Daily News Digest July 7, 2023
Image of the Day:
Capitalism is Now a Worldwide Threat to Humanity! It is on the Fast Track to Global Warming and/or Nuclear War Catastrophes!
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:
Podcasts/Vidoes of the Day:
Syria’s Missing: New U.N. Body Will Investigate Disappearance of 130,000 People in 12-Year Civil War
“Let’s Rent a Train!” Life in the Toronto Branch of the League for Socialist Action, 1961-1977
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%!
As Some US Cities Confront the Climate Crisis, Their Lobbyists Work for Big Oil Liberal cities and counties across the US – including ones suing oil and gas companies – are employing lobbyists who also represent the fossil fuel industry, new research shows. The city of Baltimore, which in 2018 sued fossil fuel companies for damages related to the climate crisis, shared a lobbyist with one of the defendants in the case: ExxonMobil.
Failed Fukushima Fixes Falling Like Dominoes Japan’s breathtaking earthquake and tsunami waves of March 11, 2011— which first smashed the Fukushima Daiichi reactors’ foundations and the electrical grid, and then destroyed all its back-up power generators — led to a “station blackout” and the meltdown of three large reactors and to hydrogen explosion that blew apart four reactor containment structures. Before the disaster, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) had refused to sufficiently upgrade its protective sea wall, although it had been warned of the risk of extreme tsunamis. The site was hit by a tsunami of a height of 46 feet, but Tepco had prepared for a wave of up to only 18 feet. (Fukushima Meltdown: The World’s First Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster, Takashi Hirose, p. 30) The result was a catastrophic, unprecedented simultaneous triple reactor meltdown: an earthquake-tsunami-radiation event that had never before been seen on Earth. Tepco’s cost-avoidance on its sea wall was only the first in a string of failures that have followed like dominos. The corruption led in July 2022 to convictions of four top Tepco executives for negligence and a fine of $95 billion.
The ‘Double Agents’: Fossil-Fuel Lobbyists Work for US Groups Trying to Fight Climate Crisis Exclusive: new database shows 1,500 US lobbyists working for fossil-fuel firms while representing universities and green groups. More than 1,500 lobbyists in the US are working on behalf of fossil-fuel companies while at the same time representing hundreds of liberal-run cities, universities, technology companies and environmental groups that say they are tackling the climate crisis, the Guardian can reveal.
The Problem With ‘Humanely Raised’ Poultry and Eggs Chicken producers are misleading consumers with misinformation. On June 13, the animal advocacy organization Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) rescued and reported their removal of nineteen chickens from trucks delivering the 6-week-old birds to a slaughterhouse in Sonoma County owned by Petaluma Poultry, a subsidiary of Perdue Farms. Petaluma Poultry markets its chickens as “free-range” and “organic” under brand names like Rocky and Rosie. A report covering several investigations of Petaluma Poultry published by DxE on the same day shows scenes of sick, crippled, dying, and dead chickens living in filth and being subjected to extreme acts of cruelty by workers. The report includes veterinary diagnoses of Petaluma Poultry chickens from several locations infected with zoonotic bacteria (transmissible to humans) in their blood and body parts. Petaluma Poultry is not an isolated case in an otherwise truthful industry targeting customers willing and able to pay high prices for “humanely-raised” chickens as opposed to “factory-farmed” birds.
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!
How the Military-Industrial Complex Sets Media Narratives on Ukraine The vast majority of media mentions of think tanks in articles about U.S. arms and the Ukraine war are from think tanks whose funders profit from US military spending. Wealthy donors have long funded think tanks with official-sounding names that produce research that reflects the interests of those funders (Extra!, 7/13). The weapons industry is a major contributor to these idea factories; a recent report from the Quincy Institute (6/1/23) demonstrates just how much influence war profiteers have on the national discourse. The Quincy Institute—whose own start-up funding came mainly from George Soros and Charles Koch—looked at 11 months of Ukraine War coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, from March 1, 2022, through January 31, 2023, and counted each time one of 33 leading think tanks was mentioned. Of the 15 think tanks most often mentioned in the coverage, only one—Human Rights Watch—does not take funding from Pentagon contractors. Quincy’s analysis found that the media were seven times more likely to cite think tanks with war industry ties than they were to cite think tanks without war industry ties.
Nuclear Weapons “Sharing” Is a Dangerous Practice That Brings Us Closer to War President Biden is calling Russia’s nuke-sharing in Belarus “irresponsible” despite the U.S.’s own arsenal in Europe. Russia has begun transferring tactical, or short-range, nuclear weapons to Belarus, prompting President Joe Biden to call the move “absolutely irresponsible” earlier this month. He’s not wrong. It is irresponsible to disburse nuclear weapons to other countries, increasing the risk that those weapons could be used by accident, miscalculation, or deliberately, especially with an active war nearby. The only problem is that the United States has been doing the same thing — sharing its nuclear weapons with its European allies — for decades. If Russia is being irresponsible, surely, we are too?
Asset Management Firms Are Gaining Power Over Housing, Hospitals, Water and More Brett Christophers explains how asset managers like BlackRock and Blackstone have come to “own the world.” Who owns our world? In recent years, one set of financial actors keep coming up as an answer to that question: asset management firms. Asset managers oversee tens of trillions of dollars-worth of investments in assets across the world. The most well-known asset management firms are the “Big Three” of BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street Global Advisors, whose business model largely rests on so-called “passive” index funds whose stock investments make these firms the top shareholders of thousands of corporations.
Civil Rights/Blackliberation:
Supreme Court Preserves College Preferences for Wealthy Whites The United States Supreme Court’s recent ruling striking down race as a factor in college and university admissions was in response to a case brought by a conservative organization claiming that Asian Americans are harmed by preferences for people of other nonwhite races. The case, which focused on Harvard University and the University of North Carolina’s affirmative action policies, used Asian students as a wedge against Black, Latino, Indigenous, and other communities of color. More importantly, it left preferences for wealthy white students intact.
Federal Judge Rules Against Biden Admin Attack on Free Speech The temporary injunction bars government agencies from suppressing free speech.
- Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana ruled that several federal agencies and officials could not collaborate with social media companies in restricting speech.
- The ruling states officials and agencies from the Biden administration are restrained from communicating with social media firms “for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.”
LASD Says it Wants to Keep Hitting People in the Head For years, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California has alleged that Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies have needlessly hit incarcerated people in the head with impunity. According to LASD, its deputies hit prisoners in the head at least 52 times last year—meaning deputies punched about one person in the head per week. The ACLU, which is taking the sheriff’s department to federal court over the matter, says that number is inexcusable. But in federal court yesterday, the sheriff’s department argued it has already made significant changes and should not be forced to change its head strike policy.
Upside Down Freedom Writing upon learning that a federal appeals court in Louisiana (5th Circuit) ruled that a cop can sue a protest organizer for injuries caused by another person during a demonstration, ratifying a novel legal theory that threatens to further suppress protests and First Amendment rights more broadly.
Labor:
The Derailment Saga Rail workers find allies in push for safety President Joe Biden and Congress broke railroad workers’ attempt to strike over job conditions and safety last year. Since then, an avalanche of new train accidents has exposed long-standing threats to public safety, the environment, and railroad workers themselves. Workers maintain that these calamities are totally preventable by running fewer train cars and hiring additional staff. But railroad companies have, without operators’ consent, force-marched too few workers on too long trains, with too heavy and seriously dangerous cargo. Derailments escalate and safety worsens. In an interview, this reporter spoke with Mark Burrows, a Chicago-based railroad employee and member of Railroad Workers United (RWU), a cross-union, rank-and-file caucus open to members of all rail crafts and unions in the railroad industry. Burroughs explained that “trains are, mile for mile, safer than trucks and have a lower carbon footprint for transporting freight. But the elimination of safety rules, no track maintenance, and cutting staff to a single worker on trains — the engineer — have been causing problems for years.”
Economy:
The Closing Scissors and Profits Global corporate profits growth is heading south, according to analysis by JP Morgan economists. JP Morgan estimates that, after surging a humungous 89% (4q moving ave) in 2021, global corporate profits moderated to a still-solid 24% in the year ending in 2Q22. And they reckon that “on net, the level of profits is 17% above its pre-pandemic trend, but still making up for lost earnings through the pandemic.” However, JP Morgan expects “slowing in profit growth in the coming quarters as inflation cools while labor markets remain tight. Additional pressure is coming from rising corporate borrowing rates as central banks press on with the steepest tightening cycle in decades.” The scissors of a future slump (falling profits and rising interest rates) are beginning to close. During the post-pandemic recovery, corporate profit margins (that’s the difference between revenues and costs per unit of production) reached multi-decade highs as the surge in inflation boosted corporate pricing power while wages languished.
Large Banks Have Bled $921 Billion in Deposits Since April 2022 — the Fastest Pace in 40 Years — and a Much Larger Decline than Small Banks You may recall reading a burst of headlines during the banking crisis in March of this year about depositors fleeing small banks for the perceived comfort of the largest banks. Unfortunately, those headlines were never put in context or updated to reflect a broader picture. In fact, using deposit data that is updated weekly from the Federal Reserve’s own H.8 releases, it becomes crystal clear that the large banks are bleeding deposits at the fastest pace in 40 years.
World:
World’s 500 Richest People Added $852 Billion to Their Wealth in First Half of 2023 “They can afford to pay their fair share in taxes.” The 500 richest people on the planet collectively added $852 billion to their fortunes in the first half of 2023 due in large part to a record-breaking rally in the U.S. stock market. According to a Bloomberganalysis of its Billionaires Index, the world’s richest people added an average of $14 million per day to their wealth over the past six months, “the best half-year for billionaires since the back half of 2020, when the economy rebounded from a Covid-induced slump.”
Patrick Lawrence: We Need to Talk About Nahel What is it about France these days? La republique seems to be ever on the brink of exploding over one or another social question. Twice in the past four months the French have erupted in protests and all too often rioting. In March they took to the streets, burned buildings, burned tires, built barricades, lit bonfires, and made impassioned references to the guillotine in reaction to the Macron government’s plans to neoliberalize the pension system. For a week beginning last Tuesday, cities from Lille to Marseille were set ablaze after the police shot and killed a 17–year-old citizen named Nahel, who was of North African descent. This occurred at a traffic stop in Nanterre, one of the unspeakably grim banlieues that ring Paris and other large French cities. When I watch these events unfold, one after the other, I always come to the same conclusion: France ‘R’ Us. The French inherited a certain political fractiousness from their 18th century revolution, true. But the social and political confrontations occurring regularly in France these days are visible manifestations of social and political confrontations that are suppressed or sublimated elsewhere all over the West. This is why we ought to pay attention. The French happen to have the good sense to say what they mean more readily than the rest of us.
The Massacre of the Amazon Yanomami by Land Invaders The Yanomami child stares with blank eyes out of a body reduced to skin and bones by extreme hunger. The image of the Yanomami humanitarian crisis circled the globe early this year. On Jan. 21, the Health Ministry of the new government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silvadeclared a medical emergencyin Yanomami Indigenous territory deep in the Amazon rainforest that for years has been invaded by illegal miners and loggers, and more recently, organized crime. Months later, little has improved. In an exclusive interview with the Americas Program, Indigenous leader Kleber Karipuna of the Karipuna people from Rondônia, a Northern state that is part of the Amazon, blamed successive Brazilian governments for the Yanomami plight, particularly aggravated by neglect and hostile policies carried out during the time of President Michel Temer (2016-2019) and intensified under President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023).
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