Daily News Digest August 18, 2023

 Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

Cornel West 2024!

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 golf links lie so near the mill, That almost every day, The laboring children can look out  And see the men at play. — Sarah Cleghorn

¨Mayor Giuliani and the ‘Mob’: In its efforts to stop buying concrete from the Mafia, New York City may have ended up buying it from a company that was tied to the Colombo crime family. At least that is what a former mob leader has testified.     City records show that through a subcontracting arrangement, most municipal concrete work this year in Manhattan — about $1 million in gross sales — has gone to the Ferrara Bros. Building Materials Corporation. That company, the former Mafia leader testified in 1992, made payoffs to the Colombo crime family in return for labor peace and help in winning contracts.     Calling the subcontracting situation “unfortunate,” Richard J. Schwartz, a senior adviser to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, said the city was trying to find a new supplier to replace the New York West 57th Street Management Corporation, which gave the subcontracts to the Ferrara company. The West 57th Street corporation — the successor to a company the city originally helped create in 1986 in a novel plan to prevent the Mafia from getting lucrative city contracts — has an exclusive contract to provide concrete for all municipal work in Manhattan. — Mob Allegation Clouds New York Concrete Deal

I attended a panel discussion “reporting back” from this conference about the hazardous conditions from the implosion of the World Trade Center. This meeting was sponsored by Cal-OSHA, “Worksafe!,” and other safety organizations.The reporters explained that The Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response Standard (HAZWOPER) cleanup regulations were suspended for the cleanup of the World Trade Center “dustpile.” OSHA was prevented from enforcing work safety regulations and relegated to merely an advisory status. (Employers thus faced no penalties for putting workers at risk.).    To justify the suspension of the rules, all of the branches of the government determined, in statements to the public, that the air in ground zero was safe to breath.     — Movie Review: 911 Dust and Deceit at the WTC

 The public health community has been shouting from the rooftops for years about the risks posed by factory farms. In 2008, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production concluded that industrialized animal agriculture posed “unacceptable” public health risks: “Due to the large numbers of animals housed in close quarters in typical [industrial farm animal production] facilities there are many opportunities for animals to be infected by several strains of pathogens, leading to increased chance for a strain to emerge that can infect and spread in humans.” 74     Five years before that, the American Public Health Association (APHA), the largest and oldest association of public health professionals in the world, was among those advocating for “radical” (from the Latin radix, for “root” 75 ) change. In 2003, the APHA passed a “Precautionary Moratorium on New Concentrated Animal Feed Operations,” in which it urged all federal, state, and local authorities to impose an immediate moratorium on the building of new factory farms—including industrial turkey, laying hen, broiler chicken, and duck facilities. 76 In November 2019, it reiterated its stance, publishing a new policy statement calling once again for a moratorium on new factory farms as well as a moratorium on the expansion of existing ones. 77 — The United States National Center for Biotechnology Information of the Institue of Health’s Essay — Primary Pandemic Prevention

Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is one of the recognized causes of our changing climate and it is also problematic for coral reefs. The ocean absorbs approximately one-third of the atmosphere’s excess carbon dioxide, resulting in a more acidic ocean. In order for a coral reef to grow, it must produce limestone (or calcium carbonate) at a rate that is faster than the reef is being eroded. Ocean acidification slows the rate at which coral reefs generate calcium carbonate, thus slowing the growth of coral skeletons.     Climate change can cause sea level rise; changes in the frequency, intensity, and distribution of tropical storms; and altered ocean circulation. All of these impacts can have negative consequences for the health and diversity of reefs around the world, including in the Florida Keys. — Coral Bleaching and Ocean Acidification are Two Climate-Related Impacts to Coral Reefs

Podcasts/Videos of the Day:

“Watershed Moment”: Montana Rules Youth Have Constitutional

Right to Healthy Climate Kansas to Probe Police Raid on Local Newspaper; Co-Publisher Dies from Stress Day After Raid

Rocket-Launching Billionaires Promise a New Pie in the Sky 

Black Agenda Radio August 11, 2023New York City Loses Black Population Due to Lack of Affordable Housing

Jihad Abdulmumit on the Significance of Black August

Coup in Niger and the U.S. Response

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’!

After World War II Rosa Luxenburg Coined the Slogan: ‘S0cialism or Barbaism’! Now the Slogan is Ecoscialism or Ecocide!

EPA Contradicts The United States National Center for Biotechnology Information

EPA Denies Petition Seeking Stronger Rules on Water Pollution From Factory Farms The agency instead pledged to study factory farm pollution, but the petitioners say its impacts are already well known Public health and environmental advocacy groups said that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chose to benefit the factory farming industry instead of protecting communities and drinking water late Tuesday when it denied an anti-pollution petition filed in 2017 by nearly three dozen groups.

Agribusiness/Factory Farms — Environmental Hazards! The Great Land Grab: Rush for World’s Farmland Threatens Food Security for the Poor  Oakland CA: In a new report, The Great Land Grab: Rush for World’s Farmland Threatens Food Security for the Poor, the Oakland Institute sounds the alarm on the threat that land grabbing poses to food security and livelihoods. Land grabs—the purchase of vast tracts of land from poor, developing countries by wealthier, food-insecure nations and private investors —have become a widespread phenomenon, with foreign interests seeking or securing between 37 million and 49 million acres of farmland between 2006 and the middle of 2009. While such land grabs have not gone unnoticed, much attention has focused on individual countries, such as China and Saudi Arabia, buying land in poor nations. The Great Land Grab lays bare the insidious role played by international financial institutions like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank and Foreign Investment Advisory Service (FIAS), as well as rich nations, in promoting and facilitating this widespread land reappropriation—all in the name of promoting food security through foreign investment in agriculture.

Over 90% of the food we eat are Factory Farmed! What are the Costs?

  1. By their very size, they enhase the global warming of the the Earth
  2. Lately, Facory Farms are Responsible for all of the plague of Pandemics. US Capitalism Ignores Its’ Own Science for Two Decades!

From: The United States National Center for Biotechnology Information of the Institue of Health’s Essay Primary Pandemic Prevention: Factory Farms Cause Pandemics! 

 Deadlier Atlantic Storms Excessively Killing US People f Color – Study Named tropical storms and hurricanes, which have become more intense, have caused about 20,000 more deaths from 1988 to 2019 Atlantic storms have become deadlier as the planet warms – and are disproportionately killing people of color in the US, a landmark new study has found. About 20,000 excess deaths – the numbers of observed rather than expected deaths – occurred in the immediate aftermath of 179 named storms and hurricanes which struck the US mainland between 1988 and 2019.

The Guardian View on Protecting Corals: What Lies Beneath Matters Too When images of the climate emergency’s impact are so visceral and so widespread, it is easy to neglect what we cannot see. The shocking photographs and video footage of wildfires in Hawaii and Greece, and floods in China, along with the terrible loss of life and testimony from those who fled, are beginning to bring home the contribution of global heating to such disasters – even if people, and especially businesses and governments, may be slow to accept the truth and even slower to act on it.    Yet our eyes cannot fully capture the devastation in Hawaii, and it does not end where its shores meet the sea. Beneath the surface of the water, sediment runoff may smother coral polyps and block sunlight, affecting the growth of colonies, experts warn. This is only one element of a broader disaster now unfolding, which scientists fear may soon be global and yet which has generated relatively little attention or alarm. Corals in countries across Central America, North America and the Caribbean are suffering significant bleaching as they experience unprecedented levels of heat stress due to record ocean temperatures, and there are similar warnings about reefs off northern Vietnam and southern China. In Florida, some sites have reported total loss of all corals. 

Dozens Say ‘Prosecute Us Too’ If 68-Year-Old Climate Activist Is Charged Over Peaceful Protest “In the face of such violations of our ancient liberties, it should come as no surprise that members of the public are ready to take a stand.” In a show of solidarity with a retired social worker and climate activist who is facing a possible two years in jail for holding a sign, 40 members of the U.K. public on Thursday urged the solicitor general for England and Wales to also prosecute them if he decides to charge 68-year-old Trudi Warner.

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!

As Biden Touts the IRA Anniversary, Here Are 5 Carbon Bombs He Leaves Out A slew of White House actions are undermining efforts to address climate change, and under Biden, the country is producing more energy from fossil fuels than it did under former President Donald Trump. The science is clear: Building any new fossil fuel infrastructure is incompatible with a livable climate. Yet, while President Joe Biden touts the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, as the country’s biggest climate law ever, he’s glossing over all the ways his administration has advanced fossil fuels, including in the IRA.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Arkansas Will Not Recognize AP Black History for Credit, Only European History One critic of the state’s action described it as “racism pure and simple.” The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) met in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, last Thursday to discuss how to respond to the recent coup in Niger. The deadline put forward by ECOWAS for the coup leaders to step aside and restore President Mohamed Bazoum to power elapsed the previous Sunday without the military intervention that countries like Nigeria had.

Black Agenda Report

Labor:

The Rise of the Labor Movement, in the 1930s, Gave Rise to the End of Child Labor and Public Education Laws! Now, When the Labor Bureaucracy is In ‘Partnership With Capital’, We Havethe Rise of Child Labor!

Child Labor Is on the Rise

The Appalling Commodification of Children This Spring has seen timely attention to the shocking use of child labour in the U.S. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the current situation of children in the U.S. and worldwide. Attention to children waxes and wanes: Engels and Dickens wrote about the deplorable, even murderous, treatment of children in ‘civilized’ Victorian England. Novelists, child victims, Freud and Freudians, attachment and infant researchers, contribute much to understanding what children endure, what they think, feel, and need. What is described here is not secret: for example, Amy Goodman and her colleagues (Democracy Now) consistently report about children worldwide. Suppression and distortion of this information is also a constant: there is much awareness of the backlash to Sinead O’Connor’s revelations about Church abuse, of the concealment of Indigenous deaths in residential schools, and Israel’s attempt to conceal information about its treatment of Palestinian children by labelling Defence for Children International a terrorist organization. This article about child commodification summarizes recent research on systemic policies since 1996 that have caused unprecedented and unparalleled cruelty to racialized and impoverished children in the U.S.

Economy:

Is Industrial Society on the Verge of Collapse? The events of this summer suggest we are already all too close to the edge of the kind of systemic failure experienced so many centuries ago by the Mayans, the ancient Puebloans, and the Viking Greenlanders. In his 2005 bestseller Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, geographer Jared Diamond focused on past civilizations that confronted severe climate shocks, either adapting and surviving or failing to adapt and disintegrating. Among those were the Puebloan culture of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, the ancient Mayan civilization of Mesoamerica, and the Viking settlers of Greenland. Such societies, having achieved great success, imploded when their governing elites failed to adopt new survival mechanisms to face radically changing climate conditions.

Giuliani Was in the Running to Be Trump’s Attorney General. His Authoritarian Rule as Mayor Suggests a Nightmare Outcome American democracy is in a slow death gurgle from the repetition of Orwellian reverse-speak slogans: “Make America Great Again,” “Save America,” “Drain the Swamp,” and “America’s Mayor.”     Most Americans have forgotten that Rudy Giuliani was under serious consideration to be nominated by Donald Trump as his Attorney General. As “America’s Mayor,” Giuliani would have likely sailed through his Senate.

World: 

Singapore: a Safe Harbour From Capitalist Crisis? Since the start of the pandemic, Singapore has seen an unprecedented level of capital inflow. More than $400 billion SGD (nearly $300 billion USD) in capital flowed into the country in 2021 alone. The capitalists of the region and beyond sense the coming economic crisis and accompanying political and social turmoil and are betting big on Singapore to be the safe harbour to ride out the storm. However, the crisis of capitalism on a world scale will only worsen, and the capitalists will find that they can run, but they can’t hide.

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