Daily News Digest July 1, 2024
Images of the Day”
America Decides
Latuff: Julian Assange is FREE! — Journalism is Not a Crime!
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:
A crucial takeaway for journalists and editors in this piece is that explaining the cause of these weather events isn’t hard. It’s often a matter of adding a sentence at most, Atkin and Samuelson write. They provide examples of stories that successfully made this connection, as with BBC (6/24/24): Scientists say extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and intense as a result of human-caused climate change, fueled by activities like burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests— Reports on Heat Waves and Flooding Usually Neglect to Explain Why They’re Happening: Study
Podcasts/Videos of the Day:
The Biden/Trump ‘Debate’: Presidial Candidate Cornel West Podcast: This prudential debate is a pure farce! Trumps lies, contempt, and hatred are beyond appalling! Biden’s lies, senility, and emptiness are apathic! Both are simply living in worlds far removed from the realities of America and Abroad. Both will continue the barbaric genocide in Gaza! Is America now addicted to self-destruction? My Presidential campaign provides a stark alternative of Truth, Justice, and Love!
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 Real Coup: A County Ruled by a Corrupt 9 Person Supreme Tribunal/Dictatorship!?: SCOTUS Overturns “Chevron” Deference, Sparking Massive Transfer of Power to Courts This decision could lead to the erosion of federal regulations in health, environment, food safety, labor, and more.
The Supreme Court’s Latest Power Grab: Regulatory Oversight The Supreme Court’s conservative bloc advances a key aim of the Project 2025 manifesto: “deconstruct the Administrative State.” This week, the Supreme Court truly delivered when it comes to hobbling oversight over securities fraud, pollution, and other regulatory matters. In two key decisions, the conservative majority cast doubt on some of regulatory agencies’ most important oversight mechanisms and tossed a longstanding doctrine about their authority to interpret legal questions within their specialized lanes. Together, these rulings further one of the prime directives of the conservative legal movement, enshrined in the Project 2025 manifesto: “deconstruct the Administrative State.” The decisions also further consolidate authority within the federal judiciary.
There Will Be More and Larger Cancer Alleys, as the Laissez Faire Supreme Court Unconstitutionally Usurps the Power of the Executive to Enforce Environmental Regulations!: This Decision Puts Profits Before Life! Supreme Court Puts Countless ‘Lives at Risk’ by Ruling Against Clean Air “With this decision, the Supreme Court has abandoned any pretense of neutrality in cases involving environmental regulations,” an expert said. Health and environmental groups decried a U.S. Supreme Court decision on Thursday that suspended an air pollution rule with far-reaching implications set by the Environmental Protection Agency. The justices ruled 5-4 in Ohio v. EPA to nullify the rule, designed to protect people in states downwind from smog-forming pollution, until the case can be decided on its merits in federal court, siding with the in-dustrial polluters and upwind states who’d petitioned them to do so.
Really Think About What It Means That The US President Has Dementia It’s very revealing how everybody’s focusing on what Biden’s dementia-addled debate performance says about his ability to win re-election instead of on the fact that the current, sitting president of the United States has dementia.
Abandon Biden Campaign Reacts to Presidential Debate: A Call to Reject Genocide and Racism Last night’s presidential debate revealed a stunning and disheartening moment as the term “Palestinian” was openly used as a slur officials of the #AbandonBiden campaign said Friday. This blatant racism, particularly against Palestinians, was exemplified when Donald Trump hurled the insult, “He’s become like a Palestinian,” at Joe Biden. This shocking display comes just a month after a Texas woman attempted to drown a 3-year-old Palestinian girl, highlighting the deep-seated and dangerous racism prevalent in our society. Joe Biden continued to perpetuate falsehoods, blaming Palestinians for rejecting ceasefire deals while he has provided billions in weapons to Israel since October, fueling the ongoing genocide
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
First Debate Underscored Both Candidates’ Fealty to Israel Amid Genocide Neither Trump nor Biden seem willing to address the root causes of the Palestinian struggle and regional instability. Last night’s presidential debate was an indication of how little both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump understand the truth of the Israeli occupation and genocide in Palestine, and how unwilling and incapable either administration would be of supporting an end to U.S.-enabled wars in the Middle East and achieving lasting peace and stability in the region.
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!
Amid Climate Crisis, Global Warming Was Glossed Over in Presidential Debate Neither Biden nor Trump directly answered whether they would do anything as president to address the climate crisis. Over more than an hour and a half of back-and-forth, climate change got just a couple minutes of airtime during a CNN-hosted debate between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump on Thursday.
Plastics Companies Blocked Mitigation Efforts and May Have Broken US Laws – Study Paper outlines different legal theories that could help governments pursue accountability for harms
Companies have spent decades obstructing efforts to take on the plastics crisis and may have breached a host of US laws, a new report argues. The research from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) details the widespread burdens that plastic pollution places on US cities and states, and argues that plastic producers may be breaking public-nuisance, product-liability and consumer-protection laws.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
America’s Prisons Are Slave Labor Factories “The reason I think it’s so important to expose the North’s invention and expose the North’s innovation in these practices is that when we start the story with the 13th Amendment, when we start the story of forced prison labor with the end of the Civil War, what we’re doing is we’re starting the story in the middle, and when we start the story in the middle, we inadvertently let the North off the hook.” While the 13th Amendment is often revered for putting an end to American slavery, what many don’t realize is how it represented the middle of America’s continuous relationship with slavery. It codified Black prisoners as a subhuman criminal class and made slavery in the form of prison labor an acceptable practice, uniting incarceration and capitalism. Robin Bernstein, Dillon Professor of American History at Harvard University, joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to discuss the sinister origins of modern American slavery, as detailed in her new book, “Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit “Prison labor, unpaid prison labor, forced prison labor, absolutely is slavery by another name,” Bernstein tells Scheer. The book shines a light on William Freeman’s story at Auburn State Prison in upstate New York. Freeman, indicted without evidence for horse theft, spent years imprisoned and forced to work in Auburn, a facility that ultimately became the prototype for the modern day American prison system. 
The End of the Innocence: Railroading Marcellus Williams to Death Row It was, as prosecutors often say, an evidence-rich crime scene. Felicia Gayle’s murderer left behind footprints in her blood, fingerprints, hair, and, most crucially, DNA on the knife used to kill her. The problem was: none of the evidence implicated the person the DA charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for the crime. On August 11, 1998, someone broke into the home of Felicia Gayle and stabbed her 43 times with a butcher’s knife swiped from her kitchen. Gayle’s murder took place in open daylight inside a gated community in University City, a suburb of St. Louis, where she lived with her husband Dr Daniel Picus, a radiologist. Picus discovered her body at the bottom of the stairs when he came home from work around 8 in the evening. The murder weapon was still lodged in her neck. Felicia Gayle, a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was 42 years old at the time of her death. Several items were stolen from the Gayle-Picus home, including Gayle’s jacket and purse and her husband’s old Apple laptop computer. It was, as prosecutors often say, an evidence-rich crime scene. Gayle’s murderer left behind footprints in her blood, fingerprints, hair, and, most crucially, DNA on the knife he used to kill her. The problem was: none of the evidence implicated the person the DA charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for the crime. That person was Marcellus Williams, who has spent the last 25 years on death row for a murder he didn’t commit. Now the Missouri Supreme Court has set an execution date for Williams on September 24, even though no court has ever reviewed the evidence that proves Williams’ innocence.
Labor:
You are not Alone If You are Out of Work We are endlessly and repetitively treated to sermons on the wonders of capitalism. Everybody will be taken care of, with the proviso that you are willing to work. As I have had frequent cause to note, that a line has to be furiously propagated across every channel speaks to a lack of concrete reality. And as more people, especially young people, see that they have declining possibilities, more questioning inevitably arises. The only thing worse in capitalism to having a job, however unpleasant, is not having a job. Unemployment benefits are barely at starvation rates and end all too soon. Naturally, that is worse in the United States than most other advanced capitalist countries of the Global North. Six months is the limit set at a rate well less than half of what your wages were in the job you just lost. And given that six months is the average time necessary to secure new employment, that means around half of those collecting unemployment insurance will likely have a spell of no income at all. Moreover, the official unemployment rates issued by the world’s governments drastically understate how many are in need of full-time, regular work. And, in turn, the number of those with regular employment or seeking regular employment drastically understates the lack of jobs out there.
Economy:
World:
United States Capitalism Moves Closer to WWIII!: Ukraine: America is Playing With Fire “Can a man take fire to his bosom, And his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals, And his feet not be seared?” (Proverbs 6:27-29) On 24 June, the US ambassador to Russia was summoned to the Foreign Ministry where she was presented with what is known in the jargon of diplomacy as a demarche. That in plain English means the most serious warning, just short of a declaration of war. This is a clear sign that relations between the two countries are on the brink of total breakdown. The immediate cause of the warning was an incident that occurred last Sunday, when an attack on Crimea by US-made ATACM guided missiles led to an explosion over a crowded beach in Sevastopol where families were celebrating the orthodox feast of the holy Trinity. It seems that the missile exploded in midair, showering the beach with a murderous rain of cluster bombs, leading to numerous casualties including children. The details of the attack are not entirely clear. But it is clear that it could not have occurred without the active involvement of the US military. The official position of the Russian government is that this was a deliberate attack by Ukrainians upon civilians in Crimea. According to the Defence Ministry of Russia, the attackers used US operational missiles with cluster warheads to kill the maximum number of people. Offline data were entered by US military crews and a reconnaissance drone was on duty off the coast of Crimea during the attack.
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
Profits before Life!: Error-Ridden Tech Plagues Millions of US Medicaid Recipients Deloitte systems have generated incorrect notices to beneficiaries, sent paperwork to the wrong addresses, and more. Deloitte, a global consultancy that reported revenue last year of $65 billion, pulls in billions of dollars from states and the federal government for supplying technology it says will modernize Medicaid. The company promotes itself as the industry leader in building sophisticated and efficient systems for states that, among other things, screen who is eligible for Medicaid. However, a KFF Health News investigation of eligibility systems found widespread problems. The systems have generated incorrect notices to Medicaid beneficiaries, sent their paperwork to the wrong addresses, and been frozen for hours at a time, according to findings in state audits, allegations and declarations in court documents, and interviews. It can take months to fix problems, according to court documents from a lawsuit in federal court in Tennessee, company documents, and state agencies. Meanwhile, America’s poorest residents pay the price