Daily News Digest March 21, 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:
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:
It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself! — Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us
The Capitalist Economic System Production That’s Based Upon Production for Profit, not for Humaanity News, in Now Criminaly Anti-Human and is an Imediate Threat to Life Itself!
Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred. Human-caused climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. This has led to widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people (high confidence). Vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to current climate change are disproportionately affected (high confidence). {2.1, Table 2.1, Figure 2.2 and 2.3} (Figure SPM.1) — IPCC’s Findings
The mass media that enabled this war has only gotten worse over the last twenty years. They will not admit their role nor even acknowledge that the war was based on lies that they willfully transmitted. Last week, with only months of investigation, the ICC indicted Putin for his illegal war of aggression against Ukraine. It’s been twenty years and no international or domestic forum has indicated George Bush for his crimes against humanity. The mainstream media is already deeply involved in revisionism, with the New York Times running a lengthy article proclaiming that the origins of the war were too complicated to access a single reason. The rest of the world knows better. Hopefully the American people will as well. — War Made Easy: Will US Media Finally Admit Its Craven Complicity in Iraq War?
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
‘We Have a Choice Here to Act’: IPCC Climate Report to Sound Most Dire Warning Yet “The central message from climate scientists is unmistakable: governments must rally to drastically cut emissions and cease the extraction and burning of fossil fuels this decade.” A United Nations panel composed of the world’s top scientists is set to release its latest climate assessment on Monday as governments fail to heed repeated, increasingly urgent warnings that the window for action to prevent catastrophic global heating is nearly shut.The landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will come after a year in which planet-warming CO2 emissions shattered records once again as the impacts of such pollution—from “apocalyptic” flooding in Pakistan to deadly drought in East Africa—continued to mount.
Demanding Swift Action, UN Chief Calls IPCC Report a ‘Survival Guide for Humanity’ “We must move into warp-speed climate action now. We don’t have a moment to lose,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. The head of the United Nations outlined a plan Monday to “super-charge” climate action after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its most stark warning yet about the trajectory of planetary heating and its cascading impacts on ecosystems and the life they sustain. “This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who argued the IPCC’s findings show that “humanity is on thin ice—and that ice is melting fast.”
Microplastics Are Everywhere. Here’s What You Can Do About It Yes, you should worry about climate change. But WIRED’s editor in chief wants you to be aware of the fossil-fuel industry’s secret survival weapon, too. The miracle material canonized in that little exchange from The Graduate (1967) is now in almost everything: Even “100% cotton” clothes are coated in synthetic polymers for water-proofing, and paper cups have plastic liners. But its ubiquity goes much further than that. The world is filling up with microplastics and nanoplastics—invisibly small fragments of the stuff shed in their trillions by the objects we wear and use every day, from boots and baby bottles to credit cards and car tires, and by the masses of plastic trash being broken down by sunlight, wind, rain, seawater, and general abrasion. This stuff is everywhere: literally, everywhere. Microplastics show up under the microscope in air samples from remote mountain peaks, ice from Arctic wastes, and sediment from the deepest ocean trenches. They’re buried in peat and course through rivers; they float through your living room and swirl from your taps. They’re in our wastewater, and in the sludge from it that we spread over crops. They’re embedded in plants, animals, and humans; they’ve been found in the first feces of newborn babies and in the bloodstreams of their mothers. And they’re very much not biodegradable, so once the fragments become too small for normal erosion to keep breaking them apart, they may stick around for centuries.
Big Oil Firms Touted Algae As Climate Solution. Now All Have Pulled Funding Insiders aren’t surprised as ExxonMobil, the last remaining proponent of green algae biofuel, ends research
US Utility Firms Spent Big Preparing Power Grid For Storms – And Still Failed Electric utilities spent billions after 2014’s polar vortex to ensure power plants and the grid could handle extreme cold, but this winter it still wasn’t enough
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
20 Years After Illegal US Invasion of Iraq, Its Architects Are Still Cashing In Corporations and universities helped launder the reputation of war criminals who are still profiting from the invasion. It had been 15 years since the U.S. invaded Iraq when, on March 19, 2018, the celebrated Iraqi novelist and poet Sinan Antoon published a blistering op-ed in The New York Times. He took readers through his observations of the steady deterioration of Iraqi society since the war began, but the most scathing words came toward the end. “No one knows for certain how many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion 15 years ago,” Antoon wrote. “Some credible estimates put the number at more than one million. You can read that sentence again. The invasion of Iraq is often spoken of in the United States as a ‘blunder,’ or even a ‘colossal mistake.’ It was a crime. Those who perpetrated it are still at large.” That the invasion was not just a moral catastrophe but an egregious war crime has been echoed by everyone from United Nations heads to human rights leaders. According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, over 300,000 people died in the war, the overwhelming bulk of them Iraqi civilians. These are only the counted: civilian deaths are certainly much higher. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis continue to suffer from a decades-long public and mental health calamity. Around 9.2 million Iraqis have been displaced.
It Wasn’t Just “For Oil.” The Iraq War Was Something Even Worse Out of all the “troublemakers” to make an example of, Iraq in 2003 had the ideal combination of feigned strength and de facto weakness. Its people were made to pay an unimaginable price for those traits. . . . Today, we must sit with the fact that over one million humans were killed as a direct result of this invasion. One and a half million were displaced. $2 trillion that could have been used for human betterment was spent ruining one of the world’s oldest civilizations. And for what, exactly?
SVB Bailout Edition The very public failure of SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) is raising concerns of a renewed wave of bank failures that threatens Western economies. The subtext is residual fear that the earlier (mid-2000’s) bank crisis was never adequately addressed. The very bankers who sank the banking system back then were handed trillions in public largesse to cover their losses, but the system of Wall Street provision of credit to fuel capitalism was never reconsidered. As then Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner put it, ‘the US doesn’t do nationalization (of banks).’
Civil Rights Black Liberation:
Labor:
Economy:
The Next Bomb to Go Off in the Banking Crisis Will Be Derivatives U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen finds herself in a very dubious position. Under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010, the U.S. Treasury Secretary was given increased powers to oversee financial stability in the U.S. banking system. This increase in power came in response to the 2008 financial crisis – the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression. The legislation made the Treasury Secretary the Chair of the newly created Financial Stability Oversight Council (F-SOC), whose meetings include the heads of all of the federal agencies that supervise banks and trading on Wall Street. The legislation also required the Treasury Secretary’s authorization before the Federal Reserve could create any more of those $29 trillion emergency bailout programs for the mega banks – which had tethered themselves to casino trading on Wall Street since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. Yesterday, after the Swiss banking behemoth Credit Suisse had traded at an all-time low of less than two bucks; blown out its credit default swaps to unprecedented levels; and tanked the Dow Jones Industrial Average by more than 700 points intraday, Bloomberg News ran this headline at 12:54 p.m. – “US Treasury Reviewing US Banks’ Exposure to Credit Suisse.” By “exposure,” the Treasury really means how many billions of dollars of underwater derivatives are U.S. banks on the hook for as a counterparty to Credit Suisse. The Treasury also has to worry about U.S. banks’ exposure to Credit Suisse’s other major counterparties that U.S. banks do business with, even if the banks are not direct counterparties to Credit Suisse itself.
UBS Was Quietly Bailed Out in 2008; Now It’s Getting a $173 Billion Backstop to Buy Credit Suisse at 82 Cents a Share Yesterday, the Swiss banking giant, UBS, agreed to a shotgun wedding with its collapsing long-time Swiss rival, Credit Suisse. Switzerland has committed $173 billion in loans and guarantees to the combined firm. A key player in this deal was the central bank of Switzerland, the Swiss National Bank. That’s the very same central bank that had quietly bailed out UBS during the financial crisis of 2008 with the assistance of dollar swap lines from the Federal Reserve (the “Fed”) – the central bank of the U.S. Yesterday, the Fed announced the return of those emergency dollar swap lines as the shotgun wedding of UBS and Credit Suisse failed to quell a spreading banking panic.
World:
The Australian Defence Department has published a fact sheet on the matter, which, as all such fact sheets go, fudges the facts and sports a degree of misplaced optimism. It promises a “sophisticated security and safety architecture” around the nuclear-powered submarine program, “building on our 70-year unblemished track record of operating nuclear facilities and conducting nuclear science activities.” This record, which is rather more blemished than officials would care to admit, does not extend to the specific issues arising from maintaining a nuclear-powered submarine fleet and the high-level waste that would require shielding and cooling. In the context of such a vessel, this would entail pulling out and disposing of the reactor once the submarine is decommissioned. — Spent Matters: The AUKUS Nuclear Waste Problem
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