Daily News Digest June 18, 2021

Daily News Digest Archives

Images Of the Day:Mark TwainAnother 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!
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:

Rachel Carson: The ‘Right to Make a Buck’

Videos of the Day:

Israel Launches Air Raids on Gaza, First Since Truce With HamasDisaster Capitalism: Puerto Rico Plunged into Darkness After Privatization of Electric Utility

US Government: The Best Money Can Buy?

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!

Progressive Warnings Grow as Big Oil-Backed Republicans Endorse Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework “The Senate GOP members participating in these talks on infrastructure have accepted a career total of $15,896,919 in campaign contributions from oil and gas companies.” By Jake Johnson

Wealth Hoarding by ‘Silver Spoon Oligarchs’ Is Endangering US Democracy: Report “The five wealthiest dynastic families in the U.S. have seen their wealth increase by a median 2,484% from 1983 to 2020.” By Kenny Stancil

Biden’s Defense Budget IS A Big Win for Hypersonic Weapons Contractors The U.S.’S largest defense corporations can breathe a sigh of relief: President Joe Biden’s first budget proposal not only continues his predecessor’s commitment to hypersonic weapons, but it’s also seeking a major increase in government spending. While the Pentagon has yet to clarify the strategic value of weapons that can travel at least five times the speed of sound to destroy their targets, the new administration is looking to pour billions of dollars into various projects that risk accelerating an arms race. By  Sara SirotaEnvironment:UK’s ‘Really Shocking’ Climate Record Is Damned Britain, host of November’s UN talks, COP-26, is pilloried by its own advisers for the UK’s “really shocking” climate record. In a searing indictment of its failure to act fast enough to prepare for the onslaught of rising heat, there is condemnation of the British government by its independent advisers for the UK’s “really shocking” climate record. The latest science says the world could warm by an average of 4°C over historic levels by 2100, an increase which would prove devastating to human life and the natural world. By Alex Kirby

 Scientist Who Spent Year at ‘Epicenter’ of Climate Crisis Warns World May Already Have Hit Arctic ‘Tipping Point’ ‘Urgent’ action is needed, atmospheric scientist Markus Rex said. The atmospheric scientist that led a major year-long Arctic research expedition said Tuesday that the world may have already hit one of the so-called climate “tipping points.” “The disappearance of summer sea ice in the Arctic is one of the first landmines in this minefield, one of the tipping points that we set off first when we push warming too far,” said Markus Rex of the Alfred Wegener Institute, reports Agence France-Presse By Andrea GermanosCivil Rights/Black Liberation: 

Black Agenda Report

REPORT: Murdering Women in Nigeria, Nnamdi Benjamin Azikiwe, May 1930
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Juneteenth has become the latest iteration of liberal capture of Black politics, opportunistic virtue signaling, and the intentional misrepresentation of America’s history.

Independent Media is Political, Too: A Defense of “State” or Publicly-Funded Media
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
It is imperative for independent journalism to serve as the media arm of a movement that opposes the privatization of information and works toward the development of a public media apparatus.

REPORT: Murdering Women in Nigeria, Nnamdi Benjamin Azikiwe, May 1930
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
British colonial officials turned their guns on women in two Nigerian towns in the 1920s, to put down protests against “head” taxes and levies on market stalls, killing scores.

Ethiopia: Tribalism versus National Consciousness
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Washington and its allies seem intent on punishing Ethiopia and Eritrea for deposing a pro-US government in Addis Ababa, but some anti-imperialists also oppose the new regime.

The Town Crier’s List of Who’s Who in the capitalist state machine
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
“Ain’t no power like the power of the people—
‘cause the power of the people don’t stop!” bouncing
off summer skyscrapers; ricocheting off resistance
Millenia righteous… Centuries overdue…

Community Control of Public Safety: Building a Transitional Program for Power 
Netfa Freeman
Why is more effort is put into trying to discredit CCOP, while the ruling class is pulling all stops to hoodwink the public with actual reformism,

Lessons from Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panther Party
Ahjamu Umi
ust like we glorified the black leather jackets, black berets, and guns in the 60s, we still romanticize African people with guns and mouths that fire more inaccurately than the guns they carry.

Walter Rodney’s Death Records to be Amended and Children’s Books Placed in Schools
Denis Chabrol
The martyred revolutionary’s assassination has finally been acknowledged by the Guyana state, and his works will become part of the educational curriculum.

NYT’s Africa: A Place of Failure and No Leadership
Siyanda Mohutsiwa
Ruth Maclean’s article, like countless others in Western media, took place in an Africa without leaders, without public health officials or activists.

The Responsibilities of Caribbean Intellectuals
Aaron Kamugisha
The tradition of Caribbean intelligentsia insists on a grounding with the massive against the elites.

Two Former Israeli Ambassadors to South Africa Join Tsunami of ‘Apartheid’ Accusations Against Israel
By gradually driving occupied populations from their land and concentrating them into dense and fractured pockets, both South Africa and Israel thwart political autonomy and true democracy.

Abolishing Police and Abolishing Militaries
David Swanson
Prison and war abolition are up against the exact same profiteers, politicians, and pundits, as well as many of the same people “serving” as soldiers, police, and guards.

America’s Gun Obsession is Rooted in Slavery
Carol Anderson
The sheer brutality of human bondage created an overwhelming fear among whites of the enslaved’s capacity and desire for retribution.

The Kids Are Reimagining International Solidarity
Roberto Lovato
Millennial and Gen Z activists are aligning their struggles at home with the fights against US empire in the streets of Palestine, Haiti, Colombia, and other countries.

 Labor:

Economy:

Profits Call the Tune I have argued in many posts that ‘profits call the tune’ in capitalist accumulation.  What I mean by that is that any change in business profits (and profitability) will lead to changes in business investment – and not vice versa over time.      Profits are key to capitalist investment, not ‘effective demand’ as Keynesians argue, or changes in interest rates or money supply as Monetarists and the Austrian school argue.  I differ strongly from the post-Keynesian view that profits are a ‘residual’ generated by investment; or as Keynesian-Marxist Michal Kalecki put it: ‘capitalists earn what they invest, while workers spend what they earn’.       Yes, workers spend what they earn from wage labour ie (consume and save little); but capitalists do not ‘earn’ profits from their investment in capital (means of production and labour).  This theory denies Marx’s law of value that only labour produces value and surplus value (profit) for the capitalist.  It turns profit into the ‘gift of capital’; ie there is no profit without capitalists investing.  Yet profits can be generated out of the exploitation of labour power and capitalists may not invest.  Indeed, that is what we can see now in the expansion of ‘fictitious capital’ at the expense of productive investment. By Michael Roberts

Justice Department’s Investigation of Dodgy Archegos-Style Accounts at the Wall Street Mega Banks Is Likely the Cause of Plunge in Trading Revenues On May 26 Bloomberg News reported that the U.S. Department of Justice had opened an investigation into Archegos Capital Management and its bank lenders. Archegos is the family office hedge fund that had blown up in late March, causing a total of more than $10 billion in losses to mega banks including Credit Suisse, UBS, Morgan Stanley and others.  Archegos had obtained leverage of as much as 85 percent on its heavily-concentrated stock trades from some of its banks, in brazen violation of the Federal Reserve’s Regulation T which sets margin for stock trading at a maximum of 50 percent on opening trades. In addition, the banks were holding the stocks in their own names (while shifting losses and gains to Archegos under a derivatives contract called a swap) thus denying the public the knowledge of the true owners of these stock positions under 13F public filings with the SEC. By Pam Martens and Russ MartensWorld:

The G7’s Subservience to Big Pharma in Face of a Deadly Global Pandemic Is Shameful. The elected heads of the powerful bloc are guilty of vaccine nationalism and their shameful stance on vaccine patents and paltry charity will only prolong the pandemic. Last week, the presidents and prime ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) – featuring the UK’s Boris Johnson and Canada’s Justin Trudeau – gathered in Cornwall with a mandate to develop a plan for ending the Covid-19 pandemic that has cost at least 4 million lives and counting. They failed. Simply put, the heralded plan to donate 1 billion doses of the Covid-19 vaccine is both too slow and too paltry to halt the vicious spread of the virus. It commits less than 10 per cent of the doses necessary to vaccinate the world, and spreads them out over an extra year and a half. As the UN general-secretary, Antonio Guterres, said: “We need more than that.” By Jeremy Corbyn and Niki AshtonEducation, 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!