Daily News Digest March 1, 2023
Capitalism is Now a Worldwide Threat to Humanity! It is on the Fast Track to Global Warming and/or Nuclear War Catastrophes!
Images of the Day:
Drinking Up Oil and Consuming Water, During Drought!: The Oil Fields of Kern Country Ca.
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:
Norfolk Southern burned the chemical contents of the derailed cars, polluting the community. Two derailed train cars held vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate, two substances used in industrial production and known to cause harm to human and animal life. These chemicals have seeped into the ground and leached into the air, polluting the critical resources of East Palestine and potentially causing long-lasting physical harm to its residents and their property. As we now know, the EPA estimates that more than 43,000 fish have died as a direct result of the crash, and we continue to receive reports of residents experiencing a range of symptoms. “You want to be heard, but you’re going to be told it’s safe, you’re going to be told not to worry,” Brockovich said. “That’s just rubbish because you’re going to worry. Communities want to be seen and heard. Don’t expect somebody to give you the answers. Unfortunately, this is not a quick fix. This is going to be a long game. We want you to get information that you can take home so that you’re better informed.” The consequences of this crash will require a long-term remediation plan for the town and continuous, attentive, and transparent testing of the town’s waterways, air, and soil. Norfolk Southern owes the residents of East Palestine financial support to recover, rebuild, and ensure the safety of their community. The corporate wrongdoing, negligence, and greed involved in this incident require justice for the people of East Palestine. Attorneys at Watts Guerra and Bevan and Associates LPA are leading a lawsuit to hold Norfolk Southern accountable for its negligence and get families the compensation they deserve. “The company chooses to ship the most deadly, the most toxic, the most dangerous chemicals ever made by man in railcars right through populated cities. If you are going to ship these kinds of chemicals through populated areas or small towns like this, you damn sure have an obligation to make sure you don’t jump the tracks,” said Mikal Watts on Friday night. Watts Guerra is the leading mass tort law firm in the United States. Led by celebrated lawyers Mikal Watts and Francisco Guerra, the firm has secured billions of dollars in awards to victims of misdeeds of utility companies in California, automobile manufacturer malfeasance, and pharmaceutical company lies. Watts Guerra is committed to not only winning compensation for the residents of East Palestine but also deeply committed to preventing future crises like this. East Palestine Justice is a team of attorneys, environmental activists, and scientific and medical experts representing community members affected by Norfolk Southern’s negligence. — Erin Brockovich, Trial Attorney Mikal Watts, and Representatives from Ohio Law Firm Bevan & Associates Speak at East Palestine Justice Town Hall Meeting
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Will the Equal Rights Amendment Finally Be Added to the U.S. Constitution 50 Years After It Passed
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
Marjorie Cohn: Human Rights Commission Nominee Rejected Over Stance on Israel Professor James Cavallaro, a leading scholar, was denied a post on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for his claim that Israel is an apartheid state. As the new right-wing Israeli regime ramps up its oppression of Palestinians, the Biden administration has taken its capitulation to Israel to a new and absurd level. After nominating an independent expert to serve on a human rights commission, the U.S. State Department withdrew the nomination because the expert accurately called Israel an apartheid state. A week later, the United States prevented the United Nations Security Council from voting to condemn Israel’s illegal settlements in Palestinian territory. On February 10, the State Department nominated Professor James Cavallaro as an independent expert on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Cavallaro is “a leading scholar and practitioner of international law with deep expertise in the region as well as the Inter-American human rights system,” the State Department declared. Cavallaro, executive director of the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR), was a member of the IACHR from 2014-2017 during the Obama administration and even served as its president. IACHR commissioners are independent human rights experts, not spokespersons for their countries’ foreign policies. They hear cases about massacres, extrajudicial killings, torture and disappearances only in the Americas. They have no jurisdiction over Israel. But that didn’t stop the State Department from withdrawing Cavallaro’s nomination on February 20 after The Algemeiner, a U.S.-based Jewish newspaper, criticized him for (correctly) describing Israel as an “apartheid state” and accusing Israel of “atrocities.”
Immigrants Win ‘Unprecedented’ Settlement Over Violent ICE Raid in Tennessee “Today’s ruling is a testament to the incredible power and resiliency of immigrant workers and their communities,” said one advocate. Immigrant rights groups celebrated a historic victory late Monday as a federal judge handed down what is believed to be the first-ever class action settlement over a workplace immigration raid in the United States, awarding $1.17 million to nearly 100 people who were targeted by the Trump administration in 2018.
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
‘Time Is Up’: Greenpeace Warns Global Ocean Treaty Under Threat of Failure “We are once again on the brink of these talks falling apart as countries have chosen not to rise to the occasion as they quibble over minor points,” said one Greenpeace campaigner. Greenpeace warned Monday that nations are “once again stalling” as they enter the final week of talks on the United Nations Ocean Treaty, a pact the environmental group says would “safeguard marine life and be the biggest conservation victory for a generation” if negotiators get it right. A new draft of the landmark treaty “still contains major areas of disagreement,” said Greenpeace, whose activists displayed a large banner supporting the treaty outside United Nations headquarters in New York City on Monday. U.N. members are gathered inside in an effort to draft a unified agreement on the conservation and sustainable exploitation of marine ecosystems located outside national boundaries on the high seas—an area encompassing nearly two-thirds of the Earth’s oceans. A previous round of talks on the treaty last year failed to produce an agreement.
Civil Rights Black Liberation:
From The Lessons of the Montgomery Bus Boycott: Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks Being Fingerprinted After Her Arrest
Another example of the new mood among blacks was Rosa Parks. The following from Book Review: Rosa Parks by Douglas Brinkley, reviewed by Grace Lee Boggs. Grace Lee Boggs, was a lifelong Detroit activist, wrote, at the time of Rosa Parks’ death, we are given a picture of Rosa Parks that is not commonly known:
Rosa Parks has become a symbol of courage for our time and for all time. All over the world, she ranks with Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the pantheon of 20th-century heroes and sheroes who have expanded our notion of what it means to be a human being.
But in becoming an icon, Parks has been turned into a shadow of her real self. Few people are aware of her lifetime of struggle before and after that fateful day in 1955, when her refusal to give up her seat on an Alabama bus triggered the 13-month-long boycott that launched the modern civil rights movement.
How many people know that, unlike Gandhi and King, she refused to rule out the righteous use of force? Not only did she admire Malcolm X, but she also flew down to Monroe, North Carolina, just a few years ago for the funeral of Robert Williams, the outspoken advocate of armed self-defense by the black community.
One of the main virtues of this book is that it demolishes the myth that Rosa Parks was just a good-hearted, middle-aged seamstress who was simply too tired from working all day to give up her seat. Historian Douglas Brinkley, also the author of award-winning biographies of Jimmy Carter and Franklin D. Roosevelt, reveals the difficult decisions that educated Parks politically and empowered her not only to say ‘no’ on December 1, 1955, but to give permission for her ‘no’ to become the basis for a constitutional challenge to Montgomery’s bus segregation ordinance.
Brinkley writes, ‘While the NAACP executives made dinner speeches and attended national conferences,’ Parks, as the local NAACP secretary, ‘balanced the ledgers, kept the books, and recorded every report of racial discrimination that crossed her desk. She also did field research, traveling from towns like Union Springs to cities like Selma to interview African Americans with legal complaints, including some who had witnessed the murders of blacks by whites in rural areas.
As the mother of the Civil Rights movement, Rosa Parks received countless awards, including the Congressional Gold Medal. But most people see only the fame and not the enormous risks she took. In 1957, for example, the family was forced to leave Montgomery and move to Detroit, because continuing death threats were driving her husband to ‘near-suicidal despair,’ and also because Rosa’s celebrity status had made the couple unemployable by Montgomery’s white business community.”
Plainclothes Paramilitaries and the Predator State Beware the scorpions. To residents of Memphis’s resource-poor, predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods, the Scorpions were easy to spot. The plainclothes patrols were known for driving their unmarked Dodge Chargers through the streets, often all too recklessly, sowing fear as they went, spitting venom from their windows, jumping out with guns drawn at the slightest sign of an infraction. On the night of January 7th, Tyre Nichols was two minutes from home when members of that squad pulled him over. Probable cause: reckless driving (if you believe the official story). Five Scorpions, all of them trained use-of-force specialists, proceeded to take turns hitting him with everything they had, including boots, fists, and telescopic batons.
Labor:
RWU Weekly Rail & Labor News Headlines
Rail Workers Demand “Immediate Action” From Lawmakers to Rein In Rail Industry Workers say preventing future crashes like the one in East Palestine could be simple, if lawmakers choose to act.Each week, RWU brings you the news of what is happening in rail labor and in the rail industry in both North America and around the world. Employing numerous news feeds and a cadre of volunteers, we are able to glean out the most important stories of the week, focusing on issues of concern to railroad workers and our allies in the labor movement and the larger community. Look for it here each week, publicly released at 7 AM Central Time each Tuesday morning. You may wish to get the e-newsletter version to read, or you may prefer to listen in to the headlines. Perhaps you want to do both! Listen by clicking below and hear Greg Giorgio present a 5-minute news summary each week. Fellow Worker Greg is an RWU Solidarity Member and a longtime member of the IWW in Upstate NY. He is also a union voice talent and actor as a member of SAG-AFTRA and donates his services to RWU.
Economy:
Goldman Sachs Is Being Sued for 27 Separate Stock Offerings It Underwrote As we reported on February 7, there are some very strange things going on at Goldman Sachs. After reading the Wall Street investment bank’s annual report, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last Friday, the word “strange” doesn’t seem to do justice to the situation. Goldman Sachs is looking more like a litigation warehouse these days than an investment bank. According to Goldman’s annual report, it is being investigated for pretty much everything it does to make money: derivatives, currencies, mortgages, financial advisory, securities lending, dark pools, investment management, commodities, U.S. Treasuries, corporate bonds, credit cards, hiring and compensation practices, research practices, compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, transactions involving government-related financings – and on and on.
World:
As US Reengages Maduro, Oil Giants Earn Deals — and Venezuelans Protest The protests in Venezuela show a broad movement of people who are reaching the end of their tether amid inequality. In late November 2022, an article in The Economist reported that “things have changed in Caracas” with the new availability of luxury consumer goods, a new generation of high-end restaurants and the return of traffic jams. Add to that a new Ferrari dealership and it becomes clear what sections of the population are the beneficiaries of the changes — a tiny minority of wealthy Venezuelans. At the other end of the spectrum are those whose survival depends on the minimum wage — 130 bolivars a month, or the equivalent in bolivars of around $30. For reference, a carton of eggs or a kilo of meat or cheese will cost the typical Venezuelan the equivalent of roughly $5. Venezuela has the second largest reserves of oil in the world, yet today, most of its population lives below the World Bank’s poverty level of $2.50 dollars per day. Despite that, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro still claims to be continuing the socialist project of his predecessor Hugo Chavez. The difficulties faced by ordinary Venezuelans have been revealed once again with the widespread protests that erupted in January 2023, and which continue. The demonstrations erupted across the whole country, involving teacher, nurses, civil servants as well as local community organizations. The workers at the iconic steel plant Sidor mounted protest pickets at the plants and called for other workers to join them, which they did in significant numbers. The government has announced a $30 bonus for public workers, which is little more than a token gesture while inflation remains the highest in Latin America, and the minimum wage remains wholly inadequate. From Chavez to Maduro When Hugo Chavez won the Venezuelan presidency in 1999, the nation adopted a new constitution that promised a participatory democracy in which oil wealth would be used for the benefit of the country’s poor. A new health service would be created and social housing built with funds diverted from the national oil company PDVSA. In the longer term, Chavez’s aim was to diversify the nation’s economy and socialize oil profits — to build the “socialism of the 21st century,” which he famously proclaimed at the World Social Forum in 2005.
‘Truth, No Matter What’: Why Watering Down Palestinian Reality is a Crime On February 20, the United Nations Security Council approved a statement, described in the media as a ‘watered-down’ version of an earlier draft resolution which would have demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory.” The intrigues that led to the scrapping of what was meant to be a binding resolution will be the subject of a future article. For now, however, I would like to reflect on the fact that the so-called international community’s relationship with the Palestinian struggle has always attempted to ‘water down’ a horrific reality.
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!
Hundreds Rally Outside Supreme Court Amid ‘Baseless’ Attack on Student Debt Relief “You should not have to face financial ruin because you want a damn education!” said Sen. Bernie Sanders. “Education, from child care to graduate school, is a human right. It should be free to all.” Borrowers, advocates, and lawmakers converged on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday night and Tuesday morning to defend President Joe Biden’s stalled student debt relief plan as justices prepared to consider a pair of right-wing challenges to the popular proposal.
Education in the United States: Groups Warn of ‘Financial Disaster for Millions’ If Supreme Court Kills Student Debt Relief “If the Supreme Court sides with the extremist judges, millions of Americans’ monthly costs will rise significantly when student loan payments resume later this year,” says a report commissioned by Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Striking down President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan would have devastating impacts on millions of borrowers, advocacy groups warned in a report released Monday, one day before the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments over the White House’s cancellation bid.
Education in Cuba: Is Cuban Education Really Free? Since the revolution of the 1950s, the Cuban Government has worked hard at improving Cuban education standards in terms of a long-standing policy that made education the nation’s top priority. A recent UNICEF study reconfirmed that the island nation has one of the best education systems in the world – how did such a poor nation achieve this and what lessons may other nations learn. Let’s consider a few statistics first: Approximately 25,000 new primary schools have been built in the past half century, including in the remotest and least populated rural areas. These schools forward students to 2,100 secondary schools, 50 centers for advanced learning and 11 universities. Education at all levels is free, although secondary students and university graduates are required to do community service in return. The rate of literacy has been rated 100%. The average student-teacher ratio is 1:13 and the school retention rate approaches 100%. Close to 25,000 educators teach at higher-level institutions and 10% of Cubans hold university degrees.
Social Security Does Not ‘Need Protection’, What’s Needed is for the US Government to Pay Back, What It Plundered From the Socials Secuiryu Fund!: A Simple Choice: Social Security or Billionaire Greed Any politician who expresses concern about Social Security’s finances without being willing to tax the rich is a phony. Nothing but a phony. Like they used to say in the old neighborhood, some things ain’t complicated. If your senator or representative won’t tax the wealthy to protect and expand Social Security, then they care more about America’s 728 billionaires than they do about the 66 million children, disabled, and older people currently receiving benefits—or the many millions that will follow them. They don’t deserve to stay in office if they can’t represent their own people.
Report Shows Big Insurance Profiting Massively From Medicare Privatization The seven largest for-profit insurance companies in the U.S. have seen their combined revenues from taxpayer-backed programs grow 500% over the past decade.