Daily News Digest January 22, 2024
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”
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:
Why Biden is So Dangerous: Biden is delusional, more so than previous U.S. presidents regarding Israel. Some Republican and Democratic presidents in the past have pushed back, unlike Biden, when Israeli rulers went too far. Today no Israeli leader says they support a two-state solution even as Biden cynically claims he supports it, knowing it will not happen. He flew to Israel on October 19 after the October 7 attack and met with the “war cabinet.” He told Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he affectionately calls “Bibi”, after a public bear hug, “I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist.” — Biden Launches Wider Middle East War For Israel
The Massive Takeaway: A 2020 TIME magazine article reported that in just over four decades $50 trillion has been transferred from working Americans to multi-millionaires. According to the Credit Suisse 2022 Global Wealth Databook, in approximately the last decade (2010-2021) America’s wealth has grown by over $80 trillion, up to $60 trillion of which was taken by the country’s millionaires and multi-millionaires (about 10% of the population). — Make America Mad Again—Mad About the Trillions of Dollars Taken From Them by the Very Rich
Videos of the Day:
2023 in the US: Toxic Trains, Explosive Strikes & Genocide Joe
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
Patrick Lawrence: This Is Not Another ‘Phoney War’ It Just Got Very Real. Amid the tit-for-tats along Israel’s border with Lebanon over the past few weeks, the Houthis’ shelling of Red Sea traffic and repeated assertions that the U.S. does not want to widen the Gaza crisis into a regional war, I started thinking of that twilit interim in 1939–1940 known in history as “the phony war.” Has the world entered another such passage—another war we do not want to think is a war but is a war we do not want to see? That question seems far away now, an intellectual flinch. America, mindlessly loyal to the frothing dog known as Israel, has wandered into another war the way our president wanders away from podiums and off television news programs while the cameras are still rolling. This is a 21st century war, replete with attacks, denials, proxies and indirection, and with no formal declaration. But we may as well declare it ourselves so we understand our moment properly. America is once more at war.
The Dangerous Myth of the “Indispensable Nation”
- “But if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us. Our nation’s memory is long and our reach is far.” – Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, 1998.
- “We are the indispensable nation. American leadership is what holds the world together.” – President Joe Biden, 2023.
- “The United States is still…the ‘indispensable nation’ in the Middle East.” –David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist, 2024.
There is no better declarative indicator of American arrogance and hubris than the self-appointed title of “indispensable nation.” Liberal pundits and critics believe that the notion of the indispensable nation had its origins in the post-Cold War era following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In actual fact, the ideological origins of the indispensable nation were “present at the creation,” if I can borrow the title of Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s trenchant memoir.
The Mad Bomber: Biden Admits Yemen Airstrikes Aren’t “Working” But Vows to Continue Them Anyway “Well, when you say ‘working,’ are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes,” he said.
Republican Kicks Barbara Lee Out of Hearing on Cuba Over Pro-Diplomacy Views “You are doing exactly what you say the Cuban government is,” Lee said. Republican Kicks Barbara Lee Out of Hearing on Cuba Over Pro-Diplomacy Views.
USA: the 2024 Election Circus Starts in Iowa The Iowa caucus has kicked off another presidential election. Once again, we are told by the billionaire media that it will be a “historic election” that will shape the future of the country and the world. Insofar as the campaign is already accelerating the instability of bourgeois rule in the world’s most powerful country, they have a point. But the reality is that, whoever wins, the working class will be the losers. The vast majority of problems facing the working class will not be solved by these elections, no matter who wins. The US is a bourgeois democracy, which means it is a democracy for the capitalist class and nobody else. The richest 10% of the population own 70% of the wealth, while more than 120 million workers have no political party of their own to fight for their class interests. Marx explained that at election time, the workers simply pick who will rule over and exploit them. This will be the case until the workers build a mass communist party and establish a workers’ government that actually represents the vast majority.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
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’!
US Climate Scientist’s Defamation Case Over Online Attacks Finally Comes to Trial Michael Mann alleges, in lawsuit first brought in 2012, that attacks on his work by climate denialists amount to defamation A lawsuit first instituted over 10 years ago, brought by an esteemed climate scientist over alleged defamation by a rightwing blogger and an analyst, goes to trial this week. The 2012 court case was brought by the University of Pennsylvania earth and environmental scientist Michael Mann, who is alleging that online attacks on his work amount to defamation.
Panama Hits Activists With Terrorism Charges Over Successful Anti-Mining Protests Activists in Panama defeated a mining project. Now the state is criminalizing them.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Environmental Racism: The Epa is Backing Down From Environmental Justice Cases Nationwide The agency has pumped the brakes on Civil Rights Act investigations out of apparent fear that a Louisiana challenge could make it to the Supreme Court. ST. JAMES, La. — For a little while, it seemed like Cancer Alley would finally get justice. The infamous 85-mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is one of the nation’s most polluted corners; residents here have spent decades fighting for clean air and water. That fight escalated in 2022, when local environmental justice groups filed complaints with the Environmental Protection Agency, alleging that the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality had engaged in racial discrimination under the Civil Rights Act. In a watershed moment, the EPA opened a civil rights investigation into Louisiana’s permitting practices. But just when the EPA appeared poised to force the LDEQ to make meaningful changes, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry — now the state’s governor — sued. Landry’s suit challenges a key piece of the agency’s regulatory authority: the disparate impact standard, which says that policies that cause disproportionate harm to people of color are in violation of the Civil Rights Act. This enables the EPA to argue that it’s discriminatory for state agencies to keep greenlighting contaminating facilities in communities of color already overburdened by pollution — such as in Cancer Alley — even if official policies do not announce discrimination as their intent.
Labor:
Economy:
Senile Economics: Bubble Ontology and the Pull of Gravity What are the drivers of senile capitalism? I will list five of them in no particular order, and then proceed to discuss their interconnections:
- Debt. The only road into the capitalist future continues to be signposted by liquidity creation programmes. Creating cash “out of nothing”, and setting it in motion as credit, is the elementary monetary strategy that keeps our societies from staring into the abyss – like the cartoon character who, having run off the edge of a cliff, floats in mid-air before acknowledging gravity. However, the pull of gravity is now irresistible, and the descent has begun with a violent bout of currency devaluation.
- Bubbles. Financial bubbles, inflated by cheap credit feeding a delusional mechanism of perpetual motion, are the only meaningful measure of wealth-production left. Nothing but keeping the bubbles from popping matters to the minions of the “beautiful machine”. While the financialised economy balloons away from its social bond, human existence turns into collateral for the speculative algorithm.
- Controlled demolition. Wage dumping and downward competition for fewer and fewer jobs is the necessaryother side of the bubble paradigm. For the speculative markets to persist, the “work society” must be gradually downsized, since today’s artificially inflated financial assets and real demand are mutually exclusive. Simply put: Main Street is a liability for Wall Street, which is why consumer capitalism is now morphing into the management of collective immiseration.
- Emergencies. Our existential condition during the terminal phase of bubble-to-bubble capitalism is an intrinsically terroristic meta-emergency ideology, a permacrisis that must accompany us from cradle to grave. In this respect, the pseudo-pandemic of 2020 was only the icebreaker. Let us not delude ourselves: a world that is set on defending so fanatically its own implosion has many more shockers in store for us.
- Manipulation. Media propaganda in the age of digital hyper-connectivity comes naturally, so it is only natural that senile capitalism, sensing its collapse, makes the most of it. A stubborn confluence of blind stupidity and cynical calculation is at work here. As George Orwell predicted well before the internet, it comes down to telling lies while believing them: ‘The process [of mass-media deception] has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.’[i]Jean Baudrillard called the result of this process ‘hyper-reality’.
Monopoly’s Set the Price!: Analysis Shows How Corporate Profits Drive Inflation—Even as Business Costs Go Down “It’s one thing for corporations to pass reasonable increased costs to consumers,” said one analyst. “It’s another for them to line their coffers by exploiting Americans who are just trying to get by.” Inflation has eased over the last two years, and with supply chains no longer struggling to keep up with demand and companies’ business costs stabilizing, an analysis out Thursday asks: Why haven’t American households seen the benefits of a more secure economy, with the prices of consumer goods and services falling?
World:
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
Missing Links in Textbook History: Colonialism Colonies, Mythic Tales and a Tea Party In 1958 I learned that the British established colonies in Eastern North America. I was in 5th grade. In trying to recall how and what names, dates and locations were taught, it proves to be a jumble. But I remember that a lot happened in the early 17th century, including the founding of most of those British colonies. I remember being told about Pilgrims and their struggle for religious freedom. I also remember learning that there were Indigenous tribes living in the areas colonized, but the clear implication was that a lot of the land was vacant. I remember learning about indentured servants, but I don’t remember learning anything about the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in 1619. We were presented with a mythological story of Pocahontas and John Smith and a fictional version of the first Thanksgiving. As the lessons proceeded, new colonies were added and we heard less about helpful natives and more about conflicts such as the one textbooks call “King Philip’s War.”
As of January 18, there are 181,156,498 active cases of People Infected by Covid-19: Long Covid Goes to Washington Patients tell a senate panel that the government is failing them and putting the country at risk ahead of the next pandemic. U.S. senators pledged Thursday to press for more funding to research long COVID-19 during a hearing that highlighted patients suffering from the diagnosis as well as experts studying its impacts. “Long COVID stripped away my daughter’s life as she knew it,” said Nicole Heim, the mom of a long COVID patient in Winchester, Virginia. “She was a straight A honor student, an active member of the school’s marching band and had an active friend group. Now she is isolated and struggles to do her schoolwork”. “Instead of looking forward to a high school graduation, my 16-year-old is working slowly on her GED from home,” Heim added.