Daily News Digest August 3, 2023
Images of the Day:
Bendib: The Olfactorily-Challenged
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:
“We still have a chance to change the broken economic system that puts profit and overconsumption before people and nature,” said Greenpeace International. Campaigners and researchers who calculate “Earth Overshoot Day” each year called on policymakers to help “move the date” on Tuesday as they announced the planet has already reached the date when humanity has used more natural resources than the Earth can regenerate in a year. — On Earth Overshoot Day, Campaigners Say ‘Move the Date’ by Fixing Broken Economic System
Podcasts/Vidoes of the Day:
Did Western Military Presence Help Foster Coup in Niger, Where U.S. Has Drone Base & 1,000+ Troops?
Black Agenda Radio July 28, 2023
Solidarity with Venezuela, and Getting Justice in the U.S.
Closing Rikers Island and Decarcerating New York City
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%!
This Chart Proves Global Warming is Systemic to Capitallsm!: Weekly Average CO2 @t Mauna Loa Week beginning on July 23, 2023 422.43 ppm Weekly value from 1 year ago: 418.03 ppm Weekly om 10 years ago: 397.30 ppm
Agribusiness — Factory Farms Are Pandemic Breeders!: George Monibot: All Hat and No Cattle The spectacular implosion of a popular delusion about livestock farming. Every industry has its apparatus of justification. The more damaging the industry, the greater the effort spent constructing it. Few if any industries are as damaging as meat production, especially meat production from ruminant animals, such as cattle and sheep. The principal reason is their vast hunger for land. Every hectare of land used for an extractive industry is a hectare than cannot be occupied by wild ecosystems. Cattle and sheep ranching has destroyed more habitat and seized more indigenous people’s land than any other enterprise – and continues to do so. Rainforests, dry forests, wetlands, natural grasslands and savannahs have all been converted on a massive scale to ranchland.
Desertification of the Midwes?: For the Midwest, There’s No Easy Way Out of This Year’s Drought Sporadic, intense rain events and soil conditions affect the region’s ability to recover from hot and dry weather. A hot summer and dry spring have brought drought to a large part of the Midwest. The lack of moisture has far-reaching implications, including on agriculture and water levels on the country’s largest rivers. “Rain is essential — it is where drought starts and ends,” said Illinois State Climatologist Trent Ford. “As we were going into drought from April through June, we just weren’t getting rain.”
Britain’s World Championship Triathletes Cannot Train in Irish Sea Due to Pollution Team forced to practice in indoor pool ahead of competition in Spain amid high sewage levels off coast of Lancashire British triathletes preparing for next month’s world championships have been forced to abandon open water swim training because of sewage in the sea off the coast of Lancashire.
Chinese Firefighter ‘Dies Heroic Death’ As Beijing Reports Heaviest Rain in 140 Years Extreme weather comes as China’s foreign ministry denies reports that it obstructed discussions on climate crisis at G20 meetings China’s government awarded martyr status to a firefighter who died as he tried to rescue people trapped by heavy flooding that has pummelled Beijing and surrounding areas in the heaviest rain in at least 140 years.
Polluters Rely on Old Rhetoric to Block Clean Energy Future For 60 years, corporate polluters and their political allies have sought to slow and derail anti-pollution laws, often using the exact same arguments and wording. Today’s pushback against EPA proposals to cut CO2 emissions from power plants is no exception. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering proposals aimed at reducing climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from existing coal and gas-fueled power plants. Power plants are the second-largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States, and the pollution standards, which are open for public comment until August 8, will mark a new milestone in climate action. But the United States’ biggest polluters and their political allies are pushing back — just as they have resisted every other landmark shift in the 60-year history of federal air pollution control. “This administration is determined to advance its radical climate agenda and has made it clear they are hellbent on doing everything in their power to regulate coal and gas-fueled power plants out of existence, no matter the cost to energy security and reliability,” declared Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-WV) in a May 10 statement.
Tribes to EPA: Ban Fish-Killing Tire Chemical 6PPD “If EPA truly cares about protecting the environment and the tribe’s treaty rights, not just industry’s pocketbooks, it will act now,” said one tribe’s environmental scientist.
As the Country Bakes, Tell the EPA to Strengthen Power Plant Standards Cleaning up the power sector is a foundational component of any and every viable path to meeting our nation’s climate targets.
United States:
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!
Pax Americana: How the US Ascended to Global Empire in the 20th Century The way the U.S. global empire developed to be the most powerful empire in history is encapsulated in the first three presidents of the 20th century, William Appleman Williams wrote in his final work, published in 1980, Empire as a Way of Life: An Essay on the Causes and Character of America’s Present Predicament Along with a Few Thoughts About an Alternative.
How Lockheed’s Stock Buyback Bonanza Is Paid for by You The arms industry titan pockets billions a year in federal contracts then turns around and uses it to enrich its shareholders. The value of Lockheed Martin’s stock grew by 37 percent last year, representing an incredible financial gain for investors in the nation’s largest military contractor. This spike was hardly the result of changing market conditions, however: the S&P 500 ended the year with growth of -20 percent. Instead, this growth came from stock buybacks. In 2022, the company bought back more of its own stock than in any other year in its history: $7.9 billion, equivalent to 12 percent of its sales income.
Top Medical Journals Publish Unprecedented Joint Call for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons “The nuclear-armed states must eliminate their nuclear arsenals before they eliminate us.” Leading medical journals published a joint editorial late Tuesday calling on world leaders to take urgent steps to reduce the risk of nuclear war—and eliminate atomic weapons altogether—as the threat of a potentially civilization-ending conflict continues to grow. The call was first issued in The Lancet, The BMJ, JAMA, International Nursing Review, and other top journals. Dozens of other journals are expected to publish the editorial in the coming days ahead of the 78th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Patrick Lawrence: Reading the Mess the Democrats Have Made At writing, we are 16 months and five days from the 2024 presidential election. If a week is a long time in politics, there is too strong a chance that the interim upon us will prove one of awful eventfulness. In my read, the risk of brazen lawlessness in the upper reaches of power and, in consequence, a constitutional crisis, is now greater than at any point in the postwar period. It is time to brace ourselves against this eventuality. Is there any other plausible conclusion as things now stand? I do not see one. Two reasons: One, the Democrats have emerged since Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016 as a party of liberal authoritarians intent on imposing their political hegemony on our republic by whatever means this project requires. Nothing is out of bounds, as these people have already demonstrated. Two, in what looks like one of the great political miscalculations in my lifetime, the Democrats are determined to stand a candidate in 2024 whose senility has been publicly on display for the past two years and change.
After 21 Years, the Harms of Guantánamo Bay Are Still Unending A recent U.N. report calls for a way forward that directly addresses the crimes of the past, including the need for public apology, compensation to former detainees, and the shutting down of that infamous prison.
Civil Rights/Blackliberation:
COINTELPRO Continues!: Lawsuit Targets Fbi Probe of Racial Justice Activists The FBI’s secret infiltration of the 2020 protest movement, first revealed by The Intercept and the podcast series “Alphabet Boys,” is being challenged for chilling free speech. The fbi’s secret infiltration and subversion of the racial justice movement in Colorado was challenged Tuesday in a lawsuit alleging that federal and local law enforcement officials abused their powers when they targeted left-wing activists in the summer of 2020. The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, accuses the FBI, the Colorado Springs Police Department, and local police officers of overstepping their authority in infiltrating, surveilling, and requesting search warrants aimed at Colorado Springs activists. The FBI’s targeting of racial justice activists was revealed in February by The Intercept and the podcast series “Alphabet Boys.”
After His Mother Asked For Help, Fbi Terrorism Sting Targets Mentally Ill Teen She said two FBI informants “groomed” her son. They waited until the day after his 18th birthday to spring their trap. On a recent Monday, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of an 18-year-old man, Davin Daniel Meyer, on charges of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Meyer had been arrested the previous Friday, July 14, at Denver International Airport as he tried to board a flight to Turkey. Meyer thought he was going to the Turkish city of Ankara for a rendezvous with members of the Islamic State terrorist group.
Federal Judge Blocks CFPB Rule Aimed at Preventing Discrimination by Small Business Lenders “Big bank special interests with a record of discrimination have delivered a one-two punch against the bureau in their own selfish interest to turn away borrowers of color with impunity,” said one consumer advocate.
Labor:
Economy:
Fed Reserve Rate Hikes May Set Stage for Financial Crises in Global South Monetary policy to control inflation in the U.S. has significant impacts on poor and indebted nations. The campaign to fight U.S. inflation by upping interest rates has been going on for a year and a half — and its impacts are being felt around the world. On July 26, 2023, the Federal Reserve announced another quarter-point hike. That means U.S. rates have now gone up 5.25 percentage points over the past 18 months. While inflation is now coming down in the U.S., the aggressive monetary policy may also be having significant longer-term impact on countries across the world, especially in developing countries. And that isn’t good.
FRED Effective Federal Funds Rate is 5.33%
Former FBI Agent Prepared to Testify that JPMorgan Had Jeffrey Epstein Account for 28 Years – Not 15 Years – and “Impeded” Criminal Investigation of Epstein On July 24th and 25th, the Attorney General’s Office for the U.S. Virgin Islands filed dozens of documents in the court case it has launched against the largest federally-insured bank in the United States – JPMorgan Chase – in a U.S. district court in Manhattan. A quick glance at the giant blur of filings indicated that the vast majority had been filed under seal. (See a partial screen shot here.) The U.S. Virgin Islands is credibly alleging in its lawsuit that JPMorgan Chase “actively participated in Epstein’s sex trafficking venture” where dozens of underage girls were sexually assaulted by Epstein or his rich pals. Wall Street On Parade has learned over the years to deeply scrutinize anything that is happening in the federal district court in the Southern District of New York, where Wall Street has kept critical information about its serial crimes against the American people hidden behind a dark curtain of protective orders, sealed documents, and non-transcribed conferences with the judge – exactly what is happening in this case.
World:Capitalism was Built by the Slave Trade — Racism is Systemic to Capitalism!: The Struggles of Black and African History in Britain The University of Chichester has unilaterally announced that it will suspend the important MRes (Master by Research) on ‘The History of Africa and the African Diaspora’. This decision was abruptly taken overnight without consulting its course leader, the world-renowned academic Professor Hakim Adi, currently the only Professor of the History of Africa and the African diaspora in Britain. More than that, Professor Adi is actually the first person of African heritage to become a history professor in Britain – but despite this accolade, he is not being celebrated, but rather threatened with redundancy. What does this move signal for the broader study of Africa and its diaspora in the United Kingdom? What consequences can Black British people expect?
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