Daily News Digest August 17, 2020

Daily News Digest Archives

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! And Now the Total Caronavirs Deaths in the United  States are Over 20%  of the Total Death in the Entire World!

Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat 4 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 very future of Humanity Is Now At stake! By Roland SheppardLaura 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!  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!

Images of the Day:

‘Fire Tornado’ Hits California in Latest Apocalyptic Moment in 2020 Quotes of the Day:

In The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man, Friedrich Engels wrote:“Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. …”     In December 1999, when I first wrote my essay Whither Humanity? (The Environmental Crisis of Capitalism), there were some doubters, on the left, about the science of the article. However, the essay has held up quite well in the past eight years. Since that time , we now know that “Carbon dioxide rates have been accelerating — that the rate of increase in carbon dioxide emissions has more than doubled since the 1990s”!

 Videos of the Day:

Bi-Partisan Economic Deathblow: COVID Exploited to Implement Tyrannical Economic System The CARES Act Is A Two-Party Multi-Trillion Dollar Looting of Taxpayer Money, Exploiting COVID to Restructure Entire Economic System, Enrich Richest 0.01% & Consolidate Their Tyrannical Control Across the Totality of the American Economy Using Taxpayer Money to Systematically Strangle American Taxpayers to Death

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 the poor and gives to the Rich. Rax the Rich!  — They Can Afford To Pay!

August 12-22, 1945: Washington Starts the Korean and Vietnam Wars August 14, 1945. The day Japan surrendered. I was eleven year old. I was crammed in the back of a pickup packed with other boys and girls, all yelling our hearts out as loud as we could to be heard over the cacophony of honking horns and howling air raid sirens. We were part of an impromptu motorcade weaving through the evening streets of our Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn. Everywhere we went—past the sidewalk fruit and vegetable stands, the storefront A&P exuding the smell of freshly ground coffee, the fish market and the kosher delicatessen along Avenue J, the small row houses and big apartment houses on the side streets, along Coney Island Avenue, with its rows of small stores dotted with small restaurants and soda fountains, where the electric trolley cars were clanging their bells nonstop—more and more cheering people poured onto the sidewalks, waving American flags and homemade signs, hugging, dancing. We kids in the truck were all screaming, “Peace! Peace! The war is over!” We believed this was the end of not just this war but of war itself, that we were all going to live the rest of our lives in a prosperous and victorious nation, on a peaceful planet. By H. Bruce Franklin

Environment:

Big Energy/U.S. Capitalism Has Made a Conscious Decision   to  Commit Humanicide, Rather Than Lose Their Profit Making Enterprises: ” The panelists examined the corporate genesis of the climate denial movement and the many methods of influence that have been utilized to stall effective climate change policy. Using documents and analysis found on Climate Files, Davies recounted how the largest oil majors, including Shell and Exxon, had extensive internal knowledge about climate change science and impacts decades before it became a topic of global concern. Rather than addressing the threat that their product posed to the world, the documents show that the fossil fuel industry engaged and funded a climate change countermovement to deny the urgency their own scientists knew to be true. — The Climate Change Countermovement: Brown University Report and Panel (2019)

The Jungle The Jungle is a 1906 novel by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair (1878–1968).[1] The novel portrays the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. Sinclair’s primary purpose in describing the meat industry and its working conditions was to advance socialism in the United States.[2] However, most readers were more concerned with several passages exposing health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meat packing industry during the early 20th century, which greatly contributed to a public outcry which led to reforms including the Meat Inspection Act. Sinclair said of the public reaction, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”

The Return of The Jungle: Bloody Chicken: Inside the American Poultry Industry During the Time of COVID One effect of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. is the momentary spotlight it shined on the meatpacking industry. Working conditions inside packing plants were exposed in the sheer number of workers who were infected with the virus. Exact numbers are elusive but thousands of cases have been confirmed along with up to 100 deaths. Meanwhile, meatpacking workers were deemed ‘essential.’  By Joseph Grosso

Business as Usual Equals Many Extra Deaths from Global Warming Business as Usual Equals Many Extra Deaths from Global Warming Is it already too late to stop global warming? That question is not asked with thoughts of throwing up hands in despair and giving up. Rather, that question must be asked in the context of mitigating future damage to whatever degree might yet be possible. The context here is that the carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases thrown into the atmosphere don’t magically disappear but will have effects that will persist for centuries. A ton saved today is a ton saved tomorrow. By Pete DolackThe Criminology of Global Warming Some – like Exxon since 1957 – have been aware that the world is facing global warming that has all the signs to render earth uninhabitable. At least with United Nations’ IPPC and NASA reporting on global warming, others have realised that we also face an unprecedented threat. Potentially, all of this is an issue of criminology. Somewhat similar to biology and psychology, criminology is the science of crime and criminal behaviour. Global warming can be seen from an environmental, geological, atmospheric, capitalist, etc. perspective, but it can also be seen as an issue of criminology. By Thomas Klikauer and Nadine CampbellLast Decade Was Earth’s Hottest On Record As Climate Crisis Accelerates — 2019 Was Second Or Third Hottest year ever recorded — Average global temperature up 0.39C in 10 years The past decade was the hottest ever recorded globally, with 2019 either the second or third warmest year on record, as the climate crisis accelerated temperatures upwards worldwide, scientists have confirmed. Every decade since 1980 has been warmer than the preceding decade, with the period between 2010 and 2019 the hottest yet since worldwide temperature records began in the 19th century. The increase in average global temperature is rapidly gathering pace, with the last decade up to 0.39C warmer than the long-term average, compared with a 0.07C average increase per decade stretching back to 1880. By Oliver Milman.

Mountains nearly devoid of snow stand behind a road and a polar bear warning sign during a summer heatwave on Svalbard archipelago in July near Longyearbyen, Norway. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images\

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Labor:

Economy:

Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Inflation Charts   The CPI chart on the home page reflects our estimate of inflation for today as if it were calculated the same way it was in 1990. The CPI on the Alternate Data Series tab here reflects the CPI as if it were calculated using the methodologies in place in 1980. In general terms, methodological shifts in government reporting have depressed reported inflation, moving the concept of the CPI away from being a measure of the cost of living needed to maintain a constant standard of living.

Aid to “Badly Managed” States Versus Aid to “Badly Managed” Wall Street Banks According to the official press briefing transcript on August 8, President Donald Trump explained the stalemate between his administration and the Democrats in passing the latest stimulus bill as follows: “…what the Democrats primarily want is bailout money. It has nothing to do with the China virus. It has nothing to do with anything that we’ve been talking about over the last period of time. They want to bailout states that have been badly managed by Democrats, badly run by Democrats for many years — and, in fact, in all cases, many decades.  And we’re not willing to do that.” But according to the U.S. Government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, two of the states making outsized contributions to the GDP of the United States are California and New York. They are just two states out of a total of 50 but together they accounted for $4.87 trillion in GDP in 2019. That’s 22.8 percent of total U.S. GDP of $21.43 trillion in 2019 according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

Contradictions of The Political Situation In Belarus: A Warning The complexity of the current political moment in Belarus and the active involvement of the working class in the events were described by us in two previous articles (here and here). But now we also have more detailed reports from the scene, much more vividly reflecting both the nature of the mobilisation of the country’s working people and the impact of this mobilisation. By Oleg Bulaev

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 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

Doctors Per Capita by Country: In the US, Cuba is often derided as a communist hell-hole where nothing works and its basically a disaster.Though most Americans tend to believe this oft-repeated propaganda one needs to dig into the details to find the truth. One area where Cuba beats the US hands down by global metrics is the field of medicine – more specifically in the number of doctors available per person in the country.