Daily News Digest May 31, 2021

Daily News Digest Archives

The First Memorial Day:

This April 1865 photo shows the graves of Union soldiers: who died at the Race Course prison camp in Charleston, which would later become Hampton Park. On May 1 of that year, former slaves gave the fallen a daylong funeral. The Library of Congress

 

An obelisk, erected by L. T. ‘Eliza’ Potter, stands in Beaufort National Cemetery. It reads, ‘Immortality Hundreds Of The Defenders of American Liberty Against The Great Rebellion.’Memorial Day By Roland Sheppard

I Morn Those That Died — The 1% Sing Praises To The Spoils Of War! Every Year I Honor the Casualties Of The Wars For Profit — Not Just the Americans Who Have/Will Died, but The People World Wide Who Have/Will Die, From War and the Exploits of US Capitalism:

Images Of the Day:

San Francisco: Thousands March for Palestine

nother 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:

If we dedicate war memorials to the memory of men and women, who are cut down before their time, these (Workplaces)  are war memorials. . . . — Homer Seguin, Video: Before Their Time” Cancer & Health And Safety On Our Jobs

The past two weeks in Gaza have been a critical period for people of conscience. It’s been one of those historical moments, which reveals what people are made of and its worth taking a moment to reflect on who said what and when and where they said it. Who spoke out during the first evictions in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrar, who spoke out when the first missiles hit Gaza, who spoke out when a refugee camp was hit, when residential buildings were turned to rubble, who waited until the AP/Al Jazeera building was targeted, who refused to fall for the bait of blaming both sides? I ask this because my memories are still fresh from the early days of the Afghan War, when the voices in opposition where so very few, when those of us who did speak out were tarred as traitors and terrorist appeasers, when many lost their jobs, their writing and music gigs, their tenured faculty positions, their friends and lovers. I think about how some of the people who now strut about as popular voices of the “anti-war” movement, like Glenn Greenwald, supported both the Afghan and Iraq Wars. I’m glad they’ve come around, naturally. But I trust the people who were there in the beginning, who didn’t need mounds of civilian corpses and a gradual shift in public opinion to change their minds. This is critical in part because the reputational consequences of standing up to criticize Israel are fraught with peril and also because the last two weeks have only been a hyper-violent phase of the Gaza war, which was going on before the frenzy of missiles and will continue tomorrow and next week and next month, when the daily humiliations, evictions, beatings, jailings, and killings happen out of the media spotlight. And who will still be speaking out then? And what will they say? — Roaming Charges: Back to the Future in Gaza

Videos 0f the Day:

Marx’s Law of Value Led by Michael Roberts

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!

Julian Assange’s Father and Brother Announce US Tour to Demand Journalist’s Freedom “The U.S. government wants to make an example out of him to deter journalists and whistleblowers.” —Gabriel Shipton, Julian Assange’s brother “Gabriel and I are excited to talk to the American public on why protecting journalism and freeing Julian is so important to a free press,” says John Shipton, the WikiLeaks founder’s father. By Jessica CorbettMedicare for None: A Response to the State-Based Universal Health Care Act of 2021 Proponents of a state-based universal healthcare approach believe states can be incubators for change, and that ultimately, once one state shows the way, all states will follow—but we have yet to see any evidence of this. The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the inequities, inefficiencies, and ineffectiveness of our healthcare system. If there was ever a time for healthcare reform, this is it. But some healthcare activists and their progressive allies, suffering from the frustration and disillusion brought on by the refusal of President Joe Biden and Congress to consider structural reform, have accepted this defeat and turned to state-based reform, jeopardizing Medicare across the country. Healthcare is a national responsibility. To palm it off to states is a step backward: the dream of Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan to shrink the federal government.  By Ana Malinow

Former DNC Chair Tom Perez Now Works for Anti-Labor Law Firm After a four year tenure as chair of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez has taken a job as partner at Washington D.C. law and lobbying firm Venable LLP.“When assisting clients with legal, legislative, and regulatory matters across a broad range of subject matter areas, Tom Perez brings to bear decades of experience leading government organizations at the federal, state, and local levels,” Venable’s website says. Venable advertises services defending employers against labor unions, including collective bargaining negotiations, refuting unfair labor practices allegations, and offering advice during union organizing campaigns and petition drives. By Donald Shaw

 Environment:

 

“We Have Assured That the Effects ff Our Actions Will Outlast Us By Millions Of Years”: Evolutionary biologists have looked at the timetable of mass murder 66 million years ago in what is now called the Fifth Great Extinction. By looking at fossil snails and other freshwater citizens of what is now Europe, they traced oblivion’s malign impact over many millennia. The grim news is that the loss of species began soon after a substantial comet or asteroid crashed into planet Earth, but it took another 12 million years for evolution to catch up again.The even grimmer news is that the Sixth Great Extinction has already begun, and is proceeding at a rate 1,000 times faster than the massacre of the little creatures that perished alongside the dinosaurs.The message − familiar for decades to conservationists, evolutionary biologists and palaeontologists, but still to be appreciated by politicians − is that the impact of more than 7 billion humans on the rest of the living world is less immediate, but more devastating, than the celestial traffic accident that wiped out the dinosaurs. — Fossils Show Oblivion’s Malign Impact on Nature

The ‘Tipping Point’ —   World Meteorological Organization (WMO: New Climate Predictions Increase Likelihood Of Temporarily Reaching 1.5 °C In Next 5 years Geneva, 27 May 2021 (WMO) – There is about a 40% chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level in at least one of the next five years – and these odds are increasing with time, according to a new climate update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). There is a 90% likelihood of at least one year between 2021-2025 becoming the warmest on record, which would dislodge 2016 from the top ranking, according to the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, produced by the United Kingdom’s Met Office, the WMO lead center for such predictions. , , ,  “These are more than just statistics,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas. “Increasing temperatures mean more melting ice, higher sea levels, more heatwaves and other extreme weather, and greater impacts on food security, health, the environment and sustainable development,” he said. “This study shows – with a high level of scientific skill – that we are getting measurably and inexorably closer to the lower target of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. It is yet another wake-up call that the world needs to fast-track commitments to slash greenhouse gas emissions and achieve carbon neutrality,” said Prof. Taalas. “Technological advances now make it possible to track greenhouse gas emissions back to their sources as a means of precisely targeting reduction efforts,” he noted.

‘Regulation’ Pollution: Outrage As Regulators Let Pesticides From Factory Pollute US Town For Years   Contamination from an ethanol plant in Mead, Nebraska, came from some of the world’s largest agricultural companies For years, the people of Mead, Nebraska, have worried about the ethanol plant that moved into their small rural community a little over a decade ago. They feared the terrible smells and odd illnesses in the area might be connected to the plant and its use of pesticide-coated seed corn in its biofuel production process. Those concerns recently turned to outrage and anger after environmental regulators were forced to acknowledge that under their oversight the AltEn LLC ethanol plant has been contaminating the area with an array of pesticides at levels much higher than what is considered safe. By Carey Gillam

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Urban Renewal/Removal:

Opinion: ‘Urban Renewal’ Aka Gentrification is a Vicious Attack Against Predominantly Black Neighborhoods Historically and today, there’s a more vicious version of “urban renewal” taking place in predominantly black areas across the country and it’s called gentrification and it comes in several different forms. James Baldwin, a popular figure in the 1960’s once famously said that “urban renewal is negro removal” and his famous statement is so true today in the modern day age of social media and YouTube. By Kwame Shakir 

Despite the progress in rebuilding greenwood, from the 1960s through 1980s, a series of choices by white city planners destroyed the district again—this time in the name of “urban renewal.” the urban renewal movement was devastating for greenwood; as detailed by human rights watch in their 2020 report recommending reparations, a mix of policies that included eminent domain, rezoning, and highway construction led to displacement and plunging property values, while racist redlining policies prevented the injection of new capital into the community. — The True Costs of the Tulsa Race Massacre, 100 Years Later

100th Anniversary of Tulsa Massacre Should Remind Us Why Reparations Are Needed Memorial Day marks the 100th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, one of the deadliest episodes of racial violence in U.S. history, when the thriving African American neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma — known as “Black Wall Street” — was burned to the ground by a white mob. An estimated 300 African Americans were killed and over 1,000 injured. Whites in Tulsa actively suppressed the truth, and African Americans were intimidated into silence. But efforts to restore the horrific event to its rightful place in U.S. history are having an impact. Survivors testified last week before Congress, calling for reparations. President Biden is set to visit Tulsa on Tuesday. We speak with documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson, whose new film premiering this weekend explores how Black residents sought out freedom in Oklahoma and built a thriving community in Greenwood, and how it was all destroyed over two days of horrific violence. Nelson notes many African Americans migrated westward after the Civil War “to start a new life” with dignity. “Greenwood was one of over 100 African American communities in the West,” he says. “Greenwood was the biggest and the baddest of those communities.” By Amy GoodmanAgainst Apartheid Pedagogy in the Age of White Supremacy The toxic thrust of white supremacy runs through American culture like an electric current. Jim Crow is back without apology suffocating American society in a wave of voter suppression laws, the elevation of racist discourse to the centers of power, and the ongoing attempt by right-wing politicians to implement a form of apartheid pedagogy that makes important social issues that challenge the racial and economic status quo disappear. The cult of manufactured ignorance now works through disimagination machines engaged in a politics of falsehoods and erasure. Matters of justice, ethics, equality, and historical memory now vanish from the classrooms of public and higher education and from powerful cultural apparatuses and social media platforms that have become the new teaching machines. By Henry GirouxLabor:

Economy:

Unregulated Cryptocurrency Bubble Could Send the Economy Into a Tailspin By Unregulated Cryptocurrency Bubble Could Send the Economy Into a Tailspin  Bank regulators are rushing to come up with cryptocurrency rules, according to the Federal Reserve official overseeing financial regulation, but many fear the rule-making comes too late, and the unregulated bonanza may already be on the cusp of crashing and causing a broader recession that would hurt the poor most intensely. Fed Vice Chair of Supervision Randal Quarles said on May 25 that his agency and two others — the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) — are taking the lead in what appears to be a scramble to act amid a period of instability with the potential to do serious damage to the rest of the economy. About 1 in 5 financial industry professionals believe that a cryptocurrency downturn could deliver a “salient shock to financial stability” over the next 12 to 18 months, according to a Fed survey conducted between February and April. By Sam Knight

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 

 How It All Went Wrong: the Global Response to COVID-19 The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response was never likely to hand down a rosy report with gobbets of praise.  Organised by the World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last May, the panel’s gloomy assessment was grim: the COVID-19 pandemic could have been avoided. Almost nothing in the main report could be seen as remarkable in these jaded times.  It reads like a sharp vision of looking backwards, a history of folly and stumbles.  The protagonist, SARS-CoV-2, proved wily, moving more rapidly than surveillance could detect it, ducking the monitors and seducing the examiners.  The rest of the actors in the show proved, to varying degrees, to be inept, indifferent and even callous.     Almost nothing in the main report could be seen as remarkable in these jaded times.  It reads like a sharp vision of looking backwards, a history of folly and stumbles.  The protagonist, SARS-CoV-2, proved wily, moving more rapidly than surveillance could detect it, ducking the monitors and seducing the examiners.  The rest of the actors in the show proved, to varying degrees, to be inept, indifferent and even callous. BY Binoy Kampmark

Today’s San Francisco Chronicle Headline: Mass Killer Harbored Hatred for Workplace. This response indictative of work under capitalism. What separates humans from animals is our ability to create or work. Under Capitalism, this is controlled and owned by members of the 1% Capitalist Class. Thus, the alienation of workers from this ability in the workplace.

This Slogan,Worst Day Sailing is Better Than the Best Day Working!, Epitomizes Working Class Alienation and Dehumanization on the Job!:

Alienation Of Labour Under Capitalism:  The alienations imposed by capital upon tabor reinforce and intensify those forms of alienation carried over from the barbarous past by adding to them estrangements bred by capitalism’s own peculiar type of exploitation. It is necessary to analyse the economic foundations of capitalist society in order to bring out its characteristic processes of alienation.

  1. Capitalism emerges as a distinct and separate economic formation by wrenching away working people from precapitalist conditions of production. Before capitalism could be established, the mass of direct producers had to be separated from the material means of production and transformed into propertyless proletarians. The processes of expropriation whereby the peasants were uprooted from the land and the social elements fashioned for the wage labour required for capitalist exploitation in Western Europe were summarised by Marx in Chapter XIX of Capital.

  2. However, the alienation of the producers only begins with the primary accumulation of capital: it is continually reproduced on an ever-extended scale once capital takes over industry, Even before he physically engages in the productive process, the wage-worker finds his labor taken away from him by the stipulations of the labour contract. The worker agrees to hand over his labour to the capitalist in return for the payment of the prevailing wage. The employer is then free to use and exploit this labor as he pleases.

  3. During the productive process, by virtue of the peculiar divisions of labor in capitalist enterprise, all the knowledge, will, and direction is concentrated in the capitalist and his superintendents. The worker is converted into a mere physical accessory factor of production. “The capitalist represents the unity and will of the social working body” while the workers who make up that body are “dehumanized” and degraded to the status of things. The plan, the process, and the aim of capitalist production all confront the workers as alien, hostile, dominating powers. The auto workers on the assembly line can testify to the truth of this fact.

  4. At the end of the industrial process the product which is its result does not belong to the workers who made it but to the capitalist who owns it. In this way the product of labour is torn from the workers and goes into the market to be sold.

  5. The capitalist market, which is the totality of commodities and money in their circulation, likewise confronts the working class—whether as sellers of their labor power or as buyers of commodities—as an alien power. Its laws of operation dictate how much they shall get for their labor power, whether it is saleable at all, what their living standards shall be.

  6. The world market is the ultimate arbiter of capitalist society. It not only rules over the wage-slaves; it is greater than the most powerful group of capitalists. The overriding laws of the market dominate all classes like uncontrollable forces of nature which bring weal or woe regardless of anyone’s plans or intentions.

  7. In addition to the fundamental antagonism between the exploiters and the exploited, the competition characteristic of capitalism’s economic activities pits the members of both classes against one another. The capitalists strive to get the better of their rivals so that the bigger and more efficient devour the smaller and less productive.

  8. The workers who go into the labour market to sell their labour power are compelled to buck one another for available jobs. In the shop and factory they are often obliged to compete against one another under the goad of piecework.

Both capitalists and workers try to mitigate the consequences of their competition by combination. The capitalists set up trusts and monopolies; the workers organize into trade unions.      But however much these opposing forms of class organization modify and restrict competition, they cannot abolish it.      The competitiveness eliminated from a monopolized industry springs up more violently in the struggles between one aggregation of capital and another. The workers in one craft, category, or country are pitted, contrary to their will, against the workers of another.    These economic circumstances generate unbridled individualism, egotism, and self-seeking throughout bourgeois society. The members of this society, whatever their status, have to live in an atmosphere of mutual hostility rather than of solidarity. Thus the real basis of the forms of alienation, within capitalist society, is found in the contradictory relations of its mode of production and in the class antagonisms arising from them. —  George Novack’s Understanding History