Daily News Digest August 19, 2021
Over a Hundred Years Ago. Rosa Luxemburg Raised the Slogan: Socialism or Barbarism! The Slogan for 2021 is Ecosocialism or Ecocide!!!!
Daily News Digest Archives
Images of the Day:
Bendib: Bipartisanship 
Another 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”
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:
From Bob’s Dylan’s Masters of War:
Come, you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
[Verse 2]
You that never done nothing
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly . . .
Videos of the Day:
Christianity Started the Slave Trade
President George W. Bush Announces End of Taliban, Dec. 12, 2021
Segment 806: A Typical Day at the New York Fed’s Trading Desk
Owen Jones: Why We Need a Revolution
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!
The Only Victors of War War Contractors/Investors: $10,000 INVESTED IN DEFENSE STOCKS WHEN AFGHANISTAN WAR BEGAN NOW WORTH ALMOST $100,000 Was the Afghanistan War a failure? Not for the top five defense contractors and their shareholders. IF YOU PURCHASED $10,000 of stock evenly divided among America’s top five defense contractors on September 18, 2001 — the day President George W. Bush signed the Authorization for Use of Military Force in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks — and faithfully reinvested all dividends, it would now be worth $97,295. This is a far greater return than was available in the overall stock market over the same period. $10,000 invested in an S&P 500 index fund on September 18, 2001, would now be worth $61,613.That is, defense stocks outperformed the stock market overall by 58 percent during the Afghanistan War.
Why Many Veterans Terminate Their SoulsOnce veterans realize they were Molested for Profit, this profound
truth assassinates their core belief system. Some people call this
trauma Moral Injury.
But, it is far worse.
The Fatherland who sent them to war is evil.
It is called Political Incest.
It is a raping of their souls.
The word Trust is reduced to nothingness.
Psychologically, everything is Betrayal.
Wasted…
The veteran feels like a stranger in a strange land.
Who am I?
Where did I come from that made me so sick?
The magnitude of my soul sickness is equal to the depth of my
Silence.
W A R = Wealthy Are Richer
Unless the veteran bears witness and confronts the Liars,
the Sherman’s will continue to march to the sea.
The Media Monopoly Always ‘Spins’ the White House ‘Spin’!: Robert Scheer: Was Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman? Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist? To even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is heretical, especially in the context of the U.S. media’s supine acceptance of administration claims relating to national security. Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain’s leading documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this and many other accepted articles of faith in the so-called war on terror.
Afghanistan: The Cynical Betrayal of US imperialism America’s longest war has ended in abject shame and humiliation for US imperialism. Twenty years after the invasion of Afghanistan, the most powerful military force the world has ever known has been dealt total defeat at the hands of a band of primitive religious zealots. The fall of Kabul marked the end of a seven-day blitz in which Taliban forces took over an area comprising more than half of the country, including its most populous cities. They are now in control over every district of the country.Yet not so long ago, US President Joe Biden assured everybody that the Taliban would not take Kabul; nor would they take control of the whole country. There would be a government of national reconciliation, as agreed with the Taliban. And so on and so forth.
Glen Greenwald: The U.S. Government Lied For Two Decades About Afghanistan Using the same deceitful tactics they pioneered in Vietnam, U.S. political and military officials repeatedly misled the country about the prospects for success in Afghanistan “The Taliban regime is coming to an end,” announced President George W. Bush at the National Museum of Women in the Arts on December 12, 2001 — almost twenty years ago today. Five months later, Bush vowed: “In the United States of America, the terrorists have chosen a foe unlike they have faced before. . . . We will stay until the mission is done.” Four years after that, in August of 2006, Bush announced: “Al Qaeda and the Taliban lost a coveted base in Afghanistan and they know they will never reclaim it when democracy succeeds. . . . The days of the Taliban are over. The future of Afghanistan belongs to the people of Afghanistan.” For two decades, the message Americans heard from their political and military leaders about the country’s longest war was the same. America is winning. The Taliban is on the verge of permanent obliteration. The U.S. is fortifying the Afghan security forces, which are close to being able to stand on their own and defend the government and the country.
Corporate Property-Buying Spree May Make Housing Even Less Affordable Amid COVID Corporate investors have been buying up homes from landlords unable to maintain their properties without rental income. As the eviction moratorium sputters uncertainly onward, a new genre of news article has emerged from the chaos: the woes of the so-called “mom-and-pop landlord.” These landlords — individuals with just a handful of rental properties — are hard-pressed to keep up mortgages and maintenance due to their inability to collect rent during the COVID crisis. Most landlords featured in such stories agree that ending the moratorium is the answer.
The Relative Decline of US Imperialism The swift collapse of Afghanistan puppet government when US troops withdrew from the war with the Taliban and left the country after 20 years has been likened to the fall of Saigon at the end of the 30-year ‘American’ war against the Vietnamese people. The scenes of Afghans trying to get onto US planes at the airport to escape seem startlingly familiar to those of us who can remember the last days of Saigon. But is this a superficial similarity? After all, America’s occupation of Vietnam was way more costly as a share of US national output and in terms of the lives of American soldiers than the attempt at ‘regime’ change in Afghanistan. The Vietnam disaster led to the US government running deficits for the first time since WW2. But even more important, it meant a diversion of investment into arms rather than productive sectors at a time when the profitability of capital had already begun to fall, the Golden Age of investment and profitability having peaked in the mid-1960s.
Environment:
Proof That Capitalism Can Not Stop Global Warming! — Capitalists are Planning for the Apacolypse as the World Burns: Apocalypse Insurance: : The insanity of our current economic reality is well illustrated by a new, self-serving ideological movement among the super-rich. Their emotional investment in their right to remain immensely wealthy is naturally much stronger than the investment of the rest of us in their staying rich. Which is one reason billionaires are capable of coping with much greater levels of cognitive dissonance when justifying the continuation of the current economic order. The greatest ideological challenge facing the super-rich is imminent climate collapse: how to rationalise an economic system designed to satisfy their hunger for profit, and the continuation of their privilege, when it is so obviously causing that collapse. Some have fled into ridiculous schoolboy fantasies – the billionaires’ equivalent of derangement. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are pouring money – while offsetting it against tax – into the escapism of space colonies, premised on the same technological exploitation and monetisation of nature that have been rapidly making our own planet uninhabitable. Others are looking in more practical, if equally futile, directions. Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, has estimated that half of his fellow billionaires in Silicon Valley have bought what he calls “apocalypse insurance”, investing in safe-haven islands and luxury underground bunkers. Fancifully, they imagine that this will be their life-belt when the planet’s climate system breaks down beyond repair. — Where Best to Ride Out the Climate Apocalypse? The Billionaires’ Bunker Fantasies Go Mainstream
Facking and Drought:“The group, Western Resource Advocates, used public records to conclude that energy companies are collectively entitled to divert more than 6.5 billion gallons of water a day during peak river flows. The companies also hold rights to store, in dozens of reservoirs, 1.7 million acre feet of water, enough to supply metro Denver for six years.” — Oil, Water Are Volatile Mix in West, Energy Firms Buying River Rights Add to Competition for Scarce Resource
‘Code Red’ for Climate Crisis – But the Capitalist Class Won’t Act A recent study conducted by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has concluded that the world is facing unprecedented and potentially irreversible damage due to global warming. The United Nations’ secretary general, António Guterres, has described the report as a “code red for humanity”, with its warnings that the Earth is almost certain to see warming of over 1.5°C, causing severe disruption to weather patterns and ecosystems. And yet faced with this catastrophe, the ruling class remains largely unmoved. For all their hand-wringing and laments, in truth the capitalists and their political representatives have barely lifted a finger. The reason for their lethargy is clear: in the final analysis, it is they and their system that are to blame for this crisis.
Climate Change is a Public Health Emergency The WHO reports that globally, the number of weather-related natural disasters has more than tripled since the 1960s. They have resulted in over 60,000 deaths, mainly in developing countries. Natural disasters force people to move, which increases the likelihood of negative health effects such as mental disorders and communicable diseases.
Water Shortage Declaration for US West “Climate change is an emergency,” said Judith Whitmer, Nevada state Democratic Party chair, over the Lake Mead and Colorado River crisis. . . . “We are seeing the effects of climate change in the Colorado River Basin through extended drought, extreme temperatures, expansive wildfires, and in some places flooding and landslides, and now is the time to take action to respond to them,” Tanya Trujillo, Interior Department assistant secretary for water and science, told reporters Monday.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Stalled US Debt Relief Is the Latest Setback to Black Farmers The USDA’s relationship with Black farmers has been flawed from the start. Out of 3.4 million farmers working in the United States, fewer than 50,000 are Black, according to the most recent Census of Agriculture taken in 2017. That disproportionately small number is due in large part to historic racial discrimination in federal farm programs—and now efforts to address that history are themselves being attacked as discriminatory.
Labor:
Economy:
The New York Fed Is Not the Only Place Obsessed with Market Intelligence Gathering; The U.S. Treasury Does the Same Thing in a Secure “Markets Room” Before daybreak on any business day in lower Manhattan, the glow of lights from Bloomberg terminals illuminate windows at 33 Liberty Street, home of the New York Fed. The New York Fed not only has its own trading floor with speed dials to the Wall Street trading houses, but it also has its own global markets intelligence gathering group, called simply the Markets Group. According to a previously released educational video featuring Karin Kimbrough, then the Director of Financial Stability Market Monitoring at the New York Fed – a position she held until November of 2014 — the traders at the New York Fed take turns coming in at 4:30 a.m. in order to get a jump on market intelligence by calling their contacts in London, Frankfurt and Japan. (See Video.)
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!
\Profiteering From Vaccine Inequity: A Crime Against Humanity? Companies and rich nations are creating a deadly Covid-19 vaccine “protection racket.” Early in the pandemic, Pfizer announced an intention to profit from its covid-19 vaccine.1 In the first three months of 2021, Pfizer’s vaccine brought in $3.5bn (£2.5bn; €3bn) in revenue and hundreds of millions in profit.2 Other companies are also making exceptional profits from covid-19. Moderna, which received public funding to develop its covid-19 vaccine, will earn several billion dollars from vaccine sales.3 Even Astra Zeneca, with its acclaimed “non-profit” model, will receive billions in revenue and is free to raise the price once itconsiders the pandemic to be over.
After Banning Mask and Vaccine Mandates, GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Gets Covid-19 “Abbott will have access to the best healthcare, the best doctors, the best treatments… The kids who he refuses to protect from Covid in his state’s schools? Not so much.”