Daily News Digest March 9, 2023

Daily News Digest Archives

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:

That’s What Cancel Culture Is!

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’s Policy of  Deferred Maintenance has Evolved to Deliberate Indifference! Under the Law, That Corpoaration Should Be So Charged! 

Deliberate Indifference Law and Legal Definition: Deliberate indifference is the conscious or reckless disregard of the consequences of one’s acts or omissions. It entails something more than negligence, but is satisfied by something less than acts or omissions for the very purpose of causing harm or with knowledge that harm will result!

The Cleveland collision highlights the danger of such accidents at industrial sites, where rail crossings often are unmarked and have no barriers. “Typical operation at the mills,” one former steelworker at the plant said on social media. “They killed on average one person every year in their rail operations when I was with the previous owner before Cleveland Cliffs.” The accident also recalls a fatal collision in Detroit at Stellantis’ Jefferson North Assembly Plant in 2021, when an autoworker leaving her shift was struck and killed while driving over a crossing located immediately next to the employee parking lot.     At a town hall last week in East Palestine, attorney Mikal Watts revealed that Norfolk Southern had 3,397 derailments in the past 20 years, or approximately once every two days. But the railroad is far from unique. Across all railroads, there were 1,743 train accidents last year, including 1,164 derailments, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. In these accidents, 978 people were killed, including 11 rail workers. Norfolk Southern ranked third out of seven class I railroads in total accidents (243), behind BNSF (331) and Union Pacific (516). California had by far the highest number of railroad deaths last year (219), with Ohio ranked 11 with 19 deaths. — Two Norfolk Southern Rail Accidents on Four Days in Ohio Show Nothing Has Been Done After East Palestine Disaster

I’m going to begin by asking for your indulgence, and I apologize if you’ve heard much of what I’m going to say before. But I think it’s important and it deserves repeating. At the C.I.A., they teach us in briefing training to give your main point up front. So I’ll do that. The American government is lying about Julian Assange. That’s the bottom line. — John Kiriakou: The Threat to Journalism

Videos/Podcasts of the Day:

Rail & Labor News from RWU Weekly Digest Number 10 – March 7, 2023 

[Podcast] Women and the Russian Revolution

Black Agenda Radio March 3, 2023 With Margaret Kimberley

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. Tax 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  

Big Brother is Watching You!: ACLU Obtains Docs Detailing FBI, Pentagon Development of Facial Recognition Tech “The continued proliferation of surveillance tools like facial recognition technologies in our society is deeply disturbing,” said Sen. Ed Markey, reintroducing a federal ban. Thousands of records about U.S. government involvement in the research and development of facial recognition technology—unveiled due to an ACLU lawsuit and first reported on Tuesday by The Washington Post—fueled fresh calls for a federal ban on such tools. “Americans’ ability to navigate our communities without constant tracking and surveillance is being chipped away at an alarming pace,” Sen. Ed Markey(D-Mass.) told the Post. “We cannot stand by as the tentacles of the surveillance state dig deeper into our private lives, treating every one of us like suspects in an unbridled investigation that undermines our rights and freedom.”

Newspeak: ‘All the News That’s Fit to Print (For the Government)’:New York Times Spokesperson Came yo Paper From National Security Agency Paper investigates the NSA while represented by former NSA staffer. Charlie Stadtlander, Director of external communications for the New York Times, joined the paper directly from the National Security Agency, where he served as head of public affairs.     According to Stadtlander’s LinkedIn page, he’s worked for the Times since January 2022. Before that, he held his position at the NSA starting in 2019. His only listed job in the media before the New York Times is as a journalism teacher for three months in 2010, when he served as an “instructor to gifted children, ages 8-13” at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

Norfolk Southern Conductor Death in Ohio Shows Need to Boost Rail Safety Rules: Union  A Norfolk Southern conductor was killed in Ohio early Tuesday, elevating scrutiny of the rail giant and calls for dramatic improve-ments to industry safety regulations in the wake of a devastat-ing derailment in the state last month. Louis Shuster, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) Division 607, was fatally injured when a dump truck   collided  with a train while he was on the outside of a railcar at the Cleveland-Cliffs Cleveland Works steel plant.

U.S. Military Out of the Philippines In April 2022, the US sent 5,000 troops to the Philippines for the yearly Balikatan war exercises. In July 2022, 38 warships, more than 170 aircraft, and some 25,000 personnel from more than two dozen countries converged on Hawaiʻi for the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises. Pointedly, China, which had been invited to participate in previous RIMPACs in 2014 and 2016, has been disinvited since 2018.

Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:

Reality Check:  The Yellowstone Bison “Hunt” is a Slaughter Our National Mammal — the beloved, sacred American bison — is under attack.  Of course, they have been since the dawn of colonization, yet despite the false narrative of “America’s greatest conservation success story”, the war against wild buffalo rages on along the northern edge of Yellowstone National Park, where the country’s last continuously wild herds still exist.  Once numbering seventy million strong, spanning most of North America, wild, migratory bison today number fewer than 5,000 and occupy less than 1% of their native homelands.  The Yellowstone herds represent the last of their kind and are in such dire straits that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is considering Endangered Species Act protection.  With federal, state, and tribal governments taking actions that are destroying these special herds, ESA listing may be their only chance for survival.

 New Nuclear Plants Have Turned Into Money Pits The 13-metre, 500-tonne, reactor pressure vessel arriving last month at Hinkley Point C. It was built at the notorious and scandal-ridden Le Creusot forge. The unfinished nuclear plant is shaping up to be the most expensive in history. (Photo: EDF).    Oops sorry. That two-reactor nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point C you thought would cost $19 billion? It’s going to cost $26 billion now. Actually, make that $35 billion. Wait, sorry, no, the actual number is closer to $40 billion. When will it be ready for operation? Um, well, currently says French contractor, EDF, maybe 2027? Ish?

Greta Thunberg’s Climate Book reviewed by Jeremy Williams In review: A go-to source for understanding these different, closely interconnected crises The last book, THE CLIMATE BOOK
The Facts and the Solutions. with Greta Thunberg’s name on it was a slim volume of speeches that you could read in an hour. . . . Thunberg’s message has always been to listen to the science, and this is something she’s put into practice here. “I have decided to use my platform to create a book based on the current best available science – a book that covers the climate, ecological and sustainability crisis holistically,” Thunberg writes. “My hope is that this book might be some kind of go-to source for understanding these different, closely interconnected crises.”Thunberg plays an editorial role here and directs our attention to scientists, activists, economists and others across a series of short chapters in a straightforward structure:

  • How climate works
  • How our planet is changing
  • How it affects us
  • What we’ve done about it
  • What we must do now

 Revealed: 1,000 Super-Emitting Methane Leaks Risk Triggering Climate Tipping Points Vast releases of gas, along with future ‘methane bombs’, represent huge threat – but curbing emissions would rapidly reduce global heating ‘We don’t feel safe’: US community in shock after record methane leak      More than 1,000 “super-emitter” sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities.      The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67m running cars.    Separate data also reveals 55 “methane bombs” around the world – fossil fuel extraction sites where gas leaks alone from future production would release levels of methane equivalent to 30 years of all US greenhouse gas emissions.     Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating today and there has been a “scary” surge since 2007, according to scientists. This acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating and seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say.

Civil Rights Black Liberation:

In First-of-Its Kind Legal Challenge, Texas Women Say State Abortion Ban Endangered Their Lives . .  . The five women—Amanda Zurawski, Lauren Miller, Lauren Hall, Anna Zargarian, and Ashley Brandt—are suing officials including state Attorney General Ken Paxton and state medical board executive director Stephen Brint Carlton, and are calling on a state court in Travis County to confirm that the state’s abortion ban allows medical professionals to provide abortion care in cases where the pregnant person has a “physical emergent medical condition” or “where the pregnancy is unlikely to result in the birth of a living child with sustained life.”

Setting Our Sights on the Equality of Women On the victories won and the ground we’ve lost as women fighting for our bodies, our dignity, and our rights! A month ago, I heard on the news that Boston public schools would be closed on February 3 because of the severe Arctic cold and wind chill forecast for that day and the next. My first thought was: what if the students’ mothers are working single mothers, what if they cannot take off or cannot afford to lose the pay—given inflation of food, energy and rents and the impoverishing impact of Covid? Boston is a severely unequal city with an extremely segregated public school system: 80 percent of children in public school are low-income; 90 percent are students of color, mainly Latino and Black; higher income families with children leave for suburbs when their children become of school age, according to the Dorchester Reporter. Almost all new residential buildings are high-income; and the city is referred to as “two Bostons.”

To Strengthen Women’s Resilience to Disasters, Make the Wealthiest Pay Their Fair Share Gender inequality exacerbates the impact of natural disasters, and the consequences of natural disasters compound gender inequality. States must introduce progressive taxation to finance the expansion of rights such as universal access to health care and education, and strengthen women’s resilience to natural hazards, including climate change.

Labor:

 Economy:

FDIC Investigators Are on the Premises of Collapsing Federally-Insured, Crypto Related Bank, Silvergate: It’s Not a Friendly Visit A very peculiar headline appeared at Bloomberg News yesterday concerning the collapsing federally-insured bank, Silvergate Bank, which became the go-to financial institution over the past few years for crypto exchanges around the globe. The headline read: “Silvergate Is in Talks With FDIC Officials on Ways to Salvage Bank.” That headline moved quickly to other news outlets, which dutifully regurgitated that there was an effort underfoot by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to save Silvergate Bank.     Bloomberg News then went further out on a shaky limb with this paragraph: “Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. officials have been discussing with management ways to avoid a shutdown, according to people familiar with the matter. One possible option involves lining up crypto-industry investors to help Silvergate shore up its liquidity, said one of the people. FDIC examiners arrived at the firm’s La Jolla, California, offices last week, the people said.”

World:

Whose Red Lines? In the conflict-ridden realm of international relations, certain terms are particularly useful, and one of them is “Red Lines.” Derived from the concept of a “line in the sand,” first employed in antiquity, the term “Red Lines” appears to have emerged in the 1970s to denote what one nation regards as unacceptable from other nations. In short, it is an implicit threat.    Vladimir Putin, self-anointed restorer of the Russian empire, has tossed about the term repeatedly in recent years. “I hope nobody will get it into their heads to cross Russia’s so-called red line,” he warned in April 2021. “Where it will be drawn, we will decide ourselves in each specific case.”     These red lines, although addressing a variety of issues, have been proclaimed frequently. At the end of that November, Putin announced that Russia would take action if NATO crossed its “red lines” on Ukraine, saying that the deployment of offensive missile capabilities on Ukrainian soil would serve as a trigger.

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