Daily News Digest August 16, 2022
Images of the Day:
Fracking During the Drought: Sunday night, August 14. I watched the 60 minutes story on the Coloradoo River Basin Drought. In 2009. I wrte this essay:
Big Energy Frackers Keep on Fracking With Their Own Private Water Supplies During Drought
More than 55 percent of all U.S. wells are operated in areas experiencing a level of drought. Ceres 
As there is now a shortage of drinking water in the Western United States There Is no shortage of water for fracking.
While the West is in drought, Big energy and Agribusiness are not. As big contributors to election campaigns they have acquired enough water reserves to keep fracking during the drought as fresh water dries up for the citizens of California.
Oil, Water Are Volatile Mix in West Energy Firms Buying River Rights Add to Competition for Scarce Resource By Stephanie Simon 2009 Oil companies have gained control over billions of gallons of water from Western rivers in preparation for future efforts to extract oil from shale deposits under the Rocky Mountains, according to a new report by an environmental group that opposes such projects. The group, Western Resource Advocates, used public records to conclude that energy companies are collectively entitled to divert more than 6.5 billion gallons of water a day during peak river flows. The companies also hold rights to store, in dozens of reservoirs, 1.7 million acre feet of water, enough to supply metro Denver for six years.
From pages 133-135 of the book, Two Californias: the truth about the split-state movement by Michael DiLeo and Eleanor Smith:
Cheap Water + New Land = Big Money
Some of these corporations bought up land in the Central Valley because of the vast oil deposits lying beneath many of the now-rich croplands. Since this oil is a thick and viscous crude that must be mined with steam, extractors need large volumes of water to develop it. Though they haven’t done so on a significant level yet, the petroleum giants of the Central Valley may soon be able to double their money by drilling and processing the black gold below their fields while they grow the highly profitable cash crops on the surface both with the aid of cheap state project water.
A Big Fracking Problem: This ironic cartoon depicts a fracking truck and a man representing the fracking industry pumping the ground a euphemised and nice sounding name of “Secret Sauce”. In cold reality, the fracking fluid being pumped in contains over 300 deadly, environmentally degrading, and carcinogenic chemicals causing the surrounding environment become dead and barren. The cartoon makes fun of the fracking business successfully keeping it’s fracking formula’s in the dark whilst using chemicals deadly enough to surrounding citizens before the “secret sauce” formula is found out and protested. This cartoon demonstrates the need for both transparency, regulations, and political action.
Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Has Been Aware of the Comming Catastrophe of Global Warming 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:
In the online version of the article, NPR wrote: “Omar also sheltered Osama bin Laden, and refused to turn over the Al Qaeda leader when the United States demanded him after 9/11.” This line that the Taliban “refused to turn over Osama bin Laden,” and that this “led to the US attack,” though part of the commonly accepted chronology of the war, is a gross distortion of history. The truth is almost the exact opposite: The Taliban repeatedly offered to give up Bin Laden, only rejecting George W. Bush’s demands for immediate and unconditional acquiescence without discussion. — NPR Distorts History of US Invasion of Afghanistan
In our country, voluntarily recognized fundamental norms have been breaking down. The chief impetus for this collapse is the ascending supremacy of commercial power over civic values. The surrender of the latter to the former in sector after sector has spelled the decline of our country as measured by its own promise and pretensions. Compared to seventy years ago, there are almost no commercial-free zones anymore. Almost everything is for sale – or should be in the minds of dogmatic free market fundamentalists and its apologists like Milton Friedman and his disciples. — Watch Out for Big Corporations and Dangerous Politicians Breaking Our Established Norms
Videos of the Day:
Chris Hedges and John Kiriakou discuss the CIA, how it has evolved, how it sees its mission, what it does, how it works, and the effects of its clandestine operations around the globe. John Kiriakou worked for the CIA from 1990 to 2004, first as an analyst, and later as a counterterrorism operations officer overseas in Bahrain, Athens, and Pakistan, where he was the CIA’s Chief of Counterterrorist Operations.He became the sixth whistleblower indicted under the Espionage Act by the Obama administration and was sent to prison for two and a half years.
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 Results of the United States’ Policy of Ignorance is Strength: ‘Five-Alarm Crisis’: US Has Shortage of 300K Teachers, School Staff To stay in their profession, said a union leader, educators need “professional respect” including fair pay and the right “to make teaching and learning decisions for their students.” National Education Association president Becky Pringle on Thursday warned that the U.S. teacher shortage has spiraled into a “five-alarm crisis,” with nearly 300,000 teaching and support positions left unfilled and policymakers taking desperate—and in some cases, questionable—measures to staff classrooms. Pringle told ABC News that teachers unions have been warning for years that chronic disinvestment in schools has placed untenable pressure on educators as they face low pay and overcrowded classrooms.
The Media Monopoly and The Fall Of A Great American Newspaper … and Democracy News that the Herald-Times newspaper building was going on the auction block didn’t exactly land here in Bloomington, Indiana. like a blinding left hook. The end of a 61-year the making, far longer than most realize. It’s a local story that mirrors the decline of daily newspapers nationwide and, along with it, American democracy. As I’ve long lectured to journalism students and anyone who would listen, it’s no coincidence that our democracy and journalism paralleled each other’s descent into the void, into these desperate times. like a blinding left hook. The end of a 61-year stint in the iconic limestone building south of town has been 30-plus years in the making, far longer than most realize.
There Are Good Reasons to Defund the FBI. They Have Nothing to Do With Trump. This seeming contradiction helps us get to a deeper truth about the nature of police power. The FBI in particular, and the police in general, were not created to provide justice. Instead, the history of the FBI is one of repressing movements for liberation and carrying out wars on marginalized communities in the guise of wars on drugs, crime, terrorism, gangs and communism, among other phenomena determined by the state to be threats. The FBI’s long-running stretches of state-sanctioned violence have served to criminalize those that challenge the status quo, either through organized resistance or through survival strategies that interfere with capitalist notions of protecting the private property and individual autonomy of the rich and powerful.
Environment: Ecocide or Ecosocialism!:
In recent decades, the warming in the Arctic has been much faster than in the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. Numerous studies report that the Arctic is warming either twice, more than twice, or even three times as fast as the globe on average. Here we show, by using several observational datasets which cover the Arctic region, that during the last 43 years the Arctic has been warming nearly four times faster than the globe, which is a higher ratio than generally reported in literature. We compared the observed Arctic amplification ratio with the ratio simulated by state-of-the-art climate models, and found that the observed four-fold warming ratio over 1979–2021 is an extremely rare occasion in the climate model simulations. The observed and simulated amplification ratios are more consistent with each other if calculated over a longer period; however the comparison is obscured by observational uncertainties before 1979. Our results indicate that the recent four-fold Arctic warming ratio is either an extremely unlikely event, or the climate models systematically tend to underestimate the amplification. — The Arctic has Warmed Nearly Four Times Faster Than the Globe Since 1979
U.S. Has The Warmest Nights Ever As it melts records across the Northern Hemisphere, the scorching summer of 2022 has squeezed out the warmest month of nights in U.S. history. Sweltering nights are a recipe for trouble during major heat waves, as they give human bodies in un-air-conditioned places less chance of recuperating from the more intense heat of the day.
This LNG Giant’s Greenwashing Reveals Gas Export Industry’s Dangerous Intentions . . . Oil Change International and Greenpeace USA released a report today raising serious questions about both the methodology and the intent of Cheniere’s cargo emission tags. Here are the key findings:
- Cheniere’s emissions estimates rely on facility-level methane emissions data collected from its upstream suppliers by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Studies have found that EPA data substantially underestimates methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by relying on outdated emissions factors that do not accurately capture emissions from large “super-emitter” events.
- A sensitivity analysis found in the supplemental information section of a paper that forms the basis of Cheniere’s methodology shows that when more accurate emission factors that better incorporate high-emissions events are used, the full lifecycle emissions increase significantly. However, this finding was not incorporated into the paper’s result and conclusions.
- Cheniere claims its methodology is “supplier-specific”, but 42% of the gas supply assessed in the paper is pooled gas for which no supplier-specific data exists.
- The published methodology paper only analyses the company’s Sabine Pass LNG plant and does not provide any information about the supply chain for its Corpus Christi LNG plant. This plant is primarily supplied from the Permian Basin, which has one of the worst methane emissions rates in the country. As a result, the discrepancy with EPA data could be even more pronounced with Corpus Christi than with Sabine Pass, and the total lifecycle emissions for Corpus Christi cargoes could be very large.
- scenarios. While methane emissions reduction is fundamental to climate action, it must go hand-in-hand with winding down the fossil fuel industry, including the supply of gas and LNG. The recent IPCC Working Group III report concluded that “Reducing [greenhouse gas] emissions across the full energy sector requires major transitions, including a substantial reduction in overall fossil fuel use.”
- The CETs say nothing about the wide range of impacts associated with the U.S. fracked gas and LNG industries, including community impacts and environmental injustice. In fact, Cheniere is simultaneously seeking an exemption from the Biden administration to dump greater amounts of health-damaging air pollution in local communities around its Corpus Christi, Texas plant.
Risk of Catastrophic Megafloods Has Doubled in California, Study Finds Scientists concluded that a series of storms could dump enough rainfall to displace millions, causing over $1tn in losses Driven by the climate crisis, exceedingly rare megafloods will become more common – and more catastrophic – according to a new study that found their likelihood has already doubled in California. The unexpected threat lingers even as browning hillsides, fallowed fields and bathtub ring-laden reservoirs serve as a constant reminder of the drought disaster in the state, which may be woefully unprepared when the coin inevitably flips.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Labor:
Economy:
China Moves to Delist Five State-Owned Companies from the New York Stock Exchange This past Friday, five state-owned companies in China announced that they would apply this month to delist their shares from the New York Stock Exchange. The companies plan to continue trading in Hong Kong and mainland China. The companies include the large oil company Sinopec; China Life Insurance; Aluminum Corporation of China; PetroChina; and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Company. It is highly likely (and long overdue) that more Chinese share delistings on U.S. exchanges will follow. For the past two decades, China has been stonewalling U.S. regulators over access to the work papers of auditors of publicly traded companies that are based in China but listed on U.S. stock exchanges. China takes the position that these audit work papers hold state secrets and it prohibits audit firms from releasing the documents directly to U.S. regulators, effectively flouting U.S. accounting law.
World:
Ukraine: the Invasion of Capital Last week, Ukraine’s foreign private creditors agreed to the country’s request for a two-year freeze on payments on about $20bn of foreign debt. This would enable Ukraine to avoid defaulting on its overseas borrowings. Unlike other ‘emerging economies’ in debt distress, it seems that foreign bondholders are happy to help Ukraine out – if only for two years. The move will save Ukraine $6bn over the period, helping to reduce pressure on central bank reserves, which slid by 28 per cent year-to-date, despite significant foreign aid. Ukraine’s economy is, not surprisingly, in a desperate state. Real GDP is projected to decline by more than 30% in 2022 and the unemployment rate is at 35% (Constantinescu et al. 2022, Blinov and Djankov 2022, National Bank of Ukraine 2022). “We are grateful for the private sector support of our proposal in such terrible times for our country,” responded Yuriy Butsa, Ukraine’s deputy finance minister, “I’d like to emphasise that the support we’ve received during this transaction is hard to underestimate . . . We will stay fully engaged with the investment community further on and hope for their involvement in the financing of the rebuilding of our country after we win the war,” Butsa said.
Russia under Putin In my last post, I described how Western capital is planning to take over and control Ukraine’s resources and exploit its labour force to the maximum in order to boost the profitability of both Ukraine’s domestic capitalists (oligarchs) and foreign multi-nationals. However, there is a problem for Western capital and Ukraine’s oligarchs: it’s Russia. The war has already led to Russian forces gaining control of at least $12.4trn worth of Ukraine’s resources in energy (cola), metals and mineral deposits, apart from agricultural land. If Putin’s forces succeed in annexing Ukrainian land seized during Russia’s invasion, Kyiv would permanently lose almost two-thirds of its deposits. Moscow now controls 63% of Ukraine’s coal deposits, 11% of its oil, 20% of its natural gas, 42% of its metals, and 33% of its rare earths.
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!
Monkeypox Is Yet Another Global Health Crisis Fueled by Governmental Neglect . . ,For anyone familiar with the ongoing trauma of the HIV/AIDS crisis, there are brutal parallels in the mishandling of the monkeypox outbreak in the U.S. Unlike the early years of the AIDS crisis, though, when no effective treatments were available until a decade of mass death and public protest forced the government and pharmaceutical industry to action, monkeypox is generally not a deadly disease, and we already have the tools for treatment and prevention: the Jynneos vaccine (a smallpox vaccine that is also effective against monkeypox); tecovirimat (also called Tpoxx), an antiviral medication; and pre-approved tests for rapid diagnosis. The problems are the lack of access and the lack of care.
USA: “Scum of the Earth” – The Capitalists Who Created the Opioid Crisis Over 100,000 people died last year from drug overdoses in the US. It was the second year in a row that the death toll exceeded that figure, according to statistics from the CDC. These overdoses are disproportionately concentrated in poor regions, particularly Appalachia, which has been ravaged by an opioid addiction crisis for the past two and a half decades.Recent lawsuits against the billionaire Sackler family—the owners of Purdue Pharma and producers of OxyContin—have brought to light the active role their company
The Privilege of Free Health Care: a View From Nicaragua We’re settling in to our daughter Orla’s sixth night in the hospital. Visiting hours are over and only ten of the beds in our 32-bed pediatric ward are occupied tonight, down from 20 a few nights ago. The patients – mostly young teens in our room – are tucked in under mosquito nets. Their carers – mainly grandmas, aunts and moms – are slouched in chairs or curled around their patients on the beds. A few of us stretch out on unoccupied beds to get some rest before the nurse turns on the lights for the next regular blood pressure and temp check.