Daily News Digest October 9, 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!
Qu0te of te Day:
Amateur presidential candidate West shot himself in both feet and made his ballot access problem four times worse, according to ballot access expert Richard Winger. According to Winger, West could have obtained ballot access for himself and the Green Party in all 51 jurisdictions by securing 225,000 petition signatures. But as an independent, acquiring that same access will now require 850,000 valid signatures. Given that he’s reportedly gun shy about paying petitioners, (some mistaken twit apparently told him that might be illegal – it’s NOT), his chances of being on the ballot in enough places to matter are about slim to none. He’s clearly listening to the wrong people and acting on very bad (perhaps malignant) advice, because chucking the green party ballot line advantage was a thoroughly bone-headed move from a strategic standpoint. — Cliff Sommers
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), sea level rise over the next 30 years will equal the past 100 years. “In the United States, the most vulnerable populations live on the East and Gulf Coasts… The acceleration of sea level rise along these coasts is ‘unprecedented in at least 120 years.” (Source: Acceleration of U.S. Southeast and Gulf Coast Sea-Level Rise Amplified by Internal Climate Variability, Nature Communications, April 2023). The Antarctic summer of 2023 is on shaky footing as global heat is on the march worldwide like never before, and it knows no boundaries from south to north, every ecosystem everywhere is fair game. Of course, a major concern is rapid acceleration of ice shelf disintegration, especially fragile West Antarctica where Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier are already the fastest changing and most unstable glaciers in the world. Incidentally, Thwaites has a nickname: The Doomsday Glacier. — Antarctica’s Dicey Summer
Videos of the Day:
Cornel West Announce himself as a Green Party Presindial Candidate for Ballot Status, As an Independent, He is No longer a Threat as a ‘Lessor Evil Spoiler’!: Urgent Shift: Dr. Cornel West Goes Independent for 2024
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!
Antarctica’s Dicey Summer The past couple of years in Antarctica have been a rough and tumble affair of erratic climate change with record-high temperatures and totally unexpected ice shelf collapse. The continent is starting to reflect the impact of a warming planet that’s just too hot for icy comfort. So, what surprises will this year’s summer season bring? At the tail end of Antarctica’s 2022 summer, during the start of autumn/March ‘22, temperatures along the eastern coast spiked 70°F (39°C) above normal. Scientists called it “unthinkable.” According to Edward Blanchard-Wrigglesworth, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington: “We found that temperature anomaly, the 39-degree temperature anomaly, that’s the largest anywhere ever measured anywhere in the world.” (Source: Scientists Found the Most Intense Heat Wave Ever Recorded – in Antarctica, The Washington Post, September 24, 2023). Within weeks, the unthinkable happened in East Antarctica. Conger Ice Shelf suddenly collapsed. According to NASA: “It is relatively common for ice shelves in Antarctica to spawn icebergs, it is less common for an ice shelf to completely disintegrate. The collapse has reshaped a part of the Antarctic landscape where coastal glacial ice was once thought to be stable. The change happened fast… All of the previous collapses have taken place in West Antarctica, not East Antarctica, which until recently has been thought of as relatively stable. This is something like a dress rehearsal for what we could expect from other, more massive ice shelves if they continue to melt and destabilize. Then we’ll really be past the turnaround point in terms of slowing sea level rise” (Source: Ice Shelf Collapse in East Antarctica, Earth Observatory, NASA, March 29, 2022).
‘Monster Fracks’ Are Getting Far Bigger. And Far Thirstier. Giant new oil and gas wells that require astonishing volumes of water to fracture bedrock are threatening America’s fragile aquifers. The letter from an oil company arrived for Mario Atencio’s family in 2013, promising riches in exchange for a lease to drill near their home in northwestern New Mexico. Then, Enduring Resources, the Denver-based oil and gas company that ultimately acquired the lease, started to drill. Workers dug a water well near the area where his family raises livestock, tapping into the groundwater that had long sustained the grazing land the Atencios use to raise goats and sheep. “They came in and they put in water pipelines. Huge pools filled with water,” Mr. Atencio said. “We thought, ‘Is this our water? How much water are they tapping?’”
Dead Lawns, Dry Wells: Texas Drought Persists After Summer Heat Dome More than 30% of the continental US is experiencing drought after roasting this summer, but in the heart of Texas hill country, the conditions feel worseThe heat dome that roasted a wide swath of the US this summer has dissipated – but it has left behind a crisp, dehydrated landscape, particularly in Texas. Even as the weather cools, more than 30% of the continental US is experiencing drought, according to a newly released analysis from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). Sizable portions of the Pacific north-west, midwest and much of the south find themselves grappling with drier-than-normal conditions.
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
For Immediate RELEASE Wednesday, October 4, 2023
Cornel West for President
CornelWest2024.com
press@cornelwest2024.com
Looking For a Seat at the Table.” “The World’s Trajectory to Ecocide!”
Washington, DC – Presidential candidate Dr. Cornel West decried the waste of the people’s time and money associated with Tuesday’s vote to oust Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House of Representatives. “The derelict duopoly is playing congressional musical chairs while poor and working-class people are looking for a seat at the table so they have a say in addressing an atrophying democracy, an economy that works primarily for the oligarchs, and a crippling climate crisis that subjects the most disadvantaged to perpetual cataclysms,” said West. Dr. West expressed great concern that the House of Representatives prioritized motions to make each other look bad over the real concerns of the people, including a budget to fund the people’s government facing yet another shutdown in less than two months. He explained, “Career D.C. politicians are listening to the lobbyists more than their constituents, for if they opened their ears and their hearts, they would hear the collective voice of U.S. residents, from all political spectrums, expressing their displeasure, distrust, and frustration with a government that has lost the confidence of the people they swore to serve. This isn’t just a house of cards; it’s a house of chaos.” As part of his visit to the D.C. area this week, Dr. West committed to addressing the issues of the derelict duopoly’s impact on poor and working-class people and its inability to address and dismantle the challenges of our time from instituting dignified immigration policy, guaranteed healthcare and reproductive justice, and climate and environmental justice provisions to head off the world’s trajectory to ecocide. Yesterday he addressed an audience of supporters and started rolling out his policy prescriptions to eviscerate the myriad dysfunctions of the duopoly and the best ways to establish and maintain a government by and for the people.
Patrick Lawrence: Depleted Ukrainium What Comes After Failure? “Slovakia as a card-carrying member of the Western coalition supporting Ukraine. But they did not win the election: Fico did. And Fico is all business in his opposition to Slovakia’s support for the U.S. proxy war tearing Ukraine and its people to pieces.” You cannot name the last time you read anything about a parliamentary election in Slovakia, so I won’t bother asking. But you are reading about one this week, assuming you still follow mainstream media—if only to understand what you are supposed to think about one or another event, as against what has actually occurred. In results announced in Bratislava Sunday, a leftist party whose primary platform plank is opposition to the war in Ukraine won 23 percent of the vote. On Monday the Slovakian president, Zuzana Čaputová, formally asked Robert Fico, who leads the SMER party, to form a government. It looks like he will do so in a coalition with either Voice, a social-democratic party that took 15 percent of the vote, or with Progressive Slovakia, a liberal-centrist party that finished with 18 percent of the vote. Fico is an interesting figure. He has served as prime minister twice over the course of a decade, during which time he proved sufficiently European to bring Slovakia into the euro. To one or another extent, his likely coalition partners favor keeping Slovakia as a card-carrying member of the Western coalition supporting Ukraine. But they did not win the election: Fico did. And Fico is all business in his opposition to Slovakia’s support for the U.S. proxy war tearing Ukraine and its people to pieces.
The Americans are Unleashing Monsters They Have No Idea How to Contain At present, it is difficult to see how US politics get sorted in a way that avoids calamity. The Biden administration’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine appears to have been lost on the battlefield. In the midst of the Disney-on-meth-and-cough-syrup ‘pageantry’ of American elections, the truth about the US-provoked catastrophe is unlikely to emerge, leaving most Americans wildly detached from the genocidal foreign policy being carried out in their names. Meanwhile, the administration’s Covid-19 ‘response’ has assured that a significant proportion of the population is being permanently disabled by long Covid.
Black Liberation/Civile Rights:
Labor:
Economy:
The IMF and World Bank Talk Good Governance, But Walk With State-Capturers To some degree, next week’s Annual Meetings of the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs) in Marrakech will be focused on the tragic earthquake and flooding damage in Morocco and Libya, respectively – in turn reflecting a lack of durable infrastructure, especially in the latter case after the state was crippled by NATO regime-change excesses in 2011 and Derna’s fragile dams were not maintained. The reconstruction funding needs are enormous, but are the BWIs appropriate allies, given their record? In late August, the BRICS+ gathering in Johannesburg, South Africa, raised near-universal concern (or even misplaced hope) that some of the world’s most tyrannical regimes are uniting and potentially facing off against the ‘West’ in part because of the BWIs’ heavy-handed loan conditionality. Five of the six new members are from the Middle East and Horn of Africa, including dangerously indebted Egypt and Ethiopia, while another new member, Argentina, is under Washington’s austerity thumb. And that perception will probably compel a more active reengagement of BRICS+ regimes by a new down-to-business World Bank President, Ajay Banga, and by International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, who reflect a long-standing global-apartheid policy in which only U.S. and European citizens get Bank and IMF leadership, respectively.
World:
Reality Meets Truth: The United States in the Middle East Last month, world leaders met in New York for the opening session of the 78th United Nations General Assembly. In his speech to the assembly on 21 September, Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, raised questions that the global community has danced around for decades. Although he posed his questions to the 193 countries of UNGA, they were directed at the powerful Western nations, particularly to Israel’s number one enabler, the United States. In his speech, President Abbas wondered: “Why remain silent about all the flagrant violations of international law that are being committed by Israel, the occupying Power? Why isn’t it subjected to serious accountability, why are sanctions not imposed on it for ignoring and violating international resolutions, as is the case with other countries? Why practice double standards when it comes to Israel? Why accept that Israel is a state above the law? Isn’t it time to answer these questions?”
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
The COVID-19 Pandemic isn’t Over!: New Data Shows Long Covid is Keeping As Many As 4 Million People Out of Work Since the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic through today, news about labor shortages and missing workers has dominated headlines . The question everyone still seems to be asking is: Why? In January 2022, Brookings Metro published a report that assessed the impact of long Covid on the labor market. Data on the condition’s prevalence was limited, so the report used various studies to make a conservative estimate: 1.6 million full-time equivalent workers could be out of work due to long Covid. With 10.6 million unfilled jobs at the time, long Covid potentially accounted for 15% of the labor shortage.