Daily News Digest September 17, 2024
Images of the Day:
Watching
Ted Rall: Your Thoughts are Her Heartfelt Policy Positions
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”There is No Democracy! When Less Than 1% Control the Wealth, Production, and Price of Everything Produced and Consumed in the World! In the present period of unfettered Capitalism, the pretense of democratic rule does not exist, except in the minds of ‘socialists’ like Bernie Sanders and the Labor Bureaucracy! Capitalists view all struggles as struggles against capitalist rule! Transition demands immediately become revolutionary demands! Therefore, any resistence to the attack of capitalists has to be organized by those that understand this! 
Today, the United States Capitalists are Consolidating Themselves as the Supreme Capitalists! Capitalism’s Gluttony is Demonstrated by It’s Quest for More and More Profits at the Expense of Humanity! The Rise of Capitalism was Under the Banner of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity! Now There is Less Liberty, More Inequality, and Less Fraternity of Humanity! Every Day, From Global Warming to Global War There is a New Example of Capitalism in Imperialist Decay!
Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capitalism Has Been Aware of the Comming Catastrophe of Global Warming Over 6 Decades Ago and Did Nothing!: Under Capitalism — Human Lives Don’t Matter Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Five Horsemen of the the Apocalypse, Spreading Racism, War, Famine, Pestilence, Death, and Misinformation! The very future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and The Iron Heel! For Decades, Blacks Have Been Subjected to The Iron Heel! Currently, the US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply It to Everyone! Globaly, With the Current Gaza War, The Right of Assembly is Under Attack! Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Still Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World!
The Majority of the World, Despite the Media Monopoly’s Lies, are Opposed to the Palestinian Genocide and Global Warming — The 1% Minority Funds Them! At, this Time in History, Capitalism is Exposing the Fact That it is Opposed to Majority Rule/Democracy!
Always Remember: That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he Established, in writing, the United States Capitalist Austerity Program. — The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!
Democracy?: As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%, Only the 1% Voted For Austerity! The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1%, Who Profit From Austerity!! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.! Socialism Means True Democracy, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
Quotes of the Day:
When Wall Street Banks Buy Bubbling, Pozi Scheme, Derivatives, It’s Risk Free Investments, for Wall Street Banks are ‘Too Big to Fail’ and They Know That Their Government Will Bail Them Out!
Podcasts/Vide0s of the Day:
Musings On The Second Trump Assassination Attempt Another Trump assassination attempt has been foiled by the Secret Service, this time with the would-be assassin alive and in police custody. … Unlike the last aspiring assassin, this one didn’t get off a shot, and has a much more public profile. The Grayzone has a report out documenting Routh’s extensive involvement in efforts to recruit volunteers to fight in the war in Ukraine, a cause he has been highly ideologically dedicated to.
United States:
The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War! Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford ford To Pay! Both Parties Support U.S. Capitalism’s Wars! (The Only War the Democrats Opposed was the Civil War!)
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both. — Louis D. Brandeis Quotes/
The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I cannot be Silent. ― Martin Luther King Jr.
To this day, we have a government and state apparatus that is designed to “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” Democracy for white and wealthy men only! — Roland Sheppard, My Forefathers and The 1%’s Forefathers.
U.S. Army is Upgrading an Israeli Base To Make Room for New Boeing Jets The purchase of the KC-46As was seen as a signal of Israel’s determination to increase its capacity to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. In addition to billions in weapons, the U.S. military is renovating an air base in the south of Israel, according to a new contract. … The construction stems from a nearly $1 billion contract, awarded to defense giant Boeing in 2022, to provide Israel with four KC-46A Pegasus tanker aircraft to be delivered by the end of 2026. The purchase of the KC-46As was seen as a signal of Israel’s determination to increase its capacity to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. The KC-46A is the newest tanker being produced for the U.S. Air Force to replace its two aging models. The new aircraft has been plagued with myriad problems, including issues with its Remote Vision System, which allows the boom operator to see the boom through a video feed. The plane has also become a financial burden, racking up more than $7 billion in losses.
United States Funded Genocide in Israel:
Attack on History!: How Does Israel Justify Genocide? It Starts in the Schools. Palestinian history and geography were scrubbed from Israeli schoolbooks a decade ago, scholar Nurit Peled-Elhanan says. In The Black Image in the White Mind, historian George M. Frederickson writes, “In the years immediately before and after 1800, white Americans often revealed by their words and actions that they viewed [Black people] as a permanently alien and unassimilable element of the population.” Within the context of white American domination, anti-Black racist stereotypes framed Black people as inherently unfit, innately problematic and divorced from the category of the human, a category that is synonymous with whiteness.
Environmanet:
Fund Climate! — Not Genocide! One of Many Ways to Begin to End Global Warming: Expose ‘Greenwashing’ — Tax the Polluters 100%! After World War II Rosa Luxenburg Coined the Slogan: ‘S0cialism or Barbaism’! Now the Slogan Should Be: ‘Ecosocialism or Ecocide’!
We Must Hold These Monsters to Account!
Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Week beginning on September 08, 2024: 422.06 ppm,Weekly value from 1 year ago: 418.52 ppm, Weekly value from 10 years ago: 395.09 ppm. Last updated: September 15, 2024
George Monbiot: Out of 1,500 Global Climate Policies, Only 63 Have Really Worked. That’s Where Green Spin has got Us Grand schemes, many backed by governments, masquerade as positive action on the environment. They should be disowned. Let’s talk about perceptionware. Perceptionware is technology whose main purpose is to create an impression of action. Whether it will ever work at scale is less important, in some cases entirely beside the point. If it reassures the public and persuades government not to regulate damaging industries, that’s mission accomplished. Managing perceptions is an expensive business. Real money, especially public money, is spent on fake solutions. Take carbon capture and storage: catching and burying carbon dioxide emissions from power stations, oil and gas fields, and steel and cement plants. For 20 years, it has spectacularly failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, its only clear successes involve enhanced oil recovery: carbon dioxide is used to drive oil out of geological formations that are otherwise difficult to exploit. With astonishing chutzpah, some oil companies have claimed the small amount of carbon that remains trapped in the rocks as a climate benefit. Though it is greatly outweighed by the extra oil extracted, they have, as a result, received billions in government subsidies.
Leak at First CO2 Injection Site in US Exposes Dangerous Folly of Carbon Capture “This incident puts an exclamation point on concerns communities across the country have been raising for years about the dangers the CCS industry poses to public safety and drinking water,” said one climate group. Environmental groups said Friday that a newly reported leak at the first CO2 injection site in the United States highlights the threat—and false promise—of carbon capture and storage efforts, which climate advocates have long criticized as a ploy by the fossil fuel industry to preserve its extractive business model.
Louisiana Town the Canary in the Coalmine as Climate Effects Worsen Lake Charles has been battered by storms over the past 20 years – and now its most famous landmark lies in ruins Last week, one south-west Louisiana city in particular was girding itself for Hurricane Francine’s blow: Lake Charles, located about four hours west of New Orleans and two hours east of Houston. .. According to the US Energy Information Administration, today Louisiana provides 10% of the country’s marketed natural gas production and 61% of the US’s natural gas exports. Lake Charles is the biggest contributor to those numbers, with a disproportionate number of refineries and facilities around the city’s edges. Through oil busts and booms, the tower stood like a beacon for the town’s success in the energy industry, a bulwark against climate change’s doomsayers even as the climate has warmed and the hurricanes barreling in from the Gulf have got stronger.
US Lawmakers Push to Exclude Lucrative Chemicals from Official PFAS Definition Language in Senate defense bill is probably first step to shield widely used toxic F-gases from regulation US lawmakers and the military are pushing for a new definition of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” that would exclude a subclass of toxic compounds increasingly used across the economy and considered to be potent greenhouse gases. Language included in the defense bill by the Senate armed services committee asks the military to detail how it uses fluorinated gases, or F-gases, stating that the committee is “interested in learning more about how the [department of defense] may or may not be impacted by the definition” of PFAS.
Fracking Company Is Selected to Receive Federal Environmental Justice Funding CNX Resources has committed over 2,000 environmental violations since 2004. Pittsburgh — A Pennsylvania-based fracking company is the subject of controversy after one of its projects was listed as an environmental justice initiative under a federal government program by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). An environmental monitoring project conducted by CNX Resources, a natural gas company headquartered in Pittsburgh, was included on a list of Justice40 efforts related to the federally funded Appalachian Hydrogen Hub in a document recently released by the Department of Energy. The hub is a network of infrastructure that will create hydrogen for energy use. It’s part of a nationwide initiative to advance hydrogen production with the goal of decreasing climate-warming carbon emissions in the U.S.
EPA Claims No Obligation to Regulate PFAS in Farmland Sewage Sludge The EPA seeks to dismiss a lawsuit over toxic PFAS contamination in sewage sludge used as fertilizer. U.S. regulators claim they are not legally required to regulate toxic PFAS chemicals in sewage sludge spread on farmland across the country, according to a court filing the government made this week in response to a lawsuit from an environmental watchdog group.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Being Black in America: Tyreek Hill’s Traffic Stop Shows Interactions With Police Can be About Survival for Black Men After his traffic stop in Miami on Sunday, Tyreek Hill said that as a youngster he received ‘the talk’ about what to do when pulled over by police. After his traffic stop in Miami on Sunday, Tyreek Hill said he has received “the talk” about what to do when pulled over by police. He knows to heed the instructions passed down in Black families for generations. Keep your hands in sight, preferably on the steering wheel. Avoid any sudden movements. Don’t talk back to the officer. And above all, follow instructions without error or delay. On Sunday, body camera video released Monday shows, the star wide receiver for the Miami Dolphins was ordered out of his vehicle by Miami-Dade Police officers, handcuffed and placed face down on a street outside the team’s stadium. Hill said he was stopped for speeding and reckless driving before the Dolphins’ first game of the season, and his interaction with police captured in a now-viral cellphone video and the body camera footage escalated to the type of incident that often prompts protests and claims of discriminatory policing, with the prone and handcuffed football star detained by three police officers, one on top of Hill with his knee holding the player’s wrists against his lower back.
Labor:
Economy:
Headlines
- University Of Michigan’s Preliminary September 2024 Consumer Sentiment Continued 31.7% (-31.7%) Shy Of Ever Recovering Its
- February 2020 Pre-Pandemic Peak
- Highlighting Some Key Elements In The Pending
- Inflation And Economic Review-Previews:
- September 13th Gold Price Has Met and Overtaken
- The Shadow Statistics Alternate Cpi for the First Time!
- Small Headline Dip in Year-to-Year August CPU Inflation
- Reflected Renewed Administration Actions To Suppress
- Pre-2024 Election Gasoline Prices
- Such Activity Also aas Seen Pre-2022 Mid-Term Elections
- Booming Headline Real Year-ro-Year Real GDP Growth
- Continued To Be Countered and Contradicted by Flat-to-Minus
- Real Annual Growth in the Underlying, Higher-Quality,
- Monthly Economic Series
ShadowStats Preview of Special Commentaries September 13, 2024 Unstable and Difficult Times Ahead
- Today’s University of Michigan’s Preliminary September 2024 Consumer Sentiment Continued 31.7% (-31.7%) Shy of Ever Recovering Its February 2020 Pre-Pandemic Peak Level
- Highlighting Some Key Elements in the Pending Inflation and Economic Review-Previews:
- Gold Price Has Just Met And Overtaken the Shadow Government Statictics Alternate CPI for the First Time!
- Small Headline Dip in Year-to-Year August CPI Inflation Reflected Repeated Administration Actions to Suppress Gasoline Prices Pre-2024 Election
- Such Activity Also Was Seen Pre-2022 Mid-Term Elections
- Headline Booming Real Year-to-Year GDP Growth of 3% Continues to be Countered/Contradicted by Flat-to-Minus Real Annual Growth in the Underlying, Higher-Quality, Monthly Economic Series
- Extended Details Follow in the Pending Review-Preview Inflation and Economic Commentaries of the Two Weeks Ahead
***
Pending: An Intensifying, Hyperinflationary U.S. Economic Depression Calculating Comparative Headline Inflation for the August 2024 CPI-U and the Shadow Government Statistics Alternate CPI Inflation from Pre-Pandemic February 2020 to the Latest August 2024 Reporting of Headline CPI-U Inflation of 21.5% vs. Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Inflation of 66.6%
Shadow Government Statistics Monthly Payroll
Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Unemployment Rate is Over 26%
Everything this Book Predicted on Wall Street Megabanks Ruling their Regulators Is Now Unfolding It is rare for a book to be so comprehensive and insightful that it provides a roadmap for the future – especially when its cast of characters are the lawyered-up megabanks on Wall Street and their legions of lobbyists and public relations flacks. We’re referring to Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act by Arthur E. Wilmarth, Professor Emeritus of Law at George Washington University.
World:
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
Profiteering Lets Mpox Epidemic Spread Out of Control Four years on, nothing has been learned from COVID-19 A new strain of Mpox is tearing through Central Africa. Since the start of the year, 13 African countries have reported more than 22,800 Mpox cases and 622 deaths, which represents a 160 percent increase compared with the same period in 2023. This is likely only a fraction of the real number. What is clear is that, four years on, nothing has been learned from COVID-19. The recent explosion of the disease threatens a worldwide outbreak. In August, the WHO declared Mpox a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC). Shortly afterwards cases were detected in Sweden, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand. With the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic fresh in mind – as well as the last global outbreak of Mpox in 2022 – one might assume that the governments of the world would join together to tackle this crisis before it gets out of control. On the contrary. In spite of the frantic calls of the global health community, the world is stumbling blindly and inevitably into a new health crisis, blighted by exactly the same things that undermined a rational, global response to COVID-19: the private ownership of the pharmaceutical industry, and antagonistic nation states.
Do Parents Always Know What’s Best for Their Children? NO. Over recent years, we have heard again and again that parents always know what’s best for their child. And so we have vouchers and home-schooling because “parents always know what’s best for their child.” No, they don’t. Read this story and ask yourself whether this parent knew what was best for her child. I wish I had saved the many stories of this kind that I have read over the past decade. Thank God, they don’t happen every day but they do happen. Whenever I write about abusive parents like the one in this horrific story, I get inundated by angry letters from advocates for parents’ rights, especially homeschoolers. Let ’em write. The state should have had someone to look after this boy. They should have had the authority to take the child away from his mother, who hated him, to save his life.