger and food insecurity include neighborhood deprivation and agricultural policy.[1][2] Hunger is addressed by a mix of public and private food aid provision. Public interventions include changes to agricultural policy, the construction of supermarkets in underserved neighborhoods, investment in transportation infrastructure, and the development of community gardens.[3][4][5][6] Private aid is provided by food pantries, soup kitchens, food banks, and food rescue organizations.[7][8][9]
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 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:
Ernest Mandel: The Importance of Armament Expenditures: The first objective phenomenon which is a tremendous factor in facilitating the growing governmental intervention in the economic life of the capitalist countries is precisely this permanence of the cold war and this permanence in the armaments race. To say permanence of the cold war, permanence in the armaments race, permanence of an extremely high military budget, is also to say state control of an important part of the national income. If we compare the economies of all the big advanced capitalist countries of today with those of all the capitalist countries prior to the first world war, we immediately see the extremely important structural change which has taken place and which is independent of every theoretical consideration and research. It is a consequence of the rise in the military budget. Whereas prior to 1914 the total state budget took 5 per cent, 6 per cent, 4 per cent, 7 per cent of the national income, the budgets of capitalist states today represent 15 per cent, 20 per cent, 25 per cent or even in some cases 30 per cent of this income.
. . . The south-east of England is permanently threatened by water shortages. A shocking lack of planning and investment by the water companies, alongside their gross failure to reduce demand and conserve supplies, ensure that as drought looms again the stupidest of all solutions begins to look attractive. Rather than properly managing its supplies, Thames Water wants to pipe huge volumes across the country from another catchment: the Severn. . . .Worse still, the private abstraction of water from rivers and aquifers in England is effectively unmonitored: a shocking scandal. Amazingly, the businesses abstracting water have no obligation to use meters. The system is entirely “self-regulated”, which means not regulated at all. The second obvious step is to reduce leakage. Thames Water has the highest leakage rate in England, losing around 635m litres a day. Again, the government has done almost nothing to ensure this improves. On the contrary, since 2002 the water industry regulator, Ofwat, has allowed water companies not to fix leaks if the cost of doing so is greater than the financial value of the water being lost. The logic of capitalism, in this privatised industry, trumps the logic of public service and resource protection. — Pipe Dream Pumping water from one messed-up catchment to another solves nothing. We need to fix our problems at source.
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Scheer Intelligence: Race, Inheritance and Healing
The Second Cold War Is More Dangerous Than the First Americans have to ask themselves: Is it worth risking nuclear war—and an apocalyptic nuclear winter—for no loftier purpose than to maintain their country’s violently enforced grasp of overwhelming global power? Twenty years ago, Noam Chomsky published a bestselling book called Hegemony or Survival. Since then, the stark choice he posed has only become more urgent. Depending on how humanity responds to the challenges of ecological destruction and imperialistic war, in the coming decade that terrifying question “Hegemony or survival?” may well be answered
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. Tax 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
Biden Embraces Autocracies and Deteriorating Democracies to Challenge China The administration sees the world as divided between U.S. military and economic power and the alliances supporting it, and the only peer competitor facing the United States. The Biden administration opened its second Summit for Democracy this week with a panel featuring India’s Narendra Modi and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. As the leaders of their countries, both have pursued similar forms of exclusionary nationalism. Indeed, both Modi and Netanyahu were—as they spoke—facing political crises at home in response to their attempts to permanently sideline democratic opposition.
The Simple Reason Why the U.S. Wants ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ of the Earth Full spectrum dominance, as the doctrine is known, is the reason the United States behaves the way that it does on the international stage. The United States demands that the world bow down to its leadership. A failure to do so is met with the full force of the international military-industrial complex controlled by the Americans. Enforcement has included everything from the funding of opposition forces in sovereign nations, the removal or even assassination of political leaders who refuse to toe the line, economic sanctions, and military intervention.
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
Global Warming is Systemic to Capitalism!:
Any President That Allows the EPA to Legalize Pollution is an Enemy of Humanity!: EPA’s (Employer Protection Agency’s) ‘Legal Pollution’ Companies Have Discharged Millions of Pounds of Toxic Chemicals in The Delaware River the Last Five Years, Records Show! Scores of facilities on the river are permitted to legally release toxic chemicals into the water each year. Companies have discharged millions of pounds of toxic chemicals in the Delaware River the last five years, records show Scores of facilities on the river are permitted to legally release toxic chemicals into the water each year. . . . Of the 62 manufacturers, petroleum facilities, and chemical makers within a mile of the river’s edges, two have reported releasing millions of pounds of toxic discharges — again, within legal limits, according to an analysis of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency records.
Chemical Plant That Poisoned Philly’s Water Forced My School to Evacuate in 2007 Who will guarantee our safety in the future when this inevitably happens again? Because it will, and it already has.
New oilfield in the North Sea would blow the UK’s carbon budget Campaigners say Rosebank, with a potential yield of 500m barrels, would seriously undermine legal commitment to net zero A single new oil and gas field in the North Sea would be enough to exceed the UK’s carbon budgets from its operations alone, analysis has shown, as the government considers fossil fuel expansion despite the legally binding commitment to net zero.
Orderly Climate Transition Needs Fossil Fuel Bans, Phaseouts, Authors Say An orderly yet wide-ranging energy transition in the United States will require restrictive supply-side polices to “actively wind down fossil fuel extraction,” say the co-authors of a new report that urges policy-makers to treat carbon fuels the way they did lead paint and asbestos—either ban them outright or phase them out. An orderly yet wide-ranging energy transition in the United States will require restrictive supply-side polices to “actively wind down fossil fuel extraction,” say the co-authors of a new report that urges policy-makers to treat carbon fuels the way they did lead paint and asbestos—either ban them outright or phase them out. Economists’ favoured response to the climate crisis has long been some form of carbon pricing, aiming to leverage market economics for positive climate outcomes, write political economist Mark Paul and policy and planning specialist Lina Moe of the Rutgers University Climate and Community Project. Then came investment-based strategies, like the recently-passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which facilitated a huge expansion of renewable energy and clean technologies in the U.S. The IRA poured massive amounts of money into demand-side climate investment policies, but it lacked restrictions to curb and phase out fossil supply, write Paul and Moe. In fact, parts of the IRA expanded fossil fuel extraction. “Implicit in the strategy of focusing on clean energy investment is the assumption that fossil fuel firms will voluntarily close their doors as they get pushed out and exit the market in an orderly fashion,” write the researchers. “They will not.” “Without discrete restrictive supply-side planning and policy, the end of fossil fuels will be a chaotic collapse where workers, communities, and the environment suffer.” Their report explains “the economic rationale—and climate necessity—of deploying restrictive supply-side policies to actively wind down fossil fuel extraction.”
Trump’s Indictment Was Not the Biggest Story of the Week Hours before news of the former president’s indictment took over the headlines, a study warned that “melting ice around Antarctica will cause a rapid slowdown of a major global deep ocean current by 2050 that could alter the world’s climate for centuries.” The truly novel story came out a few hours earlier on Thursday, with the publication of Nature. The magazine is one of the world’s two pre-eminent scientific journals, and it emerges weekly from its London base with the latest in carefully peer-reviewed research. This week it carried one of the most important installments in the most important saga of our time, the rapid decline of the planet’s physical health. It was in the form of a dispatch from the Antarctic, where researchers found, to quote their title, clear evidence of “Abyssal ocean overturning slowdown and warming driven by Antarctic meltwater.”
Lost Decade: How Shell Downplayed Early Warnings Over Climate Change Newly discovered documents from the 1970s and early ’80s show that Shell knew more about the “greenhouse effect” than it let on in public. Narrated in the upper-crust accent favoured by British documentary-makers of the era, Shell’s 1981 film Time for Energy assesses the scope for solar, wind, nuclear, and other sources of power to end the world’s dependence on finite reserves of oil. By the closing credits, the viewer is left in little doubt that there is only one fuel plentiful and versatile enough to carry the world “safely” into the 21st century: coal.
The Links Between Pollution and Miscarriage: ‘This is the stuff nightmares are made of’ Journalist Isabelle Oderberg has spent years researching the links between pollution and early pregnancy loss. What she has learned keeps her up at night
New Oilfield in the North Sea Would Blow the UK’s Carbon Budget Campaigners say Rosebank, with a potential yield of 500m barrels, would seriously undermine legal commitment to net zero.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Book Review: ‘Why the U.S. Government Assassinated Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.’ The question of who ordered the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. is a vital one, and thousands of pages have been written on the issue. Those who dismiss the notion that the United States government would engage in assassination — by characterizing those who believe this as “conspiracy nuts” — willfully ignore the 1975 Church Committee Report that exposed covert, illegal government activities and the many CIA-orchestrated assassinations and coups d’etat from Africa to Latin America. The CIA’s experience with overseas assassinations has given it more than enough expertise to conduct domestic assassinations, with the added advantage of having control over investigating agencies at the local, state and national levels.
Labor:
Economy:
Michael Roberts Facebook Blog: In an unprecedented decision, the IMF has agreed a $15.6bn loan to Ukraine — The first time to a country at war. This will be part of a broader package of of $115bn with bilateral aid from countries at $80bn and $20bn from special relief funds. This is equivalent to 70% of Ukraine’s pre-war GDP.: IMF Poised to Announce $15.6bn Lending Programme For Ukraine Multilateral lender has been under pressure to provide war-torn country with a comprehensive aid package The IMF is finalising a four-year lending programme worth $15.6bn for Ukraine, with a person close to the talks saying an announcement is “imminent”. The multilateral lender has been under pressure to pull together a more comprehensive aid package for the country, which has been economically devastated by Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. The person said an announcement would come in a few days.
After Being Criminally Charged for Rigging Precious Metals, JPMorgan Chase Controls 53 Percent of All Precious Metals Contracts Held by Banks According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), there were 4,706 federally-insured banks and savings associations in the U.S. as of December 31, 2022. Of those, according to the quarterly report released last Friday from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a little less than one-quarter found a reason to engage in derivative trading activities. As of December 31, 2022, just 1,139 FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings associations reported trading of derivatives in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the OCC. Ostensibly, instead of running a derivatives casino, the other three-quarters of taxpayer-subsidized banks were doing what taxpayers want federally-insured banks to do: make business loans; provide affordable mortgage loans to homebuyers; provide checking accounts devoid of hacking, identity theft and predatory overdraft fees; and not blow up the bank by getting in bed with derivatives, crypto or dodgy Wall Street IPOs.
World:
The Hidden War Against the World’s Impoverished Migrants of Color The weaponization of natural spaces like El Tapón del Darién against impoverished migrants of color is a new and insidious form of global warfare. As the public’s attention is fixated on the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, a new breed of warfare has been quietly and insidiously creeping into existence. This asymmetric warfare is characterized by the weaponization of natural spaces such as the geographical space between Colombia and Panama, El Tapón del Darién, against impoverished migrants of color. Staying informed about sudden and extreme global events is crucial, but we must resist being distracted from more insidious and subtle transformations and forms of violence happening around the world. The ongoing inhumane war waged by the world’s wealthiest nations against the planet’s impoverished peoples, currently manifesting in El Darién, also deserves our unwavering attention.
France: Left Wing Out in Force And on the Offensive at CGT Congress! The 53rd Congress of the CGT, which was held at the end of March, marked a turning point in the history of this union confederation. The 942 delegates were polarised between a left and a right wing, which clashed over four days. Above all, the left wing appeared stronger and more offensive than ever, even if the right wing managed to retain control of the leadership and place one of its own, Sophie Binet, as general secretary.
France: How Can We Defeat Macron? On Wednesday, the day prior to the eleventh day of action against the Macron government’s pension reform, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne will meet the leaders of the ‘intersyndicale’, a coalition of French trade unions. “Everyone will be able to discuss the subjects they want to,” she has said. That’s very kind of her. The union leaders will be able to reiterate their opposition to the reform, and the prime minister will be able to reiterate that she couldn’t care less.
Forced Displacement Exposes Gaps in Climate Migration Responses On the environmental crisis, demographic trends, and human rights. “It is impossible to stay in your home if it is underwater. You cannot grow crops or raise livestock if it has not rained for years.” —Atlas of Migration 2022, Rosa Luxemburg Institute Everybody who is passionate about mountaineering knows about Pakistan, which is home to five of the 14 tallest peaks on the planet. At the same time Pakistan is also a country characterized by sustained population growth and migration outflows. In this short article, we bring the example of Pakistan to elaborate on the issue of climate migration.
Education. Health, 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
Michael Roberts Facebook Blog: “US life expectancy is in freefall as the young and the poor bear the brunt of struggles for shared prosperity.” The average American has the same chance of a long and healthy life as someone born in the most deprived town in England. And the UK is far from top of the class when it comes to life expectancy in Europe. People born in the very poorest pockets of Blackpool are expected to live fully five years more than the poorest in the US. One in 25 American five-year-olds today will not make it to their 40th birthday. “These young deaths are caused overwhelmingly by external causes — overdoses, gun violence, dangerous driving and such — which are deeply embedded social problems involving groups with opposing interests.” Americans lost 9.4 million years of life to external causes in 2021 alone, more than the 9.1mn lost to Covid over the course of the entire pandemic. And these deaths continue to rise. It’s social murder (Engels). Re: Why are Americans Dying So Young? US Life Expectancy is in Freefall as the young and the poor bear the brunt of struggles for shared prosperity