Daily News Digest March 23, 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:
So, if it is likely that these events will keep happening and communities will keep facing environmental injustice. What can be done? One solution is to create a national response team within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), called the EPA National Response Center (EPANRC). Within this proposed EPANRC, a Rapid Response Team would be created that is tasked with monitoring potential environmental hazard scenarios and be equipped to respond quickly to various toxin-related emergencies. The proposed EPA Rapid Response Team (EPARRT) would consist of multiple experts with different skills, including toxicologists, epidemiologists, environmental health scientists, public health emergency planning officials, and communication experts. A model like the one proposed already exists for other federal agencies. For example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have protocols in place for when contaminations are found in the food supply, such as when E.coli was detected in lettuce. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also have various resources and teams in place to address infectious disease outbreaks. With the increasing number of actual train derailments and potential derailments, now is the time that environmental justice emergency issues are provided equal attention and the same amount of support at the national level, like the ones which already exist at the CDC and FDA. — Why Are We Unprepared For Environmental Disasters?
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
The U.S. Owes Iraq “Just Compensation”: Muslim Peacemaker Sami Rasouli on 2003 Invasion & Aftermath
Andrew Bacevich on China’s Rise as Global Superpower & Decline of U.S. Empire After Iraq Invasion
“Stop Dirty Banks”: Bill McKibben & Ben Jealous on Ending Big Bank Funding for Fossil Fuel Expansion
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
In America’s Creed, Blessed Are the Warmakers The real needs of humanity haven’t changed since Ike’s time. Whether in 1953 or 2023, more guns won’t serve the cause of peace. In April 1953, newly elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a retired five-star Army general who had led the landings on D-Day in France in June 1944, gave his most powerful speech. It would become known as his “Cross of Iron” address. In it, Ike warned of the cost humanity would pay if Cold War competition led to a world dominated by wars and weaponry that couldn’t be reined in. In the immediate aftermath of the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Ike extended an olive branch to the new leaders of that empire. He sought, he said, to put America and the world on a “highway to peace.” It was, of course, never to be, as this country’s emergent military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC) chose instead to build a militarized (and highly profitable) highway to hell. Eight years later, in his famous farewell address, a frustrated and alarmed president called out “the military-industrial complex,” prophetically warning of its anti-democratic nature and the disastrous rise of misplaced power that it represented. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry, fully engaged in corralling, containing, and constraining it, he concluded, could save democracy and bolster peaceful methods and goals.
Government Mendacity and Media Complicity Made the Catastrophic Iraq Invasion Possible As mainstream U.S. media outlets pause to remember the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it’s clear that there’s a lot they hope we’ll forget – first and foremost, the media’s own active complicity in whipping up public support for the war. But the more you dig into mainstream news coverage from that period, as our documentary team did last week when we put together this five-minute montage from our 2007 film War Made Easy, the harder it is to forget how flagrantly news networks across the broadcast and cable landscape uncritically spread the Bush administration’s propaganda and actively excluded dissenting voices.
Patrick Lawrence: Biden and the ICC: ‘A New Level of Farce’ There are many things to say about the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin on charges that the Russian president directed the abduction and deportation of thousands of children from eastern Ukraine in the early months of the intervention that began a year ago. Let us settle on three of these things. Straight off the top, the ICC’s action announced on March 17 is ridiculous in any number of ways. Its legality is questionable at the very least. Its premise appears to bear no relationship with reality; it will have no appreciable effect. It is a political gesture dressed up as law and, as a political gesture dressed up as law, it is sheer propaganda, nothing more.
Seymour Hersh: The Cover-Up The Biden Administration continues to conceal its responsibility for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines. It’s been six weeks since I published a report, based on anonymous sourcing, naming President Joe Biden as the official who ordered the mysterious destruction last September of Nord Stream 2, a new $11-billion pipeline that was scheduled to double the volume of natural gas delivered from Russia to Germany. The story gained traction in Germany and Western Europe, but was subject to a near media blackout in the US. Two weeks ago, after a visit by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Washington, US and German intelligence agencies attempted to add to the blackout by feeding the New York Times and the German weekly Die Zeit false cover stories to counter the report that Biden and US operatives were responsible for the pipelines’ destruction. Press aides for the White House and Central Intelligence Agency have consistently denied that America was responsible for exploding the pipelines, and those pro forma denials were more than enough for the White House press corps. There is no evidence that any reporter assigned there has yet to ask the White House press secretary whether Biden had done what any serious leader would do: formally “task” the American intelligence community to conduct a deep investigation, with all of its assets, and find out just who had done the deed in the Baltic Sea. According to a source within the intelligence community, the president has not done so, nor will he. Why not? Because he knows the answer.
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
Why Are We Unprepared For Environmental Disasters? The train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, shows that our country is unprepared to address environmental emergencies adequately. Environmental disasters of the past show that accidents, just like human error, are inevitable. But how our society responds to these events can make all the difference. It can mean the difference between a life lost, and a life saved. The Norfolk and Southern train derailment carrying toxic materials, such as ethanol and propane, was not the first environmental emergency facing our country. Other human-made ecological disasters that have impacted the health and safety of the communities include the Love Canal toxic waste site, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Deepwater oil spill, the California fires caused by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and the Ringwood Mines Landfill Site. There is no certainty that such destructive environmental events, like East Palestine, will never happen again, especially since there are an average of three train derailments per day. Of note, the Norfolk and Southern CEO, Alan Shaw, refused to support the Railway Safety Act of 2023 during the March 9, 2023 Senate hearing on the derailment. Shaw’s lack of commitment to safety improvements is even more staggering in the context of another one of the company’s trains derailing the morning of the hearing. During the hearing, Shaw also refused to commit to covering the healthcare costs of the community members impacted by the toxic fumes released into the air.
Water’s Moment: Advancing the Human Right to Water in the United States Water isn’t a commodity to be sold to only those that can pay. It’s a basic right our government must provide to all residents. More than a decade ago, the United Nations declared that access to clean water and sanitation is a human right, underpinning all other goals for equality, health, and economic prosperity. The United States did not sign on. Today, on World Water Day, global leaders are gathering in New York to discuss progress towards this goal. It’s the first time the UN Water Conference is being held in the U.S. and time for our nation to embrace the moral imperative: Water is a human right
Civil Rights Black Liberation:
Labor:
The Return of Soliarity?!: Demanding Respect for All School Workers, LA Teachers Shut Down 2nd-Largest US School District “As workers we are powerful. As parents we are powerful. As the people united, we are unstoppable.” An estimated 65,000 teachers and school staffers from across Los Angeles walked picket lines in the rain on Tuesday as the city’s public school district employees went on strike—but more than half of the picketers were staging the walkout in solidarity, protesting conditions that don’t directly affect them. The 35,000 teachers who are represented by United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) joined cafeteria workers, bus drivers, teaching aides, grounds workers, and others who help ensure that more than 1,000 public schools in Los Angeles run safely and smoothly, demanding that support staff are treated fairly by the district.
Economy:
FRED Effective Federal Funds Rate is 4.58%
Bank Busts and Regulation Stock markets are jumping back up today. It seems that financial investors think the monetary authorities and banking supervisors have got the banking crisis under control. That could be wishful thinking. The banking crisis of 2023 is not over yet. The Californian ‘tech’ bank Silicon Valley (SVB) that went bust last week has been taken over by the US banking authorities; and so has the cryptocurrency bank Signature. First Republic Bank, used by local companies and rich New Yorkers, has got liquidity funding from a batch of big banks, but it is still tottering on the brink, as depositors flee. And over in Europe, one of the largest and oldest banks Credit Suisse has been eliminated after 167 years. In a shotgun marriage, its rival Swiss bank UBS has taken over CS for just $3.2bn, a fraction of its book value. The Swiss authorities forced this through to ensure that CS shareholders would keep most of their equity investment, but bond holders of CS have been wiped out to the tune of $17bn – an unprecedented step. The Swiss National Bank is also providing $100bn in liquidity funding to cover deposit withdrawals as a sweetener to UBS, while thousands of low-grade banking workers are to lose their jobs. The government insisted this was the only solution – otherwise CS would have to be nationalized and we can’t have that! Thus, the strong (UBS) has swallowed up the weak (CS). Some say that all this has been done without a bailout that would use public money and credit. But that is baloney. The liquidity funding by the Swiss authorities is huge and the US Fed has set up a Bank Term Funding Program which enables banks facing depositor withdrawals to borrow for one year using as collateral their government or mortgage bonds that they hold, at ‘par’ (namely the price they paid for them), not what they are worth in the bond market today. So the government is taking on the risk of default. Also the US authorities have guaranteed all the deposits in banks, not just up to the previous threshold of $250,000. So the better-off will not lose their money as the government will cover any bank collapse using public money.
Banking Crisis 2023: Deep Origins and Future Directions It’s more than a week since the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest bank in the US at the time of its collapse and reportedly a source of funding for half of all the tech start ups in the US. It’s now become clear the more general banking crisis that has emerged is not due simply to a rogue, mismanaged bank that over-extended itself during the recent tech boom and then somehow mysteriously imploded in just 72 hours, March 7-9, until seized by the FDIC on the morning of March 10, 2023. Deeper, more systemic forces are at play—in the case of both the SVB collapse and the now spreading contagion to US regional banks as well as to European banks. The SVB is just the tip of the current financial instability iceberg. In Europe the focus is the now collapsed big Credit Suisse bank announced today, March 19, by Switzerland’s central bank. The problem is thus now not just US regional bank centric, but is rapidly becoming global systemic.
Citigroup’s Citibank Took the Largest Amount of Loans from the FHLB of NY in 2022, Reminiscent of FHLB Loans Taken by Silvergate, SVB, Signature, and First Republic Bank On March 13 we published the chart below, showing the ten financial institutions that had taken the largest loan advances from the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco as of year-end 2022. It’s a very ominous sign that the bank at the top of the list, Silicon Valley Bank, collapsed and is now under the control of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Silicon Valley Bank had $212 billion in assets as of year-end 2022, making it the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. The largest failure was Washington Mutual in 2008, with approximately $300 billion in assets. The second bank on the list, First Republic Bank (ticker FRC), has seen its share price collapse, had its debt downgraded deeper into junk by S&P Global on Sunday, and is experiencing an exit stampede by depositors.
World:
Fance: the Government is Weak – NoFw Finish It Off! The French government’s use of Article 49.3 of the constitution to force through Macron’s pension reforms without a parliamentary vote on 16 March marked a turning point in the development of the struggle. The bypassing of the National Assembly is rightly seen by large layers of the population as an insult and a provocation too far.
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
‘Appalling’: Biden Administration Declines to Force Big Pharma to Cut Price of Prostate Cancer Drug “This decision effectively rubber-stamps continued Big Pharma abuse,” said one Democratic lawmaker. Patient advocates on Tuesday blasted the Biden administration’s refusal to compel the manufacturer of a lifesaving prostate cancer drug developed completely with public funds to lower its nearly $190,000 annual price tag.