Daily News Digest July 5, 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:
The Media Monopoly Riggs the ElectionsFlashpoint 
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:
Podcasts/Vidoes of the Day:
“What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?”: James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech
Months Before Death, Daniel Ellsberg Warned Crisis over Ukraine & Taiwan Could Lead to Nuclear War
“The Doomsday Machine”: Confessions of Daniel Ellsberg, Former Nuclear War Planner
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%!
We’ve Run Out of Time’: Experts and Activists Urge Climate Action Amid Summer of Extremes “Still we are not acting with the urgency and determination that is required,” the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said Monday. As parts of the world from China to Texas bake under extreme heat, scientists and advocates are warning that world leaders are running out of time to take action on the climate crisis. In a speech to a United Nations panel discussion on Monday,, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk cautioned that current policies put the planet on course for a “dystopian future.
Our Children’s Lungs Are Uniquely Vulnerable to All This Wildfire Smoke . . . As physicians who specialize in respiratory health and children, our first thought last week as wildfire smoke again engulfed parts of the United States was of little ones Ian’s age and younger because their developing lungs are particularly vulnerable to smoke inhalation. And we worried most about the millions of children in this country with asthma who may not have access to the prescription medications they need or to a clean indoor space to breathe. This new recurring threat of terrible air quality from wildfire smoke is one big reason we believe that for a child born today, climate change may be the single greatest determinant of health over the course of their lives.There are, of course, other pressing public health problems affecting children, including gun violence, opioid addiction and obesity. But the health effects of fossil fuel pollution and climate change are inescapable and cumulative, jeopardizing our children’s development while increasing health inequities. The latest example of what they are up against is the large and profuse wildfires, fueled by extreme heat and drought that are growing worse as the planet warms, spewing huge columns of soot, tiny particles and other toxic material into the air.
Stopping the ‘Insect Apocalypse’ in the Garden of Capitalism If neonics are so dangerous, what is the Environmental Protection Agency doing about it? Not very much, as it turns out I was reading about bumble bees recently—specifically, their looming demise, thanks to human greed and ignorance—and started thinking about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We should have eaten from it! Well, we did, but then apparently upchucked everything we learned and, in the process, fooled ourselves into thinking that technology has allowed us to recreate the Garden of Eden from which we’d been banned. You might call it the Garden of Capitalism, in which humans can take what they want without consequences, forever and ever and ever. This seems to be the myth at the core of dominant global culture.
EPA Begins to Clean Up Black Globs of Asphalt From Yellowstone River Train Derailment Environmental agency officials said workers are cooling the gooey material with river water and putting it into garbage bags for recycling Globs of asphalt binder that spilled into Montana’s Yellowstone River during a bridge collapse and train derailment could be seen on islands and riverbanks downstream from Yellowstone National Park a week after the spill occurred, witnesses report. Officials with the Environmental Protection Agency said cleanup efforts began on Sunday, with workers cooling the gooey material with river water, rolling it up and putting the globs into garbage bags. It will probably be recycled, said Paul Peronard with the EPA.
Being Built to Fail: Biden’s Mountain Valley Pipeline and the Titan Submarine Disaster We have seen what happens when things are built from substandard materials with faulty design. When President Biden agreed to the debt deal in May, the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) became his pipeline. Climate scientists tell us it’s exactly the wrong thing to be building in 2023 but the president fast-tracked it anyway. He may claim that his hands were tied by Manchin and the Republicans who were willing to hold the economy hostage if they didn’t get their way. But no one is tying the President’s hands when it comes to an important safety measure regarding MVP. For more than 50years there’s been a federal law on the books that all ays all pipe must have an external coating that is “sufficiently ductile to resist cracking.” The purpose of the coating is to prevent corrosion over the many years and decades that the pipeline will be in service. The reason it has to be sufficiently ductile (flexible) to resist cracking is because 40-foot sections of pipe flex quite a bit when they are moved from the factory to the pipeyard to the right of way and finally into a ditch. The factory-applied coating is designed to flex but it loses its flexibility, as well as other qualities if it sits out in the sun for too long. The National Association of Pipe Coating Applicators (NAPCA) says that the coating shouldn’t be exposed to the sun for more than six months but the MVP pipe was coated 6 or 7 years ago and most of it has been exposed to the sun in pipeyards or along right of ways ever since. The January 2020 issue of Corrosion Management reported (starting on p. 16) that the coating on Keystone XL pipe was “no longer fit for purpose” after it had sat out in the sun for years just as MVP’s pipe has. Every piece of KXL pipe that was tested failed the flexibility test and had cracks in the coating. Cracked coating is obviously no longer corrosion-proof.
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!
Ecosidal Supreme Court!: SCOTUS Continues Attacking Environmental Health It may come as a surprise that one of the biggest challenges facing environmental and public health is our judicial system – specifically the current U.S. Supreme Court. Out of the total nine Justices, six are conservative-leaning, and three are progressive-leaning. The Trump administration picked three of the current six conservative Justices – the same administration that posed several difficulties for environmental protection. The Trump-administration-packed Supreme Court, which saw the appointments of conservatives Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barret, has repeatedly deteriorated environmental protections for all Americans. The Supreme Court Justices have a chokehold on environmental health issues and have consistently voted to strip Americans of the right to a healthy environment. The most recent example of such an environmental health ruling is the Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency ruling,which limits EPA’s ability to regulate wetlands under the Clean Water Act. This ruling will pose issues to the health and safety of the water because, unlike the Supreme Court’s logic that wetlands are separate from the rest of the U.S. water bodies, the truth is that all water is connected. Pollution in the wetlands will undoubtedly leak into our main drinking water supplies.
Pax Americana Exposed!: ‘Totally Indefensible’: Biden Nominates Death Squad Backer Elliott Abrams to Diplomacy Panel “Elliott Abrams, enemy of human rights, apologist for mass murder, should have no place within spitting distance of any Democratic administration in any capacity.” President Joe Biden on Monday quietly nominated Elliott Abrams to serve on a bipartisan diplomacy commission, a move that human rights advocates condemned as outrageous given the longtime Republican official’s past as a defender of Latin American death squads and cheerleader for murderous U.S. foreign policy interventions.
Chris Hedges: They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine. The U.S. public has been conned, once again, into pouring billions into another endless war. The playbook the pimps of war use to lure us into one military fiasco after another, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, does not change. Freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must be protected. The fate of Europe and NATO, along with a “rules based international order” is at stake. Victory is assured. The results are also the same. The justifications and narratives are exposed as lies. The cheery prognosis is false. Those on whose behalf we are supposedly fighting are as venal as those we are fighting against. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a war crime, although one that was provoked by NATO expansion and by the United States backing of the 2014“Maidan” coup which ousted the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych wanted economic integration with the European Union, but not at the expense of economic and political ties with Russia. The war will only be solved through negotiations that allow ethnic Russians in Ukraine to have autonomy and Moscow’s protection, as well as Ukrainian neutrality, which means the country cannot join NATO. The longer these negotiations are delayed the more Ukrainians will suffer and die. Their cities and infrastructure will continue to be pounded into rubble.
Civil Rights/Blackliberation:
Alphabet Boys Revelations: How The FBI Infiltrated and Undermined Black Lives Matter The Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in the summer of 2020 shook the edifice of US capitalism. At its height, the movement involved over 20 million people in 2,500 cities and towns, making it the largest mobilisation in the nation’s history. There were many factors that contributed to the movement ending up at an impasse, not least the lack of revolutionary leadership. But for years, it was alleged state infiltrators had a hand in undermining BLM. However, there was little irrefutable evidence – until now. In early 2023, award-winning investigative journalist Trevor Aaronson, using secret audio recordings, reports, and video, exposed how the FBI infiltrated and undermined the BLM movement in a 10-part series, constituting season one of the Alphabet Boys podcast, which seeks to expose the nefarious activities of intelligence bodies like the FBI, CIA, DEA, ATF etc. Incriminating documents were leaked to Aaronson by someone in the FBI who was deeply disturbed by its use of informants to undermine the struggle against racism. These documents paint a dark, shameful, and downright bizarre image of the FBI’s secret operations on behalf of US capitalism.
Economy:
Inflation and Interest Rates: Ruling Class Prepares to Impose Pain Recent data has caused alarm amongst the ruling class, suggesting that inflation has become entrenched. In response, central bankers are looking to provoke a slump in the hope of quelling price rises. The only solution is socialist revolution. “Central banks’ battle with inflation enters new phase of ‘pain’,” This recent headline summarises the position of the Financial Times – a bourgeois mouthpiece normally known more for its seriousness and sobriety than its sadism.
Elizabeth Warren Rips Stock Buybacks ss ‘Nothing But Paper Manipulation’
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren told CNBC that buybacks are market manipulation made to inflate executive pay.
- She said stock repurchases do nothing to improve the quality of a business or the goods and services it produces.
- Warren’s comments came a day after she and Sen. Bernie Sanders proposed a 3% total annual tax on wealth exceeding $1 billion.
Apple Hits $3 Trillion Market Cap After Spending More than Half a Trillion Dollars on Stock Buybacks Since 2013 According to S&P Dow Jones Indices, component companies of the Standard & Poor’s 500 spent $922.7 billion in 2022 buying back their own stock. That was $41 billion more than the S&P 500 companies spent in 2021, which came in at a lofty $881.7 billion. One of the companies leading the stock buyback parade is Apple. Of the $922.7 billion spent on stock buybacks in 2022 by all companies in the S&P 500, Apple represented 10 percent of that spending with $90.2 billion in buybacks of its own stock.
World:
Michael Roberts Facebook Blog: About 184 million people—2.3 percent of the world’s population—live outside of their country of nationality. Almost half of them are in low- and middle-income countries. As the world struggles to cope with global economic imbalances, diverging demographic trends, and climate change, migration will become a necessity in the decades to come for countries at all levels of income. Will this end of disaster and conflict or will migration help countries short of people and labour?
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