Daily News Digest July 8, 2019

 Daily News Digest July 8, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

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 banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

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.

Images of the Day:

I Aint A Gonna Kill Nobody!Carlos Latuff:Trump’s CampsQuotes of the Day:

The only realistic anti-right-wing choice today for the working class and the poor is a vote for the KKE, the only mass workers’ party, which has programmatically broken with reformism as of the decisions of its last congresses, and which has adopted an anti-capitalist line of fighting for socialist workers’ power. When a mass workers’ party with these political characteristics exists, it is the task of every communist to support it in the upcoming battles. Under the existing conditions of paralysis in the workers’ movement, under which the elections are taking place, this task is even more meaningful and decisive. Electoral success for the KKE, in which it would secure third place (a completely realistic electoral goal), would help the working class back on its feet after the defeats of the past. It would send a vitalising, anti-capitalist message to the broad working masses and it would signify a change in the existing balance of forces, which has not been on the side of working people for years. — Greece: Stop the advance of the ND with a mass vote for the KKE!

The Environmental Defense Fund’s strategy of corporate-friendly, so-called market-based solutions to climate change and other environmental problems has led it to elevate natural gas and fracking as a climate solution even as the global climate crisis has worsened. Now, even as climate scientists are telling us that we need to leave all remaining fossil fuels in the ground, EDF is stepping in to advocate for the construction of a new pipeline under New York harbor. EDF’s connections to investors profiting from oil and gas drilling as well as its past endorsement of shoddy fracking industry research create serious credibility issues about its endorsement of the Williams pipeline. — Williams Pipeline Support Highlights Environmental Defense Fund’s Long, Cozy Relationship With Fracking Pseudoscience.

Videos of the Day:

U.S. Women’s Soccer Sues The U.S. Soccer Federation Over Pay Inequality

Facebook’s Libra Currency Monetizes Identity and Threatens Privacy

Anti-Trump 4th of July Protest in DC Features ‘Baby Trump’ Blimp

Immigration Detention Center Conditions Cause Massive Outcry

Tenants Continue to Protest Deteriorating Living Conditions at Bolton House 

U.S.:

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 Falsity of America All rise!  It is the anniversary of this conflicted, sclerotic, blind, self-destructive country.  There will be celebrations.   Glitzy extravaganzas of flash and fireworks providing the shimmering eye candy to camouflage the corpse of the myth that is centerpiece and theme our national shivaree. A nation built on genocide and slavery, with a Constitution launched with sanctimonious pieties never meant to be honored, ranking property over people, with blood-and-guts Capitalism–wealth and privilege–enthroned to rule an emasculated citizenry concussed by propaganda: this is the “exceptional” America we swarm on this day to extol. By Paul Edwards

 Born on the 5th of July  The unifying factor behind environmental decline, an extractive health care system, mind-numbing work for poverty wages, perpetual wars and increasingly intrusive and assertive commercial relations, is capitalism. Of course, the term is an abstraction, shorthand for a belief system used to explain and organize social relations. Its history is of brutality, pillage and genocide explained by its perpetrators as laying the ground for some imagined future civility. By Rob UrieUS is a Classic Empire and Is Becoming a Repressive Police State at HomeAs I set out to fly home from the UK on Monday following a short film project in Cambridge, I found my boarding pass, which I had been blocked from obtaining online the night before, carrying a bold-faced SSSS stamp in the lower right corner. Asking about it I was told by the British employee at the United check-in counter, “That is because you are on a US Department of Homeland Security list, sir.” Later, after my son and I got the boarding gate, my name was called and I was ushered through a door in the wall behind the gate desk where two British security agents pawed through my bag and ran a cloth over computer, phone and all the zippers on my suitcase and computer bag looking for traces of explosives. After that I was politely told that I and my son (whose luggage was left uninspected) could board the plane. When I asked why I, a journalist with no criminal record, was being treated like a suspected terrorist, they laughed and said I would have to inquire of the DHS. By Dave Lindorff

Environment:

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. — Roland Sheppard, Whither Humanity? The Environmental Crisis of Capitalism

The Environmental Defense Fund GreenwashersWilliams Pipeline Support Highlights Environmental Defense Fund’s Long, Cozy Relationship With Fracking Pseudoscience.The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), an environmental group with close ties to the corporate community, has taken a friendly approach to the explosion of the natural gas industry in the United States. In the early years of the fracking boom, EDFtouted natural gas as a “bridge fuel” toward renewable energy. The organization helped to promote industry-funded misinformation by signing off on sham studies — for example from the University of Texas and the State University of New York at Buffalo — that claimed fracking was safe, but were fatally marred by basic errors in arithmetic and undisclosed conflicts of interest. EDF’s pro-gas stance has moderated in the wake of increasing evidence that natural gas causes far more carbon pollution and other harmful impacts than originally claimed, and the group is now calling for a decarbonization of the US economy. However, EDF is still giving environmental cover to the natural gas industry. The organization has backed the CEO Climate Dialogue, a group formed “to urge the President and Congress to enact a market-based approach to climate change” whose members include major fossil fuel companies and utilities, like Shell and PG&E. By Rob Galbraith

‘The Climate Crisis Doesn’t Go on Summer Holiday, And Neither Will We,’ Says Greta Thunberg as #Fridays ForFuture Returns to the StreetsA campaigner in Nigeria adds, “It doesn’t matter the course you study nor your age, we need you to join climate justice.” By Jessica Corbett

‘We Are in a Climate Emergency, America’: Anchorage Hits 90 Degrees for First Time in Recorded History  “This is unprecedented. I tease people that Anchorage is the coolest city in the country—and climatically that is true—but right now we are seeing record heat,” said Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz By Jake Johnson

Study Finds Holding Governments and Corporations Legally Accountable for Climate Crisis ‘Has Become a Global Phenomenon’ Climate action and liability cases have been filed in at least 28 countries   An analysis published Thursday details how lawsuits that aim to push governments to more ambitiously the address climate emergency and make polluting corporations pay for the damage caused by their sizable contributions to the global warming are growing in popularity around the world. By Jessica Corbett

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Democracy Now!: Border Agents Caught Posting Racist, Sexist Messages About Migrants & AOC in Secret Facebook GroupCustoms and Border Protection has opened an investigation into the posting of racist and xenophobic messages by current and former Border Patrol agents on a private Facebook group. More than 9,500 people are part of the group, which was exposed by ProPublica on Monday. The Facebook group is filled with racist, homophobic, anti-immigrant and misogynistic content about migrants and asylum seekers, as well as public officials like Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is depicted in a photoshopped image being sexually assaulted by President Trump.“What to the Slave Is 4th of July?”: James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Reparations Are Not Just About Slavery But Also Centuries of Theft & Racial Terror

Labor:

Economy:

The IMF and World Bank: Partners in Backwardness“The purpose of a military conquest is to take control of foreign economies, to take control of their land and impose tribute. The genius of the World Bank was to recognize that it’s not necessary to occupy a country in order to impose tribute, or to take over its industry, agriculture and land. Instead of bullets, it uses financial maneuvering. As long as other countries play an artificial economic game that U.S. diplomacy can control, finance is able to achieve today what used to require bombing and loss of life by soldiers.” By Michael Hudson and Bonnie Faulkner

‘Recovery for Whom? Over 20% 0f the 99% Have Been Unemployed Since 2009!Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Unemployment ChartsThe seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.                                           The Shadow Government Statistics  Alternate Unemployment Rate for June 2019 is 21.2%

The Fed and Wall Street Have their Worry Beads Out Over Deutsche Bank’s “Bad Bank” IdeaAccording to press reports around the globe, there’s going to be a hot confab this Sunday by the Board of Deutsche Bank that will focus on the potential to create a so-called “bad bank” to hold some of Deutsche’s toxic assets along with discussions of cutting 15,000 to 20,000 employees from the payroll – meaning as many as one out of every five employees could get the axe. A big part of the job losses will hit Manhattan where Deutsche Bank has a heavy presence on Wall Street — which it plans to severely pare back. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

Report Shows How War Profiteers Are Now Refugee Profiteers, TooArms dealers flood war-torn Middle East with weapons and then lobby EU to militarize borders against refugees—profiting from both ends of conflict As Europe comes to terms with a Brexit vote fueled in large part by anti-immigrant hate-mongering, a new report exposes how war profiteers are influencing EU policy to make money from unending Middle East conflicts as well as the wave of refugees created by that same instability and violence. By Nika Knight

Royal Marines seize Iranian tanker under orders from USBritain’s seizure of an Iranian supertanker carrying 2 million barrels of oil is an act of piracy and a major escalation in tensions that threaten to spiral out of control. It was carried out at the behest of the United States as part of the campaign of military provocations and economic sabotage against Tehran. A detachment of nearly 30 British troops including Marines from 42 Commando raided the tanker, Grace 1, together with police from Gibraltar, the rocky outcrop seized by Britain following the War of the Spanish Succession under the 1713 Peace of Utrecht that is strategically placed to control access to the Mediterranean Sea. The UK said it had seized the ship to prevent Iran breaching sanctions against Syria. By Chris Marsden

After British Commandos Seize Oil Tanker, Iran Accuses UK of Committing ‘Maritime Piracy’ on Behalf of US” If Britain does not release the Iranian oil tanker, it is the authorities’ duty to seize a British oil tanker,” said Mohsen Rezai, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander By Jake JohnsonRussia condemns UK for seizing Iranian oil supertanker off GibraltarRussia has condemned Britain for its seizure of an Iran-operated supertanker off the coast of Gibraltar, calling the provocative move a deliberate step geared to further deteriorate the situation in the Middle East. “We condemn the seizure of a super tanker flying the Panamanian flag committed on July by the Gibraltar authorities who were backed by UK Royal Marines,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a Friday statement, carried by TASS news agency.

Sudan: No to a rotten compromise! Finish the revolution!  Last night, a power sharing agreement was reached between the Transitional Military Council (TMC), the military junta currently in power, and the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), which includes the main leaders of the revolutionary movement that erupted last December. By Hamid AlizadehGreece: Stop the advance of the ND with a mass vote for the KKE! An announcement from the Communist Tendency (Greek section of the IMT) on the 7th July elections. The only possible way to stop the advance of the ND is a mass class vote for KKE: A mandate to fight for power!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 ‘govern’, 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 the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!

 Proposed Rule Could Evict 55,000 Children From Subsidized Housing Tens of thousands of poor children — all of them American citizens or legal residents — could lose their housing under a new rule proposed Friday by the Trump administration. The rule is intended to prevent people who are in the country illegally from receiving federal housing aid, which the administration argues should go to help only legal residents or citizens. But the proposal targets 25,000 families that now receive such aid because they are of “mixed” status, which means that at least one member of the family is undocumented while the others are citizens or legal residents. These families now pay higher rents to account for their mixed status. By Brakkton Booker