Daily News Digest June 26, 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:
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:
Native American Genocide 2023: Nearly 1 in 3 people who live on the Navajo Nation reservation do not have access to clean water, despite living alongside the Colorado River. — The Supreme Court Ruled the U.S. Govt is not Responsible for Ensuring Water Access for Indigenous Tribes In A 5-4 Vote.
Many things were gained as a result of these years of struggle. In 1964 the Civil Rights Bill came into being after the Birmingham movement, which did a great deal to subpoena the conscience of a large segment of the nation to appear before the judgment seat of morality on the whole question of Civil Rights. After the Selma movement in 1965, we were able to get a Voting Rights Bill. And all of these things represented strides. But we must see that the struggle today is much more difficult. It’s more difficult today because we are struggling now for genuine equality. And it’s much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee a livable income and a good solid job. It’s much easier to guarantee the right to vote than it is to guarantee the right to live in sanitary, decent housing conditions. It is much easier to integrate a public park than it is to make genuine, quality, integrated education a reality. And so today we are struggling for something which says we demand genuine equality. — MLK, The Other America Speech Stanford UniversityApril 14, 1967
Environment:
After World War II Rosa Luxenburg Coined the Slogan: ‘S0cialism or Barbaism’! Now the Slogan Should Be: ‘Ecosocialism or Ecocide’!
One of Many Ways to Begin to End Global Warming: Expose ‘Greenwashing’ — Tax the Polluters 100%!
Ecological Tipping Points Could Occur Much Sooner Than Expected, Study Finds Amazon rainforest and other ecosystems could collapse ‘very soon’, researchers warn “It could happen very soon,” said Prof Simon Willcock of Rothamsted Research, who co-led the study. “We could realistically be the last generation to see the Amazon.” The research, which was published on Thursday in Nature Sustainability, is likely to generate a heated debate. Compared with the long-established and conclusively proven link between fossil fuels and global heating, the science of tipping points and their interactions is relatively undeveloped.
Fast Facts: Global Water Crisis
- 771 million people lack access to clean water. That’s 1 in 10 people on the planet.
- Women and girls spend an estimated 200 million hours carrying water every day.
- The average woman in rural Africa walks 6 kilometers (about 3.7 miles) every day to haul 40 pounds of water.
- More than 800 children under 5 die every day from diarrhea caused by contaminated water, poor sanitation, and unsafe hygiene practices.
- 1.69 billion people live without access to adequate sanitation.
- 494 million people practice open defecation.
- The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6 (clean water and sanitation) aims to provide universal access to clean water and sanitation by 2030.
The Fight to Ban Forever Chemicals Forever chemicals are called forever for a reason. They take hundreds of years to disappear, and cancer-causing forever chemicals are everywhere. But mostly they’re in plastics, the water and certain no-stick products for food. PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – don’t break down, and since very tiny amounts of them cause multiple diseases and dangerous health conditions – kidney and testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, pregnancy-induced hypertension, infertility and high cholesterol – you’d think the federal government would be on the case. But you would be wrong. People have known about the dangers of PFASs for a long time; it wasn’t until last March, however, that the Environmental Protection Agency finally proposed to limit six such chemicals. This is a pathetic track record, because there are another 5000 plus such chemicals, and who knows how many of those cause sickness? So any sane person should be relieved to learn, according to the Washington Post June 5, that the states have shot way ahead of the feds on this – even states where the GOP controls the legislature. Evidently this is a bipartisan issue.
US Honeybees Suffer Second Deadliest Season on Record Nearly 50% of US bee colonies died off last year, although efforts have helped the overall bee population remain ‘relatively stable’.
Oregon County Sues Big Oil and ‘Misinformation Agents’ Over Deadly 2021 Heatwave “The heat dome was a direct and foreseeable consequence of the defendants’ decision to sell as many fossil fuel products over the last six decades as they could and to lie to the county, the public, and the scientific community.”
Petition Demands EPA Take Action on ‘Under-the-Radar’ Methane Emissions From Landfills “Protective landfill standards are an urgently needed addition to other significant actions EPA has recently taken to reduce climate-destabilizing and health-harming pollution,” said one advocate.
Podcasts/Vidoes of the Day:
As Media Spotlights Titanic Sub, Hundreds of Migrants Who Died in Greek Shipwreck Get Scant Coverage
From Drone Strikes to Settler Attacks, Israel Intensifies Effort to “Completely Take Over Palestine”
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
A Vote for Trump or Biden is a Vote for Ecocide!
Native American Genocide 2023: Supreme Court Rules Against Navajo Nation in Colorado River Water Rights Case The Supreme Court ruled against the Navajo Nation on Thursday in a dispute involving water from the drought-stricken Colorado River. States that draw water from the river — Arizona, Nevada and Colorado — and water districts in California that are also involved in the case had urged the court to decide for them, which the justices did in a 5-4 ruling. Colorado had argued that that siding with the Navajo Nation would undermine existing agreements and disrupt the management of the river.
Instead of Trashing Cornel West, Here’s what Democrats Could Do if they Actually Cared about Social and Economic Justice Dr. Cornel West is a professor, philosopher, activist, world-renowned public intellectual, and the premiere standard bearer of the black prophetic tradition in the United States. He announced his Presidential bid in early June of 2023. Fed up with endless war and the corrupt corporate duopoly, Dr. West’s presidential platform centers poor and working people, anti-imperialism, social, economic and environmental justice. In a newly released video, West said that his campaign would be centered around health care, a living wage, housing, reproductive rights and “de-escalating the destruction” of democracy and the planet.
Pentagon Says ‘Accounting Error’ Provides Extra $6.2 Billion in Ukraine Military Aid The Pentagon on Tuesday claimed that an “accounting error” has freed up an additional $6.2 billion to spend on military aid for Ukraine. Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters that weapons sent to Ukraine from US military stockpiles using the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) were overvalued by using the cost to replace the arms rather than the depreciated value.
US Supports Native Palestinian Genocide: ‘This Is a Pogrom’: Omar Slams Continued US Military Aid for Israel Amid Settler Violence “The U.S. provides billions in military funding to the Israeli military. How long do we have to keep demanding accountability? U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar and other progressive lawmakers decried their government’s continued military support for Israel on Thursday after hundreds of settlers rampaged through Palestinian towns this week, terrorizing families and setting fire to dozens of cars, homes, and businesses.
The 1%’s Supreme Court’Shady and Corrupt’: Add Barrett Real Estate Deal to List of Supreme Court Ethics Scandals The right-wing justice sold a home to a religious freedom group that has filed numerous briefs in cases before the court.
Civil Rights/Blackliberation:
New Docs Link CIA to Medical Torture of Indigenous Children and Black Prisoners. While we may never know the full truth, we owe it to those harmed and killed The documentary record of “mind control” experiments conducted by the United States and other governments during the Cold War is just the tip of the iceberg, and our collective ignorance is by design. In early 1973, as the fallout from the Watergate scandal exposed the need for greater congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ordered the destruction of all documents related to MK Ultra.
Obama’s Coup D’état — A Police State In Imerging
Learning from history and the recent events in the world, United States capitalism knows that a working class upsurge will result from its austerity programs. Therefore, the capitalist class is applying the Precautionary Principle, in order to be prepared to apply the iron heal to quash any upsurge. As their spokesman, Obama, is and has been slowly but surely setting up the police state iron heal. As Obama moves toward disarming the people and the working class, he is organizing an extra-legal domestic police force as capitalism, with Obama their spokesman, establishes a gradual slide into a police state — That would be the Envy of Hitler!
As James Madison once stated:. . . I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations. On a candid examination of history we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power by the majority trampling on the rights of the minority, have produced factions and commotions, which in republics, have more frequently than any other cause produced despotism. If we go over the whole history of the ancient and modern republics, we shall find their destruction to have generally resulted from those causes. . . . The following quotes confirm my statments:
From Hooray for the new Patriotic police state Obama won’t veto law that turns military into domestic police force: It flew through the House today and should pass the Senate shortly. Along with the usual gazillion dollars for the Pentagon to buy death machines from military contractors via lobbyists/former members of Congress, the NDAA will also allow the military to seize U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and throw them in Gitmo forever. Remember how the terror prison at Guantanamo Bay was originally filled, after 9/11? And remember how a fraction of the prisoners held and tortured there for years had anything to do with Al Qaeda, because they were just random goat herders or whatever, picked up because the military and the CIA paid a per-head bounty on “terrorists”? Yeah well same thing now, but in the United States!. . .
From: The National Defense Authorization Act Passes Again in 2013 – Are You Watching Your Back? : . . .This behemoth, 1,600 page charter, allotting $662 billion of taxpayers’ money towards defense funding, contained controversial, vaguely-worded provisions that allow for detention of persons – including Americans here at home – indefinitely by the military without trial or military tribunals, and contains implications for abuse of presidential powers by significantly broadening the scope of executive authority with a simple pen stroke. Specifically, sections 1021 and 1022, reminiscent of Draconian laws, authorized indefinite detention by the armed forces without trial – this, despite the Constitution’s sixth amendment which guarantees right to fair trial for all, and the Posse Comitatus Act which limits governments’ use of military intervention to enforce laws. . . .
Atlanta’s Attack on Cop City Protesters Should Be a Warning to Us All The fight against the militarized police training center dubbed “Cop City” is one of the great struggles of our time. The ongoing attack on the network of environmental and abolitionist activists in Atlanta should make all people concerned with the right to protest, the future of the environment and the rise of militarized police forces take notice. At 5 am on June 6, after over 200 community members had spoken against moving forward with the facility, the Atlanta City Council voted to allocate $31 million in public funds toward construction of a militarized police training center dubbed “Cop City.” This was the most recent development in a fierce and violent struggle over police expansion and forest preservation in Georgia, and has repercussions well beyond the state. In January, a young protester was shot and killed by police in a surprise raid on a protest encampment at the proposed site of the facility. Soon afterwards 42 protesters were arrested and outrageously charged with domestic terrorism. “Dissent is being criminalized,” warned Atlanta organizer Kamau Franklin.
Labor:
Economy:
Michael Roberts Facebook Blog: The latest surveys of economic activity in the major economies (called PMIs) are out for June. They show that there is an outright contraction in manufacturing in all the major economies – and it is getting worse.
Up to now the non-manufacturing, so-called services sector has been expanding in these major economies and thus providing some overall growth. But in June, expansion in the services sectors in the major economies slowed, so the overall (composite) PMIs fell back.
Any score below 50 means contraction and recession.
- Manufacturing: Australia: 48.6; Japan: 49.8; Eurozone: 43.6; UK: 46.2 ;US: 46.3!
- Services: Australia: 50.7; Japan 54.2; Eurozone: 50.3; UK: 53.7; US: 54.1
- Composite: Australia 50.5; Japan 52.3; Eurozone 50.3; UK: 52.8; US: 53.0.
So Australia and the Eurozone are basically close to recession in this last quarter; while Japan, the US and the UK are slowing.
Eurozone graph: below 50 means slump.
World:
When the Rich Get a Global Rescue Mission and the Drowning Poor Get… Nothing A story of two sinking vessels in a world of extreme inequality The sinking of two vessels—the Andrianna, filled with hundreds of desperate migrants, and the Titan, with a handful of multi-millionaires—provides a vivid picture of the world today. All drowning deaths in the ocean are tragic, and one has to sympathize with the families who have lost loved ones. Yet these events also dramatically demonstrate global economic inequality and injustice.
Health. Welfare, and Education:
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