Daily News Digest June 5, 2024
From Extinction Rebellion’s Article: The Eve of Catastrophe Crossing the Rubicon …”We’re on the Road to Nowhere“? So that is the context against which we received this news. To all intents and purposes 1.5 degrees is gone. Yes, you can make objections to this assertion. It’s an El Niño year, and there may be fluctuations downwards that see the warming trend dip back below 1.5 degrees in the next few years. But ultimately with every COP disappointment, and the fact that we are yet to feel the full effect of the greenhouse gasses humanity has already released into the atmosphere, it’s time to face our failure. And, alas, there was an inevitability about this failure. Now we have to consider:
- Where next for the struggle against environmental degradation and climate breakdown?
- Will the power makers eventually take the action we know they have to? And what will it be that finally prompts them to do this?
- What will this ultimately mean for us as humanity, for our children and our children’s children?
- What does Crossing the Rubicon mean for Extinction Rebellion?
Some of our colleagues will begin to prepare for the worst, with the aim of survival now taking precedence over any idealistic visions of the future: Deep Adaptation. And many of our colleagues, always defiant, will continue the fight. Extinction Rebellion was formed in the knowledge that there was never any guarantee of a happy ending. But that doesn’t mean we’ll turn away now. Yes, it may feel that this latest setback is too much to cope with, coming as it does on top of all of the suffering we see around the world, in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Yemen, in Sudan, in West Papua and many other places, and coming at the same time, as it does, as the incipient authoritarianism from a growing number of our own governments. There is a danger, and perhaps there always was, that we will lose some people by the wayside, so bleak is our outlook now.Now, more than ever, we need to keep sight of the better future for all life on our planet we’re seeking to create.
Images of the Day:
Infinite Greed The Inhuman Selfishness of Capital
Latuff: Biden’s “Red Line’ — Rafah on Fire!
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”
The Rise of Capitalism was Under the Banner of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity! Now There is Less Liberty, More Inequality, and Less Fraternity of Humanity! Every Day, From Global Warming to Global War There is a New Example of Capitalism in Imperialist Decay!
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: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 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! Globaly, With the Current Gaza War, The Right of Assembly is Under Attack! Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Still Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World!
The Majority of the World, Despite the Media Monopoly’s Lies, are Opposed to the Palestinian Genocide and Global Warming — The 1% Minority Funds Them! At, this Time in History, Capitalism is Exposing the Fact That it is Opposed to Majority Rule/Democracy!
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:
In The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man, Friedrich Engels wrote:. . . Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. …
Podcasts/Videos of the Day:
Air Quality and Environmental Justice in the US
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 ford 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
From the Viewpoint of United States Capitalism, There Is No World Law and Order — It Only Recognizes Pax Americana
79 Percent of Americans Worry About Misinformation Ahead of Elections A new poll finds US news audiences must contend with the “Wild West of fact checking.” As the November elections approach, a new poll reveals that the vast majority of Americans across the political spectrum are deeply concerned about the deliberate spread of disinformation on platforms controlled by Big Tech. A national survey commissioned by the media reform group Free Press found that 79 percent of people polled worry the information they are seeing online is “false, fake, or a deliberate attempt to confuse.” As serial liar Donald Trump prepares to face off against embattled President Joe Biden, 76 percent of those polled said they are concerned about misinformation regarding the presidential election. The poll also finds that large majorities are especially worried about coverage of local elections in their own communities.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
They Can’t Control The Gaza Narrative Because Too Much Has Been Seen. Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): A lot of mainstream-adjacent progressives act like Gaza is some radical deviation from normal US behavior, which is infantile nonsense. The US inflicts similar horrors on the world all the time; the only major difference is (A) this one’s being live-streamed and (B) there… A lot of mainstream-adjacent progressives act like Gaza is some radical deviation from normal US behavior, which is infantile nonsense. The US inflicts similar horrors on the world all the time; the only major difference is (A) this one’s being live-streamed and (B) there was a pro-Palestine movement in place before it began. With regard to (B), Gaza is really illustrating how much the US empire benefits from moving through its foreign military violence relatively quickly. When it can move from propagandizing the population about Evil Dictatorship X to destroying the country in question to moving on to its next war in the span of a few short years, there’s not enough time for public awareness to grow of exactly how evil the empire is being. It was years before a mainstream consensus developed that the invasion of Iraq was wrong, and it will probably be decades before there’s mainstream consensus about the evil shit the empire did in Syria from 2011 onwards.
Despite Calling on Netanyahu to Resign, Schumer Invites Him to Address Congress One critic suggested the Israeli prime minister “can be arrested for his war crimes on the Senate floor.” “This is shameful, Sen. Schumer.” That was the reaction of progressive activist Cynthia Nixon on Friday after the Democratic Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate co-signed a formal letter — alongside Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) — inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress. With global outrage over Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza at new heights and the International Criminal Court considering an arrest warrant application for the Israeli prime minister over the military campaign that many experts and humanitarians have deemed “genocidal,” Nixon suggested that “[p]erhaps Netanyahu can be arrested for his war crimes on the Senate floor.
Environment:
Fund Climate! — Not Genocide! 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’!
Capitalism’s Wars for Oil: When Bodies Start Stacking Up From Climate Change-Related Disasters, Will These Monsters be Held to Account?
Capitalism’s Infinite Greed Fuels Global Warming: The Limits of Capitalist Solutions to the Climate Crisis There is an increasing acceptance that capitalism is directly connected with climate change and that the apocalyptic consequences of it are already causing deaths, diseases, dislocations and destruction to ecology and people’s lives, which will continue as there is no decisive measure being taken to address the climate crisis. Society’s relationship with nature under extractivist capitalism follows the principles of ownership and rights of access, modes of production and consumption, the need for permanent added-value, as well as class and gender relations, all of which are associated with profit maximisation and exploitation of people and nature. It is important to emphasise that the privilege to profit, overconsume and overdiscard is reserved for a small portion of society. The extraction of fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas), which is the biggest cause of climate change, enables large-scale production of goods, transportation systems and efficient distribution networks of products and services. Climate change is therefore not just an environmental issue; it is both a social and an ecological crisis. Even modern wars in the last three decades, as exemplified by the invasion of Iraq, were at least partially about access to and control of the production and distribution of oil. As the impacts of climate change intensify, free-market ideology, big business and financial actors increasingly shape the strategies and priorities in addressing it. At the same time, resistance to neoliberalism, efforts to reclaim the commons (land, water and forests, knowledge, etc.) struggles against ‘development aggression’ by states and corporations and the promotion of alternative models of development are being globalized.
Infinite Greed The Inhuman Selfishness of Capital Selfishness is essential to capitalism—or so both advocates and opponents claim. In Infinite Greed, Adrian Johnston argues that this consensus is mistaken. Through a novel synthesis of Marxism and psychoanalysis, he reveals how the relentless pursuit of profits is not fundamentally animated by human acquisitiveness. Instead, capitalism’s strange “infinite greed” demands that individuals sacrifice their pleasures, their well-being, and even themselves to serve inhuman capital. Johnston traces the mechanisms that compel capitalist subjects to obey the cold imperative to accumulate in perpetuity and without limits—and also without regard for the consequences for everyone and everything else. Facing crises such as spiraling wealth inequality and the profit-driven prospect of a looming ecological apocalypse, the rational self-interest of the majority would seem to dictate putting a stop to capitalist accumulation. By bringing together the Marxian critique of political economy with psychoanalytic metapsychology, Johnston shows why and how capitalism, rather than being responsive to people’s rationally selfish interests, disregards and overrides them instead.
Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa Week beginning on May 26, 2024: 426.88 ppm, Weekly value from 1 year ago: 424.62 ppm. Weekly value from 10 years ago: 402.09 ppm, Last updated: June 02, 2024.
Capitalist Imperialist Loan Sharks ‘Aid’: Wealthy Nations Finally Meet $100B Climate Aid Promise, But Much More Is Needed Loans continue to make up the majority of funding, often trapping developing countries in deeper cycles of debt. International climate negotiations have long been haunted by a broken promise. In the wake of collapsed negotiations at the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009, wealthy nations, led by the United States, pledged to provide developing countries with $100 billion in climate-related aid annually by 2020. The money was meant in part to ease tensions between the rich countries that had contributed the most to climate change historically and the poorer nations that disproportionately suffer the effects of a warming planet. But rich countries fell short of the target in both 2020 and 2021, deepening mistrust and stymying progress during the annual United Nations climate conferences, which are known by the abbreviation COP.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Labor:
University of California Union’s Gaza Solidarity Strike Spreads Across Campuses Labor support for Palestine at UCLA, Davis and Santa Cruz is the fruit of years of organizing. Others may join soon. Astrike is underway within the University of California (UC) system — with UCLA, UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz all now participating — as unionized graduate student workers take collective action to protest the brutalization and repression of fellow union members and Palestine solidarity protesters. With academic employees unionized with the United Auto Workers (UAW) walking out at all three schools, the UC administration has found itself contending with the consequences of its decision to invite state aggression upon its own students as they protested the ongoing genocide perpetrated by Israel in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Those consequences appear to be piling up, with additional union workforces at UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara set to join the strike on Monday, and UC Irvine workers walking off the job on Wednesday, according to UAW 4881.
Economy:
Agricultural Imperialism in the EU Ever since World War II, U.S. trade strategists have based their international policy on control of two key commodities: oil and grain. Economically, they have been the mainstay of the U.S. balance of payments, the leading categories of export surplus (along with weapons), especially as the U.S. economy has deindustrialized. And politically, these are basic needs of every economy. U.S. diplomacy has sought to make other countries dependent on American grain. In the 1950s, most notably, U.S. opposition to Mao’s Communist revolution in China sought to impose a grain embargo on that country. But Canada broke the sanctions – creating good will for decades. U.S. trade strategists have sought to promote grain dependency on U.S. farmers by opposing foreign attempts to achieve grain self-sufficiency. Most notoriously, the World Bank from the outset refused to make any agricultural loans to Global South/Third World countries for the production of food grains. Lending has been limited to promoting tropical crops that do not compete with U.S. farm production. The result is that countries like Chile, with the world’s largest supply of natural guano fertilizer, have squandered their export earnings from copper on buying U.S. grain that they could easily have produced themselves.
World:
Education, Health, and Welfare:
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