Daily News Digest December 12, 2022

Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

Profits of War: Corporate Beneficiaries of the Post-9/11 Pentagon Spending SurgeSince 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: 

One of the first practical problems that the ex-bus riders [word inaudible] is in finding some way to get around the city. The first thing that we (MIA) decided to do was to use a taxi, and they had agreed to transport the people for just ten cents, the same as the buses. Then the police commission stopped this by warning the taxis that they must charge a minimum of forty-five cents a person.      Then we (MIA) immediately got on the job and organized a volunteer carpool, and almost overnight over three hundred cars were out on the streets of Montgomery. [applause]     They were out on the streets of Montgomery carrying the people to and from work from the various pick-up and dispatch stations.    It worked amazingly well. Even Commissioner Sellers had to admit in a White Citizens Council meeting that the system worked with “military precision.” [applause] It has continued to grow and it is still growing.      Since that time we have added more than twenty station wagons to the car pool and they’re working every day, all day, transporting the people. It has been an expensive project. Started out about two thousand dollars or more a week, but now it runs more than five thousand dollars a week. We have been able to carry on because of the contributions coming from the local community and nationally, from the great contributions that have come from friends of goodwill all over the nation and all over the world. [applause] — Martin Luther King, The Montgomery Story, Address Delivered at the Forty-seventh Annual NAACP Convention

The protests have come to be known as the ‘A4 Protests’, a reference to the use of blank sheets of A4 paper by protesters, an ironic comment on the fact that any political slogan would immediately be deemed illegal.     This movement has seen record numbers of protests occurring simultaneously in major cities around China.  thousands of people fed up with the draconian and often nonsensical lockdown measures of the state took to the streets against the regime.     In doing so, they were inspired by the courageous fight of the Zhengzhou Foxconn factory workers against wage theft by management working hand-in-glove with the state, alongside an explosion of anger at an apartment fire in Urumqi.     The protest erupted in major cities in over 19 provinces, including key cities like Beijing and the economic centre, Shanghai.    The youth played a particularly important role in the mobilisations, with over 79 universities across the country seeing student protests against the lockdown and the general dictatorial character of the regime.      This has been echoed by numerous student protests overseas, notably a large demonstration outside of the Chinese Embassy in London, UK. — China: Regime Relents on Lockdown in Face of Pressure From Below  

Videos of the Day:

Mark Fiore: Fast Track to the Gilded Age Republicans and Democrats in Congress recently joined together to force rail workers to accept a contract with exactly zero paid sick days and one measly “personal day.” Thanks to the 1926 Railway Labor Act, lawmakers sided with (surprise, surprise!) multibillion dollar rail corporations instead of workers.

Seaspiracy Passionate about ocean life, a filmmaker sets out to document the harm that humans do to marine species — and uncovers alarming global corruption.

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

When I worked as an ironworker, all military production was cost-plus! We were told to pad the cost to increase profits! — Profits were guaranteed by the government!

War Industry ‘Celebrating Christmas Early’ as House Passes $858 Billion NDAA “There is no justification to throw… $858 billion at the Pentagon when we’re told we can’t afford child tax credit expansion, universal paid leave or other basic human necessities,” said the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. “End of story.” 

‘All We Are Saying — Give Peace a Chance!: When Will We Give Peace the Budget it Deserves? The planet is bleeding to death. Not to worry, though. We still have nukes. Advocating that humanity’s collective consciousness must transcend militarism and an us-vs.-them attitude toward the planet means lying on a bed of nails. W‘s collective consciousness must transcend militarism and an us-vs.-them attitude toward the planet means lying on a bed of nails.

How Big Tech and Billionaires Dodge 1st Amendment Laws and Censor the World’s Big News Platforms Despite the promise of boundless access to information, Silicon Valley mirrors legacy media in its consolidated ownership and privileging of elite narratives. This new class of billionaire oligarchs owns or controls the most popular media platforms, including the companies often referred to as the FAANGs—Facebook (Meta), Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (Alphabet). Their CEOs are routinely lionized in popular culture and the press as intrepid entrepreneurs, inventors of today’s must-have tools for work and play, and stewards of the public square. They include but are not limited to Bill Gates (Microsoft, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, Facebook, Instagram), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon, the Washington Post)—all of whom are deeply involved and invested in computer software, social media platforms, and the worldwide web itself (e.g., Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube). 

We Are Living in a Digital Police State. You Can Thank Big Tech. DHS and Silicon Valley have dumped money and new surveillance tech into local police departments across the country.    Since the 9/11 attacks, private tech companies have partnered with the U.S. government to rapidly expand the digital police state through federal grant programs that critics say shield from public scrutiny billions of dollars funneled to local law enforcement. Expansive anti-terrorism efforts at all levels of government failed to thwart recent mass shootings by white supremacists, not to mention the January 6 attack on the Capitol, but advocates say Muslim, Black, Brown and immigrant communities are still targeted by the surveillance dragnet, particularly in big cities with large police forces that seek out federal money for high-tech cameras, military-grade weapons and spying gadgets.

Words Ache, But Indifference Kills While segments of the US body politic remain fixated as so much virtual Netflix on episodic instances of “incitement” to political violence, it is incitement to ignorance that poses the greatest danger to a relatively uninhibited and diverse society … albeit one no longer, if ever, remarkable for its collective thirst for informed thought and acquired education, be it in the classroom or out.    Words are not the enemy … stupidity is. And on that score today the United States stands proudly at the head of the class.  Enter Kanye West, Nick Fuentes and the devoted dupes who relish them as seers of sort; communal gifts from on-high who engender insight, experience and vision. In reality, they add nothing to the challenge of the marketplace of ideas but a call to the rest of us to be worse than we actually are, and can be.

Environment — Ecosocialism or Ecocide: 

Ecosocialism Not Extinction!

Atmospheric CO2  November 2022  417.51

Marine Life Hit by ‘Perfect Storm’ As Red List Reveals Species Close to Extinction Unsustainable human activity putting dugongs, abalone shellfish and pillar coral at risk of disappearing, says latest IUCN update Illegal and unsustainable fishing, fossil fuel exploration, the climate crisis and disease are pushing marine species to the brink of extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list, with populations of dugongs, abalone shellfish and pillar coral at risk of disappearing for ever.

Roaming Charges: The Mask of Order

• The argument for not telling people just how truly fucked the climate crisis is and how few options there are for a livable planet in 50 years has been that it will frighten them into complacency–which is, of course, the prevailing attitude now. So what’s to be lost by being brutally honest?

• The Washington Post examined 1500 different scenariosfor the planet’s climate future. The results weren’t encouraging: “When we look at those scenarios that have the temperature closing out the century below 1.5C, there is a big problem. With their dramatic plunges in greenhouse gas emissions levels by 2025 — just three years away — some of the scenarios, which were finalized in 2021 at the latest, increasingly conflict with reality. After all, the world just saw emissions rise in 2022…”

• According to the latest data from NOAA, the global heat content of the oceans has reached another record high…

Civil Rights Black Liberation:

Tax the Superprofits to Win the Inflation Battle and Defend Human Rights Pandemics, wars, and recessions do not exempt states from meeting their human rights commitments. They must tax multinationals and the richest more to finance targeted policies protecting the most vulnerable against the cost-of-living crisis.

The Lessons of the Montgomery Bus Boycott The anniversary of the beginning of the year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott will be celebrated this December. According to the official version of the Boycott, it was started by Rosa Parks on the evening of December 1, 1955, when she refused to give up her seat to a white man.     That was the day when the Black population of Montgomery, Alabama, democratically decided that they would boycott the city buses until they could sit anywhere they wanted, instead of being relegated to the back when a white boarded. It was not, however, the day that the movement to desegregate the buses started. Perhaps the movement started on the day in 1943 when a black seamstress named Rosa Parks paid her bus fare and then watched the bus drive off as she tried to reenter through the rear door, as the driver had told her to do. Perhaps the movement started on the day in 1949 when a black professor Jo Ann Robinson absentmindedly sat at the front of a nearly empty bus, then ran off in tears when the bus driver screamed at her for doing so. Perhaps the movement started on the day in the early 1950s when a black pastor named Vernon Johns tried to get other blacks to leave a bus in protest after he was forced to give up his seat to a white man, only to have them tell him, “You ought to knowed better.” . . .

Why the Boycott Was Successful

1. It had mass support and it strength developed from the unity of the Black masses to boycott the buses.
2. In order to sustain the boycott, the MIA had organized an alternative transportation system, which gave the masses the ability to get to work for over a year, something that was crucial to the success of the boycott.
3. The democratically organized Montgomery Improvement Association had regular weekly mass meetings of thousands to decide the strategy and tactics of the movement. The people in the struggle had control and the final say — not the leaders from on high. This helped to insured the power of the movement, for the masses saw the MIA as theirorganization and were committed by their votes to implement their tactics of both mass civil disobedience (the boycott) and self-defense by the MIA was key to the success of the struggle.
4. They used the tactic of self-defense, From my conversations, prior to this forum, with E.D. Nixon and Clifton DeBerry, (1964 Presidential candidate of the Socialist Workers Party), who, along with Farrel Dobbs (1956 Presidential candidate of the Socialist Workers Party) helped organize the 1956 Stationwagons for Montgomery Campaign, it became clear to me, that the success of this transportation system was made possible by the Korean War GIs. They were able to use their experience in the army’s “motor pools” specifically and the army generally, to perform the maintenance of the automobiles and become the hard core of the drivers that sustained this transportation system for a year. It was also widely known, in Montgomery, that these men also had the ability and the willingness to defend themselves if the KKK attacked the transportation system. Due to the wide knowledge of this fact, and the world attention that the Boycott had achieved, the racists were unable to disrupt the carpool, that “worked with military precision.”
5. The power of independent mass action, independent of the politicians, was demonstrated by the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This is the power that inspired and garnered support from throughout the nation and the world.

 Labor:

How a Nuclear Site Was Allowed to Poison Its Own Workers If you thought breathing in microscopic drops of COVID-19 was bad for your lungs, try inhaling a little of the vapor emanating from the exhaust pipes of Hanford’s burping waste tanks. For years, workers at Hanford—which turned out unfathomable amounts of plutonium for the US’s atomic weaponry, and is now home to the most expensive environmental clean-up ever—received mixed messages about whether or not they should wear respirators while working in areas that could potentially expose them to noxious, even radioactive fumes.In July 2021, Washington State released a survey of 1,600 Hanford workers, past and present, of which 57 percent admitted they had experienced a dangerous exposure event at some point while on the job, and 32 percent stated they had long-term exposure to noxious vapors.

Economy:

Higher Interest Rates Only Brought More Pain In the name of taming inflation, central banks have deliberately set themselves on a path to cause a recession—or to worsen it if it comes anyway.  Central banks’ unwavering determination to increase interest rates is truly remarkable. In the name of taming inflation, they have deliberately set themselves on a path to cause a recession—or to worsen it if it comes anyway. Moreover, they openly acknowledge the pain their policies will cause, even if they don’t emphasize that it is the poor and marginalized, not their friends on Wall Street, who will bear the brunt of it. And in the United States, this pain will disproportionately befall people of color.

Senate Banking Chair Threatens a Subpoena If Sam Bankman-Fried Doesn’t Show for Next Wednesday’s Hearing; Says SBF “Orchestrated a Coverup”   The past 48 hours has brought major developments in the battle lines being drawn in the crypto wars.

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   

Capitalism &Vaccines

• Capitalism 1953: Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine. It was not for profit, but for the health of the world!
• Capitalism Today: The US Government Funded the Production of the Covid Vaccine. but it was made for BigPharma’s profits, not for the health of the world population. Cuba developed a better vaccine, but the United States, through its sanctioning policies, prevents it from being distributed to the world, and protects Big Pharma’s profits! The result is that new variants keep arising and we have perpetual profits for Big Pharma. Capitalism is now Anti-Human and threatens all life on the planet!

 

Vaccines Yesterday and Today

•  Capitalism 1953: Jonas Salk Developed the polio vaccine. It was not for profit, but for the health of the world!
• Capitalism Today: The US Government Funded the Production of the Covid Vaccine. but it was made for BigPharma’s profits, not for the healh of the world population. Cuba developed a better vaccine, but the United States, through its sanctios policies, prevents it from being distributed to the world, and protects Big Pharma’s Profitits!       The result is that new variants keep arising and we have perpetual profits for Big Pharma. Capitalism is  now Anti-Human  and threatens all life on the planet!

New COVID Subvariants are ‘the Most Immune Evasive Yet.’ Here’s What That Means More than previous versions of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the emerging BQ.1, BQ.1.1 and XBB subvariants — descendants of the dominant omicron strain — are capable of getting around the immunity gained from vaccination or prior infection, studies warn.      Their wily evasiveness makes approved vaccines less effective at preventing infection and compromises the capability of treatments meant to protect immunocompromised individuals, experts said, though noting that the latest booster is still better than no booster at all.

California COVID Hospitalizations Soar 150% In A Month, Echoing Last Year’s Winter Surge California’s coronavirus trends keep moving in the wrong direction as cases and hospitalizations rise to levels that could match last winter’s omicron wave.     The daily number of newly reported cases in the state has increased to 7,805, up 114% from a month earlier and 43% from a week ago, according to health department data published Thursday. New hospital admissions of patients with confirmed COVID are at 4,387, up 150% from a month ago and 16% in a week.

The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture By the acclaimed author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing.     In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health?