Daily News Digest May 12, 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:
Operation Point and Click
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:
“You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”— Malcolm X
It’s impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg… The system of this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, this social system, this system period. It is impossible for it , as it now stands, to produce freedom right now for the Black man in this country — it is impossible. And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg, I’m certain you would say it was certainly a revolutionary chicken. — Malcolm X, Harlem ’Hate Gang’ Scare Militant Labor Forum, May 29, 1964
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Michael Roberts Blog: US pharmaceutical companies charge Americans more than anyone else. They report generating the bulk of the revenue in the US. But they apparently earn almost no (taxable) income in the United States. The interim report of the Senate Finance Committee showed how one firm does it –AbbVie transferred (a long time ago) the rights to its most valuable drugs to Bermuda and books all its profits there (with manufacturing mostly in Puerto Rico). Re: Cross-border Re: Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and U.S. International Tax Policy
How 4 US Banks Crash In 2 Months
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
The Next Time Some Idiot Tries to Tell You the GOP is the Party of Business… As predictably as the sun rises and sets, every Sunday sees a commentator or politician on one of the Sunday political talk shows say — without being challenged — words to the effect that the Republican Party understands and supports business better than Democrats. This weekend, as I recall, it was CNN‘s turn. All my life, in fact, I’ve been told by the media that the GOP is the “party of business.” It may have once been true when I was a very young child, but today it’s a lie — and has been so in a huge way since the neoliberal Reagan Revolution.
Censoring Away A President’s Criminal Activity The world has gotten little but grief from the post-World War II crop of U.S. presidents. Whatever the nature of their domestic policies, often influenced by selfish and biased special interests, their foreign policies have often been much worse. How many Central and South Americans have been murdered, tortured and raped by military thugs trained and supported by the U.S. government? U.S. presidents, blinded by ideology, pushed NATO to the borders of Russia and thereby bear much responsibility for the destruction of Ukraine. An entire people—the Palestinians—have been condemned to near destruction with the aid of U.S. support for Israel. And then there was Iraq where, on the basis of nothing more than deception, ignorance and an utter incapacity to think objectively, the administration of George W. Bush killed countless individuals through sanctions and war. These, of course, are only the highlights, but they tell the same generic story—a “superpower” that turned its back on the rule of law, in this case international law, and in the name of “national interest” wreaked havoc upon mostly innocent populations. Most American citizens are unaware of this side of foreign policy. Their culture, their education, and their media keep them in the dark. Culture does so through a process of “natural localism” (a universal phenomenon) which leads most individuals to concentrate their interests and awareness on local matters. Education does so by striving to turn the average student into a loyal citizen. And finally, the media, under normal circumstances, does so by censoring the news in a way that deemphasizes, or simply makes disappear, the crimes of the nationstate, thus maintaining public ignorance.
The US Government Is Illegal—Not Asylum-Seeking As of Thursday, the Biden administration will implement an Asylum Ban that breaks national and international law by limiting who can seek asylum. Title 42 ends Thursday, but the U.S.-led war on refugees will continue, as the policies that are replacing Title 42 are in many ways, much worse. For the past three years, the U.S. has used the pandemic as a pretext to implement Title 42 and violate basic human rights. Under the measure, it has deported or detained 6.9 million mostly Latin American and Caribbean migrants at its southern border and denied refugees their right to claim asylum. Now, Title 8 will apply, and the U.S. government will maintain its harmful relationship with Latin America, while also violating various federal and international laws.
Legal Exploration—and An Answer—to the Debt Ceiling Crisis Either President Biden or TreasurySecretary Yellen should move on this course of action without delay. The United States is on course to a catastrophic default on its public debt within a matter of weeks if steps are not taken soon to head off that result. Speaker McCarthy and the House Republican caucus continue to hold the necessary increase to the public debt limit hostage to their bad faith demand for unacceptable budget cuts to discretionary programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The debt limit was reached on January 19, and default is being fended off by the Department of the Treasury’s “extraordinary measures.” Those measures are projected to be insufficient at some point in June, with a resulting default on the debt if nothing is done sooner. The response of the administration and the Democratic minority in the House to this threat has been to express hope that enough Republican House members will join the Democratic minority to force a floor vote in the House on extending the debt limit. In a crisis of this magnitude, hope is not enough. Despite the catastrophic economic consequences of a default the legal obligations of the federal government, there has been no apparent consideration by the administration of any alternative remedy if Republican intransigence continues to preclude an amendment to the Public Debt Limit law to extend the limit.
‘We Will Not Be Silenced’: Tlaib Headlines DC Nakba Event Despite McCarthy Meddling The Michigan Democrat joined rights groups in a Senate committee room to mark the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians during the founding of modern Israel. An event featuring U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib commemorating the Nakba—the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland during Israel’s War of Independence 75 years ago—went ahead as scheduled Wednesday evening, despite an attempt by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to derail it.
Big Food Raking in Huge Profits From Price Hikes as US Hunger Persists: Analysis “It’s shameful that Americans are left food insecure and have to skip meals while corporations and their wealthy shareholders enjoy the spoils of supersized profits under unjustified price hikes.” As the U.S. government on Wednesday released its latest inflation report, the watchdog Accountable.US put out a new analysis detailing how Americans face food insecurity while major food corporations are padding their profits with price hikes. “Big Food’s staggering increase in earnings shows they did not need to raise prices so high on consumers but did so anyway to maximize record profits,” said Liz Zelnick, director of Economic Security and Corporate Power at Accountable.US, in a statement.
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
Biden Power Plant Rule Relies on ‘Industry Propaganda Scheme’ of Carbon Capture: Critics “Billions of dollars have been wasted trying to prove that this technology is real—and all we have to show for it are a series of spectacular failures,” said one campaigner. The Biden administration on Thursday unveiled a power plant emissions rule whose effectiveness at slashing planet-warming pollution would heavily depend on a major expansion of carbon capture, an oil industry-backed technological scheme that climate advocates view as wasteful, ineffective, and actively harmful. The Environmental Protection Agency’s newly proposed emission standards for coal- and gas-fired power plants were described as the most strict ever proposed in the U.S., and the rule garnered praise from major environmental groups.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Who Pays the Bills for the Prolifers’ Bitter Harvest? Despite today’s historic and overwhelming popularity of legal abortion in this country and elsewhere, the one crisis rarely mentioned in this age-old fractious issue is still who pays for child’s survival to age 18 or emancipation—if current abortion bans pass in most states? The current average estimated cost is a staggering $288,094 , according to the Federal government. Small wonder, then, that 73 percent of patients in a 2004 Gallup poll said they wanted an abortion because they couldn’t afford a child. Last year, pro-choice responses were up to 85 percent . Presumably those polled included male teenagers and adults (married or not) sowing their wild oats, yet escaping Nature’s bitter harvest of unsupported children.
Black Agenda Report
· Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist The Murder of Jordan Neely Abetted by Eric Adams, Worst Black Mayor in the Country
Editors, The Black Agenda Review ESSAY: British Imperialism in the West Indies, George Padmore, 1938
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor Ilhan Omar Voted to Withdraw from Somalia, but She’s No Anti-Imperialist
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence F Train Lynching: Papa Cop’s wink and nod
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor China’s Report on U.S. Cyber Attacks Only Scratches Surface of Washington’s Impunity
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Clau O’Brien Moscoso Human Rights Watch and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Confirm What Masses Have Condemned: Peruvian State Carried Out Extrajudicial Killings and Other Abuses
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David Adams , Jake Johnston Exclusive: How Haiti’s Assassination Plot Unraveled, Minute by Minute and Text by Text
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Julie Varughese ‘Anti-Black’ Claim Raised About Cuba As Solidarity Activists Stopped at U.S. Border & Black Socialists Arraigned in United States for Collaborating with Russia
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Austin Cole Witnessing Afro Cubans and Social Change
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Micah Herskind This is the Atlanta Way: A Primer on Cop City
Ramzy Baroud Erasure vs. Sumud: How the Nakba Came to Define the Collective Palestinian Identity -
Abayomi Azikiwe Sudan Conflict Provides Rationale for Further Imperialist Militarization
The Cradle US Secretary of State Under Pressure to Disclose Bombshell Afghanistan Cables
Economy:
At Year End, 4,127 U.S. Banks Held $7.7 Trillion in Uninsured Deposits; JPMorgan Chase, BofA, Wells Fargo and Citi Accounted for 43 Percent of That If the dark secrets about the U.S. banking system that federal regulators have been keeping since the financial crash of 2008 are allowed to be aired in public Congressional hearings as a result of the current banking crisis – and mainstream media will grow a backbone and cover those hearings – it could help the U.S. avoid a catastrophic financial reckoning down the road. For years, Wall Street On Parade has been reporting that just four banks in the U.S. control more than 85 percent of all the opaque derivatives in the banking system. We have also regularly reported how federal agencies have singled out these four banks for posing systemic risk to the financial stability of the United States. We’re talking about JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup’s Citibank.
World:
Ground the Killer Drones and End the War Too The notion that using killer drones will somehow provide the winning edge in combat is magical thinking. In reality, their use only prolongs war and piles up dead bodies. As the Russian military intensifies its drone attacks on Kyiv and Ukraine’s troops increase usage of homemade drones to hit Russian targets, the region and the world acutely need a proposal calling on both sides to negotiate an end to the war. A first step could be for both sides to agree to stop using weaponized drones. Current commentary discusses advantages—for one side or the other—of reliance on weaponized drones. But, the history of drone warfare in the Ukraine and in earlier wars, reveals two crucial points.
When it Comes to the Suffering of Palestinians, Which Side Is Biden On? By supporting a two-state solution and helping Israel continue its despicable treatment of the Palestinians, Biden is trying—and inevitably failing—to have it both ways. Just last week, a few representatives in Congress introduced a bill that would require Israel to disclose its operations in the West Bank, along with the intention of U.S. taxpayers’ money not being used for assistance in war crimes. It is absurd that we are still at this stage. It is absurd that this is considered progressive in any way’
One Year On, the US Has Failed to Demand Justice for Shireen Abu Akleh It is time for the U.S. to support an independent, thorough, and credible investigation into the killing of Abu Akleh and to take steps to hold the Israeli government to account for its human rights obligations. Thursday will mark one year since Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a correspondent for Al Jazeera, was shot and killed in the occupied West Bank while reporting on an Israeli army raid in Jenin refugee camp. The unconscionably unlawful killing, captured on film, of Abu Akleh by Israeli forces has gone unpunished. And, the Biden administration appears to have fallen in line with the Israeli government’s claims that “there is a high possibility that Ms. Abu Akleh was accidentally hit by IDF gunfire.”
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