Daily News Digest February 10, 2023

Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

Malcom X on Capitalism

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 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:

In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force—men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments—and asked for recommendations about how to respond to Putin’s impending invasion.      It would be the first of a series of top-secret meetings, in a secure room on a top floor of the Old Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, that was also the home of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). There was the usual back and forth chatter that eventually led to a crucial preliminary question: Would the recommendation forwarded by the group to the President be reversible—such as another layer of sanctions and currency restrictions—or irreversible—that is, kinetic actions, which could not be undone?     What became clear to participants, according to the source with direct knowledge of the process, is that Sullivan intended for the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the two Nord Stream pipelines—and that he was delivering on the desires of the President. — Seymour Hersh: How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline The

Karl Marx was one of the first to oppose the colonial oppression of the world’s masses. He did not mince his words in, this chapter of Capital, he wrote: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.  … If money … comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek, capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. Karl Marx, Capital, Chapter Thirty-One: Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist

Videos/Podcasts of the Day:

Michael Hudson: The Hypocrisy Just Makes Me Cry: Michael: Well the whole purpose of the war is economic, but it’s not economic just about Ukraine and the winners and losers of the United States and Europe.     President Biden has said this is a ten- or a twenty-year war, and it’s [a war] for what kind of economy [the world is] going to have. Is it going to be a finance-based neoliberal rentier economy centered in the United States, with the United States controlling all of the monopoly rents: for oil, for raw materials, for technology, for computer information, for pharmaceuticals?  Or, on the other hand,] will other countries have a chance to be independent?     Ukraine is just sort of the first joust in this long long war and [the war is] over the economy.     Everything that’s happening right now is just sort of a squiggle over the really big picture, which is how the world is going to be structured economically.

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 

The United States Planned Ahead for the Ukraine War!: Seymour Hersh: How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline The New York Times called it a “mystery,” but the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret—until now . . . Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.     Two of the pipelines, which were known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational. Now, with Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming, President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions.     Asked for comment, Adrienne Watson, a White House spokesperson, said in an email, “This is false and complete fiction.” Tammy Thorp, a spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency, similarly wrote: “This claim is completely and utterly false.”

Biden Uses State of the Union to Double Down on Failed Idea of Police Reforms The sorts of liberal reforms promoted by Biden won’t prevent police from killing anyone. . . .

 Rashida Tlaib Delivers Progressive Response to Biden’s State of the Union Tlaib’s speech advised the president to not give up on progressive policies.     Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) delivered the Working Family Party’s response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday evening, telling the current commander-in-chief that progressives are ready to work with him to deliver on the many popular promises he made as a candidate for office in 2020.     Tlaib, who introduced herself as a mother of two boys and “the proud daughter of Palestinian immigrant parents that grew up in the most beautiful, Blackest city in the country — Detroit,” noted that too many Americans are struggling economically. “In the richest country in the world, it shouldn’t be this hard for so many to have a good life,” Tlaib said early on in her speech.

When the Rich Paid Taxes, State Colleges and Universities were Tuition Free In California! The Farce of California’s Budget Deficit The Budget Center calculates that had California’s corporations been paying the same share of their income that they did in the early 1980s, the state would have had $14.4 billion more in its coffers in 2019.Tax breaks, mostly for industrial companies and wealthy households, add up to more than double the expected deficit. Every year, state financial analysts offer up a dutiful tally of the billions of dollars that California forgoes in revenue due to the tax breaks it offers cable companies, timber companies, the oil and gas industry, homeowners, renters, parents of young children and lottery winners, to name a few who reap such rewards.     All told, these so-called tax expenditures total nearly $70 billion, with many of the benefits going to higher income households and to businesses, according to the Sacramento-based California Budget and Policy Project. Unlike the budget, none of the tax breaks are subject to annual review. That, says Alissa Anderson, senior policy analyst at the Budget Center, is a problem.

Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:

As Always, Poorest Hit Hardest When Calamity Strikes While the rich insulate themselves from the fallout, the poor bear the brunt of military conflict, economic upheaval, climate-related havoc, and the coronavirus pandemic – which has left the earth’s have-nots on even shakier ground. 

Growing Body of Research Suggests Offshore Oil’s Methane Pollution Is Underestimated Previous efforts to regulate offshore methane emissions stalled, despite role in helicopter crashes. Flying 10,000 feet above the Gulf of Mexico, in a plane outfitted with infrared imaging equipment, researchers could see methane gas bubbling under water, likely from an undetected pipeline leak.      Over the course of several flights in 2021, they spotted frequent gas plumes from platforms, storage tanks, and pipelines offshore, leading the team to believe that the 151 platforms near the Louisiana coast had a much higher methane leak rate than what’s been measured for onshore oil and gas production.     “I think the bottom line message in this study is there’s a lot of emissions in the shallow waters that are currently unmeasured,” said Riley Duren, the CEO of Carbon Mapper and coauthor of the nonprofit’s 2022 study of offshore methane emissions.

Who Killed David “Gypsy” Chain? The shooting of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán (known as Tortuguita) on 18 January by Atlanta police has garnered international headlines as the first killing of an environmental activist by police in the US. This may or may not be true. But Terán’s shooting (we now know he was shot at least 13 times) was not the first killing of a forest activist in the US. I have profiled two previous deaths: Navajo activist LeRoy Jackson and redwood forest defender David Chain. This piece ran in the Texas Observer in January 1999.     David “Gypsy” Chain, originally from Pasadena, was killed on September 17 , 1998 on Pacific Lumber land, near Grizzly Creek off Route 36 in Humboldt County, California, because he formed part of the last line of defense in a battle plan fatally betrayed by Democratic politicians and environmental executives cringing before a corporate predator from Texas. A.E. Ammonds, the 52-year-old faller who put the tree down on Chain, crushing his skull, was the party immediately responsible for the young man’s death – but if Ammonds ever has to face charges of involuntary manslaughter, the people who put him in the woods that day should bear the full brunt of penalties consequent upon a wrongful death.

Civil Rights Black Liberation:

Federal Judge Issues Order Suggesting 13th Amendment Protects Abortion Rights Afederal judge has suggested that abortion rights may still be protected by the U.S. Constitution, in spite of the Supreme Court ruling last year that upended decades of precedent protecting the right to abortion. . . .The judge cited a scholarly article arguing the point, as well as an appellate court ruling from the 1990s. Koller-Kotelly’s order cites a scholarly article written by Northwestern University Law School professor Andrew Koppelman in 1990, which states that, “when women are compelled to carry and bear children, they are subjected to ‘involuntary servitude’ in violation” of the 13th Amendment.

We Need More, Not Less, Education on Black History and Structural Racism American history is wrought with the good, the bad, and the ugly. When we provide access to comprehensive educational opportunities for all students, it instills resilience and empathy for the shared American experience.

Black Agenda Report

Labor:

Economy:

Michael Roberts: Global Economy: The Looming Recession Fear The threat of a recession looks more real now as major economies, notably US, China, India and EU, sputter amidst a challenging macro environment. The major economies are heading into a new slump in production, investment, and income in 2023. International agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as well as private forecasters, all agree that global growth will slow significantly this year. The IMF, for example, reckons that global real gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2023 will be just 2.7% after increasing by 6% in 2021 and 3.2% in 2022. The World Bank is even more pessimistic, with a forecast of 2.3% for 2023. In fact, it even warns that in case there is any “financial-market stress,” global GDP growth would crash to 0.5% in 2023—or a 0.4% contraction in per-capita terms that would meet the technical definition of a global recession. The OECD forecasters project an even lower growth rate at a mere 2.2%, while expecting global inflation to average 6.6%. According to the Paris-headquartered organization, “the global economy is facing significant challenges. Growth has lost momentum, high inflation has broadened out across countries and products and is proving persistent. Risks are skewed to the downside.”

The US composite PMI, which surveys business activity, fell to 44.6 in December from 46.4 in November; anything below 50 means contraction, and the lower the figure, the faster the fall!

FTX Bankruptcy Lawyers Channel their Inner Sam Bankman-Fried – Bill $21,000 for their Meals Over Just 20 Days The shenanigans going on in Judge John Dorsey’s bankruptcy courtroom, which is overseeing the FTX bankruptcy proceedings of Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapsed crypto empire, are reaching levels that should be attracting the attention of federal prosecutors. The head of the newly-created FTX Task Force, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, has called the looted FTX customer accounts “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.”

World:

Thousands of Youth March for Socialism in the Basque Country We have received this report from a comrade who participated in one of two demonstrations called in the Basque Country on 28 January. We think it is very significant that thousands of young people participated in these militant demonstrations under the banner of socialist revolution. This movement should be an inspiration for revolutionary Marxists around the world, and we congratulate the comrades of GKS on their success.

Education. Health, 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!