Daily News Digest February 20, 2023
Capitalism is Now a Worldwide Threat to Humanity! It is on the Fast Track to Global Warming and Nuclear War Catastrophes!
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 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:
Muckraking the Meat-Packing Industry. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose the appalling working conditions in the meat-packing industry. His description of diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat shocked the public and led to new federal food safety laws.
For many of the families, the children are the only ones that can provide support for the families as it is much easier for a child to get a job because ‘the packers could get as much work out of a child as they had been able to get out of a man, and for a third of the pay. — The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
The derailment was the fourteenth of the young year. Not bad by the standards of the US railroad industry, which has averaged 1700 derailments a year since 1977. But plenty bad enough for the 5,000 people of East Palestine and everyone living downstream or downwind from the crash site. — Roaming Charges: Train in Vain
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
America the Beautiful:Environmental Coffeehouse 
Corporate Greed and Deregulation Fuel Threat of More Bomb Trains As East Palestine Demands Answers
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
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 ‘Lessor Evil‘, Joe Biden, Sides With Norfolk Southerm, Against Railworkers!
Biden DOJ Supporting Rail Giant Norfolk Southern’s Effort to Block Future Lawsuits Norfolk Southern—the railroad giant whose train derailed and caused a toxic chemical fire in a small Ohio town earlier this month—has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 2017 lawsuit filed by a cancer-afflicted former rail worker, and the Biden administration is siding with the corporation, fresh reporting from The Lever revealed Thursday.
The Insecure Superpower Riddle What’s scarier? A) Hundreds of military bases, all bristling with advanced, offensive weapons, controlled by your avowed enemy, close to your heartland. OR B) Unfinished military bases on three tiny islands, stocked with defensive weapons, about 9,000 miles from your nation’s capital. Plus, a few balloons. Answer: B, but only if you are the United States, the insecure superpower. The nation with most enemy bases close to its border is China. There are nearly 200 U.S. installations in Japan and South Korea alone. Last week, the U.S announced it would add four additional bases to the five existing ones in the Philippines. One of these, on the island of Itbayat, is just 93 miles from Taiwan, across the Taiwan Straits from China. When it’s completed, it will be close enough to attack the Chinese mainland within minutes, deploying the world’s most fearsome non-nuclear – and possibly nuclear — weapons. The U.S. stored nuclear bombs in the Philippines for decades under an agreement with Ferdinand Marcos. Now there is concern among islanders that the new president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (aka “Bongbong”), may revive the deal. Most people in the Philippines don’t want to become targets in a future war between the U.S. and China over the status of Taiwan. Most Americans don’t either.
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
Worried About Toxins in East Palestine Water? Here’s Everything We Know That Can Help.
East Palestine: The Place You Don’t Want to Be! Concerns Swell In Ohio After Chemical Fire From Train Derailment
US Plays Down Toxic Ohio Train Derailment
Norfolk Southern, the Owner of the Toxic Ohio Train Funded the Test of the the Water!!!!!!:
East Palestine Residents Told Water Was Safe After ‘Sloppy’ Testing Paid for by Rail Company “Thousands of people in East Palestine, Ohio have been assured by the state Environmental Protection Agency and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine that the town’s municipal water has not been contaminated by the train derailment that took place in the town earlier this month, but the only publicly available data comes from testing that was funded by the company behind the crash. As HuffPostreported late Friday, the Dallas-based consulting firm AECOM contracted with Norfolk Southern, which operated the 150-car train that was carrying the toxic chemical vinyl chloride, to sample water from five wells and from treated municipal water.
East Palestine, Ohio, Residents Demand Answers After Release of Toxic Chemicals: “You’re Telling Us the Air And Water Are Safe. Why Are We Getting Sick?” Residents of East Palestine, Ohio, packed a town hall meeting Wednesday night to demand answers about the ongoing health risks facing their community after the derailment of a Norfolk Southern freight train on February 3 and the decision by railroad and government authorities to deliberately release and burn toxic chemicals contained in tanker cars days later. The working class residents of the small town of 4,700 on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, halfway between Youngstown and Pittsburgh, are outraged over the efforts by the railroad and state, local and federal officials to downplay their concerns. Despite official proclamations that the air, water and soil are safe, townspeople continue to get sick.
Roaming Charges: Train in Vain At nearly 9’oclock on the night of February 3rd, a Norfolk Southern freight train jumped the tracks as it was passing through the eastern Ohio town of East Palestine. More than 50 of the train’s 141 cars tumbled off the rails into a smoking jumble. Like most freight trains these days, it was hauling a load of toxic cargo. At least 20 of the derailed cars carried hazardous chemicals, five of them harboring highly poisonous vinyl chloride, a carcinogen used in the manufacture of plastics. The train had left the St. Louis terminal yard earlier that day bound for Norfolk Southern’s Conway Yard in Pennsylvania, passing through cities, towns and fields, crossing creeks and rivers, rumbling by churches, schools and parks.
Echoing Workers, Sanders Says Train Derailments Stem From Wall Street Greed “When rail companies reduced their workforce by 30% under orders from Wall Street, bad things happen—like the dangerous derailments in Ohio and Michigan,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday connected the spate of recent train derailments in the United States to Wall Street-backed cost-cutting and other policy decisions that have decimated the rail industry’s workforce and compromised safety for the sake of larger profits.
Pete Buttigieg Is Pretending He’s Powerless to Change Railroad Safety Procedures In the wake of a disastrous rail accident in Ohio, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg says he doesn’t have the power to compel the rail industry to upgrade its safety equipment and procedures. But he does. Facing pressure from lawmakers in his own party after a spate of train derailments, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has now resorted to falsely suggesting that he does not have power to compel the rail industry to upgrade its safety equipment and procedures. In a Twitter thread posted more than a week after Norfolk Southern’s fiery train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, Buttigieg indicated that he cannot reinstate an Obama-enacted, Trump-repealed law requiring some trains carrying hazardous materials to replace their Civil War–era braking systems with new electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brake technology. “We’re constrained by law on some areas of rail regulation (like the braking rule withdrawn by the Trump administration in 2018 because of a law passed by Congress in 2015),” Buttigieg wrote. Buttigieg’s tweet refers to a law passed by Congress in 2015 — at the urging of the railroad industry — requiring the executive branch to conduct cost-benefit analysis of the ECP brake rule before enacting it. Trump used that law to kill the braking rule, but the cost-benefit analysis his administration used to do so was subsequently discredited.
Civil Rights Black Liberation:
The Day the Music Died: Malcolm X’s Assassination, Feb. 21, 1965 by Roland Sheppard (First Published by the San Francisco Bayview )
In the afternoon of Feb. 21, 1965, I went to the Audubon Ballroom to hear Malcolm X speak. I also went to sell the newspaper, The Militant, a radical newspaper that printed the truth about Malcolm X, published his speeches and publicly defended him.
When I got to the ballroom, things were radically different – there were no cops. Normally, Malcolm’s meetings in Harlem were crawling with cops. As I was selling papers, Malcolm X approached the Audubon Ballroom. I offered to sell him the latest issue, but he told me, “Not today, Roland. I am alone and in a hurry.”
{(2/22/21 Update: I always wondered Why Malcolm X had no guards with him when he was approaching the Audubon Ballroom, Now I know! “Without any training, Wood’s job was to infiltrate civil rights organizations and encourage leaders and members to commit felonious acts. He was also tasked with ensuring that Malcolm X’s security detail was arrested days prior to the assassination, guaranteeing Malcolm X didn’t have door security while at the Audubon Ballroom, where he was killed on Feb. 21, 1965.” — US: Ex-Policeman Implicates NYPD, FBI in Malcolm X Murder}
A while later as I entered the meeting room, again I did not see any cops. I went in to sit down where I normally sat along with the rest of the press in the front and the left side of the room. On the way to my seat, Gene Roberts, who later surfaced as a police agent member of the Black Panther Party, told me that I could not sit at my regular place but that on that day I had to sit in the front row on the right side of the hall, facing the stage.
As I sat down, I glanced over to where I normally sat and saw a large Black man with a navy blue-gray trench coat. When the meeting started, all was quiet as the crowd listened to Benjamin X introducing Malcolm X.
When Malcolm approached the podium, he gave the normal Muslim greeting for peace. At that point a disturbance occurred in the room. Two men were standing about halfway back in the room and to the right of Malcolm on stage. One was shouting, “Get your hand out of my pocket!”
Malcolm was trying to calm things down, when the men — one later identified as Talmadge Hayer — started running down the right aisle shouting and firing a pistol at Malcolm and ran out the exit doors by the stage, to the right of Malcolm X
Suddenly I heard gunshots fired from all over the place, and I instinctively hit the floor. When I looked up, I saw Malcolm X standing up and glaring down at one of his assassins. At that point, from the corner of my eye, nearby to my left, I saw a flash from a gun as I watched Malcolm X fall down and back about 10 feet.
In that instant, as Malcolm died before my eyes, I suddenly realized how big he was and I realized that he was a giant in stature and in the world. This vision of Malcolm X, being assassinated, has haunted me ‘til this day.
The fatal blast, which I later found out to be from a shotgun, came from the area where I had seen the large Black man with a navy blue-gray trench coat! When I left the hall, Malcolm’s bodyguards told me that they had caught two of the assassins, one who was shot – Talmadge Hayer – and one whom the police took away.
A few weeks later, when I was questioned in the Harlem police station, I was shown a series of photos of people whom I recognized as members of the Nation of Islam or Malcolm’s organization. I also saw a picture of the large Black man with a navy blue-gray trench coat that I had seen at the Audubon Ballroom.
I was thinking of how to respond to the cops and how to say that I did not recognize the photos of Malcolm’s friends and supporters and the members of the Nation of Islam. I then told the cops that I had to go to the restroom.
When I got to the men’s room door, I saw the same large Black man coming out of the men’s room that I had seen in the Audubon Ballroom and in the photos that had just been shown to me. He walked by me, past the desks of the secretarial pool, and went to his office inside the police station!
At that point I knew that he and the government either killed Malcolm X or were part of the assassination plot. I became very nervous thinking about what I was going to say to the cops when I got back and how I was going to get out of the station alive.
I then came up with, “I cannot recognize anyone, for all Black people look the same.” The cops nodded in agreement and we were allowed to leave the police station.
Malcolm X was one of my heroes. He was the most honest mass leader that I have ever known or seen. He was a great orator and his speeches seemed like a conversation between himself and the audience.
His speeches were like music to my ears and have inspired me for the rest of my life in the fight for social justice. He was so human in his orations. I still remember him when he made the “Harlem Hate Gang Scare” speech at the Militant Labor Forum on May 29, 1964, and other speeches in which he chuckled a “heh heh” when he was about to make a special comment.
At that forum, he said: “It’s impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg … The system of this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, this social system, this system period. It is impossible for it, as it now stands, to produce freedom right now for the Black man in this country — it is impossible. And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg (heh heh), I’m certain you would say it was a revolutionary chicken (heh heh).”
Both he and Martin Luther King had come to similar positions about capitalism and the Vietnam War at the time of their death. That is why this government assassinated them. No one has followed in their footsteps.
From the point of view of this government, the world leader in political assassinations, the two assassinations worked. To this day, no mass leader has had the courage to pick up where they left off. They were able to silence the art, science and truth of these two great orators. To me, Feb. 21 is “the day the music died.” It was the saddest day of my life.
For an in depth explanation of the government’s assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, read my article, “The Assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.”
Update: The assassin with the shotgun
On April 30, 2010, I received an email from John Judge, director of the Coalition on Political Assassinations, referring to an April 22, 2010, article titled For the First Time in History, The Face of William Bradley, Shotgun Assassin of Malcolm X-El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, in a Public Safety Campaign Commercial for Mayor Cory Booker! by Abdur-Rahman Muhammad.
In that article is the picture shown here of William Bradley, who is the man that I had seen in the Audubon Ballroom and in the photos that the Harlem police showed me while I was being interrogated. Bradley was the man I saw coming out of the men’s room, walking by me, past the desks of the secretarial pool, and into his office inside the police station, as I was going to the men’s room!
As I wrote in my original 2009 essay: “At that point I knew that he and the government either killed Malcolm X or were part of the assassination plot.” And now I know his name. William Bradley is the man that Talmadge Hayer identified as the one who shot the shotgun. Zak Kondo also identified William Bradley as the assassin with the shotgun.
In his article, Abdur-Rahman Muhammad states: “Although his name has been in the public domain now for well over three decades, ever since 1977 when Hayer filed his affidavit with famed lawyer William Kuntsler naming his accomplishes, nevertheless a face has never been attached to the name. Historian and member of the committee researching this story Zak Kondo published a marvelous book two decades ago on the assassination of Malcolm X, wherein he explored quite a bit of biographical material on the five assassins. Spike Lee even named the five killers in the credits of his movie. But in all of these years none of them, including ‘Willie’ Bradley, has ever filed a libel suit. And for good reason – they would lose.”
This video, “MALCOLM X The Assassination of Malcolm X,” shows the police catching a second man after Malcolm’s assassination.
MALCOLM X The Assassination of Malcolm X
Uploaded by polobylimsa. – Watch the latest news videos.
A new improved video, “The Hunt for William Bradley,” by Karl Evanzz in the association of Shabazz Productions, identifies the man rescued from the crowd by the police as William Bradley. The video is contained in a collection of clips titled “Naked Lies: The Continuous War Against Malcolm X.” Shabazz Productions had previously produced: Omar Shabazz “Inside Job: Betrayal of the Black Messiah.”
2019 Update:
The film, Fusion TV’s: A First Look: Who Killed Malcolm X? — A More Subtle Assassination of Malcolm X and The Man He Had Become When He Was Assassinated., shows FBI papers that William Bradely was the shotguns assassin. The fact that he was never arrested confirms what I suspected — that William Bradely was an agent of the government!
For more information read my essay Why the U.S. Government Assassinated Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Labor:
Capitalism, in its Epoch of Imperialist Deacay: The Return of the Jungle: ‘Egregious’: DOL Finds US Meatpacking Plants Illegally Employed 100+ Children The federal probe revealed that Packers Sanitation Services had children as young as 13 “working with hazardous chemicals and cleaning meat processing equipment including back saws, brisket saws, and head splitters.” Federal investigators revealed Friday that one of the nation’s largest food sanitation companies illegally employed at least 102 children in dangerous jobs at 13 meatpacking facilities states, leading to $1.5 million in fines.
Sanders and Warren Grill US’s Largest Grocer on Reports of Rampant Wage Theft Workers have filed four lawsuits against Kroger for alleged wage theft in recent months. Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) are demanding that Kroger, the U.S.’s largest supermarket brand, address reports of and lawsuits over “systemic and widespread errors” in the company’s payroll system that labor advocates say have opened the door for the company to commit wage theft.
There is a Shortage of Available Jobs! — ‘Labor Shortage’ is the 1%’s spin for Their Unserstaffing Policy:
The Richest Americans Need to Be Taught This Serious Lesson About Teachers “If we can provide over a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top 1 percent and large corporations,” said Senator Bernie Sanders this week, “please don’t tell me that we cannot afford to make sure that every teacher in America is paid at least $60,000 a year How can we measure the work a particular society truly values? Take-home pay can make as good a yardstick as any: The lower an occupation’s compensation, the lower the esteem a society is showing for that occupation. In the United States, our pay data show, no profession faces a reality that makes this link plainer — and uglier — than teaching.
Economy:
St. Louis Fed Economic News Index: Real GDP Nowcast
Shadow Government Statistics Daily Update February 15th to 18th
- The next full updating of the DAILY UPDATE likely will be over the weekend. Nonetheless, it will follow here as soon as possible. Personal computer problems have disrupted regular analysis and writing; I apologize for the delay. In the interim, brief headlines and observations are being posted here in the OPENING SECTION, as related news breaks.
- LATEST ECONOMIC, INFLATION AND MONETARY NUMBERS HEADLINES, WHICH HAVE COVERAGE PENDING, INCLUDE HERE: (1) [Feb 15] January 2023 Industrial Production continued in deepening collapse, in context of ongoing downside revisions to recent (August to December) Production, Manufacturing and Capacity Utilization, all signaling a deepening Recession. While headline Production was flat at 0.0% month-to-month, it would have been down by 0.5% (-0.5%), but for the downside revision to December 2020 activity.
- (2) [Feb 15] January 2023 Retail Sales gained in the month due to surging Auto and Gasoline Sales (gasoline prices turned higher). Although inflation-adjusted real growth gained in the month, early First Quarter activity opened in a negative year-to-year trend.
- (3) [Feb 14] Yesterday, the unadjusted headline January 2023 Cass Freight Index® was up by 4.3% year-to-year, unchanged month to month, seasonally adjusted. As with Capacity Utilization for Industrial Production, the Cass Freight Index® never has recovered its 2018 peak activity.
- (4) [Feb 14] The headline January 2023 CPI-U and the ShadowStats Alternate CPI were posted to the Alternate Tab (see link above). The reporting was in context of unusual methodological redefinitions, which will be reviewed here shortly. As reported and estimated, year-to-year unadjusted January 2023 CPI-U inflation eased minimally to 6.41% from 6.45% in December, with the ShadowStats Alternate easing to 14.48% from 14.52%, where the slowing pace of decline in annual inflation reflected rebounding gasoline prices, among other considerations, including some series redefinition.
World:
The US Is Sending Its Worst Down to Mexico Violent drug cartels often dominate headlines about Mexico but the Ayotzinapa case reveals a more sinister involvement from the US side of the border. . . . In a compelling podcast series for Reveal, journalist Anayansi Diaz-Cortes dives into an infamous case involving all these conventional elements of Mexican crime: drugs, corrupt police and horrific violence. She explains, however, in this episode of Scheer Intelligence with host Robert Scheer, that while this took place in Mexico, much of the blame falls on American policy enforcing the war on drugs, along with a host of other insidious factors.
Corbyn Rebukes Starmer for Barring Him From Running With UK Labour Party “Keir Starmer’s statement about my future is a flagrant attack on the democratic rights of Islington North Labour Party members. It is up to them—not party leaders—to decide who their candidate. Former U.K. Labour chief Jeremy Corbyn—a member of Parliament who represents the Greater London constituency Islington North—called out Leader Keir Starmer this week for barring him from running with the party in the nation’s next general election.
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!
Yes, Wall Street Would Kill Your Granny for a Few Extra Bucks Some 70% of nursing homes are now corporate operations run by absentee executives who have no experience in nursing homes and are guided by one thing: profit. There are industries that occasionally do something rotten. And there are industries — like Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Tobacco — that persistently do rotten things. Then there is the nursing home industry, where rottenness has become a core business principle. The end-of-life “experience” can be rotten enough on its own, with an assortment of natural indignities bedeviling us, and good nursing homes help gentle this time. In the past couple of decades, though, an entirely unnatural force has come to dominate the delivery of aged care: profiteering corporate chains and Wall Street speculators.