Daily News Digest July 10, 2023
Image of the Day:
The Most Racist Supreme Court Cases You’ve Probably Never Heard Of Why does the Biden administration’s Department of Justice continue to rely on cases that presume people in the territories are “alien races” composing “savage tribes”?
Capitalism is Now a Worldwide Threat to Humanity! It is on the Fast Track to Global Warming and/or Nuclear War Catastrophes!
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:
The White nationalist majority on the high court is gaslighting us, as they proclaim racism is over, the nation is collorblind. and there is nothing to see. What the Supreme Coirts’s affirmative action means \to me
Podcasts/Vidoes of the Day:
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%!
Climate Crisis is ‘Out ff Control’, Says UN After World’s Hottest Week – Video The UN secretary general has said that ‘climate change is out of control’, as an unofficial analysis of data showed that average world temperatures in the seven days to Wednesday were the hottest week on record. ‘If we persist in delaying key measures that are needed, I think we are moving into a catastrophic situation,’ said António Guterres after reports emerged about the world temperature records being broken on Monday and Tuesday. The average global air temperature was 17.18C on Tuesday, according to data collated by the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), surpassing the record 17.01C reached on Monday
Declining Air Quality Hits the Unhoused Hardest When you’re homeless, dangerous air isn’t just a problem during wildfire season. As wildfire smoke from Canada plagued parts of the United States for the second time this summer, expanding into parts of the Midwest and East Coast, cities were caught unprepared. While a few put out alerts, outreach was limited. People walked through the smoke, often with little understanding of the health risks. Once the risks were clear, some people donned masks to prevent lung damage. But when the smoke — and the clear presence of danger — receded, they left the masks behind. That’s easy enough for people who have a place to call home. But for people who are homeless, either living in a shelter or on the sidewalk, they often have to navigate confusing rules and regulations to receive the type of help they need. Additionally, for unhoused people, dangerous air isn’t just a threat during an air quality crisis — it’s an everyday occurrence. People who are unsheltered are the most at risk, living under highway overpasses or closer to industrial areas, which means their exposure to air pollution is 24/7 and not just for a few days.
The Greenland Threat Escalates Will the world’s major coastal cities, such as NYC, survive escalating global heat conditions in Greenland? And what if both Greenland and Antarctica follow the recent very disturbing pattern of the world’s oceans? For the first time that scientists can recall, sea surface temperatures that always recede from annual peaks are failing to do so, staying high.
The 1% mobilized to save their own, but they refuse to save the planet!: Even When They Fail, They Win: OceanGate and the Cult of the Super-Wealthy Innovator This deep-sea tragedy reminds us that even when the super-rich die doing foolhardy stuff, our government and media insist that we move heaven and earth to save them from their own recklessness.
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!
The Corrupt Supreme Court is Proving that The United States is Not, Never Was, a Democracy!The Corrupt Supreme Court is Proving that The United States is Not a Democracy: Michael Hudson: Should There be a Supreme Court? Its Role Has Always Been Anti-Democratic Vested interests create “checks and balances” primarily to make political systems non-responsive to demands for social reform. Historically, therefore, the checks are politically unbalanced in practice. Instead of producing a happy medium, their effect often has been to check the power of the people to assert their interests at the expense of the more powerful. Real reform requires a revolution – often repeated attempts. The Roman Republic suffered five centuries of fighting to redistribute land and cancel debts, all of which failed as the oligarchy’s “checks” imposed deepening economic dependency
and imbalance.
If Sanders was serious, he would not have voted for the war budget!: Sanders Warns of ‘Dystopian Future’ If Governments Don’t Immediately Act on Climate “We must act and act boldly. Our earth is warming rapidly. We see this every day, in every part of the world.” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a stark call to action Thursday as heatwaves shatter global temperature records and extreme weather wreaks havoc across the planet, climate impacts that the senator called a mere glimpse of what Earth’s “dystopian future could look like” if governments remain subservient to the fossil fuel industry.
Seymour Hersh: Gitmo’s Permanent Chains A UN report finds continued abuses at the US prison. Now comes yet another little-noted report on the continuing excesses and inhumanity at Guantánamo Bay, the post-9/11 American military prison that only two decades ago set the standard for war crimes—a standard that is now being eclipsed by the war in Ukraine.
Civil Rights/Blackliberation:
Globally Capitalism is Implementing the Iron Heel!: Stop the Attack on Democracy and Workers’ Rights Across the world, in both high- and low-income countries, the 2023 Global Rights Index finds that governments have cracked down on the right to negotiate wage rises collectively and take strike action.
The U.S. is a Nation of Savage Inequality Roughly 38,000 U.S. veterans eat from garbage cans every day. So Fox News reported back in January, advocating a helping hand for homeless veterans. It was nice to see the news outlet that’s usually so hostile to those who lack shelter take up their cause, even if it was only because these luckless destitute had performed military service. Any compassion for any segment of the millions of vagabonds among us is welcome, especially from an organization, one of whose hosts, Jesse Watters, hates homeless people. He even called them “bags of flesh mutating on the sidewalk,” on June 16. Very likely some of those people regarded by Watters as garbage are veterans. But maybe Watters missed the Fox memo about showing care for that subset of the unhoused, whom he also described as “urine-soaked junkies.”
Ben & Jerry’s, CodePink Co-Founders Arrested in DC Demanding Freedom for Julian Assange “It seems to me,” said Ben Cohen, “that, right now, unless things change, and unless we change them, freedom of the press is going up in smoke.” Ben Cohen, the co-founder of the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s, and Jodie Evans, who co-founded the peace group CodePink, were arrested Thursday outside Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, D.C. for blocking an entrance to the building to protest the U.S. government’s prosecution of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
Labor:
Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Unemployment Charts The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment. May 2023 ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment increased to 24.7% from 24.6% on top of U.6 increasing to 6.7% from 6.6%
2008 Crash: The 1% has Prospered! The Working Class has Been in a State of Depression!: Since June 2009 Americans have lived in the false reality of a recovering economy. Various fake news and manipulated statistics have been used to create this false impression. However, indicators that really count have not supported the false picture and were ignored. For example, it is normal in a recovering or expanding economy for the labor force participation rate to rise as people enter the workforce to take advantage of the job opportunities. During the decade of the long recovery, from June 2009 through June 2023, the labor force participation rate consistently fell from 65.7 to 62.6 percent. —Paul Craig Roberts, The Diminishing American Economy (Updated)
FRED: Labor Force Participation Rate is62.6%
Economy:
World:
Israel’s Raid in Jenin: They Create Hell on Earth And Call It Peace Beginning after midnight on 3 July, a storm swept over the Jenin refugee camp in Palestine, lasting 48 hours. It left behind scenes that resembled hell on Earth. The storm was provoked by a raid of the Israeli army. The simultaneous use of air and ground raids was combined with a ground advance in and around the refugee camp using huge military bulldozers. These were used to smash everything in their path: roads, water and sewage systems, crushing cars and damaging buildings. Israeli forces fired live bullets and tear gas into local hospitals on several occasions to “drive out” the terrorists.
Professor Jackson Lears warns the Ukraine war has wrought “the ultimate technocratic fantasy: a winnable nuclear war.” The Doomsday Clock continues to tick toward nuclear war, but at its fastest pace ever. Professor Jackson Lears, a former naval officer serving on a U.S cruiser carrying tactical nuclear weapons, considers the current moment more frightening than at any time during the Cold War. Then, there was intense alarm for the fate of the earth and the survival of the human race. Today, rather than diplomacy or negotiation, talk revolves around new weapons shipments, disappointment in Ukraine’s counteroffensive failures, and even drone strikes in Moscow. But far less attention has been paid to the prospect of nuclear war between Russia and the U.S that threatens to end all life on this planet as we know it. That is the alarm sounded by cultural historian and author Jackson Lears who joins host Robert Scheer to discuss Lears’s essay for Harper’s Magazine, “Behind the Veil of Indifference.
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
Key Homelessness Statistics and Facts for 2023
- Globally, 1.6 billion people live in inadequate housing conditions.1
- In America, 582,462 individuals are experiencing homelessness, an increase of about 2,000 people since the last complete census conducted in 2020.2
- Sixty percent of the homeless population finds refuge in sheltered locations (like emergency shelters, safe havens, or transitional housing programs). The other 40% spend nights unsheltered (often on the street, in abandoned buildings, or in other places not designated/suitable for human habitation).2
- More than a quarter of those experiencing homelessness in 2022 did so as part of a family with children.2
- In 2022, there were 329,675 beds in emergency shelters across the country available to homeless individuals.3
- The White House recently introduced a plan to combat homelessness in America in an effort to reduce homelessness by 25% by 2025.4
- More than 75% of all people experiencing homelessness were adults aged 25 or older (444,041 people).5
- As of 2018 it was estimated that 26 million people had experienced self-defined homelessness during their lifetimes.6
- Thirty percent of people without homes experience chronic homelessness, meaning they have been without homes for longer than 12 months or have experienced extended periods of homelessness over the past three years.2
- The homeless population is particularly susceptible to hate crimes and attacks, with 22 non-lethal and 14 lethal attacks perpetrated on homeless individuals in 2019 alone.3
The New York Times Wants to Cut Social Security and Medicare A recent editorial about the budget deficit echoes the board’s claim The New York Times editorial board came to a shocking realization this week: we are living on borrowed money. That was the headline of an editorial it ran calling for deficit reduction. Having discovered the deficit, the piece then went on to call for a combination of increased revenue and reduced spending to reduce the need to borrow. In this process, it insisted that cuts to Social Security and Medicare must be on the table.
When the 1%’s Media Monopoly and/or Capitalist Politicians Claim that Social Security, What they are really saying is that the Government has no Intention to Pay Back the $2.7 trillion that if Borrowed/Robbed from the Social Security Trust Fund!ßœ:
Social Security Trust Fund The Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund (collectively, the Social Security Trust Fund or Trust Funds) are trust funds that provide for payment of Social Security (Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance; OASDI) benefits administered by the United States Social Security Administration.[1][2][3] Excess funds are used by the government for non-Social Security purposes, creating the obligations to the Social Security Administration and thus program recipients. However, Congress could cut these obligations by altering the law. Trust Fund obligations are considered “intra-governmental” debt, a component of the “public” or “national” debt. As of December 2022 (estimated), the intragovernmental debt was $6.18 trillion of the $31.4 trillion national debt.[6] Of this $6.18 trillion, $2.7 trillion is an obligation to the Social Security Administration.