Daily News Digest January 25, 2023
Images:
Bendib: Spy Vs. Spy
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:
It is perfectly clear that the existing state is neither able nor willing to do anything to remedy the housing difficulty. The state is nothing but the organized collective power of the possessing classes, the landowners and the capitalists as against the exploited classes, the peasants and the workers. What the individual capitalists (and it is here only a question of these because in this matter the landowner who is also concerned acts primarily as a capitalist) do not want, their state also does not want. If therefore the individual capitalists deplore the housing shortage, but can hardly be persuaded even superficially to palliate its most terrifying consequences, then the collective capitalist, the state, will not do much more. At the most it will see to it that the measure of superficial palliation which has become standard is carried out everywhere uniformly. And we have already seen that this is the case.― Friedrich Engels, The Housing Question
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Contradictions at the Heart of Capitalist Production: Henryk Grossman
Scott Ritter Destroys the West’s Ukraine War Lies
Greenland Sees Hottest Temps In 1,000 Years
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Biden’s Dangerous Foreign Policy
Palestine, Censorship, and Punishment
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
Patrick Lawrence: Japan Reenlists as Washington’s Spear-Carrier It is always the same when Japanese premiers travel to Washington to summit at the White House. Nothing seems to happen and nobody pays much attention even when important things happen, when we should all pay attention, and, when we do pay passing attention, we usually get it wrong. In January 1960, when Premier Nobusuke Kishi visited Washington, President Eisenhower blessed the war criminal and signed a security treaty the Japanese public vigorously opposed. That week Newsweek marked Kishi down as “that friendly, savvy Japanese salesman.” Kishi proved a salesman, all right. Three years later he used armed police to clear the Diet of opposition legislators and force ratification of the Anpo treaty, as the Japanese call it, with members of his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) the only ones present to vote on it. “A 134–pound body packed with pride, power and passion—a perfect embodiment of his country’s amazing resurgence,” TIME wrote of the man who ought to have been hanged a decade earlier. Now we have Premier Fumio Kishida, who summited with our asleep-at-the-wheel president in the Oval Office a week ago. I do not know how much Kishida weighs or how proud of himself or his nation he is, but, in an uncanny echo of the Kishi–Eisenhower summit, Joe Biden blessed his radical turn toward the militarism Japan’s pacifist constitution forbids.
The Border Industrial Complex Goes Big Time In the commercial during the NFL playoff game, the camera focuses on aresearcher leaving her laboratory. Then on a dog. But the dog is not a dog. The dog is a robot. And the robot dog begins to wag its tail when it sees a robot hummingbird buzz in. From here it turns into an inspiring tale about how the robotic dog wants a pair of wings like the hummingbird, and another robot helps it achieve this. As all this is going on, I can’t help but think about one of the biggest border technology stories of 2022, which was also a robotic dog. You probably remember. DHS announced it in February, and we wrote about it at The Border Chronicle. It seemed to symbolize the Biden administration’s emphasis on enforcement technology. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when at the end of the commercial it was revealed that the company was Accenture—not the company that made the robotic dog; that’s Ghost Robotics—but a top border contractor nonetheless. Not only a top contractor, but they’ve been there since the Department of Homeland Security was formed. In 2004, Accenture got a contract to lead the Smart Border Alliance to help construct the “virtual” or technological wall. But it still was a surprise. I was surprised to see that a company whose name I had associated with border conventions and biometric databases was competing with car and beer commercials during a prime time game with millions of viewers.
The Border Industrial Complex Goes Big Time In the commercial during the NFL playoff game, the camera focuses on aresearcher leaving her laboratory. Then on a dog. But the dog is not a dog. The dog is a robot. And the robot dog begins to wag its tail when it sees a robot hummingbird buzz in. From here it turns into an inspiring tale about how the robotic dog wants a pair of wings like the hummingbird, and another robot helps it achieve this. As all this is going on, I can’t help but think about one of the biggest border technology stories of 2022, which was also a robotic dog. You probably remember. DHS announced it in February, and we wrote about it at The Border Chronicle. It seemed to symbolize the Biden administration’s emphasis on enforcement technology. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when at the end of the commercial it was revealed that the company was Accenture—not the company that made the robotic dog; that’s Ghost Robotics—but a top border contractor nonetheless. Not only a top contractor, but they’ve been there since the Department of Homeland Security was formed. In 2004, Accenture got a contract to lead the Smart Border Alliance to help construct the “virtual” or technological wall. But it still was a surprise. I was surprised to see that a company whose name I had associated with border conventions and biometric databases was competing with car and beer commercials during a prime time game with millions of viewers.
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
JPMorgan Chase Pledged Carbon Reduction. Weeks Later It Financed Coal Mining. A new report documents how investment capital continues to threaten the well-being of billions of people. The great and the good congregated in Switzerland last week for the latest meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) – a (normally) annual conference that former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accurately described as a “billionaires’ jamboree”. This year’s event was the first Davos summit since the start of the pandemic. And much has clearly changed since then. The word “polycrisis” provides a fair summary of the discussions at #WEF23 – used by multiple speakers over the five days to describe the concatenation of dangers and threats that the global economy currently faces.
Grad Students and Faculty Don’t Want to Work for Fossil Fuel Industry Anymore University researchers should not be forced or even allowed to produce biased data for the fossil fuel industry. For the past two years, I have been shocking D.C.’s finest college student activists by telling them to stop taking their grievances to the Capitol lawn. Students who care about climate justice have been lobbying the U.S. government for climate legislation for decades amid exponentially worsening natural disasters and promises of carbon removal. It is time to face the music: Our representatives (including the Democrats) are in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry and we need to stop pretending they will legislate us out of the climate crisis.
Civil Rights Black Liberation:
Thousands March in US Women’s Rallies for Abortion Rights People march across cities in the US demanding abortion rights ahead of next month’s key midterm elections. Thousands of people have marched across cities in the United States, demanding abortion rights ahead of next month’s key midterm elections. In Washington, DC, a crowd chanted: “We won’t go back,” as they marched. They carried posters calling for a “feminist tsunami” and urging people to “vote to save women’s rights”. “I don’t want to have to go back to a different time,” said Emily Bobal, an 18-year-old student. “It’s kind of ridiculous that we still have to do this in 2022,” she said, adding that she is concerned that the conservative-dominated high court might next target same-sex marriage. “The majority of us are ready to get out and fight for democracy and fight for people’s bodily autonomy, women and men,” said Kimberly Allen, 70.
Labor:
Economy:
World:
Omitting the Evidence: What the IMF Gets Wrong About Venezuela On December 5, 2022, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Western Hemisphere Department published a report titled “Regional Spillovers from the Venezuelan Crisis,” which assesses the causes of Venezuela’s economic crisis, the drivers of the country’s record emigration, and the impact that this influx of Venezuelan migrants has had on neighboring countries. While these are worthy topics of research, and there is much of value in the report, authors Alvarez et al. curiously omit a critical piece of the puzzle, and one of the single most important factors contributing to Venezuela’s current economic and humanitarian plight: US economic sanctions. In August 2017, the Trump administration issued Executive Order 13808, barring the government of Venezuela, including the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) and its joint ventures, from accessing US financial markets. Though the United States had imposed sanctions on certain Venezuelan individuals and entities before this, including under the Obama administration’s E.O. 13692, which declared a US national emergency with respect to Venezuela, the August 2017 sanctions marked the beginning of a series of sweeping sanctions that would define the Trump administration’s approach to US-Venezuelan relations. Sanctions were escalated even further alongside the recognition of a parallel government beginning in 2019, most notably with the January 28 designation of PDVSA as a sanctioned entity, and the 2020 imposition of secondary sanctions against shipping companies involved in the transportation of Venezuelan oil. The vast majority of these sanctions remain in place today.
Rober Baron Capitalism: Holding Venezuelan Gold in the Bank of England is a Robbery British Judge Cockerill’s decision prevents the Venezuelan State from accessing 32 tons of gold that have been held in the Bank of England since 2018. British Judge Cockerill’s decision prevents the Venezuelan State from accessing 32 tons of gold that have been held in the Bank of England since 2018. On Wednesday, President Nicolas Maduro called the retention of Venezuelan gold deposited in vaults at the Bank of England an act of piracy and theft. “The gold inside the Bank of England’s vaults belongs to the Central Bank of Venezuela,” Maduro said, adding that his administration will continue to protest against abuses, sanctions, and the seizure of Venezuelan assets abroad. “The world must know that there is no legal certainty in London or in the Bank of England because any country can have its international reserves stolen at any time. There is no respect for the Law!”, he stressed.
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!
It is perfectly clear that the existing state is neither able nor willing to do anything to remedy the housing difficulty. The state is nothing but the organized collective power of the possessing classes, the landowners and the capitalists as against the exploited classes, the peasants and the workers. What the individual capitalists (and it is here only a question of these because in this matter the landowner who is also concerned acts primarily as a capitalist) do not want, their state also does not want. If therefore the individual capitalists deplore the housing shortage, but can hardly be persuaded even superficially to palliate its most terrifying consequences, then the collective capitalist, the state, will not do much more. At the most it will see to it that the measure of superficial palliation which has become standard is carried out everywhere uniformly. And we have already seen that this is the case.― Friedrich Engels, The Housing Question
Affordable Housing Must Be Healthy Housing. Today’s affordable housing is not healthy housing—and this needs to change.
- THe construction of affordable housing has been chronically underfunded and regulated by racist housing policies. After years of widespread use, low-cost, substandard, and toxic building materials are now directly linked to more serious health risks for low income families.
- Harmful chemicals coat our food. Poisonous lead contaminates our water. Carcinogenic flame retardant-filled insulation fills our walls. Indoor air pollution has resulted in an alarming rise in childhood asthma. In the face of this health crisis, even minor renovations can drastically improve the health of communities.
- Armed with better knowledge about the impacts of material choices, designers and architects can strive to create healthy affordable housing today—and make a profound difference in many peoples’ health and lives. Healthier affordable housing is primarily in the hands of designers, developers, and builders, but working with future residents we can make well-considered choices to foster healthier lives.