Daily News Digest September 28, 2023
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!
While the conversational nature of large language models may make it impossible or impractical to completely eliminate their tendency to psychologically entangle users, mitigations can help make sure that any psychological entanglement users experience is shallow, not deep. Preventing deep psychological entanglement is particularly important for users who are vulnerable, especially children and people who suffer from mental health problems. And mitigating entanglement is broadly important to avoid improper sales and marketing uses of generative A.I. systems. Businesses trying to profit from designing and deploying generative A.I. systems must do all they can to reduce risks and limit harms. But industry cannot be left to regulate itself – a sentiment a whopping 82% of Americans agree with. Where existing laws and regulations already apply, they must be rigorously enforced. Provisions to protect against abusive and deceptive anthropomorphism should be included in any proposed legislation to safeguard the public from harms this emerging industry can cause. In 2019, California passed a law requiring bots used in commercial transactions and political campaigns to always disclose they are a bot. However, stronger protections are needed, because even users who are informed that they are interacting with a machine can become psychologically entangled. — Chatbots Are Not People: Designed-In Dangers of Human-Like A.I. Systems
How Agencies That Promote Nuclear Power Are Quietly Managing Its Disaster Narrative This year marks the 13th year since the Fukushima accident began, yet the path to a conclusion is by no means clear. The declaration of a state of emergency still cannot be lifted because of the various dangers and difficulties that have arisen. Despite this, Prime Minister Kishida’s government is doing more than ever to promote nuclear power as a basic energy source. This approach is similar to that of the French administration, which is also trying to promote nuclear energy as a dual-use nuclear weapon. The international nuclear lobby, which represents only a minority, has the influence and money to dominate the world’s population with immense power and has now united the world’s minority nuclear community into one big galaxy. Many of the citizens who have experienced the world’s three most serious civil nuclear accidents have clearly realized that nuclear energy is too dangerous. These citizens are so divided and conflicted that they feel like a helpless minority.
Videos of the Day:
Environment:
Michael Roberts Facbook Blog: Fossil fuel demand must fall by 25% by the end of this decade, if the target of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is to be achieved – says the International Energy Agency (IEA) in a new report. The International Energy Agency (IEA) in a new report. The world is investing $1.8 trillion in clean energy in 2023: but this needs to climb to around USD 4.5 trillion a year by the early 2030s. Fossil fuel demand must fall by more than 25% by 2030 and 80% in 2050. And by 2035, emissions need to decline by 80% in advanced economies and 60% in emerging market and developing economies compared to the 2022 level. Current Nationally Determined Contributions are not in line with countries’ own net zero emissions pledges, and those pledges are not sufficient to put the world on a pathway to net zero emissions by 2050. So it’s not happening.
Girl, 11, Among Six Young People Taking On 32 Nations in Historic Climate Case Claimants say European countries are breaching their human rights by failing to take adequate action to tackle global heating An 11-year-old girl from Portugal sat inside the grand chamber of the European court of human rights on Wednesday to face 86 lawyers from 32 nations in the world’s largest climate legal action. Mariana Agostinho was alongside her brother and sister, and her cousins, two rows back from 17 human rights judges. A few feet away, teams of black-suited lawyers from across Europe stood to argue why the countries they represented should not do more to tackle global heating.
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!
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
Patrick Lawrence: The Question About Biden In the wake of Zelensky’s wildly provocative statements, it is time to question whether the U.S. president has a personal interest in prolonging the war in Ukraine. Afriend and colleague wrote in an unusually sage commentary a couple of years ago that Ukraine would prove “NATO’s Waterloo.” He called the brewing conflict there “a debacle-in-waiting.” This was two months before the U.S. provoked the Russian intervention in February 2022. Now that is prescience. Ukraine, indeed, has revealed NATO somewhat in the way of the old pun: No action, talk only. As Scott Ritter argued in a recent speech, it now appears the alliance is incapable of waging war in Ukraine or anywhere else in Europe. But let’s set NATO’s surprising weakness aside for now and consider who, as the Ukrainian sinkhole widens and deepens, is tumbling fastest into it. Here I offer a confession: I take pleasure, not at all perverse, in watching Joesph R. Biden, Jr. and those around him panic as the bill comes due for all those years of conniving with Ukrainian crooks and as the unforgivable folly of the war he started is now everywhere understood, even among those who continue in public to pretend otherwise.
By Sending Depleted Uranium to Ukraine, Biden Ensures Suffering Past War’s End As a radioactive material, depleted uranium enters a human body through inhalation or as fragments puncturing the body. The United States announced plans to send depleted uranium to Ukraine earlier this month. Uranium is very dense, which is useful on the battlefield: Bullets that have elements of depleted uranium can pierce armor, and tanks made of depleted uranium stand up well against enemy fire. Almost all the reporting about the move includes the clarification that adverse health risks of depleted uranium — a byproduct of uranium enrichment for nuclear reactors and weapons — are not conclusive. Studies cannot find depleted uranium to be the sole cause of illnesses experienced by U.S. service members after returning home from Iraq in the ‘90s and early aughts. But in Fallujah, Iraq, where the U.S. used tons of depleted uranium munitions, the fallout from the 2003 invasion is ongoing, with Iraqi babies still experiencing congenital abnormalities at staggeringly high rates
From, The Queen’s Death Star Depleted Uranium Measured in British Atmosphere from Battlefields in the Middle East, shows how depleted uranium spread worldwide after the “Shock & Awe” bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq: From, The Queen’s Death Star Depleted Uranium Measured in British Atmosphere from Battlefields in the Middle East, shows how depleted uranium spread worldwide after the “Shock & Awe” bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq: The Sunday Times Online, February 19, 2006, reported on a shocking scientific study authored by British scientists Dr. Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan: “Did the use of Uranium weapons in Gulf War 2 result in contamination of Europe? Evidence from the measurements of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Aldermaston, Berkshire, UK”. The highest levels of depleted uranium ever measured in the atmosphere in Britain, were transported on air currents from the Middle East and Central Asia; of special significance were those from the Tora Bora bombing in Afghanistan in 2001, and the “Shock & Awe” bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq in 2003. Out of concern for the public, the official British government air monitoring facility, known as the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), at Aldermaston was established years ago, to measure radioactive emissions from British nuclear power plants and atomic weapons facilities.
Depleted Uranium Blamed For Cancer Clusters Among Iraq War Vets A discovery by American Free Press that nearly half of the recently returned soldiers in one unit from Iraq have “malignant growths” is “critical evidence,” according to experts, that depleted uranium weapons are responsible for the huge number of disabled Gulf War vets – and damage to their DNA. A growing number of U.S. military personnel who are serving, or have served, in the Persian Gulf, Iraq , and Afghanistan have become sick and disabled from a variety of symptoms commonly known as Gulf War Syndrome. Depleted uranium (DU) weapons have been blamed for causing many of the symptoms. “Gulf War vets are coming down with these symptoms at twice the rate of vets from previous conflicts,” said Barbara A. Goodno from the Dept. of Defense’s Deployment Health Support Directorate.
The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm 
These Supreme Court Justices Have Personal Investments in Companies That Could Reap Billions in Upcoming Ruling Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito stand to benefit personally from the Court’s ruling in Moore vs. United States because they own stock in companies that could enjoy billions of dollars in tax cuts as a direct consequence of the decision. The Moore v. United States case that will soon be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court may take the concept of “collateral damage” to a new level. The case will decide whether a couple (the Moores) must pay a $15,000 tax bill associated with the 2017 Trump tax law’s “transition tax” on offshore profits. But the decision could jeopardize a far greater amount of tax revenue—at least $270 billion, according to a new ITEP-Roosevelt Institute report — if SCOTUS finds the entire transition tax to be unconstitutional. The decision could also invalidate other important parts of the current tax system while preempting progressive wealth tax proposals. Such an outcome would represent one of the costliest—and most ethically questionable – Supreme Court decisions in U.S. history.
Black Liberation/Civile Rights:
Labor:
The Quest for Child Labor!: Ageing Population or Senile System? By the end of this century, the global population is predicted to fall for the first time since the Black Death. In every continent the pitter-patter of babies’ feet is being replaced by the clanging of walking sticks as family size shrinks under the immense pressures of working life. Faced with a shortage of workers and a growing pension-age population, the ruling class are worried about what they are calling the ‘demographic transition’.
US Legislators Should Be Cracking Down on Child Labor. But They Want More Adult workers are demanding a fairer slice of corporate profits – so child labor is a way to increase and undercut the labor pool This July the body of 16-year-old Duvan Tomas Perez “became entangled” in meat processing machinery, according to a statement from Mar-Jac Poultry, the company where the boy was working. Perez was too young to be working there, according to Mar-Jac, which blamed an outside staffing company for failing to verify Perez’s age and identity. Perez was not the first worker to die at the plant in recent years, and he was not the first 16-year-old to die at work in the US this summer.
Economy:
FTC and 17 States File Antitrust Lawsuit Against Amazon “This is one of the most important antitrust cases in U.S. history,” said a supporter of the federal agency’s lawsuit. Economic justice advocates applauded on Tuesday as the Federal Trade Commission and 17 states filed a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Seattle-based Amazon.com for illegally dominating the online retail economy at the expense of consumers. “Freedom of commerce is a fundamental liberty of American democracy,” declared Open Markets Institute executive director Barry Lynn in response to the suit. “Today the FTC took a first step to restoring the liberty of every individual and business who relies on essential internet platforms to exchange goods, services, and ideas with one another.”
World:
As the First Black President, Obama, Served His Purpose, Whem He Set Up AFRICOm and 30+Militarty Bases in AFRICOM!: Imperial Footprints in Africa: The Dismal Role of AFRICOM No power in history has exercised such global reach. With brutal immediacy, forces from the United States may be dispatched and deployed within hours to combat any designated adversary. From its webbed network of bases official, semi-official and undeclared, Washington’s imperium can exert heft in a number of military domains with a ruthlessness the envy of any of its rivals. In the aftermath of NATO’s attack and destabilisation of Libya in 2011, France and the United States entrenched their military involvement across the Sahel. The French focused on creating G-5 Sahel spanning Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, including expanding or opening new bases in Gao, Mali; N’Djamena, Chad; Niamey, Niger; and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
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