Daily News Digest Achives
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 banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and The Iron Heel.
Always Remember That Obamba Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature, Started the United States Capitalist Austerity Program — The Race to the Botom or the 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 — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!
Images of the Day:
Streets Of Barcelona Fill As Huge 3-Day Marches Arrive, On Day Of General Strike
Fed Up 
Quotes of the Day:
Stop referring to a coming post-antibiotic era—it’s already here. You and I are living in a time when some miracle drugs no longer perform miracles. Stop playing the blame game. Each person, industry, and country can affect the development of antibiotic resistance. — Good and Bad News in CDC’s 2019 Antibiotic Resistance Threats Report
Videos Of the Day:
General Strike In Catalonia As ‘Freedom Marchers’ Walk In Barcelona | AFP
Netanyahu Kills Palestinians to Keep Opposition From Forming Government
25-Year Drought Forces States to Rescue Colorado River System The Colorado River system provides water for around 40 million people. A 25-year drought has endangered this system, prompting seven states and Mexico to accelerate conservation efforts.
Economic Update: The US’s Profit-Driven Medicine This week: Updates on on Berlin, Germany’s law freezing all rents for 5 years; over–indebted corporations threatening the world economy; prisoners’ slave labor in Los Angeles; French inequality and yellow vests; Bernie Sanders’ push to put workers on corporate boards of directors; Prof. Wolff interviews Dr. Michael Magee on the medical-industrial complex in the United States.
U.S.:
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.
‘Grand American Tradition of Immunizing Its War Criminals’ Continues as Trump Pardons US Soldiers “A shameful use of presidential powers,” said the ACLU. “It sends a clear message of disrespect for the law, morality, the military justice system, and those in the military who abide by the laws of war.” By Jon Queally
Meet Ukraine: America’s Newest “Strategic Ally”When the dust settles in a month or two, the House of Representatives will have impeached President Donald Trump with a one-sided partisan vote and then the Senate will have exonerated Donald Trump with a similarly one-sided partisan vote. But at the end of the day, the United States will have acquired a new strategic ally in Central Europe: Ukraine. The very first day of the impeachment hearings in November has been responsible for an important national security decision that had no input from Trump’s national security team or from the congressional foreign policy committees. The implications of this decision are onerous. By Melvin Goodman
A Gangster for Capitalism: Next Up, Bolivia “War is a racket. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.” This sounds like a modern day comment from the US far left, but the source is hardly that. It’s from a man who was the most decorated Marine ever at the time of his death. He was an expert on the topic. He served in WW I as well as the Mexican Revolution. Smedley Butler was doomed to be a largely forgotten voice in the rush to gloss over the true causes of war and regime change. He pointed out the techniques used to win public approval and the subsequent serving of the corporate needs by entering these ever-repeating violent conflicts. He described his military career as that of “a high class muscleman for Big Business, Wall Street, and the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” By Kathleen Wallace
The USA “Defends” Its Blockade, and Cuba Responds The annual vote on the Cuban resolution at the UN General Assembly on “the need to end the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” is a time of celebration in Cuba, for it is a time in which the governments of the world nearly unanimously support the Cuban demand for the United States to cease its long-standing blockade. The first vote on the resolution was held in 1992, and it was approved with 59 votes in favor, 3 opposed, and 71 abstentions. For the next seventeen years, the annual vote saw a steady increase of votes in favor and a corresponding decrease in abstentions, arriving in 2000 to 167 votes in favor, 3 opposed, and 4 abstentions. Since 2005, there have been only five countries or less that have opposed or abstained. In the vote 2019 this past week, there were 187 votes in favor of the Cuban resolution, three opposed (the United States, Israel, and Brazil), and two abstentions (Colombia and Ukraine). By Charles Mckelvey
Environment:
California Wildfires: Climate Change, Prison Labour And, The Electric Company By The intense wildfires that have gripped California once again in late summer and autumn seem to have abated. The mainstream media have covered these fires, which were concentrated in the area north of San Francisco and the upscale west side of Los Angeles, in graphic detail. They have covered the devastation these fires have wrought. What they have downplayed or not covered at all is the underlying cause of the great intensification of these fires in recent years, as well as related issues.Barely mentioned (and then only in passing) is the glaring underlying cause of climate change due to global warming. By Barry Sheppard
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
A fact concerning the recent wildfires the mainstream media completely ignores is the use of prisoners as firefighters. The difficulty in battling the fires necessitated the use of 4000 fire fighters from across the state and from nearby western states, including 700 California prisoners. Regular firefighters earn an annual mean wage of about US$74,000 a year plus benefits, while the prisoner firefighters earn about $1 an hour. The very low wages that are typically paid to prisoners for their work is rooted in the Constitution’s 13th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, which abolished slavery. However, it made an exception, allowing prisoners to be forced into “involuntary servitude”. — California Wildfires: Climate Change, Prison Labour And, The Electric Company
Labor:
Economy:
Wall Street and the Frankenstein Economy Herein we find the paradox that vexes liberals: 1) income is distributed according to the intrinsic virtue of one’s undertakings in this world (we ‘earn’ it) and 2) this distribution nevertheless has the stink of greed and malevolence all over it. On the one hand, there is an agreement made to exchange labor for pay, meaning that we earn it. One the other, there is a class that uses its political and economic power to pay itself more by paying everyone else less. And there is an additional time component: CEOs and Bank executives tend to be paid the most just before their actions kill the economy for a decade of more. By Rob Urie
Fed’s Powell Says Forensic Work Ongoing on Liquidity Crisis; This Chart Shows Why He’s Worried Yesterday, for the second day in a row, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, gave testimony and took questions before a Congressional Committee. On Wednesday it was the Joint Economic Committee; yesterday it was the House Budget Committee. On both days, only one member of the Committee dared to ask a question about the hundreds of billions of dollars the Fed is hurling at Wall Street each week in repo loans.The crisis in the repo loan market, where financial institutions make overnight loans to each other, began on September 17 when the interest rate spiked from the typical range of 2 percent to 10 percent. For the first time since the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve had to step in with lots of cash to ease the liquidity stresses. The Fed has continued to offer that cash every business day since that time and is now supplementing its overnight loans, which can run as high as $120 billion per day, with $35 billion in 14-day term loans twice a week. In total, the Fed is offering $670 billion each week in revolving loans to securities firms it will not name for a crisis it cannot define. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Health, Education, and Welfare: