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Daily News Digest August 15, 2023

Images of the Day:

The Slogans of a Developing Police State!: George Orwell’s 1984: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength! Public Dollars Belong in Public Schools!

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:

Why is it that the global south has to suffer the consequences that were caused by the Global North? Cancel the debts of the Global South and turn the debts into climate action. — Shamim Zawadi, Social Scientist

If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there’s shouting after you, keep going.
Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going. — Harriet Tubman

Podcasts/Vidoes of the Day:

Glenn Greenwald: Wikipedia Co-Founder Calls Wikipedia “Most Biased Encyclopedia

“War Zone”: Native Hawaiian Scholar Says Colonialism Set Stage for Destruction as Death Toll Soars

“This Is the Climate Crisis”: Michael Mann on Maui Wildfires & Why Disasters Are Becoming Deadlier

Environment:

One of Many Ways to Begin to End Global Warming: Expose ‘Greenwashing’ — Tax the Polluters 100%!

After World War II Rosa Luxenburg Coined the Slogan: ‘S0cialism or Barbaism’! Now the Slogan Should Be: ‘Ecosocialism or Ecocide’!

Fact Sheet: The Climate President’s Emergency Powers

We are Now Facing an Apocalyptic Future!: Ready or Not, the Climate Crisis Is Here Denial operates at individual and societal levels, in both cases upholding an unsustainable status quo; we cannot escape death or the consequences of climate change, which for many will be one and the same.

Opposition to Government Regulatory Mandates And Funding Contributed to Hawaii Wildfire Disaster The following is based on official reports by the Hawaiian government. Links and excerpts provided below. Hawaiian and federal government officials were fully aware of wildfire risks and the fact that current wildfire prevention and response programs were totally inadequate to protect public safety from increasingly frequent and severe wildfires. Those same officials were fully aware of the science and management approach required to prevent wildfires and reduce wildfire risks, see:

The Big AEPA: A Last Chance to Save the Appalachian Ecosystem Proforestation means “growing existing forests intact to their ecological potential” [1]. In other words, protecting standing intact forests and letting them grow and develop in complexity to their natural old growth state. The 2019 paper’s title says it all: “Intact Forests in the United States: Proforestation Mitigates Climate Change and Serves the Greatest Good.” Forests of older and larger trees sequester far more carbon than do those of younger smaller trees [2]. Clearly, intact older forests are of such exceptional value in so many ways that their preservation must be made an urgent priority [3].

Debate Intensifies Over PFAS Cleanup Costs Amid US Regulator’s Actions Various health issues like cancer, birth defects, reduced fertility, and kidney disease are connected to PFAS. As U.S. regulators work to tackle the toxic threat posed by a class of widely used chemicals known as PFAS, debate is heating up over who could — and should — get hit with the cleanup costs. Over the last several weeks, federal officials have received an onslaught of conflicting calls for action regarding a proposal to designate certain types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) as “hazardous substances” under the nation’s so-called “Superfund” law. The designation would provide a pathway for the remediation of dangerously contaminated sites around the United States, including assigning liability for the hazardous waste cleanup.

It’s Time to Cancel the Mountain Valley Pipeline—Just Ask the People of Maui The MVP is a climate time bomb. It is literally a public safety hazard and an enormously corrupt and democracy-ending project. After Hawaii saw the worst disaster in its history and people perished in a massive climate change-driven wildfire, the 4th Circuit felt they had no other choice but to dismiss lawsuits designed to protect our environment.

Record Ocean Heatwaves Threaten Ecosystems, Wreaking Havoc on Fisheries Rising marine temperatures will remake natural ocean patterns and cost coastal economies billions in coming years. Scientists first spotted the Blob in late 2013. The sprawling patch of unusually tepid water in the Gulf of Alaska grew, and grew some more, until it covered an area about the size of the continental United States. Over the course of two years, 1 million seabirds died, kelp forests withered, and sea lion pups got stranded. But you could have easily missed it. A heat wave in the ocean is not like one on land. What happens on the 70 percent of the planet covered by saltwater is mostly out of sight. There’s no melting asphalt, no straining electrical grids, no sweating through shirts. Just a deep-red splotch on a scientist’s map telling everyone it’s hot out there, and perhaps a photo of birds washed up on a faraway beach to prove it. Yet marine heat waves can “inject a lot of chaos,” said Chris Free, a fisheries scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It’s not just gulls and sea snails that suffer. Some 100 million Pacific cod, commonly used in fish and chips, vanished in the Gulf of Alaska during the Blob. In British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, salmon runs — and the fishing industry that depends on them — floundered. The acute warming also triggered a toxic algal bloom that disrupted the West Coast’s lucrative Dungeness crab business.

State Pension Fund Is Invested in Deal to Drain Arizona’s Dwindling Groundwater The state’s investment into exporting its own water overseas comes as the region faces ongoing water shortages. As rural Arizonans face the prospect of wells running dry, foreign firms are sucking up vast amounts of the state’s groundwater to grow hay for Saudi Arabia and other wealthy nations. Now it turns out that a key investor in this water transfer scheme is Arizona’s own employee retirement fund.

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!

A Sign of Creeping Fascism: Private, Lawless Police Army: The Rise Of Private Cops: How Not To Tackle Homelessness During A Recent Visit To Portland, Oregon, My Husband And I Watched A Private Security Guard Help Up An Unhoused Man From The Sidewalk. Three White Women Looked On At The Interaction That Took Place In The Trendy Nob Hill Neighborhood On August 7, 2023, Right In Front Of A Yoga Studio. But The Guard Was Not Responding With Compassion. Seconds Earlier, The Tall And Very Muscular Man Sporting A Flak Jacket Emblazoned With The Word “Security,” Had Walked Right By Me Toward The Unhoused Man And Savagely Knocked Him To The Ground Without Provocation Or Warning. Blood Streamed From The Victim’s Face And Onto The Sidewalk. He Stood Up As The Guard Hovered Over Him And Stumbled Toward The Damaged Glasses That Had Fallen Off His Face During The Assault. The Guard, Who Was Twice The Man’s Size, Picked Up And Offered Him The Hat That Had Also Fallen Off His Head And Ushered Him Away.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

New Book Edited by Incarcerated Writers Explores Oppression Beyond Prison Walls ” “American Precariat” explores the ways in which people have been pushed to the edge by myriad social ills. “The precariat is not the equivalent of what we used to call the working class,” National Book Critics Circle award recipient Eula Biss writes in the introduction to American Precariat: Parables of Exclusion. “More common now is gig work, with no set hours, no potential for advancement, work done through the interface of an app by workers who don’t know the people for whom they’re working.”

Racial Segregation and Gun Violence in Black Communities What distinguishes the United States from other rich countries is not freedom, but firearms. No other rich country has a firearm homicide rate anywhere near as high as the United States. As if to emphasize this point, over last month’s Fourth of July holiday weekend, there were at least 17 mass shootings which left 18 people dead and 102 injured. The Fourth of July is the most popular day for mass shootings in the United States.

Higher Ed, We Must Go Beyond Diversity and Inclusion The framework of diversity, equity and inclusion isn’t radical enough to truly challenge the spheres of power. In a single academic year, political and judicial leaders have escalated their anti-democratic, anti-educational movement aimed at dismantling higher education’s focus on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), initiating a furiously paced rejection of racial, sexual and ethnic diversity — as well as basic humanity. Multiple states have instituted curricular gag orders through “divisive concept” legislation and eliminated funding for DEI curriculum, offices or employees. Right-wing leaders and activists have worked to intimidate students and higher education experts whose identities and/or scholarship have traditionally been marginalized. And in June, the Supreme Court banned race-conscious school admissions entirely.

Labor:

Economy:

Judge Jed Rakoff Has Regularly Dined in the Past with the Chairman of the Law Firm that Just Got a Big Win in His Court in the JPMorgan Sex Trafficking Case In 2017, Simon & Schuster released the book, The Chickenshit Club, by the Pulitzer-prize winning public interest writer, Jesse Eisinger. The title derives from the premise that the prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice are too worried about losing a case or harming their ability to get those seven-figure pay packages at the big Wall Street law firms to do their jobs properly as prosecutors. Aside from that narrative, which is brilliantly analyzed by Eisinger, the book reveals a stunning fact about Manhattan federal district court Judge Jed Rakoff – a man who has gone out of his way to portray himself with the media as the protector of the public interest.

World:

Chris Hedges: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – The Israel Lobby’s Useful Idiot The long nightmare of oppression of Palestinians is not a tangential issue. It is a black and white issue of a settler-colonial state imposing a military occupation, horrific violence and apartheid, backed by billions of U.S. dollars, on the indigenous population of Palestine. It is the all powerful against the all powerless. Israel uses its modern weaponry against a captive population that has no army, no navy, no air force, no mechanized military units, no command and control and no heavy artillery, while pretending intermittent acts of wholesale slaughter are wars. The crude rockets fired at Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance organizations — a war crime because they target civilians — are not remotely comparable to the 2,000 pound “bunker-buster” Mark-84 bombs with a “kill radius” of over 32 yards and which “create a supersonic wave of pressure when they explode” that have been dropped by Israel on crowded Palestinian neighborhoods, the thousands of Palestinian killed and wounded and the targeted destruction of basic infrastructure, including electrical grids and water purification plants.

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

The Capitalist Slogan is Ignorance is Strength: Budget Cuts have been the Code Word Cuts to Public Edication and the Growth of Irnorance!: 50 Years Older and Deeper in Debt: The Shaky Foundations of US School Funding Most schools don’t get enough money, and the money they do get is not distributed fairly. This year marks the 50th anniversary of San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the landmark 5-4 Supreme Court decision that held that education is not a fundamental right protected by the U.S. Constitution. The decision dashed hopes that the historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling that ended legal segregation in 1954 would be followed by a sustained federal commitment to making education equality a reality. We moved into toan affordable senior housing complex,the rent was under $two thansand a monther for a 2 bedroom 2 bathrom apartment. Eight years later, yhr rent is over $3100 a month and Rising! After Urban Renwal, The United States Stopped Building Low Cost housing! Instead, with Urban Renewal, they sometimes build ‘Affordable Housing’ that soon become, with built in uearly rent increases, Unaffordable!: A Lack of Supply Isn’t Causing Our Housing Crisis Schwartz and McClure put it plainly: “Nationally, there is no shortage of housing, and adding to the surplus won’t resolve the nation’s affordability problems.” Millions of people simply do not make enough money to consistently afford market-rate housing. Contrary to popular belief, all that construction won’t help the hundreds of families I saw facing eviction. Nor will it be of any benefit to almost any of the 13 million other households currently behind on their rent or mortgage or the 600,000 people who are homeless in this country. You wouldn’t know that from listening to the Biden administration, state governors, and think tanks, all of whom trumpet the virtues of building more housing. The New York Times diagnoses homelessness as a simple “supply-and-demand problem.”

Archaeology Is Flipping the Script on What We Know About Ancient Mesoamerica The implications of this archaeological research are too informative and powerful to stay put in textbooks. Recent archaeology emerging from ancient Mesoamerica is flipping the script of public understanding about the people and institutions that inhabited this world: the evidence tells us that cooperative and pluralistic government was at least as common as and more resilient than despotic states.

From the Manifesto of the Communist Party: The history of all hitherto existing society† is the history †That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan’s (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)