Daily News Digest June 21, 2024
Images of the Day:
Carlos Latuff: The Price of a Life, by Western Standards
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 6 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 Five Horsemen of the the Apocalypse, Spreading Racism, War, Famine, Pestilence, Death, and Misinformation! 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:
On the other hand the Jews of different countries have created their press and developed the Yiddish language as an instrument adapted to modern-culture. One must therefore reckon with the fact that the Jewish nation will maintain itself for an entire epoch to come. Now the nation cannot normally exist without a common territory. Zionism springs from this very idea. But the facts of every passing day demonstrate to us that Zionism is incapable of resolving the Jewish question. The conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine acquires a more and more tragic and more and more menacing character. I do not at all believe that the Jewish question can be resolved within the framework of rotting capitalism and under the control of British imperialism. — Leon Trotsky, On the Jewish Problem
Podcasts/Videos of the Day:
Our Propagandized Society Is Like A Sick Man Who Doesn’t Know He’s Sick
Israel Threatens all-out War against Lebanon’s Hezbollah: Curve-ball for US Presidential Campaign?
Black Agenda Radio June 14, 2024
New Yorkers Need More Housing Vouchers
Haitian Sovereignty and the Construction of the Ouanaminthe Canal
Ending Prison Slavery in California
Israel’s Rescue Massacres Civilians and Censors Media
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/
The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I cannot be Silent. ― Martin Luther King Jr.
The United States is the greatest purveyor of terrorism in the world!: The US List of Countries Allegedly Sponsors of Terrorism: Another Imperialistic Scam In the US State Department’s toolkit, unilateral coercive measures (UCMs) are used to blackmail, bully and intimidate States that do not readily accept US hegemony. Placing a country in the US list of countries sponsors for terrorism is intended to lend some phony legitimacy to UCMs imposed against targeted States.
The Unreported Irony of Hunter Biden’s Conviction It has gone largely, if not completely, unremarked in all the verbiage spun out by the 24-hour news cycle in the US media that the law under which the president’s son, Hunter Biden was convicted on three felony counts, was something pushed by his own dad, Joe Biden as part of his effort to “lock up drug users” for lengthy terms in 1994.
We Were Called “Terrorists” and Forcibly Ejected by Police from Congressional Baseball Game During last week’s Congressional Baseball Game, dozens of us in the crowd conveyed urgent messages to stop funding Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and to address the escalating climate crisis. We were met by hundreds of police from different jurisdictions who encircled us during the game, and at times followed us around.
Slavery and the American Mexico War: Juneteenth: Why Were the Enslaved in Texas? Juneteenth is named after June 19, 1865, when news of their emancipation reached enslaved people in Texas. None of the pundits who are commenting on the holiday ask why enslaved people were in Texas in the first place. General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who fought Texas enslavers at the Alamo in 1836, is depicted in settler school books as a villain. No. Santa Anna was opposed to slavery. He found the practice disgusting. The defenders of the Alamo, some of whom ran away, were pro-slavery. As Phillip Thomas Tucker writes in his book “Exodus from the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth”: “Today we can no longer afford to ignore that the Alamo defenders were on the wrong side of the slavery issue, while the Mexicans were in the right.
US Laws Created During Slavery are Still on the Books As the story of Juneteenth is told by modern-day historians, enslaved Black people were freed by laws, not combat. Union Gen. Gordon Granger said as much when he read General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, in front of enslaved people who were among the last to learn of their legal freedom. According to the order, the law promised the “absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.” But the new laws guaranteeing legal protections for equal rights – starting with the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863 and followed by the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments after the U.S. Civil War had ended in April 1865 – did not eliminate the influence of slavery on the laws. The legacy of slavery is still enshrined in thousands of judicial opinions and briefs that are cited today by American judges and lawyers in cases involving everything from property rights to criminal law. For example, in 2016 a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cited Prigg v. Pennsylvania, an 1842 U.S. Supreme Court case that held that a state could not provide legal protections for alleged fugitive slaves. The judge cited that case to explain the limits of congressional power to limit gambling in college sports.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
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’!
We Must Hold These Monsters to Account!
Chemicals From East Palestine Train Disaster Spread to 16 States: Study Fires after the February 2023 accident caused plumes of toxic chemicals to spread farther than researchers anticipated. “I think we should be concerned,” an expert said. Toxic chemicals released during fires following the Norfolk Southern train derailment in Ohio last year spread to 16 states and likely Canada, according to a study released Wednesday. The pollution, some of which came from the burning of vinyl chloride, a carcinogen, spread over 540,000 square miles, showing clearly that “the impacts of the fire were larger in scale and scope than the initial predictions,” the authors of the study, published in Environmental Research Letters, found. Lead author David Gay, coordinator of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program, said that he was very surprised by the way the chemicals had spread. “I didn’t expect to see an impact this far out,” he told The Washington Post.
For the Last 14 Months Global Temperature has been Above the ‘1.5 C Degress Tipping Point’!: A Moment of Climate Truth A Cosmic Moment of Truth On June 5, 2024, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres gave a talk at the Museum of Natural History in New York. He spoke on the desperate climate situation facing humanity. He focused on the 1.5 degrees Celsius global temperature above pre-industrial levels, which world leaders agreed, in Paris in 2015, to maintain in order to avoid planetary catastrophe. “Why all this fuss about 1.5 degrees?” Guterres asked. “Because our planet is a mass of complex, connected systems. And every fraction of a degree of global heating counts. The difference between 1.5 and two degrees could be extinction and survival for some small island states and coastal communities. The difference between minimizing climate chaos or crossing dangerous tipping points… Scientists have alerted us that temperatures rising higher would likely mean: The collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet with catastrophic sea level rise; The destruction of tropical coral reef systems and the livelihoods of 300 million people; The collapse of the Labrador Sea Current that would further disrupt weather patterns in Europe; And widespread permafrost melt that would release devastating levels of methane, one of the most potent heat-trapping gasses. Even today, we’re pushing planetary boundaries to the brink – shattering global temperature records and reaping the whirlwind.
The Brockovich Report:The Top 10 Most Polluted Beaches Is Everybody Going Surfing… In Water That Could Make Them Sick?! Ever wonder about water quality at the beach? More than 100 million people flock to U.S. beaches every year to swim, surf, paddle, and enjoy the sunshine and sand. As summer begins, let’s take a look at a new report on the state of beaches conducted by Surfrider Foundation, which tested thousands of water samples from coast to coast, as well as in Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, and Canada. The results are sickening. About 64 percent of the more than 560 sites tested had at least one sample with unsafe bacteria levels, exceeding state health standards.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
- Uncle Sam Wants You, to Kill and Die for the Empire The Biden administration and congress work together in their efforts to secure what they think is U.S. domination.
- SERMON: The “Pet Negro” System, Zora Neale Hurston, 1943 Zora Neale Hurston’s sermon on the “Pet Negro” system provides devastating and timely insight into the psychology of Black folk working in the service of white power.
- The Case for Palestine Dan Kovalik’s new book makes a case for Palestine.
- Defeat The Fascist War On African People In The US And Abroad! The struggle to defeat the war on African people can be understood through an analysis of the ongoing relationship between African people and the state.
- Unmasking Ruto’s Betrayal and Mobilizing for Kenya’s Sovereignty and Justice Kenyan President William Ruto, despite his posturing as a strong leader for the people, has betrayed the masses time and time again.
- The Intersection of Vulnerability and Power: The Case of Francia Márquez Francia Marquez’s rise to Colombia’s vice presidency has put a target on her back, but she also brings with her hope for a real change in Colombian politics.
- Black Alliance for Peace Condemns US Black (Mis)Leaders for their Support of US Military Intervention and Occupation of Haiti The ruling elite uses black misleaders to shore up support for imperialist objectives. Currently, these misleaders are freely and happily offering their services in support of the invasion and occupation of Haiti.
- The Problem with Juneteenth Juneteenth was a people’s holiday with deep meaning for the descendants of enslaved people. But the declaration of an official federal holiday has turned it into an opportunity for corporate exploiters and cynical politicians to show pretend concern for Black people. At best Juneteenth provides a history lesson and an opportunity for much needed political education.
- NUMSA Statement on the National Elections Results and Coalitions With its recent historic loss of the Parliament majority, the African National Congress has formed a coalition with the Democratic Alliance, heir to the old apartheid regime, demonstrating its failure to live up to its Freedom Charter. Before this dubious deal was done, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa explained why this development was so dangerous to the nation and such a grave betrayal.
- Nigerian Trade Unions Stage Two-day Strike amid Economic Crisis Newly elected President Bola Tinubu, the Chair of ECOWAS, has mounting political problems while advocating military intervention in neighboring Niger.
- Roc Nation’s Lobbying Efforts Cast Suspicion on Jay Z’s Association with GOP’s Top Funder Jay Z has consistently shown himself willing to be used as a Black face to run cover for conservative political endeavors.
- No to African and Caricom troops in Haiti! The undemocratically imposed bourgeois political misleaders in Haiti must be understood as tools of imperialism that have led the country into its ongoing crisis.
- War on Gaza: How the West celebrated the Nuseirat massacre In the latest repellent display, western media are hailing the rescue of four Israeli hostages at the cost of 270 Palestinian lives.
- Will South Africa’s new Coalition Government Change Tack on Israel-Palestine? While the new government includes parties neutral about Israel’s war on Gaza, ANC insists it will still support Palestine.
Labor:
The Labor Bureaucracy in the Service of the Boss!: Starmer’s Manifesto: A Tory Programme in Labour Colours Labour’s election manifesto delivers exactly what most workers have come to expect from the party: nothing. Aping the Tories on every major policy, this is a programme for the bosses and bankers, not the working class. We say: No trust in Starmer! — “We are the party of wealth creation,” declared Sir Keir Starmer, as he launched Labour’s manifesto last Thursday. — ‘You’re speaking our language!’ cheered Britain’s bankers and bosses, who like to style themselves as ‘wealth creators’. — No doubt they got the message: that the Labour Party under Starmer is now a safe pair of hands for British capitalism. After 14 years of crisis and decline, the Tories have never been more hated. But despite naming his manifesto ‘Change’, Starmer’s programme in fact offers a continuity of the broken status quo; more of the same austerity, inequality, and war that Sunak and his predecessors have presided over for the last decade-or-more.
Economy:
Last week the World Bank issued its latest Global Economic Prospects. The WB economists reckon that the world economy “is stabilising” in 2024, the first time in three years. The world economy avoided an outright recession in 2023 that many predicted (including me – to some degree) and is now making a ‘soft landing’. Global real GDP growth will be 2.6% in 2024, the same as 2023 and will rise slightly to 2.7% next year. The term ‘soft landing’ is somewhat odd. I suppose it means that the world economy has not crashed into the runway, but instead lightly settled down. But really, there has been no landing at all – if we mean by that a slump or contraction in real GDP globally. Anyway, to use another aphorism, the world economy is really ‘a curate’s egg’, an old-fashioned term to described something that is partly bad and partly good, or more exactly something that is obviously and entirely bad, but is described out of politeness as nonetheless having good features that might redeem it.
Is the Stock Market Setting Investors Up for a Tech Bust Similar to the Dot.com Bust? Tuesday, a stock most Americans had never heard of four years ago – Nvidia – closed with a market cap of $3.34 trillion. That makes it the most valuable company in the world, overtaking Microsoft’s heady $3.32 trillion market cap. Nvidia’s share price (ticker NVDA) has soared 174 percent year-to-date while the S&P 500 is up just 15 percent. The much broader index, the Russell 2000, has flat-lined this year. (See chart above.) Without the gains from Nvidia, the S&P 500 would be reporting one-third less percentage increase year-to-date. Nvidia trades on the Nasdaq stock market. Its share price has been riding the artificial intelligence (AI) hype in a manner reminiscent of how the Nasdaq skyrocketed in value on the tech and dot.com mania of the late 1990s. That era did not end well, to put it mildly.
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