Daily News Digest April 19, 2023

Daily News Digest Archives

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:

Product Development

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:

Corporatism grips the corporate Republican Party and most Democrats into indentured obeisance to the fossil fuel industry. The CEOs of the purveyors of greenhouse gases are hostile or indifferent to how the burning of coal, gas, and oil are detonating the planet’s climate patterns. Yet, Congress fails to abate large taxes and other subsidies for these climate catastrophe corporations. It is time to visualize the Congress as a giant inanimate boulder blocking the highway of life, straddled on both sides by steep cliffs of death. Unfortunately, despite its awesome power under the Constitution to do good, Congress wallows in corruption. Too many members of Congress are driven to ignorant or nefarious actions by the venom of campaign cash. Congress should be viewed as a criminogenic enterprise.    One learned congressman called Congress a “criminal enterprise,” which is technically inaccurate, for there is no criminal statute covering Congress. (The solons have insulated their privileged position.) However, if you adopt the early common law of criminality—before statutory laws proliferated, congressional actions and inactions fit the criteria of premeditated endangerment, obstruction of justice, and repeated knowing and willful behavior costing lives and livelihoods without due process of l — Ralph Nader. Why Be a Capitol Hill Citizen?

Robber Barons

Videos/Podcasts of the Day:

Report from Khartoum: Civilians Killed & Trapped Amid Fighting 

Between Factions in Sudan’s Military

 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 

As Paper Shows Benefits of Expanded Child Tax Credit, Sinema Challenger Gallego Says ‘Bring It Back’ A Georgetown University economist tied pandemic stimulus and expanded child tax credit payments to reduced low birth weights, fewer preterm births, and higher Apgar scores.

Some of Diane Feinstein’s ‘Legacy’: She Never Refrained from Voting on Defense (War) Budget

Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:

 The Bright Side of Extinction There is a long philosophical tradition of eliminating future suffering through nonexistence.     If you think we’re in the End Times, that humanity might be writing the final paragraphs of its autobiography, you’re not alone. A 2015 survey of the general public found that 54% of people in the U.S., UK, Canada and Australia “rated the risk of our way of life ending within the next 100 years at 50% or greater.” Another survey found that “four in 10 Americans think the odds that global warming will cause humans to become extinct are 50% or higher.” And a recent poll out from Monmouth University reveals that 55% of Americans are either “very worried” or “somewhat worried” that “artificial intelligence could eventually pose a threat to the existence of the human race.”

Report Cites RBC as World’s Biggest Funder for Fossil Fuels, Fracked Gas The Royal Bank of Canada was the biggest fossil fuel financier in the world in 2022 after handing over more than US$42 billion to oil, gas, and coal projects, a coalition of environmental groups reports in the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report survey yesterday. 

On Back of Willow Project, Biden DOE Approves ‘Another Carbon Bomb’ in Alaska “Claiming that a project like this could possibly be in the public interest isn’t just out of step with the Biden administration’s stated commitment to climate action—it’s out of step with reality,” one campaigner said of the fracked gas export initiative. 

Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant Waste: Plan to Dump Wastewater From Indian Point Into Hudson River Paused After Local Outcry “My constituents are already overburdened with the negative environmental externalities left behind by industrial infrastructure, and we should not be treated like pawns in this process,” said one local lawmaker about Holtec International’s now-paused plan.

People Power Ends Nuclear Energy Era in Germany The German nuclear phase-out is a victory of reason over the lust for profit; over powerful corporations and their client politicians. Millions of people worked towards this day for years. People who protested against reprocessing plants, nuclear waste transport, unsafe nuclear waste storage facilities, and the construction of new nuclear power plants. Those decades of resistance were worth it.     The German nuclear phase-out is a victory of reason over the lust for profit; over powerful corporations and their client politicians. It is a people-powered success against all the odds.

Louisiana’s Hurricane Victims Struggle to Recover as Climate Disasters Pile Up Government agencies have abandoned Black and low-income communities in the face of one devastating storm after another. 

LNG Is a Bridge Fuel to a Hotter, More Dangerous World The era of fossil fuels is coming to an end—and we need to accelerate it for the sake of humanity, ecosystems, and life on Earth everywhere.

The Hidden Connection Between the Ohio Derailment, Environmental Injustice, and Mass Incarceration Attorney General Dave Yost is now suing the Norfolk Southern rail company on behalf of Ohio for the reckless endangerment of residents’ health. The recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio required locals to evacuate their homes, adding to the ongoing list of recent environmental disasters in the US. Since then, the crisis has garnered much-deserved attention, including a federal attempt to utilize multiple agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Transportation to support the community following the event.     What most people don’t know is that less than 15 miles from East Palestine, there are two federal prisons housing thousands of incarcerated individuals and employing a large correctional staff to support its operations—a population unable to quickly escape such a disaster.     Unfortunately, it is nothing new that those who live and work within correctional facilities are exposed to environmental hazards. In fact, 134 federal and state prisons are located within a mile of a Superfund cleanup site, which are known to release toxins that are harmful to human health. Documenting this risk, recent research shows that correctional facilities in the Southwest are nearly six times more likely to have excess arsenic in their water systems than surrounding communities.     These environmental hazards aren’t without health impacts, which could be one reason why both those impacted by incarceration and those who work in correctional facilities have shorter life expectancies than the general public. One such study provides evidence for this connection by showing that 13% of deaths in Texas prisons were related to excessive heat in facilities without air conditioning.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Police Are Abusing Civil Forfeiture Laws to Seize Cash for Themselves Massive loopholes in state laws are letting police walk away with millions in cash.

Abortion Rights Supporters Protest at US Supreme Court, Nationwide From Florida and Texas to California and Illinois, demonstrators marched with chants like, “Red state, blue state, you can’t hide, the war on abortion is nationwide,” and “Fascist judges make me ill, hands off the abortion pill.”     As legal fights raise concerns about the future accessibility of the abortion medication mifepristone, reproductive rights supporters on Saturday rallied outside the U.S. Supreme Court and in cities across the country.     The demonstrations came a day after the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked a recent ruling by Texas-based federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump who struck down the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2000 approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs often taken in tandem

Labor:

Economy:

Shadow Government Statics Daily Up April 15-16

  • BREAKING NEWS –- INTENSIFYING MONETARY INFLATION AND DEEPENING ECONOMIC CONTRACTION AHEAD. Federal Reserve appears to be re-liquefying the system, returning the Monetary Base to pre-March 2023 FOMC levels.
  • University of Michigan’s early-April Consumer Sentiment held shy by 37.1% (-37.1%) of ever recovering its February 2020 pre-Pandemic peak.
  • The headline March 2023 CPI, ShadowStats-Alternate CPI and PPI annual year-to-year inflation rates all dropped sharply, against the year-ago extreme jump in last year’s oil and gasoline prices followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022.
  • The March 2023 Cass Freight Index® showed continued contracting freight activity, still consistent with Recession.
  • Next DAILY UPDATE coverage will be Tuesday, April 18th, reviewing March 2023 New Residential Construction, followed by the initial “Advance Estimate” of First-Quarter 2023 GDP on Friday, the 21st.

The Emerging New World Economy The emerging new always both frightens and inspires the fading old. History is that unity of opposites. Sharp-edged rejections of what is new clash with enthusiastic celebrations of it. The old gets pushed away even as bitter denials of that reality surge. The emerging new world economy displays just such contradictions. Four major developments can illustrate them and underscore their interactions.     First, the neoliberal globalizing paradigm is now the old. Economic nationalism is the new. It is another reversal of their previous positions. Driven by its celebrated profit motive, capitalism in its old centers (western Europe, North America, and Japan) invested increasingly elsewhere: where labor power was far cheaper; markets were growing faster; ecological constraints were weak or absent; and governments better facilitated rapid accumulation of capital. Those investments brought big profits back into capitalism’s old centers, whose stock markets boomed and thus their income and wealth inequalities widened (since the richest Americans own the great bulk of securities). Even faster was the economic growth unleashed after the 1960s in what quickly became capitalism’s new centers (China, India, and Brazil). That growth was further enhanced by the arrival of the capital relocated from the old centers. Capitalism’s dynamic had earlier moved its production center from England to the European continent, then on to North America and Japan. That same profit-driven dynamic took it to mainland Asia and beyond during the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries.

JPMorgan Chase’s Deposits Declined by 57 Times that of Citigroup Over Past 12 Months On April 11, Wall Street On Parade ran this headline: Fed Report: Largest 25 U.S. Banks Have Shed $700 Billion in Deposits Over Past Year. Using deposit data directly from the Federal Reserve’s weekly H.8 report, we documented that contrary to the misleading reporting in the mainstream business press, it wasn’t the regional banks that were losing the bulk of deposits in the U.S., with the biggest banks the beneficiaries, it was actually the biggest banks that were dramatically shedding deposits. We explained as follows:    “The reality is that the 25 largest domestically-chartered commercial banks in the U.S. have been bleeding deposits for most of the past 12 months, shedding more than $700 billion in deposits between April 13, 2022 and March 29, 2023. To put that in even sharper focus, all U.S. domestically-chartered commercial banks have lost a total of $970 billion during the same time period. That means that the largest 25 banks account for a whopping 72 percent of the plunge in deposits over the past year.”

World:

Zionist Storm Troopers: Israeli Police Assault Palestinian Christian Worshippers in Jerusalem Ordinarily, 10,000 worshippers would flock to the church for this festival, but the Israeli police under the new extremist, Jewish supremacist Netanyahu government have refused to allow more than a fraction of them to gather there this year. 

Sudan: Bloody Clash Erupts Within Counter-Revolution An open clash within the Sudanese counterrevolution has plunged the country into violence, which has already killed around 100 people and wounded hundreds more. This long-anticipated battle to determine which clique of murderous gangsters gets to plunder Sudan is a tragic consequence of the failure of the masses to take power after the 2018-9 revolution.

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