Daily News Digest November 21, 2022
COP 27:Capitalists Have Chosen Ecocide!
Capitalist ‘Leaders’ met at COP 27 and rejected environmental science. Their drive for more and more profits supersedes humanity! As George Monbiot wrote Our ‘Leaders’ Had a Final Chance to Halt Climate Breakdown. They Failed Each and Every One of Us . The scientists of the world and environmental journalists have been warning of this for over 50 years. Below are a few recent posts demonstrating the colossal betrayal of humanity due to the Capitalist System’s forever thirst for more profits!
‘We are in the midst of a climate emergency and there is no way out without radically changing the way society is organised. If humanity does not free itself from the capitalist drive for ever greater profits and ever-expanding economic growth, rising global temperatures alone will make the planet uninhabitable for humans and millions of other living species. We urgently need to find a collective road to a new way of living that is based on human solidarity and ecological sustainability!’ (See An Ecosocialist Manifesto: For an Egalitarian, Cooperative Road to Ecosocialism!)
70% of Animal Species Around the World Has Been Wiped Out in Just 50 Years According to a major scientific report, Earth’s animal populations have declined by an average of 69% in little under 50 years as people continue to destroy forests, consume beyond the planet’s limitations, and pollute on an industrial scale. According to the WWF and Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) yearly Living Planet Report, the quantity of birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles has declined by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 2018, from the open ocean to tropical rainforests. Two years ago, it was 68%, and it was 60% four years ago.
World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency We are now at “code red” on planet Earth. Humanity is unequivocally facing a climate emergency. The scale of untold human suffering, already immense, is rapidly growing with the escalating number of climate-related disasters. Therefore, we urge scientists, citizens, and world leaders to read this Special Report and quickly take the necessary actions to avoid the worst effects of climate change. 2022 marks the 30th anniversary of the “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity,” signed by more than 1700 scientists in 1992. Since this original warning, there has been a roughly 40% increase in global greenhouse gas emissions. This is despite numerous written warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a recent scientists’ warning of a climate emergency with nearly 15,000 signatories from 158 countries (Ripple et al. 2020). Current policies are taking the planet to around 3 degrees Celsius warming by 2100, a temperature level that Earth has not experienced over the past 3 million years (Liu and Raftery 2021). The consequences of global heating are becoming increasingly extreme, and outcomes such as global societal collapse are plausible and dangerously underexplored (Kemp et al. 2022). Motivated by the moral urgency of this global crisis, here, we track recent climate-related disasters, assess planetary vital signs, and provide sweeping policy recommendations.
Images of the Day:
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:
“It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.” ― Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us
Videos of the Day:
Michael Jackson – Earth Song (Official Video) – YouTube
United in Science: We are Heading in the Wrong Direction There is nothing natural about the new scale of these disasters. They are the price of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “This year’s United in Science report shows climate impacts heading into uncharted territory of destruction. Yet each year we double-down on this fossil fuel addiction, even as the symptoms get rapidly worse,” Mr Guterres said in a video message.
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 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. 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
Freedom of Speech and the Press, be Damned! By the same logic, will Trump be granted immunity as a ‘head of state? : ‘Morally Deplorable’: Biden Admin Recommends Immunity for MBS in Khashoggi Case “The Biden administration has not only shielded MBS from accountability in U.S. courts, but has effectively issued him a license to kill more detractors and declared that he will never be held accountable.” . . . Rights groups pointed out that while bin Salman, commonly known as MBS, has been the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia for years, his formal status as the country’s prime minister—a position traditionally held by the king—was enshrined less than two months ago in what observers called an apparent scheme to ensure his immunity from legal action.
The Shame of Being the World’s Worst Weapons Dealer Too few Americans even know about their nation’s role as the world’s largest weapons trader, much less the devastating impact of the arms it transfers. Here’s a seldom commented-upon reality of this century and this moment: the United States remains the number-one arms-exporting nation on the planet. Between 2017 and 2021, it grabbed 39% of the total global weapons market and there’s nothing new about that. It has, in fact, been the top arms dealer in every year but one for the past three decades. And it’s a remarkably lucrative business, earning American weapons makers tens of billions of dollars annually.
90 Percent of US Counties Have Experienced a Climate Disaster in Past Decade Ninety percent of all counties in the United States have experienced a weather disaster over the past decade, and these climate-fueled events have caused more than $740 billion in damages, according to a new report from the climate adaptation group Rebuild by Design. The “Atlas of Disaster,” a first-of-its-kind study published on Wednesday, analyzes a decade of federal disaster spending to reveal which parts of the country have been hit hardest by climate change, and which are most vulnerable to future catastrophes. The report finds that the federal disaster relief system is both underfunded and inefficient: The government lacks the authority and resources to help communities fully recover after disasters, and it also spends too much money on rebuilding in risky areas.
Environment: Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
With COP Gridlocked, Critics Blast ’27 Years of Obstructionism, Delay, and Greenwashing’ “As we race towards climate breakdown, once again we are seeing rich countries trying to evade their responsibility to step up and do their fair share of climate action,” one activist said as talks spilled into overtime.
George Monbiot : Our ‘Leaders’ Had a Final Chance to Halt Climate Breakdown. They Failed Each and Every One of Us . . . So how have heads of government chosen to use this miracle? To extend our time on Earth, earning the gratitude of all the improbable humans of the future? No. They have chosen to do nothing. Nothing that has a realistic chance, in this contest of probabilities, of changing our trajectory. They had a choice at the Cop27 meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh of defending the habitable planet or appeasing their sponsors. They went with the sponsors. We know how way leads on to way, how the power amassed through corrupt decisions in previous generations drives the corrupt decisions of our time. We know that the licence granted to fossil fuel companies by 50 years of failure has enabled them to make stupendous profits – $2.8bn a day on average across that entire period – and that they need invest only a fraction of this money in politics to buy every politician and every political decision they need.
US Shamed as the ‘Colossal Fossil’ of Cop27 Climate Summit by Campaigner Climate action group believes US is blocking progress on global heating by rejecting payments to poorer countries. The US has been named the “colossal fossil” of the Cop27 climate talks by campaigners who criticised the country for its intransigence in providing support to developing countries hit hardest by the climate crisis.
Greenwashing Governments and Oil Companies Turned COP27 Into a Climate Disaster In the end, COP27 looked more like a fossil fuel industry trade show than a climate summit. Corporate Capture This year’s United Nations climate summit, which ends on November 17 at the luxury Sharm el-Sheikh resort, is the first to which oil and gas companies were invited to participate in the official program of events. Rachel Rose Jackson of Corporate Accountability commented that “COP27 looks like a fossil fuel industry trade show.”
Is COP27 Already Too Lost and Too Damaged? To date, the world’s wealthy countries have so far refused to pay for “loss and damage,” that is, to admit that they’ve massively polluted the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gasses. The United Nations Climate Change Conference has convened here in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. It’s called COP27, the 27th Conference of Parties to the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the ever-evolving, never-quite-fully-negotiated treaty that, it is hoped, will someday ensure all countries rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to forestall catastrophic climate change. An estimated 30,000 people from around the world have descended on this Red Sea resort on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. The summit is hosted by Egypt, a dictatorship propped up by billions of dollars annually in military aid from the United States. This has been dubbed “The Africa COP,” to highlight the continent’s plight as one of the world’s poorest regions, already suffering dire impacts of the climate crisis.
How the West is Using COP27 to Shift Blame to Poorer Nations COP27 has begun in Sharm el-Sheikh. Although the Ukraine war and the U.S. midterm elections have shifted our immediate focus away from the battle against global warming, it still remains a central concern of our epoch. Reports indicate that not only are we failing to meet our climate change goals, but we are also falling short of the targets by a large margin. Worse, the potent methane greenhouse gas emissions have grown far more rapidly, posing as much of a climate change threat as carbon dioxide. Even though methane lasts for a shorter time in the atmosphere, viewed over a period of 100 years, it is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Manifesto For a Rainforest Defenders International Surely a “global system” must include everyone. But the words “global system” usually refer to the G8, or maybe the G20. They don’t refer to us, The People. One thing for sure is that rainforests and all the species that dwell in them won’t be protected if the human rights of their Indigenous inhabitants—the 5% of the world’s population who care for 85% of its biodiversity—aren’t included in the project of saving the rainforests. In the terrible state it’s now in, planet Earth is screaming out for a movement from small to big, but not in the usual sense of the small begging the big (= powerful) for help because the big powers are hellbent on making matters worse. We mean big in terms of everyone coming together to fix this disaster: Indigenous rainforest communities, sinking islands like Tuvalu, occupied countries like West Papua, and millions upon millions of individuals, young and old, who all share the same concerns and fears. This planet is ours and “ours” includes all species. It’s not the private property of the powers that are ravaging it with a global economic system that has produced “its own grave-diggers”. t
If Greenland’s Ice melts into the sea, it will mean a rise in sea level of over 8 Meters or 18feet! : Greenland is Worse Than Ever, Much Worse A new study finds Greenland’s ice sheet thinning much further into the ice sheet core than previously thought, 100 miles inland. (Source: S. Khan, et al, Extensive Inland Thinning and Speed-Up of North-East Greenland Stream, Nature, November 9, 2022). The implications are extremely concerning and far-reaching especially for sea level rise. It is a significant development that will prompt climate scientists to recalculate global warming’s impact. In that regard, some facts are worth repeating. Here’s one that cannot be told often enough because of the gravity of its implications for the 130 coastal cities of the world each with over one million residents: During the 1990s Greenland and Antarctica combined lost 81 billion tons of ice mass per year on average. A decade later, during the decade of the 2010s, the ice mass loss increased 6-fold to 475 billion tons per year on average. (Source: Greenland, Antarctica Melting Six Times Faster Than in the 1990s, NASA, March 16, 2020)
Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
Attacks on Indian Child Welfare and Affirmative Action are the Reverberations of White Supremacy Attacks on the Indian Child Welfare Act. On Wednesday, November 9th, 2022, the Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in Haaland v. Brackeen.This case is centered on the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, which was adopted to prevent family separation, specifically, the removal of Native American children from tribal lands. In this case, “Baby O” who was left in a hospital after birth under Nevada’s Safe Haven Laws, was adopted by the white foster parents, Heather and Nick Libretti. Investigation of Baby O’s family identified her biological father and other blood relatives, finding that she is eligible for citizenship in the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, a federally recognized Native American tribe. [1] Under the ICWA, preferred placement of Native children rests first with parents, then grandparents and other non-nuclear family blood relatives. The parents were notified that they would not be able to adopt Baby O, and they decided to contact all potential blood relatives with whom Baby O might be placed, to try to convince them to give up their custody rights. The Libretti’s approached Baby O’s grandmother, requesting she renounce tribal citizenship to remove Baby O from ICWA’s coverage. The Libretti’s hired attorneys and worked with biased social workers who did not reach out to many of Baby O’s blood relatives until a court ordered them to do so, and when they did, they tried to convince them from accepting custody of the child.[1]
Labor:
The Working Class Has Been in a Depression Since Kennedy’s Tax ‘Reform Nixon’s Wage price Freezes, the government’s figures claim ‘recession’, but the more accurate term is depression! (Figures don’t lie, But Liars Liars can ‘Figure’!
Since June 2009 Americans have lived in the false reality of a recovering economy. Various fake news and manipulated statistics have been used to create this false impression. However, indicators that really count have not supported the false picture and were ignored. For example, it is normal in a recovering or expanding economy for the labor force participation rate to rise as people enter the workforce to take advantage of the job opportunities. During the decade of the long recovery, from June 2009 through October 2020, the labor force participation rate consistently fell from 65.7 to 62.2 percent. —Paul Craig Roberts, The Diminishing American Economy (Updated)
FRED: Labor Force Participation Rate is 62.2%
Shadow Government Statistics Alternet Unemployment Charts The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment. ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment rose to 24.5% from 24.4% on top of U.6 rising to 6.8% from 6.7%
Shadow Government Statistics Real Average Weekly Earniings Official real earnings today still have not recovered their inflation adjusted levels of the early 1970s, and, at best, have been in a minimal uptrend for the last two decades (albeit spiked recently by negative headline inflation). Deflated by the ShadowStats (1990 – Based) measure, real earnings have been in fairly-regular decline for the last four decades, which is much closer to common experience than the pattern suggested by the CPIW. 
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics November 17th to 21st
- IN THE NEWS: STILL NO ECONOMIC REBOUND OR RECOVERY HERE
- Today’s release of October 2022 New Residential Construction (Building Permits and Housing Starts) showed continuing and deepening economic collapse
- Yesterday’s October 2022 Industrial Production declined by 0.1% (-0.1%) in the month, on top of sharp downside revisions to recent months, with last month’s Capacity Utilization recovery of its prior August 2018 peak level, evaporating, in conjunction with meaningful downside revisions to the last five months of production activity.
- On the inflation front, 29% of the headline jump in October 2022 Nominal Retail Sales was due to spiking gasoline prices.] government’s finances, it is even worse than originally anticipated.
Education, Health, 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 James Webb Telescope: An Eye Onto a Universe, Infinite In Time and Space Thirty years after the launch of the Hubble telescope, its successor, the James Webb telescope is now operational. Big Bang cosmologists expected it to show young galaxies just a little after the universe’s own ‘beginning’. But having peered deep into the cosmos, the James Webb telescope is sending back images that defy the established cosmology, and point to a universe that is infinite in time and space. The images being sent back from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have amazed the world. These are the sharpest and most far-reaching images of the universe yet obtained by humanity. As one might expect, one Jesuit astronomer working at the Vatican’s own observatory described these pictures as, “God’s creation being revealed to us, and in it we can see both his astonishing power and his love of beauty.”[1] But far from exalting God’s creation, the JWST is now beginning to send back data that poses serious difficulties for that modern creation myth: the Big Bang theory. As it looks deeper into space, it is beginning to challenge long-held prejudices about the origin and development of the universe, and shedding a brilliant light on profound and important scientific and philosophical questions. The JWST was put into orbit 1.5 million kilometres from our planet just last December, and after around six months of calibration and just 12 hours of full operation, it has produced the most dazzling images. With its powerful 25 square metre eye, capable of detecting a wide range of infrared light with one hundred times the power of its predecessor – the Hubble telescope – it promises to revolutionise our understanding of the universe and our place within it.