Daily News Digest June 2, 2023
Capitalism is Now a Worldwide Threat to Humanity! It is on the Fast Track to Global Warming and/or Nuclear War Catastrophes!
Images of the Day:
Coverup: Industry Hid Dangers of ‘Forever Chemicals
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!
Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capitalism 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:
Klarenberg’s interrogation appears to be London’s way of retaliating for the journalist’s blockbuster reports exposing major British and US intelligence intrigues. In the past year alone, Klarenberg revealed how a cabal of Tory national security hardliners violated the Official Secrets Act to exploit Brexit and install Boris Johnson as prime minister. In October 2022, he earned international headlines with his exposé of British plans to bomb the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian Federation. Then came his report on the CIA’s recruitment of two 9/11 hijackers this April, a viral sensation that generated massive social media attention. — British Police Detain Journalist Kit Klarenberg, Interrogate Him About The Grayzone
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Black Agenda Radio May 26, 2023 With Margaet Kimberly
Black Women’s Movement in Brazil
Advocacy for Expungement of Criminal Records
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 Republicrats 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. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay! Both Parties Support U.S. Capitalism’s Wars! (The Only War the Democrats Opposed was the Civil War!)
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 D. Brandeis Quotes
The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. MLK, Beyond Vietnam
The US Supreme Court Is Coming for Voting Rights—Again A pending ruling on in Allen v. Milligan could be one of the most damaging yet by the supermajority of John Roberts’ right-wing court. June is the cruelest month. Today begins the weeks of decisions to be announced by the Supreme Court as its term draws to a close. Once again we will wait to find out how far the six conservative justices will push — and what kind of country we will live in. I discuss the perils of this moment in my new book, The Supermajority, out next Tuesday. One of the most important rulings will come in a major case on the Voting Rights Act, Allen v. Milligan. It could also be one of the most damaging. That statute was by some measures the most effective civil rights law on the books. And over the past decade, the Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts has demolished it, bit by bit.
Biden’s Debt Ceiling Bill: Biden’s Debt Ceiling Bill is a Bipartisan Decision for Ecocide!: Climate Youth Warn Dems Debt Ceiling Deal Is ‘Politically and Morally Dangerous’ “President Biden and the Democratic Party should know the passage of this negotiation is the type of harmful decision that makes our generation feel disillusioned and defeated,” said the Sunrise Movement’s leader. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepared to vote on President Joe Biden’s debt limit deal with GOP negotiators Wednesday evening, the youth-led Sunrise Movement warned Democrats that the so-called Fiscal Responsibility Act could have a major impact on the 2024 elections. “When we’re knocking on doors and on college campuses, we constantly hear young people in our generation feel like the government doesn’t work for them,” said Sunrise Movement executive director Varshini Prakash in a statement. “This debt ceiling deal tells these young people that the U.S. will keep polluting our air and water by approving the Mountain Valley Pipeline, that our government will make life harder for working people, a
nd that our system values billionaires over students.”
Senate Report Warns Inaction Pushing US Childcare System To the Brink of Collapse Dens. Bernie Sanders and Patty Murray warned that the looming expiration of emergency funds “will likely force providers to lay off staff or shut down.”. Already among the worst and least affordable in the developed world, the U.S. childcare system could soon be “pushed closer to the brink of collapse” if Congress doesn’t act before emergency federal funding runs dry at the end of September
Coverup: Industry Hid Dangers of ‘Forever Chemicals Secret documents show 3M and Dupont suppressed knowledge of PFAS toxicity The chemical industry took a page out of the tobacco playbook when they discovered and suppressed their knowledge of health harms caused by exposure to PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), according to an analysis of previously secret industry documents by UC San Francisco (UCSF) researchers. A new paper published May 31, 2023, in Annals of Global Health, examines documents from DuPont and 3M, the largest manufacturers of PFAS. The paper analyzes the tactics the industry used to delay public awareness of PFAS toxicity, and in turn, delay regulations governing their use. PFAS are widely used chemicals in clothing, household goods, and food products, and are highly resistant to breaking down, giving them the name “forever chemicals.” They are now ubiquitous in people and the environment. “These documents reveal clear evidence that the chemical industry knew about the dangers of PFAS and failed to let the public, regulators, and even their own employees know the risks,” said Tracey J. Woodruff, Ph.D., professor and director of the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE), a former senior scientist and policy advisor at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and senior author of the paper.
‘Simply Inconceivable’ to Dump Fukushima Water in Pacific, Critics Say After Latest IAEA Report “Piping water into the sea is an outrage,” said one Japanese fisher angered by the plan to release radioactive wastewater into the ocean. “The sea is not a garbage dump.” Critics of a Japanese plan to release filtered radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear disaster into the Pacific Ocean intensified their opposition to the proposal on Wednesday after the United Nations agency responsible for promoting nuclear energy said the company that operated the plant has adequately demonstrated its ability to measure the water’s radioactivity. The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) this week released a report that found the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)—the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station that was catastrophically damaged during a 2011 meltdown in three reactors caused by an earthquake and tsunami—”has demonstrated its capabilities for accurate and precise measurements of the radionuclides present in the treated water stored on site.”
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. — Oil, Water Are Volatile Mix in West
The following leavesx out the billons of gallons of water used for Fracking! (See Big Energy Frackers Keep on Fracking With Their Own Private Water Supplies During Drought)
Colorado River Is on Life Support, and 40 Million People Depend on It for Water Vulnerable communities may be at risk of reduced water supply under a new Colorado River agreement. Water rights negotiators from California, Arizona and Nevada announced earlier this month that they have reached an agreement to reduce their draw of water from the Colorado River by 3 million acre-feet between now and 2026. That translates to the amount of water that several million households use in a year, and it represents a 14 percent reduction in water usage. Slightly over half of that amount will come from California; the rest will be divided between Arizona and Nevada.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Sheepdogging and Liberal Fantasy There is an understandable yearning for a progressive president. But like dreams of happily ever after endings, the fantasy is just that. In 2015, Black Agenda Report co-founder Bruce Dixon coined the term “sheepdog” to describe the role that Bernie Sanders would play in the 2016 presidential campaign. Dixon presciently said, “Bernie’s job is to warm up the crowd for Hillary, herding activist energies and the disaffected left back into the Democratic fold one more time. Bernie aims to tie up activist energies and resources till the summer of 2016 when the only remaining choice will be the usual lesser of two evils.” The word stuck and since that time the question is rightly asked whether a particular democratic challenger is serious about getting the nomination or is merely a sheepdog who will herd supporters back into the hands of their party’s oligarchy. That question arises again now that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has announced his presidential campaign. Kennedy obviously has the advantage of name recognition, and he isn’t shy about making frequent references to “my uncle” and “my father.” Yet he is attractive to leftists in the party because he is willing to take positions in opposition to its established orthodoxy. He does make the obligatory references to Russia’s “brutal invasion” of Ukraine but he also points out what no one in the Democratic Party will say, that the war was provoked by U.S. actions and he calls the billions of dollars in allocations to the Ukrainian government a “money laundering operation for the military industrial complex.” Yet Kennedy also falls back into line if pressured. He said that the CIA assassinated his uncle John F. Kennedy, and he points out the many CIA interventions around the world as a practice he would end as president, but he backtracks if criticized, making a lie out of his pronouncements. “The majority of people working at the CIA are good, patriotic people committed to their missions and the law. My own daughter-in-law was a field agent, and she is among the bravest people I have known. He certainly got the zionist message about Israel . Kennedy praised musician Roger Waters for his opposition to the war in Ukraine but then deleted his comment on twitter because Waters also opposes Israeli apartheid. For good measure he added meaningless blather about the “aspirations of the Palestinian people.” After being called out when he ran for cover, he then deleted his comments which rescinded his first comment. There is another issue aside from Kennedy’s willingness to back pedal when criticized for taking the positions he claims to run against. Will his supporters end up like those who worked for Jesse Jackson, Dennis Kucinich, or Bernie Sanders, who believed in their candidate only to be told that they had to support Mondale or Dukakis or Kerry or Clinton or Biden? One must ask, what is the point of going out on a limb yet again when history gives a strong indication of how this campaign will end? The selective amnesia of many Kennedy supporters indicates another problem with what passes for left politics in this country. People here have been so thoroughly indoctrinated about the value of electoral politics that they believe it is the only way to bring about the changes they want to see. The end result is the search for a savior, the belief that we can vote our way out of a situation created by the oligarchy which controls both wings of the duopoly. It is comforting to think that the right president would end capitalist exploitation and imperialism but such a belief, while understandable, doesn’t hold water. Would the military industrial complex suddenly disappear if Kennedy were president? Would the democrats and republicans who are bought off by big oil, big pharma, big agriculture, big healthcare, and other powerful interests suddenly throw off the shackles they happily accepted? Would their patrons allow them to do so even if they were so inclined? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding, “No.” Both parties are run by capitalists who have not gone to a lot of trouble to maintain their hold on the system only to give it all up because some democrats can’t end their habit of engaging in wishful thinking. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. takes positions that need to be heard. It is good that a presidential candidate opposes U.S. interventions around the world and pledges to end the censorship that the state and big tech carry out. But there’s no savior, just the hard work of mobilizing left movements. Kennedy speaks of the need for a “peaceful revolution.” It isn’t clear that revolutions can be peaceful, but they certainly won’t come from U.S. presidential politics. The question is the same. It doesn’t change every four years. How do we mobilize against interests that won’t be placated, whose imperatives are antithetical to human needs? They don’t care if leftists want to believe that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. can win the Democratic Party nomination and become president. They won’t be wished away.
What Would Martin Luther King Jr. Think of This Biden-McCarthy Debt Ceiling Deal? An agreement in which Pentagon spending was off the table but sharp cuts to programs that provide a lifeline to the nation’s most vulnerable individuals and families epitomizes what the civil rights leader called the “madness of militarism.” The debt-ceiling deal reached by President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy that passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday is a picture of priorities that Martin Luther King Jr. deplored. While reductions in military spending are completely off the table, the knives are out for deep cuts in government programs to feed the hungry, aid children in low-income families, provide housing assistance, assist seniors and much more. This is the latest version of what King called “the madness of militarism.” Speaking a year before his death, King described huge spending for war as a “demonic, destructive suction tube” siphoning vast resources away from anti-poverty programs to pay for warfare in Vietnam. Now, 56 years later, the nation’s military expenditures are at record highs while the Pentagon “suction tube” easily blends in with the political scenery.
Labor:
Economy:
Jamie Dimon’s Deposition in Epstein Case Reveals Email Stating that Dimon Was to Be Treated to “Heavy Snacks” at Epstein’s Home After much delay and legal protests by JPMorgan Chase, its Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, was forced by a Manhattan federal court to testify under oath in a deposition about what he personally knew about the bank’s long-term customer relationship with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. (Epstein died in a Manhattan jail on August 10, 2019. His death was ruled a suicide by the medical examiner.)
World:
Education. Heal, 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 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