Daily News Digest April 12, 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:
What If, What If, What If
Savage Capitalism: From Climate Change to Bank Failures to War David Barsamian: On March 20th, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its latest report. The new IPCC assessment from senior scientists warned that there’s little time to lose in tackling the climate crisis. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “The rate of temperature rise in the last half-century is the highest in 2,000 years. Concentrations of carbon dioxide are at their highest in at least 2 million years. The climate time bomb is ticking.” At COP 27 he said, “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator. It is the defining issue of our age. It is the central challenge of our century.” My question to you is: You’d think survival would be a galvanizing issue, but why isn’t there a greater sense of urgency in addressing it in a substantial way? Noam Chomsky: It was a very strong statement by Guterres. I think it could be stronger still. It’s not just the defining issue of this century, but of human history. We are now, as he says, at a point where we’ll decide whether the human experiment on Earth will continue in any recognizable form. The report was stark and clear. We’re reaching a point where irreversible processes will be set into motion. It doesn’t mean that everybody’s going to die tomorrow, but we’ll pass tipping points where nothing more can be done, where it’s just decline to disaster. So yes, it’s a question of the survival of any form of organized human society. Already there are many signs of extreme danger and threat, so far almost entirely in countries that have had the smallest role in producing the disaster. It’s often said, and correctly, that the rich countries have created the disaster and the poor countries are its victims, but it’s actually a little more nuanced than that. It’s the rich in the rich countries who have created the disaster and everyone else, including the poor in the rich countries, face the problems.
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:
If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.” ― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Black Agenda Radio April 7, 2023 With Margaret Kimberly
Margaret Kimberley Remarks at Chicago Area Peace Action Peace Summit
Zone of Peace Campaign Press Conference
Ajamu Baraka Discusses the Zone of Peace and Kamala Harris’ Trip to Africa
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
Leaked Document Appears To Show NATO Special Operations Forces Are in Ukraine The document says just under 100 troops from the US, Britain, France, and Latvia are in Ukraine. APentagon document that has appeared on the internet as part of a trove of leaks shows the number of NATO special operations forces that are inside Ukraine, according to The Guardian.
A Change in Values to Reverse a Nation in Perilous Decline We need a value to replace greed as our highest goal. Compassion? Justice? Love of truth? We do not know how to name it precisely, but that does not mean we cannot strive for something that can guide us, other than concerns with money. The Reality — Capitalist’s Have no ‘Moral Fiber’: “It’s time for governments to find their moral fiber and tax the richest, so we can stave off climate catastrophe and lift everyone out of poverty.” With global finance leaders set to gather in Washington, D.C. this week for the spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Oxfam is warning rich countries against using accounting gimmicks to artificially inflate their global climate funding commitments.
CIA’s War on WikiLeaks Is a Scandal Worthy of Congressional Investigation Kevin Gosztola provides updates on the case against Julian Assange and discusses the threats to U.S. press freedom. In 2010, Chelsea Manning shocked the world with leaked documents that exposed abuses and crimes committed by the United States military in Iraq. These revelations also made the publisher of those documents, Julian Assange, and his organization, WikiLeaks, household names. Kevin Gosztola was one of the few reporters to cover the U.S. military court-martial against Manning. Gosztola was at Fort Meade in Maryland for each phase, including the trial, and became a go-to resource for both the public and the media (PBS’s “Frontline” noted his critical role in the coverage). Since then, he has reported on the unfolding saga of Assange with equal tenacity and focus. In his new book, Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange, Gosztola meticulously documents how state and private actors have colluded to punish a journalist fiercely committed to transparency, truth-telling and uncovering the secrets of the powerful. In this interview, Gosztola provides updates on the case against Assange and discusses the potential threats to press freedom in the U.S.
Celebrating Daniel Ellsberg and a Courage Unconfined to the Past In the closing time of his life, the famed whistleblower continues to speak out with urgency, in particular about the need for genuine diplomacy between the U.S. and Russia, as well as the U.S. and China, to avert nuclear war.
State Media: He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune In early April, Twitter added a “State-Affiliated Media” tag to National Public Radio’s account on the social media platform, putting it in the same league as Russia’s RT, China’s Xinhua, and other government-funded “news” outlets. Within a few days, under withering criticism from, among others, NPR CEO Jack Lansing (who came to NPR after running other US state-affiliated media such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe), Twitter backed off a bit and changed NPR’s label to “Government Funded.”What’s the difference? There isn’t one.
An American Dilemma: Michael Kazin and the Recycling of Cold War Liberalism “We must release the human imagination, in order to open up a new exploration of the alternatives now possible for the human community; we must set forth general and detailed plans, ideas, visions; in brief, programs. We must transcend the mere exhortation of general principle and opportunist reactions. What are needed are commanding views of the future, and it is our opportunity and task to provide them. We must develop and debate among ourselves—and then among larger publics—genuine programs; we must make of these programs divisive and partisan political issues within the U.S.A.” — C. Wright Mills, The Causes of World War III, New York: Ballantine Books, 1960, page 159. — The U.S. Left’s Leveraging Russian Militarism to Support a Domestic Equivalent — Michael Kazin has written critically acclaimed books about left history. Yet, an unfortunate problem for us is that being an expert in left history does not turn one into an expert in anti-militarism. Militarism can be defined as the surplus projection of violence for power accumulation purposes, a surplus seen in the displacement of diplomacy and more peaceful resolution of conflicts. This surplus is defined by self-fulfilling prophecies like the “security dilemma” in which one state’s arming itself provokes another, which sets an arms spiral into motion. Parts of the left itself have been very weak in opposing militarism, extending to both the Bolshevik left (as Simone Weil noted) and anti-Communist opponents who sided with forces championing the arms race, CIA coups, nuclear overkill and military adventurism in Vietnam, Latin America and the Middle East. Kazin’s essay in Dissent Magazine (March 23, 2023), “Reject the Left-Right Alliance Against Ukraine,” falls into this larger pattern.
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
Global Warming is Systemic to Capitalisn!
Climate Emergency is the Biggest Health Crisis of Our Time – Bigger Than Covid As toll on public health and global economy rises, radical action is needed on greenhouse gas emissions As toll on public health and global economy rises, radical action is needed on greenhouse gas emissions The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is a grim, yet unsurprising, reminder of the catastrophic effect global heating is having on our planet. The message from leading climate scientists is clear: action is needed now. Not tomorrow, not next year, not by the end of the decade.
EPA (Employer Protection Agency) Faces Questions Over Plastic-Based Fuel With Huge Cancer Risk Agency sued after ProPublica and the Guardian revealed the EPA gave a Chevron refinery approval for a fuel that could leave people nearby with a one-in-four lifetime risk of cancer The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is facing a lawsuit filed by a community group and questions from a US senator over the agency’s approval of fuels made from discarded plastic under a program it touted as “climate-friendly”. The new scrutiny is in response to an earlier investigation by ProPublica and the Guardian that revealed the EPA approved the new chemicals even though its own scientists calculated that pollution from production of one of the plastic-based fuels was so toxic that one in four people exposed to it over their lifetime would be expected to develop cancer. That risk is 250,000 times greater than the level usually considered acceptable by the EPA division that approves new chemicals, and it’s higher than the lifetime risk of cancer for current smokers.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Countering ‘Miscarriage of Justice,’ Metro Nashville Council Reappoints Justin Jones “Voters in District 52 elected Justin Jones to be their voice at the statehouse, and that voice was taken away this past week,” said Nashville’s mayor. “So let’s give them their voice back.”
Labor:
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics Daily Update April 10th to April
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BREAKING NEWS Preliminary March 2023 Monetary Base reflected emergency flip-flop easing, despite some late-month pullback, while the pre-banking-crisis February Money Supply M2 signaled continuing inflation pressures from increasingly high systemic liquidity.
- March 2023 Payrolls and Unemployment held consistent with an evolving Recession.
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As to the longer-range bullish Gold and Silver circumstance, see the brief summary in the following ALERT, with more detail in the later SYSTEMIC RISK SECTION.
Michael Roberts Facebook Blog: A rocky recovery, says the IMF in its latest economic forecast for the global economy. “The outlook is uncertain again amid financial sector turmoil, high inflation, ongoing effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and three years of COVID.” In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF forecasts that global growth will slow this year to 2.8% before rising modestly to 3% in 2024. But global inflation will fall only slowly to 7% this year and 4.9% in 2024. And that’s the base forecast. If credit tightens further and interest rates stay high, global growth could drop to just 1%. The G7 economies will grow little more than 1% this year and after accounting for population growth, hardly at all. The UK and Germany will contract. China and India will lead the way with 5-6% real GDP growth this year.
Fed Report: Largest 25 U.S. Banks Have Shed $700 Billion in Deposits Over Past Year To read the headlines in the major business press, one would think that since the upheaval began in the U.S. banking system, the largest U.S. commercial banks have been the beneficiaries in terms of deposit inflows. For example, on March 13 the Financial Times ran this headline: “Large US banks inundated with new depositors as smaller lenders face turmoil.” The subhead was even more questionable, reading: “Failure of Silicon Valley Bank prompts flight to likes of JPMorgan and Citi.” (JPMorgan Chase has been charged with five felony counts by the U.S. Department of Justice over the past nine years while Citigroup’s stock has been a basket case since the financial collapse in 2008. Citi did a 1-for-10 reverse stock split in 2011 to window dress its stock price.) See Citigroup stock price chart below.
World:
The Good Friday Agreement: a Quarter Century of Dashed Hopes Twenty-five years ago this week, the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was signed in Belfast. Heralding it as nothing less than the beginning of a new epoch for the North of Ireland, the British and Irish government signatories – along with its American architects – were inebriated with their own ‘success’. ‘History’ had been made! The very day after its signing, on 11 April, the mouthpiece of Irish bourgeois society – The Irish Times – put it in no uncertain terms: “Where the inherited historic icons were the rebels of 1916 […] those of the coming times will be the peacemakers who buried the quarrel of 400 years inside the grey, prefabricated huts of the Castle Buildings at Stormont.” . . . Today, one can hardly believe that such words were ever uttered by someone living on this planet. Twenty-five years on, hardly a stone remains standing of the GFA and all the promises made.
All-Latvian Teachers’ Strike: Class Struggle On the Rise In the Baltics It is no secret that the class struggle in the Baltic states has been stagnant since the restoration of capitalism in 1991. But now, we are beginning to see a change in the situation, with a national, three-day strike by education workers in April. This is a sign of things to come. In Latvia, OECD data indicates that between 2000-2010 there were zero days lost to strike action per 1,000 workers annually. While this does come with some caveats – such as the exclusion of public sector, political, and unauthorised strikes – the data is still striking. Neither the economic damage caused by the breakup of the USSR and the gradual departure of a third of Latvia’s population since 1991, nor the economic shock of the 2008 crash, resulted in any sort of revival of the class struggle. This is a product of the national chauvinism that accompanied the breakup of the USSR, and the division of the working class by political elites who fan the flames of rabid sectarianism against the Russian-speaking minority of Russians, Ukranians and Byelorussians.
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