Daily News Digest March 27, 2024
Images of the Day
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”
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: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, andThe 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! Globaly, With the Current Gaza War, The Right of Assembly is Under Attack! 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:
As the oil companies rejected the ‘phasing out’ of fossil fuels at their Houston conference, the world is warming faster than scientists expected. UN’s World Meteorological Organization reported that global warming records had been not just broken but smashed in 2023, the hottest year on record. More than 90 per cent of the world’s oceans suffered heatwave conditions, glaciers lost the most ice on record and the extent of Antarctic Sea ice fell to by far the lowest levels ever measured. The planet is burning up. — Michael Roberts Facebook Blog
PEN America peddles agitprop. It is our version of the Union of Soviet Writers. The human rights violations by our enemies are heinous crimes and our own, and those of our allies, are ignored or whitewashed. Writers and editors, such as Assange, who expose the lies and crimes of the state, are discredited, while propagandists for U.S. imperialism and the apartheid state Israel – even as it carries out genocide – are fêted. — Chris Hedges: PEN America Self-Destructs
Pocasts/Videos of the Day:
Conversation on the Gaza Genocide with Norman Finkelstein and Chris Hedges
United States:
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 ford 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
Assange Extradition Delayed Unless US Provides ‘Assurances’ He Won’t Be Executed for Revealing the Truth If the U.S. fails to file assurances in three weeks, Assange will be granted permission to appeal. The British High Court has accepted three elements of Julian Assange’s appeal against his extradition to the U.S., delaying the process for some time. Unless the U.S. provides “assurances” for Assange’s appeals, including protection against the death penalty, the WikiLeaks founder will be granted a new appeal. Despite U.S. officials promising Assange would not be subject to capital punishment, the court ruled “nothing in the existing assurance explicitly prevents the imposition of the death penalty.”
Squeezed by African Coups, Biden Cozies Up to the World’s Worst Dictator Famous for its repression and torture, Teodoro Obiang’s Equatorial Guinea got an aid delivery from U.S. Special Operations forces. U.S. commandos have shown a special interest in strengthening ties with one of the most corrupt, abusive, and repressive regimes on the planet. The delivery of aid by Special Operations forces to the coastal African nation of Equatorial Guinea last month followed pilgrimages to the country’s pariah president by top U.S. officials. The move came amid shifting West African geopolitics. A Pentagon report last year mentioned Equatorial Guinea as the potential site of a future Chinese military base. At the same time, U.S. relations with longtime allies in Central and West Africa have frayed, often in the aftermath of coups d’état by American-trained military officers
Boeing CEO’s Voluntary Departure Is Not Accountability for Corporate Crime: Watchdog “For real and lasting change to occur,” said Public Citizen’s Robert Weissman, “Boeing must now be held criminally accountable.” Embroiled once again in an alarming quality control and safety scandal, the aircraft manufacturing giant Boeing on Monday announced a management shake-up that will see CEO Dave Calhoun step down at the end of the year, the head of the company’s commercial airplanes division resign immediately, and the chairman of the board depart after Boeing’s annual meeting in May. Calhoun, who said he decided on his own to resign, took charge at Boeing in the midst of the company’s previous high-profile crisis—the grounding of the 737 MAX jet following a pair of crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed more than 340 people.
Things That Have Been Discredited During The Destruction Of Gaza Israel, the “rules-based international order”, liberals, the label “antisemitism”, the mainstream media, Joe Biden, the “two-state solution” myth, Bernie Sanders, RFK Jr, etc., List of things that have been discredited during the destruction of Gaza.:
- Israel
- the “rules-based international order”
- liberals
- the label “antisemitism”
- the mainstream media
- Joe Biden
- The “two-state solution” myth
- Bernie Sanders
- Robert F Kennedy Jr
- The label “terrorist”
- The “human shields” lie
- the ADL
- AIPAC
- The US war machine
- Right wing “free speech” supporters
- The Democratic Party
- The Republican Party
- Zionism
- All western governments
- All of western civilization
- Everything westerners believe about their society
U.S. Armed and Funded Palestinian Genocide:
From the River to the Sea, Not a Single Palestinian is Free Israel has put in place a complex system of laws, policies, and regulations that fundamentally curtail the rights and freedoms of nearly every Palestinian and Arab in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and even among its own citizens.
Biden Sheds Crocodile Tears While Supporting Genocide tears” derives from the fact that crocodiles have been noted to shed tears as they consume their victims. According to the Collins Dictionary, the meaning of the saying is “to pretend to be sad or to sympathise with someone without really caring about them.” Crocodiles do indeed produce tears, but they serve to keep the eyes clean and lubricated and are in no way connected to emotions. Today, we have many crocodiles in human form – they are called Presidents, Prime Ministers, Foreign Secretaries, newspaper editors, and so on. But Biden stands out clearly as the Chief Crocodile
Draft UN Report Finds Israel Has Met Threshold for Genocide “Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure.” The United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday published a draft report that found “reasonable grounds to believe” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a move that came on the same day as the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in the ongoing war. The advance unedited version of the report—entitled Anatomy of a Genocide—concludes that Israel’s far-right government and military “have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.
As Israel Defies UNSC Demand For Gaza Ceasefire, UN Human Rights Body Slams Ongoing “Genocide” The UN Security Council has finally passed a ceasefire resolution for Gaza, from which the US abstained, so it was passed by the other 14 members. Although UNSC resolutions are binding, and countries like Iraq and Iran have been severely punished for disobeying them, the US is running interference for the Netanyahu government by insisting that the resolution is “non-binding.”
Environment:
Fund Climate! — Not Genocide! One of Many Ways to Begin to End Global Warming: Expose ‘Greenwashing’ — Tax the Polluters 100%! After World War II Rosa Luxenburg Coined the Slogan: ‘S0cialism or Barbaism’! Now the Slogan Should Be: ‘Ecosocialism or Ecocide’!
Capitalism’s Wars for Oil: When Bodies Start Stacking Up From Climate Change-Related Disasters, Will These Monsters be Held to Account?
Climate Agreements Suck Climate agreements suck. There are no real enforcement provisions. Many signatories cheat. Some don’t rep0rt at all. Moreover, reported data is highly suspect. It’s a worldwide scandal recently exposed by YaleEnvironment360. Evidence of cheating is found in the atmosphere: Global CO2 is on a rampage, skyrocketing upwards like never before, double-to-triple rates of only one year ago, see: CO2 Bursting into the Atmosphere. This is not supposed to be happening. It is twisting the planet’s climate system into a pretzel that doesn’t know which way to turn next. There are plenty of reasons to believe it is going to get much, much worse. The planet’s climate system is already so far whacked-out that it’s breathing fire. For example, the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite registered a 705% increase in fire activity in Canada in 2023 versus the prior six-years. Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions are skyrocketing in the aftermath of the much-touted climate agreement Paris ‘15 when 196 countries agreed to cut to net zero. Oops, wrong, many signatories are “net nothing.”
EU Nature Restoration Laws Face Collapse as Member States Withdraw Support Brussels vote cancelled after it became clear law would not pass final stage with majority vote. The EU’s nature restoration laws appear on the verge of collapse after eight member states, including Hungary and Italy, withdrew support for the legislation. The laws, which have been two years in the making and are designed to reverse decades of damage to wildlife on land and in waterways, were supposed to be rubber-stamped in a vote on Monday. But instead the vote was shelved after it became apparent the legislation would not pass its final stage with the majority required. Sources say there was “just 1%” between those who would support it and those who would not, either by abstaining or voting against.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Survivors of Sexual Assault IN Juvenile Detention are Speaking Out Last year, Maryland lifted the statute of limitations on civil lawsuits against state employees who have committed sexual abuse. A class action lawsuit seeking justice for several survivors was filed this January. The prevalence of sexual violence in the US prison system is so widespread and accepted that it’s often made the butt of jokes in popular culture. Yet the reality is that countless survivors of the prison system carry the scars and traumas of sexual abuse—and for many, the perpetrators of these crimes were the very prison staff charged with their protection. Juvenile victims of the prison system are no exception. In Maryland, several adult survivors of sexual abuse as juveniles in state custody have filed a class action lawsuit demanding justice. Lawyer and former DC Council Member LaRuby May joins Rattling the Bars to discuss the class action suit, and the systematic nature of sexual violence in prisons as a form of racial oppression.
Labor:
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics New Weekly Commentary March 25, 2024
Catch-Up Part II
- February 2023 FOMC Held Policy and High Interest Rates in Place, Still Looking to Kill an “Overheating” Economy
- There Is No “Overheating” Nor Booming Economy, No Recovered Economy and No Contained Inflation
- Plot of the University of Michigan’s Preliminary March 2024 Consumer Sentiment Shows Sentiment Still Is Shy by 24.3% (-24.3%) of Recovering Its Pre-Pandemic Peak Key Broad Monthly Economic Indicators, Beyond Sentiment,
- Continued to Show Flat-to-Minus Annual Activity in February 2024 Consider: Neither February 2024 Industrial Production nor Real Retail Sales Grew Year-to-Year
Dichotomy Between Headline GDP Growth And Headline Monthly Numbers Could Signal Major Economic Trouble Ahead Full Coverage Follows In Late-Week GDP Reporting
- Unlike Third-Quarter and Early-Reporting of Fourth-Quarter 2023 GDP, Latter-2023 February 2024 Real Retail Sales and Industrial Production Still Are Not Booming
- Key Monthly Economic Numbers Show Continuing Flat-to-Minus Real Annual Activity, Despite a 3% Annual Jump in Headline Real GDP in Each of the Last Two Quarters of 2023
- Discussed and Plotted Here Previously, Headline Monthly Economic Series Such as Real Retail Sales, Industrial Production and the Cass® Freight Index Continue to Show Annual Contractions or No Meaningful Year-to-Year Growth
- Unlike the Real Headline GDP, Which Has Gained 3% Year-to-Year in Third- and Fourth-Quarter 2023, Its Gross Domestic Income Theoretical Equivalent Was Unchanged in Third–Quarter 2023, With Its Only Fourth Quarter 2023 Estimate Pending on Thursday March 28th
- A Full Analysis of the Related Numbers Follows in This Weekend’s Commentary
- Although Rare, a Second Consecutive Quarter of Major GDI-GDP Dichotomy Was Seen Last at, and Was a Signal of the Onset of the Great Recession
Potentially Major Negative News From Ongoing GPD Vs. GDI Dichotomy. Quarterly Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Gross Domestic Income (GDI) and ShadowStats Alternate Headline GDI and GDP Yr-to-Yr, 1q2019 to 3/4q2023 GDP, Seasonally-Adjusted [Bureau of Economic Analysis]
Almost 10,000 U.S. Banks Have Disappeared Since 1985, Leaving 4 Mega Banks Controlling 39 Percent of Bank Assets According to Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) data, there were 14,417 federally-insured banking institutions in the U.S. in 1985. As of December 31, 2023, the FDIC reports there are only 4,587 remaining. The vast majority of the 9,830 banks that have disappeared since 1985 did not fail – they were merged with other banks. Today, just four banks control $9.3 trillion in consolidated bank assets or 39 percent of all bank assets. Those four banks are JPMorgan Chase with $3.395 trillion in consolidated assets; Bank of America with $2.540 trillion; Wells Fargo with $1.7 trillion; and Citigroup’s Citibank with $1.685 trillion. (All asset figures are as of December 31, 2023 and come from the Federal Reserve’s statistical release of the largest banks.)
World:
Education, 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