Federal Monitor Challenges UAW’s Support for  Ceasefire in Gaza By Malik Miah

There had been concerns about the Federal Monitor of the UAW [United Auto Workers] investigating President Shawn Fain that recently became public. Fain was the first UAW president elected by a direct membership vote in 2023, which also elected a new reform leadership.     At first, I and many other socialist  supporters of the labor movement thought it was about disputes in the reform leadership and conflicts between these leaders, that had been reported in the media.     Behind Monitors positionBut it turns out the Court-appointed Monitor, Neil Barofsky’s recent investigation is completely political and had nothing do with union internal democracy and Fains alleged financial corruption.     In a July 11 article by Ryan Grim, co-founder of a new media outlet, Drop Site News,  he revealed:     The federally appointed monitor tasked with overseeing the United Auto Workers, Neil Barofsky, is ratcheting up his conflict with UAW President Shawn Fain, announcing another investigation into the union leader who rose to national prominence amid the successful Stand Up Strikeagainst the Big Three automakers.    Yet newly unveiled documents suggest Baroskys pursuit of Fain has less to do with concerns over union self-dealing and more to do with the politics of Israel-Palestine.     Barofsky was appointed in 2021 as the result of the Department of Justice-led consent decree put in place in lieu of prosecution of the union itself for rampant corruption, following prison sentences for two consecutive UAW presidents.”     The Consent Decree between the Department of Justice and the UAW  forced the union to allow the rank and file to directly elect the president for the first time.   Behind monitors investigation of Fein.    On  December 1, 2023, the UAW became the largest union in the U.S. to officially call  for a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza, explaining, as one union leader put it in a statement at the time,  From opposing fascism in WWII to mobilizing against apartheid South Africa and the Contra war [in Nicaragua] , the UAW has consistently stood for justice across the globe.”    The UAWs International Executive Board (IEB) also voted to form a Divestment and Just Transition working group to study the history of Israel and Palestine, the unions economic ties to the conflict, and to explore how to achieve a just transition for US workers from war to peace.”    The decision to call for a ceasefire was strongly  criticized  by defenders  of Israels war. Among them is Neil Barofsky, who let Fain know about his criticism directly even though the issue has nothing to do with the guidelines of the Consent Decree.    On December 14,  two weeks after the UAW released its statement, Fain appeared on Capitol Hill for a press conference with members of Congress calling for a ceasefire.     The evening before,” Grim added, according to a source familiar with the conversation, Barofsky called Fain and urged him to rethink the union position. Barofsky said that it had pained him to see the UAWs wheel logo and anti-war protests where UAW members were present, and he told Fain there had been repeated instances of antisemitism at those protests. Barofsky told Fain he was not calling as the federal monitor, who has nearly unchecked power over the union, but merely in his personal capacity.”    Barofsky himself confirmed he made such a call in a letter he later sent to the executive board, first reported by the Detroit News buried under the headline UAW’s court filing highlights tension with federal monitor.” That letter itself was perhaps even more outside its authority  to write and send.     Unions response.    On February 11, according to an email sent to Barofsky by Benjamin Dictor, a UAW attorney, the Anti-Defamation League [ADL] wrote to Barofsky and complained about the Unions demand for a ceasefire in Gaza and in particular the actions of Local 7902 which represents over 4,000 part-time and adjunct professors, student educators, and healthcare workers in New York] in support of same.”     In California, like New York City, the UAW represents many faculty members and instructors who have supported pro-Palestinian campus protests.     Barofsky, in a letter to the UAW board, wrote, Although this issue is outside of the Monitors jurisdiction, we thought it was important to forward the [ADL] message to the IEB given the serious concerns raised here.” He then added, confirming he made the call to Fain, For what its worth, as I previously shared with Shawn, similar concerns were raised directly to me shortly after the IEB issued its own ceasefire statement.”     The UAW board held its next quarterly meeting the week of February 19, and this time Barofsky joined remotely, having missed the meeting when the ceasefire resolution was voted on. A source at the meeting said union officials confronted him about inappropriate lobbying on an issue that is not within his authority. Barofsky defended his position, arguing that the ADL (a Zionist lobbying outfit that says criticism of Israel’s war is anti-Semitic) was an unimpeachable authority on the question. That Barofsky continued debating the unions position on a ceasefire stunned the board members.    Grim further explained, Fain and Baroskys relationship had been strong before the Gaza war, as both had the same interest, to reform and root out corruption at the UAW. “     Its been a pretty collaborative working relationship with the monitor,” said one official. Up until now.””    On  February 23, the UAW lawyer Benjamin Dictor sent Barofsky a blistering letter after the board meeting ended, telling the Monitor that the union was flabbergasted at his breach of ethics.    You called President Fain and introduced your conversation with President Fain as one that was strictly on a personal levelduring which time you shared with President Fain your personal concerns about the Unions position on the crisis in Gaza,” he wrote. Your call to President Fain on an issue so blatantly outside of the Monitors jurisdiction was inappropriate as your Office holds disproportionate power over the UAW, and even a strictly personalsharing of opinion implicitly implicates such power dynamic. Nonetheless, out of respect for you and the office of the Monitor, President Fain discussed the conversation with only those in his inner circle and chose not to escalate the improper exchange any further. Dictor added that it was additionally inappropriate for Barofsky to lobby the board regarding the ADLs objection to the UAWs call for a ceasefire.    On February 29,”Grim added,  just six days after the UAW sent its letter to Barofsky complaining about his improper lobbying, Barofsky sent the UAW a sweeping demand for documents, saying he was opening an investigation into Fain over a dispute Fain had with the secretary treasurer. That letter was made public in a court filing by Barofsky this week.”  Barosky asked for any and all emails, text messages, and instant messages” sent between Fain, his top deputies, and his lawyers, from February 12 through February 23, 2024.” That covers pretty much the exact time the UAW and Barofsky were jockeying over the ADLs complaint about their call for a ceasefire.    Monitor escalates attack.   Barofsky has only upped the attack on Fain since then. The Wall Street Journal said Barofsky is probing” new allegations against President Shawn Fain, including that he made demands to benefit his domestic partner and her sister, according to a court filing.    The  allegation, which has nothing to do with the unions statement on Gaza, is aimed at undermining Fain and his call for a ceasefire.    The Gaza issue is clearly being used by Barofsky and pro-Israel allies, including in Congress,  to attack Fain and the union.    The position of Monitor over the union should be eliminated. How changes are made within unions, including the issues of corruption and rank-and-file control, must be decided by the unions members.    Direct government intervention in and takeovers of unions, even if it initially weakens the ruling bureaucracy, can lead to a situation where a political issue like the Gaza war can be  used to undermine rank and file democracy and control.

 

 

 

 

Systemic to Capitalism: Global Warming, Racism. And War

Global Warming is Systemic to Capitalism What are the Greenhouse Gas Changes Since the Industrial Revolution?

Racism is Systemic to Capitalism

From its Origins, Racism has Been been an intuecgal pard of the Capitalist system:  The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.  … If money … comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek, capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. — Capital, Volume One, Part VIII, Chapter 31, (the) “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist”.

Wars for Markets are Systemic to Captialism

Lenin said in Chapter 7: Imperialism as a Special Stage of Capitalismthe  First World War (1914–1918) was “an annexationist, predatory, plunderous war”[3] among empires, whose historical and economic background must be studied “to understand and appraise modern war and modern politics”.[4] That for capitalism to generate greater profits than the home market can yield, the merging of banks and industrial cartels produces finance capitalism, and the exportation and investment of capital to countries with undeveloped and underdeveloped economies. In turn, that financial behaviour divides the world among monopolist business companies. In colonizing undeveloped countries, business and government will engage in geopolitical conflict over the exploitation of labour of most of the population of the world. Therefore, imperialism is the highest (advanced) stage of capitalism, requiring monopolies to exploit labour and natural resources, and the exportation of finance capital, rather than manufactured goods, to sustain colonialism, which is an integral function of imperialism. Moreover, in the capitalist homeland, the super-profits yielded by the colonial exploitation of a people and their economy permit businessmen to bribe native politicians, labour leaders and the labour aristocracy (upper stratum of the working class) to politically thwart worker revolt (labour strike) and placate the working class’

Profits vs. The Planet: Does Humanity Have a Future? The Environmental Crisis of Capitalism (1999)

Since the development of capitalism, the natural resources of the planet have been consumed on a larger and larger scale by the profit system. A result of this process has been a rapid change in the earth’s ecological balance that could eventually lead to the extinction of humanity.judi

Whole forests have been destroyed, whole oceans are undergoing life-threatening changes, as the air we breathe is becoming more and more contaminated by the expansion of capitalist production.

From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the burning of fossil fuels, the earth’s ecosystem has been greatly altered. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by U.S. imperialism at the end of World War II demonstrated the technological development and the capacity of capitalism to destroy humanity. This potential of nuclear pollution and destruction has been a glaring reality from that time to the present.

The less apparent product of World War II was that the technologies developed for wartime purposes had changed chemistry and physics forever. These products were tested for their effectiveness during war-not for the safety of humanity.

Under the banner of “Better Living Through Chemistry,” life and production changed. The “miracle fiber” asbestos was used everywhere and everything was dusted with DDT. Twenty years after their introduction, the death toll from cancer caused by these two substances began to come in.

The development and production of synthetic organic chemicals, used in everyday life, has increased over 100 fold since World War II in the United States. The increase has been geometric, doubling every seven to eight years.

In the United States, by the late 1980s, production had reached over 200 billion pounds per year. Many of these new compounds and medicines have been to the benefit of humanity. Unfortunately, only approximately 3 percent of these chemicals have been tested for their toxicity and potential long-range harm.

Rachel Carson’s Warnings

Rachel Carson was the first scientist to come forward and explain the potential dangers of the new pesticides, fertilizers, and other toxic pollutants. Her first book, “The Silent Spring,” is credited with the beginning of the environmental movement. This book explained that cancer and other diseases have become part of the world’s food chain and even present in the air we breathe and the water we drink.

Predicting the coming catastrophe if the mode of production does not change, Rachel Carson wrote in “The Sea Around Us”: “It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.”

Despite Carson’s warnings and the beginnings of the environmental movement over 35 years ago, the destruction of the environment by capitalism and the capitalist mode of production has only escalated.

An example of this escalation is global warming. The melting of glaciers throughout the world is one demonstration of this phenomenon.

The Quelccaya ice cap in South America, home to some of the world’s largest glaciers, is rapidly melting. From 1930 to 1990, it had been shrinking at the rate of three meters a year. Since 1990, it has been shrinking at the rate of approximately 30 meters a year.

The Antarctica ice shelves have been in retreat for 50 years, shrinking approximately a total of 7000 square kilometers in that time span. In the past year, from October 1998-March 1999, the Antarctica ice caps have retreated approximately 3000 square kilometers.

These quick increases in glacier decline are foreboding. Recent studies of ice cores in the Arctic and the Antarctic demonstrate that global warming may not be a gradual phenomenon.

The ice core studies demonstrate that during the last global warming, the earth’s climate warmed gradually and then abruptly increased by approximately 20 degrees Fahrenheit to end the ice age 12,500 years ago. The ancient carbon dioxide levels that provoked these abrupt changes, while significant, were far lower than the rising concentrations in today’s atmosphere.

Until these discoveries, global warming had been described as a gradual event (4 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 60 years) that will reach dangerous levels around the year 2050 or 2100. This new evidence demonstrates that the present gradual warming could develop into an abrupt change.

An increase of this magnitude (20 degrees Fahrenheit) would flood most cities and industrial centers in the world as the ice caps melt into the sea raising the sea level. (If all of the ice caps melted, sea level would rise approximately 260 feet.) The potential catastrophic results of global warming and the threat to humanity’s future should become an immediate concern.

Along with global warming, the increasing pollution of the oceans, the fresh water, the land, and the air throughout the world has put into question the future of our species and other species.

Fidel Castro expressed the urgency of these problems in his speech to the Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro in 1992. He opened with these words:

“An important biological species-humankind-is at risk of disappearing due to the rapid and progressive elimination of its natural habitat. We are becoming aware of this problem when it is almost too late to prevent it. It must be said that consumer societies are chiefly responsible for this appalling environmental destruction. … Tomorrow will be too late to do what we should have done a long time ago.”

In this context, the fight for the spotted owl, the snail darter, and other endangered species, while important in their own right, are indicative of a far greater concern-the survival of humanity.

A Fight for Human Rights

It is becoming clear that the struggle for the environment is a fight for human rights and the survival of the species — a struggle for environmental justice. We need to defend, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, humanity’s “Unalienable Rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

We should demand:

  • All products must be tested for toxicity before being produced for the market. The present practice of experimenting on human beings and waiting for the human body counts before determining that substances are toxic must be stopped;
  • The production of toxic substances must be stopped and the least toxic alternatives must be used until all toxins can be eliminated from use;
  • Gravity, wind, and solar power must be developed to replace fossil fuels as a source of energy.
  • The top priority throughout the world must be the elimination of pollution and the development of science to maintain the earth as a healthy biosphere for humanity;
  • The squandering of trillions of dollars on military spending must stop and these trillions of dollars must be used to repair the environment. (In 1991, even after the end of the Cold War, military spending was almost 1 trillion dollars.);
  • There must be a 100 percent tax on the profits of companies that pollute.

The environmental movement has raised many of these demands. In the past 30 years, many laws have been written incorporating some of these concepts. Yet despite these laws, environmental destruction has been allowed to proceed because these regulations have always been compromised by the incorporation of the concept of “economic feasibility.”

Economic feasibility means that the profitability of an economic enterprise cannot be subordinated to environmental needs. Therefore, environmental and safety laws, under capitalism, have always been a compromise between science and business.

In fact, environmental destruction, pestilence, and death are factored into production the same as casualties of war are factored into military battles.

The most glaring example is the occupational environment, where workplaces have become “killing fields.” In the United States alone, at least 350,000 workers get occupational diseases (cancer, etc.) and 50,000 workers die each year from these diseases. In fact, some estimates are higher!

Blue-collar workers and agricultural workers all have higher rates of cancer and other diseases because they receive higher doses of the toxic chemicals at the workplace than the rest of the population. Eventually, these toxins spread to the entire working class as they become part of the environment.

Scientific technology exists to prevent the high rate of occupational diseases, but the profit motive and capitalist competition prevent the implementation of preventive action and proper safety precautions.

Science and technology are not an obstacle to maintaining a safe environment. The barrier to a safe environment is capitalism and its paramount principle of production and science for profit.

Most environmental studies demonstrate that environmental destruction has become globally intertwined within our society and that the globalization of capitalism has speeded up the destruction of the planet.

Under the conditions of global capitalist competition, it is not economically feasible to invest the capital necessary to reverse this destruction.

In the present world, the rights of the capitalists to make a profit are in direct conflict with our basic rights. In this sense, the capitalist system has become a threat to humanity.

Jefferson’s words that human rights are “unalienable” means that these rights can never be superseded. At all points of conflict the rights of humanity to survive must supersede the right of the few to make a profit. The right to a safe environment is an unalienable human right!

Since environmental illness and destruction are a global concern, it requires all of humanity to act collectively, in our overall interests for our survival as a species, to correct the problem and to remove the obstacle of capitalism.

It requires a society where humanity has social, economic, and political control over the entire environment.

Such a society, a socialist society, is needed to ensure that all decisions affecting the environment are under the democratic control of humankind so that the production of goods will be done for the needs and survival of humanity instead of the production and the destruction of humanity and other species for profit.

With common ownership of the means of production, and common control and protection of all property and wealth, science and society will be in harmony with the ecosystem and humanity’s future.

With these goals we can begin to build a more effective environmental movement. As we continue to organize against capitalism and its destructive course, we can and will transform the world.

In the words of Margaret Mead, the famous anthropologist: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Daily News Digest June 13, 2022

Daily News Digest Archives

Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines, Like the Salk Polio Vaccine, are Free For the Whole World!

The Covid Pandemic is Not Over! Yesterday, There Were Over 96,374 and Two Days Ago, There Were Over 119,909 New Covid CaseS!

Images of the Day:

As the World Burns, The Socialists Refused to Unite for a United Front fpr Ecosocialism!

Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Ws Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years 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 future of Humanity Is Now At stake!

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!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!

Videos of the Day:

Like Covid, A Crisis of Drug-Resistant Bacterial Infections is Hurting the Poor and Marginalized Most

Quotes of the Day:

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. — Martin Luther King

 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 Reublicrats 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 th poor and gives to the Rich. Taxthe Rich!  — They Can Afford to Pay!

The ‘Supreme’ CourtCreeping Fascism: ‘Supreme’ Ruling Puts Border Patrol (Cops) Above the Law: ‘Endangers Us All’: Supreme Court Ruling Shields Border Agent From Excessive Force Lawsuit  The ruling leaves thousands of Border Patrol agents “absolutely immunized from liability,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, “no matter how egregious the misconduct or resultant injury.” The ruling leaves thousands of Border Patrol agents “absolutely immunized from liability,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, “no matter how egregious the misconduct or resultant injury.” A ruling by the right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday “will have far-reaching consequences” for people who accuse federal agents of violating their constitutional rights, the ACLU warned after the court ruled against a man who wanted to sue a U.S. Border Patrol agent who entered his property without a warrant and used excessive force.

The Silence of the Lambs (Social Democratic Squad) was ‘Deafening’: Lack of Debate Most Worrying Aspect of Congressional Approval of Ukraine Arms Package Bay State reps and senators support providing $40 billion in mostly military aid on the quiet—risking nuclear war alongside accelerating economic crises at home and abroad.

The Worst Privatization Deal In U.S. History Just Got Even Worse New numbers are out on Chicago’s privatized parking meters, and they aren’t good. A  story I’ve been telling over and over again while on the road for my book “The Privatization of Everything” is the notorious and disastrous Chicago parking meters privatization deal from 2008. Somehow, it just got even worse.     New numbers are out, and this past year Chicago lost another $136.2 million in potential revenue. That’s how much in parking fees went to the group of global investors who operate the meters.

Social Security is Fully Funded! From: Is Our Debt Burden Really $100 Trillion?: The U.S. national debt comes out to about $16 trillion today. That’s something. But it’s nothing compared to the extra $87 trillion in unfunded liabilities to Social Security, Medicare, and federal pensions. Here’s how that works. If you add up all of the U.S. government’s promises to pay retirement and health care benefits for the next 75 years and subtract the projected tax revenue dedicated to those programs over the next 75 years, there is a gap. A $87 trillion gap – in addition to a $16 billion hole. Why haven’t Americans heard about the titanic $86.8 trillion liability from these programs?” Chris Box and Bill Archer ask in the Wall Street Journal. The authors blame the U.S. government for using shoddy accounting and for misleading the American public on their finances. In fact, the most misleading thing about that $87 trillion is the way the figure is often used in the media. . . . If the Federal Government can bailout the 1% to the tune of $29.616 Trillion Dollars, it can afford to pay back what it owes our funds! And tax the 1% for their wars!—  Editorial: The Big ‘Entitlements’ Swindle Workers Wages Are Not ‘Entitlements’ — We Earn Our Benefits! (2012  

Sanders Wants to Up Social Security Benefit by $2,400 a Year by Taxing the Rich “Our job is to expand Social Security so that everyone in America can retire” with dignity, Sanders said. The bill would increase Social Security payments by $2,400 a year and would fully fund the program until 2096, or the next 75 years — far past the current estimated insolvency date of roughly 2033, thanks to Republican refusal to raise taxes to fund the program

Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocied!:

Profits Before Life —World Capitalism Openly Opposes Humanity’: WTO Negotiations Prioritize Institution’s Reputation Over COVID Medicines Access World Trade Organization (WTO) “intellectual property” rules require countries to guarantee pharmaceutical corporations’monopoly control over the medicines theyproduce, which means a long wait for production of generics.     It’s embarrassing that the WTO as an institution is so broken that it cannot deliver an emergency waiver of its own rules in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic that shuttered the entire global economy.

Over 400 Groups Call on UN Food Agency to ‘End Partnership With Pesticide Industry’ “Use of hazardous pesticides is inconsistent with the rights protected by the United Nations.”  “We cannot allow the U.N. agency mandated to support farmers and agricultural systems aligning with the industry that aims to influence national policy and causes such egregious pesticide poisoning and environmental devastation.” More than 400 advocacy groups on Thursday urged the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to cancel its partnership with an industry lobby group representing the world’s largest manufacturers of toxic pesticides.

Death of the Family Farmer, and the “Free Market”  Cornel West has written that one of the greatest gifts of black music is the inspiration it gives to suffering people to look at the darkness and destruction surrounding them and walk into it “singing a sweet song.” John Mellencamp has operated according to that manual throughout his career, citing as his job description to “make people feel good about themselves.”     The decimation of the family farmer and ruination of the rich land, however, did not elicit sweetness in Mellencamp’s music. Resembling a monstrous storm system, the 1980s brought devastation to small and midlevel farmers via a convergence and confluence of factors from Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, the international export market, and Washington, D.C. Throughout the Midwest, by the early 1980s, the value of farmland had fallen by 60 percent because of a drop in agricultural need and increased production. Jason Manning, a historian at Southern Illinois University, summarizes the cruel jokes and awful coincidences that collaborated to kill the family farmer:

“Blood on the Scarecrow”: John Mellencamp, the Death of the Family Farmer, and the “Free Market”  Cornel West has written that one of the greatest gifts of black music is the inspiration it gives to suffering people to look at the darkness and destruction surrounding them and walk into it “singing a sweet song.” John Mellencamp has operated according to that manual throughout his career, citing as his job description to “make people feel good about themselves.”     The decimation of the family farmer and ruination of the rich land, however, did not elicit sweetness in Mellencamp’s music. Resembling a monstrous storm system, the 1980s brought devastation to small and midlevel farmers via a convergence and confluence of factors from Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, the international export market, and Washington, D.C. Throughout the Midwest, by the early 1980s, the value of farmland had fallen by 60 percent because of a drop in agricultural need and increased production. Jason Manning, a historian at Southern Illinois University, summarizes the cruel jokes and awful coincidences that collaborated to kill the family farmer:

Civil Rights/Black Liberation: 

Labor:

Economy:

The Money Trail to the January 6 Attack on the Capitol Is Ignored in Last Night’s Public Hearing As we watched the two-hour public hearing on the critical facts uncovered by the House Select Committee on the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, we kept waiting to hear a discussion of the money trail that facilitated this attack. That discussion never came. And yet, big expenses were involved: dozens of buses were rented; signs advertising “Stop the Steal” were on the sides of some of those buses; food and lodging had to be paid for, in or around expensive Washington, D.C.; and, now, lawyers have to be paid to represent those indicted for brutalizing police on January 6 or destroying and/or stealing government property.     The House Select Committee did an excellent job last evening of providing the big picture on the plot to shred U.S. democracy in service to Donald Trump’s megalomaniac desires. But the question that any good investigator of an unsolved crime scene must ask is this: who benefits from this crime? And to understand who, besides Donald Trump, would be the chief beneficiaries of a coup that installed Trump for an illegitimate second term as President, one has to follow the money trail. That money trail leads to Charles Koch, the billionaire Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the world.     Along with the heirs of his late brother, David, Charles Koch is a majority owner of Koch Industries, a global conglomerate which has interests in fossil fuels, refineries, chemicals, paper products and extensive trading operations.

World: 

Storms at the Summit of the Americas June 7 was a bad day for Luis Almagro, secretary-general of the Organization of American States (OAS). During the ninth Summit of the Americas, a young man declared to him what he is: an assassin and puppet of the White House, instigator of the coup in Bolivia. He said that Almagro cannot come to give lessons on democracy when his hands are stained with blood. In another room at the summit in Los Angeles, Secretary of State Antony Blinken seemed to be doing no better: several journalists rebuked him for using freedom of the press to provide cover for the murderers of journalists and for sanctioning and excluding certain countries from this meeting. “Democracy or hypocrisy?” could be heard over the loudspeaker that day.

Education, Health, 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 they 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 Heslthcare!

‘Unbelievable’: Half of New Drugs Launched in 2020-2021 Cost $150,000 or More Per Year “Big Pharma’s yearly price hikes have pushed already sky-high drug prices into the stratosphere,” said one advocacy group. “Prescription drug spending in the U.S. exceeded half a trillion dollars in 2020.”

Daily News Digest June 10, 2022

Daily News Digest Archives

Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines, Like the Salk Polio Vaccine, are Free For the Whole World!

Images of the Day:

Bendib: Public PrivatesAnother Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Ws Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years 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 future of Humanity Is Now At stake!

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!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!

Videos of the Day:

Quotes of the Day:

Weapons companies don’t mind. Their stocks are soaring. U.S. weapons exports exceed those of the next five leading weapons-dealing countries. The top seven countries account for 84% of weapons exports. Second place in international weapons dealing, held by Russia for the previous seven years, was taken over in 2021 by France. The only overlap between significant weapons dealing and where wars are present is in Ukraine and Russia — two countries impacted by a war widely recognized as outside the norm and meriting serious media coverage of the victims. In most years no nations with wars present are weapons dealers. Some nations get wars, others profit from wars. — U.S. Military Spending Is Undebatable Because Indefensible

. . .  In this, Mr. Kissinger is on the same page as Mr. Guaino.      “To make concessions to Russia would be submitting to aggression,”     Mr. Guaino warned.     “To make none would be submitting to insanity.”    The United States is making no concessions.      That would be to lose face. There’s an election coming.      So the administration is closing off avenues of negotiation and working to intensify the war. We’re in it to win it. With time, the huge import of deadly weaponry, including that from the newly authorized $40 billion allocation, could take the war to a different level. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine warned in an address to students this month that the bloodiest days of the war were coming. —  War in Ukraine May Be Impossible to Stop. And the U.S. Deserves Much of the Blame.

 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 Reublicrats 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 th poor and gives to the Rich. Taxthe Rich!  — They Can Afford to Pay!

Weapons companies don’t mind. Their stocks are soaring. U.S. weapons exports exceed those of the next five leading weapons-dealing countries. The top seven countries account for 84% of weapons exports. Second place in international weapons dealing, held by Russia for the previous seven years, was taken over in 2021 by France. The only overlap between significant weapons dealing and where wars are present is in Ukraine and Russia — two countries impacted by a war widely recognized as outside the norm and meriting serious media coverage of the victims. In most years no nations with wars present are weapons dealers. Some nations get wars, others profit from wars. — U.S. Military Spending Is Undebatable Because Indefensible

Barry Sheppard Biden’s War Strategy in Ukraine — Russia’s Defeat, Rejection of a Negotiated Settlement The June 4 New York Times prom-inently printed a long opinion piece by Christopher Caldwell titled “U.S. Helps Prolong Ukraine War”. While not an editorial, it was printed in the space editorials appear when they are written. Caldwell is a neoconservative who opposes the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He is identified by the Times as “a contributing Opinion writer”. In the article, Caldwell says, “But the United States has helped turn this tragic, local and ambiguous conflict into a potential world conflagration.” He refers to an article written in the French daily Le Figaro by Henri Guaino, an advisor for past French president Nicolas Sarkozy: “Mr. Guaino argues by misunderstanding the war’s logic the West, led by the Biden administration, is giving the conflict a momentum that may be impossible to stop. He is right. “In 2014 the United States backed an uprising — in its final stages a violent uprising — against the legitimately elected government of Viktor Yanukovych …”

The War in Ukraine May Be Impossible to Stop. And the U.S. Deserves Much of the Blame. In the Paris daily newspaper Le Figaro this month, Henri Guaino, a top adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy when he was president of France, warned that Europe’s countries, under the shortsighted leadership of the United States, were “sleep-walking” into war with Russia. Mr. Guaino was borrowing a metaphor that the historian Christopher Clark used to describe the origins of World War I.  Naturally, Mr. Guaino understands that Russia is most directly to blame for the present conflict in Ukraine. It was Russia that massed its troops on the frontier last fall and winter and — having demanded from NATO a number of Ukraine —related security guarantees that NATO rejected — began the shelling and killing on Feb. 24. But the United States has helped turn this tragic, local and ambiguous conflict into a potential world conflagration. By misunderstanding the war’s logic, Mr. Guaino argues, the West, led by the Biden adminis-tration, is giving the conflict a momentum that may be impossible to stop.  He is right.  In 2014 the United States backed an uprising — in its final stages a violent uprising — against the legitimately elected Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych, which was pro-Russian. (The corruption of Mr. Yanukovych’s government has been much adduced by the rebellion’s defenders, but corruption is a perennial Ukrainian problem, even today.) Russia, in turn, annexed Crimea, a historically Russian-speaking part of Ukraine that since the 18th century had been home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

CIA Torture:The NYT Acknowledges the CIA’s Big Lie for Gina Haspel The  New York Times has finally acknowledged Gina Haspel’s direct involvement in the Central Intelligence Agency’s policy of torture and abuse.  On June 4, 2022, an article provided details of Haspel’s role as chief of the CIA base twenty years ago that was known for conducting the most sadistic acts of torture and abuse.  At her confirmation hearings to become CIA director in 2018, Haspel refused to answer any direct questions about her role in the policy of torture and abuse, which included the waterboarding of a Saudi prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.  The CIA stopped me from writing about Haspel’s role in my 2018 memoir, “Whistleblower at the CIA.”

Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocied!:

I Don’t Want — I Want

Civil Rights/Black Liberation: 

Black Agenda Report June 8. 2022

Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist U.S. Effort to Hurt Russia Undermines Itself and the World  The U.S. drive to dominate creates self-inflicted wounds and self-imposed crises. It also creates suffering around the world with only the most servile vassal states willing to do what Washington… More Storiea

.      .      .      .    .

Rejecting War Is Not Enough: Racism Curdles Peace War and racism have always been violently, tragically inseparable. For centuries, the most devastating and brutal conflicts in the world have been driven by destructive notions of racial superiority and murderous assertions of ethnic differences.

Police Have No Duty to Protect the Public (Just PrzThough often unsaid in police reform debates, numerous court precedents have established that cops aren’t obligated to act in the interests of citizens. A passenger looks out at the 36th Street subway station on April 13, 2022, where a shooting attack occurred the previous day. Supreme Court precedent holds that American police have no legal obligation to protect the public.

The Uvalde Police Sent an Important Message to the Nation We’re not going to save you or your children! Our hearts have been pierced over and over by the horrific events that occurred at the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Especially heart wrenching were the phone call cries, “send the police,” from that 10-year-old girl trapped in the room with the murderer and surrounded by the dead and dying bodies of her classmates. She made three 911 calls. See Breaking Points at about 7:30 mins. Apparently, she or another student, was told on a call to yell out, “We need help” perhaps with the idea that some of the nineteen heavily armed police just outside the door might hear and come to the rescue. Too bad for her, the only one who came to her was the shooter who promptly killed her.

Victims of Forced Sterilization in California Are Fighting for Reparations Gaining justice for survivors of the state’s abuse is not only a reproductive health issue, it’s a racial justice issue. In the mid-2000s, Moonlight Pulido experienced a bout of hot flashes, emotional ups-and-downs, and other symptoms of menopause that confused her — after all, she was in her 30s and far too young to be experiencing these kinds of hormonal changes. 

Labor:

Unison Conference: The Battle Lines are Drawn Next week’s Unison conference will be an arena for the struggle between a right-wing bureaucracy attempting to maintain their stifling control, and an ascendant grassroots left seeking to transform the union. The left must seize the moment. This year’s Unison national delegate conference represents the culmination of eighteen tumultuous months in our union.     From the onset of the election campaign for the general secretary position, right up until today, there has barely been a week without some degree of controversy.

Paul Holmes’ general secretary campaign and the subsequent victory of the Time for Real Change (TFRC) candidates in the NEC elections were a real earthquake, with implications far beyond Unison.     The right wing in the union have tried to explain all this as being down to the intrigues of a left faction. But the truth is that the rise of the left in Unison reflects years, if not decades, of discontent with the status quo in Unison.

To Win Social Justice, We Must Win the Class War Book Review: Class Struggle Unionism (2022), by Joe Burns (Haymarket) In Class Struggle Unionism Joe Burns builds on his previous book, Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America (2011).     As before, Burns grounds his argument in the class war, a battle-to-the-death between the employer class and the working class over who controls the wealth that workers create.    

Economy:

The decline of the West is not necessary or historically inevitable. It is the result of choosing policies dictated by its rentier interests. … The threat posed to society by rentier interests is the great challenge of every nation today: whether its government can restrict the dynamics of finance capitalism and prevent an oligarchy from dominating the state and enriching itself by imposing austerity on labor and industry. So far, the West has not risen to this challenge.” “There are essentially two types of society: mixed economies with public checks and balances, and oligarchies that dismantle and privatize the state, taking over its monetary and credit system, the land and basic infrastructure to enrich themselves but choking the economy, not helping it grow. — Michael Hudson, The Destiny of Civilization

FRED Overnight Bank Funding Rate is 0.82%

As Tech Startups and Blank-Check Companies Blow Up in Investors’ Portfolios, SEC Chief Gensler Gives Yet Another Speech On September 14 of last year, we wrote this about SEC Chair Gary Gensler:     “Gensler’s opening remarks at today’s Senate Banking Committee hearing include seven references to this phrase: ‘asked staff for recommendations…’ If past is prologue, this will mean that Gensler will run out the clock on actually advancing any meaningful ‘recommendations’ into concrete final rules.”    Yesterday, Gensler gave a heavily promoted speech about cleaning up the way that retail stock orders are handled on Wall Street. But all the speech actually did was to ask his staff for more ideas and recommendations. The phrase “asked staff” appears 13 times in the speech.    While Gensler spends his time giving speeches and asking his staff for recommendations that don’t go anywhere, large chunks of U.S. markets are blowing up in investor portfolios.

World: 

Latin American Nations Skip Summit of Americas for Excluding Cuba and Venezuela Leaders from Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are absent from Biden’s Summit of the Americas in LA. Top leaders from Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are all absent from the ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles.      Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced he would boycott the conference after the U.S. said it would not invite Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.    We speak with historian Alejandro Velasco and Roberto Lovato, award-winning Salvadoran American journalist and author, who calls the conference ​​”a failure of hemispheric proportions and a global embarrassment for the United States and for the Biden administration.” Lovato calls the Biden administration’s condemnation of some countries as anti-democratic hypocritical and says the absence of so many Latin American Countries Represents A Decline in U.S. Hegemony.

Mapping U.S. imperialism “The greatest threat looming over our planet, the hegemonistic pretentions of the American Empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human species. We continue to warn you about this danger, and we appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our heads.” — Hugo Chavez,     US imperialism is the greatest threat to life on the planet, a force of ecological devastation and disaster impacting not only human beings, but also our non-human relatives. How can we organize to dismantle the vast and complicated network of US imperialism which includes US war and militarism, CIA intervention, US weap-ons/technology/surveillance corporations, political and economic support for dictatorships, military juntas, death squads and US trained global police forces favorable to US geopolitical interests, US imposed sanctions, so-called “humanitarian interventions,” genetically modified grassroots organizationscorporate media’s manipulation of spontaneous protest, and US corporate sponsorship of political repression and regime change favorable to US corporate interests?

Education, Health, 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 they 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 Heslthcare! 

Corruption and Regulatory Capture Another day, our attention focuses on the problem arising due to the lack of infant formula and the trouble it poses for new new-born infants, including deaths.  And we ask, how do “they” get away with it? These are but two examples of the social crises that seem to arise every day and appear to come out of nowhere. And, after a day or so of media attention, it seems to disappear, superseded by yet another headline grabbing crisis.  Other crises have come and gone, like pharmaceutical industry’s role in widespread opioid addiction or airline crashes. Part of the reason we have these crisis – and so many others – is regulator capture.  As Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) declared, “Regulatory capture is a big deal.”

Daily News Digest April 5, 2022

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Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines, Like the Salk Polio Vaccine, are Free For the Whole World

Images of the Day:

Carlos Latuff Perrogative to Bomb!! 

Dont’e Be Distracted

Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Ws Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years 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 future of Humanity Is Now At stake!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!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!

Videos of the Day:

Quotes of the Day:

“Scientists and government representatives were locked in marathon talks late Sunday night in a race to complete the last installment of a landmark UN climate report, as a number of fossil fuel-producing nations objected to strong statements that the world must end its use of coal, oil and natural gas, a source familiar with the talks told CNN.” Sandra Steingraber, Re UN Report On Climate Crisis Confirms the World Already Has Solutions — But Politics are Getting in the Way

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 Reublicrats 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 th poor and gives to the Rich. Taxthe Rich!  — They Can Afford to Pay!

Does The Fourth Estate Dance To The Company Tune? The Media Monopoly ! (ANswer Yes! — R.S,) That’s a fact which troubles Ben Bagdikian, and which should trouble you, too. His book is strong and controversial stuff, but it’s no simple muckraker’s cry of outrage against some “conspiracy” to keep you ignorant of how great corporations use and abuse you.     The problem, as he sees it, is institutional, not personal. The media themselves are becoming part and parcel of the small group of powerful conglomerates dominating our economy. They belong to the system that they’re supposed to cover objectively on your behalf.     That’s one danger to freedom of the press. The other is that mass advertising forces a change in the substance of the news itself, encouraging the presentation of more non-upsetting, bland material that won’t spoil the euphoric, self-centered mood that encourages consumers to the sweet buy and buy.

The Media Monopoly’s Journatists: Glen Greenwald: Your Top Priority is The Emotional Comfort of the Most Powerful Elites, Which You Fulfill by Never Criticizing Them  Corporate journalists have license to use their huge platforms to malign, expose and destroy anyone they want. Your moral duty: sit in respectful silence and never object.

Looking for “Good Guys” on Ukraine? Biden and Washington have shown little interest in pursuing and promoting peace negotiations around terms that would let Putin stand down from further carnage in the wake of the difficulties his invasion has faced. There’s nothing mysterious about the off-ramps Putin needs for some kind of “mission accomplished” moment to save Ukrainian and Russian lives: official neutrality for Ukraine, recognition of the fait accompli of Russia’s takeover of Crimea, and readjusted sovereignty status for the two long-contested Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine provinces.

 Save the Planet, Behead the Military Budget  Ouch!  Peter Isaacson, writing in Fair Observer, seems to be saying . . . oh my God, democracy is a cliché, a big sham. I stand up, put my hand on my heart, pledge allegiance to the flag. This is America, land of the empowered voter. Then I read about our president’s latest budget proposal, which includes $813 billion for “national defense” — pushing the Pentagon budget’s already record-setting enormity further into outer space — and I feel myself collapse (yet again) into nothingness. Why, why, why, as our ecosystem collapses, as millions of refugees flee the horrors of war and poverty, as the pandemic continues, as World War III and the possibility of nuclear Armageddon rears its evil head, as the planet trembles, does ever-expanding, global militarism remain our primary national purpose?

Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:

Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe

‘Oh, That House? It’s in the Sea Now:” India’s Disappearing Coastline Google Maps tells me I am approaching my destination. But the neighbourhood appears a bit altered from what I remember of it. There’s no sign of the crumbling old house by the sea, whose coordinates I had saved on my phone the last time I visited Uppada. “Oh, that house? It is in the sea now – there!” says T. Maramma, casually pointing to a wave gushing in from the Bay of Bengal. 

UN Report On Climate Crisis Confirms the World Already Has Solutions — But Politics are Getting in the Way The world is careening toward levels of global warming that will have irreversible impacts, a new landmark report says, but we already have the solutions — the only thing preventing us from taking advantage of them is political will and status-quo interests in fossil fuels. The third and final installment of the sixth UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, published Monday, shows how renewable energy sources like wind and solar are now economically viable and becoming cheaper by the day. 

IPCC Report: ‘Now Or Never’ If World Is To Stave Off Climate Disaster Greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, say climate scientists in what is in effect their final warning

The world can still hope to stave off the worst ravages of climate breakdown but only through a “now or never” dash to a low-carbon economy and society, scientists have said in what is in effect a final warning for governments on the climate. Greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, and can be nearly halved this decade, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to give the world a chance of limiting future heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

New IPCC Report Doubles Down on Water Crisis The IPCC report released today is yet another urgent alarm bell, urging us to wake up to the real dangers of climate change that communities across the globe are already experiencing. The IPCC report released today is yet another urgent alarm bell, urging us to wake up to the real dangers of climate change that communities across the globe are already experiencing.  Climate change is bringing severe consequences – from increasing floods and failing dams that endanger entire communities, to droughts and tapped-out water supplies that put people, industries, economies and ecosystems at risk

Threats: Climate change is already wreaking havoc on communities and their rivers and water supplies!

  • Methane-Producing Dams: More than 90,000 dams turn free-flowing rivers across the U.S. into stagnant impoundments that release methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
  • Failing infrastructure: Major flooding and hurricanes have caused dozens of dams to fail in the Carolinas, and Michigan’s Edenville Dam failed catastrophically in 2020. Climate change is bringing more frequent and severe flooding at a time when U.S. dams are aging and outdated.
  • Rivers running dry:The Colorado River – which supports a $1.4 trillion economy and drinking water for 40 million people – is in crisis due to climate change and decades of overallocation. The river is so over-burdened it no longer reaches the sea.
  • Disastrous flooding:Record flooding along the Mississippi River in 2019 caused $20 billion in damage to people’s homes, farms and businesses in the floodplain. As flood risk grows with climate change, so does the risk to anyone living in harm’s way.

UN Weather Agency Sounds Alarm on Extreme Events in Antarctica Among the events sparking concern was “freakish warming at Earth’s South Pole” including “a mind-blowing” above-average reading at a research station. “The Antarctic ice sheets hold almost 60 meters of potential sea-level rise. Understanding and properly monitoring the continent is therefore crucial for society’s future well-being.” The remarks from climate experts with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)—delivered just ahead of a key report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—follow last month’s collapse of East Antarctica’s Conger Ice Shelf, record warm temperatures, and rare rainfall.

As Oil Giants Turn to Bitcoin Mining, Some Spin Burning Fossil Fuels for Cryptocurrency as a Climate Solution In a pilot project last year, ExxonMobil used up to 18 million cubic feet of gas per month to mine bitcoin in North Dakota. In a pilot project last year, ExxonMobil used up to 18 million cubic feet of gas per month to mine bitcoin in North Dakota. Flaring — or the burning of stranded natural gas directly at an oil well — is one of the drilling industry’s most notorious problems, often condemned as a pointlessly polluting waste of billions of dollars and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas.In early March, oil giant ExxonMobil signed up to meet the World Bank’s “zero routine flaring by 2030” goal (a plan that — when you look just a bit closer — doesn’t entirely eliminate flaring but instead reduces “absolute flaring and methane emissions” by 60 to 70 percent.)

RBC, TD Lead 51% Rise in Tar Sands/Oil Sands Investment as Biggest Banks Fund Climate Chaos Fossil investment from the world’s 60 biggest banks hit US$4.6 trillion in the six years since the Paris climate agreement was signed, while the Royal Bank of Canada and TD Bank led a 51% increase in tar sands/oil sands investment last year, according to the latest edition of the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report released Wednesday. “In 2021, the year of ‘net zero by 2050’ pledges, banks prematurely patted themselves on the back for adopting financed emissions targets a generation away while delaying serious climate action now,” concludes the analysis compiled by Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, the Indigenous Environmental Network, Oil Change International, Reclaim Finance, the U.S. Sierra Club, and Urgewald. Overall fossil investment plateaued in 2021, but that still meant $742 billion in fossil investment in a single year—just over $2 billion per day, or $1.4 million per minute—despite urgent calls by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency, and countless others to begin drastically scaling back fossil fuels of all kinds.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Coming Soon: Four Who Died Trying ( I am Interviewed about Malcom X’s Assassination.)

GOP Lawmakers Are Trying to Prevent Students From Learning About Reconstruction Guardians of the status quo have always sought to hide Reconstruction’s unprecedented advancements for Black people.

Labor:

Economy:

The Submerging Market Debt Crisis Last week, Ghana’s central bank announced its biggest ever interest-rate hike as it sought to slow rampant inflation that threatens to create a debt crisis in one of West Africa’s largest economies.  The Bank of Ghana raised its main lending rate by 250 basis points to 17% as consumer inflation reached 15.7% year-on-year in February, the highest since 2016. The war in Ukraine will likely make things worse. Ghana imports nearly a quarter of its wheat from Russia and around 60% of its iron ore from Ukraine. Ghana is just one example of the economic stress being placed on small, low-income economies around the world from food and energy inflation, rising interest rates and a strong dollar.  The island nation on the south east coast of India, Sri Lanka, has begun talks with the IMF for a ‘debt relief’ package after protests over a deepening economic crisis forced Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government into a policy U-turn.  Sri Lanka has for months faced mounting economic pain as its depleted foreign currency reserves triggered shortages of imports and fuel, power blackouts and double-digit inflation.  It has debt and interest repayments worth about $7bn due this year against usable foreign currency reserves as low as $500mn.

In a Six-Day Span in March 2020, the Dow Crashed 5,676 Points; the Fed Responded with Almost $1 Trillion in Repo Loans to 24 Trading Houses The Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, has a “dual mandate” to target inflation and to maintain “maximum sustainable employment.” The Fed has zero mandate to target a specified level for the Dow Jones Industrial Average or to prevent stock market crashes by printing money out of thin air and pumping it out to the trading houses on Wall Street. But under Fed Chair Ben Bernanke during the Wall Street crisis in 2008 and Fed Chair Jerome Powell in 2019-2020, that’s exactly what the Fed decided to do.World:

Ukraine War Inflames Global Hunger, Preparing Massive Unrest The war in Ukraine is having severe consequences throughout the world. Many countries will be hit hard by rising food and energy prices, tipping millions over the edge. It is only a matter of time before a new revolutionary wave sweeps the world.     The impact of the war in Ukraine will be felt far beyond European shores. With Russia and Ukraine together being responsible for 12% of all calories traded, and natural gas forming an important component in fertilisers, the war is exacerbating food inflation. Coming at a time when many of the dominated capitalist countries have built up massive debts in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the war is adding to a perfect storm that will provoke class struggle on a global scale.

Health, Education. and Wealfare:

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 they 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! 

‘A Poor People’s Pandemic’: Poorest US Counties Suffered Twice the Covid Deaths of Richest “The neglect of poor and low-wealth people in this country during a pandemic is immoral, shocking, and unjust,” said Rev. Dr. William Barber II in response to the new report. A first-of-its-kind examination of the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on low-income communities published Monday shows that Covid-19 has been twice as deadly in poor counties as in wealthy ones, a finding seen as a damning indictment of the U.S. government’s pandemic response.

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Daily News Digest Archives

Images Of the Day:

The Pandemic ContinuesAnother Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Ws Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years 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 future of Humanity Is Now At stake!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!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!

Quotes of the Day:

The underlying social and economic crisis cannot be solved on the basis of reforms within the framework of capitalism. It must be expected that sooner or later there will be important mobilisations over the demands still pending from October 2019. The defeat of Kast increases the confidence of the masses, and what has now been expressed through electoral channels will be expressed in demands on the new government and in mobilisations of the masses when faced with half measures.    The water crisis will continue to worsen. The Wallmapu will continue to be militarised, leading to an increasingly complex conflict where the right has established a bastion. The decriminalisation of abortion will continue to be a demand raised by the feminist and women’s movement. We are likely to witness an increase in labour disputes over wages and working conditions. Gabriel Boric’s lack of determination to carry out radical change aimed at improving living conditions will be exposed. For a profound transformation of society we need to put an end to the capitalist system and establish a workers’ government. We can only rely on the strength of the mobilisations of and the self-organisation of the working class. The key is to build a revolutionary leadership that is up to the tasks that the working class posed in the October insurrection. —Chile Presidential Election: Increase In Working-Class Vote Defeats Pro-Pinochet Candidate

Videos of the Day:

NOAA: Artic Report Card: The Time to Face Global Warming is Now!

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 ownershipof the Reublicrats, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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!

The Media Monopoly: The Mainstream Media Seems to Want More War for the United States The news and editorial pages have forgotten the failed wars of the recent past, and are already pursuing new confrontations for the United States.  In the past week, the New York Times argued that President Joe Biden’s handling of Ukraine is actually a “wider test of U.S. credibility abroad.”  The Washington Post, which has become a voice for militarism, believes it is essential to “challenge the authoritarianism” of Russia, and supports a “generational investment” in economic and military support for Ukraine.  And now the most authoritative news weekly in the English language, The Economist, has questioned America’s resolve in a cover story headlined “What would American fight for.”

Why Spending $2 Trillion on Child Care, Health Care and Fighting Climate Change Won’t Make Inflation Any Worse Than it Already is One of the main concerns raised by critics of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan is that it will drive up inflation, which is already running at the fastest pace in four decades. The Senate is currently considering a roughly US$2 trillion bill passed by the House that would spend money on health care, education, fighting climate change and much else over the next decade. But Republicans and a handful of Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia argue the risk that more spending could push inflation even higher is too great.As an economist, I believe these concerns are likely overblown. Here’s why.

Carbon Monoxide From Generators Poisons Thousands of People a Year. The U.S. Has Failed to Force Safety Changes. Portable generators are among the deadliest consumer products. Two decades after the government identified the danger, people are left vulnerable by a system that lets the industry regulate itself. Portable generators are among the deadliest consumer products. Two decades after the government identified the danger, and as climate change leads to more power outages, people are left vulnerable by a system that lets the industry regulate itself. Portable generators are among the deadliest consumer products. Two decades after the government identified the danger, and as climate change leads to more power outages, people are left vulnerable by a system that lets the industry regulate itself.

Environment:

100 years ago, Rosa Luxemburg Raised the Slogan:   Socialism or Barbarism!  Today’s Slogan is Ecosocialism or Ecocide!

2021 Arctic Report Card Tells a Human Story of Cascading Climate Disruption Including data from 2021, 15 of the lowest summer sea ice extents – the point when the ice is at its minimum reach for the year – have all occurred in the last 15 years, within a record dating back to 1979 when satellites began regularly monitoring the region.  The sea ice is also thinning at an alarming rate as the Arctic’s oldest and thickest multi-year ice disappears. This loss of sea ice diminishes the Arctic’s ability to cool the global climate. It can also alter lower latitude weather systems to an extent that makes previously rare and impactful weather events, like droughts, heat waves and extreme winter storms, more likely.    Similarly, the persistent melting of the Greenland ice sheet and other land-based ice is raising seas worldwide, exacerbating the severity and exposure to coastal flooding, disruptions to drinking and waste water systems, and coastal erosion for more communities around the planet.Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Labor:

 Economy:

Inflation Comes From Printing Money For The Rich Brief thoughts on the political science of this country (USA). Leftists are getting it slightly wrong. In Washington, the divide is between the very few progressive Democrats and the rest of the “bipartisan” politicians bought off by corporations. On the ground, however, the divide is between left-liberals and conservatives, not between leftists and liberals.  In general people of all political spectrums are far to the left of most politicians in both parties. Alienation from the Democratic Party comes not from supposed neoliberalism or wokeism, the two most common tropes by the reactionary right. Rather the alienation from the Democrats comes from their commitment to the state as a means to consolidate corporate power. Many conflate this with communism, and in the context of communism being understood as state capitalism historically, people aren’t wrong.

Robber Baron JPMorgan’s Crime Wave Continues, Calling into Question the Justice Department’s Lax Settlement with the Bank Last Year JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States. It also has the scandalous distinction of having admitted to five criminal felony counts brought by the U.S. Department of Justice since 2014 and a breathtaking series of additional charges from other regulators. (See its Rap Sheet here.) On Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined the securities unit of JPMorgan Chase $125 million for evading the ability of the SEC to adequately conduct its investigations of the bank because there was “firmwide” use by traders, supervisors and other personnel of non-official communications devices to conduct its business, while the firm failed to record and retain these messages as required by law.

World:

The underlying social and economic crisis cannot be solved on the basis of Capitalism!:  ‘We Will Bury Neoliberalism’: Global Celebration Follows Leftist Victory in Chile At last. The specter of Pinochet is removed from Chile,” declared former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. (The Social Demorcrat Betrayor of the Geek Revolution Agsinst IMF Imposed Austeritry) Socialist Gabriel Boric’s victory in Chile’s high-stakes presidential election Sunday was hailed by progressives worldwide as an inspiring example of how a democratic groundswell can overcome deeply entrenched forces of reaction and chart a path toward a more just, equal, and sustainable future. Riding a massive wave of anger at Chile’s neoliberal political establishment and the economic inequities it has perpetuated, Boric—a 35-year-old former student activist—handily defeated José Antonio Kast, a lawyer and politician whom one commentator characterized as “easily as reactionary as far-right dictator Augusto Pinochet,” the leader of the U.S.-backed military junta that ruled Chile with an iron fist for nearly two decades. Chile Presidential Election: Increase In Working-Class Vote Defeats Pro-Pinochet Candidate The candidate of Apruebro Dignidad, Gabriel Boric has won the presidential election with 56% of the votes. In absolute terms, this is a record majority, with some 4.6 million votes cast for Boric, putting him almost 1 million votes ahead of the pro-Pinochet candidate, Juan Antonio Kast, who obtained 44%. [También disponible en español]After the low turnout in the first round (47%), the Apruebo Dignidad campaign managed to mobilise a significant number of votes in working-class and popular districts, where it obtained a wide advantage, as in Puente Alto (70%) and Maipú (66%), with the turnout rising to 55% nationally in the second round. Compared with wealthy districts, where the vote increased by about 4 points on average, participation increased considerably more in poor urban districts, reaching a 10-point increase. With a correct class instinct, workers and youth mobilized to defeat Kast. In total, there were 1.25 million more votes cast in the second round.Education, Health, 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 

Omicron Outbreak Inducing Whiplash For Many Americans With the omicron variant sending coronavirus cases spiking across the country, the pandemic is once again upending daily life and evoking the early days of the outbreak as scientists race to understand the still-unknown implications of this new type of coronavirus.The worrying signs suddenly seem everywhere: Professional sports leagues are canceling games. Colleges are sending students home from campus. Secretary of State Antony Blinken cut short his trip to Southeast Asia. With the number of omicron cases appearing to double every two days, confirmed U.S. coronavirus infections have increased more than 50 percent in roughly two weeks, from 81,900 on Nov. 30 to 124,110 on Dec. 16, according to The Washington Post’s rolling seven-day average.     After a briefing on the omicron variant from his coronavirus response team Thursday, President Biden warned that for unvaccinated Americans, “we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death.” He added: “Omicron is here. It’s going to start to spread much more rapidly at the beginning of the year, and the only real protection is to get your shots.”

As Omicron Surge Begins, Hospitals Have New Reason To Open Covid-19 Wards to Journalists The pandemic has revealed how reporting on what happens in hospitals can have a real impact on public health. Michael Dowling made an unorthodox move when the Covid-19 pandemic got underway. Dowling is the chief executive of the largest hospital network in New York, and he decided that instead of barring journalists from Northwell Health’s facilities, he would let a documentary team inside one of its hospitals.A prominent figure in the U.S. health care industry, Dowling was making a radical break from other CEOs. As people stricken with Covid-19 began to perish, most hospitals closed their doors to journalists, claiming that patient privacy had to be protected and that outsiders who weren’t medical professionals might contract the virus or get in the way of their swamped staffs. Dowling had been a top health official in New York during the AIDS epidemic and didn’t think that it would be a problem. He was right.

Daily News Digest December 3, 2021

Daily News Digest December 3, 2021

Daily News Digest Archives

Images Of the Day:

What Restricting Abortion is Really All AboutLake MeadAnother Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years 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 future of Humanity Is Now At stake!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”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!

Quotes of the Day:

While Omicron is bad news for humanity, it is very good news for the Big Pharma capitalists, who are happy to keep riding the pandemic gravy train for as long as they can, irrespective of the resulting chaos and loss of life:“In reports to investors these corporations have predicted strong profits on developing booster shots to respond to new variants. It is not in their financial interest to eradicate the virus. In a modern take on evolution, one can conceptualize a symbiotic relationship between SARS-CoV-2 and biotech investors, both united in their parasitism of the bodies of working class people.”  — Omicron variant: A Menace of Capitalism’s Making

Videos of the Day:

Watch a Never-Before-Aired James Baldwin Interview From 1979 Buried by ABC at the time, the segment reveals a unique glimpse into Baldwin’s private life—as well as his resounding criticism about white fragility, as blisteringly relevant today as it was in 1979.

Abortion Under Attack: Supreme Court Hints It Will Uphold Mississippi’s Ban, Threatening Roe v. Wade

As France Honors Black Artist Josephine Baker, Far-Right Pundit Éric Zemmour Launches Presidential Bid

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 ownershipof the Reublicrats, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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!

Since Congress Lifted Crude Export Ban in 2015, US Has Dropped ‘Climate Bomb’ Port Arthur, and the entire Gulf Coast, has become a sacrifice zone!on World Oil and gas exports from the Gulf Coast have surged by nearly 600%, and fossil fuel production in the Permian Basin has grown by 135%. After Congress lifted a ban on crude exports in late 2015, oil and gas production in the Permian Basin soared while domestic consumption remained flat—leading to a massive build-out of pipelines and other infrastructure that culminated in the U.S. “flooding global markets” with fossil fuels at the expense of humanity, in general, and vulnerable Gulf Coast communities already overburdened by pollution, in particular.Environment:

California Drought: State Water Project Will Deliver No Water to Most Communities Next Year Newsom may impose mandatory conservation rules, state water officials say In a stark indicator of California’s worsening drought, the Newsom administration announced Wednesday that cities and farms should expect to receive virtually no water next year from the State Water Project, a massive system of dams, pipes and canals that typically provides water to 27 million people from Silicon Valley to San Diego.Megadrought Spurs First-Ever Federal Colorado River Cutbacks  The Biden administration today will declare a water shortage on the Colorado River for the first time ever, triggering cutbacks in the Southwest due to a decadeslong drought that experts say is a sign of what’s to come. Bureau of Reclamation officials will announce that water levels in the river’s main reservoirs have dropped so low they have triggered mandatory delivery reductions in Arizona and Nevada. The announcement comes as heat waves and wildfires are scorching the West, presenting the Biden administration with another crisis. A 20-year “megadrought” in the seven-state Colorado River Basin has caused Lake Mead and Lake Powell to drop to levels not seen since they were originally filled a half-century ago. “This drought has come on faster and harder than last time,” said Ellen Hanak, the director of the water policy center at the Public Policy Institute of California, referring to the last Golden State drought that ended in 2016. “We are in year two, but we’re in as bad a shape as year three of what was a record drought last time.” Today’s announcement means Arizona and Nevada will face the first round of cuts next year under operating guidelines agreed to by the basin states — Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. Arizona’s share of the river’s water will be cut by nearly a fifth, or 18%, mainly affecting the state’s farmers. Nevada will lose approximately 7% of its allocation.Eco-Fear: Mental Health in the Age of Climate Emergency As a climate student, I understand the isolation that comes with carrying a burden much of the world prefers to ignore—particularly those with the power to alleviate it.  Human beings today face climate challenges on an incomprehensibly enormous scale. Given the gravity of the situation we’re in, the guilt we carry about our part in creating it, and infuriating, long-standing government inaction, it’s no surprise that feelings of hopelessness and despair abound. This dark cloud has become so widely felt and acknowledged in recent years that it’s even been given a name: “eco-anxiety,” defined by the American Public Health Association (APHA) as “a chronic fear of environmental doom.” While eco-anxiety can be ignited in anyone by events as small as watching the nightly news, those deeply involved in the climate space are more vulnerable than others. As climate activists, our work is needed now more than ever: we must begin learning to live with our eco fear by talking with each other, forging connections within our communities, and taking direct action to combat the climate crisis.

Climate Justice Doesn’t Start With Politicians. It Starts in the Streets.  The outcomes of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) continue to be debated across the globe, although a clear consensus has emerged among activists that it was largely a failure. There may be some hope down the road, however, as coal appears to be on its way out and grassroots pressure to transform climate policy is on the upsurge.  Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, attended COP26 and witnessed personally the power of protests in the streets, which, she says, was the real leadership on display in Glasgow. In this exclusive interview with Truthout, Morgan shares what transpired in Glasgow, what mechanisms can be implemented to end fossil fuel use, and how the end of the fossil fuel economy has the potential to challenge capitalism.The only reason we got where we did in Glasgow was because the youth, Indigenous leaders, activists and countries on the climate frontline forced concessions that were grudgingly given.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

The Black Agenda”  Glen Ford
Black politics are key to recognizing the most important social dynamics of the United States. Over the past forty years, no commentator has been as deeply insightful about the paradoxes and personalities of Black American public life as the late journalist and radio host Glen Ford.  In this stunning overview, Ford draws from his work for Black Agenda Report, one of the most incisive and perceptive publications of the progressive left, to examine competing struggles for class power and identity in the Black movement. 

China is Not Colonizing Africa Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
International media cannot be trusted to give accurate information. Skepticism is especially warranted when China is the topic and allegations of colonizing Africa make headlines.

Interview: Malcolm X and Young Socialist, 1965 Editors, The Black Agenda Review
A 1965 interview with Malcolm X demonstrates how his encounters in Africa had a profound impact on his thinking about the domestic struggles of Africans in the Americas.

Eritrea Versus AFRICOM: Defending Sovereignty in the Face of Imperialist Aggression Dina M. Afsaha, Tunde Osazua
The rapid expansion of AFRICOM on the African continent should be a cause for concern as African nations are quickly surrendering their sovereignty to the US. As the only country without a relationship to AFRICOM, Eritrea bears the brunt of US vilification. We must salute Eritrea’s ongoing project of national liberation.

Enes Kanter Exposes Connection Between Sinophobia and Anti-Black Racism Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Recent remarks made by an NBA player show that Sinophobia represents backward foreign policy and invitations to amplify racist tropes in the U.S.

The Drone Ranger gallops into Glasgow
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR Poet in Residence

“Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured authors are Jessica Luther and Kavitha A. Davidson . Luther is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, Texas Monthly, Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and Vice Sports, among others. Davidson is a sportswriter and host of The Lead, an in-depth daily sports news podcast produced by The Athletic. She is on the board of directors at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center. Their book is Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Fan.

Democracy Scores Another Victory Over the U.S. in Honduras Black Alliance for Peace
The people of Honduras secured a victory against U.S. interference with the convincing win of Xiomara Castro as their new president. The Black Alliance for Peace explains the election’s significance.

#NoMore Censorship of Africa’s Roving Digital Army of Peace Simon Tesfamariam
The removal of Twitter accounts advocating for peace in the Horn of Africa shows the connection between the state and big tech companies. Freedom of speech is an illusion when communications are controlled by corporations which follow governmental dictates.

White Supremacy, Nazism and Fascism R U.S. Philippe Gendrault, Wendy C. Ong
Only the United States and Ukraine voted against a UN Resolution denouncing the “glorification of Nazism.” History proves that racism in all its forms is foundational to this country and continues to be affirmed.

Potential Legislation on China Amounts to a New Cold War Aída Chávez
The $250 billion “Innovation and Competition Act” leverages industrial policy to ratchet up militarization and potentially instigate global conflict with China.

Ethiopia: The West’s Diplomats Meet in Secret to Decide How to Help the TPLF Jeff Pearce
Former and current diplomats from the US, EU and UK met with representatives of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Despite claims of impartiality it is clear that the US/NATO axis have given the green light for overthrow of the Ethiopian government.

WHO Stands with African Nations and Calls for Borders to Remain Open  World Health Organization Scientists in Southern African nations revealed the presence of the Omicron Covid-19 variant but the good deed was punished with worldwide travel bans. The World Health Organization makes clear that the rationale for the ban is of dubious benefit and needlessly harms the targeted nations. The role of rich nations in hoarding vaccines and the continued patents on vaccines increase harm for Africans who are now the target of blame. Pledges to “follow the science” disappeared when Africa became the focus of attention.

Anti-Communism, Anti-Blackness, and Imperialism
Charisse Burden-Stelly, PhD
In this talk prepared for the Albuquerque Anti-War Coalition ‘s Anti-Communism & Imperialism  panel discussion, Dr. Charisse Burden Stelly discusses how anti-communism and anti-Blackness are intrinsically intertwined structures of white supremacist and capitalist control.

A Totally Different Form of Living: On the Legacies of Displacement and Marronage as Black Ecologies
Justin Hosbey, J.T. Roane
This is a brief reflection on water, swamps, bayous, wetlands, and Black life in the United States, and the forms of freedom and racialized unfreedom that these ecologies have facilitated. Our ongoing collective project is to produce “deep maps” that center Black ecologies in the ways we think about the environment in and beyond the US South. Following water’s varied capacities— stagnant open pools, circuitous underground rivers, swift streams, or open ocean with its tides and currents—we draw together Tidewater Virginia and the Mississippi Delta, particularly New Orleans, to discover new possibilities of regional social and political affiliation outside of domination, extraction, and violence.

Labor:

Economy:

It’s Not a Supply Chain Crisis — It’s a Failing Economy The Age of Consumption is Over — And Now We’re Heading for the Greatest Collapse in Economic History Why isn’t this story true? Well, take a look at this chart, for starters. That’s demand in the economy minus food and energy. See a spike? Not really — barely, but only a tiny one. There’s no huge spike in demand, really. People aren’t consuming more things — what there is is inflation. There’s a very big difference between those two things: people consuming higher quantities of stuff, versus paying more for the same amount of stuff. We are in the latter situation.  That matters, because it begins to explain why this isn’t just a “supply chain crisis.” The idea in that story is that the pandemic is ending, so people are buying things madly, more than ever before, more than they did before the pandemic, which is snarling supply chains, who can’t keep up with this explosion in demand. In fact, none of that is true. The pandemic isn’t remotely ending, and people aren’t buying more things than ever before, in some kind of relieved, joyous mania of consumption. They’re just paying more for the same stuff.Jamie Dimon Has Been Juggling Too Many Criminal Balls in the Air; One Just Landed with a Bang in Judge Jed Rakoff’s Court  We can tell you with some confidence what Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is going to be doing at 11:00 a.m. this morning. He’s going to be listening to a teleconference in a federal court case titled Shaquala Williams v JPMorgan Chase & Co. That’s because the outcome of that case will determine if the bank Dimon has helmed through five separate felony counts – all of which received non-prosecution agreements from the Justice Department – will finally be prosecuted for a crime.

World:

Morocco: Movement of Students and Unemployed Youth is a Harbinger of Revolutionary Struggles In recent days, cities and towns across Morocco have witnessed mass youth movements involving students and unemployed university graduates. Like all serious and deeply-rooted movements, it was marked by mass participation of young women, who stood at the forefront and brought with them high levels of militancy. The movement has been received with warm sympathy by all layers of the poor, not only because its demands are legitimate, but because the masses are angry and looking for a point of reference to rally around.

Education, Health, 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 

I Saw Goody Proctor Teaching CRT: On Moms For Liberty and Other Racist, Fascist Vigilantes The wingnut war on (alas, often unlovely) reality goes on. In schools nationwide – all those wee minds to shape! – frenzied battles have morphed from masks to books “pornographic” (queer), “divisive” (stories of color) or “communist” (whatever makes right-wingers discomfited.) New Hampshire is so caught up in anti-CRT and other “fake-ass astroturf racist bullshit” that Moms For Liberty (sic) offered a $500 bounty to anyone who “catches” a teacher talking about racism. “Y’all really out here snitchin?” asks one patriot. “Is it because you’re sad you couldn’t burn witches?”

Daily News Digest November 4, 2021

Daily News Digest November 4, 2021

Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

Ted Rall: It’s Different When  Democrats Do ItClay Bennet: Critcal Race Theory TextbookAnother Example of Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capitalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years 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 Future of Humanity Is Now At stake!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”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 (Fascism)!    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:

Is this how our story is due to end – a tale of the smartest species doomed by that all-too-human characteristic of failing to see the bigger picture in pursuit of short-term goals? – Naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough.

The U.S. wars lost in Iraq and Afghanistan showed imperial overreach beyond what even 20 years of war could manage. That the defeats were drawn out for so many years shows that domestic politics and the funding of the domestic military-industrial complex were, more than geopolitics, the key drivers of these wars. Empires can die from overreach and sacrificing broadly social goals for the narrow interests of political and economic minorities. The United States has 4.25 percent of the world’s population yet accounts for about 20 percent of global deaths from COVID-19. A rich global superpower with a highly developed medical industry proved to be badly unprepared for and unable to cope with a viral pandemic. It now wrestles with a huge segment of its population that seems so alienated from major economic and political institutions that it risks self-destruction and demands the “right” to infect others. Refusing to accept lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates in the name of “freedom” mixes a frightening stew of ideological confusion, social division, and bitterly rising hostility within the population. The January 6 events in Washington, D.C., showed merely the tip of that iceberg. — Why the Troubled U.S. Empire Could Quickly Fall Apart

When empires decline, they can slip into self-reinforcing downward spirals. This downward spiral occurs when the rich and powerful respond by using their social positions to offload the costs of decline onto the mass of the population. That only worsens the inequalities and divisions that provoked the decline in the first place.        The recently released Pandora Papers offer a useful glimpse into the elaborate world of vast wealth hidden from tax-collecting governments and from public knowledge. Such hiding is partly driven by the effort to insulate the wealth of the rich from that decline. That partly explains why the 2016 exposure of the Panama Papers did nothing to stop the hiding. If the public knew about the hidden resources—their size, origins, and purposes—the public demand for access to hidden assets would become overwhelming. The hidden resources would be seen as the best possible targets for use in slowing or reversing the decline.    Decline provokes more hiding, and that in turn worsens decline. The downward spiral is engaged. Moreover, attempts to distract an increasingly anxious public—demonizing immigrants, scapegoating China, and engaging in culture wars—show diminishing returns. Empire decline proceeds but remains widely denied or ignored as if it did not matter. The old rituals of conventional politics, economics, and culture proceed. Only their tones have become those of deep social divisions, bitter recriminations, and overt internal hostilities proliferating across the landscape. These mystify as well as upset the many Americans who still need to deny that crises have beset U.S. capitalism and that its empire is in decline. — Why the Troubled U.S. Empire Could Quickly Fall Apart

An Inconvenient Truth: ‘Whe Big Pharma Says Jump, Democrats. Ask: How High?: On Thursday afternoon, House progressives again beat back an effort by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the White House to split the bipartisan infrastructure bill from the broader Build Back Better Act moving through Congress under the majority-only rules of reconciliation. The progressive caucus and their allies in the Senate say they’ll use the leverage they’ve preserved to fight to get some form of drug-pricing legislation back into the bill over the weekend. Pelosi, too, is pushing to reinsert something. At a press conference Thursday, she said that there were elements she still hoped to see survive, and as the architect of the political strategy of centering drug prices in Democratic elections, her credibility is on the line. The battle represents the collision of two elements of Democratic politics that are fundamentally in conflict: what they tell voters in order to get elected, and where they get the money to broadcast that message to voters. — Making It Inconvenient to Take On Big Pharma

Videos of the Day:

Dinosaur Warns Nations Are “Driving Themselves to Extinction” With Billions in Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Uproot the System: Filipina Activist Mitzi Tan on How Capitalism & Colonialism Fuel Climate Crisis

Hurricane LUMA: Puerto Ricans Fight Big Coal & Privatized Energy Amid Climate Disasters, Blackouts

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 Reublicrats, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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! Every ‘Tax. Reform’ From President Kennedy has Been an incrase in taxes from the Poor,the Woking Class, and the Middle Class, to the Rich! —The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.  Tax the Rich!  — They Can Afford To Pay!

 

The Democrats Lost the Recent E;ection Due The Blant Exposiure  That the Democrats Represent the Interests of the 1% and not the 99%!  In the Absence of an Alternative That Void is Left to Be Filled by Return of Trump!

Chomsky: Build Back Better Fiasco Exposes How Both Parties Serve Corporate Power The United States is an abysmal outlier among its economic peers when it comes to social protection programs. Consider, for example, paid parental leave. According to a survey of the parental leave systems of 41 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union, the U.S. was the only country that does not mandate a single week of paid parental leave. It also has an infrastructure bordering on the verge of collapse, including crumbling roads and bridges, water and energy systems.

Why the Troubled U.S. Empire Could Quickly Fall Apart The U.S. wars lost in Iraq and Afghanistan showed imperial overreach beyond what even 20 years of war could manage. That the defeats were drawn out for so many years shows that domestic politics and the funding of the domestic military-industrial complex were, more than geopolitics, the key drivers of these wars. Empires can die from overreach and sacrificing broadly social goals for the narrow interests of political and economic minorities.Welcome to Hell on Earth, Brought to You by ‘The American Century ‘In the wake of the implosion of the Soviet Union, the U.S. decided to remake the world and did so—at least in the sense of allowing climate change to run riot on Planet Earth—while, in the process, unmaking itself.The one thing the triumphalists of 1991 agreed on—and American politicians have never changed their minds about, no matter the course of our wars—was funding the military-industrial complex in a way that they never would have funded either the bolstering of human health or the halting of climate change.The Result of the EPA Refusal to Protect  Public!:  (Related Article: A Small Town’s Battle Against Radioactive Fracking Waste)  Radioactive Material and Pesticides Among New Contaminants Found in US Tap Water  Analysis identifies 56 new chemicals in water supplies – including some linked to critical diseases Water utilities and regulators in the US have identified 56 new contaminants in drinking water over the past two years, a list that includes dangerous substances linked to a range of health problems such as cancer, reproductive disruption, liver disease and much more.

We don’t have nearly strong enough regulations to protect drinking water, and the regulation process is much too slow.’ Photograph: PhotoAlto/Antoine Arraou/Getty Images

Environment:         

The Covid Pandemic Has Proven, That, Under Capitalism, Collective Action of Nations  is Longer Possible! Every Solution to Potential Humancide, That  Iv’e Seen, States That Collective Action is Nesessay to Prevent the Catastrophe of Severe Global Warming! To Have Collective Action A New Economic World is Necessay! —  A Global Ecosocialist Society

The  Implosion of the Unted States Infrastructure!:  ‘Invisible Toxic Cocktail’ in Tap Water Across US Due to ‘Regulatory Capture’: Analysis A new database reveals “widespread contamination from toxic substances such as arsenic, lead, and the ‘forever chemicals’ known as PFAS in the drinking water of tens of millions of households.” Millions of people throughout the United States “are unwittingly drinking water that includes an invisible toxic cocktail made up of contaminants linked to cancer, brain damage, and other serious health harms,” according to the Environmental Working Group, which updated its nationwide Tap Water Database on Wednesday.

‘Carbon Credits’ are How Capitalists Hide Their Global Warming Pollution:  Mapped: The Rapid Rise of Voluntary Carbon Markets A growing ecosystem of banks, businesses and initiatives has sprung up around this revamped market, as major companies bank on carbon offsets becoming credible – and profitable – once more. Today’s eco-conscious consumer is no stranger to net zero pledges. There are “net zero” pensions, “net zero” fuels, even “net zero” mobile networks.   Thousands of companies have hitched themselves to the carbon-neutral bandwagon, from fossil fuel producers like BP and Shell, to other household names including United Airlines, Dell, Burger King, and Vodafone. Some companies say they’ll decarbonise by 2040, others as early as 2022.   But there are very real concerns about how these companies are going to meet their goals, with many relying on purchasing carbon credits generated by others’ efforts not to pollute, rather than reducing their own emissions as much or as fast as they can.Beware Industry-Backed ‘Nature-Based Solutions’ Scam, Warns Global Climate Coalition “What corporations and big conservation groups call ‘nature-based solutions’ is a dangerous distraction.” As a global climate summit continued in Glasgow, Scotland on Tuesday, an international coalition of advocacy groups warned world leaders that corporate polluters are pushing for “nature-based solutions” to capture planet-heating emissions so they can “keep burning fossil fuels, mine more of the planet, and increase industrial meat and dairy production.”

Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:

Labor:

Economy:

As we get to the end of 2021, how have the major economies fared during the pandemic slump?  Here are the IMF forecasts for the change in real GDP of the major economies from the point of the start of the pandemic (end 2019) to the end of 2021 (two years growth).     Despite the difficulties China is experiencing with its current property bust and the trade and technology war being waged by the US and its allies, China’s economy will have expanded by 10% during the pandemic, compared to 2.4% by the US and 1.6% by India. Most G7 economies will have contracted, with the biggest loss recorded by the UK. — Michael Roberts BlogWorld:

Portugal: Government Falls As “Geringonça” Crumbles – What are the Tasks of the Left? The voting down of the state budget indicates a qualitative change in the political situation in Portugal. An early election next year will happen in a political context very different from that of the previous period. After six years of collaboration between the Communist Party (PCP) and the Left Bloc (BE) with the Socialist Party (PS) government, the “geringonça” (“contraption” – the name by which the unlikely deal struck between the three parties became known) is dead.

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!

Daily News Digest October 26, 2021

Daily News Digest October 26, 2021

Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

The New Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: Big Pharma!Another Example of Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years 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 future of Humanity Is Now At stake!The future of Humanity Is Now At stake! 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”

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 (Fascism)!    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:

As The United States nters the twenty-first century, power over the American mass media is flowing to the top with such devouring speed that it exceeds even the accelerated consolidations of the last twenty years. For the first time in U.S. history, the country’s most widespread news, commentary, and daily entertainment are controlled by six firms that are among the world’s largest corporations, two of them foreign.  Even with the dramatic entry of the Internet and the cyber world with their uncounted hundreds of new firms, the controlling handful  of American and foreign corporations now exceed in their size and communications power anything the world has seen before. Their intricate global interlocks create the force of an international cartel.  There are pernicious consequences. While excessive bigness itself is cause for economic anxieties, the worst problems are political and social. The country’s largest media giants have achieved alarming success in writing the media laws and regulations in favor of their own corporations and against the interests of the general public. Their concentrated power permits them to become a larger factor than ever before in socializing each generation with entertainment models of behavior and personal values. The impact on the national political agenda has been devastating, For years, the mainstream news has over dramatized its reporting of congressional and White House debate on the national debt and deficit beyond their intrinsic importance. Politicians raised the issue, but it was seized upon and overblown by the major media–media that politicians use as a bellwether on what issues will get them the  most public attention and partisan advantage. During these crucial years, the American economy was undergoing an astonishing phenomenon that the mainstream news left largely unreported or actually glamorized in its infrequent references: the largest transfer of the national wealth in American history from a majority of the population to a small percentage of the country’s wealthiest families.  — Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly

 Now let’s move on to layer two (which is already a layer beyond what your mainstream corporate media will ever report on). Layer two is the slightly deeper understanding that  American oligarchs win each election no matter what. They win it in multiple ways — one is by making sure progressives, socialists, libertarians, anarchists, communists, etc. are purged from the process. The other way they dominate every election is with cold, hard cash. And the third — perhaps the most important way — is that our system simply does not pass anything through the government that isn’t beneficial to the business community, AKA Corporate America. A large 2014 Princeton study looked at 1,779 policy initiatives and found that the American public has zero impact on what gets passed through Congress. What we, the American people, want has no influence on American policy. The politicians tell you it does. They act like they care. But nothing you and I want ever gets done. — Lee Camp: The Four Layers of Reality — and Why We’re Only Allowed to Talk About One

 Videos of the Day:

Settler Violence In The West Bank ‘Is Out Of Control’

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 Reublicrats, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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! Every ‘Tax. Reform’ From President Kennedy has Been an incrase in taxes from the Poor,the Woking Class, and the Middle Class, to the Rich! —The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.  Tax the Rich!  — They Can Afford To Pay!

Study: US Is An Oligarchy, Not A Democracy  The US is Dominated By  Rich and Powerful Elite. So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page. This is not news, you say.  Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here’s how they explain it: Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

 It is Time for Teachers and Parnets to stand up for education in opposition the Attacks on education!:  Don’t Mistake School Board Protests for a Grassroots Campaign Conservatives are disrupting school board meetings by shouting, using Nazi salutes, and even physically assaulting anyone they disagree with. But these attacks are anything but spontaneous. School board meetings have been in the news lately, with parents and community members taking aim at board members and the policies they’re trying to implement. Frightening incidents have taken place at school board meetings in FloridaTexasMichigan, and Wisconsin, among others, with angry citizens shouting and using Nazi salutes in the face of mask mandates, and some even sending death threats to board members over decisions with which they disagree.

Environment:              

Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:

ProPublica: 11 Black Children Were Arrested in Rutherford County, Tennessee, for a Crime That Doesn’t Exist ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio investigated a case that happened in 2016, when the police arrested 11young children for a crime that doesn’t exist. What they found was not simply an outrageous miscarriage of justice, but a county whose juvenile justice system is run by tyrannical officials who like to punish children to “straighten them out.” The initial arrests occurred after a scuffle among three boys. The boys who threw punches were not arrested, but the children watching the fight were. One was only eight years old. Some were handcuffed.

Labor:

Economy: 

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!

Corporate Medicine Profiteers: Welcome to the Emergency Room. A Wall Street Honcho Will Decide Your Treatment! Doctors and medical experts say private equity firms and profiteering corporations are putting American lives at risk and compromising the practice of medicine. The emergency room. You go there for help when you’re really in trouble or have no place else to turn. But who decides what happens to you there? If you think the answer is “doctors,” think again. Large corporations are increasingly taking over these centers of life and death, and they are focused far less on your health than squeezing as much profit from your situation as possible/

Hospitals’ New Emergency Department Triage Systems Boost Profits But Compromise Care (The provider-in-triage model was created by health care consultants who applied the Toyota model of lean production to health care.) If you’ve needed emergency care in the last few years, you probably encountered this situation: Soon after entering the emergency department, you were asked to go to a triage area in the waiting room where a doctor, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant asked you a few questions and ordered some diagnostic tests while you waited. That’s a departure from the traditional form of triage, in which a nurse assesses the level of acuity of a patient’s illness or injury. This basic and time-honored system ensures that someone with a gunshot wound gets seen before someone with a sprained ankle. The new “provider-in-triage” system ostensibly accelerates care. On the surface, ordering tests in the waiting room to get the ball rolling might seem like a good way to save time. A closer look reveals a system that sacrifices spital profits.

What’s Behind The Mdia Monopoly Facebook ‘Scandle’

Media Monopoly

What’s Behind The Mdia Monopoly Facebook ‘Scandle’

The Capitalist Media Monoply control the free flow and exchange of ideas and information.

When the internet became global it made it possible to have a global forum for news, views, ideas, and etc..

Wealth inequality Became Globally Known due to the internet, not The Median Media Monopoly. The people know that Capitalist 1% minority of the people control the world’s wealth!

Media Monopoly Lies about Iraq led to the War in Iraq.

We knew, about those lies due, to the intent.

Media Monopoly Lies about Police Brutality became public, to the majority, Black protests, were only shown through cell phone images and the internet. Black Lives Matter rose up, due to the use of the internet.

The Internet has become an infective tool to educate, agitate and organize against Capitalist Oppression!

Global Warming has been the only outlet for scientists to make the public aware of the immediate danger to humanity. The released draft on global warming by the scientists of the Internation Panel on Global Warming, [rovented total greenwashing by the Capitalist Government of the world.

Mark Zuckerberg, due to the reality of The Media Monopoly, saw a market for people to exchange information, news, and ideas.

They use anti-capitalist slogans to justify their attacks on Facebook! The media monopoly and the Democrat/Republican Duopoly have risen up to claim that Facebook ‘puts profits before people! (What corporation does not?)

This comes, at a time, when it is obvious that capitalists worldwide are putting their profits before the people to ignore the scientific fact of global warming. It is very clear that Big Pharma puts its profits above the needs of humanity, during the current Covid Pandemic!

What the Media Monopoly opposes is people discussing and having a forum to present ideas that contradict the dictums of the media monopoly. They now demand ‘internet reforms’ to attack Facebook!

But the Real Objective is to Gain Control of the Global Internet, for more control of the Freedom of Ideas. The Real Attack is the peoples Right to Know!

From my essay Book Review: The Media Monopoly :

The following is from the Preface to the sizth Edition to the The Media Monopoly:

As the united states enters the twenty-first century, power over the American mass media is flowing to the top with such devouring speed that it exceeds even the accelerated consolidations of the last twenty years.

For the first time in U.S. history, the country’s most widespread news, commentary, and daily entertainment are controlled by six firms that are among the world’s largest corporations, two of them foreign.

Even with the dramatic entry of the Internet and the cyber world with their uncounted hundreds of new firms, the controlling handful  of American and foreign corporations now exceed in their size and communications power anything the world has seen before.

Their intricate global interlocks create the force of an international cartel.

There are pernicious consequences. While excessive bigness itself is cause for economic anxieties, the worst problems are political and social. The country’s largest media giants have achieved alarming success in writing the media laws and regulations in favor of their own corporations and against the interests of the general public.

Their concentrated power permits them to become a larger factor than ever before in socializing each generation with entertainment models of behavior and personal values.

The impact on the national political agenda has been devastating, For years, the mainstream news has over dramatized its reporting of congressional and White House debate on the national debt and deficit beyond their intrinsic importance.

Politicians raised the issue, but it was seized upon and overblown by the major media–media that politicians use as a bellwether on what issues will get them the  most public attention and partisan advantage.

During these crucial years, the American economy was undergoing an astonishing phenomenon that the mainstream news left largely unreported or actually glamorized in its infrequent references: the largest transfer of the national wealth in American history from a majority of the population to a small percentage of the country’s wealthiest families. 

Media Reform Information Center

Daily News Digest October 5, 2021

Daily News Digest October 5, 2021
Daily News Digest Archives
Images of the Day:
Ted Rall: Isual PanelJustice Alito Doth Protest Too MuchEngles Quote  America Is BackAnother Example of Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years 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 future of Humanity Is Now At stake!The future of Humanity Is Now At stake! 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”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:
U.S. household debt climbed to a record high of fourteen point six trillion dollars at the end of 2020 as mortgage debt surpassed 10 trillion for the first time. Now, the GDP of the United States is only around 21 trillion. Americans owe over 1.71 trillion dollars in student loan debt spread out among 44.7 million borrowers. That’s about 739 billion more than the total U.S. credit card debt. While defaults and payments have been halted due to the pandemic, I’m talking now again about student debt, there’s no plan yet for forgiving such debt in spite of promises from Biden and many others in the Democratic Party. Biden said during a CNN town hall that he would not forgive 50 thousand dollars through executive action, as urged by Senator Schumer and Warren, Biden said, I’m prepared to write off the ten thousand dollars debt, but not the fifty thousand because I don’t think I have the authority to do it. Well, a group of 17 state attorneys general called on Biden to forgive fifty thousand dollars in student debt loans per borrower through executive action, asserting he does have the authority to do so under the Higher Education Act. — Surprise: Corporate Junk Before Students?
U.S. household debt climbed to a record high of fourteen point six trillion dollars at the end of 2020 as mortgage debt surpassed 10 trillion for the first time. Now, the GDP of the United States is only around 21 trillion. Americans owe over 1.71 trillion dollars in student loan debt spread out among 44.7 million borrowers. That’s about 739 billion more than the total U.S. credit card debt. While defaults and payments have been halted due to the pandemic, I’m talking now again about student debt, there’s no plan yet for forgiving such debt in spite of promises from Biden and many others in the Democratic Party. Biden said during a CNN town hall that he would not forgive 50 thousand dollars through executive action, as urged by Senator Schumer and Warren, Biden said, I’m prepared to write off the ten thousand dollars debt, but not the fifty thousand because I don’t think I have the authority to do it. Well, a group of 17 state attorneys general called on Biden to forgive fifty thousand dollars in student debt loans per borrower through executive action, asserting he does have the authority to do so under the Higher Education Act. — Surprise: Corporate Junk Before Students?
Videos of the Day:
The Dirty Truth About Bill Gates Kneeling On The Shoulders of Giants: Dave Zirin on ‘The Kaepernick effect’ When Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem in 2016, he wasn’t alone. He was carrying on a proud tradition of athletic protest, and his courage has inspired a new generation of athletes who are expanding that tradition today.
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 Reublicrats, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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! Every ‘Tax. Reform’ From President Kennedy has Been an incrase in taxes from the Poor,the Woking Class, and the Middle Class, to the Rich! —The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.  Tax the Rich!  — They Can Afford To Pay!
Taxation is a  Class Issue! The 1%, Who Don’t Pay Taxes,  Rule!
US Denounced as ‘Biggest Peddler of Financial Secrecy’ After Pandora Papers Leak “U.S. President Biden must match his own rhetoric on shutting down global illicit finance, and start with the biggest offender—his own country.” The leak of an enormous trove of tax haven files over the weekend offered a further glimpse into the secretive world of offshore finance—a system facilitated by the U.S. and other rich nations—and prompted calls for immediate changes to global rules that let the powerful hide their wealth, skirt their obligations, and starve governments of crucial revenue. When Will the US Acknowledge its Secret Torture Site in Poland? The European Court for Human Rights ruled in 2015 that it was “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Zubaydah had been held in Poland… Warsaw asked Washington for assistance. Their request went unanswered Abu Zubaydah has been a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay for 15 years. He’s asking the Supreme Court to allow his lawyers to depose the two men who oversaw his torture.
Lee Camp Exposes Bill Gates and the Hidden Side of His Capitalist Projects  Lee Camp exposes Bill Gates and the hidden side of his capitalist projects. The corporate media spend hours honoring his benevolent philanthropy but rich men never give anything away without a string attached and Gates’ empire has strings connected to dark activities around the world. After listening to Lee you’ll understand why it’s safe to assume that none of Gates’ charity is intended to help people. His pharmaceutical interests push unsafe drugs on the global south that drive profits back into Gates’ pockets. His agricultural interests build monopolies that harm local farmers. And the list goes on
Ralph Nader:  While Americans Sleep, Our Corporate Overlords Make Progress Impossible Both the Republicans and the Democrats vote as if the nation’s middle-class taxpayer is a sleeping sucker. The quiet harmony between the two parties created by the omnipresent power of Big Business and other powerful single-issue lobbyists is often the status quo. That’s why there are so few changes in this country’s politics.
Both Parties allow unconstitutional wars violating federal laws and international treaties that we signed onto long ago, including restrictions on the use of force under the United Nations Charter. (Photo: US House Chamber/Flickr/cc)
Public Lands Open to Livestock Grazing Should Not Count Toward 30×30 Goals According to an article published on September 28, the Biden administration is considering including millions of acres of federal public lands permitted for cattle and sheep grazing toward meeting the goals of the 30×30 Initiative and “American the Beautiful” Program. Approximately 250 million acres of public lands—nearly 400,000 square miles—administered by the U.S Forest Service (USFS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for livestock grazing would count as “protected” land under the recent announcement. While much of the public (and apparently some in the Biden administration) might not know the difference between a national park, national forest, or BLM-administered public lands, the differences are stark. Most importantly, Forest Service and BLM lands are not necessarily managed to protect native wildlife and clean water or sequester atmospheric carbon, despite agency claims that they manage their lands for “long-term sustainability.” While the Forest Service’s Deputy Chief Chris French says “the majority of National Forest System lands meet the conservation goal” laid out in 30×30, history and reality demonstrate this statement is not based in reality.
Environment:              As global meat and dairy companies have come under increasing scrutiny for their contributions to the climate crisis, net zero accounting has been a corporate lifesaver. Meat and dairy giants such as JBS, Tyson, Danish Crown, Nestle, Danone, Arla and Fonterra have all announced net-zero targets. Yet, in our examining of company documents, reports and projections, none of the major meat and dairy companies planned on reducing the number of animals in their supply chain, the source of 90% of their emissions. On the contrary, most have plans to significantly expand production and market share. For example, Tyson expects annual growth of 3-4 percent from beef and poultry sales, while Marfrig targeted 7.5–9.5 percent annual growth for 2015–2018. This target was set prior to the company’s acquisition of U.S.—based National Beef, making it the second largest beef processor in the world. Danish dairy giant Arla planned to add 2 billion kg of milk to its European supply chain between 2015–2020—a 14 percent increase. Fonterra projected a stunning 40 percent increase in its processed milk volume for 2015–2025. — Beware Big Ag’s Sleight of Hand on ‘Net Zero’
A Cry for Help! 126,000 Gallons of Crude is Not a  ‘Spill’! — Its an Ecolgical Disaster!   Massive Oil Spill Sends Crude Onto Orange County Beaches, Killing Birds, Marine Life Crews raced Sunday to contain the damage from a major oil spill off the Orange County coast that left crude spoiling beaches, killing fish and birds and threatening local wetlands. The oil slick, first reported Saturday, originated from a broken pipeline less than three miles off the coast of Huntington Beach connected to an offshore oil platform known as Elly. The rupture has poured more than 126,000 gallons of crude into coastal waters and seeped into the Talbert Marsh, a 25-acre wetland in Huntington Beach, officials said. Scientists For Extinction Rebellion This website provides scientific information about the climate and ecological emergency to members of the public and to other scientists. We also aim to connect scientists (from any discipline) with Extinction Rebellion. Follow the links below for more information about us, and about the planetary emergency and what we all can do to help.Air Pollution Do you know anyone who has an allergy or asthma? Or anyone who had a stroke, suffering dementia, or died from heart disease? Air pollution is likely to have been a contributor.  92% of the world population lives in locations that fail to meet the World Health Organisation (WHO) levels of air quality guidelines. The air can contain many different pollutants: some are gases that irritate your lung lining, like ozone, ammonia, nitrogen and sulphur oxides (called NOx and SOx); and some are particulate matter (PM) like smoke particles and sand from sandstorms. Sometimes gases can react with sunlight and other gases to from PM, and these are called ‘secondary PM’.  Some PM is more toxic because of its shape (like the sharp fibres of asbestos that can lead to asbestosis), size (generally the smaller it is, the more toxic it is), surface charge, or its composition (PM from coal, for example, is more toxic than PM from soil dust). The composition of PM2.5 varies enormously, such as it being made of soot, sea salt, microplastics, metals, ammonium compounds, and others. The toxicity varies with all of these characteristics, so the measurement of PM2.5 mass per volume is not, in itself, enough to determine how bad the air is. The highest toxicity measured so far is from diesel engine exhaust particles, followed by gasoline engine exhaust particles, biomass burning particles, coal combustion particles, and road dust. Traffic and combustion of fossil fuels could play the most critical role in enhancing the toxic effects of fine particles. The research of the effect of composition on toxicity is still in its very early stages.
B.C. Fossil Subsidies Threaten Critical Caribou Habitat, New Mapping Shows British Columbia is subsidizing oil and gas well drilling on the same land it has promised to protect for caribou, new research has found. “The B.C. government has made a lot of commitments to caribou habitat restoration and it’s not really working,” said Adriana DiSilvestro, a University of British Columbia graduate student and lead author on the project, which is published on the website of ARCGis Online, a cloud-based mapping software.
Siberia’s Hot Streak Global warming in Siberia is on a hot streak! It was +6°C last year. In like manner, if the entire planet hit +6°C above pre-industrial, it would be lights out, life snuffed out, sayonara.    Meanwhile, the Siberian hot streak theoretically threatens the entire planet with methane-induced runaway global warming, the dreaded monster of the North that takes no prisoners. As it’s happening now, in real time today, Siberia is demonstrating the impact of deadly serious climate reactions to too much heat, too soon. This fiasco cannot be dismissed or ignored. It should be at the top of the agenda for COP26 in Glasgow this coming November.
Ireland: Stop Scandalous State Repression 0f Young Climate Activists! As the world toboggans towards an environmental catastrophe created by the capitalist system, how is Ireland – one of Europe’s most polluting nations – responding to the crisis? By using state repression against young environmental activists. We say: protest is not a crime! Drop the charges against climate activists! On 19 March, Orla Murphy (then aged 19) walked up to the Department of Foreign Affairs building in Dublin and splashed pink paint against the building before spray painting the words, “No More Empty Promises” on the front of the building. Meanwhile, her friend, fellow activist and supporter of the Irish Marxists (the IMT in Ireland), Zac Lumley, live-streamed her protest.
Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
Latuff: Echos of Slave   CatchersWealth Inequality  Demonstrates That ‘Equality For All’, Has Always Been a Myth!
The sentence, delivered by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in New York City, represents “an international outrage,” tweeted journalist Emma Vigeland following its announcement. . . . In 2019, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York—a former corporate lawyer with investments in Chevron—held Donziger in contempt of court after he refused to disclose privileged information about his clients to the fossil fuel industry. Kaplan placed Donziger under house arrest, where he has remained under strict court monitoring for 787 days.  In addition to Kaplan’s own connections to Chevron, the judge appointed private attorneys to prosecute the case, including one who had worked for a firm that represented the oil giant.  Preska, who found Donziger guilty of the contempt charges in July, is a leader of the right-wing Federalist Society, which counts Chevron among its financial backers. — Six-Month Sentence for Lawyer Who Took on Chevron Denounced as ‘International Outrage’
Harlem (The Black Community) is policed like occupied territory.—James Baldwin, A Report from Occupied Territory              And the police are simply the hired enemies of this population. They are present to keep the Negro in his place and to protect white business interests, and they have no other function. They are, moreover — even in a country which makes the grave error of equating ignorance with simplicity—quite stunningly ignorant; and, since they know that they are hated, they are always afraid. One cannot possibly arrive at a more surefire formula for cruelty. — James Baldwin, From ‘Victim’ to ‘Threat’: James Baldwin and the Demands of Self-Respect  — The Historic Role of Police Brutality in the Black Community and African American Oppression
Marjorie Cohn, Biden’s Expulsion of Haitian Migrants Is Racist, Illegal — and Trump:Notwithstanding President Joe Biden’s promise to pursue a more humane immigration policy than his predecessor, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been illegally expelling Haitian migrants, with the Border Patrol cracking whips and herding them like cattle. When U.S. authorities put them on a plane to Haiti, “they chained us like animals — our hands, feet and waist — and once we arrived, they unchained us so journalists wouldn’t see us,” one Haitian man told John Oliver on “Last Week Tonight.” Labor:
Economy:
Shadow Government Stistics Daily Update (October 4th to 5th) Economic Headlines:
  • Paralleling Weakening Quarterly Contractions in Housing Starts and New-Home Sales, August 2021 Real Construction Spending Continued in Early Trend for a Third-Quarter 2021 Quarterly Decline, Following a Second-Quarter 2021 Drop and Booming Growth in Both First-Quarter 2021 and Fourth-Quarter 2020
  • Second-Quarter 2021 GDP Inflation Held at a 40-Year High, Amidst Mixed Revisions to “Final” Estimates of the GDP, GDI and GNP
  • Net of Surging Inflation and Extremely Volatile Commercial Aircraft Orders, August 2021 Real New Orders for Durable Goods Dropped 1.6% (-1.6%) Month-to-Month
  • August New-Home Sales Continued in Quarterly Downtrend • August 2021 New Residential Construction Was Stronger Than Expected, Yet Housing Starts Still Indicated a Quarterly Downturn, and Building Permits Were Suggestive of Potential Reporting Issues
  • Continuing Downtrend in Real Retail Sales Was Consistent With the Contracting Retail Trade Employment and Flat Leisure and Hospitality Jobs in August
  • S. Real Median Household Income Fell by 2.9% (-2.9%) in 2020, With the Official Poverty Rate Jumping by 1.0% to 11.4% • August 2021 Manufacturing and Mining Held Down Respectively by 2.2% (-2.2%) and 8.0% (-8.0%) from Recovering August 2018 Peak Activity in Industrial Production; Where Manufacturing has Regained Levels Seen at the February 2020 Pre-Pandemic Peak, Mining Has Not.
  • August 2020 Cass Freight Index® Gained an Adjusted 5.0% in the Month, Still Shy by 2.6% (-2.6%) of Its Recent May 2021 Peak • August CPI Inflation Notched Lower to 5.3%, from Its 5.4% 13-Year Peak in June and July, with the August ShadowStats Alternate Backing off a Notch from Its 41-Year Peak of 13.4% in July (Headline and Alternate CPI Details Are Posted on the ALTERNATE DATA Tab)
  • August PPI-FD Monthly Annual Inflation Set Its Fifth Consecutive Series High • Amidst Faltering August 2021 Labor Conditions, How Can the Economy Be Minimally Recovered With Headline Annual Payroll Growth Weaker Than at the Troughs of the Last Seven Recessions, the 2007 Great Recession Excepted? • Full Recovery in Payrolls Remains Unlikely Before Late-2022/ Early-2023
  • Initial Estimate of the July 2021 Real Merchandise Trade Deficit Suggested an Early Trend for the Current Record Trade Deficit to Hold for a Third Consecutive Quarter
New Documents Show the Fed’s Trading Scandal Includes Two of the Wall Street Banks It Supervises: Goldman Sachs and Citigroup In the late eighteenth century, men gathered under a Buttonwood tree at 68 Wall in lower Manhattan and traded stocks among themselves. That’s not how it works today. Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan had to give his “over $1 million” trades in a litany of individual stocks and his “over $1 million” transactions in S&P 500 futures to a licensed broker at a registered broker-dealer. The same thing applied to Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren in placing his $1000 to $50,000 trades 68 times in 2020 in individual stocks and publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). The safeguards that failed at the Dallas Fed and the Boston Fed to stop their Presidents from trading like hedge fund wannabes should not have failed at the SEC-regulated Wall Street broker-dealers that placed these trades. The accounts at the trading firms for these two men should have been coded to indicate that the men came into regular contact with sensitive, market moving information. The nature and level of their trading should have triggered the immediate involvement of the firms’ compliance departments and a halt to the trading. (See our earlier report on how a dozen legal safeguards failed, that should not have failed, to stop these men from humiliating the central bank of the United States around the world.) World:
Afghan Resistance Leaders, Long Backed by Cia, Have Fled Following Taliban Takeover The retreat of Ahmad Massoud and Amrullah Saleh belies public claims that they are still in Afghanistan. THE SON OF Afghanistan’s most celebrated anti-Taliban resistance leader has escaped into neighboring Tajikistan, less than a month after vowing to defend his homeland “no matter what happens.” Ahmad Massoud, son of the late Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, fled to Tajikistan shortly after the Taliban seized control of the Panjshir Valley on September 6, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, a Pentagon consultant, and two former senior Afghan government officials. Massoud was joined a few days later by Amrullah Saleh, the former Afghan vice president and longtime intelligence chief, who left Afghanistan by helicopter, the senior U.S. official and two former Afghan officials said.
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!
Does Capitalism Make Us Crazy? The Short Answer is YES! Life under capitalist rule is perilous. We can’t survive on our own, and we can’t rely on society to support us. We live with perpetual uncertainty: Can I pay my bills? Will I lose my home, my job? What happens if I’m sick or injured? Add the constant threat of racism, war, and climate change disasters. Do you feel safe in this world? I don’t. Every morning, I wake up with a sense of dread, thinking, “OMG. I’m still here, and this is still happening.” I am not alone in this. A ten-country survey of 10,000 young people, aged 16 to 25, inquired what they thought and felt about climate change. Sixty percent felt very or extremely worried. More than half felt sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty. Seventy-seven percent saw the future as frightening, and 56 percent believe that humanity is doomed. This breaks my heart. And it shows how desperately we need a social revolution. Psychologists see it differently: The Good Grief Network offers
NPE Action Grassroots Network Now Counts 175 Groups Nationally There are now more than 175 local organizations working for their public schools against privatization. If your group hasn’t joined yet, consider doing so. Here is a small part of the monthly report: Giving Voice to Friends of Public Education: NPE Action’s New Project The Network for Public Education is proud to announce a new project from NPE Action called Public Voices for Public Schools. Public Voices for Public Schools will give voice to former voucher and charter parents, educators, and community members who work tirelessly in their communities every day to improve our public schools, even as they fight well-funded efforts to privatize their schools. Public Voices for Public Schools will publish a story each Monday.  Go here to subscribe to the website and get each story as it is launched.  Please like them on Facebook and give them a follow on Twitter.
A Year and 3.5 Million Deaths Later, ‘Greed Is Triumphing Over Human Life’ in Vaccine Fight “How many more people must die needlessly before countries do the right thing and support the lifting of patent restrictions, so Covid-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments can be produced worldwide?”

Daily News Digest September 29, 2021

Daily News Digest September 29, 2021

Global Warming, (Wildfiresl Floods, Droughts etc..), Global Pauperization, Global Hunger, and the Covid Pandemic, are symptoms of Capitalism in Its Death Agony!

Over a Hundred Years Ago.  Rosa Luxemburg Raised the Slogan: Socialism or Barbarism!   The Slogan for 2021 is Ecosocialism or Ecocide!!!!

Daily News Digest Archives
Images of the Day:
News Item:  PG&E Power Line Suspected in Dixie Fire Was Set To Be Buried Underground In Safety Move ( Due to It’s Differred Maintanence Policy It  Was Not yet Done!)
PGE’s Differed Maintenance PolicyAnother Example of Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years 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 future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
The future of Humanity Is Now At stake! 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”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:
The. Steady Drift to an Open Dictatorship! Executive Order: An executive order is an official directive from the U.S. president to federal agencies that often have much the same power of a law. Throughout history, executive orders have been one way that the power of the president and the executive branch of government has expanded—to degrees that are sometimes controversial.
Videos of the Day:
Justice for Black Women & Girls: R. Kelly Found Guilty in Sex Crimes Case After Decades of Abuse
 The Plot to Kill Julian Assange: Report Reveals CIA’s Plan to Kidnap, Assassinate WikiLeaks Founder
 Meet Mansoor Adayfi: I Was Kidnapped as a Teen, Sold to the CIA & Jailed at Guantánamo for 14 Years
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 Reublicrats, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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! Every ‘Tax. Reform’ From President Kennedy has Been an incrase in taxes from the Poor,the Woking Class, and the Middle Class, to the Rich! —The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.  Tax the Rich!  — They Can Afford To Pay!
9-11 War ProfitsChris Hedges:  America’s Fate: Oligarchy or Autocracy The competing (governing-R.S.) systems of power are divided between alternatives which widen the social and political divide — and increase potential for violent conflict.Dnald Trump Is Building an Army. He Can No Longer Be Ignored.     After a nice little break, it’s time to dive back into the dumpster fire. . . . .  It gives me no joy to take this position. Covering Donald Trump — from his racist escalator ride in 2015 to a piece on his still-deadly COVID politics I wrote back in August — was like walking on hot shards of glass in bare feet every single day. It damaged my health and assassinated my sleep. Once the banshee scream of Trump’s front-burner position subsided, my body started to heal in tangible ways from the ceaseless Trump-instigated anxiety and stress.    I was a whole new man, and altogether happy to never type the words “Donald Trump” again if it could possibly be avoided… but the last several weeks have given me deep pause.The January 6 insurrection never ended, you see, and has since made gains I would have thought impossible on January 7. The GOP’s feint toward liberation from Trump lasted about as long as it takes to boil an egg, and today, virtually the entire apparatus of the party — federal, state and local — is his unquestioned domain.Environment:               Infrastructure and Budget Bills Contain Very Bad Logging Provisions Which Will Make Climate Change Worse
  More Subsidized Logging for the Timber Industry The budget reconciliation bill adds an astonishing $16 billion dollars to the Forest Service’s current budget, most of which would go for logging – removing nature’s best, cheapest and most effective mechanism for filtering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This ignores that the Forest Service already has a billion dollars in its existing budget to subsidize commercial logging. The infrastructure bill not only gives the Forest Service an additional $3 billion, it mandates logging 30 million acres of national forests over the next 15 years – an area larger than the entire state of Pennsylvania! Even worse, it also exempts many new logging projects and oil and gas pipeline expansion over public lands from environmental analysis, public review and comment, and the ability for citizens – who own these lands – to legally object to the projects. If We Don’t Get Climate Justice, Shut it Down A sane world would be dramatically cutting fossil fuel use now. CO2 concentrations are already at levels not seen in at least 3-5 million years, before humans existed, when trees grew in Antarctica and sea levels were something like 65 feet higher. Levels might even be greater than they were 23 million years ago. John Lennon said, “Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives . . . by maniacs for maniacal ends.” Like bank and oil company executives and their bought-and-paid-for politicians who are driving the world headlong into catastrophe.  Mainstream Media Attention to IPCC Report Neglected Real Cause of Emissions It is outrageous that the mainstream media only spent a single news cycle addressing the major report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last month, which sounded an alarm for humanity, warning that, “unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5°C or even 2°C will be beyond reach.”      Despite the urgency of the message — that we’ve arrived at the “now or never moment” — mainstream media’s attention to the report, which is titled “The Physical Science Basis,” barely lasted 24 hours.China’s Emissions Are Made in America The debate over the reality of climate change is over. After years of oil-fueled denialism, the inescapable fact of the human-altered climate has finally hit home for many once-skeptical Americans. In some cases, it has literally hit home. In various parts of the country, homes are being threatened, torched and inundated by a barrage of climate-stoked catastrophes. Real-world experience has replaced easy-to-dismiss graphs and scientific models with failing crops, drowning livestock, escalating insurance costs, collapsing infrastructure, rising seas and waning biodiversity. The doomsday scenarios scientists have predicted for five decades are now all too real for 1 in 3 Americans.Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
Labor:
Child Labor: Which Side are Democracies On? Two years ago, when Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro favorably promoted the idea of labor for children as young as eight or nine, his minister for Human Rights, Family, and Women shot back: “Let us be clear that for children to work is a violation of their rights, something that cannot be allowed.” The Brazilian National Forum for the Prevention and Eradication of Child Labour publicly expressed “its vehement repudiation of the statement of Mr. Jair Bolsonaro…The declaration reveals a total disregard for the 1988 Federal Constitution…which prohibits all forms of child labour under the age of 16.” According to the International Labor Organization’s latest report last fall, despite years of declining rates worldwide, child labor is indeed on the rise again. And the increase began before COVID exacerbated the situation.Economy:
Shadow Government Statistica Daily Update (September 27th to 28th)
  • September 2021 FOMC Held Existing Policies in Place
  • Tapering Could Start in 2022, If “Progress” Towards Maximum Employment and Price Stability Goals Continues, Yet Current Conditions Are Deteriorating Anew
  • Unfolding Circumstances Are Anything But Bullish for U.S. Stocks [See SYSTEMIC RISK Section]
  • ECONOMY – Amidst Declining Orders for Motor Vehicles but Extremely Strong and Volatile Commercial Aircraft Orders, August 2021 Nominal Durable Goods Orders Jumped 1.2% in the Month
  • Third-Quarter New-Home Sales and Construction Activity Remained on Track for Consecutive Quarterly Contractions
  • August 2021 Nominal Retail Sales Monthly Gain of 0.7% Was in Context of a 0.6% (-0.6%) Downside Revision to July Activity; Real Retail Sales Held on Track for a Quarterly Contraction
  • First Time in Five Years, the 2020 Poverty Rate Jumped and Real Median Household Income Plunged, with Surveying Disrupted and Distorted by the Pandemic-Driven Collapse
  • August 2021 Industrial Production Minimally Recovered Pre-Pandemic February 2020 Activity by 0.3%, but It Already Was Collapsing into the Pandemic in February 2020; Still Down Today by 2.5% (-2.5%) from its August 2018 Peak
  • How Can the Economy Be Minimally Recovered With Headline Annual Payroll Growth Weaker Than at the Troughs of the Last Seven Recessions, the 2007 Great Recession Excepted?
  • After Two Months of Decline, the August 2021 Cass Freight Index® Showed Some Seasonally Adjusted Rebound, With Trucks Taking Up Some Slack from Railroads, but Still at a Four-Month Low; Never Having Recovered its 2018 Peak Activity
  • INFLATION – August 2021 Consumer Price Index Annual Inflation Notched Lower to 5.25% from 5.37% [See the ALTERNATE DATA Tab], While the August Producer Price Index Hit an Historic High of 8.27% [see LATEST NUMBERS and BUSINESS CYCLE]
  • MONETARY BASE – No Suggestion of Tapering Here, With Indications of a Continuing Monetary Base Surge in Early-September 2021; August 2021 Numbers Showed Ongoing Explosive Growth at the Cycle High • MONEY SUPPLY – July 2021 “Basic M1” Soared to an Historic-High 91.7% Above Its Pre-Pandemic Peak, Up from the Prior-Record 87.6% in June [See the ALTERNATE DATA Tab, SYSTEMIC RISK and MONETARY DATA]
  • COMBINED IMPACT: Reflecting the Surge in Money, Inflation Has Exploded, While Business Activity Has Begun to Pull Back Anew, at an Intensifying Pac
Goldman Sachs Refuses to Say If It Was Placing Trades for Dallas Fed President Kaplan as Materially False Statement Released by Board on Kaplan’s Relationship with Goldman Sachs    The biggest trading scandal in the Federal Reserve’s 108-year history took down two Federal Reserve Bank Presidents yesterday. Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, who traded in and out of REITs last year in amounts of $1,000 to $50,000, will leave this Thursday; Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan, whose trading made Rosengren look like a Boy Scout, will step down from his post at the end of next week. Kaplan was making repeated trades of “over $1 million” in S&P 500 futures (an instrument used during and after stock exchange hours by hedge funds) as well as making “over $1 million” trades in a litanyWorld:
International Criminal Court Excludes US From Probe Into Afghanistan War Crimes  A Monday announcement from the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor saying his office is seeking approval to resume its investigation into potential war crimes in Afghanistan committed by the Taliban and the Islamic State — but excluding alleged atrocities committed by U.S. forces — sparked a flurry of outrage from human rights defenders.Mexico: criminalisation of abortion declared unconstitutional   In a historic and unanimous vote by ten ministers, the Supreme Court of Mexico has declared the penalisation of women who decide to get an abortion unconstitutional. That this vote has taken place now is clearly the result of our struggle in the streets, which has made it impossible for women’s rights to be ignored any longer. Without this struggle, the vote simply never would have happened.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!
Civics

Barry Sheppard: Biden Increases Threat to China; Continues Trump Foreign Policy

Barry Sheppard: Biden Increases Threat to China; Continues Trump Foreign Policy

The new military alliance between the United States, Britain and Australia is aimed at China. By providing Australia with nuclear powered submarines, highly enriched uranium to power them, and the top-secret nuclear technology to operate them, Biden has intensified Trump’s confrontation with China, and raises the threat of war.

Australia will be only the second country to be provided with this technology, after Britain in 1958. As opposed to conventional submarines, nuclear powered ones can go farther and much longer without returning to base. They could easily reach China from Australia.

They are also much quieter, helping to escape detection longer. China is weaker in anti-submarine warfare than other aspects of it navy. 

An article in The New York Times written the day after the surprise announcement said, “With its move to acquire heavy weaponry and top-secret technology, Australia has thrown in its lot in with the United States for generations to come — a ‘forever partnership’, in the words of [prime minister Scott] Morrison’s words.

“The agreement will open the way to deeper military ties and higher expectations that Australia would join any military conflict with Beijing.”

The article also said that “security analysts believe that Australia would be likely to use nuclear-powered submarines to patrol” the South China Sea off China’s coast. The nuclear powered submarines will be able to deliver missiles aimed at China.

They will augment the U.S.’s powerful deployment of warships and submarines in the Pacific, including nuclear weapons, and will be under U.S. control.

China reacted immediately and sharply. Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the submarine agreement would “seriously damage regional peace and stability, exacerbate an arms race and harm international nuclear nonproliferation efforts.”

The latter charge is given credence by the fact that the nuclear technology and highly enriched uranium provided by the U.S. can be the basis for Australia acquiring nuclear weapons, if Washington so wishes at any time.

Biden is qualitatively stepping up Trump’s confrontation with China, but this is not the only way Biden’s foreign policy is unfolding as a continuation and consolidation of Trump’s.

Trump was known for his distain for “allies” in West Europe, and for his unilateralism. But now the military alliance with Australia and Britain, and the providing of nuclear-powered submarines to Canberra has enraged France.

The announcement of the new alliance came as a surprise to the rest of the world. In has now been affirmed that Biden began to work on the new agreement early in his presidency, in secret.

The announcement of the agreement was accompanied by the announcement by Australia that it was withdrawing from a $66 billion agreement with France for the latter to build conventional submarines for it.

This was a “unilateral, brutal and unpredictable decision” said an enraged Jean-Yeves Le Drian, France’s Foreign minister, and he compared it to rash and sudden policy shifts Trump was known for.

Le Drian’s statement also said, “The very conception we have of our alliances, our partnerships and the importance of the Indo-Pacific” for Europe would be affected.

One aspect of this shift was to deprive France’s military industry of a large revenue, while American companies building the nuclear-powered submarines will reap big gains, although the main reason was increasing the military threat to China.

French President Emanuel Macron retaliated by withdrawing its ambassadors to both Washington and Canberra back home for “consultations”. Reflecting his view that Britain is a secondary player, he didn’t pull back the ambassador from there.

An editorial Le Monde, the leading French daily, broadening the charge against the U.s., said: “For any who still doubted it, the Biden administration is no different from the Trump administration on this point: The United States comes first, whether it’s in the strategic, economic financial or health fields. ‘America First’ is the guiding line of the foreign policy of the White House.”

Subsequently, Le Drian, when asked if Biden’s behavior is like Trumps, he responded “Without the Tweets”.

An article in The New York Times noted, since the American company Lockheed Martin was a partner in the French submarine deal reached in 2016, “the contract was viewed in Paris as an example of how France and the United States could work together in Asia.

“That belief has been shredded, replaced by bitterness, suspicion and a measure of incredulity that the Biden administration would treat France this way.”

Daily New Digest September 20, 2021

Daily News Digest September 20, 2021
The Global Warming Storm: In the Louisiana Bayou, Dolphin Victims of Hurricane Ida Set the Stage for a Political Fight Over Coastal Restoration
Over a Hundred Years Ago.  Rosa Luxemburg Raised the Slogan: Socialism or Barbarism!   The Slogan for 2021 is Ecosocialism or Ecocide!!!!
Daily News Digest Archives
Images of the Day:
The Global Warming Storm: In the Louisiana Bayou, Dolphin Victims of Hurricane Ida Set the Stage for a Political Fight Over Coastal RestorationAnother Example of Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years 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 future of Humanity Is Now At stake!The future of Humanity Is Now At stake! 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”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:
The New York Times published a prominent article defining the “Biden Doctrine” as seeing “China as America’s existential competitor; Russia as a disrupter; Iran and North Korea as nuclear proliferators, cyberthreats as ever-evolving and terrorism as spreading far beyond Afghanistan.” Against these threats, the article depicts U.S. strategy as representing “democracy,” the euphemism for countries with neoliberal governments that leave economic planning to Wall Street financial managers, and infrastructure in the hands of private investors, not provided at publicly at subsidized prices. Nations that restrict monopolies and related rent-seeking activities are accused of being autocratic.     The problem, of course, is that although the United States, Germany and other nations grew into industrial powers in the 19th and 20th centuries by government-sponsored infrastructure, progressive taxation and anti-monopoly legislation, the post-1980 neoliberal rejection of these policies has led them into economic stagnation for the 99 Percent burdened by rising debt and other rentier overhead paid mainly to the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector. China is thriving by following precisely the policies by which the former leading industrial nations grew rich before suffering from the neoliberal financialization disease. This contrast prompts The New York Times article’s thrust, summarized in its summary of what it hopes will become a Congressionally supported Biden Doctrine of escalating a New Cold War against non-neoliberalized economies, juxtaposing U.S.-sponsored liberal-democratic imperialism against foreign socialism: — Michael Hudson, The Vocabulary of Neoliberal Diplomacy in Today’s New Cold War
Again, as I have argued before, the basic contradiction of China’s economy is not between investment and consumption, or between growth and debt; it is between profitability and productivity. The growing size and influence of the capitalist sector in China is weakening the performance of the economy and widening inequalities.  In my view, the Chinese economy is now strong enough not to rely on foreign investment or on unproductive capitalist sectors for growth.  Increasing the role of planning and state-led investment, the main basis of China’s economic success over the 70 years of the People’s Republic, has never been more compelling.  — Michael Roberts,  Not so Evergrande
EisenhowerVideos of the Day:
Chris Hedges: Wendy Brown on Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism In his books “Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism” and “Politics and Vision,” a massive survey of Western political thought that his former student Cornel West calls “magisterial,” Wolin lays bare the causes behind the decline of American empire and the rise of a new and terrifying configuration of corporate power he calls “inverted totalitarianism.”
Glen Greenwald: Democratic Officials Continue to Threaten Tech Companies to Censor More
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 Reublicrats, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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! Every ‘Tax. Reform’ From President Kennedy has Been an incrase in taxes from the Poor,the Woking Class, and the Middle Class, to the Rich! —The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.  Tax the Rich!  — They Can Afford To Pay!
Freedom to Vote Act—For Capitalist Parties Only The Freedom to Vote Act, the pared down voting rights legislation that Democratic Senators unveiled on September 14, must be supported to preempt GOP state laws for partisan gerry-mandering, voter suppression, election subversion, and intimidation of voters and election administrators.  Yet this bill also deserves vigorous protest from the Left for its public campaign financing provisions, which are effectively for the two big capitalist parties only.     The bill eliminates the Presidential Election Campaign Fund on December 31, 2021. That is the fund which Green Party presidential candidates have used to qualify for presidential primary matching funds.      That funding has been crucial in paying for petitioners to qualify the Green Party for state ballots under the onerous signature requirements of most states. No major party candidates used primary matching funds in 2020 because it limited total primary spending to $50 million, which is not enough for the corporate party candidates these days. So they are eliminating it because only the Green Party still uses the program.Understanding the Basics of 21st-Century Democracy, Autocracy, and Capitalism Democracy exists if and when a community organizes its self-governance around the full participation, on an equal basis, of all the members of the community. Its other, autocracy, exists when a community organizes (or allows) its governance by an individual or subgroup of that community, a ruler. Universal suffrage is clearly a step toward at least formal democracy because voters elect leaders. How real this formal democracy is depends on the inclusivity of the population voting and the concrete reality of voters’ equal influence on the election’s outcome.
The Big Spy in Your Little Phone Without a ban on Pegasus and spyware like it, human rights defenders, journalists, and others will continue to be targeted, spied on, beaten, arrested, and killed. Is the phone in your pocket spying on you? As cell phones have become ubiquitous, government intelligence agencies have poured vast resources into hacking them, remotely stripping people of their privacy in the name of national security. Now, a burgeoning industry has emerged, generating huge profits for shadowy corporations that specialize in developing ever-more innovative ways to secretly infect digital devices with spyware.
As the War Drones On: US Drones Still Fly Over the Afghan Horizon Despite its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the U.S. military maintains an “over-the-horizon capability,” which allows it to continue launching airstrikes.      Facing unrelenting criticism over the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden Administration is insisting that the United States will maintain a capability to launch airstrikes in Afghanistan, regardless of the legal limitations and possibility of perpetuating the war.Glenn Greenwald and Iowa’s Latest WTF Moments     “AOC’s Revolutionary and Subversive Socialist Gown” Glenn Greenwald’s latest Substack essay shows how it is possible to be bright, seemingly progressive, stupid, and stealthily reactionary all at one and the same time – a common affliction of petit-bourgeois intellectuals who’ve never had a proper Marxist education. “While AOC’s revolutionary and subversive socialist gown generated buzz,” Greenwald writes, “the normalization of maskless elites attended to by faceless servants is grotesque.”
America’s Homelessness Crisis Is About to Get So Much Worse The looming eviction crisis could precipitate the worst housing and homelessness disaster in American history.Over the past weeks, multiple crises have merged: a crisis of democracy with the most significant attack on voting rights since Reconstruction; a climate crisis with lives and livelihoods upended in the Gulf Coast and the Northeast by extreme weather events and in the West by a stunning fire season; and an economic crisis in which millions are being cut off from Pandemic Unemployment Insurance, even as August job gains proved underwhelming. There’s also a crisis taking place in state legislatures with an ongoing attack on women’s autonomy over our own bodies. The Supreme Court let a law go into effect that makes abortions nearly impossible in Texas and turns its enforcement over to vigilantes. And then, of course, there’s the looming eviction crisis that could precipitate the worst housing and homelessness disaster in American history.
‘There is Nothing Colder Than a Landlord’s Heart!’:  Exclusive: Jared Kushner’s Family Firm Set to Unleash Eviction Wave Amid Pandemic “Kushner is the poster child for ultra-rich landlords clamoring to boost their bottom line by kicking families to the curb, even if it comes at the expense of public health.” Properties owned by former White House adviser Jared Kushner’s family company have filed at least 590 eviction lawsuits since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and more than 200 in 2021 alone, putting “countless tenants” at risk of losing their homes in parts of the U.S. where Covid-19 transmission levels remain dangerously high.
The Media Monopoly’s  Motto’s Are: War is Peace!, Freedom is Slavery!, and Ignorance is Strength!!!!:   A Journalist Dissects a Biased Chart of Media Biases Only 29% of people in the US trust the news. Some 37% of Mexicans do, and 43% of Australians. That figure drops even further when it comes to social media. Some 18% of Australians trust news there, and 13% of people in the US do. People are being inundated with content, marketing, and headlines, and it is understandable that they struggle to differentiate between what is reliable and what isn’t.
Environment:               (The Elephant in the Room: The Prediction Below is Based Under a False Assumption that the Rate of Global Warming Will Remian the Same for the Next 80 Years. The Problem  With That Assumption is the Global Warming Treadmill. — As the Global Warming Increases, the Rate of Global Warming Increases. As the Rate Increases Global Warming Increases, Overall Global  Warming Increases. This, in Turn, Increases the Rate of Global Warming Increases. Every Time the UN Makes a Prediction,  Based on Formal Logic, the Next Year, They Say Global “Warming is Happening fast Than They Thought. The Faster the Rate, The Faster the Earth Warms! That is the Dialectic of Global Warming!
  ‘What Betrayal Looks Like’: UN Report Says World on Track for 2.7°C of Warming by 2100 “Whatever our so-called ‘leaders’ are doing,” said Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, “they are doing it wrong.” The United Nations warned Friday that the planet is barreling toward 2.7°C of warming by the end of the century, a nightmare scenario that can be averted only if policymakers take immediate and sweeping action to slash greenhouse gas emissions. Even if the 191 parties to the Paris climate accord meet their current commitments, global greenhouse gas emissions will still rise 16% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels, according to a new report published by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCCLetting the World Burn: The Question of Governance The primary cause of the worsening situation is not the combustion of fossil fuels, but the massive political dereliction that has allowed the bonfire to go on after we knew that it posed a potentially lethal threat to humankind. The sixth report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms yet again that we are rapidly destabilizing the climate and making the earth a more dangerous and biologically impoverished planet. No surprise; we’ve known this since the 1970s. The primary cause of the worsening situation, however, is not the combustion of fossil fuels, but the massive political dereliction that has allowed the bonfire to go on after we knew that it posed a potentially lethal threat to humankind. We have no precedent for malfeasance at this scale therefore we have no law, no accountability—and so far—no remedy
What’s Up With COP26? What’s Up With COP26? What’s at risk at COP26?  Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs answers that all-important query in a summary report intended for heads of governments, entitled: Climate Change Risk Assessment 2021.
  • The report introduces the subject with three key statements:
  • The World is dangerously off-track to meet the Paris Agreement goals.
  • The risks are compounding.
  • Without immediate action, the impacts will be devastating in the coming decades.
The 1% Horse Murderers and Their Lackies!:  The Big Lie That’s Destroying the Wild Horses of the American West The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is busy clearing federally designated wild horse territory of wild horses on public lands — and BLM officials are telling some big lies to get the job done.     At roughly 27 million acres, wild horse herd management areas (HMAs) constitute just 4% of the 750 million acres making up “the West” in the lower 48 states. There are 22 million cattle and sheep across that vast western expanse. That’s 265 times the number of wild horses (presently estimated at 86,000) in the 177 HMAs that were established principally for their use by the 1971 Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.     But the livestock industry considers that 27 million acres with 86,000 wild horses on it (one wild horse per 314 acres) to be overpopulated, or, as the BLM puts it, “above AML.” This is an acronym for “appropriate management level” but “agribusiness management level” is more accurate. Science-based? No. The AML is a quota whose purpose is to maintain commercial cattle and sheep stocking rates inside wild horse territory.Alabama “Forever Chemicals” Plant Creates the Climate Pollution of 125,000 Cars The plant manufactures PFAS-coated fast food packaging and pumps out loads of a banned ozone-depleting compound. As evidence mounts that hamburger wrappers and other kinds of grease-proof packaging contaminate food with PFAS, states have started banning the toxic chemicals from food packaging.Now, a new report provides yet another reason to remove PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, from food wrappers: climate and ozone pollution.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights: 
On This DayLabor:
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics Daily Update (September 17th to 20th)
  • ECONOMY – August 2021 Nominal Retail Sales Monthly Gain of 0.7% Was in Context of a 0.6% (-0.6%) Downside Revision to July Activity; Real Retail Sales Held on Track for a Quarterly Contraction
  • First Time in Five Years, the 2020 Poverty Rate Jumped and Real Median Household Income Plunged, with Surveying Disrupted and Distorted by the Pandemic-Driven Collapse
  • August 2021 Industrial Production Minimally Recovered Pre-Pandemic February 2020 Activity by 0.3%, but It Already Was Collapsing into the Pandemic in February 2020; Still Down Today by 2.5% (-2.5%) from its August 2018 Peak
  • How Can the Economy Be Minimally Recovered With Headline Annual Payroll Growth Weaker Than at the Troughs of the Last Seven Recessions, the 2007 Great Recession Excepted?
  • After Two Months of Decline, the August 2021 Cass Freight Index® Showed Some Seasonally Adjusted Rebound, With Trucks Taking Up Some Slack from Railroads, but Still at a Four-Month Low; Never Having Recovered its 2018 Peak Activity
  • INFLATION – August 2021 Consumer Price Index Annual Inflation Notched Lower to 5.25% from 5.37%
  • MONETARY BASE – No Suggestion of Tapering Here, With Early Indications of a Continuing Monetary Base Surge in September 2021; August 2021 Numbers Showed Ongoing Explosive Growth at the Cycle High
  • MONEY SUPPLY – July 2021 “Basic M1” Soared to an Historic-High 91.7% Above Its Pre-Pandemic Peak, Up from the Prior-Record 87.6% in June [See the ALTERNATE DATA Tab] • July FOMC Policies Were Unchanged [See the SYSTEMIC RISK and MONETARY DATA]
  • COMBINED IMPACT: Reflecting the Surge in Money, Inflation Has Exploded, While Business Activity Has Begun to Pull Back Anew, at an Intensifying Pace
Senator Elizabeth Warren and Bloomberg News Need to Give It a Rest with Bashing Wells Fargo and Turn Their Attention to 5-Count Felon, JPMorgan Chase On Tuesday of this week, Bloomberg News published its umpteenth negative article on the San Francisco-headquartered bank, Wells Fargo. This time around, the article was highlighting Senator Elizabeth Warren calling for Wells Fargo to be broken up, with its federally insured bank separated from its Wall Street businesses. . . .  Based on all of this negative media coverage, particularly at Bloomberg News, one would think that Wells Fargo is the most criminally-inclined bank in the United States. But here is where this story gets particularly curious. While Senator Warren and Bloomberg News have turned Wells Fargo into a piñata, Wells Fargo has not actually been charged with even one felony count by the U.S. Department of Justice. JPMorgan Chase, on the other hand, is the only U.S. federally-insured bank in history to be charged with five felony counts in the span of seven years, while keeping the same man, Jamie Dimon, as its Chairman and CEO.     So, to summarize: Wells Fargo did not facilitate the largest Ponzi scheme in history; it did not lose $6.2 billion of depositors’ money at its federally-insured bank through wild gambles in derivatives in London; it has not been criminally charged with rigging three separate markets – foreign exchange, precious metals, and the U.S. Treasury market.And, Wells Fargo’s regulators have not determined that it is the riskiest bank in America. That distinction, along with the five felony counts, belongs to JPMorgan Chase. If we’re going to start talking about breaking up behemoth banks and crime syndicates, that conversation needs to start with JPMorgan Chase and it needs to start right now.World:Education, Health, Science, 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! 

Daily News Digest July 26, 2021

The Global Climate Emergency is Now! For A Ecosoialist United Front!

Global Warming Emergency!From: Crushing Climate Impacts to Hit Sooner Than Feared: Draft UN Report:

  • But global warming impacts are also amplified by all the other ways that humanity has shattered Earth’s equilibrium.
  • These include “losses of habitat and resilience, over-exploitation, water extraction, pollution, invasive non-native species and dispersal of pests and diseases,” the report says.
  • There is no easy solution to such a tangle of problems, said Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank and author of the landmark Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.
  • “The world is confronting a complex set of interwoven challenges,” said Stern, who did not contribute to the IPCC report.
  • “Unless you tackle them together, you are not going to do very well on any of them.”
          The UN Climate Report States:  “The world is confronting a complex set of interwoven challenges,” said Stern, who did not contribute to the IPCC report.“Unless you tackle them together, you are not going to do very well on any of them.”
        To solve the coming catastrophe, all of the nations and the nations of the must take collective action to stop the rapid rate of global warming
         The Global Covid-19 pandemic has clearly proven that capitalism, in its death agony, cannot unite to save humanity from the coming global warming catastrophe.
         Science and technology are not an obstacle to    maintaining a safe environment. The barrier to a safe environment is capitalism and its paramount principle of production and science for profit.
         Most environmental studies demonstrate that environmental destruction has become globally intertwined within our society and that the globalization of capitalism has quickened the destruction of the planet.
          Under the conditions of global capitalist competition, it is not economically feasible to invest the capital necessary to reverse this destruction.
          In the present world, the rights of the capitalists to make a profit are in direct conflict with our basic rights. In this sense, the capitalist system has become a threat to humanity.
          Jefferson’s words, from the Declaration of Independence, that human rights are unalienable, mean that these rights can never be superseded. At all points of conflict, the rights of humanity to survive must supersede the right of the few to make a profit. The right to a safe environment is an unalienable human right!
          Since environmental illness and destruction are a global concern, it requires all of humanity to act collectively, in our overall interests for our survival as a species, to correct the problem and to remove the obstacle of capitalism. It requires a society where humanity has social, economic, and political control over the entire environment. Such a society, a socialist society, is needed to ensure that all decisions affecting the environment are under the democratic control of humankind so that the production of goods will be done for the needs and survival of humanity instead of the production and the destruction of humanity and other species for profit.
          With common ownership of the means of production and common control and protection of all property and wealth, science and society will be in harmony with the ecosystem and humanity’s future.
           Science and technology are not an obstacle to maintaining a safe environment. The barrier to a safe environment is capitalism and its paramount principle of production and science for profit. Most environmental studies demonstrate that environmental destruction has become globally intertwined within our society and that the globalization of capitalism has quickened the destruction of the planet. Under the conditions of global capitalist competition, it is not economically feasible to invest the capital necessary to reverse this destruction.
          Another obstacle is that, during the recent decades of relative capitalist prosperity, the socialist left has been fractured and has been unable to united in c common struggle to stop this humancide. The left must put aside past differences and join to build an ecosocialist united front!
          In the present world, the rights of the capitalists to make a profit are in direct conflict with our basic rights. In this sense, the capitalist system has become a threat to humanity.
           Jefferson’s words, from the Declaration of Independence, that human rights are unalienable, mean that these rights can never be superseded. At all points of conflict, the rights of humanity to survive must supersede the right of the few to make a profit. The right to a safe environment is an unalienable human right!
           Since environmental illness and destruction are a global concern, it requires all of humanity to act collectively, in our overall interests for our survival as a species, to correct the problem and to remove the obstacle of capitalism. It requires a society where humanity has social, economic, and political control over the entire environment. Such a society, a socialist society, is needed to ensure that all decisions affecting the environment are under the democratic control of humankind so that the production of goods will be done for the needs and survival of humanity instead of the production and the destruction of humanity and other species for profit.
          With common ownership of the means of production and common control and protection of all property and wealth, science and society will be in harmony with the ecosystem and humanity’s future.
          ‘We are in the midst of a climate emergency and there is no way out without radically changing the way society is organized. If humanity does not free itself from the capitalist drive for ever-greater profits and ever-expanding economic growth, rising global temperatures alone will make the planet uninhabitable for humans and millions of other living species.   We urgently need to find a collective road to a new way of living that is based on human solidarity and ecological sustainability!’ (See An Ecosocialist ManifestoFor an Egalitarian, Cooperative Road to Ecosocialism!)
The Emergency is Now! Humanity Needs To Move Beyond Capitalism To Ecosocialism! We Need, very quickly,  to Build a World Movement for Ecosocialist Revolution!

A Need a Green Ecocosocialist Industrial Revolution!

Daily News Digest July 26, 2021

Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

But So Did!

Victor Hugo

Another Example of Capitalism as a Failed System: World CaAnpilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years 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 future of Humanity Is Now At stake!

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:

In recent days, Pegasus, the name of Israeli spyware implicated in everything from the murder of journalists to the surveillance of world leaders, has been splashed across headlines around the globe. Reports in the Washington Post, The Guardian, and 15 other media outlets, as well as Amnesty International, which uncovered the spyware’s reach, revealed that Pegasus, sold by the Israeli company NSO, was used in attempts to track the most intimate details of thousands of people, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, as well as hundreds of human rights activists, journalists and lawyers around the globe. The revelations have prompted Haaretz columnist Eitay Mack to declare in no uncertain terms that “Israel’s NSO and Pegasus are a real and present danger to democracy all over the world.” — Richard Silverstein: Why the Israeli Spy Export Pegasus Is a Danger to Freedom Worldwide

Videos of the Day:

 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 ownershipof the Reublicrats, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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!

Medicare for All Advocates Take to the Streets of Over 50 US Cities “How can we have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness when we live in constant fear of illness, bankruptcy, or homelessness because of the outrageous for-profit healthcare system?” Just days before the 56th anniversary of Medicare being signed into law, advocates for creating a public, universal health insurance program in the United States to replace the largely private, for-profit system held marches in more than 50 cities across the country on Saturday.

‘Red Tape’ Baby Killers: Wyden Warns Millions of Poor Families Could Be ‘Denied’ Child Tax Credit Unless IRS Acts Without urgent fixes to a shoddy online application portal, Wyden said, many of “America’s most vulnerable communities” will not receive the expanded monthly benefit.

War 1st Vaccine ????:  A Huge Outrage’: Senate Panel Approves $25 Billion Pentagon Budget Increase “Not so incidentally, the $25 billion spending increase approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee exactly matches the cost to scale up Covid-19 vaccine production to meet global demand.” 

The Schnacke Affidavit: U.S. Admission of Offensive Germ Warfare Capability During the Korean War I recently obtained from the National Archives an affidavit from assistant U.S. attorney Robert H. Schnacke. The sworn statement was filed during a controversial 1950s trial prosecuting the editorial staff of China Monthly Review for sedition for reporting on the controversy over whether the U.S. used BW against China and the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK).      In the affidavit, which provides us today with two important pieces of the BW puzzle surrounding the charges of germ warfare aimed at the U.S., Schnacke stipulated the presence of an offensive capability by the U.S. to wage biological warfare dating back to the beginning of 1949, something the U.S. had long hidden or denied. The revelation briefly made headlinesin San Francisco, where the trial was being held, but more generally faded away.Surveillance, Roombacops, White Rage, and the End of Empathy Labels aside, those who perpetrate or acquiesce to racial abuse are not confined to a single race, ethnicity or gender. Joe Gutierrez, the officer who pepper-sprayed Nazario, is a white Latino. An officer involved in the Louisiana strip search is black. Freddie Gray’s killers in blue are black and white. The female officers who molested Charnesia Corley are also black and white. The three uniformed accomplices who abetted Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd are white, black, and Asian. This is not the kind of diversity of which America should be proud.

Environment:

The Climate Crisis Has Gone Critical  Human-induced climate change has gotten so bad that our only hope isn’t to reverse it, but to simply save what we can.   In June, record heat waves hit Russia, Northern Europe, Canada, and the United States. When these increasingly common weather phenomena began killing hundreds of people, the U.S. media focused its coverage on a single record breaking 116-degree day in Portland, Oregon.   When unprecedented flooding in Germany and Western Europe had killed more than 100 people by July 16, I watched as three U.S. network news shows rolled that report into coverage of the West’s wildfires and California’s worst drought in 1,200 years.

‘A Day of Shame’: Australia Lobbying Thwarts Push to List Great Barrier Reef as Endangered Greenpeace Australia called Friday’s World Heritage Committee vote “a victory for one of the most cynical lobbying efforts in recent history.” 

“We Knew Who Was Going to Die”: Warnings About Lower-Income Heat Risk Went Unheeded Many of the deaths in extreme heat events, like the record-breaking one in the Pacific Northwest, could be foreseen, a scientist told Congress. In the wake of an extreme heat event in the Pacific Northwest that killed at least 200 people, a scientist testified before Congress that the deaths could have been prevented.      “Those who died lacked access to financial capital, social networks, and had aging or injured bodies,” Vivek Shandas, director of the Sustaining Urban Places Research Lab at Portland State University, told the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. To Shandas, the tragic result was not unforeseen.     “We knew who was going to die,” the scientist said. “I wrote a report stating as much in 2009, and yet local agencies had little capacity for taking swift action.”

Black Liberation/Civil Rights:

Why Black Americans Should Care About What’s Happening in Haiti & Cuba The ongoing conflicts in the island nations have repercussions in America where punishment is meted out for any threat to white supremacy A lot of people have been blowing me up over the last two weeks asking me to speak up about what’s happening in Cuba and normally I would, as it’s always been my way to lend a voice in these times. But as a woman of Haitian and Cuban lineage living in the United States, this subject hits home in a very personal way. And so I took some time to reflect and ask myself, “What message could I possibly convey to my American friends about why they should care about any of this? How does this impact them?”

Freedom Rider: Standing with the Cuban People
– Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
The current Black-centered Cuban protest operation is very well orchestrated and if Black people in this country are not careful, they will end up amplifying the dictates of U.S. imperialism.

DOCUMENT: The Rise of Black Power in the West Indies: Walter Rodney, 1969

 Editors, The Black Agenda Review
Rodney succinctly demonstrates how capitalism and colonialism, and nationalism and imperialism, function to create a rigid hierarchy by which color is fused with class to keep the Black majorities

Joe Biden is Wrong, Capitalism IS Exploitation
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
The COVID-19 pandemic has produced numerous examples of “disaster capitalism, and spectacular profits for billionaires.”

The TPLF Attack on Ethiopia Contains the Accumulated Evil of the War
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
“The US and its allies haven’t even been able to get past the first step—UN Security Council censure—with regard to Syria, then Burundi, and now, Ethiopia.”

Our ‘democracy’
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Shangri-La—untaxed, socially-distanced champagne- caviar, Cayman Island, yacht crowds who Pay nothing for water washing their waste to sewage 

The Conspicuous Absence of Derrick Bell—Rethinking the CRT Debate, Part 1
Patrick D. Anderson
Bell levels a class critique against the Black bourgeoisie, whom he sees as having led Black political protest down the wrong path time and time again.

Memo to France as Its Soldiers Leave Africa: “Get Out and Stay Out!”
Mark P. Fancher
French bullying of Africa has been driven entirely by self-interest and greed.

BAR Book Forum: Matthieu Chapman’s Book, “Anti-Black Racism in Early Modern English Drama”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
This book analyzes Early Modern English Drama as a form of cultural production in which the paradigm of Early Modern England was shifting to account for encounters with black Africans.

BAR Book Forum: Julia Rose Kraut’s “Threat of Dissent”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Ideological exclusion and deportation from the United States, and how they has been consistently used as tools of political repression.

People Working A Minimum Wage Job Can’t Afford Rent Anywhere In The U.S.
Sarah Ruiz-Grossman
Over 40% of Black and Latinx households pay more than 30% of their income on rent, compared with 25% of white households.  

 Labor:

Worldwide, The Labor Bureaucracy, the Labor Lieutenants of Capitalism, are Capitalism’s Fifth Colum Within the Working Class:   Britain: Marxism, the Labour Party and the Witch-Hunt Socialist Appeal, the Marxist voice of Labour and youth, has been expelled from the British Labour Party, with the right wing saying they are ‘alien’ and ‘toxic’ to the party’s ‘aims and values’. But Marxism has a long history in the British labour movement, and the Labour Party. This article answers the lies, smears, and slanders.  The decision by Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) to ban Socialist Appeal and expel our supporters from the Labour Party is not a new idea. It is part of a long history by the right wing to eradicate Marxism and its influence from the party.

Economy:

 Robber Baron CEO: After JPMorgan Chase Admits to Its 4th and 5th Felony Charge, Its Board Gives a $50 Million Bonus to Its CEO, Jamie Dimon The unthinkable is happening with alarming regularity at the Frankenbank JPMorgan Chase. Over the last seven years, with Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon at the helm, JPMorgan Chase has managed to do what no other federally-insured American bank has managed to do in the history of banking in the United States. The bank has admitted to five separate felony counts brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, while regulators took no action to remove the Board of Directors or Jamie Dimon.

World:

Lattuff: No Ice Cream for War Criminals! 

Israel Vows to ‘Act Aggressively’ Against Ben & Jerry’s Israel’s prime minister vowed Tuesday to “act aggressively” against the decision by Ben & Jerry’s to stop selling its ice cream in Israeli-occupied territories, as the country’s ambassador to the U.S. urged dozens of state governors to punish the company under anti-boycott laws.

Mobilizing Against the Corporate Hijack of Agriculture and the UN Food Systems Summit    Despite claims of being a ‘people’s summit’ and a ‘solutions’ summit, the UNFSS is facilitating greater corporate concentration, unsustainable globalised value chains and agribusiness leverage over public institutions. As a result, more than 300 global organisations of small-scale food producers, researchers and indigenous peoples will gather online from 25-28 July to mobilise against the pre-summit.    The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSM) for relations with the United Nations Committee on World Food Security is working to eradicate food insecurity and malnutrition. According to the CMS, the UNFSS – founded on a partnership between the UN and the World Economic Forum (WEF) – is disproportionately influenced by corporate actors, lacks transparency and accountability and diverts energy and financial resources away from the real solutions needed to tackle the multiple hunger, climate and health crises.

400+ former heads of state, politicians, artists, and intellectuals call on US president Biden to “Let Cuba Live”  An open letter signed by over 400 personalities calls on US president Joe Biden to lift the 243 unilateral sanctions imposed on Cuba during the administration of Donald Trump which have greatly aggravated the economic situation on the island

Thousands across Cuba have mobilized in support of the revolution. Photo: Minrex
Education, Health, Science, 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!

Medicare for All Rallies in 50 Cities Show Big Support for Universal Health Care The United States is one of the richest countries in the world, yet its poverty rates are higher and its safety nets are far weaker than those of other industrialized nations. It is also the only large rich country without universal health care. In fact, as Noam Chomsky argued in Truthout, the U.S. health system is an “international scandal.”

Members of National Nurses United union members wave “Medicare for All” signs during a rally in front of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America in Washington, D.C, calling for “Medicare for All” on April 29, 2019