Daily News Digest July 8, 2022

Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

42 Million Americans Face Hunger Each And Every DayZike Luckovich: Devolving 

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:

Jeremy Corbyn

“We simply cannot make promises, hector people to vote, and then refuse to use our full power when they do,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.    . . . Instead, tweeted Slate journalist Mark Joseph Stern on Tuesday, the White House’s response to the ruling—which promptly eliminated abortion rights in at least eight states—has amounted to “a total abdication of leadership on an issue that sits at the heart of the Democratic Party! — ‘Fight for Us Goddamnit’: Frustration Grows Over Biden Fecklessness Amid GOP Destruction 

Now we’re there. Our “normal” climate is dead; the weather has gone insane, and it is killing Americans and millions of people all around the globe.     This is how quickly it has hit us: when I published the first edition of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight in 1996 (it’s been updated twice since then) there was still a vigorous debate here in the United States — funded in large part by the fossil fuel industry and it’s allies in rightwing media — over whether climate change was even a real thing.    They knew that their product was poisoning our atmosphere, but they were making hundreds of billions of dollars. Nothing was more important to them than that money. — Our “Normal” Climate Is Dead—Now We Live in an Emergency

Videos of the Day:

“The Inevitable Has Happened”: Boris Johnson to Resign as PM After Mounting Scandals, Resignations

Sri Lanka Is “Grinding to a Halt” Amid Fuel Shortage, Inflation & Austerity, Prompting Mass Protests

Global South Is Facing a “Complete Energy Crisis” from Oil to Natural Gas Amid Ukraine War & Pandemic

The Chris Hedges Report: Hemingway’s Shadow

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!

Third Party? America Doesn’t Even Have a Second Party. A June 29 Associated Press/NORC finds that 85% of Americans — including 92% of self-identified Republicans and 78% of self-identified Democrats — say “things in this country are headed in the wrong direction.” Meanwhile, national support for a “third” political party remains high — 62% as of last year’s Gallup Survey — yet no actually existing party outside the Democratic and Republican establishments seems able to get much traction. This Week in Fake News / Blurred Truths _  A veteran journalist’s weekly critique on the state of mass media — Dependently ‘Independent’! No, I still haven’t got over the report in The New York Times this spring, wherein we learned of a joint American–Ukrainian campaign to inundate Russians with propaganda intended to demoralize the public as Russian forces advanced in eastern Ukraine. “Using a mix of high-tech and Cold War tactics,” the government-supervised Times reported, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is “circulating information about the Ukraine war among Russian citizens to sow doubt about the Kremlin’s accounts… in an effort to undermine faith in the Kremlin.” 

$Trillions for War, Nothing  for the Environment!: America’s $1.4 Trillion So-Called “National Security” Budget Makes Us Less Safe—Not More America and the world would be far safer places if this outrageous spending was drastically cut and those funds redirected to “moral” investments in people, society, and planetary health—not war and weapons

Lee, Pocan File Amendment to Slash $100 Billion From US Military Budget “For far too long, this country has put profits ahead of its people,” said Rep. Barbara Lee. “Nowhere is that more apparent than in our Pentagon topline budget.”     Reps. Barbara Lee and Mark Pocan led a group of House Democrats this week in filing amendments that would slash current U.S. military spending by $100 billion and reverse recent efforts to add more money to President Joe Biden’s historically high Pentagon budget request for the coming fiscal year.

Economically Secure People Do Not Care So Much About Being “Replaced” The vast majority of Americans are struggling to maintain a moderate standard of living because a grotesque economic model is failing most people.

Noam Chomsky: The “Historic” NATO Summit in Madrid Shored Up US Militarism The expansion of NATO to include the newly created Indo-Pacific “sentinel states” is proof the U.S. empire doesn’t rest. On June 28-30, 2022, NATO leaders gathered in Madrid, Spain, to discuss the major issues and challenges facing the alliance. The summit ended with far-reaching decisions that will have a dire impact on global peace and security. 

“Hell on Earth” Used to Be a Bold Metaphor. Now It’s Our Potential Future. n recent weeks, a newly emboldened right-wing Supreme Court struck down a more than century-old New York law restricting the carrying of concealed weapons and a nearly 50-year-old precedent on abortion. Meanwhile, the January 6th Committee has been laying out in graphic televised detail how our last president tried to subvert the 2021 election. Inflation, of course, continues to run riot; gas prices have soared to record levels; the brutal war in Ukraine proceeds neverendingly; the Biden administration looks increasingly hapless; and the president himself ever older and less on target. In sum, our world seems to be in headline-making disorder, while our fate here in this country — thank you, (in)justices Alito and Thomas, not to speak of The Donald and crew! — remains remarkably up for grabs by the worst of us all

 Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:

It is Very Apparent Right Now! — Capitalism cannot produce a a safe environment! We, the people, need to take control, to socialize, the fight against Ecocide!  Re: Our “Normal” Climate Is Dead—Now We Live in an Emergency We can no longer tolerate the criminal political malpractice of those standing in the way of a green energy future. There’s a new study out about climate change — and our new climate normal — that is truly shocking and, for those of us concerned about future generations, alarming.     The lead researcher’s first name is Cassandra, no doubt an unintentional choice in the paper’s authors’ pecking order, but still.     For much of the past four decades, climate activists have been warning us that we’re approaching tipping points and thresholds that will alter how Americans live, cost us a fortune, and kill thousands of Americans every year.     Now we’re there. Our “normal” climate is dead; the weather has gone insane, and it is killing Americans and millions of people all around the globe.

Revealed: US Water Likely Contains More ‘Forever Chemicals’ Than EPA Tests Show Guardian analysis of water samples taken in nine US locations shows test agency uses is likely missing significant levels of PFAS pollutants In May 2021, a celebration for Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s new $17m water treatment facility drew local and national officials who declared the city’s water free of toxic “forever chemicals”.      Firefighting foam from the nearby Pease air force base had polluted the water for decades with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and in recognition of the public health threat the US military funded the city’s new filtration system.     Officials said after implementing the upgraded filtration, testing no longer found detectable levels of PFAS chemicals in the water. They called the work in Portsmouth a “national model” for addressing PFAS water contamination.     “We are here to celebrate clean water,” Senator Maggie Hassan said at the time.      But the water may not be clean after all.

Nature Isn’t a “Vault” Full of Material Value. It Is a Treasure to Be Valued. If companies have their way, the rights to entire ecosystems will be held exclusively by investors. On June 17, 2022, Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly published the article “Nature’s Vault offers investors a ‘green’ gold option” to little fanfare. Like so much of what passes for news from institutionalized sources reporting breathlessly about opportunities for wealth accumulation, it’s a story ostensibly about a “win-win” scenario for capital investment and environmentalists. The piece dangles the tempting prospect of making money from so-called “natural resources” while leaving them unharvested or unextracted, ensuring that the integrity of the ecosystems in which they are found remain unspoiled. But what’s really going on here?     The article describes Nature’s Vault Ltd. as an “environmental, social and governance finance company” which “aims to keep gold in the ground, thereby avoiding the carbon emissions and environmental impact of mining, while providing investors with stable, tradeable tokens representing what they dubbed ‘nature’s gold’ or environment-friendly gold.” It sounds like a dream come true. What could possibly go wrong?

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley  Black Agenda Radio July 1, 2022

Reproductive Justice

Campaign to Bring Mumia Home

“What to the Slave is the 4th of July?” read by Ossie Davis

Labor:

Economy:

Internal Charts Show Treasury Agency Assigned to Measure Risk in U.S. Markets Slept through the Repo Crisis of 2019 and the Fed’s $19.87 Trillion Bailout The Office of Financial Research (OFR), a unit of the U.S. Treasury Department, was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010. Its job is to prevent, through early warnings, the kind of catastrophic financial crisis that occurred in 2008 when irresponsible and corrupt practices on Wall Street toppled the U.S. economy; brought on the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression; and left the taxpayer and Fed bailing out the Wall Street megabanks that would have otherwise collapsed from their own hubris.

World:

Michael Roberts Blog : The number of people going hungry in the world has risen by 150 million since the start of the Covid pandemic, the UN has said, warning that the food crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine risks pushing the worst-hit countries into famine.     Globally, the number suffering from chronic undernourishment rose to as many as 828 million last year, a rise of about 46 million on the previous year, and three times that increase if measured since the world shut down due to Covid, a report has found.     Gilbert Houngbo, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), said that, according to projections, chronic undernourishment would affect nearly 670 million people in 2030 – a similar figure to that of 2015, when the UN vowed to eradicate hunger by 2030 as part of the sustainable development goals.

News Release: UK Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson Resigns Amid Relentless Scandal:    Britain: Boris Goes – A New Chapter in the Crisis Begins After months of crises and scandals, faced with a growing rebellion in his ranks, Boris Johnson has finally fallen on his sword. But the Tory leader’s departure will not solve any problems for the ruling class. Instead, explosive events impend.     Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson once famously remarked that a week is a long time in politics. Given the current pace of events in crisis-ridden Britain, however, it seems that political developments can now be measured in hours.     Marx made a similar – but more profound – observation when he stated that there were periods of calm and quiet when decades passed as if they were only days; and other periods of storm and stress, in which the experience of decades was concentrated in the space of just days.     Britain, not long ago considered one of the most stable capitalist countries, is now clearly living through the latter. We have entered a new epoch: one of sharp turns and sudden changes.     From the referendums over Scottish independence and Brexit, to the rise of the Corbyn movement and the never-ending chaos in the Tory Party: the country’s political landscape has been rocked and shaken by one earthquake after another.

Spain: Comrade Juan Glop Released Following Brutal Arrest – The Struggle Continues! After being detained for 15 hours, spending the night in a police cell together with common criminals, IMT comrade Juan Glop from Seville was finally released after giving a statement before a judge. The detention of the comrade, coupled with the violent treatment he received at the hands of the police, were a grave injustice that generated a wave of solidarity.     Comrade Juan Glop, spokesperson of the Interdistrict Neighbourhood Platform “Barrios Hartos” (Fed Up Neighbourhoods), and member of Lucha de Clases (the Spanish section of the IMT), was arrested Monday afternoon during a neighbourhood demonstration against the exploitative rise in electricity prices and the constant power outages that affect several working-class neighbourhoods in Seville.

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!   

COVID Policies Should Be Decided by Public Health Agencies, Not Corporations  The grinding two-plus years of the pandemic have yielded outsize benefits for one company — Pfizer — making it both highly influential and hugely profitable as COVID-19 continues to infect tens of thousands of people and kill hundreds each day.     Its success in developing COVID medicines has given the drugmaker unusual weight in determining U.S. health policy. Based on internal research, the company’s executives have frequently announced the next stage in the fight against the pandemic before government officials have had time to study the issue, annoying many experts in the medical field and leaving some patients unsure whom to trust.