Daily News Digest September 20, 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:
Cornel West
Corporate Greed is Killing the Planet!
Supreme Court Decisions: Follow the Money!
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 Way the Politicians Wanted It: In the early-1990s, political Washington moved to change the nature of the CPI. The contention was that the CPI overstated inflation (it did not allow substitution of less-expensive hamburger for more-expensive steak). Both sides of the aisle and the financial media touted the benefits of a “more-accurate” CPI, one that would allow the substitution of goods and services. The plan was to reduce cost of living adjustments for government payments to Social Security recipients, etc. The cuts in reported inflation were an effort to reduce the federal deficit without anyone in Congress having to do the politically impossible: to vote against Social Security. The inflation-calculation changes had the further benefit to government fiscal conditions of pushing taxpayers artificially into higher tax brackets, thus increasing tax revenues. The changes afoot were publicized, albeit under the cover of academic theories. Few in the public paid any attention. — Consumer Price Index Has Been Reconfigured Since Early-1980s
So As to Understate Inflation versus Common Experience
It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely….” — Malcolm X
You put the government on the spot when you even mention Vietnam. They feel embarrassed — you notice that?… It’s just a trap that they let themselves get into. … But they’re trapped, they can’t get out. You notice I said ‘they.’ They are trapped, They can’t get out. If they pour more men in, they’ll get deeper. If they pull the men out, it’s a defeat. And they should have known that in the first place. France had about 200,000 Frenchmen over there, and the most highly mechanized modern army sitting on this earth. And those little rice farmers ate them up, and their tanks, and everything else. Yes, they did, and France was deeply entrenched, had been there a hundred or more years. Now, if she couldn’t stay there and was entrenched, why, you are out of your mind if you think Sam can get in over there. But we’re not supposed to say that. If we say that, we’re anti-American, or we’re seditious, or we’re subversive…. They put Diem over there. Diem took all their money, all their war equipment and everything else, and got them trapped. Then they killed him. Yes, they killed him, murdered him in cold blood, him and his brother, Madame Nhu’s husband, because they were embarrassed. They found out that they had made him strong and he was turning against them…. You know, when the puppet starts talking back to the puppeteer, the puppeteer is in bad shape. — Malcolm X
Videos of the Day:
Dr. Cornel West speaks at the 2023 Climate March in NYC
Emerging Tipping Points in Antarctica
Environment:
One of Many Ways to Begin to End Global Warming: Expose ‘Greenwashing’ — Tax the Polluters 100%!
After World War II Rosa Luxenburg Coined the Slogan: ‘S0cialism or Barbaism’! Now the Slogan Should Be: ‘Ecosocialism or Ecocide’!
After World War II Rosa Luxenburg Coined the Slogan: ‘S0cialism or Barbaism’! Now the Slogan is Ecoscialism or Ecocide!
The Earth System has Passed Six of Nine Planetary Boundaries Dwindling resilience brings the planet ever closer to catastrophic tipping points The Planetary Boundaries framework, first published in 2009, has been fully updated and mapped for the first time. The results show that six of the nine global environmental boundaries have definitely been passed, and one, ocean acidification, is very close to its boundary. Only ozone depletion and atmospheric aerosols are clearly in the safe operating space.
Melting on Humboldt Glacier Every year from around May to early September, melting takes place atop the vast sheet of ice covering Greenland. Toward the end of August 2023, unseasonably warm weather led to several days of widespread melting. The unusual late-season event peaked island-wide on August 22, when melting spanned nearly 730,000 square kilometers (282,000 square miles), or about 45 percent of the ice sheet’s surface, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. This pair of images shows the front of Humboldt Glacier in northwest Greenland before and after melting peaked. The images were acquired on August 18 (left) and August 27 (right) by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8. Notice that by August 27, recent snow and the underlying compressed snow, or firn, (white) has retreated, exposing more dirt-stained ice (gray and brown). The darkest blue areas farther inland are saturated firn, melt ponds, and possibly some ephemeral streams. Areas in between could be slushy wet firn mixed with areas where water has drained away or refrozen. Besides contributing directly to sea level rise, meltwater can flow to the base of the ice sheet via crevasses and moulins, accelerating the flow of ice toward the ocean.
Inside West Virginia’s Chernobyl A highly radioactive oil and gas facility has become a party spot in Marion County. It’s around 4 p.m. one fine summer afternoon on a West Virginia hilltop when Dr. Yuri Gorby, a former Department of Energy scientist, gets the first clicks on his Geiger counter. He is wearing a full-body plastic protective suit, and using the device to survey a span of odd brownish dirt near the dilapidated main building of Fairmont Brine Processing, a fracking waste treatment plant that ceased operations in 2017. “These are the highest readings I’ve ever seen!” he shouts. “You want to come over here!” I follow Ohio organizer Jill Hunkler past a graffiti-covered security shack and a vaguely Satanic-looking circle of busted up furniture to find the 62-year-old scientist wearing a look of deep concern. The clicking — hauntingly familiar from Hollywood depictions of Chernobyl and post-Apocalyptic scenarios — continues to quicken as Gorby walks toward the flame-scarred husk of the frack waste processing building. Bending over the odd brownish dirt, the clicks become furious beeps, like a smoke alarm gone haywire, before merging into a high-pitched wail, a sound reminiscent of an emergency room patient flatlining. Gorby freezes. A microbiologist who worked for years at a federal radiological lab in Washington state, he understands very well the meaning of the nerve-rattling screech. “The unit is maxed out,” he says.
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
“Current estimates are that $500 billion to $1 trillion in illegal funds from organized crime, narcotics trafficking and other criminal misconduct are laundered through banks worldwide each year.” writes Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), “with about half going through U.S. banks.” The senator’s statement, however, only covers proceeds from activities that are crimes under U.S. Iaw. It does not include financial transfers by corrupt political leaders or tax evasion by overseas businesses, since in those cases any criminal activity takes place outside the United States. Raymond Baker, a leading U.S. expert on international finance and guest scholar in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, estimates the total “flow of corrupt money … into Western coffers” from Third World or ex-Communist economies at $20 to $40 billion a year. He puts the “flow stemming from mis-priced trade” (the difference between the price quoted, for tax purposes, of goods sold abroad, and their real price) at a minimum of $80 billion a year. “My lowest estimate is $100 billion per year by these two means … a trillion dollars in the decade, at least half to the United States,” Baker concludes. “Including other elements of illegal flight capital would produce much higher figures.” — U.S. Banks and the Dirty Money Empire (2001)
The Profitaable Drug War: The US Spends Millions in Foreign ‘Aid’ to Drive Global Drug War The new report by Harm Reduction International details the scope of spending by wealthy nations on policies that hurt poor and marginalized communities. The United States, Europe and other rich nations give hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign “aid” to fund the devastating global drug war, details a new report by Harm Reduction International (HRI). Rather than reducing poverty and hunger, or improving health and education, this money is instead bankrolling police and militaries that violate human rights and add to crises faced by poor and marginalized communities. HRI is urging the US and other governments to “stop using money from their limited aid budgets” to support policies that harm and kill people who use drugs. The report, “Aid for the War on Drugs,” finds that from 2012-2021, 30 donor countries spent $974 million in international aid funding for “narcotics control.” This includes at least $70 million spent in countries that have the death penalty for drug charges.
The following paragraphs, from his book, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, exemplify Vidal’s concepts throughout his collection of essays.: “The damage caused by the September 11 plane bombings is] nothing compared to the knockout blow to our vanishing liberties — the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996 combined with the recent requests to Congress for additional special powers to wiretap without judicial order; to deport lawful permanent residents, visitors, and undocumented immigrants without due process. . . . Vidal speaks of: . . . an undeclared war under the Clinton presidency which coincided with severe restrictions of our human rights supposedly protected by the Bill of Rights as the first ten amendments to the constitution. . .The Bush administration (Vidal notes) though eerily inept in all but its principal task, which is to exempt the rich from taxes, has casually torn up most of the treaties to which civilized nations subscribe — like the Kyoto Accords or the nuclear missile agreement with Russia. The Bushites go about their relentless plundering of the Treasury and now, thanks to Osama, Social Security (a supposedly untouchable trust fund), which, like Lucky Strike Green, has gone to a war currently costing us $3 billion a month. They have also allowed the FBI and CIA either to run amok or not budge at all, rather like the Wizard of Oz doing his odd pretend-magic tricks while hoping not to be found out. Meanwhile, G.W. booms, ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists’. That’s known as asking for it.” . . . — Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace
Why Won’t Biden Tell the Truth About the Vietnam War? No matter how many lies it tells or how many people it kills, being the United States government means never having to say you’re sorry. When President Joe Biden flew out of Hanoi last week, he was leaving a country where U.S. warfare caused roughly 3.8 million Vietnamese deaths. But, like every other president since the Vietnam War, he gave no sign of remorse. In fact, Biden led up to his visit by presiding over a White House ceremony that glorified the war as a noble effort.
With Alito’s Billionaire Patron Holding $90 Million in Finance Firms, Watchdog Demands Recusal From CFPB Case “Should Justice Alito preside over this case despite his clear conflicts of interest, it would add to the worsening Supreme Court corruption crisis and underscore the urgent need for ethics reform,” said one critic.
Black Liberation/Civile Rights:
Labor:
Economy:
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CPI no longer measures the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living.
- CPI no longer measures full inflation for out-of-pocket expenditures.
- With the misused cover of academic theory, politicians forced significant underreporting of official inflation, so as to cut annual cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security, etc.
- Politicians look to expand further the concept of artificially-suppressed cost-of-living adjustments in current budget-deficit negotiations, through the use of the Chained-CPI (see Special C-CPI Supplement at end of this document).
- Use of the CPI to adjust retirement benefits, private income or to set investment goals impairs the ability of retirees, income earners and investors to stay ahead of inflation.
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Understated inflation used in estimating inflation-adjusted growth has created the illusion of recovery in reported GDP.
World:
NATO Puppet Talks Back! Alan Woods: West Faces Humiliation in Ukraine The catastrophic failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive is provoking splits and divisions in the NATO alliance. Meanwhile, workers across the world are paying the price for this inter-imperialist conflict. The class struggle is set to intensify. If the meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) major economies in India was intended as a show of unity against Russia, it succeeded in producing precisely the opposite result. The final declaration of the Group, which pointedly refused to condemn Moscow, immediately provoked a wave of fury in Kyiv and exposed glaring contradictions in the self-proclaimed coalition against Russia. The host nation, India, effectively emasculated the original statement drafted by the Americans, which placed the blame for everything squarely on the shoulders of Russia. But the document made no mention of any Russian invasion. Instead, the statement confined itself to empty declarations about the “human suffering and negative added impacts of the war in Ukraine”.
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