Daily News Digest August 27, 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:
They’d Rather Take Horse Dewormer
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!
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:
Consider, for example, that neither the 9/11 commission nor any court of law has been able to directly take evidence from the key post-9/11 terror detainees held by the United States. Everything we know comes from two sides that both have a great stake in exaggerating the threat posed by Al Qaeda: the terrorists themselves and the military and intelligence agencies that have a vested interest in maintaining the facade of an overwhelmingly dangerous enemy. Such a state of national ignorance about an endless war is, as “The Power of Nightmares” makes clear, simply unacceptable in a functioning democracy. — Robert Scheer: Was Al Qaeda a Bush Boogeyman?
Videos of the Day:
Sarah Chayes: Afghanistan Was an “Afterthought” for U.S. as Bush Was “Hellbent” on Invading Iraq
“An Inquiry Needs to Take Place”: Jeremy Corbyn on Afghanistan & Preventing the Next War
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! Every ‘Tax. Reform’ From President Kennedy has Been and incrase in taxes from the Poor,the Woking Class, and the Middle Class, to the Rich! —The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay!
‘Democracy for Sale’: Analysis Ties Corporate Consolidation to Increased Lobbying “Monopoly is a threat to representative democracy—and that protecting our democracy requires effective antitrust.” An analysis published Wednesday about corporate consolidation and political lobbying in the United States found that large mergers—particularly in Big Tech, the pharmaceutical industry, and the oil and gas sector—has increased corporate control of American democracy.
Little-Known Federal Software Can Trigger Revocation of Citizenship Known as ATLAS, the software mines various federal databases for derogatory information. It runs autonomously on Amazon servers. Software used by the Department of Homeland Security to scan the records of millions of immigrants can automatically flag naturalized Americans to potentially have their citizenship revoked based on secret criteria, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept. The software, known as ATLAS, takes information from immigrants’ case files and runs it through various federal databases. ATLAS looks for indicators that someone is dangerous or dishonest and is ostensibly designed to detect fraud among people who come into contact with the U.S. immigration system. But advocates for immigrants believe that the real purpose of the computer program is to create a pretext to strip people of citizenship. Whatever the motivation, ATLAS’s intended outcome is ultimately deportation, judging from the documents, which originate within DHS and were obtained by the Open Society Justice Initiative and Muslim Advocates through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. 
“Don’t Worry Baby”: The War on Terror Will Continue There are reasons, and then there are the actual reasons. The top 10 so-called defense contractors (“The top 10 defense contractors,” Bloomberg Government, June 10, 2021) in the US have done quite well during both wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. How many trillions of dollars (Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute) pissed down the drain and how many hundreds of thousands of lives lost, refugees made, civil liberties lost and of equal significance, how many more trillions to be made from the shift in focus from Afghanistan to the already targeted nations of Russia and China? Julian Assange rots in a jail in that great bastion of human rights, England, and Edward Snowden is banished to Russia. There must be a message there for journalists and those who are the heroic whistleblowers! Don’t report on the dirty secrets of the empire, or we’ll put you away forever and throw away the dungeon key.
Environment:
Atmospheric CO2 Levels Haven’t Been This High in 800,000 Years: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) A major report on climate says both greenhouse gas concentrations and global sea levels hit record highs in 2020. Although the coronavirus-driven economic slowdown resulted in an estimated 6% to 7% reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2020, the global average atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased to a record high of 412.5 parts per million. The atmospheric concentrations of other major greenhouse gases (GHG), including methane and nitrous oxide, also continued to climb to record highs last year despite the pandemic. According to NOAA, last year’s CO2 concentration “was 2.5 parts per million greater than 2019 amounts and was the highest in the modern 62-year measurement record and in ice core records dating back as far as 800,000 years.” Moreover, “the year-over-year increase of methane (14.8 parts per billion) was the highest such increase since systematic measurements began.”
This Is Only the Beginning: It’s About to Get Much Harder Our planet hasn’t seen temperatures this hot in fifteen million years, when the sea level was forty meters higher than it is today This is just the opening salvo. As the American west is gripped by potentially the worst drought since algebra was invented 1,200 years ago and temperature records are once again shattered on a weekly basis, we are entering into unknown territory. Lytton in Canada reached a staggering 49.6°C on Tuesday which is hotter than Las Vegas has ever recorded. Portland topped 46.7°C and this is higher than anything experienced in Houston, Texas. This has been building for a long time, but things are about to get much much worse.
A Hell of America’s Own Making The Pentagon’s escalating dystopian scenarios, its fixation with being overstretched by climate crises and great power conflict to the point of collapse, and its more recent goal of reducing its climate emissions, are studiously and methodically presented in Michael Klare’s “All Hell Breaking Loose.” Encasing the Earth with its empire of military bases, weapons, personnel, and pollution, the U.S. military is the single largest institutional contributor to the climate crisis, using an estimated 5% of all petroleum consumed globally. Were the U.S. military a country, it would rank 47th out of 195 countries in greenhouse gas emissions, yet its role in the climate crisis is sheltered from public reporting and accountability.
Capitalism is Destroying Hamanity’s Habitat: It’s Not Human Stupidity That Is Blocking Climate Action, It’s Big Oil This failure to shine a spotlight on the real force blocking climate progress leads to a sense of hopelessness Efforts are being blocked by the fossil fuel industry—probably the most powerful set of interests on earth.
The Collapse Chronicle: U.S. Heat Is So Bad Farmers See a ‘Half Crop’ for Spring Wheat Sun-baked U.S. spring wheat fields have been so badly hurt by drought this year that some farmers are expecting to harvest what they’re dubbing a “half a crop.” Plants are visibly stunted. So much so that when crop scouts toured the fields of top-producing state North Dakota this week they kept having to get close to the ground to inspect crops that were about 10 inches (25 centimeters) or shorter — about a third of the normal size for this time of year. Large patches of dry soil could be seen in between rows. In better seasons, the ground isn’t even visible.
‘Unprecedented’: Madagascar on Verge of World’s First Climate-Fueled Famine “These people have done nothing to contribute to climate change,” said one U.N. official. “They don’t burn fossil fuels… and yet they are bearing the brunt of climate change.”
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist: Gentrification and the End of Black Communities Census data show that gentrification is accelerating Black displacement.
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor: Somalia, from the Cold War to the War on Terror Cold War and War on Terror destabilize Somalia and cause great suffering for its people.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review: Document: Notes of a Prison Collective: Marion Political Collective, 1976 In 1976, prisoners in the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois wrote a collective document explaining the status of the prisoner within the prison—and the role of the prison
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence: Summer of Soul/Summer of Struggle… BAR’s poet in residence pays tribute to fallen Black Panther Party comrades. Chalk silhouettes, bullet-violated bodies of Bunchy and John—UCLA, cold Campbell Hall
Netfa Freeman: Nicaragua at a Revolutionary Crossroads and in Imperialist Crosshairs U.S. attack on Nicaragua targets its Black community.
Black Alliance For Peace: Afghanistan is No ‘Graveyard’ for U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination Black Alliance for Peace analysis on Afghanistan, Haiti and the U.S. effort to maintain hegemony.
Thomas Peralte: The Return of the Marines It’s hard to teach an empire new tricks. Once again, the U.S. Marines invade Haiti “for the umpteenth time” under the guise of humanitarian assistance.
Jailhouse Lawyers Speak: Jailhouse Lawyers Speak calls for National Shut ‘Em Down Demonstrations Jailhouse Lawyers Speak call for Shut ‘Em Down prison abolition actions in 2022.
Alexander Ramdass, Lisa Premchand, Gary Aboud: Corruption, Pollution and Economic Crisis: The Cautionary Tale of T&T’s Oil Industry Oil Reserves Don’t Benefit the People of Trinidad and Tobag
Labor:
Economy:
The 2008 Crash Was Part of the 20 Year Slump! The Pandemic-Induced Global Slump Is Just Part of a 20-Year Financial Crisis The pandemic-induced global slump is just part of a 20-year financial crisis The pandemic-induced global slump is just part of a 20-year financial crisis.
The SEC Is Allowing 5-Count Felon JPMorgan Chase to Trade Its Own Bank Stock in its Own Dark Pools JPMorgan Chase is unique among the mega banks on Wall Street – and not in a good way. It owns the largest federally-insured bank in the United States despite a rap sheet that would make the Gambino crime family jealous. It has been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with five felony counts since 2014, admitting to all of them. Its Board of Directors has left the same man, Jamie Dimon, at the helm of the bank as Chairman and CEO, throughout those five felony counts.JPMorgan Chase is also the only American bank to ever be fined for using depositors’ money to gamble in derivatives in London and lose $6.2 billion of that money. (Jamie Dimon was Chairman and CEO at the bank then as well.)
