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Daily News Digest August 15, 2022

Images of the Day:

Headlines:

The Newspeak Role of The Media Monopoly: United States/Ukraine War Lies Esposed:

Ukrainian forces have put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, including in schools and hospitals, as they repelled the Russian invasion that began in February, Amnesty International said today. Such tactics violate international humanitarian law and endanger civilians, as they turn civilian objects into military targets. The ensuing Russian strikes in populated areas have killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure. “We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General. — Ukraine: Ukrainian Fighting Tactics Endanger Civilians

Patrick Lawrence: So Far As I Can Make Out Patrick Lawrence explores how the truth about Ukraine has turned into a recipe for anger and contempt from the Western media So far as I can make out, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are losing their war against the Russian intervention. So far as I can make out, the AFU has been losing it more or less from the start of hostilities on February 24. So far as I can make out, the Ukrainian forces are heading toward a decisive defeat with ever mounting momentum. So far as I can make out, they grow increasingly desperate as this outcome becomes more evident, their conduct increasingly condemnable.

Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Has Been Aware of the Comming Catastrophe of Global for Over 5 Decades 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:

The only issue is if Jeremy wants to do it. Obviously if he doesn’t, we will have to accept and respect it. No-one would blame him after the lies and smears he endured for the last six years. I would however urge him to give it serious consideration. Those lies and smears are never going away. He will never be the safe, elder statesman. He’s too threatening a figure for that to happen. So he might as well run with that anti-Establishment reputation and use it to force change on the status quo. He is, after all, a tireless fighter for peace and justice. No cosy, quiet retirement on his horizon. Jeremy wants to bring about real and lasting change for the better. That’s all he’s ever wanted. And so do we. We are a good match. We proved that for five years. We are capable of putting the wind up the Establishment when we join forces, and while thousands have joined his Peace and Justice Project, hundreds of thousands would join the Peace and Justice Party. — Why I’m Hoping Corbyn Launches A New Party

And yet here we are, in a democratic system under unbelievable stress, in a country with a gigantic military (backed by a corporate weapons-making complex of almost imaginable size and power) that’s proven incapable of winning anything of significance, even if funded in a fashion that once might have been hard to imagine in actual wartime. In a sense, its only “success” might lie its remarkable ability to further fossil-fuelize the world. In other words, we now live in an America coming apart at the seams at a moment when the oldest story in human history might be changing, as we face the potential decline and fall of everything. One thing is certain: as with all of us, when it comes to my personal story, there’s no turning around my own decline and fall. When it comes to our country and the world, however, the end of the story has yet to be written. The question is: Will we find some way to write it that won’t end in the fall not just of this imperial power but of humanity itself? — Those of Us in Our 70s Have a Unique Perspective on Humanity’s Decline

Videos of the Day:

As Rent Soars & Evictions Spike, Will Biden Address Housing Crisis with Same Urgency as Gas Prices?

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!

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both— Supreme Court Judge Louis D. Brandeis

The Dangerous, Degenerate Dems: Pied Piper 2022 and Other Forms of Complicity Never underestimate the cynical, fascism-complicit depravity of the dismal, disingenuous and dollar-drenched Dems – the Weimar Democratic Party of “inauthentic opposition” and passive resistance. It’s bad enough that Democrats function as the Republi-fascists’ enabling partner in numerous ways (see this, this, this, and this): demobilizing the majority working-class non-Republican electorate though cringing subordination to corporate, financial, and military-industrial authority; legitimizing right-wing agendas and narratives by embracing them; relentlessly seeking bipartisan cooperation with a militantly partisan neofascist party (the post-republic/-bourgeois-democracy Republicans); refusing to attack archaic minority rule institutions and practices that inflate the Republifascists’ power (including the Electoral College, the preposterously malapportioned, unrepresentative, and powerful nature of the U.S. Senate, the Senate filibuster, the absurd nine-member Supreme Court, judicial review, and states’ rights); failing to forthrightly and properly punish the putschist Trump for trying to install himself as a dictator; refusing to properly name the “late fascist” menace for what it is; keeping people off the streets by channeling everything into the killing confines of the nation’s right-tilted electoral politics; playing the bourgeois identitarian card with an irrational “wokeness” that is just the other “left” side of the Republi-fascists’ revanchist, anti-science, identitarian, and truth-canceling coin (see this essay’s postscript for further reflections on the objectively reactionary woke syndrome).

The Nazification of American Education “…if all this is not fascism, let’s acknowledge it looks a lot like it” – Eduardo Galeano. DeSantis’s View of Education as Propaganda Factories The crisis of education in the United States presents not only a danger to American democracy, but also advances the ideological and structural foundations for the emergence of a fascist state. The slide towards lawlessness and authoritarianism is now aided and abetted by educational policies that are repressive and dystopian, wedded to social control and the death of the social imagination. An unimagined catastrophe now characterizes how American education is being shaped by far-right Republican Party politicians. Nowhere is this more evident than in the policies of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who is on the forefront of transforming American education into a feral propaganda tool for producing and legitimating what is euphemistically called “patriotic education.” Coercion, conformity, and toxic forms of religious, political, and economic fundamentalisms now threaten to destroy education as a democratic public sphere, however weak it may be. Institutions of learning at all levels in the red states are becoming laboratories for what I term the Nazification of American education, replicating pedagogies of repression that were at work in Germany in the 1930s.

5 Years After Charlottesville, We Can See Its Legacy in January 6 Violence Both events were the major public actions of the moderate and extreme sides of an alliance formed around Trump. On August 12, 2017, the largest fascist-led rally in the United States in many decades was held in Charlottesville, Virginia. What happened shocked the country out of its complacency about how right-wing politics were unfolding under then-President Donald Trump, and foretold the years of far right violence to come. Charlottesville’s effects still reverberate today, both on those who were present and in local and national politics. And there is a direct line from that rally to the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Talking Sense About “A New American Civil War” For some time, people who analyze social conflicts have been watching the growth of political and cultural polarization in the U.S. with more than a little trepidation. At present, the bookshelves and airwaves are filled with talk of a possible armed conflict between elements of the nation’s far-right “Red” and left-liberal “Blue” tribes.[1] What gives this scary analysis more credibility than it might otherwise have is not only the proliferation of weapons in America (over 400 million guns in a population of 330 million), but the increasingly sharp polarization of institutions originally designed to resolve civil conflicts nonviolently – in particular, political parties, government offices, elections, and courts.

Environment: Ecocide or Ecosocialism!:

The People of Califormia/Southwestern United States May Well be Climate Migrants: Migration as Sign of Climate-Change Impact in the Global South U.S. government programs for migrants who crossed the U.S. southern border are punitive and disjointed. Left-leaning political groupings may criticize, but they too have fallen short in conceptualizing lives of dignity for migrants in the United States. Nor do they adequately take into account adverse circumstances weighing on migrants’ lives in their home countries. First among forces pushing masses of people northward is the environmental crisis. The role of climate change in reducing soil productivity and food availability and in predisposing already beleaguered people to migrate is of great concern.

Arctic Warming Nearly Four Times Faster Than Earth as a Whole, Study Finds “Scientific data keeps showing that the situation is more urgent than we had previously thought.” Scientists have been underestimating how rapidly the Arctic is heating up compared to the Earth as a whole, according to a new study which found the region is growing hotter nearly four times faster than the global average. Researchers at the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki found that between 1979, when advanced satellite measurements of global temperatures began, and 2021, the icy northern region warmed 3.8 times faster than the rest of the planet—nearly twice the rate that had long been estimated.

WTO Threats Against US Electric Vehicle Tax Credit Prompt Calls for ‘Climate Peace Clause’ “It’s time to end this circular firing squad where countries threaten and, if successful, weaken or repeal one another’s climate measures through trade and investment agreements.”

‘Blue Hydrogen Cheerleader’: UK Government’s Choice of Hydrogen Champion Draws Criticism Climate campaigners concerned over Jane Toogood’s role in a company that sells technology to produce hydrogen from methane. The UK government has been accused of appointing a “cheerleader for climate-wrecking blue hydrogen” as its hydrogen champion while claiming to support clean energy. Jane Toogood was named as the new “hydrogen champion” by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng in July and will liaise between industry and government to “accelerate hydrogen production” to help the country reach its net zero goal. However, Toogood is a chief executive at Johnson Matthey, a FTSE 250 multinational which markets technology that can produce blue hydrogen “from natural gas at scale”.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Labor:

Economy:

Shadow Government Statistic s Daily Update – August 12th to 15th [Posted August 12th, 11:40 a.m. ET] – Today’s August 2022 Consumer Sentiment (University of Michigan) “moved up very slightly.” Recently covered July 2022 Payroll Employment purportedly regained its Pre-Pandemic Peak by a minimal (albeit not statistically significant) 0.02% or 32,000 jobs; Real Second-Quarter 2022 GDP showed a second consecutive quarterly contraction, consistent with a “New Recession,” induced by the FOMC (see July 27th discussion). A renewed downturn appears to be in play, despite intensifying official obfuscation already underway. July 2022 limited-history PPI Inflation softened month-to-month and year-to-year, off record highs of recent months, given declining gasoline/ energy prices, but otherwise at broad levels last seen 47-years ago in its traditional Finished Goods Series (Bureau of Labor Statistics – BLS). Similarly, although gasoline-price are depressed off recent peaks, July 2022 CPI Inflation measures otherwise still were the highest seen in 75-years ago (ShadowStats-Alternate) and 41-years ago (BLS). June 2022 Money Supply showed no noticeable slackening in headline money growth or anything suggestive of pending Inflation relief.

Rent and Rental Costs in Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) Neighborhood

World:

Amnesty International: Ukraine: Ukrainian Fighting Tactics Endanger Civilians

Military bases set up in residential areas including schools and hospitals
Attacks launched from populated civilian areas
Such violations in no way justify Russia’s indiscriminate attacks, which have killed and injured countless civilians

Britain: Wildcat Wave – Unofficial Action Indicates Explosive Struggles to Come A wave of wildcat strikes has swept across Britain — in the construction industry and at Amazon warehouses — as workers’ anger reaches boiling point. This is a harbinger of the huge class battles on the horizon. The unions must prepare for war. Inflation continues to rise, whilst wages and conditions worsen. As a result, more and more sections of the working class are growing restless, and are demanding better pay to combat the cost-of-living catastrophe, as seen with the recent strikes by unions such as the CWU and the RMT. Significantly in recent weeks, however, fresh layers of the working class are now joining the struggle unofficially, through wildcat strikes.

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!

Capitalism Is Making Us Sick and Sucking Us Dry “All of these systems of extraction are always connected,” says Beatrice Adler-Bolton. “Framing health as a personal responsibility doesn’t work. And it’s one of the greatest tricks that capitalism has ever pulled,” says author and podcaster Beatrice Adler-Bolton. In this episode of “Movement Memos” Adler-Bolton and host Kelly Hayes discuss the extractive nature of the U.S. health care system, the dominance of COVID nihilism, and why we cannot give up on universal health care. Kelly Hayes: Welcome to “Movement Memos,” a Truthout podcast about organizing, solidarity and the work of making change. I’m your host, writer and organizer Kelly Hayes. Today, we are going to talk about health care in the United States, and how capitalism makes us sick and then sucks us dry. So how bad is health care in the United States? A 2020 study comparing the U.S. to 10 other high-income countries found that private medical spending is five times higher in the United States than Canada, which was the second-highest spender. Medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. Such expenses might be forgivable if they meant we were getting the best care in the world, but the U.S. also had the lowest life expectancy and highest chronic disease burden of any wealthy nation featured in the study. And sadly, our caregivers are not faring much better. Even prior to the pandemic, women who were employed as nurses died by suicide at twice the rate of women who were not employed as nurses. More than 100,000 U.S. nurses left the profession in 2021.

Friedrich Engels, The Housing Question:

Competition permits the capitalist to deduct from the price of labour power that which the family earns from its own little garden or field; the workers are compelled to accept any piece wages offered to them, because otherwise they would get nothing at all, and they could not live from the products of their small-scale agriculture alone, and because, on the other hand, it is just this agriculture and landownership which chains them to the spot and prevents them from looking around for other employment.

It is perfectly clear that the existing state is neither able nor willing to do anything to remedy the housing difficulty. The state is nothing but the organized collective power of the possessing classes, the landowners and the capitalists as against the exploited classes, the peasants and the workers. What the individual capitalists (and it is here only a question of these because in this matter the landowner who is also concerned acts primarily as a capitalist) do not want, their state also does not want. If therefore the individual capitalists deplore the housing shortage, but can hardly be persuaded even superficially to palliate its most terrifying consequences, then the collective capitalist, the state, will not do much more. At the most it will see to it that the measure of superficial palliation which has become standard is carried out everywhere uniformly. And we have already seen that this is the case.

Tenants Call on Biden to Act as Rent Increases Reach a 35-Year High Housing advocates demand that President Biden declare a national emergency Inflation cooled off and remained unchanged during the month of July, providing President Joe Biden and vulnerable Democrats a reason to celebrate ahead of the midterms. However, on Wednesday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its consumer price index, which reports that the cost of paying rent inflated by 6.3 percent over the past year, the largest increase in 35 years and a clear signal that the housing crisis enflamed by the COVID pandemic continues. The rent inflation index reflects landlords raising rents on existing tenants; it does not include the prices of new leases when tenants move. A monthly report from Apartment List, a company that tracks rental data, found that when price hikes in new leases are included, rents actually grew by 12.3 percent over the past 12 months, down from a peak 18 percent in January. Nationally, the median cost of an apartment reached $2,000 for the first time ever in June.