Daily News Digest May 24, 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:
Debt Ceiling
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 global environmental crisis and crumbling infrasticrure are two clear examples of capitalism in this current epoch of impeurrialist decay!
In 2015, Assad ordered a review and army negotiators discovered Lockheed Martin and its subcontractor, Boeing, were grossly overcharging the Pentagon and U.S. allies by hundreds of millions of dollars for the Patriot’s PAC-3 missiles. Pentagon analysts found the total profits approached 40%. . . . Bogdan pointed to another Lockheed Martin contract with problems. In 2012, he was tapped to take the reins of the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program; it was seven years behind schedule and $90 billion over the original estimate. Bogdan said the biggest costs are yet to come for support and maintenance, which could end up costing taxpayers $1.3 trillion. The Pentagon had ceded control of the program to Lockheed Martin. The contractor is delivering the aircraft the Pentagon paid to design and build, but under the contract, Lockheed and its suppliers retained control of the design and repair data, the proprietary information needed to fix and upgrade the plane. Bogdan pointed to another Lockheed Martin contract with problems. In 2012, he was tapped to take the reins of the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program; it was seven years behind schedule and $90 billion over the original estimate. Bogdan said the biggest costs are yet to come for support and maintenance, which could end up costing taxpayers $1.3 trillion. The Pentagon had ceded control of the program to Lockheed Martin. The contractor is delivering the aircraft the Pentagon paid to design and build, but under the contract, Lockheed and its suppliers retained control of the design and repair data, the proprietary information needed to fix and upgrade the plane. — How the Pentagon Falls Victim to Price Gouging by Militar Contractors
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Raza Ahmad Rumi interviews Greg Palast Raza Ahmad Rumi, Director of the Park Center for Independent Media and a courageous Pakistani journalist, interviews investigative journalist and filmmaker Greg Palast. The pair met up in Ithaca, NY earlier this year, when Palast was invited by Rumi to deliver a Master Class at Ithaca College and screen his new film, Vigilante: Georgia’s Vote Suppression Hitman, at the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, which is sponsored by the Park Center for Independent Media. In this conversation, the duo talk about why Palast transitioned from a lucrative career as an economist and investigator into investigative journalism, and discuss Palast’s new film and the journalistic techniques used to get to the inconvenient truths it exposes.
Hiroshima Survivor Slams G7 Leaders for Embracing War & Rejecting Nuclear Disarmament
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
Bendib: Big Brother’s Watching
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Biden proposes $1 trillion in social spending cuts after announcing $375 million more for war in Ukraine On Sunday, Biden repeatedly pointed to his proposal to cut more than $1 trillion in discretionary spending as part of a budget deal, making clear that his government is committed to imposing a new wave of austerity measures that will further undermine education, health care, housing, home heating assistance and other vital programs relied upon by millions of working class families. . . . In the barrage of propaganda over the supposed necessity to slash social programs to avert the nation’s first-ever default on its debt obligations, nothing is said about the role of military spending in driving up the debt. In fact, social spending as a percentage of GDP has declined sharply since 2011, when the last Democratic administration, headed by Barack Obama and Joe Biden, followed its multitrillion-dollar bailout of the banks after the financial crash of 2008 with the bipartisan Budget Control Act of 2011. That measure imposed a decade-long cap on discretionary spending, sharply reducing in real terms government outlays for education, health care and other vital social needs.
The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace By recognizing that the question of NATO enlargement is at the center of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Only diplomatic efforts can do that. George Orwell wrote in 1984 that “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Governments work relentlessly to distort public perceptions of the past. Regarding the Ukraine War, the Biden administration has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the Ukraine War started with an unprovoked attack by Russia on Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In fact, the war was provoked by the U.S. in ways that leading U.S. diplomats anticipated for decades in the lead-up to the war, meaning that the war could have been avoided and should now be stopped through negotiations.
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
Industrial Meat Production: Coalition Calls on IPCC to Reject Meat Industry Meddling in UN Climate Process “We are writing to urge the IPCC to fully recognize the scientific evidence that shows the role of food and agriculture in driving the climate crisis and to ensure that future reports specifically highlight plant-based diets as a key climate strategy,” the letter states. “Furthermore, we encourage the IPCC to maintain its credibility by taking steps to ensure that Big Agriculture and the global meat industry have no influence over future reports.” According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, animal agriculture produces 16.5% of global greenhouse emissions. On its own, the global livestock industry—which emits the methane equivalent of 3.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide annually—would be the world’s third-largest greenhouse polluter. Nearly one-third of Earth’s ice-free land is currently used for livestock production. Beef production alone is responsible for more than 40% of the world’s tropical deforestation, while a single quarter-pound beef burger requires the equivalent of 460 gallons of water to produce. 
Save Colorado River Water! – Stop Facking it!:
In 2009 Oil companies have gained control over billions of gallons of water from Western rivers in preparation for future efforts to extract oil from shale deposits under the Rocky Mountains, according to a new report by an environmental group that opposes such projects. The group, Western Resource Advocates, used public records to conclude that energy companies are collectively entitled to divert more than 6.5 billion gallons of water a day during peak river flows. The companies also hold rights to store, in dozens of reservoirs, 1.7 million acre feet of water, enough to supply metro Denver for six years. — Oil, Water Are Volatile Mix in West Energy Firms Buying River Rights Add to Competition for Scarce Resource
‘Not a Panacea’: Experts Say More Cuts Needed as States Agree to Reduce Colorado River Use “The only way to solve the long-term shortage on the Colorado River is to take a lot less water out of the system,” said one agricultural economics professor. “Which necessarily means permanent reductions in crops grown.” California, Arizona, and Nevada on Monday struck a deal with the Biden administration in which the states agreed to take less water from the dangerously overdrawn Colorado River—an agreement cautiously welcomed by conservationists, who warned that the cuts are insufficient to stabilize a system upon which tens of millions of people rely.
Cleaning Up After the North Sea Oil Industry Will Cost Billions – But Nobody Wants to Pay Delays by companies and governments risk turning the basin into a fossil fuel graveyard. This story is the start of The North Sea Investigations, a multi-year international reporting project on the battle for the future of the North Sea, led by Dutch investigative journalism platform Follow the Money in cooperation with Norwegian broadcaster NRK, Belgian newspaper De Tijd and DeSmog. Skimming across the waves in inflatable dinghies, activists closed in on their target: An abandoned steel hulk looming 40 storeys above the surface of the North Sea. Encircling the platform, tugboats, fired plumes of seawater in a spectacular but futile attempt to stop the protesters scaling its sheer sides. It was the spring of 1995, and a Greenpeace campaign to prevent Royal Dutch Shell disposing of the giant floating oil tank — known as Brent Spar — by towing it away and sinking it was fast developing into a pivotal moment in environmental activism. Shell had never faced anything like it. The activists occupied the facility for nearly a month; British opposition politicians rallied to their cause; and customers boycotted Shell petrol stations in the Netherlands and Germany. In Hamburg, a Shell service station was firebombed.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Civil Commitment Does More Harm Than Good Civil commitment facilities actually foster the traumatic and violent conditions that they are supposed to prevent. As if serving a prison sentence wasn’t punishment enough, 20 states and the federal Bureau of Prisons detain over 6,000 people, mostly men, who have been convicted of sex offenses in prison-like “civil commitment” facilities beyond the terms of their criminal sentence. Around the turn of the millennium, 20 states, Washington D.C., and the federal government passed “Sexually Violent Persons” legislation that created a new way for these jurisdictions to keep people locked up — even indefinitely — who have already served a criminal sentence for a “sex offense.” In some states, people are transferred directly from prison to a civil commitment facility at the end of their sentence. In Texas, formerly incarcerated people who had already come home from prison were rounded up in the middle of the night and relocated to civil commitment facilities without prior notice. This practice, though seldom reported on, made some news in 2017 when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case from Minnesota after a federal judge deemed the practice unconstitutional. The Prison Policy Initiative has included civil commitment in our Whole Pie reports on U.S. systems of confinement, but here we offer a deeper dive, including recently-published data from a survey of individuals confined in an Illinois facility under these laws.
Labor:
Economy:
The Fed Has a New Scandal on Its Hands: Colluding with Central Banks to Rig Libor; Evidence Is Being Tweeted Out The Fed has been under non-stop scandals for the past two years. It pumped out trillions of dollars in repo loans to Wall Street’s casino banks beginning on September 17, 2019 and then made up a hokey excuse to cover up its massive bailout of banks it is incompetent to supervise. After former Dallas Fed President, Robert Kaplan, was caught trading like a hedge fund kingpin while sitting on confidential Fed information, the Fed’s Board of Governors had the audacity to refer the matter to its own Inspector General, who reports to the Fed’s Board of Governors and can be fired by it. Not surprisingly, 19 months later there’s still no word on this investigation. Then there was the President of the St. Louis Fed, James Bullard, who was caught giving a private meeting with Citigroup clients. The New York Fed has been allowed to quietly set up a second trading floor for itself near the S&P 500 futures markets in Chicago.
World:
Cuba: Capitalist Restoration by the ‘Russian Road’? In recent days, a series of public announcements have been made about Russian investments in Cuba. “They are giving us preferential treatment, the path is clear,” declared Boris Titov, the head of the Russian delegation at the closing of the Cuba-Russia Business Economic Forum. The conditions offered to Russian capitalists are very favourable to them: 30-year land concessions – longer than those that have been in place until now – tax exemptions on machinery imports, and the repatriation of profits. But this is not all. The Russian capitalists – led by the oligarch Titov, whose official title in Russia is Commissioner for Entrepreneurs’ Rights – are demanding more, as reflected in a report by the Russian news agency Interfax on 19 May. In the report, Titov himself, after welcoming the conditions already offered, makes it clear: “But we would like to see new measures as well. The issue of tax preferences, an independent personnel policy of Russian employers in Cuba, including the right to freely hire and dismiss employees, and preferential access of Russian companies to public procurement of the Republic of Cuba (for a separate list of goods) has not yet been resolved. We hope that in the near future there will be progress on these issues, and the whole range of preferences will be enshrined in law.”
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