Daily News Digest April 17, 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:
‘So Much Power, So Much Influence’: The Super-Rich and Our Government
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:
Vítor Gaspar, head of fiscal policy at the IMF, told the Financial Times that Brazil, China, Japan, South Africa, Turkey, the UK and the US were likely to push public debt up by more than 5 percentage points of gross domestic product over the next five years. By 2028, the world’s public debt burden was on course to match the value of goods and services produced in the world. “By the end of our projection horizon — 2028 — public debt in the world is expected to reach almost 100 per cent of GDP,” Gaspar said, adding that this was “back to the record levels set in the year of the pandemic”. — Public Debt Could Return to Pandemic-Era High, Warns IMF Fiscal Chief
Oil companies have gained control over billions of gallons of water from Western rivers in preparation for future efforts to extract oil from shale deposits under the Rocky Mountains, according to a new report by an environmental group that opposes such projects. The group, Western Resource Advocates, used public records to conclude that energy companies are collectively entitled to divert more than 6.5 billion gallons of water a day during peak river flows. The companies also hold rights to store, in dozens of reservoirs, 1.7 million acre feet of water, enough to supply metro Denver for six years. — Oil, Water Are Volatile Mix in West Energy Firms Buying River Rights Add to Competition for Scarce Resource (2009)
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
George Carlin – The American Dream You Need to be Asleep To Believe It
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
It’s Called the American Dream Because You Have To Be Asleep to Believe It A thorough dissection of America’s capitalist mythology reveals the sham to which lots of people continue to subscribe, despite growing nationwide suffering.
Domestic Spying?: From The Strange Case of Jack TeixeirAn Air National Guardsman in Cape Cod posts classified documents to “Thug Shaker Central.”:
The details of Teixeira’s case have surprised observers for a number of reasons — beginning with the fact that the Air National Guard has an intelligence division. Even those intimately familiar with this domestic sub-branch of the Army have expressed shock that a low-level staffer like Teixeira had access to sensitive information about a war in eastern Europe. “I can’t explain why the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s intelligence wing would have access to the kind of information that has been disclosed,” Juliette Kayyem, a former National Guard adviser to the Massachusetts governor’s office, told The Boston Globe. “Why a 21-year-old in the Air National Guard has access to intelligence about a war that we’re not fighting, and that poses no threat to the homeland, is the question that has to be answered.” Another important question, argues Matt Taibbi on his Substack publication Racket, is why media outlets accepting framing of the leak as a “deliberate, criminal act” have been happy to accept and even celebrate leaks by highly placed officials in recent years. “and even celebrate leaks by highly placed officials in recent years. “The intelligence community has itself been massively interfering in domestic news using illegal leaks for years,” writes Taibbi. Remember the “Why Did Obama Dawdle on Russia’s Hacking?” story by David Ignatius of The Washington Post in January of 2017, outing would-be Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had been captured in intercepts speaking with a Russian ambassador? That was just the first in a string of leak- or intercept-based news stories that dominated news cycles in the Trump years, involving everything from conclusions of the [Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act] court to supposedly secret meetings in the Seychelles. When civilians or whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange (in jail for an incredible four years now), Reality Winner and now the “Discord Leaker” bring leaked information to the public, the immediate threat is Espionage Act charges and decades of jail time. When a CIA head or a top FBI official does it, it’s just news. In fact, officials talk openly about using “strategic leaks” as a public relations staple.
The Pentagon Leaks: Utter Humiliation for US Imperialism US officials are reeling from a major leak of over 100 pages of highly sensitive intelligence, uploaded to the internet by persons unknown [now alleged to be 21-year-old Air National Guardsman, Jack Teixeira – 14/4], and first shared by gamers on Discord. The wide-ranging documents lift the lid on the extent of US involvement in the Ukraine War, the serious difficulties faced by the Ukrainian side, the role of the Israeli secret services in fomenting mass protests against the Netanyahu regime, and much more besides. This highly embarrassing blow to the prestige of the US state will severely undermine the confidence of its allies – many of whom (as revealed by the documents) are being actively spied on by Uncle Sam. The leak also happens to confirm much of the analysis of world politics we have presented in recent months, proving once more the advantage Marxist analysis permits us, of foresight over astonishment.
Impeach Them all! The Case of Steven Donziger: Supreme Court Liberals Help Turn Judges into Prosecutors So the truth is out: the three so-called liberals on the supreme court are phonies. More precisely, they, like most of their conservative brethren, are corporate hacks. We learned this a couple of weeks ago, when the high court ruled against Steven Donziger, a climate-activist attorney, long persecuted and then literally prosecuted by Chevron. In a pro-corporate decision about as subtle as a heart attack, seven of the nine justices declined to hear Donziger’s appeal of a criminal contempt decision involving his representation of Indigenous Ecuadorians against Chevron. Two far-right justices dissented. In the weeks since this ruling, when the highly questionable gifts of, among other things, a luxury $500,000 vacation to their GOP colleague, justice Clarence Thomas, burst into public view, the supreme court’s Donziger fiasco shifted onto the back burner. There has been no comment, no explanation, no hint that the three supposedly liberal justices believed anything was amiss. No indication that the three Dem appointees recognized that their ruling favoring partisan judges and corporate power is, in a different way, as damaging to Americans as Thomas’s rather more gaudy escapades with the very wealthy Nazi-memorabilia collector and real estate mogul, Harlan Crow.
Robber Baron Supreme Court: ‘He Must Be Impeached’: Clarence Thomas Made Undisclosed Property Deal With Billionaire Megadonor “Harlan Crow is not, as Thomas claims, his ‘dearest friend’ so much as his corrupt benefactor,” said one critic. “Thomas is unfit to serve on any court, let alone our nation’s highest court.” New revelations about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s business dealings with Texas Republican megadonor Harlan Crow on Thursday led to intensified calls for the right-wing justice’s impeachment, as ProPublicareported on a previously undisclosed real estate transaction between the two men. A week after the first report on Crow’s funding of Thomas’ travel was published, ProPublica revealed that Crow purchased two vacant lots and the home where Thomas’ mother lived, all owned by Thomas and his family, in Savannah, Georgia in 2014.
The Contradiction in Biden’s Tech And Trade Policies On the world stage, Big Tech becomes a constituency to placate. Their business models may make life worse for everyone on Earth, but they make life worse in an American way, dammit.
Teach History. Democracy Requires It. Learning history is partly about understanding injustices past and present. But it’s also about understanding how people came together to fight back. At 85 years of age, having been a civil rights lawyer virtually all my professional life, at times my mind wanders toward despair. How as a nation have we fallen into such a place? How have we simply watched as one of our political parties has embraced election deniers who seek to undermine our democracy and mortally weaken our public schools and public universities? How have we watched abortion rights and voting rights come under the gun of right-wing political power.
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
Global Warming is Systemic to Capitalisn! : Banks Choose Ecocide! Banking on Chaos The world’s 60 biggest banks poured over $5,500,000,000,000 over 7 years into the fossil fuel industry, driving climate chaos & causing deadly local community impacts.
Disturbing Sea Level Studies For decades, climate scientists have been sounding the alarm that unless the nations of the world stop emitting greenhouse gases global warming will bring dangerous consequences. Rather, greenhouse gases, like CO2, have escalated to new highs year-over-year without hesitation. Now, new climate studies are exposing the results of decades of a couldn’t-care-less world interwoven within a deadly entrapment of free-market dictates of “not to worry, the market will handle it.” It hasn’t! Ergo, the price for decades of jaded indifference is starting to run very high and maybe irreversible with a sea level calamity poised to spring loose, catching the world unprepared. Two major new studies paint a sobering picture of unexpected sea levels well beyond anybody’s expectations. Indeed, the world is not braced for this:
- According to an article in The Guardian d/d April 10, 2023: “What experts are calling a dramatic surge in ocean levels has taken place along the US south-eastern and Gulf of Mexico coastline since 201o. (referenced study: Jianjun Yin, Decadal Acceleration of Sea Level Rise Along the U.S. East and Gulf of Mexico During 2010-2022…Journal of Climate, March 2, 2023)
- Another new study: Christine L. Batchelor, et al, Rapid, Buoyancy-Driven Ice-Sheet Retreat of Hundreds of Metres Per Day, Nature, April 5, 2023 demonstrates nightmarish rapid sea level rise based upon events in the past when ice sheets retreated in pulses of almost 2,000 feet per day during the end of the last ice age. Conditions today may be similar. As reported by Inside Climate News, the Batchelor study has alarmed climate scientists, especially glaciologists at the top of the field like Eric Rignot (more to follow) and according to Frazer Christie, polar scientist at Scott Polar Research Center/University of Cambridge: The study showed ice sheet retreat rates up to 20 times faster than previously measured anywhere else: “It’s probably likely, in my opinion, that this rapid buoyancy driven course of retreat, could be all that’s needed to set in motion a chain of events that spirals into a more runaway style of retreat.” (Source: Global Warming Could Drive Pulses of Ice Sheet Retreat Reaching 2,000 Feet Per Day, Inside Climate News, April 5, 2023)
Biden Does as the Big Banks DO!: Biden Approves Alaska Gas Exports As Critics Condemn Another ‘Carbon Bomb’ Energy department gives green light to exports from liquefied natural gas program, after Willow project approved last month
Climate Activists Targeted by Fossil Fuel Industry Spies at Standing Rock May Boeve, who heads 350.org, decried private security firm TigerSwan’s “astonishing abuse of power and significant interference with the right to political freedom of thought and the right to protest.”
World’s 60 Largest Banks Have Dumped $5.5 Trillion Into Fossil Fuels Since Paris Accord “Fossil fuel companies are the ones dousing the planet in oil, gas, and coal, but big banks hold the matches,” said one advocate. “Without financing, fossil fuels won’t burn.”
Big Oil/Frackers Don’t Plug Their Wells!: Energy Companies Have Left Colorado With Billions of Dollars in Oil and Gas Cleanup As the state tries to reform its relationship to drilling, an expensive task awaits. When an oil or gas well reaches the end of its lifespan, it must be plugged. If it isn’t, the well might leak toxic chemicals into groundwater and spew methane, carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere for years on end. But plugging a well is no simple task: Cement must be pumped down into it to block the opening, and the tubes connecting it to tanks or pipelines must be removed, along with all the other onsite equipment. Then the top of the well has to be chopped off near the surface and plugged again, and the area around the rig must be cleaned up. There are nearly 60,000 unplugged wells in Colorado in need of this treatment — each costing $140,000 on average, according to the Carbon Tracker, a climate think tank, in a new report that analyzes oil and gas permitting data. Plugging this many wells will cost a lot —more than $8 billion, the report found.
The Elephant on the Banks of the Colorado River The Navajo Nation’s rights to enough water for a healthy permanent homeland, rights that might include water from the Colorado River that borders the northwest corner of its reservation in Arizona, are the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case being heard and decided this year. To the federal government, state governments, irrigation districts and water districts involved with the river, the reservation is a 27,325-square-mile elephant that they aren’t inviting in for a drink. The federal government, with authority over both the tribe and the river, has never permitted the Navajo Nation to engage in negotiations for water from the river. After 23 years of drought, the Navajo water situation is grim. Thirty to 40 percent of homes on the reservation lack running water and many drive for hours every week to far off uncontaminated wells for water for themselves and their livestock.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
2 California Prisons Face Imminent Flooding. They Must Be Evacuated Now. California prison authorities have a history of failing to evacuate incarcerated people for weather-related emergencies. These crises are set to come to a head in coming weeks in Corcoran, California, where the refilling of Tulare Lake has created an imminent danger of flooding at two already-crumbling and overpopulated state prisons. This spring’s slow-moving flooding disaster is projected to hit the largest prison in the state, California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility, and the connected California State Prison-Corcoran, caging a total of 8,138 people.
Labor:
Now More, Than Ever, We Need a Bill of Rights for Working People!: A Bill Of Rights For Working People (1976) Today we are ruled by a new tyranny. Industrial and financial barons govern by the rule of profits, denying us the basic democratic and social rights we need for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness:”
- America is in a developing crisis. The quality of life for most people is going from bad to worse. And the present system offers no hope for the better.
- There is no end to wars—one after another since the end of World War If. After Korea came Vietnam; now the Middle East is like a powder keg.
- Huge stockpiles of atomic weapons are a constant reminder of the threat of nuclear war.
- Pollution is destroying our environment—from the water we drink to the air we breathe.
- The economic crisis is worsening.
- Breakdowns, shortages, layoffs, soaring prices—each week it’s harder to get by. Suffering the most are those at the bottom of the ladder—Blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and other doubly oppressed people.
Economy:
World:
Riots erupt across France as Constitutional Council validates Macron’s pension cuts The Constitutional Council approved a law opposed by an overwhelming majority of the French people and which Macron rammed through without even a vote in parliament. At 6 p.m. yesterday, France’s Constitutional Council ruled that President Emmanuel Macron’s pension cuts are constitutional, removing the last legal obstacle to their adoption as law. The Elysée presidential palace announced 15 minutes later that Macron will promulgate the pension cuts as law within 48 hours. The Council’s predictable approval of a law opposed by 80 percent of the French people, and which Macron rammed through without even a vote in parliament, again tears the “democratic” mask off the capitalist state. It imposes the diktat of the banks, who plan amid the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine to massively divert social spending into strengthening the military-police machine. The struggle against the pension cuts can only be waged as a political struggle directed against the entire capitalist state machine.
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