Daily News Digest June 27, 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:
The four passengers paid $250,000 each for the macabre adventure of descending to 12,500 feet below the surface to see the wreckage of the Titanic where 1,517 people died after the ship hit an iceberg in 1912. The vessel went missing on June 18. The U.S. and Canadian coast guards did everything possible, dispatching ships and planes to locate and save those five. But debris found on June 22 indicates that the submersible vessel apparently imploded. By contrast, many of those who died when the Andrianna capsized on June 14 still have no names. The ship, an overloaded fishing vessel, sailed from Libya to Italy, carrying between 400 and 750 migrants from various countries. Some 104 were rescued, hundreds of others remain unaccounted for, many of them women and children who were below decks. There were Egyptians, Syrians, Pakistanis, Afghans, and Palestinians among the survivors and perhaps other nationalities among the dead. These passengers were mostly poor people heading for Europe in the hope of finding a way to make a better living and take care of themselves and their families. — Two Shipwrecks Reveal the State of the World
Today, all the big U.S. banks have established multiple correspondent relationships throughout the world so they may engage in international financial transactions for themselves and their clients in places where they do have a physical presence. Many of the largest U.S. and European banks located in the financial centers of the world serve as correspondents for thousands of other banks. Most of the offshore banks laundering billions for criminal clients have accounts in the U.S. All the big banks specializing in international fund transfer are called money center banks, some of the biggest process up to $1 trillion in wire transfers a day. For the billionaire criminals an important feature of correspondent relationships is that they provide access to international transfer systems — that facilitate the rapid transfer of funds across international boundaries and within countries. The most recent estimates (1998) are that 60 offshore jurisdictions around the world licensed about 4,000 offshore banks which control approximately $5 trillion in assets. One of the major sources of impoverishment and crises in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Russia and the other countries of the ex-U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, is the pillage of the economy and the hundreds of billions of dollars which are transferred out of the country via the corresponding banking system and the Private Banking system linked to the biggest banks in the U.S. and Europe. Russia alone has seen over $200 billion illegally transferred in the course of the 1990s. The massive shift of capital from these countries to the U.S. and European banks has generated mass impoverishment and economic instability and crises. This in turn has created increased vulnerability to pressure from the IMF and World Bank to liberalize their banking and financial systems leading to further flight and deregulation which spawns greater corruption and overseas transfers via private banks as the Senate reports demonstrate. The increasing polarization of the world is embedded in this organized system of criminal and corrupt financial transactions. While speculation and foreign debt payments play a role in undermining living standards in the crisis regions, the multi-trillion dollar money laundering and bank servicing of corrupt officials is a much more significant factor, sustaining Western prosperity, U.S. empire building and financial stability. The scale, scope and time frame of transfers and money laundering, the centrality of the biggest banking enterprises and the complicity of the governments, strongly suggests that the dynamics of growth and stagnation, empire and re-colonization are intimately related to a new form of capitalism built around pillage, criminality, corruption and complicity. — “Dirty Money” Foundation of US Growth and Empire Size and Scope of Money Laundering by US Banks
Higher prices so far mostly reflect increases in profits and import costs, but labor costs are picking up Rising corporate profits account for almost half the increase in Europe’s inflation over the past two years as companies increased prices by more than spiking costs of imported energy. Now that workers are pushing for pay rises to recoup lost purchasing power, companies may have to accept a smaller profit share if inflation is to remain on track to reach the European Central Bank’s 2-percent target in 2025, as projected in our most recent projection. — World Economic Outlook. — IMF Blog:Europe’s Inflation Outlook Depends on How Corporate Profits Absorb Wage Gains
Podcasts/Vidoes of the Day:
Environment:
After World War II Rosa Luxenburg Coined the Slogan: ‘S0cialism or Barbaism’! Now the Slogan Should Be: ‘Ecosocialism or Ecocide’!
One of Many Ways to Begin to End Global Warming: Expose ‘Greenwashing’ — Tax the Polluters 100%!
Current Heatwave Across US South Made Five Times More Likely by Climate Crisis Latest ‘heat dome’ event over Texas and Louisiana, plus much of Mexico, driven by human-cause climate change, scientists find The record heatwave roiling parts of Texas, Louisiana and Mexico was made at least five times more likely due to human-caused climate change, scientists have found, marking the latest in a series of recent extreme “heat dome” events that have scorched various parts of the world. A stubborn ridge of high pressure has settled over Mexico and a broad swath of the southern US over the past three weeks, pushing the heat index, a combination of temperature and humidity, to above 48C (120F) in some places.
Ecological Doom-Loops: Why Ecosystem Collapses May Occur Much Sooner Than Expected Around the world, rainforests are becoming savanna or farmland, savanna is drying out and turning into desert, and icy tundra is thawing. Indeed, scientific studies have now recorded “regime shifts” like these in more than 20 different types of ecosystem where tipping points have been passed. Around the world, more than 20% of ecosystems are in danger of shifting or collapsing into something different. These collapses might happen sooner than you’d think. Humans are already putting ecosystems under pressure in many different ways—what we refer to as stresses. And when you combine these stresses with an increase in climate-driven extreme weather, the date these tipping points are crossed could be brought forward by as much as 80%These collapses might happen sooner than you’d think. Humans are already putting ecosystems under pressure in many different ways—what we refer to as stresses. And when you combine these stresses with an increase in climate-driven extreme weather, the date these tipping points are crossed could be brought forward by as much as 80%. This means an ecosystem collapse that we might previously have expected to avoid until late this century could happen as soon as in the next few decades. That’s the gloomy conclusion of our latest research, published in Nature Sustainability.
About 6m Across US at Risk of Extreme Weather as Over 700,000 Without Power Outages concentrated in south-eastern US, with severe thunderstorms in Ohio valley and a suspected tornado in Indiana More than 700,000 Americans were without power on Sunday evening, and about 6 million across the US were at risk for extreme weather, according to CNN.
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
A Vote for Trump or Biden is a Vote for Ecocide!
Time for Third Choice: Cornel West has a Real Chance to get Elected: Poll: A Historic Number of Americans Don’t Want a Biden-Trump Rematch The survey found that 33 percent favored Trump, and 32 percent were opting for Biden, but that 36 percent viewed neither positively. Specifially among registered voters, 31 percent preferred neither frontrunner candidate.
US’ Aid to Ukraine Seriously Watered-Down, Serving ‘Money Laundering’: Think Tank One day ahead of the one year anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine conflict’s outbreak, a Chinese think tank published a report on Thursday, claiming that US aid to Ukraine is seriously “watered-down” as Kiev and Ukrainian people only received very little from the huge amount of the US has promised, while the most of the assistance are actually serving the “money laundering plan” for the US military industrial complex.
Criminal Gangs Have Used Sham Bank Accounts To Steal Billions Financial authorities are doing little to combat thriving online marketplaces that facilitate account fraud. In January 2020, Debi Gamber studied a computer screen filled with information on scores of check deposits. As a manager for eight years at a TD Bank branch in the Baltimore suburb of Essex, she had reviewed a flurry of account activity as a security measure. These transactions, though, from the ATM of a tiny TD location nestled in a nearby mall, struck her as suspicious. Time and again, Gamber saw that these checks were payable to churches – many states away from the Silver Spring shopping center branch—yet had been deposited into personal accounts, a potential sign of theft. Digging deeper, she determined that the same customer service representative, Diape Seck, had opened at least seven of the accounts, which had received more than 200 church check deposits. Even fishier, the purported account holders had used Romanian passports and driver’s licenses to prove their identities. Commercial bankers rarely see those forms of ID. So why were all these Romanians streaming into a small branch located above a Marshall’s clothing store.
Supreme Court Decisions?: Follow the Money! Alito Ruled to Curb EPA’s Power After His Wife Leased Land to Oil and Gas Firm Alito’s wife has an agreement to receive 3/16ths of the oil and gas sales from the lease. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has ruled multiple times over the past year to slash climate regulations and aid the fossil fuel industry and developers — and new reporting finds that he may have an indirect personal financial stake in those rulings. As The Intercept reported on Monday, Samuel Alito’s wife Martha Ann Alito struck a deal with oil and gas company Citizen Energy III last year: She would lease the company a plot of land she inherited from her father, and in return, she would get a fraction of the sales of the oil and gas it would potentially extract from the land.
Civil Rights/Blackliberation:
Labor:
Economy:
This is the Bank Chart that Is Alarming Fed Insiders Between March 10 and May 1 of this year, three of the largest bank failures in U.S. history occurred. On March 10 the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) seized Silicon Valley Bank after $42 billion in deposits had exited the bank the day prior with another $100 billion queued up to leave the next day – meaning it was possible for a federally-insured bank to lose 85 percent of its deposits in the span of 48 hours in the digital age. (For a closer look at what was going on at Silicon Valley Bank, see our report: Silicon Valley Bank Was a Wall Street IPO Pipeline in Drag as a Federally-Insured Bank; FHLB of San Francisco Was Quietly Bailing It Out.)
World:
Oxfam Reveals How Rich Nations Are Helping For-Profit Health Industry Exploit Poor Patients Development finance institutions run by wealthy countries have fueled “a free-for-all of private greed over public good,” the humanitarian group shows in a new report.
Global South Reeling From High Cost of Basic Goods Amid Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Survey “The most vulnerable people around the world are bearing the brunt of skyrocketing food, fuel, and fertilizer prices, with women and girls the hardest hit.” A report published Monday by the international anti-poverty group ActionAid revealed that the cost of food, fuel, and fertilizer continues to increase in some of the world’s most vulnerable communities due to Russia’s ongoing 16-month invasion of Ukraine. The survey of more than 1,000 community leaders and members from 14 countries in Africa and Asia plus Haiti conducted by the Johannesburg-based NGO found that some families are spending up to 10 times what they paid for necessities nearly 16 months ago.
Romania: Working Class Take Lesson From Teachers’ General Strike Between 22 May and 12 June, teachers all across Romania took on the government in a three-week general strike, principally over the issue of low salaries. This strike represented a tremendous display of militancy on the part of the Romanian working class. It has profoundly shaken the government, forcing them to make major concessions, and has acted like a jolt to the consciousness of millions of workers, demonstrating the latent power of the working class when it moves in a militant and united fashion. Despite the fact that the leadership of the teachers unions, representing over 150,000 teachers and 80,000 auxiliary staff, have – the workers brought the country’s education system to a complete standstill during the exam season, and forced the Romanian government onto the ropes.
Health. Welfare, and Education:
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