Daily News Digest May 31, 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:
Bendib: Artificial Intelligence
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:
“In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.” ― Eugene Victor Debs
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
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-Mccarthy Debt Ceiling Deal Attacks Social Programs To Pay For War It must be stressed that the cuts contained in the deal announced by Biden and McCarthy are not one-off measures. Rather, they mark an inflection point in the decades-long attack on the social conditions and living standards of the working class. The debt ceiling agreement announced Saturday night by President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is the outcome of a bipartisan conspiracy, using a manufactured crisis to intensify the assault on social programs and make the working class pay for the war against Russia and war preparations against China. After nearly three weeks of closed-door talks, Biden and McCarthy hailed an “agreement in principle” that is supposedly the necessary response to the danger of a “catastrophic” default on the national debt that would otherwise take place on June 5. The entire crisis over an imminent debt default has a contrived and stage-managed character. This is underscored by the fact that over the past week, the US stock market has registered gains, with the Dow, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 rising sharply on Friday, the price of gold falling, and the US dollar index registering its third straight weekly advance. The terms of the debt limit deal as outlined by the media completely confirm the analysis presented by the World Socialist Web Site. We wrote on May 16 that “the two big business parties are conspiring to impose a multi-year cap on non-military discretionary spending that will deprive millions of people of health coverage, food assistance, rent support and other necessities.”
Advocates Warn New Work Requirements for Food Aid Would ‘Deepen Hunger and Poverty’ “The great contradiction of this debt ceiling deal is that, while poverty is the fourth-leading cause of death, this deal will make it harder to get food stamps but easier to spend money on war.” Hundreds of thousands of older Americans could soon be at risk of losing federal food aid and falling deeper into poverty due to a provision of the new debt ceiling agreement that expands work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a change that comes as food banks across the United States are seeing demand surge.
[rewind] Ron Kovic and Maj. Danny Sjursen: The Great Con of American Patriotism [rewind] Ron Kovic and Maj. Danny Sjursen: The Great Con of American Patriotism”What I really saw [in Iraq],” Sjursen recalls, “was the results of American messianism in the world, of American exceptionalism, the notion that we could remake societies in our own image. What it really meant was a whole lot of dead children, a whole lot of car bombs, a whole lot of teenagers shooting each other in the night. And then, of course, a whole lot of Americans getting killed as well, although less of us than the Iraqis.”
Miles-Long Trains are Blocking First Responders When Every Minute Counts Nationwide, Longer and Longer Trains are Obstructing Rural Intersections, Preventing Paramedics From Getting to Emergencies, Including a Baby Who Died After His Mom Waited and Waited. A man suffered a stroke but a stopped train blocked paramedics from reaching him for over an hour. A senior in a nearby retirement community missed his oncologist appointment because another train obstructed that same intersection. A fire crew could not get to a house engulfed in flames until another train eventually cleared the crossing. For decades, those living along Glover Road in Leggett, Tex. — a rural community with fewer than 150 residents about 80 miles from Houston — wrote letters, sent emails and called authorities pleading that trains stop blocking the neighborhood’s sole point of entry and exit for hours. Some residents and a county judge sent letters addressed to the railroad company, warning of a “greater catastrophe,” including a toxic train disaster.
‘An Egregious Act’: Debt Ceiling Deal Imperils the Environment, Critics Say The agreement will fast-track the Mountain Valley pipeline, and limit the scope of environmental reviews for future developments The deal to raise the US debt ceiling will have significant ramifications for the climate and nature, by fast-tracking a controversial gas pipeline in West Virginia and limiting the scope of environmental reviews for future developments, environmentalists have warned. The agreement struck between Joe Biden and Republicans who control the House of Representatives states the Mountain Valley pipeline is “required in the national interest” and should be issued its necessary permits within 21 days and be shielded from legal challenge by those who object to it.
Climate Groups Slam Debt Ceiling Deal for MVP Approval and Other ‘Polluter Giveaways’ “This agreement is far from a compromise,” said one campaigner. “It’s a surrender to Big Oil and Republican hostage-takers in Congress.” In exchange for an increase of the United States government’s arbitrary debt limit, the Biden administration ” betrayed the American people,” one climate campaigner said Monday, by accepting a deal that requires the approval of all remaining permits for the planet-heating Mountain Valley Pipeline and weakens the government’s ability to stop further pollution-causing projects.
Will There Ever Be a Criminal Trial for the People Wilfully Destroying Life on Earth? Fossil fuel executives have funded a massive, 50-year-long campaign to lie to the American people, cloud the science, and buy off Republican politicians. Untold millions will die and suffer as a result, but will their ever be one iota of accountability? If somebody had set your house on fire, killing your child and pets, and then your city demanded that you give that somebody hundreds of dollars a year for the next decade, how would you feel? That’s pretty much the situation of families across America who’ve lost their homes, family members, and livelihoods to wildfires, floods, extreme heat and cold, mile-wide tornadoes, bomb cyclones, heat domes, hurricanes, and drought caused by today’s climate emergency, but nonetheless have to pay taxes that subsidize the fossil fuel industry executives who helped caused it all.
When Your Life Goes To The Landfill A Shame on Portland, Maine On May 16, with the promise of summer around the corner, but with nighttime temperatures still hovering around the freezing mark, the City of Portland, Maine moved out an encampment of approximately 150 unhoused occupants that had been sheltering in their 84 odd tents and makeshift shelters. After kicking the can down the road for weeks, the city council, urged on by city manager Danielle West who half-heartedly said she made the decision “with a heavy heart”, voted to remove those who had been living on public land. The city made the black hearted decision knowing the unhoused there had few, if any alternatives for places to go. The well-heeled had turned a blind eye to the plight of Portland’s poorest. So much for a city that US News and World Report said was the seventh best place to live in the whole country, but that may depend on one’s point of view. Are you viewing that from a condo, or a cardboard box?
Polluting the Grand Canyon for “Clean Energy” The Doomsday Clock, established in 1947 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, has moved closer to midnight than at any time in its history. The scientists see the world in 2023 as 90 seconds from apocalypse, due to the threat of nuclear war arising from the Ukraine War. The United States has sanctioned Russian gas and oil but hasn’t yet sanctioned low-enrichment uranium from Russia because it sells US companies somewhere between a quarter and a half of all the low-enriched uranium used by commercial nuclear reactors. But that could change: today there are bills in both houses of Congress to sanction Russian enriched uranium and to stimulate the moribund US uranium-mining industry, driven out of business due to import competition, disasters such as Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Church Rock, Chernobyl, and increased environmental regulation. The richest US uranium deposits are on the Colorado Plateau. The Navajo Nation alone contains more than a thousand abandoned uranium mines left over from a boom that busted 30 years ago and their radioactive tailings are a continuing danger to residents.
The Right to Pollute?: Supreme Duplicity When the U.S. Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972 mandating protection for wetlands “adjacent to the waters of the United States,” it didn’t say “adjoining,” “bordering,” or “contiguous.” It said “adjacent,” which according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means those things as well as the more expansive “very near” and “neighboring.” Recent usage, according to the OED, includes: “five miles away in an adjacent valley;” and “a parking lot adjacent to a soccer field.” But if you are one of the conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who value private profit over public good, adjacent means having a “continuous” surface connection to a thing. By that logic, a bus can’t be adjacent to a soccer field unless the lot is covered in grass, or the field is covered in asphalt!
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Economy:
But he is no techno-optimist. His research shows that major technological disruption — such as the Industrial Revolution — can flatten wages for an entire class of working people. In a recent interview in the Financial Times, Acemoglu said “capital takes what it will in the absence of constraints and technology is a tool that can be used for good or for ill.” Referring to the technology in the 19th century onwards, he went on: “Yes, you got progress, but you also had costs that were huge and very long-lasting. A hundred years of much harsher conditions for working people, lower real wages, much worse health and living conditions, less autonomy, greater hierarchy. And the reason that we came out of it wasn’t some law of economics, but rather a grass roots social struggle in which unions, more progressive politics and, ultimately, better institutions played a key role — and a redirection of technological change away from pure automation also contributed importantly.” These comments echo the conclusions on the impact of technology that Friedrich Engels made during the height of industrial revolution in the mid-19th century. Back then, Engels argued that mechanisation shed jobs, but it also created new jobs in new sectors, see my book on Engels’ economics pp54-57. Marx also identified this in the 1850s: “The real facts, which are travestied by the optimism of the economists, are these: the workers, when driven out of the workshop by the machinery, are thrown onto the labour-market. Their presence in the labour-market increases the number of labour-powers which are at the disposal of capitalist exploitation…the effect of machinery, which has been represented as a compensation for the working class, is, on the contrary, a most frightful scourge. …. As soon as machinery has set free a part of the workers employed in a given branch of industry, the reserve men are also diverted into new channels of employment and become absorbed in other branches; meanwhile the original victims, during the period of transition, for the most part starve and perish.” (Grundrisse). The implication here is that automation means increased precarious jobs and rising inequality for long periods. — Acemoglu, AI and Automation
JPMorgan Chase Transferred $347 Billion in Debt Securities Over the Last 3 Years to Inflate Its Capital Using a Controversial Manuever Wall Street mega banks, as well as others, are moving vast amounts of their debt securities from one accounting category to another accounting category in order to stretch out unrealized losses over the life of the instrument. FDIC chart above indicates, as of December 31, 2022 unrealized losses on investment securities at U.S. banks stood at more than $600 billion.
World:
UN Agencies Warn ‘Acute Food Insecurity’ Likely to Worsen in 18 Hunger Hot Spots “This report makes it clear: We must act now to save lives, help people adapt to a changing climate, and ultimately prevent famine,” said the World Food Program chief. “If we don’t, the results will be catastrophic.” As El Niño looms and fighting in Sudan rages on, a pair of United Nations agencies on Monday warned that “acute food insecurity is likely to deteriorate further in 18 hunger hot spots” across 22 countries from June to November. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP) delivered that warning in a joint report. “Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen remain at the highest concern level,” the report states. “Haiti, the Sahel (Burkina Faso and Mali), and the Sudan have been elevated to the highest concern levels; this is due to severe movement restrictions of people and goods in Haiti, as well as in Burkina Faso and Mali, and the recent eruption of conflict in the Sudan.”
Belgium: Delhaize Supermarket Workers’ Strike – A Turning Point for Workers’ Movement On 7 March, the bosses of the Delhaize Group – Belgium’s largest supermarket chain – announced a plan to franchise their 128 stores across the country. As a consequence, 6,500 out of the company’s 10,000 workers risk losing their jobs. The remaining workers will see their wages seriously reduced (by up to a quarter), be robbed of other hard-won benefits, and stripped of union representation. The existing collective bargaining agreement will be unilaterally torn apart. In response, thousands of Delhaize workers have begun an exemplary fight to save their jobs and working conditions. The Delhaize company expects to see its profits increase five-fold in the next five years as a result of its new plan, which aims to transform the company from a food retailer into a financial real estate company. Many bosses are keeping a keen eye on Delhaize, and are all eager to similarly subcontract their workforces. One union leader correctly said that this manoeuvre by the Delhaize bosses is a “canary in the coal mine” for the workers’ movement
Education. Heal, 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