Daily News Digest September 20, 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:
Patrick Lawrence: Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for The International Herald Tribune, is a media critic, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His web site is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site. Hn.is Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored without explanation.
The Media Monopoly’s Newspeak: Dan Rather: News anchors looking into camera and reading a script handed down by a corporate overlord, words meant to obscure the truth not elucidate it, isn’t journalism. It’s propaganda. It’s Orwellian. A slippery slope to how despots wrest power, silence dissent, and oppress the masses.
Capitalism Requires Infinite Gowth to Survive: David Attenborough: Someone Who Believes In Infinite Growth Is ‘Either a Madman or an Economist’
Videos of the Day:
Blackout in Puerto Rico: Whole Island Loses Power Amid Hurricane Fiona as Privatized Grid Collapses
Stronger & Wetter: Michael Mann on How Climate Change Makes Storms Worse & Why We Must Cut Emissions
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
Patrick Lawrence: Atrocity Porn (Newspeak) The Russian army shelled its own detention center in the east of Ukraine. The Russian army shelled a nuclear power plant it has guarded since taking control of it last March. The Russian army wantonly shelled a maternity ward, a theater, and an art center in Mariupol last spring. The Russian army shells hospitals and apartment houses everywhere and randomly. The Russian army massacred residents of Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, as it withdrew in the final days of March. And last Friday we had news that the Russian army slaughtered hundreds of people in Izyum before its recent withdrawal from the city. There is a mass grave to prove it, just as Ukrainian police discovered a mass grave outside of Mariupol last spring. “Ukrainian authorities have found a mass grave of more than 400 bodies in the eastern city of Izium that was recaptured from Russian forces, a regional police official said on Thursday…” This was what Reuters reported last Friday morning. In its third paragraph. A police investigator is quoted thus: “I can say it is one of the largest burial sites in a big town in liberated [areas]…440 bodies were buried in one place.” . . .As to the 17 Ukrainian soldiers, Russian media reported months ago that Russian forces proposed several times to establish safe-passage corridors allowing the Armed Forces of Ukraine to collect their dead and give them proper burials. The AFU refused all such offers and declined to remove the corpses of its fallen, according to these media. Russian forces, in consequence, interred the 17 soldiers in a cemetery with, by the most reliable count, roughly 200 individual graves. This report from a Russian news site includes Russian-language text covering these events and video that appears to show Russian soldiers preparing the 17 bodies for burial.
Fed-Up Railroad Workers Ready To Strike! . . . Leading freight companies have used PSR to cut staffing by 29% in the last six years and to reduce the workforce by 45,000. Railroad profits soared and allowed investors to pocket $183 billion in stock buybacks and dividends since 2010. But, resulting understaffing has made insane, unpredictable work schedules and dangerous fatigue into enormous safety issues for train operators. Workers suffer from mandatory overtime. They are often forced to work between 70 and 90 hours a week. They can be called to work at any hour, any day of the week, year-round, with an hour and a half to report in. Many have left the industry because they have no control over their lives. Safety has been seriously jeopardized. These trains used to run with crews of at least three, and up to five people. They already got rid of the worker on the caboose. The reason? They eliminated the caboose, which was used for breaks, and for lookout. Now, railroad companies typically run two-person crews, an engineer and a brakeman who ride in the cab. Owners want to go down to one-person crews, even when pulling two miles of freight cars. Just how dangerous this is was shown in the 2013 Quebec, Canada, rail disaster, when a lone engineer did not properly tie down a train carrying two million gallons of crude oil. The result was a wreck that killed 47 people and destroyed 30 buildings in the town of Lac-Mégantic. This lack of staff is an under-reported major safety issue affecting the public and workers.
Robber Baron Government Insider Traders: Meet the Members of Congress Who Traded Defense Stocks While Making National Security Policy Though all of the lawmakers in a recent analysis deny any impropriety, the capacity for competing interests is clear The New York Times reported this week that 97 members of Congress “bought or sold stocks, bonds, or other financial assets that intersected with their congressional work or reported similar transactions by their spouse or a dependent child” between 2019 and 2021. With more than 3,700 such trades in those three years alone, the investigation reveals potential conflicts of interest in nearly every area of policymaking. At least 25 members sat on committees that shape national security policy while simultaneously trading financial assets in companies that could create competing interests with their work, such as defense stock. Defense policy is no different. At least 25 members sat on committees that shape national security policy while simultaneously trading financial assets in companies that could create competing interests with their work, such as defense stock. With a near-even party split, Democrats and Republicans may have found a rare instance of common ground.
Robber Baron Vulture Capitalists!: House Dem Demands Biden HHS Probe Hospital Behemoth for Bilking Medicare “Because of its mammoth size, HCA sets the pace for both for-profit and not-for-profit hospitals in the United States.” “Workers, patients, and taxpayers need to know the truth about unnecessary charges and understaffing,” said SEIU, welcoming Rep. Bill Pascrell’s call to investigate HCA Healthcare.
Looters for Oil Barons: US Occupation Loots 88 Oil Tankers From Syrian Al-Jazeera Hasaka, SANA-The US occupation forces stole a new batch of Syrian oil from al-Jazeera fields and brought them out to their bases in Iraqi territory. “A convoy of the US occupation forces, consisting of 88 tankers loaded with stolen Syrian oil, left from the illegitimate Mahmoudiya crossing and entered Iraqi territory” Local sources from Yarubiyah countryside said on Friday. The sources added that the convoy left the Syrian territories towards the bases of the US occupation in the northern Iraq.
Environment: Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
Burning All Fossil Fuel Reserves Would Exceed Global ‘Carbon Budget’ 7 Times Over: New Data A first-of-its-kind public database launched Monday estimates that burning all of the world’s known fossil fuel reserves would spew 3.5 trillion tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere—more than all of the emissions released since the Industrial Revolution.
Criticism Intensifies After Big Oil Admits ‘Gaslighting’ Public Over Green Aims Fury as ‘explosive’ files reveal largest oil companies contradicted public statements and wished bedbugs upon critical activists Criticism in the US of the oil industry’s obfuscation over the climate crisis is intensifying after internal documents showed companies attempted to distance themselves from agreed climate goals, admitted “gaslighting” the public over purported efforts to go green, and even wished critical activists be infested by bedbugs,
Civil Rights/ Black Liberarion:
The Historic Role of Police Brutality in the Black Community and African American Oppression To begin to understand, the role of the police, the following quotes By Jam Baldwin, which are still true today — they act like a army of occupation.: Harlem (The Black Community) is policed like occupied territory.—James Baldwin, A Report from Occupied Territory And the police are simply the hired enemies of this population. They are present to keep the Negro in his place and to protect white business interests, and they have no other function. They are, moreover — even in a country which makes the grave error of equating ignorance with simplicity—quite stunningly ignorant; and, since they know that they are hated, they are always afraid. One cannot possibly arrive at a more surefire formula for cruelty. — James Baldwin, From ‘Victim’ to ‘Threat’: James Baldwin and the Demands of Self-Respect
Economy:
A Fossil Fuels Giant Has Been Raising the Election Chances of Extreme-Right Candidates — Using a Dangerous High-Tech Weapon The Federal Election Commission (FEC), a federal agency, states that its mission is to “protect the integrity of the federal campaign finance process by providing transparency and fairly enforcing and administering federal campaign finance laws.” So last week Wall Street On Parade sent an email inquiry to the FEC, asking the following: “The fossil fuels conglomerate, Koch Industries, which is privately-owned by billionaire Charles Koch and the heirs of his late brother, David, owns a massive voter database, data mining, get-out-the-vote operation, etc. called i360. “As you will see from the FEC link below, i360 is selling its services to a multitude of Republican candidates for seats in the House and Senate, as well as to PACs that in turn support those candidates.
World:
Them and Us: Abundance for the Rich… And Grinding Misery for the Rest Emmanuel Macron somberly announced at a cabinet meeting that the Ukraine war and climate change signalled the end of “an era of abundance”. Wait a moment, monsieur, when did the ‘era of abundance’ begin? Did we blink and miss it? In reality, it only ever existed for the rich. While top billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg might grumble at losing billions to stock sell offs last week (a market reaction to higher-than-expected US inflation), they still have billions more to lose. For most people, the cost of living crisis is turning their lives upside down. For many, it is a matter of life and death. As always, there is one reality for the wealthy elite, and another for the rest of us.
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
Biden Rebuked for Claiming ‘Pandemic Is Over’ as Hundreds Die of Covid Each Day in US What’s ending here is political commitment and funding, not cases or deaths,” said one medical anthropologist. President Joe Biden’s fresh assertion that “the pandemic is over”—a claim made as Covid-19 kills roughly 3,000 people each week in the U.S. alone—is being criticized by progressive commentators and medical experts who argue that such “false declarations” undermine support for public health measures and bolster the GOP’s effort to nix funding for vaccines, tests, and treatments.