Daily News Digest August 6, 2024
Images of the Day:
The West on Fire
Carlos Latuff: It’s Easy to be a Bully When You Have an Older Brother Behind You…
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”There is No Democracy! When Less Than 1% Control the Wealth, Production, and Price of Everything Produced and Consumed in the World! In the present period of unfettered Capitalism, the pretense of democratic rule does not exist, except in the minds of ‘socialists’ like Bernie Sanders and the Labor Bureaucracy! Capitalists view all struggles as struggles against capitalist rule! Transition demands immediately become revolutionary demands! Therefore, any resistence to the attack of capitalists has to be organized by those that understand this! 
Today, the United States Capitalists are Consolidating Themselves as the Supreme Capitalists! 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:
The Israeli government is now conducting a massive experiment on over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, half of them children, to see whether being compelled to live in completely unsanitary conditions will cause health epidemics among them and much reduce their numbers. The World Health Organization estimates tens of thousands of people to be at risk from this experiment, which recalls those not only of federal scientists in the US but of Josef Mengele. — Israeli Total War infects 40,000 with Hepatitis A, Threatens Polio Epidemic, Recalling Past Experiments on Human Subjects
Industrial Capitalism did not come into being due to the gradual primitive accumulation of capital, but rather the industrial revolution was fueled by the wealth plundered from the colonialized world in the name of Christianity. This is the historic material basis for modern racism as an ideology, which is used to justify the holocaust perpetuated upon the majority of the world during the period of the subjugation of the colonial world to European/United States capitalist imperialism.:Karl Marx was one of the first to oppose the colonial oppression of the world’s masses. He did not mince his words in“Capital”, Volume One, Part VIII, Chapter 31, (the) “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist”.:
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. … The treatment of the aborigines was, naturally, most frightful in plantation-colonies destined for export trade only, such as the West Indies, and in rich and well-populated countries, such as Mexico and India, that were given over to plunder. But even in the colonies properly so called, the Christian character of primitive accumulation did not belie itself. Those sober virtuosi of Protestantism, the Puritans of New England, in 1703, by decrees of their assembly set a premium of £40 on every Indian scalp and every captured red-skin: in 1720 a premium of £100 on every scalp; in 1744, after Massachusetts-Bay had proclaimed a certain tribe as rebels, the following prices: for a male scalp of 12 years and upwards £100 (new currency), for a male prisoner £105, for women and children prisoners £50, for scalps of women and children £50. Some decades later, the colonial system took its revenge on the descendants of the pious pilgrim fathers, who had grown seditious in the meantime. At English instigation and for English pay they were tomahawked by red-skins. The British Parliament proclaimed bloodhounds and scalping as “means that God and Nature had given into its hand.” . . . If money … comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek, capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.
Podcasts/Vide0s of the Day:
“Well What SHOULD Israel Have Done After October 7”
Tim Wise on ‘DEI Hires,’ Keith McHenry on Criminalizing the Unhoused
Mass Media Goons Are Still Reporting That Biden Is Getting Tough On Netanyahu All they’re doing here is trying to wash this administration’s hands of the horrors that are being inflicted in the middle east with the direct facilitation of this administration.
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.
Exploitation of Immigrants: Recognizing the Economic Need for California’s Undocumented Immigrants A new study finds 1.6 million undocumented workers created 1.25 million jobs and produced 5% of the state’s GDP. The conversation around undocumented immigrants in California is inherently political, tied up in dogma and imagery. And because the state has more undocumented people than any other, it often functions as a surrogate for the national debate. To some researchers studying it, that’s too bad — not because the human and political components of the discussion should be ignored, but because there’s a bigger picture at play in California: The state simply wouldn’t function without the work of undocumented immigrants. Quietly, in the spaces beyond rhetoric, a host of different industries understand that truth. Their profits depend on it. “It is absolutely ridiculous to hear people say, ‘We’re going to deport them.’ Deport what, your workforce?” said Jamshid Damooei, executive director of the Center for Economics of Social Issues at California Lutheran University. “We got down this rabbit hole because of the politics around the issue.” The numbers tell the story. According to 2019 data analyzed by Damooei and the center, undocumented immigrants are the source of more than half a trillion dollars of products in the state, either by direct, indirect or induced production levels. Their work adds up to nearly 5% of the state’s gross domestic product, or GDP. Almost half of California’s agricultural workforce (46%) is undocumented, the report found — but corporate and family farming are only a couple of the industries deeply dependent upon such labor. In Los Angeles County, 28.7% of the construction workforce is undocumented, along with 17.5% in manufacturing, 16% in wholesale trade and more than 15% in retail trade.
US Funded Palestinian Genocide:
Israel Accuses Hamas of Using “Human Shields” While IdF Embeds Among Civilians at Lebanon Border As Israel and Hezbollah exchange fire, Israeli troops are stationed in the villages that dot the country’s northern border. Arab Al-Aramshe, Israel — Inside the Shrapnel-Pocked school building, children’s drawings are strewn about and traces of blood dot the floor. The playground outside is littered with debris, and a burned-out car sits in the parking lot. Children ride their bicycles through the streets while families in this Israeli village less than 1 kilometer from the border with Lebanon sip coffee on their porches, seemingly unperturbed by the risk of all-out war between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. “Everything’s quiet until it’s not,” Arab al-Aramshe resident Kareem Suidan told me while we walked through the village in late July. Three months earlier, the apparent calm had been broken when Hezbollah targeted an Israeli command center inside the village, killing one soldier and injuring 16 other people, including four civilians. In the wake of the April 17 drone strike, the targeted building was described in news reports as a “community center,” but according to Suidan and the aftermath of the bombing that I observed, the building was in fact a school.
Iran Condemns “Medieval Barbarity” of Israel’s Sde Teiman Camp, Insists on Right to Deter Further Aggression The Iranian spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Nasser Kanani, condemned Israel on Saturday on “X” Saturday for practicing “medieval forms of torture” at the detention center for Palestinians at Sde Teiman, where it was revealed this week that rogue military police had engaged in gang rape and severe torture of detainees, sending one to hospital in critical condition for injuries to his rectum and allegedly resulting in the deaths of others. He compared the torture there to that practiced by the U.S. at Abu Ghrayb in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay.
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!
Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa Week beginning on July 28, 2024: 424.88 ppm Weekly value from 1 year ago: 420.83 ppm Weekly value from 10 years ago: 397.65 ppmLast updated: August 04, 2024
July 2024 was Hottest Month in Death Valley History Death Valley is always hot in July, of course. But this past July was the hottest ever recorded in history. The average daily temperature for the month was 108.5. It was a half-degree hotter than the previous record, set in 2018 There were 24 days when the temperature reached or passed 120. On July 7, it hit a high of 129. It basically never cooled off, even at night. The average low for the month was 95.
‘This is Climate Change’: Scottish Beach Eroding by 7 Metres a Year Centuries-old Montrose golf links falling into the sea and town at risk of flooding as coastal erosion accelerates
As They Accumulate In One’s Body, There are No Safe Limits for These Poisons!: After a Study Found Lead in Tampons, Environmentalists Wonder if Global Metal Pollution Is Worse Than They Previously Thought The congratulatory calls and emails were pouring in, and Kathrin Schilling was trying her best to keep up with them all. A new study for which Schilling was the senior author disclosed the presence of such harmful metals as lead and arsenic in tampons. Schilling’s work achieved the kind of mainstream attention of which researchers dream, gaining coverage in national news outlets and driving a broader public conversation about toxic chemicals in women’s hygiene products. And while her study answered an important public health question, Schilling was struck by one query from some of her well-wishers. “Everybody says, ‘Why hasn’t this been studied? Is it because it’s a product for women?’” said Schilling, an assistant professor of public health at Columbia University. “Yeah, could be.” The Center for Baby and Adult Hygiene products, a trade association, said in a statement that it is aware of the study and that “tampons are safe and have been used by people globally for many years.”
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
“I’ll Fucking Shoot You in the Face”: the Police Murder of Sonya Massey Deputy Sean Grayson didn’t turn on his body camera until after he’d shot Sonya Massey three times. This is probably why he thought he could get away with saying he killed Massey in self-defense, as she was charging toward him with a pot of boiling water. What Grayson didn’t realize is that his partner’s body cam recorded the entire fatal encounter, showing that the diminutive, unarmed Massey was hiding from the Springfield deputy, when Grayson walked around the kitchen counter, shot her in the face and left her to bleed out. Then he lied about it…lies that were caught on tape and exposed as lies on tape. Grayson should never have been hired as a cop. His record contains one blemish and red flag after another, starting with his abbreviated career in the US Army. Sean Grayson joined the Army in May 2014, but his career as a wheeled vehicle mechanic lasted less than two years, before he was discharged for “misconduct, (serious offense).” During his time in the Army, Grayson pleaded guilty to charges of driving under the influence. Shortly after his discharge, he was arrested again for drunk driving. On his application for a job with the Logan County Sheriff’s Department, Grayson said he had been drunk “a lot” in his life.
Labor:
Economy:
How Unelected Regulators Unleashed the Derivatives Monster – and How It Might Be Tamed While the world is absorbed in the U.S. election drama, the derivatives time bomb continues to tick menacingly backstage. No one knows the actual size of the derivatives market, since a major portion of it is traded over-the-counter, hidden in off-balance-sheet special purpose vehicles. However, when Warren Buffet famously labeled derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction” in 2002, its “notional value” was estimated at $56 trillion. Twenty years later, the Bank for International Settlements estimated that value at $610 trillion. And financial commentators have put it as high as $2.3 quadrillion or even $3.7 quadrillion, far exceeding global GDP, which was about $100 trillion in 2022. A quadrillion is 1,000 trillion. Most of this casino is run through the same banks that hold our deposits for safekeeping. Derivatives are sold as “insurance” against risk, but they actually add a heavy layer of risk because the market is so interconnected that any failure can have a domino effect. Most of the banks involved are also designated “too big to fail,” which means we the people will be bailing them out if they do fail.
Nikkei Has Biggest Drop in History: Here’s What’s Causing the Global Market Selloff Japan’s Nikkei stock market index fell a stunning 4,451.28 points in overnight trading, marking the worst tumble in point terms in the entire history of the Nikkei. In percentage terms, that was a one-day trading loss of 12.4 percent. Dow futures took their cue from the selloff in overnight foreign markets and tumbled a breathtaking 1200 points by 8:26 a.m. in New York. When the market actually opened at 9:30 a.m. the Dow had shaved off 1,167 points in the opening five minutes. As of 9:40 a.m., the Nasdaq had lost 819.8 points or 4.89 percent.
World:
German Colonialism in Africa left Hundreds of Thousands Dead: Its Chilling Afterlife Imperial Germany was a latecomer in the scramble for Africa. Shady deals marked the pseudo-legal entry point. South West Africa (today Namibia), Cameroon and Togo were euphemistically proclaimed to be possessions under “German protection” in 1884. East Africa (today’s Tanzania and parts of Rwanda and Burundi) followed in 1886. German rule left a trail of destruction. The war against the Hehe people in east Africa (1890-1898) signalled what would come. It was the training ground for a generation of colonial German army officers. They would apply their merciless skills in other locations too. The mindset was one of extermination.
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