Daily News Digest July 18, 2024
Images of the Day:Heat Advisory
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”
Capitalism’s Gluttony is Demonstrated by It’s Quest for More and More Profits at the Expense of Humanity! 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:
“And here with us—and here with us today are countries from the Indo–Pacific region,” Biden said midway in his address. “They’re here because they have a stake in our success and we have a stake in theirs.” I do not like this remark one bit. I read it as a barely veiled confirmation of a swell of hints and innuendo last year to the effect that NATO intends to expand its purview to East Asia, so following the U.S. in its gradually escalating confrontation with China. As if on cue, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s outgoing sec-gen, subsequently launched into an utterly inappropriate attack on China for “oppressing its own people,” for “crushing democratic voices,” for “more assertive behavior in the South China Sea,” for “threatening neighbors, threatening Taiwan,” and so on down the list of complaints Blinken and the Biden regime’s policy cliques favor when addressing the Chinese. NATO in Asia is now to be taken with the utmost seriousness. It is NATO now and the NATO to come—brain dead NATO, NATO everywhere with no legitimate business anywhere. Shortly after Stoltenberg delivered himself of his preposterous tirade, Biden hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom around his neck> ‑ Patrick Lawrence: ‘Brain Dead’ and Dangerous, NATO Proceeds
One need not look further than the hundreds of billions dollars the US has given Israel in the past century to see selective treatment. But beyond this, the US consistently excuses Israel’s well-documented war crimes and continues to violate US Code 2304 by providing weapons to them. While Zionist groups cry foul at “selective outrage,” the reality is that Israel receives selective treatment on the international stage. Selective outrage connotes malintent, the idea that people are critical of Israel because it is a Jewish state. However, the rhetoric of the anti-Zionist movement points more to Israel being given a free pass to conduct itself in whatever cruel manner it pleases. —“Selective Outrage” Towards Israel
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the six right-wingers, assured us that “the president is not above the law.” But he then proceeded to carve out a zone of immunity even broader than the one Trump’s legal team had sought. — The Supreme Court Has Made It Official: US Presidents Are Now Monarchs
Vide0s of the Day:
“Blank Check” for Genocide: Court Dismisses Palestinians’ Case Against Biden Admin over Gaza War
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.
To this day, we have a government and state apparatus that is designed to “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” Democracy for white and wealthy men only! — Roland Sheppard, My Forefathers and The 1%’s Forefathers.
Patrick Lawrence: ‘Brain Dead’ and Dangerous, NATO Proceeds It is now five years since Emmanuel Macron, in one of those blunt outbursts for which he is known, told The Economist, in a reference to the collective West, “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO.” The French president thereupon shocked officials across the Continent. “That is not my point of view,” Angela Merkel responded augustly. “I don’t think that such sweeping judgments are necessary.” Heiko Maas, the German chancellor’s foreign minister, added imaginatively, “I do not believe NATO is brain dead.” The North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrated its 75th anniversary last week, 32 presidents and prime ministers assembling in the same Washington auditorium where earlier leaders, 12 of them then, signed its founding treaty on April 4, 1949. Joe Biden presided over the anniversary proceedings, of course. And with this in mind, let us credit the French leader for his prescience in diagnosing the condition of NATO’s cerebral matter. As Joe Lauria put it in a Consortium News commentary at the summit’s conclusion last Thursday, this is an organization whose members are collectively losing their minds.
NATO Must Rethink Expansion Plans, Step Back from Precipice of Nuclear Confrontation With Russia There’s a history to the war between Russia and the West going back to the Cold War and the unification between East and West Germany. Thomas Friedman once asked George Kennan, (the architect of the US Cold War strategy on containment), what he thought about NATO expansion, Kennan said, “I think it is the beginning of a new Cold War. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.” In March 2003, President George W. Bush invaded Iraq on the pretext that Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were ever found, and President Bush lied to the world and the US. This war cost the lives of 4,485 Americans and the lives of 500,000 Iraqis. Moreover, this act of aggression cost the US upwards of two trillion dollars and, to boot, we are still paying the price today. How so? This war left a vacuum in Iraq so that Saddam’s generals formed Daesh or I.S.I.S. a terrorist group that is still active today..
The Only Kind Of “Political Violence” All U.S. Politicians Oppos The Trump rally shooting reveals a bipartisan consensus about what constitutes political violence — and who should wield it. A bipartisan sampling of the world’s greatest perpetrators and enablers of political violence has rushed to condemn political violence following the shooting attempt on former President Donald Trump on Saturday. Politicians swiftly coalesced around the language of “political violence,” rather than terrorism, to describe the assassination attempt, carried out by Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot dead at the Western Pennsylvania rally. Taken together, the outpourings of condemnations betray a clear agreement on what constitutes political violence, and in whose hands the monopoly on violence should remain. “The idea that there’s political violence … in America like this, is just unheard of, it’s just not appropriate,” said President Joe Biden, the backer of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine, with a death toll that researchers believe could reach 186,000 Palestinians. Biden’s narrower point was correct, though: Deadly attacks on the American ruling class are vanishingly rare these days. Political violence that is not “like this” — the political violence of organized abandonment, poverty, militarized borders, police brutality, incarceration, and deportation — is commonplace.
Childcide in the Age of Fascist Theocracies In the aftermath of over five hundred shootings during the July 4th weekend, reports indicate that “a Texas-based company has developed vending machines that sell bullets and installed them at a handful of grocery stores in Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama, with plans for expansion into other states.”1 Violence has become an organizing and governing principle in America, revealing a form of social and political psychosis driven by greedy manufacturers of death, the military-industrial-academic complex, fascist politics, and the emergence of a society that uses violence as a source of identity, pleasure, and collective hatred. When morality collapses, the social contract dies, and liberal ideology exhausts itself. With the growing concentration of power and massive inequality in wealth, historical amnesia and willful ignorance, poisonous conditions proliferate for a society marked by both bare life and a form of institutionalized domestic terrorism.
Boeing Pleads Guilty to Criminal Fraud: the Continuing 737 Max Saga Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge regarding the two crashes of 737 Max airplanes that caused the death of 346 passengers on two flights: a Lion Air flight out of Indonesia in October 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines flight in March 2019. Though Boeing had tried hard to convince the world that these accidents occurred due to poorly trained pilots in the third world, there was overwhelming evidence that Boeing had made significant changes to the flight control systems while hiding them from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the concerned airlines.
US Funded Palestinian Genocide:
Genocide is Mass Assasinations!: Israel’s Assassination Attempts and the Endless Stream of Civilian Casualties If the world accepts the way Israel now interprets ‘proportionality,’ then genocide will become justified. Most people probably don’t know this but Wikipedia has a page called “List of Israeli assassinations.” It begins in July 1956 and stretches over 68 years until today. The majority on the list are Palestinians; among them are famous Palestinian leaders PFLP’s Ghassan Kanafani, Fatah’s Khalil Ibrahim al-Wazir – also known as Abu Jihad, Hamas’s Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and Islamic Jihad’s Fathi Shaqaqi.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!
Residents of Illinois Town Evacuate as Officials Warn if ‘Imminent’ Dam Failure Nashville and surrounding areas have been hit by severe storms and flooding, overwhelming city’s infrastructure Residents in Nashville, Illinois, are evacuating their homes after emergency management officials warned the failure of the city’s dam was “imminent”.
Millions of US Low-Income Households Face Power Shutoffs Amid Deadly Heat Half of Americans live in states without rules restricting disconnections for unpaid or overdue bills, report finds Millions of low-income households are at risk of having their power disconnected this summer, exacerbating the risk of deadly heat as the climate crisis drives up temperatures. A new report by the Centre for Energy Poverty and Climate (EPC) and the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (Neada) found that almost half of Americans live in states without rules restricting disconnections for unpaid or overdue energy bills during potentially deadly heatwaves, forcing some low-income families to choose between cooling their homes and paying rent.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
CODEPINK’s Palestinian-American Staff Member Arrested on False Accusation of Assault by Member of Congress In an incident of political thuggery and intimidation at the RNC, CODEPINK’s Palestinian campaign organizer, Nour Jaghama, has been unjustly arrested by police on accusation of assaulting a member of Congress. While peacefully waiting in line to enter the event, Nour, a visibly Palestinian woman, was intentionally bumped into by a bald, white member of Congress while he tried to shove past her. Despite not reacting to this, Nour was falsely accused of “alleged” assault by a Texas State police officer on the scene and we are told she will be taken to a Milwaukee Police Department for arrest. Notably, two other CODEPINK staff members ahead of her in line passed through without any issues, raising concerns of racial profiling.
Labor:
A New Era of Endless Labor Shortages? A Critical Analysis of McKinsey’s New Report Every so often a publication comes along that more or less perfectly captures the Zeitgeist of world business elites. So it was on the 26th of June when the McKinsey Global Institute issued a new report: “Help Wanted: Charting the Challenge of Tight Labor Markets in Advanced Economies.” The message its few pages of charts and text deliver is dire indeed: “Labor markets in advanced economies today are among the tightest in two decades, not merely a pandemic-induced blip but rather a long-term trend that may continue as workforces age.” This constraining labor market, the report claims, “means forgone economic output,” since employers are not able to “fill their excess job vacancies.” “Companies and economies,” the authors warn, “will need to boost productivity and find new ways to expand the workforce. Otherwise, they will struggle to exceed—or even match—the relatively muted economic growth of the past decade.” Less than two weeks later, on July 5, the United States Department of Labor released its “Employment Situation Summary” for the month of June. Lost in a wave of mostly upbeat press coverage were two striking facts utterly incongruent with the McKinsey report’s claims. Firstly, unemployment had risen to its highest point since November 2021: 4.1%. Even more awkwardly, Long Term Unemployment among the unemployed had spiked to 22.2% — more than five percentage points above its February 2023 low of 17.5%.The measure of unemployment highlighted in the June release is the “narrow” measure, sometimes referred to as “U3.” It excludes many workers who we and many other analysts have long insisted should also be counted, such as discouraged workers and those working part-time because they could not find a full-time position. At no point during the pandemic did that “wider” measure, “U6,” in Labor Department parlance, ever fall below 6.7%. Since July of 2023, it has fitfully risen to 7.4. This means that, in June 2024, there are more than 13.1 million American workers willing to work but without a job.
Economy:
Jamie Dimon Goes Missing from Earnings Call, After Dumping $183 Million of His JPMorgan Chase Stock Earlier this Year We can’t remember a time when the Chairman and CEO of the largest, most complex and scandal-ridden bank in the United States, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, was too busy to squeeze in an appearance at the company’s heavily-scrutinized quarterly earnings call with analysts. That happened last Friday.
World:.
How the Knowledge Economy and Science Bolster Cuba’s Socialist Revolution Cuba and Cuban science gained acclaim worldwide for producing their own very effective Covid-19 vaccines. The achievement stood out among nations of the Global South. The feat reflects Cuba’s development over decades of a formidable scientific establishment engaged in the development and marketing of biologic products oriented to healthcare mostly, and also to food production.
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
UnitedHealth Reports $7.9 Billion in Q2 Profits After Protesters Arrested “Health insurance coverage has expanded in America, but we are finding it is private health insurance corporations themselves that are often the largest barrier for people,” said one organizer. A day after 150 people assembled outside the headquarters of UnitedHealth Group to demand the for-profit health insurance giant stop its “systemic” denial of coverage, the company announced Tuesday the huge profits it raked in over the second quarter of 2024: $7.9 billion. The sum, said one organizer, exemplifies why the demonstrators were willing to risk arrest to speak out against the firm’s practices. “UnitedHealth Group’s $7.9 billion quarterly profit announcement is the result of a business model built on pocketing premiums and billions of dollars in public funds, then profiting by refusing to authorize or pay for care,” said Aija Nemer-Aanerud, Health Care for All campaign director for People’s Action Institute. “People should not have to turn to public petitions or direct actions to get UnitedHealthcare to pay for the care they need to live. That makes no sense, unless you’re a shareholder or executive eyeing your next big luxury purchase.
Arizona’s “Model” School Voucher Program Is Causing Massive Budget Meltdown The state is facing a $1.4 billion budget shortfall, much of it due to a tax-funded private school voucher program. In 2022, Arizona pioneered the largest school voucher program in the history of education. Under a new law, any parent in the state, no matter how affluent, could get a taxpayer-funded voucher worth up to tens of thousands of dollars to spend on private school tuition, extracurricular programs or homeschooling supplies. In just the past two years, nearly a dozen states have enacted sweeping voucher programs similar to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account system, with many using it as a model. Yet in a lesson for these other states, Arizona’s voucher experiment has since precipitated a budget meltdown. The state this year faced a $1.4 billion budget shortfall, much of which was a result of the new voucher spending, according to the Grand Canyon Institute, a local nonpartisan fiscal and economic policy think tank. Last fiscal year alone, the price tag of universal vouchers in Arizona skyrocketed from an original official estimate of just under $65 million to roughly $332 million, the Grand Canyon analysis found; another $429 million in costs is expected this year.