Daily News Digest December 2, 2022
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:
In 2021, the New York Times released a series of investigative reports detailing horrors committed by military drone pilots. The Times noted that people were often attacked or killed remotely based on misunderstandings or flimsy evidence. In one incident, officials authorized a drone strike on the home of Basim Razzo, an innocent man, after just 95 minutes of surveillance, killing his wife, daughter, brother, and nephew. In those few minutes of monitoring, the Times reported that the military made stunning errors, such as interpreting the opening of a gate or the absence of women as “ISIS activity.” Razzo survived but needed major surgery to correct multiple shattered bones and remove pieces of shrapnel from his body. Despite these horrors, the U.S. military continues to use remote weapons with troubling frequency. And now, after Americans failed to stop the widespread use of this technology overseas, it may be coming home. — Cops Are Asking To Kill People With Robots. What Could Go Wrong?
From: Railroad Workers United Open Letter to Congress and the President . . . While the tentative agreement provides significant wage increases, workers on the railroads have stated clearly and repeatedly that their fight is not just about money. Railroad workers are fighting for the right to live—and have a life—outside of work. The freight rail industry is structured as a non-competitive oligopoly that is dominated by seven rail carriers and operates at the behest of Wall Street, prioritizing the maximization of profit for rail executives and shareholders, even if it comes at the expense of endangering the broader public and irreparably damaging the supply chain. In the past few decades, the rail industry has adopted the Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) model, which has benefited investors at the cost of railroad workers and the public at large. As noted in the Presidential Emergency Board Report #250, because of the PSR model, railroad companies have reduced the workforce by about 30 percent in 6 years, have instituted attendance models which pressure workers to work through exhaustion, reduced safety and checking procedures, all in order to reduce costs and increase profits. In fact, the railroad industry is the most profitable industry in the country. However, the billions of dollars of profit comes at the cost of railroaders being on call virtually 24/7, unable to access routine health care, missing the deaths of their loved ones and the birth of their children, and dying by the hundreds in work accidents. It has also come at the cost of the broader public, as PSR has created a situation where there are not enough working railroaders to service the demand which the rail industry faces, making it a direct cause for the current supply-chain crisis and a key contributor to inflation. The central demand of railroad workers has been increased days of sick leave which has been wholly absent from the tentative agreement. It is for this that workers are willing to go on strike. Railroad workers have been without a contract for over 3 years, dealing with these issues without resolution and without support from the Congress and Presidency. Urgent action has only taken place after the urging of big business not of workers.
Videos of the Day:
Scott Ritter – Lies and Deception About Ukraine/Russia Conflict
Black Agenda Radio November 25, 2022
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley COP27 and the 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 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
The MAGAfication of America Just in case you didn’t notice, authoritarianism was on the ballot in the 2022 midterm elections. An unprecedented majority of candidates from one of the nation’s two major political parties were committed to undemocratic policies and outcomes. You would have to go back to the Democratic Party-dominated segregationist South of the 1950s to find such a sweeping array of authoritarian proclivities in an American election. While voters did stop some of the most high-profile election deniers, conspiracy theorists, and pro-Trump true believers from taking office, all too many won seats at the congressional, state, and local levels.
Lawmakers Set to Propose Record $847B for Defense, $45B Over Biden’s Request Meatpacking Giant Tied to Child Labor, Deforestation and Mass COVID Infection The Department of Labor filed suit against Brazil meatpacking firm JBS for employing children in Minnesota and Nebraska. The United States’s already colossal and record-breaking defense budget is about to get even bigger, with congressional negotiators slated to propose a staggering $847 billion for defense for 2023, new reporting finds — a $45 billion increase over President Joe Biden’s already massive defense budget request. Four people familiar with negotiations told Politico that House and Senate lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have come to a “compromise” on the budget, which could balloon as high as $858 billion when programs outside of the congressional armed services committees are included. $847 billion is equal to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s proposal from earlier this year.
New Bill Targets Hedge Fund Stranglehold on Housing Market The legislation aims to prevent rich investors from taking advantage of renters and limiting homeownership. As millions of Americans struggle to afford rent and mortgage rates, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley on Wednesday unveiled legislation intended to stop major Wall Street investors and hedge fund predators from continuing to exacerbate the nation’s housing crisis.“Everyone should have a safe, affordable place to call home,” the Oregon Democrat said in a statement. ‘In every corner of the country, giant financial corporations are buying up housing and driving up both rents and home prices. They’re pouring fuel on the fire of the affordable housing crisis that so many of our communities are facing, leaving working families behind.“
‘Lesser Evil’ Means More Evil!: Number of Immigrants Under Punitive Surveillance Quadrupled on Biden’s Watch Surveillance technologies like ankle monitors and cellphone apps are not harmless “alternatives” to immigration jails. Over the past two years, despite President Joe Biden’s campaign promises to bring fairness to the immigration system, the current administration has quadrupled the number of people enrolled in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) so-called “alternatives to detention” (ATD) surveillance program, and has doubled the number of people held in immigration jails.
San Francisco Has Voted to Tax Corporate Landlords for Leaving Housing Vacant The groundbreaking affordable housing victory in San Francisco could serve as a blueprint for other cities to follow. With nearly 60,000 unoccupied units, San Francisco has a significant vacancy problem, in addition to an acute affordable housing shortage. This creates something of an irony: The city simultaneously has too few and too many rooms available. The contradiction is explained by the priorities of developers and capital taking preced-ence over the needs of the populace. It can only be resolved when all housing is made more affordable and accessible for working people. To mitigate the city’s catastrophic housing crisis, new rent-controlled housing must be constructed and existing unfilled units returned to the market at affordable rates.
Environment: Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
‘Egregious’: PFAS Firefighting Foam Spills at Notorious Red Hill Naval Facility in Hawaii While officials said there is no evidence that drinking water was contaminated, the incident generated further local frustration with the closing fuel storage complex. Commonly called forever chemicals because they persist in the human body and environment for long periods, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been tied to a variety of health problems. They are used in not only some firefighting foams but also cookware, food packaging, and water-resistant clothing and furniture—though there are growing calls to ban them.
Hawaii Site That Measures Global CO2 Shuts Down After Mauna Loa Volcano Eruption Scientists scramble to re-establish the crucial monitoring that has been situated on the volcano since 1958 The world’s premier measurement site for global carbon dioxide levels has been shut down because of a volcanic eruption in Hawaii, with scientists scrambling to re-establish the crucial monitoring that has been situated on the volcano since 1958. Lava has been shooting more than 150ft into the air from Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano, since Sunday night and a river of molten rock is now not only menacing the main highway on Hawaii’s big island but also the Mauna Loa Observatory, a scientific station situated on the northern flank of the volcano.
Civil Rights Black Liberation:
- WINTER IS COMING for Ukraine and Taiwan with Garland Nixon, Margaret Kimberley and Danny Haiphong
- XCERPT: Brussels Conference Act of 1890
- The Crisis of Western Imperialism and the Imperative of War and Repression
- Worthy and Unworthy Protest
- An African View On Ukraine
- China’s Leadership Shines Bright in Asia’s Moment
- Is The “Conscience of the Congress” Unconscious?
- DC Government’s Racial Equity Plan is Elite Capture by The State
- Dominican Republic: Exploitation and Forced Labor in the Central Romana Corporation Has a History
- Venezuelan Government and Opposition Sign ‘Social Agreement’, US Approves Chevron License
Labor:
Under Capitalism: The Pauperization of. The Working Class: Michael Roberts Blog: Real wages in the Eurozone have fallen by 8% since the end of the pandemic slump in 2020. In Germany, real earnings have plunged by 5.7% in the last year, the largest real wage loss since statistics began.
Meatpacking Giant Tied to Child Labor, Deforestation and Mass COVID Infection The Department of Labor filed suit against Brazil meatpacking firm JBS for employing children in Minnesota and Nebraska. In early November, the U.S. Department of Labor filed suit against the Brazil-headquartered, global industrial meatpacker JBS for hiring child labor. Children as young as 13 were hired through a contractor to clean up bloody meatpacking plants in Minnesota and Nebraska. The suit, filed in the name of U.S. Secretary of Labor Martin Walsh, alleged JBS hired children through Packers Sanitation Services (PSSI) to clean its meatpacking plants during the graveyard shift in Grand Island, Nebraska, and Worthington, Minnesota. The complaint was presented to a federal court on November 9. Through an investigation carried out in August, the Department of Labor identified at least 31 children between 13 and 17 years of age in hazardous occupations.
Economy:
How to Think About Policy in a Polycrisis Welcome to the “multi-crisis” — a world in which “economic and non-economic shocks are intertwined,” says historian Adam Tose. We have the inflationary shock caused by the disruptions caused by the pandemic, the policy responses to this pandemic and the energy shock caused by the war. That war, in turn, is linked to the breakdown in relations between the great powers. Slowing growth, rising inequality, and an over-reliance on credit have undermined political stability in many high-income democracies. The credit boom led to a great financial crisis, the outcome of which included a decade of ultra-low interest rates, and thus more financial fragility around the world. Adding to these pressures is the threat of climate change.
The Fed’s Response to Rising Inflation Protects the Wealthy at Workers’ Expense The specter of inflation is haunting the world’s economies. Surging prices since 2020, especially in food and energy, have eroded global living standards, though inflation varies considerably across countries. However, inflation is hitting the working class and lower-income people harder than wealthier households, triggering protests around the world, especially in countries with strong trade unions and left-wing political parties. In Europe, governments fearful of social unrest have spent hundreds of billions of euros in an attempt to cushion the impact of inflation. The conservative government in Greece has even sought to restrain the increase in prices in more than 50 basic goods with a “household basket” plan. Meanwhile, in the United States — the richest country in the world — government policies to assist those suffering disproportionately from the surge in prices do not even exist.
Shadow Government Statistics Daily Update November 30th to December 1st
- IN THE NEWS: In context of downwardly revised GDP inflation and despite a downwardly revised theoretically equivalent Gross Domestic Income (GDI) account, the second estimate of Third-Quarter 2022 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) revised higher to an annualized real quarterly gain of 2.93% [previously 2.57%], against an unrevised quarterly decline of 0.58% (-0.58%) in Second-Quarter 2022.
- Previously discussed, the headline third-quarter bounce in GDP activity fully was accounted for by an orchestrated, temporary flipping of what otherwise would have been a deficit in Third-Quarter Net Exports, to a surplus, directly tied to the Administration’s coincident depletion of, and exports of, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, pre-Election. Full detail and related graphics follow in next week’s Commentary.
Credit Default Swaps Blow Out on Credit Suisse as its Stock Price Hits an All-Time Low of $2.82 That $4 billion capital raise that was supposed to shore up confidence in global banking behemoth Credit Suisse turns out to have been too little, too late. Yesterday, 5-year Credit Default Swaps (CDS) on Credit Suisse blew out to 446 basis points. That’s up from 55 basis points in January and more than five times where CDS on its peer Swiss bank, UBS, are trading. The price of a Credit Default Swap reflects the cost of insuring oneself against a debt default by the bank.
World:
Italy: IMT Comrades Attacked After Women’s Protest In Rome On Saturday 26 November, a national demonstration was called in Rome as part of International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. There were possibly around 10,000 on the demonstration, at most: far fewer than the 100,000 or so of previous years. The demonstration was called by the women’s activist group “Non-una di meno” –“Not one [woman] less” – the Italian chapter of the Ni Una Menos movement. Comrades of Sinistra Classe Rivoluzione – the IMT in Italy – participated with revolutionary slogans and banners. The next day, at a meeting held by the organizers, their stall was attacked by self-described activists for women’s rights.
Four British Ministries Refuse To Say if They’ve Discussed Assange With US UK government statements raise suspicions about the degree of coordination with the US administration over the continued incarceration of the WikiLeaks founder. Kenny MacAskill, a former Scottish justice secretary and the MP who asked questions in parliament, tells Declassified: “This obfuscation and avoidance is, I believe, part of a pattern of a cover up in alliance with US authorities.” Four of Britain’s most powerful government ministries are refusing to say if their officials have met with US authorities to discuss the case of Julian Assange.
Mexico’s Left Takes to the Street, Celebrates Achievements “Sometimes there are revolutions but people keep on thinking the same way. But now we are seeing a peacetime transformation process and there is a change of mentality … I said yesterday that we are winning the battle against racism, classism, discrimination. This is not about material things, not about welfare programs. There’s been a change of mentality”. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was commenting on events of November 27, which was the fourth anniversary of his taking office. AMLO and his Moreno Party administration had staged a march and then a rally in the Zócalo plaza in Mexico City. They sought to demonstrate the Mexican people’s support for what AMLO calls Mexico’s Fourth Transformation. “Sometimes there are revolutions but people keep on thinking the same way. But now we are seeing a peacetime transformation process and there is a change of mentality … I said yesterday that we are winning the battle against racism, classism, discrimination. This is not about material things, not about welfare programs. There’s been a change of mentality”. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was commenting on events of November 27, which was the fourth anniversary of his taking office. AMLO and his Moreno Party administration had staged a march and then a rally in the Zócalo plaza in Mexico City. They sought todemonstrate the Mexican people’s support for what AMLO calls Mexico’s Fourth Transformation.
In the Netherlands, a Discriminatory Algorithm has Impoverished Thousands of Families Aided by an algorithm, the Dutch tax office has plunged into distress tens of thousands of families – in particular, foreign-born mothers, in wrongfully demanding from them staggering sums. The state is proving incapable of setting things right. Rotterdam. Each day, Sabrina Sliep picks up her telephone to listen to the same despairing stories. There are families evicted from their residence, today camping with relatives or friends, mothers who work two jobs to keep their heads above water, parents who struggle with depression. Personal trajectories broken one day by a letter from the tax office and which remain fractured. “Some need counselling for what action to take, others just cry and want to be listened to”, sighs the nurse, emotional, in a café on Rotterdam’s periphery
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