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Daily News Digest November 4, 20222

Images of the Day:

The US “Intelligence Community” Can’t Be Trusted to Police Itself

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 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:

. . . Nuclear Winter or a Climate-Change-Induced Nuclear Summer? (Probily Both!) Let’s not be shy. If there’s one word that comes to mind (mine anyway) at the moment, it’s madness. And no, believe it or not, I’m not even thinking about Donald Trump or the crazed crew of election deniers, QAnon conspiracy believers, and white nationalists who have become the essence of the Republican Party and may sweep to victory, at least in the House of Representatives, only days from now. And no, neither am I thinking about the Trumpist-leaning Supreme Court that might single-handedly (or perhaps hand in hand with all too many voters on November 8th) send us even further down the road to autocracy or at least to an eternally Republican-controlled mania-ocracy. — An Obituary for Our World

Videos of the Day:

Margaret Kimberley: Black Agenda Radio October 28, 2022

Haiti’s White Warlords, Part 2

White Nationalists Will Convene at American Renaissance Conference

International Realignments and the Absence of Progressive Voices in the West

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

Patrick Lawrence: The Democrats’ Assault on Diplomacy Actions speak louder than words and the Dems’ “diplomacy first” approach has been all bark and no bite. It is only two years since Joe Biden, hitting the hustings in pursuit of the White House, had to promise big change on the foreign policy side. Americans were beyond weary of the forever wars. People were beginning to see that the Pentagon’s outlandish budget had everything to do with America’s miserable social welfare programs, collapsing infrastructure, poor public education, and so on.

Powell Wasn’t Asked a Single Question About Corporate Profits Driving Inflation Questions from corporate media outlets focused instead on workers’ wages and the job market, which the Federal Reserve is attempting to weaken with aggressive rate hikes.

Corporate Lobbying ‘Onslaught’ Tanked Anti-Price Gouging Bills as Inflation Surged “The corporations fighting these bills have been the very ones responsible for jacking up prices on consumers and whose bottom line would be impacted the most if these bills were signed into law.”

Joe Biden is Right: America Needs a Windfall Profits Tax on Big Oil The case for a windfall profits tax is straightforward. There’s a reason why the idea is so popular Consumers are paying as big oil has gobbled up more than $125bn in profits in 2022 – triple the total from last year – doing nothing other than watching world oil prices soar due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The solution to this heist is simple enough: a windfall profits tax that extracts big oil’s unjust enrichment and returns the money to the people. . . . The case for a windfall profits tax is straightforward. The cost of getting oil out of the ground remains the same. Still, the market price of oil has skyrocketed due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. For the integrated major oil corporations, that means they have been able to charge consumers far more, despite their costs remaining flat.

When Bodies Start Stacking Up From Climate Change-Related Disasters, Will These Monsters be Held to Account? Snowden Says Shut Down DHS After Report Revealed Secretive Effort to Police Online Speech The NSA whistleblower said creating the Department of Homeland Security “was always a mistake,” but “its plan to become the Speech Police is the final straw.” NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security should be shut down after reporting shined light on the agency’s sweeping campaign to police what it deems disinformation online, an effort that raised alarm among civil liberties groups.

Biden Treasury Urged to Act as US Banks Help Big Oil ‘Torch Our Planet’ “Until Wall Street firms are held to account,” says a new letter, “no amount of investment in renewables can credibly undo the damage that their fossil fuel financing does to the climate.” An analysis of the financial sector’s net-zero emissions commitments out Wednesday reveals that the six biggest U.S. banks’ climate pledges and actions fall far short of what’s needed to stave off catastrophic levels of planetary heating, prompting dozens of progressive groups to call on the Treasury Department to take steps to ensure a swift and just clean energy transition.

Nations Spent at Least $55 Banks and G20 Billion a Year Financing Fossil Fuels Group of 20 nations and major multilateral development banks spent nearly twice as much financing international fossil fuel projects as they did on clean energy alternatives during a recent two-year period, a report published Tuesday by a pair of green groups revealed. Oil Change International and Friends of the Earth U.S., along with dozens of collaborating climate and environmental justice groups, found that from 2019 to 2021, members of the G20 and multilateral development banks (MDBs) including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) “provided at least $55 billion per year in international public finance for oil, gas, and coal,” an amount “almost two times more than their support for clean energy, which averaged only $29 billion per year.”

Environment: Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:

This Is an All-Hands-on-Deck Moment to Fight Climate Emergency It’s time for a new chapter, focused on implementing the solutions we already know will work—many of which have been developed in the very communities that have been most impacted by climate change. COP27 Activists to UN: Stand for Just Transition, Not ‘More Net-Zero Nonsense’ “The world needs funding for real solutions like just transition, climate reparations, and self-determination of Indigenous and frontline communities.”

Humanity’s Future Depends on Transformative Climate Action Now I urge every nation, every government, to pore over the solutions in this report and build them into their climate commitments. Every year, the intensifying climate crisis brings more pain and suffering to hundreds of millions of people across the globe. The only way we can exit this climate crisis, and avoid an accelerating disaster, is by launching an urgent system-wide transformation of our economies and societies. But still, as the 2022 edition of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) “Emissions Gap Report” shows, countries are not stepping up.

Healthy Ecosystems Need Birds, but Billions Fatally Strike Our Windows Every Year Glass windows have existed since as long ago as 290 CE, if only in a limited supply of small sheets. It seems fair to say that window glass has enriched human aesthetic, cultural, physiological, and psychological well-being for at least 16 centuries.

Civil Rights/ Black Liberarion:

The Erasure of Affirmative Action The erasure of race conscious admissions used in public and private universities began to its certain erasure today, October 31, 2022. For five hours, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments on the matter of Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina. Given the questions and significant concerns asked by the Justices of this Supreme Court, and, by the public comments made by the six conservative Supreme Court Justices and their loathing of affirmative action, it has been a common agreement amongst academics, civil rights and educational activists that these two cases before the Supreme Court are the cases that will dismantle affirmative action.

Black Agenda Report

Labor:

Economy:

One then has to fall back on the hope that today’s deepening global divisions can be contained, as they were, by and large, during the cold war. One rejoinder to this hope is that there were some close-run moments during the cold war. The second is that the Soviet economy was not integrated into the world’s, while China and the west are both competitors and integrated with one another and the rest of the world. There is no painless way of decoupling these economic links. It is folly to imagine there is. The effort seems sure to create conflict. Indeed, the recently announced controls on US exports of semiconductors and associated technologies to China looks a decisive step. Certainly, this is far more threatening to Beijing than anything Donald Trump did. The aim is clearly to slow China’s economic development. That is an act of economic warfare. One might agree with it. But it will have huge geopolitical conse-quences. — Martin Wolf

Will Interest Rate Rises Solve Inflation? The past few months have seen central banks scrambling to raise interest rates to control inflation. Yesterday, the Federal Reserve introduced another 0.75 percentage point hike, and the Bank of England will follow suit today. This spate of rate hikes caused mortgage rates to multiply, government borrowing rates to spiral, and now a recession looms. This will be painful for ordinary people, but will the ruling class achieve its aims? Two and a half years ago, the central banks plunged unprecedented amounts of money into the economies of the world. To prevent a COVID-accelerated recession, they engaged in an historic expansion of credit. They generated electronic money at a never before seen scale. Much of this went to fund huge government deficits. Now the chickens have come home to roost!

Raising Interest Rates: a Recipe for World Recession The past few months have seen central banks scrambling to raise interest rates to control inflation. Yesterday, the Federal Reserve introduced another 0.75 percentage point hike, and the Bank of England will follow suit today. This spate of rate hikes caused mortgage rates to multiply, government borrowing rates to spiral, and now a recession looms. This will be painful for ordinary people, but will the ruling class achieve its aims?

Shadow Government Statistics Daily Update November 2nd to 4th

Committee (FOMC) Meeting, along with an otherwise anticipated 75-basis point (0.75%) rate hike in the Federal Funds Rate. While higher rates continue to hit the Economy hard, contrary to FOMC hype, they do little to constrain current Inflation. Headline economic activity is moribund, not overheating, and it is not driving the inflation. Instead, reflecting extreme FRB money creation and consumer flight to liquidity, inflation-driving Money Supply growth in the most liquid measure of “Basic M1” (Currency plus Checking Accounts) has received the equivalent of 21 years of Monetary Stimulus in the 31 months (2.6 years) since the March 2020 Pandemic Shutdown. Under current FRB/ FOMC policies, headline economic activity should continue to falter, and inflation should continue to soar (expanded economic specifics are detailed in the later OPENING HEADLINE and LATEST NUMBERS Sections).
Consider from today’s FOMC Statement that, “Recent indicators point to modest growth in spending and production. Job gains have been robust in recent months, and the unemployment rate has remained low.” Yet, that “robust” headline Payroll Employment just minimally recovered its Pre-Pandemic level two months ago, in headline August 2022 reporting. Consider that in normal economic times [no Pandemic], Payroll Employment currently would be running higher by about 5,000,000 jobs than seen at present. Separately, the broader Unemployment Rate U.6 already has defined out of existence, a large number of “discouraged workers,” who lost their jobs during the Pandemic, and who are not looking for work, at present, because they believe there are no jobs to be had.

Michael Roberts Blog:

The Eurozone manufacturing PMI dropped to 29-month low of 46.4 in October, down from 48.4 in September, as output and new orders fell at rates rarely surpassed in 25 years of the PMI survey. Shipping giant Maersk cuts its forecast for worldwide container demand, saying usage will shrink as much as 4% this year because of an economic slowdown.
“It’s really hard to be very optimistic with a war on our doorstep and a bigger energy crisis this winter so that is impacting consumer confidence and therefore also demand.
“It’s quite likely that we either are or will soon be in a recession, certainly in Europe but potentially also in the US.”

Michael Roberts Blog: According to JP Morgan’s global manufacturing activity indicator, the world is already in a manufacturing recession. The J.P. Morgan global manufacturing output PMI ticked down 0.1-point in October to a level not seen outside of recessions. At 48.6, the output PMI points to an 0.8%-point annualized contraction in global factory output. The index is down nearly 4-points since June and stands at its weakest level of the expansion. “The message does not look any better for the months ahead as the forward-looking components of the PMIs point to even more weakness.” “The supply-demand imbalances that drove central banks around the world to the most aggressive hiking cycle in 40 years look to be correcting. The central question now is whether this will be sufficient to get policy tightening to pause anytime soon. And perhaps a more important question is whether this will matter. For the goods sector, the signal from the manufacturing PMI surveys is clear: the damage (whether intended or not) has been done and a goods sector contraction looks to be coming.”

Fed Chair Powell Sends Stocks on a Wild Ride; Says “Premature to be Thinking about Pausing” Rate Hikes The Fed released its FOMC decision to raise interest rates by 0.75 percent at 2 p.m. yesterday, bringing its benchmark Fed Funds rate to a range of 3.75 to 4.00 percent. The decision contained this statement: “In assessing the appropriate stance of monetary policy, the Committee will continue to monitor the implications of incoming information for the economic outlook. The Committee would be prepared to adjust the stance of monetary policy as appropriate if risks emerge that could impede the attainment of the Committee’s goals.” That statement was greeted as bullish by the stock market. As Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference started at 2:30 p.m., the Dow had soared by 277 points. By 2:34 p.m., the Dow was up 400 points. But things dramatically changed when Powell started taking questions from the press. By 3:15 p.m. when the press conference ended, the Dow was down by 157 points and it continued to tumble for the next 45 minutes, ending the trading day at 4:00 p.m. with a loss of 505.44 points – a wild swing of 900 points in an hour and a half.

World:

Revolutionary Struggle in Iran: Conspiracies, Enemies, and Friends Millions of Iranians are fighting for their lives and their futures as part of a revolutionary wave that has the potential to overthrow the Islamic dictatorship that has dominated their lives since 1979. As one author put it, this mass movement sweeping across Iran “is about much more than the abolition of misogynistic dress codes: it is about equal rights, full autonomy over one’s own body, access to jobs, health care and an independent life. It is about abolishing all repression and the security apparatus — from the morality police to the Revolutionary Guards. From the corrupt mullahs to the violent police.”

Hands Off Haiti! Oppose Imperialist Occupation, Fight for Revolution! Faced with a fuel blockade by the country’s most powerful gang and with a mass movement demanding solutions to the growing economic crisis, the Henry regime in Haiti is hanging by a thread. Led by the United States, the imperialists are openly discussing a military intervention to defend the Henry regime and restore order. An intervention and occupation by imperialist troops will be a disaster for the workers and poor of Haiti, and must be opposed. In November of last year we published an article on the situation in Haiti. It is remarkable how similar the current situation is to that of almost one year ago.

Health,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 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