Daily News Digest August 3, 2021
Images of the Day:
The Money Bubble: The Federal Reserve Is Financing Future Debt Problems 
Another Example of Capitalism as a Failed System: World CaAnpilalism 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!
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:
It’s a simple formula that allows Democrats to promise their base nothing — except that they are not Trump or some other flagrant racist. The trick will continue to work until voters, especially Blacks, stop rewarding Democrats for their serial betrayals. There is nothing smart or “strategic” about falling for the same trick every election cycle – and anybody that tells you different is in on the con game. The corporate Democratic stranglehold on Black America results in Black voters electing officials to office who resist the demands put forward by Black protesters in the street. We cheer the Black Lives Matter activists that demand defunding, abolishing and community-controlling the cops, but then vote to make president a politician who “wrote the bill” that imprisoned millions of our people and who continues to oppose cuts in police budgets. Such political schizophrenia extends to notables in the “movement,” like Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors. “I think we can call for Biden and [Patricia] Harris to be challenged for their past while also being the cheerleaders for them to win the election November 3.” In fact, you can’t “challenge” Biden and Harris for their anti-Black behavior as elected officials by continuing to elect them. The vote is the reward. — Glen Ford, Corporate Duopoly Wins Again
We now kill people without ever seeing them. Now you push a button thousands of miles away … Since it’s all done by remote control, there’s no remorse … and then we come home in triumph. —U.S. Navy Admiral Gene La Rocque, The Price of Conscience: Drone Warfare Whistleblower Gets 45 Months in Prison
The only losers in all this loaning and borrowing: average Americans who pay their taxes while wealthy people avoid theirs. Working Americans pay the price for that avoidance. They depend on public services that tax shortfalls cripple. Rich people, meanwhile, don’t use public services. They live in private worlds made ever more comfortable by the “asset-backed loans” that have become, points out Institute for Policy Studies analyst Chuck Collins, “one of the principal tools the ultra-wealthy are using to game their tax obligations down to zero.” — America’s Billionaires: Borrowing Their Way to Ever More Fabulous Fortunes
Videos of the Day:
Defending the Cuban Revolution
“Inflamed”: Dr. Rupa Marya & Raj Patel on Deep Medicine & How Capitalism Primes Us for Sickness
“The Ants and the Grasshopper”: Raj Patel’s New Film Aims to “Decolonize” Climate & Health Solutions
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, 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!
We Need Radical Economic Change—Not Biden’s Corporate Capitalism Stimulus packages are not enough. Only practices of deep democracy and shared ownership can end our cycle of economic disaster. All the stimulus packages, from the first (under former President Donald Trump) to the most recent (Biden’s American Rescue Plan), have one thing in common: They attempt to restore the order that created the problem in the first place.
The Least Of These: If You’re Not Simone Biles or Harry Dunn or An Infectious Disease Doctor Or the Nurse/Lover/Mother Of A COVID Patient Who’s Dying But Didn’t Have To, Please STFU With an abject lack of empathy creating a new epidemic, more idiot jackals in the fuck-your-feelings crowd emerge from the tawdry woodwork to voice their fiery contempt for anyone who, gasp, disagrees with them. The noise ranges from vicious – threats to break every bone in Dr. Fauci’s “disgusting elf skull“ or kill “punk faggot” Michael Fanone – to bumptious – pudgy white men dissing Simone Biles as “weak” – to malignant as GOP pols seethe about a requisite cloth on their face. But bone-weary nurses have had it: “What will it take for people to just give a fuck about another human being?
Environment:
Robbing the soil, 1: Commons and Classes Before Capitalism “All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil.” (Karl Marx) To live, humans must eat, and more than 90% of our food comes directly or indirectly from soil. As philosopher Wendell Berry says, “The soil is the great connector of lives…. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”[1]. Preventing soil degradation and preserving soil fertility ought to be a global priority, but it isn’t. According to the United Nations, a third of the world’s land is now severely degraded, and we lose 24 billion tonnes of fertile soil every year. More than 1.3 billion people depend on food from degraded or degrading agricultural land.[2] Even in the richest countries, almost all food production depends on massive applications of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that further degrade the soil and poison the environment.
Greenland: Enough Ice Melted on Single Day Tt Cover Florida in Two Inches Of Water
- Data shows ice sheet lost 8.5bn tons of surface mass on Tuesday
- All-time record temperature of 19.8C in region on Wednesday
The scale of disappearing ice is so large that the losses on Tuesday alone created enough meltwater to drown the entire US state of Florida in two inches, or 5cm, of water. Ice that melts away in Greenland flows as water into the ocean, where it adds to the ongoing increase in global sea level caused by human-induced climate change.
One Man Dead After Hundreds of Stings From Arizona Bee Swarm
- Two people required hospital treatment after being stung
- Large open hive thought to weigh 100lb found nearby
According to the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, most Arizona swarms involve Africanised honey bees, a cross between African and European bees popularly but erroneously known as killer bees, leaving one hive to start another. “Swarms are generally docile regardless of type,” the center says, as “the swarm has no resources (brood, queen, food) to protect. They can actually be quite vulnerable during the swarming process, as they are without the protection of a home.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Labor:
Economy:
The Money Bubble: The Federal Reserve Is Financing Future Debt Problems The Federal Reserve Is Financing Future Debt Problems
Economists John Greenwood and Steve H. Hanke ably sound the alarm in “The Money Boom Is Already Here” (op-ed, Feb. 22). Too many have looked away as the Federal Reserve prints dollars by another name: quantitative easing. While the authors rightly describe the profound implications of the massive surge in M2 from the money that has already been spent, they neglected to mention the implications for the pending $1.9 trillion in Covid spending that President Biden and many at Treasury and the Fed have requested. Follow their logic and understand the profoundly bad implications of an additional $2 trillion on top of the $4 trillion in prior Covid-rationalized spending. The Fed’s creative accounting combined with profligate federal spending won’t end the pain for Americans. It will grow the wealth gap, inflate asset prices, accelerate the growing gap between Wall Street and Main Street and imperil the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency.
Shadow Government Statistics Money Supply Chart The Fed ceased publishing M-3, its broadest money supply measure, in March 2006. The SGS M-3 Continuation estimates current M-3 based on ongoing Fed reporting of M-3’s largest components (M-2, institutional money funds and partial large time deposits) and proprietary modeling of the balance. See the Money Supply Special Report for full definitions. In February 2021, the Fed redefined its narrowest M-1 Money Supply measure back to May 2020, to incorporate the bulk of Non M-1 M-2, with headline M-1 now covering 93% of total M-2, instead of the prior 28%. In order to preserve the information reflected in the most liquid measures of M-1, ShadowStats uses the Basic M-1 Money Supply in its charts and Table here. The original Money Supply measure, Basic M-1 is defined as Currency plus Demand Deposits (checking accounts). That circumstance is reviewed in pending ShadowStats Benchmark Commentary No. 1459. A fully updated Money Supply Special Report will follow.
Israel’s Director of Public Health Stuns TV Viewers with Statement that 50 Percent of New COVID Cases Are Among Fully Vaccinated As of its most recent July 27 update on COVID vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States carries this statement: “Infections happen in only a small proportion of people who are fully vaccinated, even with the Delta variant.”
World:
Bulgaria: Regime in Crisis – Workers’ Alternative Needed! The 11 July Bulgarian parliamentary elections dislodged the right-wing GERB (“Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria”) party from power. Deep divisions in the ruling class now threaten to transform a crisis of the regime into one of the whole political system.
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!
Michael Roberts Blog Official confirmed deaths from COVID globally stands at 4.2m but this probably significantly underestimates deaths from the virus worldwide. There have been 7m-13m excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic. The rich world suffered relatively badly, but most of the dying has been elsewhere. Many Western countries, and some nations and regions elsewhere, regularly publish data on mortality from all causes. The graph below shows that, in most places, the number of excess deaths (compared with our baseline) is greater than the number of covid-19 fatalities officially recorded by the government. Compared with a historical baseline of the previous five years, Europe has suffered some deadly flu seasons since 2016—but that the death toll from covid-19 has been far greater.
The Little Talked About Covid-19 ‘Variants’: Vaccine Mismanagement Will Have Dire Repercussions Do you remember the United Nations Millennium Development Goals? If not, you are not alone. These ambitious goals, which included the eradication of “extreme poverty and hunger”, to “combating lethal diseases” and “reducing child mortality worldwide”, proved to be yet another empty gesture which, unsurprisingly, amounted to little.