Daily News Digest July 24, 2024
Images of the Day:
Laura Gray Capital Rules Through Its Two Parties: Democrats and Republicans!
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:
Sanders, AOC, and the rest of DSA’s congressional representatives have not used their position to organize against the capitalist system but have instead helped to defend that very establishment. The crisis of capitalism is also the crisis of reformism. After all, without reforms, there is no basis for it as a policy or an outlook. Only in the pages of Jacobin is the pipe dream of peaceful cohabitation with capitalism kept alive — and like DSA’s membership, its circulation is plummeting. — Biden Abandons the Race: Can Switching Horses Stop Trump?
Vide0s of the Day:
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.
The Chris Hedges Report: My Thoughts on Biden Dropping Out Joe Biden was discarded by the same billionaire class he assiduously served throughout his political career. Barely able to stumble his way through the words on a TelePrompter and not always cognizant of what is happening around him, his billionaire supporters pulled the plug. He was their creature – he has been in federal office for 47 years – from start to finish. He was used as a foil to defeat Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primaries and was anointed as the candidate in 2024 in a Soviet-style primary campaign. The billionaire class will now anoint someone else. Democratic Party voters are stage props in this political farce. Donald Trump, unlike Kamala Harris or any other apparatchik the billionaire class selects as a presidential candidate, has a genuine and committed base, however fascistic. In Hitler and the Germans, the political philosopher Eric Vogelin dismisses the idea that Hitler — gifted in oratory and political opportunism but poorly educated and vulgar — mesmerized and seduced the German people. The Germans, he writes, supported Hitler and the “grotesque, marginal figures” surrounding him because he embodied the pathologies of a diseased society, one beset by economic collapse and hopelessness. Voegelin defines stupidity as a “loss of reality.” The loss of reality means a “stupid” person cannot “rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.” The demagogue, who is always an idiote, is not a freak or social mutation. The demagogue expresses the society’s zeitgeist. Biden and the Democratic Party are responsible for this zeitgeist. They orchestrated the deindustrialization of the United States, ensuring that 30 million workers lost their jobs in mass layoffs. As I write in America, The Farewell Tour, this assault on the working class created a crisis that forced the ruling elites to devise a new political paradigm.
US Funded Palestinian Genocide:
Israeli Parliament Rejects any Palestinian State, Exposing US GaslightingThe Biden administration, and all its predecessors, have attempted to deflect questions about the concerted Israeli land theft from Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967 by underlining Washington’s commitment to a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The last time, however, that a US president put himself on the line in a serious way to attain any such thing was the 1993 Oslo Accords, which required Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian West Bank by 1997. When the Israeli Right, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, sabotaged Oslo and refused to withdraw, and on the contrary doubled the number of Israeli squatters 1993-2003, the Clinton and Bush administrations rolled over and played dead, letting the far right Likud Party get away with murder. At least in those days the US spokesmen occasionally politely demurred from Israeli war crimes. As time went on, and we got to Trump and Biden, the US began actively supporting the war crimes and avoided criticizing the Israeli government almost entirely.
Zionist Baby Killers: Rights Group Demands End to Detention and Mistreatment of Palestinian Children “These children are trapped, unable to move or see the sun, forced into crowded cells with appalling, unsanitary conditions, and subject to severe abuse and violence,” an expert said of Israeli detention centers. Save the Children on Monday said that Palestinian children in Israeli detention increasingly face starvation, disease, and abuse including sexual violence, and called for a moratorium on the arrest of children and the release of all those “arbitrarily” detained.
Oxfam: Israel Has Reduced Water Access in Gaza by 94 Percent Since October Israel’s attacks on water access are part of its decades-long campaign to exercise control over basic needs in Gaza. Oxfam has warned that Israel’s longstanding policy of using water as a weapon against Palestinians has reached its peak amid Israel’s genocide, with water access for Palestinians in Gaza now at a small fraction of pre-genocide levels as Palestinians die of dehydration, starvation and disease.
Environmanet:
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!
Large-Scale and Intense Wildfires Carrying Smoke Across Northern Hemisphere Late spring and early summer blazes in Canada, Alaska and eastern Russia add to carbon emission The northern hemisphere has had a large number of intense wildfires in the first half of summer, carrying vast amounts of smoke across Eurasia and North America.
Environmental Poisoning Agency: PFAS Widely Added to US Pesticides Despite EPA Denial, Study Finds Research shows ‘forever chemicals’ increasingly found in products as agency claims the chemicals aren’t being used. Toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” are widely added to pesticides, and are increasingly used in the products in recent years, new research finds, a practice that creates a health threat by spreading the dangerous compounds directly into the US’s food and water supply. The analysis of active and inert ingredients that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved for use in pesticides proves recent agency claims that the chemicals aren’t used in pesticides are false.
It’s ‘almost impossible’ to Eliminate Toxic PFAS from your Diet. Here’s what you can do Found in products such as eggs and rice, ‘forever chemicals’ have been linked to cancer, kidney disease and more In recent years, research has found or pointed to the presence of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” in a range of staples, products and beverages across the food system. Among them are kale, eggs, butter, protein powder, milk, ketchup, coffee, canola oil, smoothies, tea, beef, juice drinks and rice. Evidence suggests they’re most widely contaminating carryout food, seafood and even pet food.
Deforestation, Warming Flip Part of Amazon Forest From Carbon Sink to Source The study area, which represents about 20 percent of the Amazon basin, has lost 30 percent of its rainforest New results from a nine-year research project in the eastern Amazon rainforest finds that significant deforestation in eastern and southeastern Brazil has been associated with a long-term decrease in rainfall and increase in temperature during the dry season, turning what was once a forest that absorbed carbon dioxide into a source of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions. The study, published in the journal Nature, explored whether these changes had altered how much carbon the Amazon stored in its vast forests. “Using nearly 10 years of CO2 (carbon dioxide ) measurements, we found that the more deforested and climate-stressed eastern Amazon, especially the southeast, was a net emitter of CO2 to the atmosphere, especially as a result of fires,” said John Miller, a scientist with NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory and a co-author. “On the other hand, the wetter, more intact western and central Amazon, was neither a carbon sink nor source of atmospheric CO2 , with the absorption by healthy forests balancing the emissions from fires.”
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Kamala Harris’s Distinguished Career of Serving Injustice This article was originally published on Consortium News July 9, 2019, when Sen. Kamala Harris was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. She was later chosen by nominee Joe Biden as his running mate, has served as vice president since January 2021 and on Sunday was backed by President Biden to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket in the November 2024 presidential election. The article examines Harris’ record as a district attorney and California’s attorney general. Sen. Kamala Harris is rising in the polls after dramatically confronting former Vice President Joe Biden during the Democratic primary debate about his opposition to federally mandated busing for desegregation. The following week, however, Harris backed away from saying that busing should always be federally mandated, calling it just one “tool that is in the toolbox” for school districts to use. When asked to clarify whether she would support federal mandates for busing, she said: “I believe that any tool that is in the toolbox should be considered by a school district.” But Biden’s poll numbers are falling as a result of Harris’s theatrical attack. Harris, who served as San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and California attorney general from 2011 to 2017, describes herself as a “progressive prosecutor.” Harris’s prosecutorial record, however, is far from progressive. Through her apologia for egregious prosecutorial misconduct, her refusal to allow DNA testing for a probably innocent death row inmate, her opposition to legislation requiring the attorney general’s office to independently investigate police shootings and more, she has made a significant contribution to the sordid history of injustice she decries.
Freedom Rider: Kamala Harris Destroyed Black Lives Harris has spent her career locking up Black and brown people. She should not be allowed to shake hands, kiss babies or walk into black churches without being taken to task. “Kamala Harris is no friend of black people.” California Senator Kamala Harris shows all the signs of announcing her candidacy for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. She is giving speeches in the right states, interviewing with the right talking heads, and recently published the obligatory memoir. She has been on the Democratic funder’scasting couch for nearly two years. Only the official announcement is missing. But Harris is highly problematic for black voters, perhaps more so than any other candidate. She served as the district attorney of San Francisco and later as attorney general of California. In both roles she did everything in her power to support the mass incarceration system and all of its foundations. That is what prosecutors do after all, but most of them don’t try to run for president and ask for black people’s votes.
Economy:
Not The Result of the Internet but the Monopolization of the Media —No News — Just Newspeak!: Employment in Print Media Another industry disrupted by the Internet The FRED Blog has discussed how the increased popularity of video streaming over the internet gradually decreased employment in video tape and disc rental establishments. Today we explore a related topic: how consuming news over the internet has reduced employment in the print media industry. The FRED graph above shows annual data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on the number of persons employed in three sectors of the information industry directly connected to print media. Each of the stacked colored area in the graph represents one print media sector: book publishers (in green), periodical publishers (in blue), and newspaper publishers (in red). Starting around 2000, employment in those three sectors steadily decreased. At the time of this writing, employment figures are at a 35-year low. Why are the proverbial printing presses slowing down?
World:.
Crowd Strikes Out The massive tech failure that caused chaos around the world raises important questions about the ownership and control of our digital world. The relatively unknown, cyber-security firm CrowdStrike admitted that the problem was caused by an update to its antivirus software, which was designed to protect Microsoft Windows devices from malicious attacks. The outage was caused by just a tiny software update from CrowdStrike put into Microsoft programs bringing them down globally My ‘techie’ programmer friends tell me that it looks like two very basic coding errors that should have been spotted and tested before being ‘forced’ onto Microsoft operating systems.
The Biden Administration Pressured Countries to Weaken Baby Formula Health Rules Trade letters document how the government’s regulatory challenges in several countries are undermining public health. The Biden administration has quietly pushed more than a half-dozen countries to weaken, delay or rethink baby formula regulations aimed at protecting the public’s health — sometimes after manufacturers complained, a ProPublica investigation has found. In the European Union, the U.S. opposed an effort to reduce lead levels in baby formula. In Taiwan, it sought to alter labeling that highlighted the health benefits of breastfeeding. And in Colombia, it questioned an attempt to limit microbiological contaminants — the very problem that shut down a manufacturing plant in Michigan in 2022, leading to a widespread formula shortage.
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
Teeth in the US For Those Who Can Afford Them—No Matter Your Politics We must hold the dental insurance industry liable for collecting premiums for years full well knowing that patients cannot afford the costs after benefits are determined. This week has been an incredibly wild ride for politics in the United States. One former president is targeted by an assassin’s bullet, and one soon-to-be former president drops out of his campaign for reelection. History is unfolding, and fear about the future is rising. One constant certainty for every person residing in the U.S. of the free and the brave is the extraordinary profits made by health insurance corporations and the providers who deny care to millions of Americans who don’t present themselves with enough coverage or cash to afford needed care.