Daily News Digest September 26, 2022
Images of the Day:
Michael Roberts Blog:“The US LEI declined for a sixth consecutive month potentially signaling a recession,” Ataman Ozyildirim, Senior Director, Economics, at The Conference Board
No One!
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 Capilalism 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:
Despite such clear evidence of BW attack by U.S. forces, Western historians and commentators have ignored the CIA COMINT reports, relying on dubious documentation from “experts.” At the same time, historians have been unable to ignore the fact that the U.S. military, with assistance from the CIA, vastly accelerated its BW research program during the Korean War. Even as hundreds of anti-crop biological bombs were forward positioned in England and North Africa against the USSR as early as 1951 (as will be described below), Western scholars today insist that the U.S. did not implement actual offensive BW operations during this period. In December 1958, as part of the sedition trial of John and Sylvia Powell, who reported on U.S. use of germ warfare in China and Korea, Ft. Detrick official John L. Schwab, stated under oath in an affidavit to the federal court that from the period 1 January 1949 through 27 July 1953, “the U.S. Army had a capability to wage both chemical and biological warfare, offensively and defensively.” Schwab had been at one point Chief of Ft. Detrick’s Special Operations Division, which worked closely with CIA on concocting BW and chemical weapons for use in sabotage and assassination operations. — The SKELP Directives: U.S. Secret Financing of Germ Warfare during the Korean War
Videos of the Day:
Climate Strike: Mikaela Loach on How Capitalism, Colonialism & Imperialism Fuel Climate Crisis
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 Reublicrats 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. Rax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay!
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 Brandeis
A Welfare System Built to Exclude Will Never Reduce Poverty in the US To fix its broken welfare system, the U.S. must move away from its fixation on fraud, exclusions by design, and the stigmatization of people in poverty. The facts are clear: well-designed social protection programs slash poverty. And so—with an estimated 37.2 million people experiencing poverty in the U.S.—it defies reason why the country’s welfare system excludes millions of eligible individuals by design, condemning them to destitution and wasting public resources. Take the Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a federal social assistance program to lift older persons and people with disabilities out of poverty. Only 58% of eligible families actually receive it, as eligibility conditions are so stringent that most applications for the disability support are rejected. Income and asset thresholds that determine eligibility were last set in 1989 and haven’t been updated or adjusted for inflation, despite the skyrocketing cost of living.
The Sneaky Ways Big Oil Misleads the Public With Money and Power Big Oil lied to us for decades about climate change. And they’ve hid behind scientists, academics, and even “grassroots” groups to do it. The special meeting was held in front of a packed house. But many of the attendants weren’t interested Allegheny County residents. They were folks sent by industry groups and the fracking company that would benefit from the ban’s veto.
The Military to American Youth: You Belong to Me The Pentagon knows student debt, or even poverty in general, are not sufficient to keep the recruits flowing.The U.S. military needs more than just money (a trillion dollars or so) in its annual budget. It needs access to America’s young people as well—both their wallets and their minds.
Andres Auraz: Biden’s Peace for Afghanistan Is a Humanitarian Disaster The U.S. withdrew its troops and with them all humanitarian aid while freezing Afghanistan’s foreign Reserves, Leading to Mass Deprivation for Afghanistan’s Innocent Civilian Populatiin Calling it the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” former Ecuadorian Central Bank director Andres Arauz details a Biden Administration economic war against the Afghan people that has only intensified the suffering of a population that has suffered merciless military attacks, first by the Soviets and then the US. This time, according to this recent article for CEPR, the deadly weapon is U.S. control over central banking and international humanitarian aid, which has totally wrecked the already fragile Afghan economy.
Biden, Ramaphosa and Cul-de-Sacs of Imperial and Sub-Imperial Diplomacy What does South African president Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit last Friday to the White House – and the trip last month by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Pretoria – mean for geopolitics and the U.S.-Africa relationship? Start with symbolism. Typical of the way Joe Biden conducts politics is with self-flattering reminiscences, in the hope he won’t be caught out. At a crucial, primary-election-changing South Carolina campaign rally in early 2020, he bragged to an African-American audience: “I had the great honor of being arrested with our U.N. ambassador (Andrew Young) on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see (Nelson Mandela) on Robbens Island.” Well, he was certainly called out on that whopper. So last Friday at the White House, he made fun of himself a bit: “I had been stopped trying to get to uh to visit him and see him in prison. And uh, I had said once, I said I got arrested. It wadn’t arrested. I got stopped and prevented from from from moving.”
What You Need to Know About the Energy Crisis Every discussion about energy should begin or end with a reminder that building a global industrial economy on the basis of ever-increasing rates of extracting and burning finite fossil fuel resources, with polluting byproducts, was and is utterly insane. In May I wrote about the emerging energy and food crisis gripping the world due largely to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The crisis continues to unfold. However, most people are aware of it only via high prices—for gasoline, electricity, natural gas, and food—and through widespread chatter among economists about inflation and what should be done to tame it. Sadly, prices by themselves are not helpful in understanding why the crisis has emerged and how it is likely to develop in coming months. Periodic overviews of the situation that emphasize systemic causal connections and feedbacks may serve that purpose better, so consider this the second in a series of such overviews. I’ll sort information and analysis by region.
Environment: Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
The Bomb That Cracked an Island Amchitka Island sits at the midway point on the great arc of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, less than 900 miles across the Bering Sea from the coast of Russia. Amchitka, a spongy landscape of maritime tundra, is one of the most southerly of the Aleutians. The island’s relatively temperate climate has made it one of the Arctic’s most valuable bird sanctuaries, a critical staging ground for more than 100 migratory species, as well as home to walruses, sea otters and sea lions. Off the coast of Amchitka is a thriving fishery of salmon, pollock, haddock and halibut. All of these values were recognized early on. In 1913, Amchitka was designated as a national wildlife refuge by President William Howard Taft. But these ecological wonders were swept aside in the early ’60s when the Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) went on the lookout for a new place to blow up H-bombs. Six decades ago, Amchitka was the site of three large underground nuclear tests, including the most powerful nuclear explosion ever detonated by the United States. The aftershocks of those blasts are still being felt. Despite claims by the AEC and the Pentagon that the test sites would safely contain the radiation released by the blasts for thousands of years, independent research by Greenpeace and newly released documents from the Department of Energy (DOE) show that the Amchitka tests began to leak almost immediately. Highly radioactive elements and gasses, such as tritium, americium-241 and plutonium, poured out of the collapsed test shafts, leached into the groundwater and worked their way into ponds, creeks and the Bering Sea.
Civil Rights/ Black Liberarion:
Labor:
Slave Labor Wages: Public Works — the Largest New Jim Crow Employer: California Is Dependent on Prison Labor for Fighting Fires. This Must End. (Prisoners Are Getting Paid $1.45 a Day to Fight the California Wildfires) On September 7, 2022, after many attempted delays from the City of Susanville, California, a Lassen County judge ruled in favor of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to close one of Susanville’s two prisons. The court case and public debate over the prison closure has been almost entirely based on the anticipated loss of 1,000 jobs in the prison, but the closure of this facility marks an enormous shift in the use of prison labor for public work. The California Correctional Center in Susanville is set to be closed by June 2023. It is one of two remaining training hubs for the California Conservation Camp Program, which, before 2019, made up 192 of 208 hand crews working for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (also known as CAL FIRE). Although popular references to prison labor today often focus on the production of manufactured goods for private companies, public work programs make up significantly more of the total work assignments in prison. In fact, public work assignments are a larger percentage of prison jobs than government and private manufacturing combined.
Economy:
Hawks, Hikes, and Hard-Landings: New Chapter in the Crisis of Capitalism It is often said that a week is a long time in politics. Indeed, earlier this month, Britain saw both a new prime minister and a new monarch in the space of just a few days. In economics, meanwhile, the passing of a year can seem like the transition to a whole different era. Rewind twelve months, and nonchalant central bankers were describing creeping inflation as a ‘temporary’ phenomena. Supply chain disruptions and labour shortages, in turn, were considered an ephemeral nuisance by the capitalists – one that would soon be resolved by the omnipotence of the market. And economic forecasters were still predicting a robust post-lockdown rebound. How the tune has changed. Fast forward to today, and everyone can see that prices are now spiralling out of control. Hopes of recovery have given way to fears of recession. And in place of laissez-faire complacency and hubris, the ruling class is now looking to pull the proverbial monetary handbrake, in a desperate attempt to prevent themselves from careering over a cliff-edge.
These Images Demonstratesthe Pauperization of the 99%!”:
Due the Labor Bureaucracy’s collaboration with the Boss, Real Wages Have Been Cut Over 100% Since1974! — Wages Have Not Kept Up With Inflation! Since the Neoliberal Labor Bureaucracy declared itself to be in a (Domestic) Partnership With the Boss’ (‘Bedding the Boss!’)! was fully institutionalized starting in the mid-1980s, this ‘partnership’ gave birth to the one, two, three, etc. .. wage tier system! Selling out the futures of future young workers entering the labor force. And, since the lowest union wage is immediately the highest non-union wage, this wage tier system cut the wages of the entire working class! As demonstrated by this Shadow Government Statistics Graph!:
NYS Attorney General Documents a Decade of “Staggering” Fraud by Donald Trump, the Man Allowed to Run the U.S. Government from 2017 to 2020 Yesterday, the New York State Attorney General, Letitia James, filed a 222-page lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, his three adult children (Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric), and two company executives, Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney. The lawsuit is the culmination of a three-year investigation and documents in meticulous detail a “staggering” pattern of fraud from 2011 through 2021.
World:
National Revolutionary Uprising of Iranian Youth The protests in Iran, sparked by the murder of a young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, have now spread to at least 140 cities across all provinces in the country. It has turned into a national uprising, incomparable to any previous movement in the history of the Islamic Republic. The regime has responded with hard repression: shutting down internet access and mobilising nearly all its security forces: the police, counterinsurgency units, the Revolutionary [read: Counter-revolutionary] Guard, and basij paramilitaries. These forces of the regime are more and more openly shooting directly into the crowds, with over 100 confirmed dead already. The real number is likely three-to-five times higher, with hundreds more arrested or injured.
Italy: lurching to the Right Italy goes to the polls this Sunday 27 September. This is a snap election forced on Italy’s president because the ‘technocratic’ government under former ECB chief Mario Draghi fell after he lost majority support in parliament. That support was lost, partly because Draghi vigorously backed NATO support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion – something that both the leading right-wing parties and the leftist Five Star were less keen on – and partly because the Draghi government was determined to keep to the fiscal strictures of the EU Commission in return for the huge EU regeneration package that Italy would receive to revive the economy after the COVID slump. If the polls are correct, Italy will emerge from its general election on Sunday with a new far-right government led by arch-conservative Giorgia Meloni, president of the Brothers of Italy, a party that has rocketed to prominence from nowhere since the last inconclusive election in 2018 (see my report here). Meloni and her populist ally Matteo Salvini, leader of the League (which has lost huge support to the Brothers), together appear poised for a decisive victory over a deeply divided centre-left. This would mark Italy’s first experiment with far-right rule since fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, after a total of 69 ideologically diverse governments since the second world war. Both Meloni, a conservative firebrand whose political career began as a teenage activist in the youth wing of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, and Salvini, who was an ardent admirer of Russian president Vladimir Putin, are Eurosceptics.
Education, Health, Science, 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 they 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 Healthcar
College Debt is the Tip of the Iceberg: Only 35% of freshman students will both manage to graduate and use their degrees to launch a career, and many of these careers involve sketchy middle management positions that the late anthropologist, David Graeber, deemed, “bullshit jobs.” Graeber subdivided this ghostly faction of the workforce into five categories—flunkies, goons, box tickers, duct tapers, and task masters—each a talisman of administrative bloat. Graeber argued that those who perform bullshit jobs understand that their positions are merely ceremonial—pretending to scrutinize industry regulations and accountability, or planning projects that have no value, or formulating red tape and concocting excuses for inaction. Graeber uncovered an entire industry engaged in the theatrical act of looking busy. One gains access to the world of corporate fluff with but one key—a college diploma. Giving money away to flimflam artists is as old as money itself. Paying hundreds of thousands in tuition and buying $400 textbooks (that ultimately get dumped at the campus bookstore for $2.50), suggests a medieval prototype—the church indulgence (the practice of paying religious authorities lofty sums to act as mediators in the quest for salvation). Dividing all of humanity into those enjoying an eternity of bliss, and those suffering a timeless universe of torment is the conceptual ancestor of our gathering two tiered class system, but the analogy may not be perfect—so called institutions of higher learning engage in a grift that competes with the US military budget for stacking green bills to dizzying heights, while the church books have crumbled to dust. Nor can we prove that indulgences failed to deliver on the promise of reduced purgatory time. No one wants to suffer the agonies inflicted by trash talking demons armed with white hot iron rods. If an indulgence purchased an elevator ride up from the bowels of the underworld, that is an investment well spent. I do not intend to argue that a college degree has as much value as a medieval church indulgence—it doesn’t—I am simply reflecting that both the church and the Ivy League know how to rake it in while maintaining tax exempt status.