Daily News Digest December 20, 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:
Sole Purpose was linked to the notion of mutually assured destruction, or MAD. Sole purpose/MAD was the cornerstone philosophy behind successive American presidential administrations. In 2002, however, the administration of President George W. Bush did away with the Sole Purpose doctrine, and instead adopted a nuclear posture which held that the U.S. could use nuclear weapons preemptively, even in certain non-nuclear scenarios. Barack Obama, upon winning the presidency, promised to do away with the Bush-era policy of preemption but, when his eight-year tenure as the American commander in chief was complete, the policy of nuclear preemption remained in place. Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, not only retained the policy of nuclear preemption, but expanded it to create even more possibilities for the use of U.S. nuclear weapons. —Scott Ritter: A Lexicon for Disaster
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Antarctica’sTipping Point – The Science of Ice Collapse
Judge Orders Philly DA to Disclose All Evidence in Mumia Abu-Jamal Case. Could It Lead to New Trial?
Judge Orders Philly DA to Disclose All Evidence in Mumia Abu-Jamal Case. Could It Lead to New Trial?
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
Scott Ritter: A Lexicon for Disaster Russia seeks arms control Scott Ritter: A Lexicon for Disaster Russia seeks arms control agreements to prevent dangerous escalation. But the U.S. seeks only unilateral advantage. This risks all out conflict unless this changes. Dec. 8 marked the 35th anniversary of the signing of the intermediate nuclear forces (INF) treaty. This landmark arms control event was the byproduct of years of hard-nose negotiations capped off by the political courage of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev who together signed the treaty and oversaw its ratification by their respective legislatures. The first inspectors went to work on July 1, 1988. I was fortunate to count myself among them. In August 2019, former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the INF treaty; Russia followed shortly thereafter, and this foundational arms control agreement was no more.
Facing a Houthi Victory in Yemen, the US Shifts Its Approach After years of backing a disastrous, Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, the United States is shifting its approach to the war, supporting a UN-brokered truce that has resulted in the most significant reduction of violence since the war began. Bowing to the reality that the opposition Houthi movement now controls 80 percent of the population of Yemen and has acquired the means to launch missiles deep into Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, U.S. officials have been focusing on the truce as a means of achieving a ceasefire and ending the war.
Environment — Ecosocialism or Ecocide:
Fighting Poverty Means Targeting the Very Wealthy The poor don’t gain when societies ignore the rich. The rich just amass more of the clout and power they need to keep getting richer off the poor—and everyone else. Some conflicts we can see—and understand—rather easily. Their raw rhetoric will typically help us identify the opposing players and what they’re fighting over. But sometimes the rhetoric never gets raw. The dominant players smother real differences with appeals to vague values. They paper over real conflicts and choices and leave the general public unaware and uninvolved.
The Scorched-Earth Legal Strategy Corporations Are Using to Silence Their Critics Weeks before he was murdered, Victor Hugo Orcasita presented his wife with a letter describing his last wishes. Orcasita, a union leader, had been pushing for better conditions at his workplace, a mine in northern Colombia owned by a subsidiary of the Alabama-based coal company Drummond. Then the death threats started coming in. He believed that the armed strangers who had started appearing around the mine’s cafeteria would soon make those threats a reality. “He foresaw his death,” said his widow, Elisa Almarales Viloria.
Degrowth and the End of Capitalism Book review: A powerful polemic against capitalism’s planetary destruction, and an engaging look at the degrowth movement The Future is Degrowth by Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter and Aaron Vansintjan is a powerful polemic against capitalism’s planetary destruction, and an engaging look at the degrowth movement. Capitalism is destroying the planet. That’s the conclusion many climate activists are drawing. But understanding why capitalism is destroying the planet is more complex. What compels capitalists to constantly search out profit to the detriment of the planet’s capacity to support life?
The US Touts Support for Biodiversity – But at Cop15, It Remains on the Sidelines Only two countries in the world have not joined the UN Convention on Biological Diversity: the Vatican and the US. Few have missed the Holy See, but the US not joining the CBD 30 years ago has been described as the “major holdout” among countries looking to support the convention’s goals. In Montreal, where negotiations for this decade’s UN biodiversity targets are entering their frantic final stages, the absence of the US political machine is noticeable, changing the power dynamics in talks between the remaining 196 countries.
The 4 Extinction Accelerating Climate Change & Global Warming Tipping Points This page explains the four global warming extinction-accelerating tipping points. It also explains why most people who hear our governments talking about global fossil fuel reduction targets for 2030-2060 have no idea if we fail to make these critical reductions over the next 3 to 8 years, we are royally screwed! If we miss the correct 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets by a lot, we not only suffer the already unavoidable extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century, we also will bring about a worsening runaway global warming and the near-total human extinction by about 2070-2080. Unfortunately, many climate activists and environmental organizations still do not understand the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, or where runaway global heating becomes fully beyond our control, or where the climate survival threshold and its final deadline exist. Consequently, they develop climate change education and remedial action programs that do not fit the true urgency or the real deadlines of our global heating extinction emergency. Here is a quick overview of the atmospheric carbon danger levels:
- The carbon 386 tipping point, which we passed in 2015. At this point, we entered into the beginning and first phase of runaway global heating. (This was discovered by James Hansen, the NASA scientist who was one of the first to warn the world of the extinction threat.)
- The 2025 carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point. (This is the second phase of runaway global heating, contributing to an unavoidableextinction process for half of humanity by mid-century.)
- The 2042-2067 or earlier carbon 500 ppm tipping point begins the runaway global ice melt. (This is the third phase of runaway global heating, which accelerates the unavoidableextinction process for half of humanity by mid-century and can lead to the extinction of an even greater portion of humanity.)
- The 2063-2072 or earlier, the carbon 600 ppm near-total human extinction tipping point due to massive methane releases from the permafrost and the oceans. (This tipping point creates the fourth phase of runaway global heating.)
- The post-2072, the carbon 750 ppm final and fifth phase of runawayglobal heating. (This crossed threshold leads to a total human and biological life extinction.
Civil Rights Black Liberation:
The New Jim Crow: Incarcerated People Forced to do Dangerous Work for “Slave” Wages at Height of Pandemic New documents show the extent of the prison labor in New York, including jobs like asbestos removal. AT THE HEIGHT of the Covid-19 pandemic, news outlets reported that incarcerated people in New York were being forced to make hand sanitizer and coffins. Though elected officials and advocates for criminal justice reform were quick to criticize what they called the use of “slave labor” in the state’s pandemic response, the extent of this work by the incarcerated was never known. New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision data obtained by The Intercept reveals that people incarcerated in state prisons were also forced to perform a range of other jobs for penny wages during the height of the pandemic, including asbestos abatement and removal of lead paint
Labor:
Class Marriage or Class War? The Ontario Education Workers’ Strike The Ontario education workers’ strike showed the tremendous power of the working class and the failure to use that power to advance workers’ demands. Understanding what happened is essential to unite the labor movement and win the class war.
Marxism, Money, and Inflation Workers everywhere are struggling to maintain living standards in the face of soaring prices. The ruling class, meanwhile, is looking to curb inflation by provoking a slump. But what are the real causes behind inflation? And how do we fight it? After decades of low inflation and rock-bottom interest rates, economies throughout the world are now facing a spectre unseen since the 1970s: rising inflation levels combined with the beginnings of another recession. It is clear that we have entered a new chapter in the crisis of world capitalism, which the strategists of capital themselves are at a loss to explain.
Economy:
The US Rate of Profit in 2021 Every year, I analyse the US rate of profit on capital. This is because the US data is the best and most comprehensive to use and because the US is the most important capitalist economy, often setting the scene for trends in global capitalism. We now have the data for 2021 (that’s as far as the official national data go) I used to make my own annual calculations for the US rate of profit for the whole economy and for the corporate sector alone. But we can now use the excellent database produced by Deepankur Basu and Evan Wasner for the corporate sector only, which is similar to my method of measuring the rate of profit. So I have replicated their results and highlighted where the rate of profit fell and rose. The Basu-Wasner measure excludes variable capital from the denominator. You can include it using their database, but it makes little difference to trends and turning points in the rate of profit since 1945. The graph below shows the US rate of profit in the corporate sector up to 2021
The Economic Realities We Face at the End of 2022 Economies around the world were shocked and damaged over the course of 2022. Global capitalism had been brewing conflicts among the major powers (the United States, China, and the EU) for some time as their relative strengths and vulnerabilities shifted. U.S. capitalism and its empire are widely perceived as waning. Europe’s role as a U.S. ally and indeed its economic future became correspondingly riskier as a result. China’s economic growth encountered problems but continued to be remarkably positive and often crucially supportive of world economic conditions in ways that were once more closely associated with the role of the United States. China’s deepening alliance with Russia as well as its burgeoning global economic reach frightened many in the United States. Years of increasingly aggressive competition, tariff and trade wars, and bans and subsidies, mostly initiated by the United States, culminated this past year in global economic warfare
Congressman Brad Sherman Versus the Crypto Gang in Congress There’s a dangerous and growing threat to financial stability that is being fueled by crypto money pouring into the coffers of Republicans in Congress – particularly those members who sit on the House Financial Services Committee where crypto devotee Patrick McHenry (R-NC) will take over as Chair in January.
World:
“Why has There Not Been a Revolution?” – The Need for Revolutionary Leadership So-called left activists, even some self-described Marxists, often exclaim with despair and frustration: “look at how terrible things are, why hasn’t there been a revolution yet?” As Alan Woods explains in this article, those who ask such questions have no understanding of the consciousness of the masses, nor of the dialectical method, which Marxists use to penetrate below the superficial surface appearance of society, to the growing tension underneath. This article, which originally appeared in issue 37 of In Defence of Marxism magazine in March 2022 (buy and subscribe here), provides an excellent analysis of the world situation, and the real dynamics of revolution. The subsequent explosive movements in Sri Lanka and Iran in the summer of that year provided material proof of Alan’s arguments.
This Has Been a Horrific Year for the Globally Displaced This year’s record-breaking global displacement crisis calls for immigration policies that reflect our humanity, not cruelty This year had the unwelcome distinction of being the first to see over 100 million people displaced worldwide. Such a staggering milestone reminds us that greater efforts are needed to address the underlying causes forcing so many innocent people to flee their homes. Even more alarming, this milestone was reached by the middle of the year. Over 50 million people were internally displaced within their own countries, over 30 million were refugees forced to flee their countries, and some 4.3 million were stateless.
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 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
Abstract:
Childhood lead poisoning in the U.S. continues to be a major unresolved child public health issue. One barrier to solving the problem of lead poisoning concerns current child blood lead level (BLL) monitoring practices. In most states, one or two BLL tests administered in early childhood are used to rule out lead exposure. Current knowledge, however, regarding the multiple, complex biological mechanisms that underlie lead absorption and distribution during development suggests that child BLLs should be assumed to be an informative but necessarily fluctuating metric of current child lead exposure. We review some key mechanisms and pathways that influence lead absorption, lead distribution, and the stability of lead in red blood cells. We also consider how each of these factors and their development are likely to drive fluctuations in child BLLs over time. The goal of this special report is to provide a starting point for change in current child BLL testing practices. Solving the problem of child lead exposure will require new approaches to child BLL testing that take into account likely fluctuations in child BLLs.
Summary:
Current practices for BLL testing in children that rely on one or two BLL tests administered to only the youngest children (i.e., 0–5 years) are not aligned with knowledge regarding the complexity of lead absorption, transport, and disposition in the body throughout childhood and adolescence. In the respiratory system, lead deposition and absorption rates are complex and depend on many changing factors, including lead particulate size, length, frequency of exposure, respiratory rate, where in the lungs lead particulates are deposited, and importantly, individual differences in the development of the lungs and alveoli. Ingested lead is influenced by complex interactions of chemical, biological, biophysicochemical, and behavioral factors related to dietary intake, dietary deficiencies, and maturity of the GI tract. These interactions of factors can be additive, antagonistic, or synergistic. Once in the bloodstream, lead absorption by RBCs is influenced by common (ALAD) genetic variants and by ongoing fluctuations in calcium, iron, and zinc levels. Additional age-dependent factors facilitate and oppose the distribution of lead into tissues and rerelease of lead into the circulatory system. Current approaches for BLL testing in children inadvertently do not take into account the likely fluctuations in child BLLs described previously in this article. As Sobin et al. (2022) discussed, a revision of current practices is needed to ensure the feasibility for monitoring highest-risk children. Suggested revisions include: • Acceptance of capillary samples for final determination of lead poisoning, with electronic documentation of “clean” collection methods submitted by workers. • New guidance specifying analysis of capillary samples by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry or graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry with a documented level of detection ≤0.2 µg/dL. • Adaptation of universal testing and monitoring guidance that is census tract-specific for children from birth to 10 years. These changes to current practices can immediately increase our national capacity for inclusive and equitable detection and monitoring of BLLs, particularly for dangerous lowerrange BLLs in children in the U.S. Corresponding Author: Michelle Del Rio, Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Indiana University–Bloomington, 2719 East 10th Street, Innovation Center, Room 254, Bloomington, IN 47405. Email: midelrio@iu.edu.