Daily News Digest July 21, 2023
Images of the Day:
Capitalsm’s Deforestation: Four-Century History 0f Land Transformation by Humans in the United States (1630–2020) 
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:
When discussing young people and future leadership, people often reference traditional positions of power like politicians, executives of legacy companies, and directors of nonprofits. Many of these positions are not immediately attainable for the average young person. Once they are attainable to most young people, the climate would have already suffered significant and irreparable damage. By the time I can qualify to run for president in the U.S. in 2035, we would have already reached an ecological tipping point. So if young people wait to be the “leaders of tomorrow,” it will already be too late. — Young Climate Activists Aren’t Leading omorrow — They Are Leading Today If we wait to be “leaders of tomorrow,” it will already be too late. That’s why we’re leading now.
Podcasts/Vidoes of the Day:
Which Contries are Historicall Responsible of Cimate Change?
Black Agenda Radio July 14, 2023 With Margaret Kimberly
Mutulu Shakur’s Revolutionary Legacy
Eritrea’s Continuing Struggle Against U.S. Interference
Mayor Eric Adams Proposes Ending the Right to Shelter
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%!
New York City to Pay Record Settlement for ‘Kettling’ George Floyd Protester New York City and the New York Police Department have agreed to collectively pay millions to protesters who were arrested, detained or subjected to violence during a George Floyd demonstration in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx in June 2020, according to a court filing. The settlement agreement called for more than 300 protesters confined that day using a police tactic they referred to as “kettling” to each receive $21,500, which is believed to be the highest per-person settlement award in a mass arrest class action lawsuit. The total cost of the settlement will be nearly $7 million. “We are really pleased with the settlement,” plaintiffs’ attorney Ali Frick told ABC News. “This was essentially a premeditated show of force against people who were demonstrating against police violence.
Global Food Justice Movement Warns Against Corporate Takeover of UN Food Summit “Don’t appoint the goat as gardener, a peasant proverb says,” one advocate said of inviting agricultural companies to weigh in on issues of global food security.
Book Review: Deforesting the Earth: From Prehistory to Global Crisis Deforesting the Earth is valuable economic and environmental history. These two often do not go together, unfortunately. In much environmental history, humans (especially those from western industrial societies) are the problem. Nature in general and forests in particular, are often alleged to have been in a natural equilibrium with native peoples until both were ravaged by the onset of capitalist exploitation. With contemporary fears of globalization, global warming, species extinction, losses of biodiversity, deforestation, and depletion of many critical resources, advocacy groups and other special interests exaggerate environmental “crises” and fail to place them into their historical bases. In this setting it is difficult to find careful, reasoned examinations of key problems, their histories, complexities, and likely, long-term patterns and consequences. Deforestation, particularly of Amazon and other rainforests, certainly ranks at or near the top of any list of environmental crises. The issue is an impassioned one and a flood of alarmist books and articles have appeared on the subject, but they provide little understanding of the extent of deforestation, nature of regeneration, or of the underlying issues involved. Deforesting the Earth is valuable economic and environmental history. These two often do not go together, unfortunately. In much environmental history, humans (especially those from western industrial societies) are the problem. Nature in general and forests in particular, are often alleged to have been in a natural equilibrium with native peoples until both were ravaged by the onset of capitalist exploitation.
The Amazon is No Longer a Carbon Sink. It’s a ‘Carbon Source’ The rainforests of the Amazon have long been known as “the lungs of the planet,” yet that may no longer be the case. The region’s forests produce more than a billion tons of CO2 a year, which means that they now emit more carbon than they absorb, according to new research.
European Union: Who Pays the Bill for the Climate Crisis? The recent media circus around the Nature Restoration Law approved last week by the European Parliament (which has been rendered essentially harmless in its concrete effects) is intended to conceal the EU’s real objectives: the revival of a ‘green’ protectionism, paid for by workers and their families. The trend towards protectionism and the clash between imperialist blocs is expressing itself not only in military conflicts and trade wars, but also in competing policies adopted by various countries over the issue of climate change. On one side there is China, which holds a huge slice of the raw materials needed to produce so-called ‘green’ technologies, from the batteries in electric cars to solar panels. On the other hand, there is the USA, which has passed the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act), a package of incentives and public subsidies worth hundreds of billions of dollars, which is being passed off as a plan to combat global warming. In actual fact, however, it provides for brazenly protectionist measures in support of American industries against Chinese and European.
EPA Proposal Could Embolden Industry to ‘Destroy Wetlands and Pollute Our Waters’ “We have seen states like Florida work with the Trump administration, cutting corners to unlawfully take this permitting authority from federal agencies, with disastrous consequences,” noted one lawyer. An environmental law group on Wednesday sounded the alarm over a proposed Biden administration rule intended to “streamline and clarify the requirements and steps necessary for states and tribes to administer programs protecting waterways from discharges of dredged or fill material without a permit.” Earthjusticewarned in a statement that the new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal—for which the administration will now accept and consider public comment—could “allow more pollution and reckless development” in U.S.
Tornado Damages Pfizer Plant In North Carolina As Extreme Weather Hits The U.S. The large manufacturing complex produces anesthesia and other drugs as well as nearly 25% of all sterile injectable medications used in U.S. hospitals. A tornado heavily damaged a major Pfizer pharmaceutical plant in North Carolina on Wednesday, while torrential rain flooded communities in Kentucky and an area from California to South Florida endured more scorching heat.
People Need to be Riled Up’: Meteorologist Names US Heatwaves After Oil And Gas Giants Guy Walton has christened two previous heatwaves this summer Amoco and BP in attempt to name and shame fossil fuel firms The summer’s heatwaves have been so blistering they have inspired their own names. In Europe they have been called nightmarish figures from Greek mythology, but one meteorologist in the US has taken a more pointed approach – by naming the country’s heatwaves after the oil and gas companies that have worsened the climate crisis.
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!
With Real Unemloyment Now 24.9%, It is Very Difficult for a Young Person/ Black and/Young or a Person, Over 50. to Get a New Job or Keep a Job, — For Them no Food Stanps! New SNAP Policy Will Force People Over 50 to Work to Retain Food Benefits About 750,000 people are forced to work or lose food stamp benefits because of the new bipartisan compromise over SNAP. In the course of the recent resolution to the long-brewing debt ceiling crisis, it was congressional bickering that drew the most attention. Although it was largely drowned out by senatorial diatribes, the final June 2 debt ceiling measure included a substantive change: a modification to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), widely known as food stamps.
Civil Rights/Blackliberation:
Kids Are Being Kept in Solitary Confinement, Former Death Row Unit With No AC “The state’s treatment of kids in Angola has been a series of broken promises,” said one civil rights lawyer Children incarcerated at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola prison have been locked in windowless cells for nearly 24 hours a day without air conditioning as heat indexes in the area reach up to 133 degrees.
The youth, almost all of whom are Black, are being detained in the former death row building of the nation’s largest adult maximum security prison, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana. One child also described being maced and thrown against the wall by staff in court filings.
Atlanta City Leaders are Subverting Democracy to Save Cop City With a referendum against the police facility in the works, Atlanta is making sure it won’t be valid. Activists have other ways to fight. The city of Atlanta is signaling its intention to preemptively invalidate a referendum campaign to stop the construction of a vast police training facility — “Cop City” — on Atlanta forest land. A federal court filing late last week, made on behalf of the city by attorneys from elite Atlanta law firm Bondurant Mixson & Elmore, calls the effort to put a Cop City referendum on the November ballot “invalid” and “futile.” Meanwhile, organizers are still gathering the necessary 70,000 signatures to move forward with the petition. The city’s filing is not a direct challenge to the entire referendum campaign, but it makes clear that Atlanta officials will act to nullify the democratic effort in court, should organizers succeed in getting Cop City on the ballot.
Black Agenda Report
- How the Climate Crisis is Most Detrimental to the Black Community The earth recently experienced its hottest days on record. Here in the U.S. Black people face the worst consequences of the climate crisis.
- Haiti 2023: Black Agenda Report Special Issue Black Agenda Report continues its commitment to reporting on events in Haiti.
- Kagame and Other Stooges Do U.S. Bidding in Haiti The enemies of affirmative action programs are not just slick conservatives and vulgar racists, but also greasy liberals, argues Gerald Horne. And their efforts to dismantle such programs began as…
- Haitians Protest UN Occupation and Pending Foreign “Intervention” Haitians protest oligarchic rule, UN occupation, and foreign military “intervention.”
- Black Alliance for Peace Once Again Calls on International Community To Reject U.S./U.N./CARICOM Plan for An Armed Intervention of Haiti All of Haiti’s ills stem from interventions, invasions and interference in its affairs. The new call for a US/UN/CARICOM invasion is part of a long running plan to undermine the sovereignty of the…
- RFK, Jr.: It’s Not Genetics, It’s Racial Capitalism Black people were disproportionately impacted by the covid pandemic. The causes of the crisis were systemic, not genetic.
- RFK, Jr.: It’s Not Genetics, It’s Racial Capitalism Black people were disproportionately impacted by the covid pandemic. The causes of the crisis were systemic, not genetic.
- Who supports foreign invasion of Haiti, why? Core Group and their Haitian oligarch allies are committed to another invasion. Black “leaders” will give them cover and legitimize their crimes
- Nahel’s France: Neo-Colonized and Pan-African Voices Speak Up The police killing of Nahel M. in France cannot be properly analyzed outside of the context of French colonialism and neo-colonialism
- Eritrea: The Story You Don’t Hear Eritrea is an African success story. The nation provides for its peoples needs despite the impact of sanctions imposed by the west which are meant to undermine its sovereignty.
Labor:
The Hollywood Strike Can and Must Win – For All Of Us, Not Just Writers and Actors The thousands of strikers are at the frontlines of two key battles: against a future controlled by AI, and against suffocating inequality.
Shdow Government Statistics: June 2023 Employment and Unemployment is 24.9%
Increasingly Negative Implications for Second-Quarter GDP: June 2023 Payrolls and Unemployment Highlighted a Weakening Economy. Headline June U.3 Unemployment Narrowed by 0.1%, but. Slowing Economic Activity Drove the Broader U.6 and
ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment Rates Higher by 0.2% Where Total “Employed” Increased by 273,000 in June, That Included
Those Working “Part Time for Economic Reasons” Jumping by 452,000June 2023 Employment and Unemployment detail highlighted a weakening economy. As reported July 7th by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), June 2023 labor conditions reflected a narrowing in the headline U.3 unemployment rate, from 3.65% in May 2023 to 3.57% in June, but the unfolding, FOMC-driven economic downturn drove the broader U.6 unemployment rate higher, from 6.74% in May to 6.88% in June (including discouraged workers and all other people marginally attached to the labor force, plus total unemployed part times for economic reasons). On top of the deteriorating, broader headline unemployment picture, the Shadow Stats Alternate Unemployment Rate, encompassing long-term discouraged workers (those not counted by the BLS after a year), rose to a 21-month high of 24.9% in June 2023, from 24.7% in May. The Unemployment ALTERNATE DATA Tab on Shadow Government Statistics and has been updated for the June 2023 details.
Economy:
Michael Roberts Facebook Blog: US corporate profits are falling. According to FactSet, for Q2 2023, the blended earnings decline for the S&P 500 is -7.1% as reported up to 14 July. This is the third straight quarter the index has reported a decline in earnings. If -7.1% is the actual decline for the quarter, it will mark the largest earnings decline reported by the index since Q2 2020 (-31.6%). And much of the high profits and stock market gains have been confined to the seven large tech stocks – up 58% so far this year compared to just 4% for the other 493 stocks in the S&P 500 index. Re, S&P 500 Will Likely Report A Decline in Earnings for 3rd Consecutive Quarter on Q2 2023
The data in the chart above comes directly from what the biggest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, reported on its 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the quarter ending March 31, 2023. Despite all those mainstream media headlines and news stories about the biggest banks in the U.S. being the deposit beneficiaries of the banking panic earlier this year, the cold, hard facts on the ground are the following: at the end of the first quarter of this year, JPMorgan Chase had seen deposit outflows in four out of the past five quarters. Mainstream media conveniently forgot to mention that.
World:
European Parliament Approves Vicious Anti-Cuba Resolution Signs were evident. Touring Spain in May, the Cuban musical duo Buena Fe (Good Faith) had their concerts disrupted by thugs; some were canceled. A month later in Paris, protests orchestrated by a Cuban émigré university professor forced a prestigious poetry festival to withdraw the honorary presidency it was going to award Cuban poet Nancy Morejón. On July 12, Cuba’s unstable relations with European governments went downhill fast. The European Parliament approved a “Resolution on the state of the EU-Cuba PDCA in the light of the recent visit of the High Representative to the island.” There were 359 votes in favor, 226 against, and 50 abstentions. The PDCA is the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement that, facilitated by the European Council and signed in 2016, was supposed to encourage individual countries to downplay differences with Cuba in favor of European consensus and “constructive engagement.” It was to have “supported the process of economic and social modernization in Cuba.” The PDCA replaced the EU’s “Common Position” that, from 1998 on, promoted relationships that Cuba regarded as “unilateral, interventionist, selective and discriminatory.”
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