Daily News Digest September 22, 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:
Pax Romana versus Pax Americana Nearly three millennia ago, another empire confronted the same problem of overextension. Its solution enabled it to last 700 years. The Roman solution was not just or even principally military in character. The Romans realized that an important component of successful imperial domination was consensus among the dominated of the “rightness” of the Roman order. As sociologist Michael Mann notes in his classic, Sources of Social Power, the extension of Roman citizenship to ruling groups and non-slave peoples throughout the empire was the political breakthrough that won the mass allegiance among the nations dominated by the Romans. Political citizenship combined with the vision of the empire providing peace and prosperity for all to create that intangible but essential moral element called legitimacy. — Pax Romana versus Pax Americana: Contrasting Strategies of Imperial Management
Videos of the Day:
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!
Climate Catastrophe: A Worldwide Exploding Bomb
Climate change / global warming is so new to history and civilization that the very people / companies that brought it into being are continuing to deny its existence. It’s like a nuclear bomb. War gave it birth, the madness of the moment, the fear that the Germans would develop it. This spurred the American military to build it and explode it over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese evaporated from the blast and energy of this almighty bomb. The bomb secret spread to the Russians, Chinese, French, British, Indians, Pakistanis, Israelis, and North Koreans. Having this mega weapon adds mega power. Its owners are unlikely to abandon it, no matter the costs to themselves, their societies, and humanity. The same madness governs the unexpected ferocity of burning fossil fuels. Powerful corporations and a few oil countries have enriched themselves from convincing the rest of us to become entirely depended on their products. Petroleum, natural gas, and coal are heating our homes, power an unfathomable number of private cars and airplanes; fossil fuels generate electricity and even fuel our vast industries and militaries. This uninterruptible use of fossil fuels since the mid-nineteenth century has blanketed the atmosphere with greenhouse gases; it’s like a perpetual exploding nuclear bomb, changing the vast atmosphere to our detriment. Seasons are not what they used to be. The sky opens up with floods, tornadoes, strong winds, extreme heat, and other invisible calamities in the forests and seas. We hate and suffer from flooding, heat waves, massive forest fires and other storms climatologists tie to the ceaseless burning of petroleum, natural gas, and coal.
Revealed: Almost Everyone in Europe is Breathing Toxic Air Guardian investigation finds 98% of Europeans breathing highly damaging polluted air linked to 400,000 deaths a year Europe is facing a “severe public health crisis”, with almost everyone across the continent living in areas with dangerous levels of air pollution, an investigation by the Guardian has found. Analysis of data gathered using cutting-edge methodology – including detailed satellite images and measurements from more than 1,400 ground monitoring stations – reveals a dire picture of dirty air, with 98% of people living in areas with highly damaging fine particulate pollution that exceed World Health Organization guidelines. Almost two-thirds live in areas where air quality is more than double the WHO’s guidelines.
Judge Tosses Charges Against 3 Indigenous Water Protectors for Pipeline Action “I’m glad to not be in jail,” says environmental activist Winona LaDuke. “I’m not a criminal, and Enbridge is.” AMinnesota judge has dismissed criminal charges against three Indigenous water protectors who were arrested for protesting oil extraction on treaty-ceded Anishinaabe land. Winona LaDuke, Tania Aubid and Dawn Goodwin were arrested in January 2021 after police saw video shared on social media of the three women singing, dancing and praying near construction crews for Canadian energy company Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline. In a landmark opinion, Judge Leslie Metzen affirmed the protesters’ free speech rights, writing that “to criminalize their behavior would be the crime.” We go to the White Earth Indian Reservation to speak to Winona LaDuke, an Anishinaabekwe enrolled member of the Mississippi band of Ashinaabeg and a longtime environmental activist, about the case and the ongoing protests against Line 3. “I’m glad to not be in jail,” says LaDuke. “I’m not a criminal, and Enbridge is.”
While Top Polluters Dither, Pacific Island Nations Lead Push for Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty “The longer we remain addicted to fossil fuels, the longer we commit ourselves to mutual decline,” Tuvaluan Prime Minister Kausea Natano said at the U.N. Climate Ambition Summit
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
The Costs of Pax Americana: The United States Spends More On Defense Than The Next 10 Countries Combined Defense spending by the United States accounted for nearly 40 percent of military expenditures by countries around the world in 2022, according to recently released figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). U.S. defense spending increased by $71 billion from 2021 to 2022, in part due to a military aid sent to support Ukraine in its ongoing conflict, and the United States now spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined (up from outspending the next 9 countries combined in 2021).
Biden’s UN Speech Barely Mentioned Russia and China. That’s No Coincidence Biden was pitching global cooperation to developing nations long suspicious of the US-dominated world order Biden’s address included familiar themes from prior speeches, some dramatic flair, and the occasional cliche. The world, he said, was at an “inflection point in history”. Bullies and rule-breakers were continually testing international values and rules. Democracies were under threat in the Sahel and west Africa, where military-led governments have been popping up like weeds in a garden. Although both Biden and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who gave his own address, made appeals to globalism, Zelenskiy worked hard to place Moscow in the dock. In contrast, Biden seemed to have decided that a full-blown attack on Russia for invading Ukraine would not resonate with much of the global south, whose countries have been loth to openly condemn Moscow and have been anxious primarily about the war’s effect on critical imports, such as oil and food and the prospect that western support for Ukraine could diminish funding for their economic development.
Black Liberation/Civile Rights:
Citizen Groups Sue EPA for Using Black Neighborhoods as “Sacrifice Zones” The lawsuit alleges that the EPA has failed to protect vulnerable communities from cancer-causing chemicals. Environmental citizen groups in Louisiana, West Virginia and Texas are suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) after Black communities in these states were excluded from an effort to tighten regulations regarding cancer-causing air pollution. The lawsuit alleges that majority-Black communities in these states are disproportionately burdened with facilities that are major sources of pollution. These facilities produce polyether polyols and emit hazardous air pollutants, such as the carcinogen ethylene oxide. Inhalation of these cancer-causing pollutants can cause chronic, long-term harm, such as respiratory issues, degradation of the nervous system and the brain, and reproductive and developmental harms. Many polyether polyols production plants are concentrated in Black and low-income communities, such as West Virginia’s “Chemical Valley,” located along the Kanawha River west of Charleston. Institute, a town in the heart of Chemical Valley and one of only two majority-Black communities in the state, is home to several of these facilities, including a Union Carbide plant. Residents of Institute and the surrounding area face an increased cancer risk that is 36 times the level considered acceptable by the EPA.
Licensed To Murder!: Most Cops Involved in High-Profile Killings Since 2014 Kept Their Police Licenses An Intercept investigation reveals how rare it is for officers who use excessive, deadly force to be barred from working as cops. Rarely does A new police hire make national headlines. But when Myles Cosgrove got a job at the Carroll County sheriff’s department in northern Kentucky this past April, people had reason to pay attention. About three years earlier, he and his squad of Louisville police officers had used a battering ram to break into Breonna Taylor’s home during a deadly raid. Investigators later found that Cosgrove was one of three officers who fired their guns. While the Louisville police department ultimately fired Cosgrove for violating use-of-force procedures and not using his body camera, he eluded criminal charges and remains employable as a cop. That’s because he kept his police certification. He’s not the only one. Out of 54 officers involved in 14 high-profile killings that spurred Black Lives Matter protests in the last nine years, only 10 had their certifications or licenses revoked as a matter of disciplinary action, according to The Intercept’s analysis of certification documents obtained through public records requests. (Three officers’ disciplinary cases remain pending.) The Intercept’s review begins in 2014 and runs through January of this year. For the first several years of the analysis, none of the officers whose records The Intercept reviewed faced a disciplinary hearing in front of a regulatory board with the power to revoke their license — a bar on being rehired as a cop in most states. That changed after Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in 2020. He and three other Minneapolis officers were stripped of their licenses for their involvement in the killing — a turning point in public outrage over police violence, and, perhaps, in formal efforts at accountability.
- Why Barack Obama Can’t Shut Up
- ESSAY: The Question of Compensation: A Third World Perspective, Norman Girvan, 1972
- Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong
- Understanding the White Supremacy at the Center of the ‘Class Over Race’ Debate
- Libya’s disastrous flooding… Causes and hope?
- Whiter than Green: How a Not So Secret Listserv Exercises white “Supremacy” Ideology In Lieu of Climate and Racial Justice
- BAP Atlanta Says Free Them All!
- The Battle for Water in Haiti’s Northeast
- Haiti – Alternatives to US Sponsored Military Intervention
Labor:
The Labor Officials/Employers Partnership Concession Bargaing of Workers Rights and Incomes Must End!: If You Need Something to Blame for UAW Strike, Try Wall Street Greed Billions spent on buybacks means billions less not only for workers’ wages but also for developing high-quality, affordable electric vehicles to forge the transition to a green, sustainable economy. The United Auto Workers are striking against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis — the Big Three — to make up for lost ground. Since 2003 the average hourly wages of UAW production workers have declined by 30%, adjusting for inflation. A large portion of those losses came when the autoworkers were compelled to help bail out GM in 2008 as it went bankrupt. The worker concessions included a decadelong wage freeze for those hired before 2007, lower pay and benefits for new hires including the elimination of defined pensions, and the shift of the healthcare benefit fund from the company to the union. The concessions also permitted the use of lower-paid temp workers who could earn $18 an hour working alongside a longtime employee earning $32 per hour while doing the same tasks.
Economy:
Meet the Banking Cartel that Is Planting the Seeds for the Next Banking Panic and Bailout On July 27, the Federal Reserve, FDIC and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released a proposal to require higher capital levels at banks with $100 billion or more in assets – those that demonstrated quite clearly this past spring that they could spread systemic contagion throughout the U.S. banking system. Community banks will not be impacted at all by the new proposals according to the regulators. The three federal bank regulators provided a very generous public comment period of 120 days on the proposal. (Submit your own comment here.) The large banks had to only begin transitioning to the new rules on July 1, 2025, with full compliance not due for an absurd five years – on July 1, 2028. On September 12, the banking cartel made their anger known in a 7-page letter that assaulted the proposal from every conceivable angle and demanded that the three federal agencies turn over all “evidence and analyses the agencies relied on” in making the proposal.
World:
Germany: No Longer Europe’s Bulwark of Stability Once hailed as Europe’s bulwark of stability, Germany is entering a period of deep turmoil. The era of economic growth and class peace is at an end. Now, Germany is experiencing an intense crisis, as all the pillars of its former ‘success model’ are crumbling, causing profound divisions in the ruling class and a ferment among the masses. The global crisis of capitalism is hitting Germany particularly hard, leaving the German ruling class in an indissoluble dilemma. Fundamentally, the German economy is dependent in its entirety on markets in the US and China, and is reliant on world trade to maintain its access to cheap raw materials. As we have reported previously, however, the ongoing rivalry between these imperialist giants is threatening the economic security of the EU in general, and Germany in particular.
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