Daily News Digest June 13, 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:
- Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
- I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
- When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
- On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.
- All should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.” The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.
- When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Envionment: Socialism or Ecocide!
One of Many Ways to Beginto End Global Warming: Expose ‘Greenwashing’ — Tax the Polluters 100%!:
Michael Roberts Facebook Blog: Global warming and climate change – the tipping point is coming fast. Scientists say current data shows only six years left to limit global warming to 1.5C. The world’s remaining “carbon budget”, or the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted to have a 50 per cent chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C, has halved in the past three years, a group of leading climate scientists have calculated. That budget would be exhausted in less than six years at current emissions levels from energy of about 38bn tonnes a year, as a result of the continued pollution and taking into account the latest data showing temperatures were rising faster than expected, they said. “This is the critical decade for climate change,” said Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds and lead author of the report released at the UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany., Re Indicators of Global Climate Change 2022: Annual Update Of Large-Scale Indicators Of The State OF THE Climate System And Human Influence
‘A Perfect Storm’: Hundreds of Thousands of Fish Wash Up Dead on Texas Beach “As we see increased water temperatures, certainly his could lead to more of these events occurring,” one expert said. Hundreds of thousands of fish washed up dead along Texas beaches over the weekend as a “perfect storm” of weather, water, and temperature conditions depleted the oxygen they needed to survive. While die-offs like these are naturally occurring, the climate crisis can make them ever more likely. “As we see increased water temperatures, certainly this could lead to more of these events occurring,” Katie St. Clair, who manages the sea life facility at Texas A&M University at Galveston, toldThe New York Times Sunday, “especially in our shallow, near-shore or inshore environments.”
Marjorie Cohn: Youth Are Suing Montana for Failing to Protect Their Future From Climate Chaos The lawsuit is based on Montana’s state constitution, which enshrines the right to a clean and healthful environment. In a case that could have far-reaching implications for the struggle against the climate crisis, the trial in a lawsuit brought by a group of youth plaintiffs will begin in Montana on June 12. Besides being the first such case about climate change to go to trial, Held v. Montana involves the specific impacts the climate crisis has on young people. This trial is a bellwether for other cases throughout the United States. Mat dos Santos, general counsel for Our Children’s Trust, which represents the youth plaintiffs, said that the lawsuit “is not just about Montana. It’s really about the climate here in the United States and around the world.” If this suit is successful, it would be a “watershed moment” that could lead to a “cascade of legal victories around the country,” dos Santos added, and would likely have global implications.
Hell Holes …There are similar stories in many parts of the world. In the Appalachians and the Illinois basin in the US, coal companies have walked away from environmental disasters. Homes are flooded by minewater, rivers are poisoned, mountaintops remain truncated. One estimate suggests there are also 123,000 abandoned, uncapped oilwells in the US; another that plugging the derelict oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico alone – which threaten to discharge methane into the atmosphere and crude oil into the ocean – would cost $30bn. Most of this money should be provided by the oil majors that drilled them, which have a combined capitalisation of $1.2tn, but they are surrounded by the defensive political wall they have boughtthe state and federal legislators who obstruct any attempt to hold them to account. In the Niger delta in Nigeria, blighted by decades of oil spills, many people now have no option but to abandon their poisoned lands and seek to rebuild their lives elsewhere. It’s capitalism made visible: extract the money, dump the costs, abandon the community and move to the next frontier. And this is before you count the much greater liability of the carbon dioxide these corporations have released, for which there was never a clean-up plan. We are all in the hole the fossil fuel companies have left. It is time to stop digging.
‘A Portion of Paradise’: How the Drought is Bringing a Lost US Canyon Back o Life Record dryness has restored an ecosystem under Lake Powell, the country’s second-largest reservoir. Is it time to see it as ‘a national park rather than a storage tank’? One night in May 2003, I found myself in search of a disappearing lake. A friend and I had ventured to the Hite Marina on Lake Powell to see what America’s second-largest reservoir looked like after three years of record drought. In search of a camping spot, we drove down a boat ramp that just a few years earlier was bustling with boaters. Now it sat eerily on a dry lakebed. Donning headlamps, we walked past marooned docks and stranded buoys, drawn toward a strange roaring sound I thought was wind or a boat motor. Instead, it was something I never thought I’d witness. “It’s the Colorado River!” my friend shouted in disbelief at how far the reservoir had already withdrawn. “It’s flowing!”
NYC Officials Knew Wildfire Smoke Was Coming But Did Little to Protect Residents After the worst day of wildfire smoke pollution in U.S. history, critics decried the city’s “lackluster” response. On Monday evening, meteorologists at the National Weather Service center in Upton, New York, noticed something unusual in the satellite imagery. A thick wall of smoke from a series of wildfires that had broken out across Nova Scotia was moving south toward the Empire State. After examining the wind patterns and speed of the plume’s movement, the meteorologists forecast it would enter the country’s most densely populated city by the following morning. Sure enough, New Yorkers awoke on Tuesday to gray air that thickened over the course of the day. By evening the city smelled like a bonfire. By the following afternoon, the air had turned orange. When Stanford researchers crunched the numbers, they found that Wednesday, June 7 was the worst day of pollution from wildfire smoke in the nation’s history, in terms of the average American’s smoke exposure. Air quality plummeted across the Eastern United States, affecting cities from Charlotte to Philadelphia to Chicago. But in no city was the air worse than the Big Apple. The air quality index, or AQI, in parts of Brooklyn reached 484 — nearly double San Francisco’s highest hourly reading during California’s 2020 fire season. In a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, New York Governor Kathy Hochul called it “a health and environmental crisis,” and urged residents to take precautions. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the situation was “alarming and concerning,” and told people to mask up and stay indoors.
Millions Still Under Air Quality Warnings in US as Weather Eases Canada Wildfires North-eastern states remain under air pollution alerts though ‘some improvement’ as number of fires in Canada reduces slightly Millions of North Americans remained under air quality warnings on Friday, even as smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires began to dissipate in the north-eastern US. Moderate to unhealthy air quality continued to linger across a swath of the US and Canada, from the midwest to the Atlantic coast, the US National Weather Service said, although it said “some improvement” will continue this weekend.
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
Congress, There Is No Reason to Add Funds to the Pentagon Budget The enormous sums lavished on the Pentagon are being marshaled in support of a flawed National Defense Strategy that attempts to go everywhere and do everything, making America and the world less safe.
US Freight Trains Are Getting Longer — Is That Safe?
Our roads were not deraigned for today’s traffic! The primary problem is the greed of the freight bosses to transport more freight with fewer employees (‘Under Staffing’)! The following quotes tell part of the proble. Why are roads, bridges in such bad shape? Quite simply, they’re old. Most of the U.S. highway network was built during the Eisenhower administration. In Washington State, for example, 36% of bridges are over 50 years old.— Truckers contend with aging infrastructure, roads and bridges ProPublica’s reporting suggests they should start by looking at federal regulators’ ponderous response to the mounting warnings about the dangers of long freight trains. Before that morning in Hyndman in August 2017, regulators had already investigated seven long-train accidents in which the length was a culprit, and the nation’s largest rail worker union had sounded alarms about a pattern of problems. None of this caused the Federal Railroad Administration, the agency in charge of train safety, to intercede — even as more long trains crashed in the years after the Hyndman derailment, sending cars spilling into other communities. 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.” — The True Dangers of Long Trains
Philadelphia Highway Collapse Could Impact Major Interstate ‘For a Long Time’ Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said he would declare an emergency on Monday so the state could access federal money for repairs, which could take months. A tanker truck fire caused a raised portion of Interstate 95 (I-95) to collapse in northeastern Philadelphia Sunday, indefinitely blocking one of the nation’s busiest highways and threatening the Delaware River with an oil spill. The fire and collapse was triggered by a crash under the northbound ramp around 6:15 am ET, The Associated Press reported. The fire then caused the northbound lanes above it to collapse and “compromised” the southbound ones, Derek Bowmer, battalion chief of the Philadelphia Fire Department, said. There have been no injuries reported at this time.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Economy:
The Climate Crisis Will Be the Mother of All Financial Crises Our rapidly heating planet is the fundamental crisis for humanity and will have repercussions on all human systems. The criminal profits of large multinational corporations in 2022 might seem to indicate a reversal of the historical trend for global profit decline of recent decades, but they are only a hiccup and a massive assault enabled by the privileges of the monopolists of global capital. The fall in profitability continues and the climate crisis is already and will continue to be the main factor in the current and future financial crises. The inflationary spiral we are still living in was triggered by the oil companies’ choice to use their monopoly over the energy system to offset their falling profits during Covid lockdowns. This comes after decades of hooking the economy on fossil fuels in an absolute alliance with the political mainstream, with the complacency and sometimes even agreement of green and left-wing parties. All agreements have been torn up by now, only barbarism remains. However, on top of this assault produced by the imposition of unparalleled high prices, other imbalances beyond the control of the capitalist elite have begun to manifest themselves.
“Relationship Managers” Handled Collapsed Silvergate and Signature Banks’ Crypto Accounts; Citibank’s Dictator Accounts; and JPMorgan’s Jeffrey Epstein Accounts A dangerous malignancy has been growing on the U.S. banking system for at least two dozen years: It’s the job function benignly called the “Relationship Manager.” In October 2013, Carmen Segarra, a lawyer and former Bank Examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Relationship Managers there, who were assigned to delicately manage relationships between the New York Fed and the powerful Wall Street banks, had obstructed and interfered with her investigation of Goldman Sachs and tried to bully her into changing her negative findings. When Segarra refused to change her examination, she was fired, according to a federal lawsuit she filed. In 2018, Segarra provided a more detailed accounting of how these corrupted relationships play out in her book, Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street.
World:
‘One of the Most Dangerous Periods in Human History’: Global Nuclear Arsenal Grew in 2022 “There is an urgent need to restore nuclear diplomacy and strengthen international controls on nuclear arms.” A leading international think tank said Monday that the world is “drifting into one of the most dangerous periods in human history” as nuclear-armed countries continue adding to their stockpiles, with the total number of operational weapons of mass destruction growing last year. The latest research from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates that the nine countries currently known to be in possession of nuclear weapons had 9,576 working nukes at the beginning of 2023, up slightly from the 9,490 total in January 2022.
Education. Heal, 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