Daily News Digest December 8, 2023

Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2023

  1. Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850-1900 in 2011-2020. Global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase, with unequal historical and ongoing contributions arising from unsustainable energy use, land use and land-use change, lifestyles and patterns of consumption and production across regions, between and within countries, and among individuals (high confidence). {2.1, Figure 2.1, Figure 2.2}
  2. Global surface temperature was 1.09 [0.95 to 1.20]°C5 higher in 2011–2020 than 1850–19006 , with larger increases over land (1.59 [1.34 to 1.83]°C) than over the ocean (0.88 [0.68 to 1.01]°C). Global surface temperature in the first two decades of the 21st century (2001–2020) was 0.99 [0.84 to 1.10]°C higher than 1850–1900. Global surface temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other 50-year period over at least the last 2000 years (high confidence). {2.1.1, Figure 2.1}
  3. The likely range of total human-caused global surface temperature increase from 1850–1900 to 2010–20197 is 0.8°C to 1.3°C, with a best estimate of 1.07°C. Over this period, it is likely that well-mixed greenhouse gases (GHGs) contributed a warming of 1.0°C to 2.0°C8 , and other human drivers (principally aerosols) contributed a cooling of 0.0°C to 0.8°C, natural (solar and volcanic) drivers changed global surface temperature by –0.1°C to +0.1°C, and internal variability changed it by –0.2°C to +0.2°C. {2.1.1, Figure 2.1}
  4. Observed increases in well-mixed GHG concentrations since around 1750 are unequivocally caused by GHG emissions from human activities over this period. Historical cumulative net CO2 emissions from 1850 to 2019 were 2400 ± 240 GtCO2 of which more than half (58%) occurred between 1850 and 1989, and about 42% occurred between 1990 and 2019 (high confidence). In 2019, atmospheric CO2 concentrations (410 parts per million) were higher than at any time in at least 2 million years (high confidence), and concentrations of methane (1866 parts per billion) and nitrous oxide (332 parts per billion) were higher than at any time in at least 800,000 years (very high confidence). {2.1.1, Figure 2.1}
  5. Global net anthropogenic GHG emissions have been estimated to be 59 ± 6.6 GtCO2-eq9 in 2019, about 12% (6.5 GtCO2-eq) higher than in 2010 and 54% (21 GtCO2-eq) higher than in 1990, with the largest share and growth in gross GHG emissions occurring in CO2 from fossil fuels combustion and industrial processes (CO2-FFI) followed by methane, whereas the highest relative growth occurred in fluorinated gases (F-gases), starting from low levels in 1990. Average annual GHG emissions during 2010–2019 were higher than in any previous decade on record, while the rate of growth between 2010 and 2019 (1.3% yr-1) was lower than that between 2000 and 2009 (2.1% yr-1). In 2019, approximately 79% of global GHG

World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, since then, 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: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, andThe 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:

Sam Adams: Organizer of the American Revolution

Videos of the Day:

“Cabal of Oil Producers”: Climate Scientist Kevin Anderson Slams Corporate Capture of COP28

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 ford 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 

On War and Genocide: An Open Letter to My American and Israeli Brothers and Sisters As if the full support for genocide in Gaza wasn’t enough, the U.S. is also helping to perpetuate a war in Ukraine that clearly needs to end in peace talks.  To my dear American and Israeli brothers and sisters. This is a hard letter to write, but I feel it has to be written. Like you, I wish to live in a peaceful and harmonious world where every living being is able to flourish and we can all look forward to a prosperous future—for ourselves and our children. I feel it has to be said that, at present, both the American and Israeli states are making our world less peaceful and harmonious, and because of the actions of your leaders, you are becoming increasingly less secure.    The purpose of government is to provide security in exchange for certain freedoms, but your security is currently being threatened by your very own leaders, who claim to have your best interests at heart but whose policies prove otherwise. From saber rattling rhetoric to genocidal actions that threaten millions of human beings, it is removing any hope of a peaceful and prosperous future for the family of inhabitants that calls Earth home.

U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide: 

Human Rights Monitor Says 90% Killed by Israel in Gaza Were Civilians  The Israeli military has admitted to a 66% civilian death rate, which it has called “tremendously positive.” Israel’s public admission that it has killed two civilians in the Gaza Strip for every Hamas militant—a roughly 66% noncombatant death rate—is a major understatement, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.     Based on preliminary statistics, the Geneva-based nonprofit estimated that at least 90% of the people killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza thus far have been civilians, a rate that exceeds those of the U.S. wars on Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as Russia’s war on Ukraine.

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’!

Another Reason to be Anti-War: It Systemically Ruins the Earth’s Entire Ecologic System . . . The attention of the media is often drawn to the destructive explosions caused by bombs, drones or missiles. And the devastation we have witnessed in cities like Aleppo, Mosul, Mariupol and now Gaza certainly serve as stark reminders of the horrific impacts of military action.   However, research is increasingly uncovering broader and longer-term consequences of war that extend well beyond the battlefield. Armed conflicts leave a lasting trail of environmental damage, posing challenges for restoration after the hostilities have eased.

Scientists Say Risk of 5 Climate Tipping Points Means ‘Business as Usual Is Now Over’ “Averting this crisis—and doing so equitably—must be the core goal of COP28 and ongoing global cooperation,” one expert said. Current levels of global heating from the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of nature risk triggering five tipping points that could throw Earth’s systems further out of balance, with three more at risk of toppling in the next decade.     The Global Tipping Points Report, released Wednesday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in the United Arab Emirates, argues that policymakers have delayed climate action long enough that “linear incremental change” will no longer be enough to protect ecosystems and communities from the worst impacts of the climate crisis. However, world leaders can still choose to take advantage of positive tipping points to drive transformative change.

Another War for Fosil Fuel.Global Warming!: ExxonMobil Wants to Start a War in South America On December 3, 2023, a large number of registered voters in Venezuela voted in a referendum over the Essequibo region that is disputed with neighboring Guyana. Nearly all those who voted answered yes to the five questions. These questions asked the Venezuelan people to affirm the sovereignty of their country over Essequibo. “Today,” said Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, “there are no winners or losers.” The only winner, he said, is Venezuela’s sovereignty. The principal loser, Maduro said, is ExxonMobil.     In 2022, ExxonMobil made a profit of $55.7 billion, making it one of the world’s richest and most powerful oil companies. Companies such as ExxonMobil, exercise an inordinate power over the world economy and over countries that have oil reserves. It has tentacles across the world, from Malaysia to Argentina. In his Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (2012), Steve Coll describes how the company is a “corporate state within the American state.” Leaders of ExxonMobil have always had an intimate relationship with the U.S. government: Lee “Iron Ass” Raymond (Chief Executive Officer from 1993 to 2005) was a close personal friend of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and helped shape the U.S. government policy on climate change; Rex Tillerson (Raymond’s successor in 2006) left the company in 2017 to become the U.S. Secretary of State under President Donald Trump. Coll describes how ExxonMobil uses U.S. state power to find more and more oil reserves and to ensure that ExxonMobil becomes the beneficiary of those finds.

New Climate Report Shows Impact of Drying on Human Health in American Southwest The arid West is getting drier, and shrinking water supplies pose a boatload of risks to human health throughout the region.     Those findings come from a new federal report on climate change that also covers a broad range of hazards brought on by changing climate patterns due to human activity, from flooding to wildfires, drought to rising sea levels.   The Fifth National Climate Assessment identified drying in the Colorado River basin as one of the greatest climate risks facing the Southwest, as well as the region’s biggest area for future climate mitigation and adaptation.     The problem hinges on one key fact: The Southwest is getting drier, and it’s likely not a temporary phenomenon. Climate change is shrinking the amount of water on the surface and underground, replacing the normal ebb and flow of occasional drought with a permanent resetting of the baseline for how much water the region should expect to see each year, a process scientists call “aridification.”

  Black Liberation/Civil Rights:

The Lessons of the Montgomery Bus Boycott  Why the Boycott Was Successful

  1. It had mass support and its strength developed from the unity of the Black masses to boycott the buses.
  2. In order to sustain the boycott, the MIA had organized an alternative transportation system, which gave the masses the ability to get to work for over a year, something that was crucial to the success of the boycott.
  3. The democratically organized Montgomery Improvement Association had regular weekly mass meetings of thousands to decide the strategy and tactics of the movement. The people in the struggle had control and the final say — not the leaders from on high. This helped to insured the power of the movement, for the masses saw the MIA as their organization and were committed by their votes to implement their tactics of both mass civil disobedience (the boycott) and self-defense by the MIA was key to the success of the struggle.
  4. They used the tactic of self-defense, From my conversations, prior to this forum, with E.D. Nixon and Clifton DeBerry, (1964 Presidential candidate of the Socialist Workers Party), who, along with Farrel Dobbs (1956 Presidential candidate of the Socialist Workers Party) helped organize the 1956 Stationwagons for Montgomery Campaign, it became clear to me, that the success of this transportation system was made possible by the Korean War GIs. They were able to use their experience in the army’s “motor pools” specifically and the army generally, to perform the maintenance of the automobiles and become the hard core of the drivers that sustained this transportation system for a year. It was also widely known, in Montgomery, that these men also had the ability and the willingness to defend themselves if the KKK attacked the transportation system. Due to the wide knowledge of this fact, and the world attention that the Boycott had achieved, the racists were unable to disrupt the carpool, that “worked with military precision.”
  5. The power of independent mass action, independent of the politicians, was demonstrated by the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This is the power that inspired and garnered support from throughout the nation and the world.

Texas Woman Asks Court to Grant Emergency Abortion After Lethal Fetal Diagnosis “I’m trying to do what is best for my baby and myself, but the state of Texas is making us both suffer,” she said.  ATexas woman has filed a lawsuit asking the state to grant her an emergency abortion after reportedly learning that her fetus has a terminal disorder and that further carrying the pregnancy may result in debilitating complications, including, potentially, a loss of her fertility or even death.    The lawsuit was filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of a 31-year-old woman named Kate Cox, who learned on November 28 that her fetus has a condition known as Trisomy 18. Nearly all Trisomy 18 cases end in miscarriage or stillbirth, and Cox’s health provider has said that it is extremely likely that the fetus will be nonviable even if she were to carry it to term, in which case it would likely live a week at most, the lawsuit says. 

Black Agenda Report

 Labor:

Economy:

Michael Roberts: Goldilocks and the Last Mile Last week, the second estimate for the US real GDP in Q3 of 2023, i.e. national output, was released.  It came in at 5.2% on an annualised basis.  That seemed a very strong figure, only surpassed in the recent period by Q4 2021, when the US economy was recovering fast from the pandemic slump of 2020.    But this is a weird way of measuring GDP.  The annualised figure does show the pace of growth in any quarter – but it is misleading.  That 5.2% annualised figure means the US economy actually grew 1.26% in the quarter over the previous quarter (5.2/4 quarters).  That’s still pretty strong compared to the trend in recent quarters.  But another measure of real GDP growth is to compare the GDP in one quarter with where it was in the same quarter one year ago.  This is the year-on-year figure, mostly used in other countries to gauge the growth rate in an economy.  In Q3 US GDP rose 3.0% yoy compared to 2.4% yoy in Q2, still the strongest rate since the first quarter of 2022, but not over 5%.

Don’t Cry for the Lowest Paid Wall Street Mega Bank CEO Just Yet; He’s Moving Up Fast To stem some of the whining by the CEOs of the eight largest Wall Street mega banks at a Senate Banking hearing today (where they are expected to gripe about newly proposed higher capital requirements and whimper that it will hurt their ability to make loans to the little folks) the Banking Committee released the CEOs’ 2022 total compensation and its ratio to their bank’s median worker.    Among the most embarrassing and obscene pay packages was the 2022 compensation to Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, which came in at $34.9 million. The ratio of Dimon’s pay to the pay of the median worker at JPMorgan Chase was 393 to 1, the highest among the eight CEOs at the hearing. (For more on the zombie Board at JPMorgan Chase that keeps rewarding Dimon for the bank’s serial criminal behavior, see our report: After JPMorgan Chase Admits to Its 4th and 5th Felony Charge, Its Board Gives a $50 Million Bonus to Its CEO, Jamie Dimon.)

World:

Health, Education, and Welfare:

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

Another Year On – No Light on the Horizon for Capitalism 2023 is almost at an end. But the crisis of capitalism is far from over. And the coming year promises to provide even greater storm and stress. Neither the establishment nor the ‘lefts’ offer any real alternative. We say: join the communists!  As another year draws to a close, the outlook for the working class seems increasingly gloomy.     The idea that each generation’s prospects will be better than the last has evaporated. Sixty years ago, the then Tory prime minister Harold MacMillan boasted that Britons had never had it so good. Today, we have never had it so bad.     “It is too fatalistic to say that we are now in an era when things can only get worse,” states the Financial Times, the mouthpiece of British bankers. “But it is simple realism to understand that the strongest trends in world affairs are malign and gathering momentum.”     It is the same in Britain. According to the ONS, after rising by 23% in the eight years to 2008, average UK wages (adjusted for inflation) fell by 5% in the following eight years. And those at the lower end have suffered far more, experiencing the biggest decline in real wages since Napoleonic times.