Daily News Digest August 31, 2021
Over a Hundred Years Ago. Rosa Luxemburg Raised the Slogan: Socialism or Barbarism! The Slogan for 2021 is Ecosocialism or Ecocide!!!!
Nearly one in 100 people worldwide have been pushed out of their homes due to war or political instability. — Top Refugee Statistics
Daily News Digest Archives
Images of the Day:
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:
The best personal exponent of imperialist policies – Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill was in a British army that invaded Afghanistan in 1897 and said: “After today we begin to burn villages. Every one. And all who resist will be killed without quarter. The Mohemads need a lesson, and there is no doubt we are a very cruel people.” And another quote from young Winston on the British wars in Afghanistan in the 1890s: “Financially it is ruinous. Morally it is wicked. Militarily it is an open question, and politically it is a blunder. — Michael Roberts blog
Myklebust, Georgetown University Sara Myklebust of Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor told The Daily Poster that Marcus’s donations to Democratic candidates and PACs was part of “a pattern of landlords having close relationships as a result of money and influence.””It’s not shocking, because we have seen this pattern again and again,” Myklebust told the outlet. “What is shocking is that millions of people are at risk of not just becoming homeless, but also getting a deadly disease.” — Democrats Took Millions From Real Estate Interests Before Allowing Eviction Moratorium to End (Real Estate Developer Money Unites the Democratic Party)
Videos of the Day:
Hurricane Ida Hits Oil Industry in Black & Native Communities on Louisiana Coast Amid Climate Crisis
U.S. Winds Down Afghanistan Occupation Like It Began, with Drone Strikes & Civilian Casualties
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 an 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!
As Biden Threatens More War, Don’t Forget the Afghanistan Invasion Was Illegal President Joe Biden’s decision to end the Afghan war – one that should never have been fought in the first place — was correct. Missing from the national discourse, however, is analysis of the illegality of the 2001 U.S.-led NATO invasion of Afghanistan (dubbed “Operation Enduring Freedom”) and resulting war crimes committed by four U.S. presidents and their top officials and lawyers. Once again, the United States has lost a war it started illegally. But as U.S. troops leave Afghanistan, the Biden administration continues to kill — and promises to persist in killing — Afghan people.
US Drone Attack Kills at Least 10 Afghan Civilians—Including 6 Children The American aircraft targeted us,” said Samim Shahyad, whose father, brothers, and cousins were killed in the U.S. attack
Chris Hedges: A Vengeful American Empire Has Been Humiliated in Afghanistan The Americans, like the British and the Soviets before them, dug their own graveyard in Afghanistan.
Exclusive: Report Details Corporate Landlord Gluttony as Millions Face Eviction By striking down the CDC’s eviction moratorium, said one critic, the Supreme Court “sided with rich corporate landlords that are itching to kick out vulnerable families.” Exclusive: Report Details Corporate Landlord Gluttony as Millions Face Eviction
Environmen
Don’t Expect Real Climate Solutions From COP26. It Functions for Corporations In the run-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in the U.K. in November — the 26th session of the talks that were launched in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 — the governments of the world’s richest countries are making ever-louder claims that they are effectively confronting global warming. Nothing could be more dangerous than for social, labor and environmental movements to take this rhetoric at face value and assume that political leaders have the situation under control. There are three huge falsehoods running through these leaders’ narratives: that rich nations are supporting their poorer counterparts; that “net zero” targets will do what is needed; and that technology-focused “green growth” is the way to decarbonize.
‘Ban Neonicotinoids Right Now,’ Say Conservationists After EPA (Employer Protection Agency) Pesticide Review “The EPA. (doesn’t need any more proof,” said one expert after agency analyses detailed threat to endangered species “These extremely toxic pesticides are causing drastic ecological harm, both the collapse of bee populations as well as putting literally hundreds of endangered species at extinction risk across the country”
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Repugnant, Still: Hunger For the Blood of Black Citizens Amidst our extant macro horrors – surging plague, burning planet, grim detritus of war – it’s cold comfort to find America’s prosaic atrocities also go on unabated. After a two-year legal fight, harrowing bodycam video has emerged of a Louisiana state trooper pummeling an already handcuffed, prone black man 18 times in the head with a flashlight for the crime of “improper lane usage.” The savage attack, weeks after the death by cop of another black man in custody, has spawned a federal probe of troopers’ longtime, unchecked, “vile pattern” of brutalizing and killing “countless Black people.”
Labor:
Economy:
Shadow Governement 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.
Shadow Government Statistics Money Supply Charts 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.
The U.S. Has 6.3 Times More COVID-19 Cases Per 100,000 Than Canada. What Went Wrong? As of this past Friday, August 27, the U.S. had 330 COVID-19 infections per 100,000 over the last 7 days, according to the Reuters COVID-19 tracker. Canada had 6.3 times fewer cases, reporting only 52 per 100,000 over the past 7 days. The U.S. stood at 62 percent of its prior peak of cases on Friday while Canada stood at 32 percent of its prior peak. The U.S. and Canada confirmed their first cases of the virus within a week of each other in January of 2020. Both countries began vaccinating their population at roughly the same time, in December of 2020. The majority of shots in both countries came from the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which require two doses to be considered fully vaccinated.
World:
Defend Paul Holmes! – Right Wing Tries to Drive Out Unison President A right-wing plot is underway to sabotage the new left-wing leadership of Unison, involving a witch-hunt against the union’s president, Paul Holmes. Grassroots activists must mobilise to defend Paul against these injustices and attacks. It is vital that the left in Unison takes back control of the union – and if necessary takes this battle to the entire membership.
Where Are They? The Disappeared: When Remembering is a Political Act of Resistance August 30 each year is commemorated as the Day of the Disappeared in many parts of the world. In Honduras, labor unions, students and teachers organizations, human rights and women’s groups and others typically mark the day with a massive public march through some of the main streets of Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. The march can stretch for a mile or more and last for three hours. But why such an outpouring for those who have disappeared?
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!
The Great American Science Heist How the Bayh-Dole Act Wrested Public Science From the People’s Hands: Inventing Competitiveness June 6, 1979, On this day, he deployed his reputation and characteristic bluntness to stop a bill called the University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act. At stake was the government’s long-standing proprietorship of patents on inventions resulting from the research it underwrote. The proposed legislation would hand patents over to the private contractors that conducted research at government expense, essentially gutting the government’s ownership stake and paving the way for monopolization. The bill’s supporters — those in favor of removing this block — included drug companies, venture capital firms, university patent offices, and the nascent biotech industry. Those opposed to this sweeping change in federal patent policy were led by a fading Democratic coalition committed to New Deal ideas about antitrust regulation, patents, and public science controlled in the public interest. Rickover was a lone but strong military voice for this coalition: a war hero with the authority of having overseen the construction of the first nuclear propulsion systems, one of the most complex government science programs since the Manhattan Project.
Class Conflict Over COVID Over the 20th century, life expectancy rose and medical advances virtually eliminated deadly diseases such as smallpox, leprosy, and polio. We were assured that, in time, economic development and medical science would enable everyone to live longer, healthier lives. This has not happened: life expectancy is falling, old infectious diseases are resurfacing, and entirely new ones are emerging: HIV, Ebola, H1N1, and now COVID-19. How can we explain this failure of modern medicine? What is driving the conflict over masking, distancing, vaccines, and mandates? And how can we end this pandemic?