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Daily News Digest September 11, 2023

Capitalism is Now a Worldwide Threat to Humanity! It is on the Fast Track to Global Warming and/or Nuclear War Catastrophes!

9-11/:

Cancers, from 9-11 Implosions’s Toxic Dust, are Now Being Reported. The Cancer Toll will rise for it can take 40years afer exposure before cancers to arise!:

Asbestos, 9/11 and the World Trade Center Toxic asbestos and other carcinogens were released during the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. First responders, survivors and residents exposed to the dust are developing health effects such as respiratory diseases and cancer.

Asbestos Exposure and 9/11

The collapse of the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, released a plume containing 400 tons of pulverized asbestos and other hazardous materials across lower Manhattan.

An estimated 410,000 to 525,000 people, including more than 90,000 workers, were exposed to the toxic dust during the rescue, recovery and cleanup efforts that followed the attack.

Who Is at Risk of Health Effects?

According to the World Trade Center Health Program, anyone within a 1.5-mile radius of the World Trade Center was at risk of exposure to asbestos as well as other carcinogens such as lead, mercury, benzene and dioxins. A 2011 study involving firefighters exposed to World Trade Center dust proved this group is 19% more likely to develop cancer than the general population.

People Most at Risk

First responders, including firefighters
Search and rescue workers
Cleanup workers
Survivors and residents

Images of the Day:

The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions How the Pentagon became the world’s largest single greenhouse gas emitter and why it’s not too late to break the link between national security and fossil fuel consumption.

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:

9-11: The Government Lied About the Environmmental Hazardous at ‘ground zero’, putting ‘first responders’, workers, and the population at risk of cancer!: In January, 2002, I attended a panel discussion “reporting back” 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.” And that 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.) The haste to rapidly dispose of hazardous waste, unencumbered by safety regulations, compounded the environmental damage and the catastrophic damage to humans working and living in the affected area. To make matters worse, the government led people to believe that things were safe. They did not inform the workers and residents in the area of the immediate risks and long range risks to their longevity. It is obvious that the government is/was aware of these risks, because it suspended safety regulations. (If conditions truly were safe, then regulations would not have to be suspended.) The knowledge of the long range potential liabilities of the building contractors, the asbestos companies, and other producers of carcinogens, is also why the government is now proposing to put limits on asbestos litigations. The driving force behind these actions was the economic necessity to hasten the reopening of Wall Street— a clear illustration of profits being more important than human lives! — 9-11 World Trade Center Dust Cloud: How Many Will Die?!

Cate Jenkins, PhD, a 22-year specialist with the EPA’s Hazardous Waste Identification Division and the author of a 432-page memo to the EPA’s Inspector General as background documentation for the recently released IG report.On January 11, 2002, a memorandum was sent by Cate Jenkins, Ph.D., the head EPA hazardous waste investigator in lower Manhattan after 9/11. This memorandum compared the asbestos levels in the Montana, Libby Hazardous Waste Superfund Site* to the levels she found in Lower Manhattan. (In Libby, Montana almost 30% of the Libby residents were hurt by asbestos.) — 9-11 World Trade Center Dust Cloud: How Many Will Die?!

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!

Videos of the Day:

World Trade Center and How it Collapsed

Mexico Decriminalizes Abortion in Major Step Forward for Reproductive Rights in Latin America

After Reaching U.S. Open Final, Coco Gauff Backs Climate Protesters Who Disrupted Tennis Match

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!

The 2023 WMO Air Quality and Climate Bulletin focuses on heatwaves, showing that it is not just high temperatures which are a hazard, but also the impacts of resulting pollution which are often overlooked but are just as pernicious. — Record heatwaves are Worsening Air Quality, Harming Human Health

UN: The Triple Planetary Crisis: Forging a New Relationship Between People and the Earth The triple planetary crisis – climate, nature, and pollution. The science is crystal clear that we are putting extreme pressures on the planet. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052. Just last week in fact, the World Meteorological Organization and the UK’s Met Office brought this timeline even closer home, with new climate predictions that point to a 20 per cent likelihood that one of the next five years will be 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial levels. Our colleagues at the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have sounded the alarm on the rapid decline of nature and what this means for Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. Loss of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity will undermine our efforts on 80 per cent of assessed SDG Targets, making it even more difficult to report progress on poverty, hunger, health, water, cities and climate. We need to look no further than the global pandemic caused by COVID-19, a zoonotic disease, i.e. transmitted from animal to human, to know that the finely-tuned system of the natural world has been disrupted. And finally, the “toxic trail” of economic growth – pollution and waste which results every year, in the premature deaths of millions of people across the world. The common thread, in a sense, that runs through this triple planetary crisis is unsustainable production and consumption. The International Resource Panel has consistently reminded us that our relentless and unlimited extraction of resources from the Earth, is having a devastating impact on the natural world, propelling climate change, destroying nature, and raising pollution levels. Acting on this triple crisis should form the core of UNEP’s strategy for the next five years. These three programmes in turn will be sharpened and informed by our commitment to science for policy; and law and institutions that strengthen environmental governance. We seek to further enable change through transformations in finance and economic systems; and by leveraging data and technology for the environment.

The Pentagon is the Elephant In the Climate Activist Room We must divert spending away from military base occupation and war and into climate crisis aversion. Or else. As long as we ignore the Pentagon’s role in perpetuating climate change, our fight to protect the planet is incomplete. With nearly 10,000 people expected to take to the streets of New York City on September 17 for the March to End Fossil Fuels, the climate justice movement seems more organized than ever. But, there’s a big elephant in the room, and it has the Pentagon written all over it. The U.S. military is the world’s largest institutional oil consumer. It causes more greenhouse gas emissions than 140 nations combined and accounts for about one-third of America’s total fossil fuel consumption. The Department of Defense (DoD) also uses huge amounts of natural gas and coal, as well as nuclear power plants at its bases around the country. How can we demand the U.S. be part of a movement that aims to end the use of fossil fuels and protect our planet when their own institution is wreaking havoc without accountability? The answer: you can’t. As long as we ignore the Pentagon’s role in perpetuating climate change, our fight to protect the planet is incomplete. We also risk undermining our own effectiveness by not taking into account how the nearly trillion-dollar military budget takes away from people’s access to resources that not only affect their capacity to fight for climate justice but also to live under extreme economic inequality.

‘Terrifying’: Hong Kong’s Heaviest Rainfall on Record Brings Deadly Flooding Between 11 pm Thursday and midnight Friday local time, the Hong Kong Observatory recorded more than 6.2 inches of rain, the most rain in an hour since 1884.

Mega-Rich Are Paying $600,000+ a Year to Insure Their Mansions Against Climate Disaster “The growing insurance crisis illustrates the vital importance of seeing climate change as a risk to the entire financial system,” said one watchdog group. With extreme weather disasters increasing in frequency and intensity as the global climate crisis rages, wealthy homeowners in some coastal areas of the United States are paying six figures a year to insure their houses against flooding and other impacts of the kind that Hurricane Idalia brought to Florida last week.

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!

Asbestos, 9/11 and the World Trade Center HealthExposure to 9/11 Dust The World Trade Center Health Registry tracks the health effects from exposure to 9/11 dust. According to the registry, those health effects include respiratory diseases, gastrointestinal conditions, cancer and psychological conditions. The most common respiratory health effect is known as “World Trade Center cough syndrome.” It involves chronic rhinosinusitis, asthma and bronchitis. All of these are complicated by gastrointestinal reflux disease. According to the most recent health survey the registry conducted in 2016:

At least 352 people have been diagnosed with asbestosis.
In addition, at least 444 people were diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. Exposure to asbestos and other fibers in 9/11 dust may have contributed to these cases.
Nearly 16% have been diagnosed with cancer. For comparison, about 8% had been diagnosed with cancer in 2007.
Approximately 35% report seeking medical care for shortness of breath.
Nearly 70% of recovery personnel have suffered from lung problems, including World Trade Center cough syndrome.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

White Supremacy and “White Innocence” Were Behind the Killings in Jacksonville Philosopher George Yancy responds to the murder of three Black people in Jacksonville, Florida, by a white supremacist. The murder of three Black people in Jacksonville, Florida, last month by white male supremacist Ryan Christopher Palmeter, who later killed himself, cannot be understood as anything other than an act of racist terrorism. In the wake of the horror of the attack, we are left needing once again to make sense of this latest iteration of the U.S.’s relentless history of anti-Black terrorism. As a white philosopher who takes the reality of racism seriously and who studies the role of conspiracy theories within white supremacy, I sought out the analysis of George Yancy — a prominent philosopher who has given conceptually robust and courageous attention to matters of race, racism and especially whiteness. Yancy’s philosophical emphasis on the insidious ways in which white racism operates in the social and political DNA of the U.S. forces us to think more deeply and in newly contextualized ways about the horrible killing that took place this August in Jacksonville, Florida.

Labor:

Econommy:

Economic Growth in G7 Versus BRICS: A Reality Check In the United Kingdom, the BBC prepared and published data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in January about different nations’ growth forecasts for 2023 and 2024. The BBC foregrounded some really bad news for the UK. Of nine major industrial economies—the G7 (the U.S., Canada, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, and Canada), plus Russia, and China—the UK would be the only one to suffer real economic decline: a contraction in its 2023 GDP (its total annual, national output of goods and services). So dubious a distinction for the UK followed the long political night of rule by the Conservative Party. That night’s darker moments included austerity after the severe 2008-2009 global capitalist crash, scapegoating Europe for the UK’s economic troubles, Brexit taking place during the peak of that scapegoating, enjoyment of COVID cocktail parties by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government that it prohibited for the British public, and endless, transparent, and cringeworthy lying to the public when caught and exposed. But the BBC’s report on the new IMF data was shocking about far more than the poor performance of the UK economy. For the rest of 2023, the IMF says China’s GDP will grow more than 5 percent or more than twice Japan’s GDP growth rate. All other G7 countries will grow their GDPs more slowly than Japan. China’s growth rate will be more than triple that of the U.S. in 2023. Finally, the IMF’s projected GDP growth for 2024 shows both Russia and China growing much faster than any G7 country. These comparative forecasts comprise a reality check that clashes with most politicians’ statements, mass media accounts, and propaganda barrages (worsened by the Ukraine war) emerging from the G7’s old capitalist establishment. The BBC report was thus both rare and arresting.

World:

Capitalists are. Enforceing Global Warming!: Neocolonial Debt Traps Are Forcing Poorer Countries to Rely on Fossil Fuels To break our global dependence on fossil fuels, we must take on neocolonial debt, researcher Tess Woolfenden says. In the current age of climate emergency, many countries in debt are being forced by Global North elites and institutions to continue to rely on fossil fuels in order to repay loans taken from rich countries. This neocolonial debt trap creates a vicious cycle because — as a new analysis from the organization Debt Justice shows — revenues from fossil fuels are not enough to repay debts and instead leave countries even deeper in debt while at the same time worsening the prospects of achieving the goal of zero global emissions by 2050.

African Climate Leaders Say Nairobi Summit Fell Victim to Corporate Interests, False Solutions “The solutions do not lie with private capital and the age-old profit driven model,” said one advocate. The historic Africa Climate Summit held in Nairobi, Kenya this week marked the first time leaders from across the continent convened to focus on the climate crisis, but campaigners on Friday said the voices of the most vulnerable were largely silenced during the three-day summit while leaders drafted a declaration that critics say fell prey to “distracting false solutions.” While the Nairobi Declaration on Climate Change and Call to Action was applauded by advocates for its call to boost Africa’s renewable energy capacity to 300 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, critics said leaders across the continent showed they are still too eager to bend to the interests and desires of the fossil fuel industry and its financial backers. The declaration’s demands include:

A global carbon tax on fossil fuels, maritime transport, and aviation;
Financial reforms to help fund climate action in Africa and the end of a system in which African countries are forced to pay more to borrow climate funds, leading to recurrent debt crises; and
Stronger regulations of the harvesting and processing of the continent’s minerals.

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