Daily News Digest April 6, 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:
Deadly Rails, Broken Bridges: That’s Not ‘Infrastructure’
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:
George Orwell
Meanwhile, the rightwing media, including nouveau conservative Politico, frames this debate as a country that should cut Social Security and Medicare but leave the Pentagon budget alone. Indeed, they refer to those trust budgets as “drivers” of the debt and the smaller food and housing assistance budgets as “entrenched,” as though sensible working Americans would like to see them cut but the darn libs won’t yield. Meanwhile, the war profiteers are gobbling up big bites from your paychecks. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, and other Pentagon contractors make outrageous levels of profits, due to a number of corrupt practices that riddle the military procurement practices, Congress, and the corporate benefactors. One hundred percent of their profits are paid for with the taxes removed from your pay, usually before you ever see it. Look at your pay information and you’ll see why the Pentagon budget is a key factor in naming it a pay “stub.” — Profits of Doom: Military Contractors Rob Us Daily
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
[Podcast] Banking Crisis: Will There be a New Recession?
How America’s Supply Chains Got Railroaded Rail deregulation led to consolidation, price-gouging, and a variant of just-in-time unloading that left no slack in the system.
Behind The Banking Crisis with Michael Roberts
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
The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back For 40 years, both Republican and, regrettably, Democratic administrations have been turning over control of health care, public water supplies, infrastructure and transportation, criminal justice, education, prisons, parks, policing, sanitation, libraries, the weather service, and more to private companies. Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaelian’s The Privatization of Everything documents, in far more detail then has ever been done, this dismantling of the public sector. In the privatizer’s worldview, this shift from public to profit-seeking private management will lead to cost-cutting and greater attention to customer satisfaction, reduce taxes, and shrink the size of government.
Chris Hedges: Reclaiming Our Country This is a talk Chris Hedges gave on April 4th at the Independent National Convention in Austin, Texas.We are undergoing the most vicious class war in U.S. history. Social inequality has reached its most extreme levels of disparity in over 200 years, surpassing the rapacious greed of the era of the robber barons. The legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, along with the media and universities, have been seized by a tiny cabal of billionaires and corporations who pass laws and legislation that consolidate their power and obscene wealth at our expense. We are sacrificial victims, whether on the left or the right, helpless before this modern incarnation of the idol Biblical idol Moloch.
Seymour Hersh: The Nord Stream Ghost Ship The false details in the CIA’s cover story.America’s Central Intelligence Agency is constantly running covert operations around the world, and all must have a cover story in case things go badly, as they often do. It is just as important to have an explanation when things go well, as they did in the Baltic Sea last fall. Within weeks of my report that Joe Biden ordered the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, the agency produced a cover story and found willing takers in the New York Times and two major German publications. By creating a story of deep sea divers and a crew who did not exist, the agency was following protocol, and the story would have been part of the first days of secret planning to destroy the pipelines. The essential element was a mythical yacht ironically named the Andromeda—after the beautiful daughter of a mythical king who was chained to a rock, naked. The cover story was shared with and supported by the BND, Germany’s federal intelligence service.
Senate Leaves 2001 AUMF For Secret Wars In Force, Rejects Paul and Hawley Proposals. On March 29, the Senate voted to repeal two Authorizations for the Use of Military Force, (AUMF’s), one passed in 1991 and another in 2002. The repeal now goes to the House. But those Authorizations are irrelevant to the present; they apply only to the Iraq war. But a third AUMF, passed in 2001, was left untouched. And that AUMF is the only one that has a bearing on the present moment, because it provides legal cover for the many US military operations, open and secret, around the world.
The United States Position: A Country that Exports Doctors is a ‘Terrorist Threat’: As Congress Considers Prolonging Cuba’s Designation as a Terrorism Supporter, Biden Dithers Although Cuba’s Revolution survived military invasion, guerrilla actions, terrorist attacks, and bacteriologic warfare, enough was not enough. Now there are pay-offs to dissidents, manipulation of worldwide media coverage, and weaponization of social media capabilities. The U.S. economic and financial blockade persists, after 60 years, and will continue. That’s mostly because power to end the blockade switched from the executive branch to Congress, courtesy of the Helms Burton Law of 1996. Now the House of Representatives will be considering a bill that, similarly, would have Congress and no longer the president decide on removing Cuba from the U.S. list of terrorism-sponsoring nations.
Defeated Right-Wing Judge Refuses to Concede to Victor He Deems Not ‘Worthy’ “This is just what Republicans do now,” said one critic. Daniel Kelly, the right-wing former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who lost his bid to re-join the high court on Tuesday as liberal circuit court judge Janet Protasiewicz won by a decisive margin, refused to concede to his opponent in a speech that one critic said personified the Republican Party’s approach to electoral politics in recent years. “It brings me no joy to say this,” Kelly told supporters. “I wish that in a circumstance like this, I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent. But I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede.
The True Dangers of Long Trains “Monster trains” are jumping the tracks across America and regulators are doing little to curb the risk. . . . Today, the rail administration says it lacks enough evidence that long trains pose a particular risk. But ProPublica discovered it is a quandary of the agency’s own making: It doesn’t require companies to provide certain basic information after accidents — notably, the length of the train — that would allow it to assess once and for all the extent of the danger. “It’s one of our biggest frustrations, without question,” said Jared Cassity, the alternate national legislative director for the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, or SMART. The union representative said the agency can track train length for accidents “and they’ve chosen not to.” In the absence of data, the industry insists that long trains have actually helped to improve rail safety, pointing to an overall decline in derailments. The Association of American Railroads, the industry lobby, says safety is the priority when building long trains and notes that regulators have never cited length as the direct cause of an accident. The nation’s seven largest rail companies, the so-called Class 1s, echo these points, defending their safety.
‘Now Do Bush’: Trump Arraignment Contrasts Typical Impunity for US Leaders “Trump should be prosecuted for a variety of crimes, committed both as a private citizen and public official,” argues Jeremy Scahill. “But if we want to claim that our system is exceptional, then the same fate should be brought to bear on the Bushes, Cheneys, and Kissingers of the world as well.
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
Global Warming is Systemic to Capitalism!:
Reflecting the Fact That Capitalism Cannot Stop Global Warming: The Corporate Media’s Shocking Silence on Latest Tipping Points Study When what should be top “headline news,” gets nearly no major coverage at all. On the heels of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (3/20/23), which featured scientists running out of ways to emphasize how urgently deep cuts in fossil fuel use are needed, a troubling new climate study has emerged. Published in the prominent peer-reviewed science journal Nature (3/29/23), the study found that a little-studied deep ocean circulation system is slowing dramatically, and could collapse this century. One IPCC author not involved in the study declared it “headline news.” Unfortunately, science doesn’t guide US corporate media, which were virtually silent on the landmark study. he authors modeled the effects of Antarctic meltwater on deep ocean currents crucial to marine ecosystems. Similar to the more well-studied Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) that the Gulf Stream is a part of, and which is also known to be dangerously weakening, the Antarctic overturning circulation has major planetary impacts. It pushes nutrient-dense water from the ocean floor up toward the surface, where those nutrients support marine life. The Nature study, which also refers to the current as the Antarctic Bottom Water, found that this circulation system is projected to slow down 42% by 2050, with a total collapse “this century,” according to study co-author Matthew England (CNN.com, 3/29/23).
Fears of Fresh Disaster Rise as Images Show Major Damage Inside Fukushima Reactor The nuclear plant’s operator said that damage to the reactor is “spread across large areas.” Images released Tuesday by the operator of Japan’s destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant showed significant damage on the inside of one of the facility’s three melted reactors, heightening fears that another earthquake in the region could spark a fresh radioactive catastrophe.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Black Agenda Radio March 31, 2023 With Margaret Kimberly
Ray McGovern Connects Anniversary of Iraq Invasion and Ukraine Proxy War – Part 2
Biden’s Punitive Immigration Policies – Part 2
New York Prosecutors Discriminate Against Jurors and Defendants of Color
Labor:
Capitalist’s Fear of United Union Action: In Defense of the LA Education Workers’ Strike The enemies of labor unions and public education are unhappy, and I can’t say I blame them. Service Employees International Union Local 99 had been battling the Los Angeles Unified School District for a decent contract for three years, but when they struck–and when United Teachers Los Angeles struck in solidarity with them–SEIU quickly won the contract they had long sought. From the political right there has been a predictable backlash against the 65,000 Los Angeles education workers who struck March 21-23. What follows is a defense of our unions and our strike against some of our opponents’ main accusations.
Economy:
Michael Roberts Blog: The manufacturing sector in the major economies is already in recession. This was confirmed for the US with the latest ISM survey of manufacturing activity (PMI). The ISM Manufacturing PMI decreased to 46.3 in March, the lowest level since the pandemic slump in 2020 – anything below 50 implies contraction. This was the fifth straight month of contraction in factory activity.
A Growing Lack of Confidence in the Fed Is Spilling Over into a Lack of Confidence in U.S. Banks Millions of Americans are beginning to ask themselves this question: Is the Federal Reserve (the “Fed”) a competent central bank or a terminally compromised regulator that simply does the bidding of Wall Street’s mega banks to the peril of average Americans and the U.S. economy? Millions of other Americans have already made up their minds on this point. These persistent doubts about an institution with an $8.8 trillion balance sheet – that is backstopped by the U.S. taxpayer – is very bad for confidence in the U.S. banking system, especially when the Fed pivots from one banking bailout to the next. (What was the size of the Fed’s balance sheet prior to its serial bailouts? On December 26, 2007, the Fed’s balance sheet stood at $929 billion. It has soared by 847 percent in just over 15 years of serial bailouts.)
World:
‘Grim Milestone’: Over 400 Human Rights Defenders Murdered Worldwide Last Year “Despite an assault on human rights and the rule of law in many countries,” human rights defenders “showed remarkable courage and persistence in advocating for more democratic, just, and inclusive societies.”
New Currency
Mexico: Death of Migrants in Chihuahua – Capitalism and Its Representatives to Blame On Monday 27 March, at around 10pm a humanitarian catastrophe occurred at a migration detention centre, run by the National Migration Institute (INM) in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, which resulted in (at the time of writing) around 40 deaths and more than 20 people being left in critical condition. Inside the ‘shelter’ – in reality a prison for migrants – there had been unrest since the afternoon of that day. Migrants waiting to return or enter the United States for the first time were carrying out various legal activities to earn a little money, but they were held there against their will. By the evening, the desperation and dissatisfaction with the undignified treatment and lack of minimum conditions – such as the lack of water to drink – caused a small riot to break out. The migrants themselves set fire to their mattresses. It is clear what they were looking for with these actions: to get out, as some of them had families
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