Daily News Digest January 18, 2023
Images:
Is Big Oil the New Big Tobacco?
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!
apitalism as a Failed System: World Capitalism 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:
From Why Did a Man Starve to Death in an Arkansas Jail?: It was a failure of the system because he shouldn’t have even been there. The United Nations secretary general classifies more than 15 days in solitary confinement as torture. Even mentally stable people who get put in solitary experience paranoia, panic attacks, and hallucinations. In the 19th century, on a tour of America, Charles Dickens — not known for an overly rosy view of humanity — was shocked when he witnessed prisoners in solitary. “He is a man buried alive,” Dickens wrote.
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
The Three Evils of Society by Martin Luther King Jr To honor this week where we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the NWESD Equity Team would like to share an address that Dr. King delivered at the National Conference on New Politics in 1967 in which he linked racism, materialism, and war, enduring American challenges to this day.
MLK Day Special: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words
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! Both Parties Support U.S. Capitalism’s Wars! (The Only War the Democrats Opposed was the Civil War!)
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 D. Brandeis Quotes
The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. MLK, Beyound Vietnam
The president is the “chief executive” of the federal government. Strip away the pomp, circumstance, and ceremony, and he’s just a manager. He supervises a boatload of employees. Most decisions he makes really amount to signing off on other people’s recommendations. Two presidents in a row have proven they can’t even impress upon their underlings the importance of not abandoning the nuclear launch codes in a garage or on the floor of a resort. Would you trust someone with such poor management skills to run a convenience store or coffee shop? If not, why on earth would you trust him to run the largest, wealthiest, most powerful, and most dangerous organization in history? — Top Secret: The Real Classified Documents Scandal
Ludicrous Levels of Pentagon Spending Make Us Less Safe—Not More Overspending on the military will only dig humanity deeper into a hole that we must desperately escape. Late last month, President Biden signed a bill that clears the way for $858 billion in Pentagon spending and nuclear weapons work at the Department of Energy in 2023. That’s far more than Washington anted up for military purposes at the height of the Korean or Vietnam wars or even during the peak years of the Cold War. In fact, the $80 billion increase from the 2022 Pentagon budget is in itself more than the military budgets of any country other than China. Meanwhile, a full accounting of all spending justified in the name of national security, including for homeland security, veterans’ care, and more, will certainly exceed $1.4 trillion. And mind you, those figures don’t even include the more than $50 billion in military aid Washington has already dispatched to Ukraine, as well as to frontline NATO allies, in response to the Russian invasion of that country.
Harvard’s Kennedy School: Key Part Of The Military-Industrial Complex . . . The credibility of the Kennedy School has always been questionable on policy grounds because of its one-sided support for U.S. security initiatives, particularly in the Middle East. The school receives significant funding from Israel and Saudi Arabia, and supports close U.S.ties to both countries. The school is home to the Wexner Foundation, which sponsors the attendance of high-ranking Israeli generals and national security experts in a Master’s Degree program in public administration at Harvard. Kennedy School students are taken on trips to both Israel and Saudi Arabia on a regular basis. The Kennedy School curriculum closely follows the outlines of U.S. national security and foreign policies. For example, when the Obama administration announced the policy of the “Pivot” to the Asian Pacific region as part of the policy of containment of China, the Kennedy School immediately sponsored a workshop on the “Pivot.” Typically these workshops are led by supporters of U.S. policy and don’t allow for the participation of critics of U.S. policy. The School is particularly beholden to the interests of the Pentagon and the CIA, which generously support Harvard’s projects.
US Imperial Dominance Disguised as Democratic Deterrence As a soaring Pentagon budget allows the American Empire to do what it likes, the rest of the world forced to suffer as a result. More than two millennia ago, in the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides recounted a disastrous conflict Athens waged against Sparta. A masterwork on strategy and war, the book is still taught at the U.S. Army War College and many other military institutions across the world. A passage from it describing an ultimatum Athens gave a weaker power has stayed with me all these years. And here it is, loosely translated from the Greek: “The strong do what they will and the weak suffer as they must.” Recently, I read the latest National Defense Strategy, or NDS, issued in October 2022 by the Pentagon, and Thucydides’s ancient message, a warning as clear as it was undeniable, came to mind again. It summarized for me the true essence of that NDS: being strong, the United States does what it wants and weaker powers, of course, suffer as they must. Such a description runs contrary to the mythology of this country in which we invariably wage war not for our own imperial ends but to defend ourselves while advancing freedom and democracy. Recall that Athens, too, thought of itself as an enlightened democracy even as it waged its imperial war of dominance on the Peloponnesus. Athens lost that war, calamitously, but at least it did produce Thucydides, a military leader who became a historian and wrote all too bluntly about his country’s hubristic, ultimately fatal pursuit of hegemony.
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
Climate Activists Vow to Take to Streets to Stop Fossil Fuel Extraction ‘Cease and desist’ letter signed by over 650,000 people sent to oil and gas CEOs follows removal of Greta Thunberg from coal protest Hundreds of thousands of young climate activists have said they will continue “protesting in the streets in huge numbers” against fossil fuels, a day after Greta Thunberg was removed by German police from a condemned village atop a massive coal deposit. In a cease-and-desist letter to the CEOs of fossil fuel companies, youth campaigners accuse them of a “direct violation of our human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, your duties of care, as well as the rights of Indigenous people”. “This cease-and-desist notice is to demand that you immediately stop opening any new oil, gas or coal extraction sites, and stop blocking the clean energy transition we all so urgently need,” the letter says.
Despite Net-Zero Vows, Wall Street ‘Climate Arsonists’ Still Pumping Billions Into Fossil Fuels “It is business as usual for most banks and investors who continue to support fossil fuel developers without any restrictions, despite their high-profile commitments to carbon neutrality. The groups found that the U.S.-based Wall Street giants Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo provided nearly $90 billion in total financing for fossil fuel expansion between the dates they joined the NZBA and August 2022. Citigroup, which touts its net-zero commitments on its website, led the pack with $30.5 billion in fossil fuel financing from April 2021 to August 2022.
Civil Rights Black Liberation:
Class Struggle and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The US claims to honor his memory, even as it defiles his dreams.On this, the national holiday named for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ajamu Baraka tweeted: “The U.S. should drop its’ commemoration of Dr. King’s birthday because there is no relationship between (the) Dr. King the Black freedom movement created (and the) violent, warmongering U.S.” “The King birthday is a colonialist expropriation that should be rejected,” Baraka added. That is a discussion and a decision for Black people, not me, but I will say this: It’s hard to deny that the forces Dr. King condemned are trying to colonize his legacy and exploit for their own selfish ends. But try as they may, they must never succeed. His memory is a country of the mind that must always remain free.
Labor:
Economy:
Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report 2022: Fast Wealth Growth in Times of Uncertainty
A Sam Bankman-Fried Company Loaned or Invested More than $1 Billion in Clients of its Law Firm, Sullivan & Cromwell In a January 12 Substack column penned by Sam Bankman-Fried, the indicted co-founder and former CEO of collapsed crypto exchange, FTX, he writes that “When I would visit NYC, I would sometimes work out of S&C’s office.” S&C is shorthand for the 144-year old Big Law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, which has come under withering media attention for attempting to steamroll its way into the position of lead counsel in the FTX bankruptcy proceedings – including investigating its own conduct as outside counsel to Sam Bankman-Fried and his byzantine collection of crypto companies. Wall Street On Parade has been covering the mushrooming conflicts of interest held by Sullivan & Cromwell since two days after FTX (and its herd of more than 100 related companies) filed their Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition on November 11. Today, we will shine an even brighter light on those conflicts.
World:
Peru: Mass Movement Prepares March On Lima This is a crucial week for the movement against the coup in Peru. Despite brutal and continued repression, the workers, peasants and students in struggle against illegitimate president Dina Baluarte have continued fighting. The country’s trade union confederation CGTP has called for a national strike on 19 January and columns of protesters are converging on the capital Lima. Faced with growing anger and opposition, the response of the state and its institutions continues to be one of repression and criminalization of the movement. This week, 14 social and trade union leaders have been arrested. Amongst them is the General Secretary of the CGTP in the region of San Martin, in the north. The counter-terrorism branch of the Peruvian police also detained the president and seven leaders of the Ayacucho Peoples Defence Front, a mass social organization leading the movement in this Andean Department.
Turning Influence Into Money in the EU Parliament The spectacular unmasking of alleged bribery in the EU Parliament has attracted limited attention in Britain, despite police in Brussels discovering suitcases stuffed with hundreds of thousands of euros in cash and a vice president of the Parliament landing in jail. Qatar and Morocco are accused of buying up Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in a scandal that revolves around a vote on a resolution criticising Qatar during the World Cup. The Greek MEP Eva Kaili is now suspended as vice president of the Parliament with many pointing derisively to a speech she made last year, saying “the World Cup in Qatar is proof actually of how sports diplomacy can achieve a historical transformation of a country with reforms that inspired the Arab world”.
Britain: Unions Must Defy Tory Laws – Defend the Right to Strike! With industrial militancy growing and spreading across Britain, the Tories and bosses are pushing for further restrictions on workers’ right to strike. The trade union leaders must organise a militant fightback to smash these laws to pieces. Earlier this week, after months of rumours and speculation, Tory transport secretary Grant Shapps finally outlined a new bill that would enforce minimum service levels in key industries during strikes.
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
World Health Failing Due to Understaffing, Underfunding, and Bad Infrastructure!: Bleeding Out Thanks to systemic and deliberate underfunding, NHS Emergency departments are now a vision of hell. You have to see it to believe it. A few days after Christmas, I hit my head on a scaffolding bolt. There was lots of blood and pain down the right side of my face and into my neck. I thought I could live with it, but the following day I noticed a black floater in my right eye. When, after several hours, it had failed to clear, I phoned 111. They told me to travel immediately to the emergency department at my local hospital. They booked me in for 9pm, my expected arrival time. I naively imagined I would be seen then. But when I arrived, there were 16 ambulances waiting to offload their patients. The waiting room was a vision of hell. All the chairs were occupied. Sick people leaned against the walls. Many of the patients, from babies to the extremely aged, looked dangerously unwell. And yet, for all of us, the wait went on and on. I was seen by a doctor at 3am. During those six hours, I witnessed two things that distressed me more than my own injury. A man with what appeared to be cardiac symptoms collapsed on to the floor, possibly from a heart attack. A toddler was screaming “it hurts, it hurts!” for almost three hours without a break. It was devastating to hear.
‘Deeply Sinister’: Emails Reveal Big Pharma Pushed Twitter to Silence Vaccine Equity Voices “At a time when online mobilizations were one of the few forms of protest available to the public, Twitter was seemingly asked to shield the powerful from criticism,” said one campaigner. “That should worry all those who care about accountability.” Drugmaker BioNTech and the German government pushed Twitter to “hide” posts by activists calling on Big Pharma to temporarily lift patents on Covid-19 vaccines—a move which would have given people the Global South greater access to the lifesaving inoculations, a report published Monday by The Intercept revealed. Twitter lobbyist Nina Morschhaeuser “flagged the corporate accounts of Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca for her colleagues to monitor and shield from activists,” according to The Intercept‘s Lee Fang. An email from Morschhaeuser said the German Federal Office for Information Security also contacted Twitter on behalf of BioNTech, whose spokesperson, Jasmina Alatovic, asked the social media giant to “hide” activist tweets targeting her company’s account for two days.