Daily News Digest June 15, 2022
Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines, Like the Salk Polio Vaccine, are Free For the Whole World!
The Covid Pandemic is Not Over! Yesterday, There Were Over 96,374 and Two Days Ago, There Were Over 119,909 New Covid CaseS!
Images of the Day:
1954 Pro-Puerto Rico Independence Demonstration
Light Camera Fiction!
Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Ws 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”, is Still True for Today’s World!
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! For Decades, Blacks Have Been Subjected to The Iron Heel! Currently, the US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply It to Everyone!
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:
Chris StirewaltEillia: So, in the 40 or 50 years, let’s say, that Americans have increasingly chosen to vote by mail or early or absentee, Democrats prefer that method of voting more than Republicans do. So, basically, in every election, Republicans win Election Day, and Democrats win the early vote, and then you wait and start counting. And it depends on which ones you count first, but usually it’s Election Day votes that get counted first, and you see the Republicans shoot ahead, and then the process of bailing and binding and unbinding all those mail-in votes. And some states, like Pennsylvania, refuse to count the votes first. So you have to wait for all of that to come in. So, in every election, certainly a national election, you expect to see the Republican with a lead, but it’s not really a lead. When you put together a jigsaw puzzle, it doesn’t matter which piece you put in first: It ends up with the same image. — “Detached from Reality”: Barr Says Trump Embraced Lies & Conspiracy Theories After His Election Loss
William Barr: Right out of the box on election night, the president claimed that there was major fraud underway. I mean, this happened, as far as I could tell, before there was actually any potential of looking at evidence. And it seemed to be based on the dynamic that — that at the end of the evening a lot of Democratic votes came in which changed the vote counts in certain states. And that seemed to be the basis for this broad claim that there was major fraud. And I didn’t think much of that, because people had been talking for weeks, and everyone understood for weeks that that was going to be what happened on election night. — “Detached from Reality”: Barr Says Trump Embraced Lies & Conspiracy Theories After His Election Loss
Videos of the Day:
Trump’s “Big Lie Was Also a Big Ripoff” as He Raised $250 Million from Supporters After 2020 Loss
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 th poor and gives to the Rich. Taxthe Rich! — They Can Afford to Pay!
FBI Concocts Fake Muslim Plots While Failing to Foil Real White Supremacist Ones Ten days after a white supremacist murdered 10 unsuspecting Black shoppers in a racist premeditated attack that the FBI may have known about in advance, the FBI issued a self-congratulatory press release for “foiling” a separate plot that they themselves invented. Predictably, within hours of the agency issuing the press release, major media outlets parroted the FBI’s talking points without a scintilla of skepticism. On closer examination, this “plot” appears to be yet another nauseating rendition of the FBI’s “How to Make a Terrorist” manual. In its press release, the FBI states that Indianapolis, Indiana, resident Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab “exchanged money with others in an attempt to illegally bring foreign nationals to the United States.” Notably absent from the statement is that these “others” are two confidential sources, (referred to as “CS1” and “CS2” throughout the criminal complaint) both of whom have been paid by the FBI for their role in this investigation and at least one of whom is also receiving.
Ralpf Nader: Time for a Taxpayer Revolt Against Rich Corporate Welfarists It is time for an unusual but long overdue revolt by the 150 million tax-with-held taxpayers. I’m not speaking of rates of taxation that the rich and corporations largely avoid because of the gigantic tax escapes, which they grease through Congress. Today I’m hoping to get your dander up by showing how corporatist politicians make you pay for big corporations to come to their corporate welfare-friendly state and make profits. You’ve been required to subsidize these companies for them to make a profit and you get nothing in return – silent partners pouring money indirectly into big-name corporations. They misleadingly call these subsidies “incentives,” but they are really coerced entitlements.
John Kiriakou: The Triumph of “Bloody Gina,” the CIA’s Torture Queen Court filing reveals CIA director Gina Haspel participated directly in the spy agency’s black site illegal torture program while fellow officer Kiriakou was imprisoned for exposing it. The New York Times last week revealed that former CIA Director Gina Haspel was present to watch a torture session of alleged al-Qaeda terrorist Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri when she was the head of a secret CIA black site where two contract psychologists and CIA officers tortured prisoners. During her 2018 confirmation hearings, Haspel was evasive when asked directly by Senator Dianne Feinstein if she had overseen al-Nashiri’s interrogations. She said that to answer might expose a part of her classified career. The CIA refused to comment on anything that Haspel may or may not have done in the past.
The Demons of War Hunker Down in Ukraine As the war between Russia and Ukraine heads into its second hundred days, the information we are getting regarding it is less clear and less likely to be the truth. This seems especially true in the US media, which contradicts itself in this regard with greater and greater frequency. As for what the Russian media is reporting, that is becoming almost impossible to discover given the expanding censorship of news source that Washington or London considers linked to Moscow. Of course, this censorship is structured different than the censorship in Ukraine and Russia, where much of it is government-imposed. Here in the land of the free, censorship takes the shape of corporate deplatforming of various podcasts, websites and video programming. In addition, corporate payment apps (Pay Pal, etc.) cancel the censored entities accounts, thereby defunding them.
Biden— Biparistsan ‘Mass Murder: ‘The Children Scream From the Hunger at Night’: Afghans Suffer After Biden Seizes Funds Stories of hungry families in Afghanistan come as the Biden administration faces pressure to reconsider a February decision that one journalist described as “tantamount to mass murder.” Stories of hungry families in Afghanistan come as the Biden administration faces pressure to reconsider a February decision that one journalist described as “tantamount to mass murder.”
‘People Over Pentagon’ Proposal Would Take $100 Billion From Pentagon to Fund Social Programs “The Lee-Pocan bill disproves the claim that there’s not money to feed the hungry, care for the sick, cut child poverty, or protect the planet,” said one proponent. “The Lee-Pocan bill disproves the claim that there’s not money to feed the hungry, care for the sick, cut child poverty, or protect the planet,” said one proponent.
Why Does the US Have Better Intelligence on Russia’s Military Situation Than Ukraine’s? A curious fact about the Russia-Ukraine war is that US intelligence agencies admit to knowing more about the military situation in Russia than they do about the military position of Ukraine. Media coverage of the war is voluminous, but is largely reliant on Ukrainian government claims which in a time of war are understandably partisan and dwell on successes rather than failures. The fault here is not on the part of the Ukrainian government, but on a media which almost invariably fails to admit the one-sided nature of its information. Sometimes this over-optimistic bias is punctured by the Ukrainian government itself, as it was last Sunday when President Volodymyr Zelensky, on a visit to the front in the Donbas, said that the fighting in Sievierodonetsk was “extremely difficult”, with as many as 100 Ukrainian soldiers dying every day, and Russia had captured a fifth of Ukraine. But even this unexpected bit of official pessimism is not necessarily the whole story, and may be geared to prodding the US and Nato into providing more heavy weapons.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocied!:
History of Industrial Global Warming Pollution: Weekly Average CO2 at Mauna Loa Week beginning on June 5, 2022 421.30
Water Infrastructure in Detroit The process of regionalizing Detroit’s water that culminated since 2014 in formation of the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) as lessee/statutory authority over the infrastructure, began (during the Bing administration) with an intense organizational root cause analysis under GLWA Director Gary Brown, Judge Sean Cox and others. There’s not been a systemic root cause analysis of GLWA, and its roots in mass water shut offs against low-income water customers. The emergency manager’s announcement in March 2014 calling for 500 shut off notices per week for months of that previous long hot summer triggered the formal regionalization process. The city of Detroit, state of Michigan and suburban Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties invoked the state water authorities statute, and formed GLWA. GLWA saved the water systems money on bonds by obtaining favorable interest rates. One of the important conditions of those bonds was the water shut offs. This is precisely why public utilities – from the internet to the water systems’ infrastructure and beyond – need to be run democratically as public utilities, rather than outright privatized or – in metro Detroit – as publicly owned and managed nonprofit corporate entities, with their peculiar politically-connected expenses-and-revenues challenges (as well as assets – our water) defining their bottom line.)
Why I Quit Being a Banker to Join Extinction Rebellion At the age of 56, I know more about money and wealth than I ever did as a banker. Here’s what I’ve learned. I want to be part of a new kind of economy in which efficiency doesn’t mean just profit, but is a measure of how little energy and raw materials is needed to meet everyone’s basic needs.
Nothern California Fires — Result of Drought and PG&E’s Differed Maintenance Policy:
- PG&E ‘Excessively Delayed’ Its Response to Monster Dixie Fire Inferno, California Report Says PG&E’s response to the mammoth Dixie fire of 2021 was “excessively delayed,” a blunder that was a major factor behind the spread of the devastating inferno, according to a newly released state report. The embattled utility was guilty of a “prolonged response” to an initial outage and power line fault, according to the report by the state forestry and fire protection department, also known as Cal Fire. The fire, which started last July in the Feather River Canyon and burned for more than three months, scorched sections of Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Shasta and Tehama counties and consumed 963,300 acres. It was the largest single wildfire in California history and the second-largest blaze of any kind in the state.
- Report: PG&E Delays and Safety Failures Sparked Dixie Fire Prosecutors say they could have convicted PG&E but opted for a monetary settlement due to California’s lax laws on corporate crime. All the shopkeepers, teachers, plumbers, and artists lost the community for which they worked. “I think that’s the deepest trauma,” Sue Weber said. “I’m no longer any of these things and I have nothing. I think a lot of people are struggling with that.” Sue sees the struggle up-close as part of her current work, helping the community rebuild through a group called the Dixie Fire Collaborative. Even if the fire didn’t kill anyone, she firmly believes the aftermath did. “Right after the fire, a lot of people passed away. A lot of our elderly are passing away,” Weber said. “I think it’s because, for them, it’s overwhelming.” The Dixie Fire destroyed an area the size of Rhode Island, burning nearly 1 million acres.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Economy:
Crypto-Carnage Hits Every Asset Class Tied to Crypto It wasn’t just cryptocurrencies that crashed yesterday, it was crypto exchanges, crypto mining stocks, publicly-traded companies holding large investments in crypto, and crypto ETFs. By the time the closing bell rang yesterday, ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF had tanked by 20.22 percent on the day, bringing its year-to-date loss to 50.4 percent. Other crypto-related ETFs were similarly hammered. VanEck Bitcoin Strategy ETF gave up 19.86 percent, bringing its year-to-date loss to 53 percent.
World:
‘Worrying Trend’: Global Nuclear Stockpile Set to Grow for First Time Since Cold War “The risk of nuclear weapons being used seems higher now than at any time since the height of the Cold War,” said the director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The world’s stockpile of nuclear warheads is expected to expand in the coming years for the first time since the 1980s and the catastrophic threat of those weapons being used is escalating, a leading arms watchdog said Monday.
Britain:
Doctors to Top UK Officials: ‘Do Not Extradite Julian Assange; Free Him’ A group of more than 300 medical professionals warned that extraditing the WikiLeaks founder to the U.S. would make the British government complicit in his “slow-motion execution.” With the U.K. home secretary expected to decide this week whether to approve Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States to face prosecution for publishing classified information, a group of more than 300 medical professionals elevated its call Monday for the British government to immediately free the WikiLeaks founder or be complicit in his “slow-motion execution.”
Grenfell Five Years On: No Justice Under Capitalism It has now been five years since the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire. The ongoing public inquiry has exposed how capitalism puts profits before lives. But only the organised working class can bring the criminals responsible to justice. It has now been five years since the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire. The ongoing public inquiry has exposed how capitalism puts profits before lives. But only the organised working class can bring the criminals responsible to justice.
Protests After UK Court Greenlights Plan to Deport Asylum-Seekers to Rwanda “What has happened to our humanity?” asked progressive British lawmaker Jeremy Corbyn. “Deporting refugees to Rwanda has nothing to do with tackling people-trafficking and everything to do with whipping up hate and stoking division.”
Education, Health, 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!