Daily News Digest July 18, 2023
Images of the Day:
What is Hunger? “Hunger” is an evocative word. Everyone understands what it feels like to be hungry. Our stomachs start rumbling. We get irritable. It becomes hard to think straight. To make those symptoms go away, we eat something. Our stomachs are full, and we are content. Over 34 million Americans face hunger each and every day including 1 in 8 children. If we think about hunger as most of us experience it, as a temporary sensation, the solution to this problem is straightforward: we just need to get more food to people who don’t have enough.
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:
But the effects of heatwaves go beyond individual health. They have broader social and economic consequences too. Extreme heat can damage road surfaces and even cause railway tracks to buckle.Heatwaves can also lead to reduced water availability, affecting electricity production, crop irrigation and drinking water supply. In 2022, scorching heat meant French nuclear plants were unable to run at full capacity as higher river temperatures and low water levels affected their cooling ability. Research indicates that extreme heat has already had a negative impact on economic growth in Europe, lowering it by up to 0.5% over the past decade. As temperatures continue to rise, heatwaves will become more severe. It’s crucial that governments worldwide take swift and decisive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately. However, it’s important to note that even if we were to completely halt global greenhouse gas emissions today, the climate would still continue to warm. This is due to the heat that is already absorbed and retained by the oceans. While we can slow down the rate of global warming, the effects of climate change will continue to be experienced in the future. — What’s Driving Europe’s Record-Busting Heatwave?
The only good news about such primitive and circular thinking, I have been told, is the impossibility at this point of any significant Ukraine success. “Biden’s principal issue in the war is that he’s screwed,” the informed official told me. “We didn’t give Ukraine cluster bombs earlier in the war, but we’re giving them cluster bombs now because that’s all we got left in the cupboard. Aren’t these the bombs that are banned all over the world because they kill kids? But the Ukrainians tell us they are not planning to drop them on civilians. And then the administration claims that the Russians have used them first in the war, which is just a lie. “In any case,” the official said, “cluster bombs have zero chance of changing the course of the war.” He said the real worry will come later this summer, perhaps as early as August, when the Russians, having easily weathered the Ukraine assault, will counter-strike with a major offensive. “What happens then? The US has painted itself in a corner by calling for NATO to do something. “Will NATO respond by sending the brigades now training in Poland and Romania on an airborne assault?” We knew more about the German army in Normandy in World War II than we know about the Russian army in Ukraine.” — Seymour Hersh: Fear and Loathing on Air Force One
Podcasts/Vidoes of the Day:
James Bamford: The NSA Is It’s Own Worst Enemy
Asad Rehman: The Relationship Between Imperialism, Racism, and the Environmental Crisis The expansion of colonial empires and the emergence of a globalized economic system brought about a rapid increase in the destabilization of local and global environments, as well as the exploitation and destruction of indigenous peoples. In doing so, they created structures and dynamics that exist to this day. In this episode of the “Great Unraveling?” series, Asad Rehman joins Laurie Laybourn-Langton to explore the relationship between imperialism, racism, the environmental crisis, and our current moment.
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%!
George Monbiot:With Our Food Systems on the Verge of Collapse, It’s The Plutocrats V Life On Earth Climate breakdown and crop losses threaten our survival, but the ultra-rich find ever more creative ways to maintain the status quo With our food systems on the verge of collapse, it’s the plutocrats v life on Earth According to Google’s news search, the media has run more than 10,000 stories this year about Phillip Schofield, the British television presenter who resigned over an affair with a younger colleague. Google also records a global total of five news stories about a scientific paper published last week, showing that the chances of simultaneous crop losses in the world’s major growing regions, caused by climate breakdown, appear to have been dangerously underestimated. In mediaworld, a place that should never be confused with the real world, celebrity gossip is thousands of times more important than existential risk.
How Big Banks Are Financing — and Profiting From — Climate Destruction For nearly a decade, organizers have been naming and shaming the banks that prop up the oil, gas and coal industries. In the climate movement’s ongoing efforts to cut off the financing of the fossil fuel industry, perhaps no culprit has loomed as large as the big banks. For nearly a decade, organizers have been naming and shaming the banks that prop up the oil, gas and coal industries, identifying them as key drivers of climate chaos. There’s a simple reason why banks have been such a big focus: they profit from providing a vital financial lifeline to the fossil fuel industry, keeping it in business and even expanding while it spouts carbon pollution into the atmosphere and dangerous chemicals into frontline communities.
Cop City Crackdown Reflects Broader Criminalization of Environmental Protest The
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!
Cop City Crackdown Reflects Broader Criminalization of Environmental Protest The first step in fighting back is to develop a shared understanding of militarization of law enforcement, stigmatization of protest, and corporate capture of government as an intertwined strategy to undermine democracy.
The repudiation of debt at the Russian revolution was the 1918 rejection of all sovereign debt and other financial obligations by the Bolshevik government upon attaining power. In February 1918, after the Russian Revolution, the repudiation of the debt by the Soviet government shocked international finance and triggered unanimous condemnation by the governments of the great powers. The British, and especially the French, had lost millions of pounds of foreign investment in Russia. — Repudiation of Debt at the Russian Revolution
Repudiate All Government Debts! End Poverty!:
The Human Cost of Inaction: Poverty, Social Protection and Debt Servicing, 2020–2023 Twenty-five developing economies, the highest number since 2000, spent over 20 percent of their government revenues in 2022 on total external debt servicing. The average low-income country spends about 2.3 times more on interest payments than on social assistance. Due to the economic shocks during 2020-2023, we project that 165 million people fell into poverty using the $3.65-a-day poverty line —the entirety of those living in low- and lower-middle-income economies. A pause in debt payments would allow developing economies weighed down by debt to mitigate some social effects of these shocks, using resources earmarked for debt servicing. This policy brief presents simulations that show that the annual cost of mitigating the additional 165 million poor would reach US$14.24 billion, or 0.009 percent of global GDP and a little less than 4 percent of total public external debt service in 2022 —if the income losses among the already poor prior to the shocks are also included, the mitigation cost would reach US$107.11 billion, or 0.065 percent of the world’s GDP and around a fourth of total external public debt service.
Biden’s Unconstitutional “Bankruptcy Abuse” Act Makes Peons of Student Debtors. The law prohibits education loans from being discharged through bankruptcy. It should be repealed to provide relief. The Supreme Court recently blocked the Biden administration’s plan to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt. The decision disappointed 43 million borrowers owing $1.6 trillion in student debt. Regardless, the failure of the Biden plan misdirects us from the root problem: It’s not that student loan borrowers need debt relief; it’s that they merit a debt discharge. Every honest, unfortunate debtor has the constitutional right to a fresh start. That is, the right to discharge their debts, if overwhelming, through bankruptcy proceedings. But student loan borrowers were condemned to “involuntary servitude” when Joe Biden, while still a senator, led Congress to enact the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) in 2005.
Marjorie Cohn : Julian Assange Is “Dangerously Close” to Extradition for Revealing US War Crimes This is the first time a publisher has been charged under the Espionage Act for disclosing government secrets. For nearly five years, publisher and journalist Julian Assange has fought extradition to the United States where he faces 175 years in prison for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes. Instead of protecting freedom of the press, to which he pledged allegiance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, Joe Biden is continuing Donald Trump’s prosecution of Assange under the infamous Espionage Act. James Ball is one of at least four journalists that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI are pressuring to cooperate with the prosecution of Assange, Ball wrote in Rolling Stone. Biden’s DOJ is apparently attempting to bolster its prosecution of Assange in the event he is extradited to the United States. Ball said that all three of the other journalists being pressured to provide a statement told him they have no intention of helping the prosecution.
Civil Rights/Blackliberation:
We Who Believe In Freedom: Ida Wells’ Crusade To Arouse the Conscience of America Amidst our enduring and revivified racism – today’s GOP: “A white nationalist (is) an American” – we celebrate the birthday of anti-lynching agitator, muckraking journalist, fierce suffragist and orator Ida B. Wells, who for decades used the media to fight against lynching, “that last relic of barbarism and slavery,” as “color-line murder” based on “the old threadbare lie that Negro men assault white women.” “Only under the Stars and Stripes,” she charged, “is this human holocaust possible.”
On War, Imperialism, and Racism This is a transcript of a speech prepared by historian Russell Rickford for a protest against Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s scheduled visit to Cornell University on March 21, 2018. Cheney’s trip was postponed due to inclement weather. Organizers plan to protest whenever he arrives on campus.
Labor:
Economy:
(This article reminds of the decadence of the Roman Rulers during the fall of the Roman Empire:! — R.S.) JPMorgan Listed a “Lolita’s Closet” on the New York Stock Exchange for Jeffrey Epstein’s Money Man, Les Wexner In August 2007, Slate writer Emily Yoffe exploded a powder keg of parental anger when she shared her experience shopping with her 11-year-old daughter for back-to-school clothing in a store called Limited Too. The store, part of a large retail chain, marketed itself as an apparel haven for Tweens – girls ages 7 to 14. What Yoffe found inside the store was deeply disturbing: “a line of padded, underwire push-up bras for girls with nothing of their own to pad or push up…scanty panties…pairs with rhinestone hearts or printed with cheeky sayings such as ‘Buy It Now! Tell Dad Later!’ ” Limited Too is no longer in business but we did a check at the Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine to get a first-hand look at what Limited Too was peddling on its website in those early years. We found really sick stuff — like a survey of young girl customers that inquired if they were good at giving “massages.” (See screen shot above.) Sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who had multiple ties to this store chain, was indicted in 2019 for sex trafficking and luring underage girls to his home for “massages,” which quickly became sexual assaults. (Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial, taking a lot of dark secrets with him. His death was ruled a suicide by the Medical Examiner.). One of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, alleged in a lawsuit that Epstein’s (now convicted) accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, saw Giuffre reading a book about massage therapy at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach when Giuffre was working there as a spa attendant in 2000. Giuffre was under age at the time. Maxwell recruited Giuffre, on the pretext that she would be trained as a massage therapist, then Maxwell turned the position into what effectively became Giuffre serving as a sex slave to Epstein and his pals. In a BBC interview in 2022, Giuffre said she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” for sex with Epstein’s powerful friends.
World:
Spain: From the ‘Indignados’ to the Death of Podemos – Prepare for a New Revolutionary Cycle! On 15 May 2011, a tremendous movement erupted all over Spain: the indignados. Within a few years, it found a political expression in the rise of Podemos. But the upcoming elections this month are set to confirm the terminal decline of this party, led into a dead end by its leadership. This represents the end of a political cycle. It might seem that we have returned to square one. But the end of this cycle is preparing the ground for a new revolutionary upturn of the mass movement, on a higher level, enriched by the whole experience of the past decade.
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