Daily News Digest November 10, 2022

Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

Thousands March as Greeks Strike Over ‘Suffocating’ InflationSince 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:

Luke Parcher: Fantastic. We have a question here in the chat. This is from L Lewis. It says China has opted for industrialization and the U.S. corporate class clearly has not. Why is the U.S. so belligerent if it doesn’t even want an industrial system?      Michael Hudson: Because it doesn’t want any other country to have an industrial system.     Just like the West fought against communism threatening a new social system after the 1917 revolution, America’s terrified that if China can succeed by following the exact same policy that the United States got rich on in the late 19th century, then they might try to make America rich.      And, oh my God, if they do that then there’s no more free lunch for the billionaires.    This is life and death for the billionaires.     They make their money by exploiting the economy without producing.     The Chinese billionaires make their money by producing and exploiting the economy. But they also produce a lot. And then they have to give up much of what they exploit.     So the United States doesn’t want there to be any success in any country achieving prosperity in a way that doesn’t siphon off all of the income to the 1%. — Michael Hudson on The Destiny of Civilization

Videos of the Day:

Michael Hudson on The Destiny of Civilization

 Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley

• Black Politics and the 2022 Mid-Term Elections
• The Play Cousins Collective Serves the Needs of Black Families in Louisville, Kentucky
• Dr. Al-Fatah Stewart Fights for Freedom

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

Majority Opposition to Supreme Court Overturn Women’s Right to Choose!: US Midterm Elections 2022: ‘Red Wave’ Fails to Materialise As Kentucky Rejects Anti-Abortion Measure – Live Latest updates and results as Democrats perform better than expected and Fetterman wins Pennsylvania Senate race Kentucky voters reject anti-abortion ballot measure.  

• The AP is calling a ballot measure in Kentucky that would have denied constitutional protections for abortion in the state. About 53% of voters rejected the measure, which would have changed the state constitution to say it does not protect the right to abortion or funding for abortion care.
• Democratic House representative Elissa Slotkin hoped voters’ desire to protect abortion access would help her as she faced a tough reelection contest in Michigan, and the strategy has paid off.
• ‘Seismic Win’: Michigan Voters Approve Constitutional Amendment to Protect Abortion Rights “Voters are rejecting the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe and issuing a clarion call that they want their rights constitutionally protected.” Michigan residents on Tuesday voted to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution, a major victory in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s deeply unpopular decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and amid a nationwide GOP assault on reproductive freedom.

Who is Chrystia Freeland, Washington’s “prime candidate” for NATO Secretary-General? Freeland is being promoted by US imperialism to head the aggressive military alliance because she is a war hawk with extensive personal and political ties with Ukrainian fascism, which has emerged as a key proxy for the Western powers’ predatory war against Russia.

Will Our War-for-Profit System Lead to Nuclear Annihilation? The US continues to fan the flames of nuclear conflict with massive investments in the war department. How long can this last? Arecent poll conducted by the Quincy Institute found that 57% of likely voters strongly or somewhat support the US pursuing diplomatic negotiations as soon as possible to end the war in Ukraine, even if it requires Ukraine making compromises with Russia.     Despite relentless pro-war propaganda, a majority of Americans are not on board with their government’s strategy of pouring endless weapons into Ukraine’s war with its nuclear-armed neighbor and hoping for the best. They are concerned about the costs of this war – more than 60 billion taxpayer dollars have already been spent, with much of that money filling the coffers of U.S. arms manufacturers.

Environment: Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:

Climate Defenders Urge ‘Zero Tolerance for Net-Zero Greenwashing’ as UN Publishes New Report “The criteria and benchmarks for these net-zero commitments have varying levels of rigor and loopholes wide enough to drive a diesel truck through,” warned U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

Tuvalu Proposes Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty at COP27 “Pacific leaders continue to show what true climate leadership looks like,” said one climate activist. Campaigners on Tuesday applauded leaders in the Global South for continuing to lead the way in the fight for far-reaching climate action as the island nation of Tuvalu brought a proposal for a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty to the United Nations’ annual climate change conference. 

Greenpeace Dismisses COP27 Deforestation Pact as ‘Carbon Trickery’“This partnership is nothing but a green light for eight more years of forest destruction, with little respect for the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities,” said one campaigner. Greenpeace on Tuesday denounced the so-called Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership launched by more than two dozen nations at the COP27 summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, arguing that the pact is unlikely to stop deforestation.    “A robust partnership could go a long way to provide the necessary resources to protect, conserve, and restore the world’s forests, but this partnership is nothing but a green light for eight more years of forest destruction, with little respect for the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities,” Victorine Che Thōner of Greenpeace International said in a statement.

Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:

A ‘Forgotten History’ Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. We’re going to talk about how continuing racial inequality in America is in part a result of 20th-century policies that mandated housing segregation, including in the North. My guest Richard Rothstein is the author of the new book “The Color Of Law: A Forgotten History Of How Our Government Segregated America.” He writes about federal, state and local policies that help explain why new suburbs were predominantly white while housing projects became predominantly black and so many neighborhoods became – and remain – segregated. He also writes about how this mandated segregation has contributed to inequality in education, employment and income. Rothstein is a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute and a fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Black Lives Matter — They Can’t Be Up for Debate Each Election Season We can imagine a world in which every Black person is thriving, and we demand policies that will make that a reality. Many political pundits have spent recent weeks reading polls and speculating about the potential outcomes of the midterm elections. The 24-hour news cycle has been geared up for months, spinning all eventualities and their impact on the balance of power in Washington and how down-ballot races fueled by conspiracy theories will impact local politics. For us, grounded in the demands of our people who keep chanting that our lives matter, this political moment is important. But equally important is our vision for a future in which our rights are not determined by the ballot, but enshrined in just laws that are not up for debate each election season.     As students of liberatory social movements, stewards of the fight for Black liberation and members of communities whose self-determination and dignity are central to power relations in this country and globally, we have learned many lessons.     The first is that in the wake of every political uprising for social justice comes a strong and swift backlash. In the 1960s, when civil rights leaders organized and won significant legislative and judicial victories toward racial and economic justice, conservative factions implemented a vast and stealthy neoliberal agenda that promoted individualism, weakened unions and strengthened divisions between working-class people along racial lines. Similarly, today’s Black liberation movement has ushered in momentous political projects that have shaped the contours of modern U.S. democracy, including the 2020 insurgency of global proportions that contributed to the defeat of Donald Trump, propelling a new administration into power.

Labor: The Labor Bureaucracy/1% Partnership: Biden Administration Steps in Threaten to Oppose the Railworker’s Right to Strike!: Labor Secretary Says Congress Needs to Block Rail Strikes Without New Deals Labor Secretary Marty Walsh says he hopes negotiators between railroads and some rail unions can reach new labor deals and avert a possible strike. But he said without a deal he expects Congress will step in and impose contracts on the unhappy rank-and-file union members.     The statement is a blow to the unions’ leverage as they seek to win a contract that their membership will accept.     Two rail unions reached tentative labor deals with the railroads in September, ahead of a strike deadline, only to have their membership vote against ratifying them.

Economy:

US Mid-Term Elections: It’s the Economy, Stupid! Americans go to the polls today to vote in the so-called mid-term elections for the US Congress.  All the seats in the lower House of Representatives are up for grabs, while a portion of the upper house, the Senate, is being voted on.  Currently, the Democrats hold a majority of just eight in the lower house and have a majority in the Senate only through the vote of the Chair, who is the Democrat vice president.      Current opinion polls suggest that the Republicans will gain control of the lower house with a majority of 20-30 seats while the Senate is much closer.     If that result is about right, it will mean the Democrat Biden administration will be pretty much blocked from carrying out any of its proposed measures over the next two years up to the next presidential election in November 2024.      Perhaps it makes no difference who is calling the shots over the next two years, as neither Democrats nor the Republicans have any useful policies to improve the lot of most Americans, particularly when it comes to the cost of living, better jobs, more investment in public services and infrastructure. 

Shadow Gocerment Statistcs Daily Update November 9th to 10^th

• Hurricane Disruption is possible to the ShadowStats site in the next day or so, as Tropical Storm Nicole makes landfall in Florida [our server is located in Orlando]
• Pending discussion of Mid-Term Election results will follow later today, as they gel, with coverage of October 2022 CPI (November 10th) and Early November Consumer Sentiment (November 11th).
• In The News: Depletion Of Strategic Petroleum Reserve Gets Credit For Recent Headline GDP Growth (as reviewed November 5th). Well timed in advance of the Mid-Term Elections, the Administration’s massive release of petroleum and heavy depletion of the U.S. Strategic
• Petroleum Reserve not only temporarily softened excessively high inflation into the latest headline reporting in September, but it also narrowed the U.S. Trade Deficit, given largely unadvertised exports of related oil, which, along with artificially depressed inflation, helped to generate a temporary boost to Third-Quarter 2022 GDP.

The Crypto Billionaire Featured on the Cover of Fortune in August Has Flamed Out in One Week The August/September cover of Fortune Magazine raised the titillating question as to whether crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried might be the next Warren Buffett – a man whose investment acumen has survived more than seven decades. Less than three months later, the public has its answer. Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire has turned to ruins in one week.      As it turns out, folks don’t have a lot of confidence in the crypto exchanges that hold their crypto. The equivalent of bank runs seen in the early 1930s, before federal deposit insurance was enacted by Congress in 1933, can wipe out a crypto exchange in a week’s time. According to Reuters, Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, FTX, saw $6 billion of withdrawals in a 72-hour span through yesterday, leaving the exchange teetering amid questions about its solvency.

World:

Thousands March As Greeks Strike Over ‘Suffocating’ Inflation  Greek workers went on a day-long strike on Wednesday, demanding higher wages to cope with surging inflation, as Europe’s soaring energy prices and living costs trigger industrial action and protests across the continent. In Athens, thousands of people marched in the second 24-hour walkout this year over rising inflation, some holding up banners that read, “No to layoffs, no to pay cuts.” Brief clashes broke out outside parliament between protesters hurling petrol bombs and riot police who fired tear gas.

Greece: General Strike on 9 November – Down With the Government of Robbers! A recent wiretapping scandal has highlighted the advanced rottenness of the Greek ruling class and its government. Described as the ‘Greek Watergate’, it is alleged that a long list of journalists and opposition politicians had their phones bugged by the state. Coupled with high inflation, which is suffocating the living standards of the working class and the poor, the rotten New Democracy government is wracked by multiple crises. It is in this context that a one-day general strike begins tomorrow.  Internationally, we see a wave of inflation resulting from the deep crisis of the capitalist system, exacerbated by the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. In Europe, inflation is breaking new records every month. In Italy in October, it reached 11.9 percent, which is the highest rate since 1984; and in Germany, it hit 10.4 percent, the highest since 1945. In Greece, the media celebrated because inflation was ‘slowing’ in the same month (from 12 percent to 9.8 percent), but the prices of many basic products rose well above the base inflation rate, with energy up 20.8 percent, and food, drink and tobacco up 12.8 percent.

Canada: General Strike Threat Defeats “Back-To-Work” Legislation, But Workers’ Contract Unresolved For the first time, Canadian workers have forced the repeal of back-to-work legislation. The inspiring struggle of the 55,000 Ontario education workers has achieved an important partial victory.

Preparing for  The Iron Heel , The 1% Throughout the World 1% Blame Migrants, Minorities, etc. as Scapegoats for Capitalism’s Current Enconomic Crisis: Tories Cry Crocodile Tears as Migrant Crisis Escalates Facing a permacrisis back home, Tory ministers are ratcheting up their racist rhetoric against migrants and refugees, with those fleeing war and repression suffering the consequences. We say: Bring down the borders! Bring down capitalism!     Horrific conditions at a migrant processing facility in Kent have revealed the reality of the Tories’ ‘hostile environment’ policy.     Whilst some Tory figures may cry crocodile tears about the migrant crisis, the truth is that the dire situation facing refugees and asylum-seekers is a scandal entirely of the government’s making.

FYI: A Call To Youth Throughout the World: Build a Mass Movement to Stop The Ukraine War! . . . The war must be stopped before it results in a global catastrophe. The interaction of NATO’s imperialist militarism, recklessly pursuing its global geopolitical agenda whatever the consequences, and the increasing desperation of Russia’s oligarchic capitalist regime threatens to escalate into a nuclear conflagration.     The hope that “reason will prevail” and the war will soon be brought to a negotiated conclusion is a politically paralyzing and dangerous delusion. NATO does not want “peace.” It wants war. Having deliberately provoked the conflict through decades of NATO expansion toward Russia’s borders and the massive arming of its corrupt satellite regime in Kiev, the imperialist powers are determined to exploit the Kremlin’s miscalculated, politically reactionary and disastrous invasion of Ukraine to the hilt.     Believing that a military victory over Russia is possible, NATO is brushing aside all Russian red lines. For most of the post-World War II era—and particularly after the development of hydrogen bombs in the 1950s—the realization that nuclear war threatened the extinction of human civilization led to the political conclusion that nuclear weapons would never be used because there could be no winners in such a conflict. The doctrine of “Mutually Assured Destruction”—with the self-explanatory acronym MAD—was an operative military principle.

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

‘The Right Thing to Do’: Voters in Deep Red South Dakota Approve Medicaid Expansion “There is still ideological opposition among many red state politicians to expanding Medicaid,” noted one expert. “When voters have been able to weigh in directly like in South Dakota, the results are different.”