Daily News Digest September 30, 2022

Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

Bendib: Hell of A Place

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:

In the case of the UK, apparently pension funds and others had been employing yet another piece of financial jiggery-pokery called “liability-driven investment” schemes . This was the practice of buying bonds that are then used as collateral for loans to purchase more bonds – as much as £1.5trn over the last decade since the global financial crash.  If the value of the bonds used for collateral drop like a stone, as they have just done, then the ability to borrow vanishes.  So the BoE has been forced to loan £65bn to such bond holders to bail them out of their Ponzi scheme.     And it was not just in the UK with its crazy government.  Even in the US, with supposedly a ‘sensible’ administration that is not cutting taxes or funding price caps, the credit squeeze is also there.  The $24tn US treasury market has been hit with its most severe bout of turbulence since the coronavirus crisis, underscoring how big swings in international bonds and currencies and jitters over US rate rises have spooked investors.  “Right now, it is all about market volatility,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, a strategist at TD Securities. “You have investors staying away because of the volatility — and investors staying away increases volatility. It is a volatility vortex.” — The Liquidity Crisis And Drowning Naked

Videos of the Day:

Capitalism Fuels Disease, Trauma and Addiction. How Can We Heal?

2001 Anthrax Attack: Ex-Planned Parenthood Staff Reveals Working Conditions: ‘Anthrax Threats’

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley

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 

Glen Greenwald:The Democrats’ Increasing Regime of Censorship The regime of censorship being imposed on the internet – by a consortium of DC Dems, billionaire-funded “disinformation experts,” the US Security State, and liberal employees of media corporations – is dangerously intensifying in ways I believe are not adequately understood.

Chris Hedges: The Return of Fascism As in the 1930s, a bankrupt liberalism, grotesque social inequality and declining living standards are empowering fascist movements in Europe and the U.S. Energy and food bills are soaring. Under the onslaught of inflation and prolonged wage stagnation, wages are in free fall. Billions of dollars are diverted by Western nations at a time of economic crisis and staggering income inequality to fund a proxy war in Ukraine. The liberal class, terrified by the rise of neo-fascism and demagogues such as Donald Trump, have thrown in their lot with discredited and reviled establishment politicians who slavishly do the bidding of the war industry, oligarchs and corporations.

Queen Quashes Campaign News? Lack of Coverage is Routine for Social Movements.  Democratic campaign fundraisers are complaining about cable news. The reporting they rely on, to attract attention and stir giving, dried up, they say, when US news networks switched their attention from politics and the midterms to Queen Elizabeth II’s death.     How do you spark alarm, inform the public, prod people to act, if the media aren’t covering the news, political fundraisers griped to the press this week. “We need Americans to care about the future… and get involved,” a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign told the New York Times.     It’s a problem social movements in the US have faced for decades, of course, and met none of the same sympathy from the press.

Biden, Immigration, and Fentanyl: Republicans’ Strange Version of “Logic”“Arrests at the southern border will set new records this year,” Joe Walsh reports at Forbes. “Border Patrol apprehended 1.998 million people at the U.S.-Mexico border from October to August, already blowing past the 1.659 million arrested in all of fiscal year 2021, which was the agency’s busiest year on record.”

Anthrax Attack: Congress Has Yet to Investigate the Bioweapons Attack Against It . . . But after the 9/11 attacks, Congress itself came under a false flag biowarfare attack, shutting down Congress and terrorizing the entire country.      There was never a single Congress-ional inquiry.     The effects of the 2001 anthrax attacks could hardly have been more far reaching.     Someone mailed letters with deadly anthrax to a series of targets including Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.     The two had been raising concerns about the Patriot Act, which the Bush/Cheney administration wanted to ram through Congress after 9/11.

The only war the Democrats did not lead or support was the civil war!:   The Democratic Party, Now the Leading Party of War. Last May a remarkable column by Stephen Kinzer appeared in the Boston Globe.  It was headlined: “Republicans Return To Their Roots As The Antiwar Party.” More significantly, the subheading ran: “Since the Vietnam era, Americans have come to expect antiwar rhetoric from liberal Democrats. Cancel that.”  

Burning Books (or Rather Book Companies) No one listened better than Studs.  For those of you old enough to remember, that’s Studs Terkel, of course. The most notable thing about him in person, though, was this: the greatest interviewer of his moment, perhaps of any moment, never stopped talking, except, of course, when he was listening to produce one of his memorable bestselling oral histories — he essentially created the form — ranging from Working and Hard Times to The Good War.

Environment: Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:

Capitalists Fiddle as the World Burns This summer, the world has been struck by calamitous weather events, including immense droughts across multiple continents. Satellite pictures show vast areas, completely desiccated by the heat. Europe experienced its worst drought in 500 years. Meanwhile, China was hit by its most severe heatwave in 60 years, causing a drought whose impact continues to ripple through agriculture and industry.

‘Total Devastation’ as Hurricane Ian Tears Through Florida “Always remember that climate breakdown is only getting started,” said one climate scientist. “It will keep getting worse so long as the fossil fuel industry exists. Cause, effect.”

Climate Scientist Demands ‘War Crimes’ Charges for Whoever Ordered Pipeline Sabotage The call from Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson came as a fourth Nord Stream leak was discovered, intensifying fears of an unprecedented release of planet-heating methane emissions.     A Stanford University climate scientist on Wednesday called for war crimes charges against whoever is found to have ordered the apparent sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline system, an incident that experts say could result in the largest-ever recorded release of methane emissions.

Civil Rights/ Black Liberarion:

Demanding Broad Reforms, Thousands of Inmate Workers on Strike at Alabama Prisons     “The DOJ’s intervention has done nothing to shift conditions inside Alabama prisons,” said one supporter. ” They remain incredibly unsafe, inhumane, and exploitative Saying that even a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2020 did not solve the “humanitarian crisis” that has gone on for years in Alabama’s prison system, thousands of inmate workers are refusing to work this week to demand broad criminal justice reforms and changes to the state’s prison conditions.     The work stoppage began Monday after about three months of planning and organizing by inmates, with help from groups including Alabama Prison Advocacy and Incarcerated Families United.     Organizers circulated a “message from the inside” saying the roughly 25,000 incarcerated people in the state are “in the midst of a humanitarian crisis due to Eighth Amendment violations.”

Black Agenda Report

Labor:

California AB 257 Is Tip of the Iceberg When It Comes to ‘Workplace Fissure’ If workplace fissuring continues to grow at the exponential rate we’re currently seeing, the result will be that workers’ rights, power, and pay will suffer.

Michael Roberts Blog: From The Liquidity Crisis and Drowning Naked: One of the features of the 21st century in the major economies has been low unemployment, at least in the official figures.  But much of this employment has been in low-paid services sectors, part-time or temporary.  Now even here, there are signs of cracks.  In the US, full-time jobs are falling, to be replaced by part-time employment.   And in another sign of a weakening labor market, weekly working hours are down over the last six months to the lowest reading since the COVID slump in April 2020.

Economy:

Michael Roberts Blog: The Liquidity Crisis and Drowning Naked “If there was no intervention today, gilt yields could have gone up to 7-8 per cent from 4.5 per cent this morning and in that situation around 90 per cent of UK pension funds would have run out of collateral… They would have been wiped out.”  So says a UK bond trader yesterday.  A liquidity crisis erupted in British bond markets after the announcement by the new right-wing Conservative government that it would spend up to £60bn to maintain and energy price cap for householders for up to two years, subsidise business energy costs AND also cut corporate and income taxes.  The total hit from this largesse (mainly to the rich) to the UK public debt level over the next few years has been estimated at over £400bn or nearly 20% of GDP.  With UK public debt already at 100% of GDP, that sounded the death knell for the UK bond prices.  Yields (interest rate) surged.

Michael Roberts Blog: Government bond yields are rocketing everywhere, along with corporate bond yields too.  It seems that many holders of these bonds, particularly pension funds which tend to buy long-dated government bonds are at risk of going under.  In the UK, the BoE has announced purchases of UK gilts to shore up the market; and the Fed may well have to do the same in the US.  So from QE before the pandemic to QT after inflation spiralled and then back to QE to save the banks and pension funds.   The US dollar is super strong against other currencies as it is seen as a ‘safe-haven’ for investors to hold their cash and assets as inflation spirals and the world slips into recession.     But a strong dollar and rising interest rates is pushing the world economy into slump.     “These recessionary forces emanating from the US and the rising dollar come on top of those created by the big real shocks. In Europe, above all, there is the way in which higher energy prices are simultaneously raising inflation and weakening real demand.”— Martin Wolf . So what can be done?  Martin Wolf -“Not that much.” The impending world slump cannot be avoided. “What is known is that the central banks’ ability to support the markets and economy are for a while gone. …Even previously credible G7 governments, such as the UK’s, are learning this truth. The financial tide is going out: only now do we notice who has been swimming naked.” — Martin Wolf

More Than 40% of Mortgages Withdrawn as Market Reels After Mini-Budget Lenders began pulling products on Monday as they struggled to price products amid financial uncertainty More than 40% of available mortgages have been withdrawn from the market since the UK government announced its mini-budget on Friday, figures show. Lenders began suspending products on Monday as they struggled to price them amid the uncertainty on financial markets – and the volatility and number of offers being removed have snowballed this week.

World:

Imperialism and Capitalism Are ‘Bleeding the World Dry’: At UN, Nicaragua Calls for Global Rebellion At the United Nations General Assembly, Nicaragua’s Sandinista government called for a global rebellion against the “imperialist and capitalist system” that is “bleeding the world dry.” Condemning illegal sanctions and war, it urged a new multipolar order. . . . “It is time to say enough to the hypocritical imperialism that politicizes, falsifies, and denigrates human rights, that they themselves violate and deny every day,” declared Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Denis Moncada.     “Imperialism and its coercive actions are anti-life, in all spheres, and because of this, they are contrary to international law,” he added.

Russian Leaders Welcome Referendum Result as Ukraine Conflict Deepens Votes, described as a ‘sham’ by Kyiv, were seen in Moscow as opening way for four regions of Ukraine to join Russian Federation Russian leaders have been quick to welcome the outcome of the referendums that pave the way for occupied regions of Ukraine to be incorporated in the Russian Federation, escalating the conflict with Kyiv and Western governments, which have dismissed the votes as a sham.

Tunisia: a Social Explosion is Being Prepared On Sunday 25 September, hundreds of protesters took to the streets in the Tunisian capital of Tunis. The protests were ignited by the severe social and economic crisis, which has engulfed the country. The workers and poor of Tunisia are being crushed under rising inflation and food shortages, which have made the living conditions unbearable for the majority. 

Four Straight Years of Nonstop Street Protest in Haiti A cycle of protests began in Haiti in July 2018, and—despite the pandemic—has carried on since then. The core reason for the protest in 2018 was that in March of that year the government of Venezuela—due to the illegal sanctions imposed by the United States—could no longer ship discounted oil to Haiti through the PetroCaribe scheme. Fuel prices soared by up to 50 percent.

Truss’ Tories Plan to Slash Public Spending While Clinging to Chaos-Causing Tax Cuts “When the IMF tells you, ‘hang on guys, this is going to be so bad for inequality it needs a rethink,’ you’ve got a serious problem,” one U.K. activist said of the new mini-budget. “So now the Tories are going to slash your already shredded local services because they crashed the economy because they want to cut the taxes of the top 1%.”     That’s how socialist Guardian columnist Owen Jones on Wednesday summarized the recent revelations about U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss and other Conservative leaders’ fiscal policies.

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 Healthcare