Daily News Digest March 4, 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! Globaly, With the Current Gaza War, The Right of Assembly is Under Attack! 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:
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered…. I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.— Thomas Jefferson
Pocasts/Videos of the Day:
The Immiseration of the American Worker Is a Bipartisan Political Scam
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
Biden is Doing his Best to Elect Trump!: It’s All Over Now, Biden Blue: It’s the Whole Damn System “Want people to vote for Genocide Joe? Then get in the streets to stop it. Otherwise you are complicit in genocide and Trump fascism.” — Arun Gupta, February 26, 2024 “ Voting for Genocide Joe is not an effective strategy to stop the Wannabe Dictator”. — Ashley Smith, February 27, 2024 “Joe Biden is a blood-soaked mass murderer who can never be redeemed. Trump is a fascist pig. We need an actual revolution.” — Radical musician Ted Sirota, February 27, 2024 A smart New York City lefty posted this on social media the other day: “Want people to vote for Genocide Joe? Then get in the streets to stop it. Otherwise you are complicit in genocide and Trump fascism.” It’s an interesting bit of advice. For what it’s worth, the blood-soaked imperialist and self-declared “Zionist” Biden’s embrace of Judeo-fascist Israel’s genocidal war of ethnic cleansing in Gaza (made even more grotesque by transparently disingenuous and manipulative public relations efforts to make him sound concerned for ordinary Palestinians) was the quashing of the last glimmer of a flicker of a scent of a wisp of a chance that I could again recommend “tactical “ and “lesser evil” Dem voting in 2024. To paraphrase, Bob Dylan, it’s all over now, Biden (baby) blue.
Patrick Lawrence: The CIA in Ukraine — The NY Times Gets a Guided Tour The New York Times recently ran a story called “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin.” Patrick Lawrence writes that these “secrets” only contained what the CIA “wanted and did not want disclosed,” and were “effectively authorized” by the agency. If you have paid attention to what various polls and officials in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West have been doing and saying about Ukraine lately, you know the look and sound of desperation. You would be desperate, too, if you were making a case for a war Ukrainians are on the brink of losing and will never, brink or back-from-the-brink, have any chance of winning. Atop this, you want people who know better, including 70 percent of Americans according to a recent poll, to keep investing extravagant sums in this ruinous folly.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
The US Stands Alone!: US Blocks Security Council Statement Condemning IDF Killing of Gazans Seeking Aid Israel is “responsible for creating catastrophic conditions that led to yesterday’s killings,” said Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch. The United States on Thursday blocked a United Nations Security Council statement that would have expressed “deep concern” over the Israeli military’s killing of Gazans seeking food aid earlier in the day, an attack that drew global condemnation. According to Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, the U.S. was alone among the Security Council’s 15 members in opposing the statement, which Algeria put forth during an emergency session called after Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd gathered near a convoy of aid trucks in Gaza City.
The United States and Israel as International Outliers, Outlaws, and Losers If you were a bookmaker taking bets on the position of the United States in the world today, you should take into consideration three recent events. The world’s post-World War II dominant power just lost three times internationally, once politically and twice legally. Losing three times before important international institutions is not a demonstration of hegemonic strength. The three defeats reflect how the United States, and its Middle East proxy Israel, could be losing whatever moral authority they have left.
Black Thursday: Israel’s Great Flour Massacre in Gaza kills Over 100 Civilians, Wounds Hundreds The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports on the Great Flour Massacre committed by the Israeli army on Black Thursday, February 29, 2024 in the south of Occupied Gaza City at Dawar al-Nabulsi, Rasheed Street.
Environment:
Fund Climate! — Not Genocide! 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’!
Capitalism’s Wars for Oil: When Bodies Start Stacking Up From Climate Change-Related Disasters, Will These Monsters be Held to Account?
Accelerating Ocean Heat Breaks All-Time Records North Atlantic Ocean temperature is on a red-hot streak. New research finds ocean temperatures… “have now smashed previous heat records for at least seven years in a row.” (Source: Lijing Cheng, et al, New Record Ocean Temperatures and Related Climate Indicators in 2023, Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, January 2024) Certainly, it’s nothing to mess around with as oceans absorb 90% of planetary heat. Maybe that’s too much too quickly to withstand. Or is it a big burp or could it be something much worse?
The Year Without a Winter We’ve just come through the warmest December and January ever measured globally, and February seems certain to follow. I don’t write that often about developments in the actual climate in these pages—it’s uniformly depressing, and it is the part we can do the least about. None of us has the power to change how much heat a molecule of carbon dioxide traps, nor can we alter how the jet stream reacts to changes in polar temperatures. All we can do is determine how much carbon dioxide and methane there is up there in the air—and so that’s what I concentrate on.
Texas Farmers Claim Company Sold Them PFAS-Contaminated Sludge That Killed Livestock Two ranches also allege biosolids with ‘forever chemicals’ ruined crops, polluted drinking water and left their properties worthless A Texas county has launched a first-of-its-kind criminal investigation into waste management giant Synagro over PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge it is selling to Texas farmers as a cheap alternative to fertilizer.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Labor:
The Chris Hedges Report with Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Gretchen Morgenson on how Private Equity Billionaires Bought Up America and Turned Workers Into Serfs. The U.S. economy is being held hostage by a small cohort of financiers who run private equity firms — Apollo, Blackstone, the Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. These equity firms buy up and plunder businesses, piling on debt, refusing to reinvest, slashing staff and often driving companies into bankruptcy. The object is not to sustain businesses, but to harvest them for assets to make a short-term profit. Those who run these firms, such as Leon Black, Henry Kravis, Stephen Schwarzman and David Rubenstein have amassed personal fortunes in the billions of dollars. The wreckage they orchestrate is taken out on workers who lose jobs or see salaries and benefits slashed, on pension funds them are depleted because of usurious fees or abolished and on our health and safety. Residents of nursing homes owned by private equity firms, for example, experience 10 percent more deaths because of staffing shortages and reduced compliance with standards of care. Private equity owned hospitals have created a crisis in the health-care system. Nursing shortages have contributed to one of every four unexpected hospital deaths or injuries caused by errors. The private-equity firms do not serve patients but profits. They have closed hospitals, especially in rural America. They cut back on stockpiles of vital medical devices, including ventilators and personal protective equipment. In 1975 the U.S. had about 1.5 million hospital beds and a population of about 216 million people. Now, with a population of over 330 million people, we have around 925,000 beds. Fifty-six percent of Americans have medical debt, even though many have insurance, and 23 percent owe $10,000 or more. Emergency room visits – emergency rooms are often run by private equity firms — contributed to medical debt for 44 percent of Americans. At the same time, the health care system, because of this slash-and-burn assault, was unprepared to handle the Covid epidemic, seeing 330,000 Americans die during the pandemic because they could not afford to go to a doctor on time. These privity equity firms, like an invasive species, are ubiquitous. They have acquired educational institutions, utility companies and retail chains while bleeding taxpayers of hundreds of billions in subsidies, made possible by bought-and-paid for prosecutors, politicians and regulators. Joining me to discuss private equity firms and their assault on the economy is Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Gretchen Morgensen, who along with Joshua Rosner, wrote “These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs – and Wrecks – America.”
The Fall of the Trade Union Movement (2010 Update) Elections: The Default of The Trade Union Movement The Graph Below is a Graphic Example of the Decline in Standard of Living of the Working Class, Since the Trade Union Bureaucracy Declared Itself to Be ‘In a (Domestic) Partnership With the Boss’! Starting in the mid-1980s, This ‘partnership’ gave birth to the one, two, three, three ect. .. wage tier system! Selling out the futures of future young workers entering the labor force. And, since the lowest union wage is the immediately the highest non-union wage, this wage tier system cut the wages of the entire working class! When I was a union official, I called this system labors rush to the bottom! As in graphically shown in this: Shadow Government Statistics Graph Real Average Weekly Earnings (Benchmark Revised) Production and Nonsupervisory Employees Deflated by CPI-W versus ShadowStats-Alternate (1990-Base) 1965 to August 2017, Seasonally-Adjusted
Economy:
World:
Those EU Farmer Protests Aren’t What They Seem The “angry farmer” narrative is hiding an agribusiness alliance meant to sabotage Europe’s bold green agenda. During the last weekend in February, French President Emmanuel Macron appeared at the annual national agricultural fair in Paris. It was his first direct encounter with French farmers since they began blocking roads and driving tractors into city centers in January, and it did not go well. When he tried to speak, he was drowned out by a chorus of boos and whistles that delayed the event’s opening by several hours. Two days after the fair, on Feb. 26, a meeting of European agriculture ministers in Brussels was met by nearly 1,000 tractors in the streets, with farmers lighting tire-and-straw bonfires and shooting fireworks at the police, three of whom were injured. The police responded with tear gas. Since the beginning of the European farmer protests in January, most media coverage has stuck to a simple story summed up as “the Anger of the Farmers.” In reality, however, much of the anger has been manufactured by industrial agriculture concerns who feel threatened by the European Union’s Green agenda. In France, as in Italy, Germany and elsewhere, the tractor convoys are organized by rich unions with close links to Big Ag, including major landowners, pesticide makers and the finance structures that serve them. The small and independent farmers who are most threatened by EU policy changes seem less “angry” than depressed about being treated as economically irrelevant and politically powerless.
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
Despite the Media Monopoly’s Spin: The Millions Versus the Millionaires The public supports public education. It’s time the politicians supported the public. A new study from University of Southern California Center for Applied Research in Education at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences should give hope to those who believe in the value of public education—in other words, according to the study, most Americans. Despite the current political climate, the survey revealed surprising areas of agreement among Americans regarding education. For example, Americans across the political spectrum overwhelmingly agree on the importance of a free, public education for every child; its core functions of teaching basic literacy, numeracy and civics; and positioning children to have a financially secure future. The researchers also discovered that 58% of Democrats and 54% of Republicans believe protecting democracy is a very important goal of education, while 36% of adults with other affiliations agree. The survey also showed widespread agreement that parents should play an important role in their children’s education. “In an election year, when the partisan stakes seem so high, we were heartened to find such high levels of agreement around core purposes of education, including both teaching the basics and also strengthening our fragile democracy,” said Morgan Polikoff, co-author of the study and associate professor of education at USC Rossier. The study mirrors findings over the years, including a 2021 study commissioned by the National School Boards Action Center that found a solid majority of respondents valued what their public schools are doing in their community. That study also found 59 percent of voters think funding for public schools should be increased. Among those who believe it should be increased, 86 percent would support an increase in funding even if it meant they would pay more in taxes. What’s more, three-quarters of respondents to a more recent NPR poll say teachers are “asked to do too much work for the pay they receive.”