Daily News Digest January 20, 2023

Daily News Digest Archives

Images:

France: National Strike Against Macron’s Pension Sabotage – Over a Million on the Streets!

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:

The Medical Industrial Complex is an enormous system with tentacles that reach beyond simply doctors, nurses, clinics, and hospitals. It is a system about profit, first and foremost, rather than “health,” ,well-being and care. Its roots run deep and its history and present are connected to everything including eugenics, capitalism, colonization, slavery, immigration, war, prisons, and reproductive oppression. It is not just a major piece of the history of ableism, but all systems of oppression. — Medical Industrial Complex Visual

Videos/Podcasts of the Day:

DAVOS LIVE: Greta Thunberg Takes Part in a WEF Event With IEA’s Fatih Birol

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, Beyond Vietnam 

As Income Inequality Skyrockets, the Rich Are Paying Less Into Social Security Wages captured by Social Security taxes hit a record low in 2021 due to increasing inequality, a new analysis finds. New research shows that the proportion of wages that were subject to Social Security taxes hit a record low in 2021, as income inequality has skyrocketed and those receiving the highest incomes are paying proportionally even less into Social Security funds.      According to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the share of earnings subject to the tax hit its lowest level in nearly 50 years, since before reforms lengthened the solvency of the program. Only 81.4 percent of wages were subject to Social Security taxes in 2021 – far below the threshold of 90 percent of wages subject to the tax as set by the reforms in 1983.

 Dissent Episode One: Tipping the Balance In the first episode of Dissent, host Jordan Smith and legal analyst Jordan Rubin discuss the Supreme Court docket and what’s at stake. Last year, the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and demolish nearly half a century of abortion rights put to rest any remaining questions as to how far the 6-3 supermajority was willing to go to realize its extreme right-wing vision. With the court’s 2022-2023 term in full force, what rights are at stake this year? On the first episode of Dissent, an Intercepted miniseries, host and senior Intercept reporter Jordan Smith is joined by Jordan Rubin, a legal analyst with MSNBC and former prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Smith and Rubin outline the Supreme Court’s term and discuss the major implications of the decisions ahead. Jordan Smith: I’m Jordan Smith, a senior reporter for The Intercept. Welcome to Dissent, an Intercepted miniseries about the Supreme Court.     Last summer’s Dobbs decision — overturning Roe v. Wade and nearly 50 years of abortion rights — dropped like a bomb. It was the first time the U.S. Supreme Court had acted to take rights away from individuals.

Docs Reveal Hundreds of US Agencies Spying on Americans’ Money Transfers “Ordinary people’s private financial records are being siphoned indiscriminately into a massive database, with access given to virtually any cop who wants it,” said the ACLU’s Nathan Freed Wessler. “These records paint a damning portrait of government overreach.” “These records paint a damning portrait of government overreach.”    That’s how Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, and Fikayo Walter-Johnson, a former paralegal with the project, introduced over 200 documents obtained via public records request and released Wednesday on the civil liberties group’s website.     The national ACLU and its Arizona arm sought the records after U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) revealed last year that “Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a law enforcement component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was operating an indiscriminate and bulk surveillance program that swept up millions of financial records about Americans.”

Five Corporate Strategies to Manipulate Science Ever since the rise of capitalism and corporations, the manipulation of science has been at the centre of the endeavours of big companies and corporations – like those related to tobacco, asbestos, chemical, pharma, sugar, fast food, and oil and gas. This is a threat to human existence as well as planet earth.     For decades, large profit-making corporations have been very busy in obscuring the harm they and their products cause to human health and to our planet.     One of the key instruments in their fight against nature – and us – has been a staunch and prolonged rejection of any sort of state regulation – often built around the ideology of neoliberalism and the ever illusive (nobody has actually ever seen it!) free market that “takes care” of everything.     Yet, what corporations do, actually reaches far beyond by simply taking part in the beloved free market – it reaches deep into the influencing of science. There are about four core instruments that corporations and their henchmen like corporate lawyers, corporate PR agencies, and lobbying organisations use to – often pretty successfully – manipulate science – and quite often rather indirectly.

Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:

Greta Thunberg Warns Davos Elite Will Throw Humanity ‘Under the Bus’ for Profits “As long as they can get away with it, they will continue to invest in fossil fuels,” the Swedish climate activist warned. “We need to build and create a critical mass of people who demand change, who demand justice.”

Police Evict Last Anti-Coal Protesters From German Village Slated for Destruction “The most affected people are clear, the science is clear, we need to keep the carbon in the ground,” said Greta Thunberg at the protest.      The way was cleared for the complete demolition of the German village of Lützerath and the expansion of a coal mine on Monday after the last two anti-coal campaigners taking part in a dayslong standoff with authorities left the protest site.     The two activists—identified in media reports by their nicknames, “Pinky” and “Brain”—spent several days in a tunnel they’d dug themselves as thousands of people rallied in the rain over the weekend and hundreds occupied the village, which has been depopulated over the last decade following a constitutional court ruling in favor of expanding a nearby coal mine owned by energy firm RWE.

Rainforest Carbon Offsets Used by Major Corporations ‘Largely Worthless’: Analysis “Companies are making false claims and then they’re convincing customers that they can fly guilt-free or buy carbon-neutral products when they aren’t in any way carbon-neutral,” one expert lamented. Over 90% of the rainforest carbon offsets sold by the nonprofit organization that sets the world’s leading sustainability standard “are largely worthless and could make global heating worse,” an investigation published Wednesday by three media outlets confirmed. Over 90% of the rainforest carbon offsets sold by the nonprofit organization that sets the world’s leading sustainability standard “are largely worthless and could make global heating worse,” an investigation published Wednesday by three media outlets confirmed.

Civil Rights Black Liberation:

 Police Killed Nearly 100 People a Month in 2022, Data Shows A preliminary report finds police killed over 1,100 people last year, the most killings in any year in the past decade. Stunning new data shows that police across the U.S. killed 1,176 people in 2022, the highest number of police killings in a year since researchers began recording such data a decade ago.

According to Mapping Police Violence, there were only 12 days in 2022 when police didn’t kill someone. The majority of the killings took place in scenarios where no crime was alleged, or where police were called for things like nonviolent offenses or mental health checks. Only 31 percent of the people killed were in a situation where a violent crime had allegedly taken place, while 32 percent were killed while fleeing — situations in which police potentially put the public in danger while pursuing their victim. 

Students Need Emotional and Community Support, Not Cops in Schools Some schools that removed police on campus following the 2020 uprisings are now asking for them to be reinstated.  After footage of George Floyd’s May 2020 death at the hands of Minneapolis police went viral, people throughout the U.S. began to think about alternative ways to promote community safety.     Public schools that employ sworn law enforcement personnel, commonly called school resource officers (SROs), came in for particular scrutiny — and for good reason.

Black Agenda Report

 Labor:

Ditched by Biden, Railway Workers Continue Battle for Sick Leave and Safer Conditions Rank-and-file railroad unionists seem to agree that the best hope for a better contract next time is greater cross-craft unity, and a single bargaining coalition of all the rail unions. While the high-stakes labor dispute on U.S. freight railroads has receded from headlines since President Joe Biden and Congress imposed a new contract last month, rail workers are continuing their fight for dignity and better conditions — albeit without the threat of a national strike on the table.     “The American people should know that while this round of collective bargaining is over, the underlying issues facing the workforce and rail customers remain,” the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department said in a statement.     The major underlying issue remains precision scheduled railroading (PSR), the business model adopted in recent years by Class I rail carriers like Union Pacific, BNSF, Norfolk Southern and CSX. Designed to maximize shareholder profits by cutting costs to the bone, PSR has been blamed for a dramatic reduction in the freight rail workforce, increased supply-chain congestion and deteriorating safety — all while investors rake in recordprofits.

Economy:

Shadow Government Satistics Daily Updte January 18th to 20th

  • Due to the release of extensive new material today and tomorrow, which have and largely will confirm the onset of a new and significant Recession, regular rewriting revisions to today’s Daily Update have been pushed back to tomorrow, January 19th, to accommodate an extended full coverage and review, with the exception of the next three paragraphs:
  • IN THE NEWS: Fourth-Quarter 2022 full quarterly contractions were seen in today’s (January 18th) Industrial Production and Retail Sales and will be seen in tomorrow’s (January 19th) New Residential Construction. A new recession quickly is coming into play, with details tomorrow.
  • Today’s (January 18th) Producer Price Index PPI Finished Goods inflation (the only meaningful PPI aggregate) turned negative month-to-month in December 2022, by 1.6% (-1.6%), with unadjusted year-to-year inflation slowing to 8.0%, from 9.7% in December, again, due to the Administration’s orchestrated decline in gasoline prices, which has begun to reverse. That said, Energy Inflation in the December 2022 PPI slowed year-to-year to an unadjusted 9.1%, from 16.5% in November and 21.3% in October, declining month-to-month by an adjusted 7.9% (-7.9%), versus 3.3% (-3.3%) in November and 2.5% in October. Full update follows tomorrow.

In 16 Years, the Fed Has Approved 4,506 Bank Mergers and Denied One  On Tuesday, Jerome Powell’s Federal Reserve once again thumbed its nose at President Biden’s antitrust directive regarding the creation of more mega banks through merger. This time around, the Fed allowed the Bank of Montreal, with assets of $834 billion, and its subsidiary, BMO Financial, to gobble up Bank of the West, based in San Francisco. Following the merger, Bank of the West is to be merged into Bank of Montreal’s subsidiary bank, BMO Harris Bank.orld:

Tens of Thousands March in Madrid to ‘Stop Privatization’ of Healthcare System “I am Ayuso’s plan for the emergency ward,” said one demonstrator dressed as the Grim Reaper. Tens of thousands marched in Madrid, Spain on Sunday to stop the right-wing regional government’s ongoing attack on the public healthcare system.     “Cutting public health is criminal!” demonstrators chanted as they held placards against the push for privatization and cuts.     The way was cleared for the complete demolition of the German village of Lützerath and the expansion of a coal mine on Monday after the last two anti-coal campaigners taking part in a dayslong standoff with authorities left the protest site.     As we have previously reported, Macron is under intense pressure from the French ruling class to ‘reform’ the pensions system, which has faced successive attacks for decades. Currently, the legal retirement age is 62, with Macron hoping to raise it by four months a year up to 64 by 2030. This proposal is deeply unpopular with the general public, with a recent poll finding 80 percent opposed it. These attacks are stoking an anger inflamed by falling living standards across the board.

 France: National Strike Against Macron’s Pension Sabotage – Over a Million on the Streets! More than a million people were on the streets of France today at over 200 rallies, as part of a national strike against President Emmanuel Macron’s latest attack on pensions. Workers from the railways, the Paris transport system, oil refineries, and the media; along with teachers, civil servants, truck drivers and bank staff all walked out in opposition to Macron’s plans to increase the age of retirement. The potential for a showdown exists, but will the labour leaders rise to the occasion?

Mass Protests Across France Condemn Macron Attack on Pension System“If there is no positive response from the government, today is a first step, and there will be a second step,” said one union leader. The streets of France filled with outraged workers on Thursday as rail employees, teachers, and others walked off the job to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s deeply unpopular plan to overhaul the nation’s pension system by raising the official retirement age from 62 to 64.  The union-led demonstrations—which ground significant portions of the country, including many schools and transportation systems, to a halt—come as Macron is attempting to steamroll far-reaching opposition to his pension overhaul, declaring that “we must work longer.”

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 . 

Medical Industrial Complex Visual The Medical Industrial Complex is an enormous system with tentacles that reach beyond simply doctors, nurses, clinics, and hospitals. It is a system about profit, first and foremost, rather than “health,” wellbeing and care. Its roots run deep and its history and present are connected to everything including eugenics, capitalism, colonization, slavery, immigration, war, prisons, and reproductive oppression. It is not just a major piece of the history of ableism, but all systems of oppression.