Daily News Digest September 9, 2022
Images of the Day:
Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Has Been Aware of the Comming Catastrophe of Global Warming 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 very future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
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:
At the local level, the Democrats bear their share of responsibility, having overseen the deindustrialization and systematic impoverishment of predominantly African American urban areas like Jackson over the last four decades. The election of black mayors and city councilors has done nothing to stave off a dramatic decline in living standards for the working class. The overall social crisis is compounded by the impact of climate change, which is generating increasingly severe weather events throughout the world. Historic flooding in Pakistan has already killed thousands and displaced over 100,000. China is suffering from a massive heat wave. Recent studies by scientists have warned that, even with immediate action, climate change will raise sea levels by nearly a foot, while increasing temperatures will devastate the lives of millions in the Middle East and Africa. Capitalism has no solution to any of these problems. The subordination of all of social and economic life to private profit and the division of the world economy among rival capitalist nation states block a rational response to crises like that in Jackson, Mississippi while preventing the coordinated global planning necessary to address their underlying causes. The only solution lies in the expropriation of the corporate oligarchs and the big banks to free up trillions of dollars which must be put into rebuilding and developing the country’s infrastructure and combating climate change through emergency measures coordinated on a global scale. This will only be possible through the socialist reorganization of society by the working class to meet human needs and not private profit. — Jackson, Mississippi’s Water Disaster is a Crime of Capitalism
Videos of the Day:
Famine by October? Somalia & East Africa Face Humanitarian Crisis Amid Climate Change, Ukraine War
Niece of Palestinian American Shireen Abu Akleh, Killed by Israel, Wants Biden Mtg. & Indep. Inquiry
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 the poor and gives to the Rich. Rax the 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.” ― Louis Brandeis
The Media Monopoly is ‘spinning’ the lies of war: News reports repeatedly claim that the Zaporizhzhia reactor complex, which is on the Dnieper river and close to the fighting in the south, is being shelled and rocketed by both Russian and Ukrainian forces. CNN reported August 18, “Kyiv has repeatedly accused Russian forces of storing heavy weaponry inside the complex and using it as cover to launch attacks, knowing that Ukraine can’t return fire without risking hitting one of the six reactors. Moscow, meanwhile, has claimed Ukrainian troops are targeting the site. Both sides have tried to point the finger at the other for threatening nuclear terrorism.” However, this “both” sounds like an absurdity, since Russian troops control the whole area, surrounded the vast reactor complex soon after invading, and seized it in March. These occupying Russian forces have kept the reactor site running using its Ukrainian engineers. For Russia to attack it would be to fire on its own personnel, endanger the operating technicians, and risk catastrophe. As such, news reports that Russia is firing on the complex appear to be disinformation or propaganda. — Nuclear Reactors and Weapons Electrify a Warzone
An Interview with Dr. Rick Staggenborg, Soldiers for Peace International Rick Staggenborg is a former staff psychiatrist at the Coos Bay VA hospital. He is anti-war, because it is anti-people; the wars serve only the corporate overlords turfing out and pawning American patriots into hegemonic actions that often run counter to what makes America the exceptional democracy it often claims to be. At Rick’s website, Soldiers for Peace International, he describes a goal for the soldiers he supports: To challenge the US Congress to put the needs of the people above those of their plutocratic sponsors. We can only establish democracy in America and the world by working together to abolish the “rights” of corporations and those who control them to determine the collective destiny of the Peoples of the United States and of the world.
Silencing the Lambs: How Propaganda Works In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Fuhrer. She told me that the ‘patriotic messages’ of her films were dependent not on ‘orders from above’ but on what she called the ‘submissive void’ of the German public. Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? I asked. ‘Yes, especially them,’ she said. I think of this as I look around at the propaganda now consuming Western societies. Of course, we are very different from Germany in the 1930s. We live in information societies. We are globalists. We have never been more aware, more in touch, better connected. Are we? Or do we live in a Media Society where brainwashing is insidious and relentless, and perception is filtered according to the needs and lies of state and corporate power? The United States dominates the Western world’s media. All but one of the top ten media companies are based in North America. The internet and social media – Google, Twitter, Facebook – are mostly American owned and controlled.
Robber Baron Government: Bi-ParisnInsider Trading: From Senate Intel Chair Sold up to $1.6 million in Stock Before Crash.Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) dumped between $582,029 and $1.56 million of his stocks on Feb. 13, days after writing a Fox News op-ed that said the U.S. is “better prepared than ever before” to face public health threats like the coronavirus, according to ProPublica. And Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Jim Inhofe made stock trades before coronavirus pandemic. — United States Coronavirus Pandemic Crisis: Lessons to be Learned (2020)
Burr Sold 95 Percent of His Retirement Holdings After Secret 2020 COVID Briefing Newly unsealed documents that were part of an inquiry into Sen. Richard Burr show that the North Carolina Republican had profited greatly from a flurry of stock trades he made in February 2020 after receiving privileged information about the coming COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, the FBI launched an insider trading investigation into Burr for what the agency called “well-timed stock sales.” According to a search warrant from that investigation obtained this week by the Los Angeles Times in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Burr had unloaded the vast majority of his and his wife’s holdings after the Senate Intelligence Committee, which he was a part of, was briefed about the pandemic and before the public was made aware of the pandemic’s coming effects. (Truthout doesn’t mention the Democrates in 2021.)
Environment: Ecosocialism or Ecocide!
Previously Unknown Loss of Antarctic Ice Discovered by NASA – “Antarctica Is Crumbling at Its Edges” In forecasting global sea level rise, the greatest uncertainty is how Antarctica’s ice loss will accelerate as the climate warms. Two studies led by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California reveal unexpected new data about how the Antarctic Ice Sheet has been losing mass in recent decades. One study, published recently in the journal Nature, maps how iceberg calving – the breaking off of ice from a glacier front – has changed the Antarctic coastline over the last 25 years. The scientists found that the edge of the ice sheet has been shedding icebergs faster than the ice can be replaced. This surprising finding doubles previous estimates of ice loss from the Antarctic’s floating ice shelves since 1997, from 6 trillion to 12 trillion metric tons. Ice loss from calving has weakened the ice shelves, allowing Antarctic glaciers to flow more rapidly to the ocean and accelerating the rate of global sea level rise. The other study, published recently in the journal Earth System Science Data, shows in unprecedented detail how the thinning of Antarctic ice as ocean water melts it has spread from the continent’s outward edges into its interior, almost doubling in the western parts of the ice sheet over the past decade. Combined, the complementary reports provide the most complete view yet of how the frozen continent is changing.
In Fiery Floor Speech, Sanders Condemns Manchin’s ‘Dirty Side Deal’ “We can listen to the fossil fuel industry and the politicians they pay,” said the Vermont senator, “or we can listen to the scientists and the environmental community to reject this side deal.” “We have got to have the courage to finally tell the fossil fuel industry that the future of this planet is more important than their short-term profits.”
Why Everything Manchin Says About the Mountain Valley Pipeline Is Wrong Despite Joe Manchin’s Claims, The Mountain Valley Pipeline Will Wreck the Climate and Harm Communities Without Helping Europe or the United States Senator Joe Manchin wants to ease completion of the fracked gas Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), as part of the dangerous fossil fuel “side deal” he’s demanding in exchange for his support of the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act.1 The pipeline is already years behind schedule and billions over budget, lacks multiple key permits, and faces several lawsuits and federal reviews challenging its construction. Manchin and his fossil fuel industry donors2 have made a host of bogus claims about MVP in an attempt to force the pipeline to completion in an effort that will trample communities, endanger climate commitments, and undermine environmental law.
Civil Rights/ Black Liberarion:
Supreme Court’s Selective Reading of US History Ignored 19th-Century Women’s Support for ‘Voluntary Motherhood’ . . . Alito argued in the opinion that abortion has always been a serious crime, but there were no laws about abortion at all in Colonial America. Beginning in the 19th century, most states barred it only after “quickening,” when a pregnant woman can first feel the fetus move, typically around the fourth to sixth month of pregnancy. Abortion is indeed deeply rooted in the American experience and law. American women have always tried to personally determine the size of their families. Enslaved Black women used contraception and abortion as specific strategies of resistance against their physical and reproductive bondage. The very passage of the 13th and 14th amendments, which ended slavery and guaranteed citizenship for all, is evidence that the Constitution actually does protect bodily autonomy. The 14th Amendment’s due process and equal protection clauses have long been the legal basis for gender equality cases. If, as the Supreme Court’s ruling suggests, the right to abortion is not constitutionally protected via the 14th Amendment, it opens up the possibility that other settled law concerning gender and racial equality also has the potential to be reversed.
America: The Land of Inequality “America is the land of opportunity – there is no other country where I could have done this,” declared Elon Musk in 2020. He is founder of Tesla and SpaceX, and has a current estimated net worth of $254 billion. But is it a land of opportunity for all? In January 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019 – that’s an official poverty rate of 11.4 percent, up 1.0 percentage point from 10.5 percent in 2019. The “poverty threshold” for a four-person family in 2020 was $26,496.
Some Youth Don’t Get to Go Back to School Because They’re Stuck Behind Bars Many young people of color will spend their entire adult lives incarcerated, in many cases, based on coercion by cops. As families across the U.S. are sending their kids back to school, social media platforms are blowing up with parents’ proud photos of their children entering a new grade. Celebrations like back-to-school picnics, homecoming games and school supply shopping mark this societal rite of passage as symbols of growth, change and the passage of time. For thousands of parents, however, all the back-to-school fanfare serves as a painful reminder of the loss of our children to state-sanctioned violence and oppression
Labor:
TUC Congress: Unite the Struggles! Bring Down the Tories! This weekend, trade union leaders will gather for the annual TUC Congress, against a backdrop of rising industrial militancy and class struggle. On the agenda are calls for coordinated action. This must be linked to the fight for socialism. “It is blowing up all around us…it’s not just refuse collectors in Littlehampton, it’s people from all walks of life feeling the same.” So says Martin Smith, head of organising at GMB union. Indeed, everywhere you look, more and more workers are coming out on strike. This year’s TUC Congress – taking place in Brighton from 11-14 September – therefore comes at a crucial time, with the class struggle resurging beyond anything seen in generations.
Economy:
The Fed Appears to Have Violated the Dodd-Frank Act in the Second Quarter of 2020, Giving $455 Billion in Loans to Citigroup The Fed would appear to have violated both the spirit and the letter of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in the second quarter of 2020, according to new repo loan data released by the New York Fed for the second quarter of 2020. The data shows that Citigroup received 96 percent of all repo loans made by the Fed between June 24, 2020 and June 30, 2020. Citigroup also dwarfed all other borrowers in the Fed’s repo loan program during the full second quarter of 2020. Citigroup borrowed a cumulative total of $454,751,000,000 from the Fed between April 1 and June 30,2020. Of the 24 firms that borrowed during the second quarter of 2020 from the Fed’s repo loan program, Citigroup’s share amounted to more than the combined total of 19 firms. (See charts above and below.) 
World:
Italy: Electoral Swamp and Coming Class Struggle The fall of the Draghi government in Italy has resulted in snap elections being called for 25 September. While panic abounds about the inevitable victory of a right-wing coalition led by Meloni’s “Brothers of Italy” party, the fact is that workers and youth have few illusions that a change at the top will improve their situation, which has become increasingly desperate. A lack of leadership from the left and trade union tops means workers will have to take the fight to defend their wages and conditions to the streets. Almighty class struggle is implicit in this situation.
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 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
Physicians Leisurely Racing Toward Value-Based Reimbursement
Value-Based Payment Is the New For-Profit Health Care Industry Financed by powerful corporations and private equity firms, value-based payment threatens to take over health care. Over the last decade, a new industry has emerged that may eventually contribute as much to administrative waste as the insurance industry does today. This industry has no name. Because the participants in the industry all promote a new scheme known as “value-based payment,” and because they all make money off it, we propose to call the new industry the value-based payment (VBP) industry. Like the insurance industry, the VBP industry hovers over doctors and patients and seeks to influence (and in some cases, dictate) doctor-patient decision-making, and in the process diverts resources away from medical care. Unlike the insurance industry, the VBP industry is almost invisible to the public. It consists of a heterogeneous mix of corporations that own, contract with, manage, consult with, or sell services to providers (doctors and hospitals). Some, such as “accountable care organizations,” mimic insurance companies. Others are consultants, such as Privia, venture capitalists like General Catalyst, or firms selling management services, such as agilon health. Large pieces of this new industry are being bought out by companies like Walgreens and Amazon.