Daily News Digest May 13, 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, and 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! 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 Still Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World!
The Majority of the World, Despite the Media Monopoly’s Lies, are Opposed to the Palestinian Genocide and Global Warming — The 1% Minority Funds Them! At, this Time in History, Capitalism is Exposing the Fact That it is Opposed to Majority Rule/Democracy!
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:
Although the Constitution did not refer directly to slaves, it did not ignore them entirely. Article one, section two of the Constitution of the United States declared that any person who was not free would be counted as three-fifths of a free individual for the purposes of determining congressional representation. The “Three-Fifths Clause” thus increased the political power of slaveholding states. It did not, however, make any attempt to ensure that the interests of slaves would be represented in the government. — The U.S. Constitution, Article 1. Section 2. The “Three-Fifths Clause”
The ‘White Man’s Burden’ — Settler Colonialism’s Justification: Racism! From How European Colonialism Led to the Invention of Race—And Why That Still Matters:
Racism! Which came first—race or racism? Two generations ago, Sociologist Oliver Cromwell Cox, a Trinidadian immigrant to the U.S., published a classic work, Caste, Class, and Race, in which he argued that the ideology of race as we understand it had its origins in European colonialism (Cox, 1948). It stuns me to know that, by some accounts, the first African slaves were brought to the Western Hemisphere in 1501, less than a decade after Columbus and his men arrived at Hispaniola (National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus, 2001). How could such conquest be justified by people who saw themselves as good Christians? The answer lay in demeaning the conquered. If American Indians and their mestizo descendants were less human than Europeans, then the confiscation of their lands and their gold could be justified. If Africans were less human than Europeans, then the confiscation of their very bodies could be justified. Better yet, if Europeans could conclude that Africans were particularly well-suited to slavery, then they could argue that they were acting in the best interests of the enslaved, in accordance with a divine plan for their earthly improvement and heavenly salvation. Lazy people needed the discipline of slavery. Rhythmic, athletic people could work long hours in the hot sun and not be bothered. Childish, violent people needed to be controlled, for their own good and the protection of others. The origins of contemporary stereotypes about Black Americans, then, can be found in the justification for the slave trade (Hudson, 2004). Historian George Fredrickson (2002) notes that “It is the dominant view among scholars who have studied conceptions of difference in the ancient world that no concept truly equivalent to that of “race” can be detected in the thought of the Greeks, Romans, and early Christians.” Why? Because they had no pretense of believing in human equality. They considered themselves superior culturally, educationally, or religiously, and needed no further justification for subordinating others. In Enlightenment Europe, however, and on into the years of the American and French revolutions, came the belief, however tentative, that all men (and they did mean men) are created equal. How, then, to justify conquest and enslavement? Not by redefining “equal,” but by redefining “men.” Fredrickson describes the process this way: “If a culture holds a premise of spiritual and temporal inequality, if a hierarchy exists that is unquestioned even by its lower-ranking members, as in the Indian caste system before the modern era, there is no incentive to deny the full humanity of underlings in order to treat them as impure or unworthy. [However,] if equality is the norm . . . groups of people within the society who are so despised or disparaged . . . can be denied the prospect of equal status only if they allegedly possess some extraordinary deficiency that makes them less than fully human” [pages 11 – 1
Podcasts’Videos of the Day:
“Never Again” Must Apply to Palestinians
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
Campus Protests Are Fighting Militarism and Corporatization at Home and Abroad Student protesters know the fight for Palestinian freedom requires resisting militarization and fascism at home. The long-simmering crisis over Israel’s genocide of Palestinians has reached a breaking point. Campus protests in solidarity with Gaza have erupted across North America, spanning at least 45 U.S. states, Canada and Mexico. Similar demonstrations have surged across Europe, including in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Additionally, expressions of moral outrage and solidarity have erupted in Central and South American countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica and Cuba, as well as in Asia (including India, Indonesia and Japan), the Middle East (including Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon and Yemen), Africa (including South Africa and Tunisia), Australia, New Zealand, and beyond. Many faculty have protested alongside their students, and on May 8 a group of professors at The New School in New York City erected the U.S.’s first faculty encampment in solidarity with Gaza, signaling the growing momentum of the movement.
Courageous Students Disrupt America’s Culture of Death and War Leaders of the most powerful American institutions want to continue as usual, as if official participation in genocide were no particular cause for alarm. Those protesting on campuses nationwide have shown us how repugnant and unacceptable that position is.
Patrick Lawrence: University—An Attack on Intelligence “Not in my lifetime,” I used to think when contemplating America’s decline and fall—a decline and fall I eagerly anticipate as a prelude to remaking our crumbly republic such that it stands for the ideals it professes to uphold but unreservedly ignores. Blind justice, disinterested leaders and institutions, tolerance of others, freedom of thought and speech, a Jeffersonian respect for reason and knowledge: Those who come after me will see the imperium’s collapse and will begin the work of restoration, but not I. So I long assumed. And so does the pace of events suggest I may well be wrong. Things I used to think would take, maybe, 20 years now occur in five or six or seven. If I reckoned some turn of history’s wheel was a decade out, what do you know but that it now seems hard upon us. Decline and fall. It is not pleasant to live in such a time as ours, but it is, as the Chinese are credited with saying (or was it the Arabs?) interesting. Let us not, as we accept our fate, lose sight of the optimism within the apparent pessimism.
U.S. Capitalism Exposes It’s Opposition to Democracy! It is Now Applying the Iron Heel to Decent!:
U.S. Funded Plestinian Genocide:
When Opposing Genocide Is Seen As Radical, Radicalism Becomes A Moral Imperative This new protest movement is driving empire managers out of their goddamn minds, which means it’s working and must continue. When opposing genocide is seen as radical, radicalism becomes a moral imperative. The dumbest thing we’re asked to believe about Biden is that a politician who’s been an enthusiastic Zionist and virulent warmonger throughout his entire way-too-long political career privately has deep moral qualms about the genocide he’s been unconditionally supporting in Gaza. Every time I listen to the song Hind’s Hall I get more disdainful of all the worthless, vapid celebrity artists who are refusing to step up and do something real for once in their pathetic lives. Israel supporters are such psychopathic war sluts that they’re currently shrieking their lungs out at Biden for making a purely symbolic face-saving statement that he won’t give Israel the weapons to annihilate Rafah, despite the fact that he has already given Israel all the weapons it would need to annihilate Rafah.
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?
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Labor:
Economy:
ShadowGovernment Statistic s New Weekly Commentary May 10, 2024 Aberrations on Some Key Numbers A Primary Indicator of Broad U.S. Economic Activity Has Yet to Recover Its Pre-Pandemic Level.
ShadowStats-Alternate Unemployment Rate, Which Incorporates Longer Term ―Discouraged Workers,The Shadow Government Statistics Alternet Unemployment Rate is 25.9%.
Today’s May 10th Release of the University of Michigan’s Preliminary May 2024 Consumer Sentiment Showed the Index Plunging in the Month by a Statistically Significant 12.7% (-12.7%), Hitting a Six-Month Low. Currently 33.3% (-33.%) Shy of Ever Recovering its February 2020 Pre-Pandemic Peak Level, This Most-Consistent of Consumer Surveys Accurately Has Tracked U.S. Economic Conditions Since Dwight David Eisenhower Was President. National Bureau of Economic Research, Arbiter of the Timing of the U.S. Business Cycle, Has Posted a Working Paper Exploring the Aberration in the Headline Timing of the End of the Pandemic-Driven Recession versus a Lack of Recovery in the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index. Linked Below in the “Consumer Sentiment” Section, the “Working Paper” Links Will Speak For Themselves. In Areas That Could Be Related to the Issues Raised in the Working Paper: Discussed Here Regularly, the U.S. Government’s Overhaul of CPI Inflation, Beginning Back in the Early 1980s, Was Aimed Specifically and Deliberately at Understating Headline CPI Inflation, So as to Cut Related Social Security Cost of Living Adjustments and Other Payments to U.S. Recipients The Headline Understated Inflation Also Has Worked Through as a Reporting Gimmick for Overstating Real Economic Activity, Such as the CPI Used with Real Retail Sales, Let Alone the Implicit Price Deflator with a Heavily Bloated GDP. APRIL/MAY FOMC HELD BACK ON ONE, POSSIBLY TWO EASINGS
CONTENTS
- University of Michigan’s May 2024 Preliminary Consumer Sentiment Plunges Anew, Still Shy by 33.3% of Ever Recovery Pre-Pandemic Levels Plunges Anew, Still Shy by 33.3% of Ever Recovery Pre-Pandemic Levels
- April/May 2024 FOMC Held Policy in Place
U.S. ECONOMY AND DOLLAR CONTINUE TO WEAKEN AND GOLD CONTINUES TO GAIN, AMIDST A DEEPENING ECONOMIC TURMOIL AND MOUNTING INFLATIONARY PRESSURES
As Contended by ShadowStats and Suggested in the Prior Consumer Sentiment Section, There Is No Actual Overheating, No Booming Economy, Let Alone One With Recovered Activity in Place, and There Is No Contained Inflation
Yet, the April/May 2024 FOMC Backed Off a Needed Easing, Continuing to Hold Its Targeted Federal Funds Rate at 5.50%, In Order to Kill a Faux Overheating-Economy-Driven Inflation?
In the Prior Major Fed Funds Cycle, the FOMC Held Fed Funds At 5.25% for a Protracted Period, Which Helped to Trigger The Great Recession of 2007
Current-Period Inflation Is Driven by Continuing Massive Monetary Stimulus Out of the Fed, Again, Not by an Overheating Economy, Despite FOMC Misdirection to the Contrary
Rising Inflation Has Reflected Surging Liquidity in FOMC Driven Money Supply, With March 2024 Systemic Liquidity (“Basic M1”/M2) Just Hitting a New 57-Year Peak
Complimenting Inflationary Pressures from the Fed’s Extreme Monetary Stimulus Has Been Uncontained and Unconstrained Deficit Spending by the U.S. Government
The Parallels Between Archaic Entrepots and Modern Offshore Banking Centers A discussion of the origins of urbanization may provide some insight into the character of modern social problems by highlighting the long historical dynamic at work. It may not be out of place here to point out that anti‑states are well known in the modern world, above all in what the U.S. Federal Reserve Board classifies as eleven offshore banking centers. Five such enclaves are in the Caribbean: Panama, the Netherlands Antilles (Curacao), Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the British West Indies (Cayman Islands). Three enclaves—Hong Kong, Macao, and Singapore—were founded to conduct the China trade. The remaining three are Liberia, Lebanon, and Bahrain at the mouth of the Persian Gulf—the island which Bronze Age Sumerians called Dilmun when they used it to trade with the Indus valley and the Iranian shore. Nothing would seem more modern than these offshore banking and tax-avoidance centers. They are the brainchildren of lawyers and accountants in the 1960s seeking to weave loopholes into the social fabric—to provide curtains of secrecy (“privacy”) to avoid or evade taxes, and to serve as havens for ill‑gotten earnings as well as to facilitate legitimate commerce.
Surprising Rising Seas “Must Reads” Sea levels are surging along the US coastline, exceeding 30-year expectations. Scientists are confused, concerned, searching for answers. In that regard, an excellent new series by The Washington Post d/d April 29th, 2024 “Must Reads” is an eye-opening view into the impact of global warming in real time with real people and real images. For example, it’s a quick fix for anybody who doubts human-caused climate change influence on sea level rise. It’s real; it’s happening now; it should be required reading for America’s Congressional climate deniers. And required reading for 50 million Americans who do not believe in climate change/global warming, according to a new University of Michigan study. Meanwhile a diametrically opposing viewpoint: “Planet is headed for at least 2.5C of heating with disastrous results for humanity, poll of hundreds of scientists finds.” (Source: World’s Top Climate Scientists Expect Global Heating to Blast Past 1.5C Target, The Guardian, May 8, 2024)
The World Bank (Capitalism) Must Stop Pushing Fossil Gas in Africa If the bank maintains its stance on gas, it risks perpetuating a neocolonial narrative by anchoring the continent in a fossil fuel-dependent development model that binds it to poverty and environmental degradation. The conclusion of the World Bank Spring Meetings held in Washington D.C. in April has left a bitter taste in the mouths of many who had hoped for a decisive pivot toward increased financing for renewable energy. The World Bank’s enduring support for fossil gas investments starkly contrasts with the ongoing climate emergency, thus exacerbating the vulnerabilities and hardships faced by communities across Africa, compounding their development challenges. Africa has been courted to produce natural gas in the guise of economic development, as proponents claim gas is a transition fuel capable of catalyzing long-term economic prosperity. This is a misguided and dangerous assumption creating a missed opportunity for the World Bank to set the record straight.
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
Public Health Experts Raise Concerns About State of Bird Flu Testing A lack of data and surveillance of the H5N1 virus is worrying some public health experts about cases going unnoticed.After public health officials confirmed H5N1, the virus also known as bird flu, jumped from poultry to cows and recently infected an American, they’ve warned that if the virus strain made its way to pigs, it could be time to press the panic button. That’s because swine are closer to humans in genetic terms, acting as a prime reservoir for viruses to mutate into something that could turn into a far-reaching pandemic in people. But now, a new study suggests that dairy cows might have the same potential as pigs, which could improve the bird flu’s capability of being more human-to-human transmissive. As reported by Nature, preliminary data shows that the flu virus can jump back and forth between cows and birds thanks to a specific receptor. This specific trait might allow the virus to spread more widely and develop more mutations along the way. If a single cow can be a host to multiple types of influenza over time, it could evolve to more readily infect humans.