Daily News Digest June 13, 2024
Images of the Day: Ted Rall: I Would Vote If I Could Afford To
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:
I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived —yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace. What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time. I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn. — President Kennedy, Commencement Address at American University, Washington, D.C., June 10, 1963
Podcasts/Videos of the Day:
The Prison System Isn’t ‘Broken’—It’s Designed to Traumatize Black People En Masse
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
Aerial Warfare: More Soldiers Live as More Civilians Die!: Battlefield Deaths from Global Conflicts Hit 30-Year High, Study Finds Since 2021, the overall number of deaths, including of civilians, has risen to the highest level in three decades, Peace Research Institute Oslo reports Deaths from civil conflicts and battles across the world over the past three years have risen to the highest level in three decades, according to a new report. Research by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (Prio) showed that while the number of battlefield deaths fell compared with the previous two years, since 2021 the overall number of conflict-related deaths, including of civilians, has risen to the highest level in 30 years.
Ralph Nader: Joe Biden: Pushing America Deeper into the Russian/Ukrainian War Is Joe Biden increasingly slipping America into the quagmire of the Russian/Ukrainian war? Something like the U.S. did in Vietnam? When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Biden announced that the U.S. government would help Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” Despite being someone who taught classes on the “separation of powers,” he nonetheless continues the unilateral presidential practice of starting or involving the U.S. in foreign wars without Congressional authority. Biden, aware of Russia’s nuclear arsenal and Putin’s dictatorial rule, started out cautiously but soon proceeded to repeatedly change his “No’s” to “Yes’s” regarding increased aid to Ukraine. First, Biden said “No” to sending an advanced missile and then said “Yes.” Then he said “No” to the latest tank and then said “Yes.” Then he said “No” to F-16 fighter planes and then said “Yes.” Then he said “No” to cluster bombs and then relented with these brutal child killer weapons. (According to Human Rights Watch, “Clearance is dangerous, time-consuming, and expensive. Doing it well involves highly trained professionals with specialized equipment carefully marking and examining land meter-by-meter.”) Biden said “No” to using U.S.-supplied weapons to attack military targets within Russia. But then he said “Yes” to hit targets inside Russia for “limited purposes.” All along he opposed any soldiers from NATO going to Ukraine and now he is starting to relent, with some French “military advisers” on their way, that had to have had his approval.
The End of Affordable Internet The federal funding contained in the Affordable Connectivity Program offered a vital lifeline for people in South Carolina and nationwide. Now we must fight to resurrect such a program so that everyone has digital access that enriches individual lives and communities. Almost four years ago, Congress established a little-known program called the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Since it was created, the program provided millions of Americans with affordable, high-quality internet. It never got much attention, but it’s impact on communities across the country including in South Carolina was enormous. Launched by the Federal Trade Commission, the program provided eligible households with a discount on internet service of up to $30 every month to bridge the digital divide. Just this year alone, 415,680 families in South Carolina relied on the program, which averaged to about one in five households in the state. In total, the program saved people in South Carolina over $12 million each month on internet service. Despite widespread support for the program, its funding expired on June 1st. As elected officials representing Silicon Valley, the tech hub of the world, and Chester, Fairfield, and Richland, predominantly Black counties that have struggled with reliable internet, we are fighting to raise awareness about rising internet bills for families and extend the program for another four years.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
Future Generations Will See Students Backed Palestine as Admins Attacked Protest These moments determine how history will remember each of us, as well as how we remember history in the future. What efforts contributed to ending the war in Vietnam and South African apartheid? What brought successes in the civil rights, gay liberation and women’s rights movements? Alongside decades of organizing, protest and global resistance movements, the student movement on college campuses has been, and continues to be, a vital ingredient. Students taking action today ensure that history is on the side of justice; they’ve put their hands on that long arc of history and are bending it themselves. As we pass the 54th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre while watching the current mobilization of Israeli-trained U.S. police forces against students in the United States, we are once again witnessing the return of Aimé Césaire’s “terrific boomerang” as the imperial and colonial violence the U.S. government exports globally comes back with full force upon its own citizens. Colleges and universities across the nation have cracked down with tactical, militarized force on students protesting Israel’s genocidal onslaught on the people of Gaza, a move so familiar in U.S. history that the 2024 playbook seems almost identical to that from 1970. As students gather across the country to protest their government’s involvement in unethical wars abroad, the state works with the administration of their universities to violently suppress the resistance movement.
World Food Programme Pauses Use of US Aid Pier in Gaza Due to Israeli Attacks WFP already has to “make choices every day to take food from the hungry to give to the starving,” a UN official said. The UN food program has been forced to pause aid shipments through the U.S. military’s “humanitarian aid” pier in Gaza after its warehouses came under attack amid Israel’s massacre of Palestinians in Nuseirat on Saturday, the agency announced as it warned that famine is looming in Gaza.
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?
In My Opinion, Global Warming is Self-Accelerating — The Faster the Rate of Global Warming — The Greater the Global Warming! The Greater the Global Warming — The Faster the Rate of Global Warming Increases — The Greater the Global Warming etc.. Quantitative Changes in the Rate Eventually Will Cause a Qualitative Abrupt Climate Change!
Abrupt Climate Change Earth’s climate has changed many times and in many different ways over geologic history. These changes have most often played out over many thousands of years. Today, however, human activity—primarily in the form of increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere—is putting slow, inexorable pressure on the planetary system that governs Earth’s climate. This is raising concerns that the climate could respond in abrupt and unexpected ways, shifting temperature or precipitation patterns in ways that may make it difficult for human society to adapt.
Capitalism Chose Ecocide: Big Banks Have Funded Climate Crisis With Nearly $7 Trillion Since Paris Agreement “Banks that profit from climate chaos invent new greenwash every year, but we have the receipts that show how much money they put into fossil fuels,” said one report author. The world’s 60 biggest banks funded fossil fuels to the tune of $6.9 trillion in the eight years following the Paris agreement. That’s the conclusion of the 15th annual “Banking on Climate Chaos” report, which was published on May 13, and also found that the financial institutions lavished $705 billion on oil, gas, and coal in 2023—the hottest year on record. “Financiers and investors of fossil fuels continue to light the flame of the climate crisis,” Tom BK Goldtooth, report co-author and executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said in a statement. “Paired with generations of colonialism, the fossil fuel industry and banking institutions’ investment in false solutions create unlivable conditions for all living relatives and humanity on Mother Earth.”
Air in Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ Likely More Toxic Than Previously Thought New research reveals levels for ethylene oxide over 1,000 times above previous measurements The air throughout south-east Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” is probably being poisoned with a highly carcinogenic gas at levels much higher than previously thought, new research reveals. Using cutting-edge equipment that more accurately checks for the gas, ethylene oxide, which is primarily used in plastic production, researchers found levels over 1,000 times above previous measurements, and about 10 times higher on average than regulators’ modeling.
America’s Dirty Divide: ‘It’s Unbearable’: In Ever-Hotter US Cities, Air Conditioning is no Longer Enough “Conventional wisdom and public policy have long operated on the assumption that, no matter how bad the heat gets, air conditioning will be enough to keep people safe. But the last few years of record-breaking temperatures are shattering that myth.” The last few years of record-breaking temperatures are shattering the myth that air conditioning alone will keep people safe.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Labor:
Economy:
Shadow Government Statsttics New Weekly Commentary May 24, 2024 
- Today’s “Final” Reading for the May 2024 University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Confirmed The Statistically Meaningful, Sharp Month-to-Month Deterioration, Down by 10.5% (-10.5%), Still Shy by 31.6% (-31.6%) of Ever Recovering Its February 2020 Pre-Pandemic Peak, Albeit up by 17.1% Year-to-Year from May 2023 (See page 2 and the May 10th Commentary for graphs expanded detail.)
- Headline April 2024 Consumer Price Index (CPI) Inflation Increased Year-to-Year by 3.4%, Down from 3.5% in March, Otherwise at a Five-Month High, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
- In Parallel, Net of Various BLS Headline CPI Inflation-Muting Methodological Changes Since 1982, the April 2024 ShadowStats-Alternate CPI Annual Inflation Estimate Notched Lower to 11.2% from 11.3% in March 2024
- Sensitive to Rising Inflation, the Price of Gold Has Firmed, Closing in on Levels More Consistent With the ShadowStats Alternate CPI than With the Heavily Understated Headline BLS CPI
- Where the Administration Heavily Depleted the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to Depress Gasoline Prices and CPI Inflation Coming into the 2022 Mid-Term Elections, It Now Is Depleting Gasoline Reserves Before the 2024 Presidential Election In the Four-Plus Years Since the February 2020 Pre-Pandemic Trough,
- The Headline April 2024 CPI-U Inflation Has Gained an Aggregate 21.2%, While the Corrected ShadowStats Alternate CPI Gained 63.3% Over the Same Period (See the Manual Inflation Calculator on Page 10)
- The Inflation Problem: Since Before the Pandemic Hit, There Has Been No “Overheating Economy” Driving U.S. Inflation
- That Assessment Was a Federal Reserve Canard Used as an Excuse to Raise Interest Rates
- Both Federal Reserve Extreme Money Supply Creation and Unfettered Fiscal Stimulus (Federal Deficit Spending and Debt Growth) Generated by the White House and U.S. Congress Have Been Driving the Inflation; There Has Been No Overheating Economy
- Sensitive to the Mounting Inflation Pressures, the Price of Gold in U.S. Dollars Also Has Been on the Rise
- ShadoGovernment Statistics AlterNet Unemployment Rate Is 26% (Sent by Email)
French Fears Ignite Selloff in U.S. Megabanks and Foreign Peers Yesterday, The Hill published an OpEd by the man who, literally, wrote the book on the megabanks: Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr., Professor Emeritus of Law at George Washington University Law School. Wilmarth raised critical points on why these megabanks continue to pose unacceptable levels of risk to U.S. financial stability and need to dramatically boost their equity capital – notwithstanding their fierce lobbying and propaganda battle to overturn the proposed new capital rules by bank regulators.
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
Yet housing remains a social problem of the highest order. And the complexity of the building industry emphasizes only all the more the _ necessity of nationalization and planning. Witness the situation that now exists. The problem of securing shelter is one of the greatest uncertainties for most workingpeople, subject as they are to the vicissitudes of the capitalist business cycles. Those who have sufficient savings for a downpayment on a home stand to lose it during the depressions. Renting tenants unable to pay are mercilessly evicted. The need for homes is never satisfied, precisely because the profit system bars the way. Assuredly it is urgent to make’ a change here-a change to production for use, to planning. Such a system would first of all put an end to speculative land’ owners, to real estate sharks and rent-gougers, not to mention the profit hungry mortgage brokers and financiers. Oncethe builoing industry is nationalized it would be possible to plan according to the needs and the country’s ability to production. Not only the field of constructin, but all the branches producing material would be coordinated, allocations made and measures taken for improvement where shortagesappear. Every building worker would be guaranteed steady employment and a living wage. Only then would it be possible to utilize to the fullest extent new inventions, new and more efficient methods, as well as new and better materials. Healthy and comfortable living quarters would be the rule. Every faniily engaged in useful work would obtain housing to which it is entitled. Profit returns would no longer enter into calculations for home building. On the contrary, the needs of the people would be the highest concern. — Arne Swabeck, The Housing Problem (1947)