Daily News Digest May 19, 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:
The U.S. is the Only Very Highly Developed Country Without Universal HealthCare
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:
The 52 reactors in Japan ”— which generate a little over 30 percent of its electricity — are located in an area the size of California, many within 150 km of each other and almost all built along the coast where seawater is available to cool them. However, many of those reactors have been negligently sited on active faults, particularly in the subduction zone along the Pacific coast, where major earthquakes of magnitude 7-8 or more on the Richter scale occur frequently. The periodicity of major earthquakes in Japan is less than 10 years. There is almost no geologic setting in the world more dangerous for nuclear power than Japan — the third-ranked country in the world for nuclear reactors. — Leuren Moret, Japan’s Deadly Game of Nuclear Roulette
The Cuban government operates a national health system and assumes fiscal and administrative responsibility for the health care of all its citizens.[1] All healthcare in Cuba is free to Cuban residents.[2] There are no private hospitals or clinics as all health services are government-run. — Healthcare In Cuba
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
“The Budget Farce”: Robert Kuttner on Why Biden Admin Can’t Give In to GOP Demands to Gut Safety Net
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
‘End This Absurdity’: Sanders, Gillibrand, and DeLauro Unveil Bills to Guarantee Paid Leave “It is a total disgrace that millions of workers are having to choose between their job and caring for their family, their newborn child, or themselves when they are sick and in need of care,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Rahm Emanuel Slammed for ‘Trying to Light the Fuse of a Massive Carbon Bomb‘ Emanuel is using his role as U.S. ambassador to Japan to boost a major gas xxport project in Alaska, The American Prospect reported. A figure widely reviled in progressive circles for his past efforts to drag the Democratic Party to the right on climate and other issues is using his current position as the U.S. ambassador to Japan—and his extensive ties to the corporate world—to help secure funding for a major gas export project in Alaska that the Biden administration is supporting despite its pledge to rein in planet-warming emissions.
Report Details How Rich CEOs Avoid Taxes on Retirement Funds as Their Employees Struggle “Nothing but the power of corporate leaders to rig rules in their favor can explain this double standard.” Millions of people in the United States have little to nothing in retirement savings, a consequence of low-wage jobs that give workers minimal room to stash money away. Meanwhile, at the end of 2021, the nation’s top CEOs held an estimated $9 billion in rapidly growing special retirement accounts that aren’t available to their employees—a double standard established by the U.S. tax code.
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
Pentagon’s ‘Forever Chemicals’ Cleanup Budget Falls ‘Dramatically’ Short Ballooning cost of cleaning up toxic PFAS contamination at military sites places service members and civilians at risk The cost of cleaning up toxic PFAS “forever chemical” contamination around hundreds of US military installations is ballooning, but Congress and the Pentagon are failing to keep pace, a development that is leaving service members and civilians indefinitely at risk, a new analysis finds.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/18/pentagons-forever-chemicals-pfas-cleanup-budget
What We Don’t Know Can Hurt Us New Studies Show The Severe Impact Toxic Chemicals Have On Our Bodies For Those Who Lived & Worked At Camp Lejeune Another disease has been linked to the contaminated water at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. In a population-based cohort study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that Marines and Navy sailors who served at Camp Lejeune between 1975 and 1985 were 70 percent more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than those who served at Camp Pendleton* in California. That’s because the water supply was contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
US Exports Agri- Business to Africa: Open Letter to USAID: Fund Sustainable Food Systems in Africa, Not Another Industrial “Green Revolution” The agency cannot claim to be providing “aid” to Africa while partnering with AGRA. We are dismayed to learn that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) recently solidified its relationship with AGRA (formerly the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa) and committed to working with AGRA to transform African food and agriculture systems. The agricultural model promoted by AGRA ramps up the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, privatized seed varieties, and exploitative market and credit systems, and it hurts farmers while benefiting private companies (including large foreign corporations). Using taxpayer money, USAID has funded AGRA and AGRA-funded projects that largely benefit the private sector at the expense of small farmers and the environment. Independent studies have demonstrated that AGRA has failed to improve food security in the countries where it operates, and an evaluation commissioned by a major AGRA funder, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has found that AGRA’s PIATA program has failed to meaningfully increase farmers’ yields or incomes as promised.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
The US Failed Jordan Neely and Banko Brown Long Before They Were Murdered. As housing-insecure Black youth, Banko Brown and Jordan Neely needed care. Instead, they were policed and criminalized. The murders of Banko Brown in San Francisco and Jordan Neely in New York City have illuminated the demonization that unhoused people, who are disproportionately Black in both cities, face from political leaders, media and the public alike. The senseless murders of Brown — a 24-year-old Black transgender man struggling with housing insecurity who was shot to death by a Walgreens security guard on April 27 while trying to exit a store in downtown San Francisco carrying $14 of unpurchased candy — and of Neely — a 30-year-old Black unhoused subway rider who was choked to death by a 24-year-old white ex-Marine in New York City on May 1 after having shouted about his hunger, thirst and distress — have also resurfaced conversations about how dominant society treats Black men as inherently “dangerous.” Following the murders of both Brown and Neely, many political leaders, media outlets and legal decision makers alike responded with rhetoric and decisions that underscored their apparent assumption that the murder of unhoused Black men (and particularly Black men who are trans like Banko Brown, and Black men who are disabled with mental health issues exacerbated by trauma like Jordan Neely) can be justified by the mere discomfort of others in their presence — a discomfort stoked through racist fearmongering about rising crime fostered by corporate media and politicians. Just this week, in San Francisco, the DA released the video of the security guard choking, beating and lying on top of Brown before murdering him, and still decided not to press charges while conservatives rushed to the defense of Neely’s murderer, raising almost $2 million.
Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report Editor and Columnist: Durham Report Reveals the Real Threat to “Democracy” – The FBI Weaponized by Democrat Party Affiliated Elites Donald Trump calls Russiagate a “hoax” but it is in fact much worse. The manufactured scandal was part of successful efforts to intimidate, to censor, and to discredit opposition to state narratives. Russiagate is used to make the case for the proxy war in Ukraine. Here in the US it plays a role in subjugating the Black liberation movement. It is the 21st century version of COINTELPRO Six years and millions of dollars later, the “Durham report” released on May 15th confirmed once again what a few of us had the nerve to argue before all of the reports and stories that subsequently emerged – that “Russiagate” was the most massive fraud ever perpetrated on the U.S. public by a section of the capitalist rulers and represented a maturing of a form of U.S. neofascism unique to this historical moment
Labor:
Economy:
Ellen Brown: Squeezed by the Shorts: Time to Ban Short Selling? Short sellers have made a killing in the recent banking crisis, scalping $14.3 billion from bank stock owners just in March of this year. Short sellers “borrow” stock they don’t own and immediately sell it, driving the price down. Then they buy it back at the lower price, return the stock, and pocket the difference. Bankers say the practice is threatening the stability of the banking system and are calling for a ban on short sales of bank stock. The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to decline but is investigating whether the practice constitutes illegal market manipulation intended to deceive investors. It is argued here that short selling is fraudulent by its very nature—it is a fraud on the legitimate stock owners—and should be banned across the board. But first a closer look at the issues and some recent developments.
The Banking Crisis Has Produced Extraordinary Testimony about Land Mines Lurking in the U.S. Banking System On Wednesday, March 8 of this year, the holding company for the federally-insured Silvergate Bank announced it was winding down the bank. It had little choice but to do so. It was experiencing a bank run and had incinerated its reputation by focusing on deposits from crypto companies, including those majority-owned by indicted crypto kingpin, Sam Bankman-Fried. According to testimony from the Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Martin Gruenberg, before the Senate Banking Committee on March 28, “in the fourth quarter of 2022, Silvergate Bank experienced an outflow of deposits from digital asset customers that, combined with the FTX deposits, resulted in a 68 percent loss in deposits – from $11.9 billion in deposits to $3.8 billion.”
World:
Michael Roberts Facebook Blog: Yet another large-scale corruption scandal has come out of Ukraine as the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) have announced significant action taken against the highest court in the land. “NABU and SAP have exposed large-scale corruption in the Supreme Court, in particular a scheme to obtain undue advantages by the leadership and judges of the Supreme Court,” the anti-corruption bodies announced on their official social media channels Tuesday. The watchdog bodies stated they have “documented the head of the Supreme Court receiving a $2.7 million bribe.”The $2.7 million was seized in a raid on the top judges home. Re: Anti-Corruption Authorities Confirm Arrest of Supreme Court Head Knyazev, Preparing Charges
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
The Cuban Educational System José Martí, Cuban hero and independence leader, advocated for education as a civil right and a necessary means for equalizing Cubans’ lives. Early revolutionary leaders drew heavily on Martí’s philosophy and installed education as a vehicle for realizing a more egalitarian society and a central part of national policy. One of the first actions of the revolutionary government, in June 1961, was to pass legislation that created a free, nationalized school system for all. Shortly after, intensive and focused reforms commenced in an effort to ensure that all new schools were equipped to provide all children with a quality education. Before 1959, enrollment rates were much lower than those recorded throughout the post-Revolutionary era. According to the ONEI, in 1958-59, there were approximately 26,662 graduates of primary and secondary education combined; by 2016, this number had risen to 347,064. The inclusion of adult and special-needs students in the educational system further increased graduation rates and educational access. Today, despite material challenges, Cuba continues to invest the third-largest portion of its national budget, 14.24%, in education. The government provides tuition-free preschool through university education to all those who are eligible.