Daily News Digest August 21, 2024
Images of the Day: Protesters Gather in Chicago’s Union Park before Democratic party Convention
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:
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace Does not Spread Democracy!:
The Seventy-one years ago, on 19 August 1953, a coup was organized against him by MI6 and the CIA and their paid Iranian agents. After the Coup, the men and the many unknown women around him who went to prison included my own father. They were all individuals of high integrity. A rare phenomenon these days. May his ideals and ideas become an inspiration for future generations of Iranians who wish to build a nation based upon the rule of law and democracy in their country. — Remembering a Democratic Iran under Mosaddegh, which the US Overthrew
Podcasts/Vide0s of the Day:
Thousands March on DNC in Chicago to Demand End to War on Gaza
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.
While Watching Genocide Joe’s Farewell Speech I Thought of Martin Luther King’s 1967 Speech, The Other America, and how the divide, between the rich and more the poor, has gotten much wider in the United States.: My 2010 introduction to King’s, The Other America, for the San Francisco BayView: ” The Jan. 15 birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will be celebrated this year as America’s only ‘Black holiday’ Monday, Jan. 19. On this day, the ruling class and their mass media always feature his 1963 ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, as if he never evolved beyond that point. During his lifetime, as a leader of the civil rights movement, King was constantly hounded by the government with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. Since his death, an effort has been made to convert him into a harmless icon – to canonize him. Below is one of his last speeches, given over 40 years ago and one year before his assassination, at Stanford University in April 1967 and titled the ‘The Other America.’ Here he speaks not of a dream but of the nightmarish economic condition of Black people. When he talks about ‘work-starved men searching for jobs that do not exist’ and living on a ‘lonely island of poverty surrounded by an ocean of material prosperity,’ the speech remains timely in today’s world. Now the ‘the work starved people’ are suffering from corporate landlord’s induced homeless have been criminalize. The victims of capitalism have been pronounce criminal. not the Capitalist Corporate Landlords!
Politicians In Dystopialand Warn Other Candidate Will Cause Dystopia From the heart of this tyrannical nightmare, politicians warn that if you don’t vote for them you will find yourself in a nation that has been transformed into a tyrannical nightmare. One bizarre thing about modern US presidential races is watching politicians in one of the most dystopian civilizations ever to exist warning people that the other candidate wants to lead them into a dark dystopia, which depending on the party they label “communism” or “fascism”.
“And Now They Want Our Votes” Eman Abdelhadi’s speech from the “Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws” demonstration on Aug. 18 in Chicago. Chicago, we all know why we are here. We are drowning, and our hearts are broken. We are drowning in debt. In medical bills. In rising rents. In inflation. We are under attack in this country. The Right has declared war on people of color, on trans people, on women. They are trying to dismantle our systems of education, trying to criminalize teaching Black history and the realities of racism, oppression and exploitation in this country. They openly call for mass deportations and want to strip Black people of voter rights. Every year, the climate crisis kills more people of heat, of floods, of fires. Every year, the number of climate refugees at home and abroad climbs and climbs. And in this moment of absolute disaster, of absolute crisis. The American ruling class —the people descending on this city for the Democratic National Convention — have seen fit to spend our money on killing children in Gaza.
Biden’s Cruel and Orwellian Remarks on Gaza at the DNC A speech that denied the suffering of Palestinians was a journey into an alternative universe of political guile from a president who just six days earlier had approved sending $20 billion worth of more weapons to Israel. An observation from George Orwell—“those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future”—is acutely relevant to how President Biden talked about Gaza during his speech at the Democratic convention Monday night. His words fit into a messaging template now in its eleventh month, depicting the U.S. government as tirelessly seeking peace, while supplying the weapons and bombs that have enabled Israel’s continual slaughter of civilians.
Biden Lied Like a Rug/Trump!: Biden Says Civilians Being Killed on Both Sides in Gaza. The Ratio Is 45 to 1. The civilian death ratio of Palestinians to Israelis is, conservatively, 45 to 1 — and this gulf grows larger each day. “Those protesters out in the street, they have a point,” Biden said, referring to the droves of pro-Palestine protesters demonstrating outside of the convention. “A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides.” He once again touted the U.S.’s ceasefire negotiations that have done nothing but prolong Israel’s genocide so far. It is patently untrue that there are people dying on “both sides” in Gaza and Israel. Since October 7, when Hamas forces killed 1,139 Israelis and foreigners, including roughly 700 Israeli civilians, almost zero Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinian forces. Since then, a few dozen Israeli hostages have been killed — though it’s unclear how many are dead, and of those, how many were killed by the Israeli military.
United States Funded Genocide in Israel:
Gaza is in Rubble Now; But it was a Great Intellectual Hub of the Roman Empire The years 2023 and 2024 will certainly be remembered as some of the darkest in the long and often violent history of Gaza. The recent destruction of schools and universities in the Gaza strip has attracted the attention of the media and concern from the United Nations, which has raised the question of whether the damage may be considered “scholasticide”. Such reports are cause for reflection on the intellectual history of the city – something rarely discussed outside academic circles. This is a shame, as there was a period in the late Roman Empire (5th and 6th centuries CE) when Gaza was one of the great intellectual centres of the Mediterranean world.
Israel Has Tripled The Number of Children It’s Killing Via Gunfire in West Bank Israeli forces have shot and killed 115 children in the West Bank in the past 10 months. Israel has majorly escalated its campaign of shooting and killing children in the occupied West Bank since October, a UN report says, as Israel carries out its deadliest campaign in the West Bank on record amid its genocide of Gaza.
After Meeting With Blinken, Netanyahu Backs US Gaza Proposal That Includes His Demands After meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jerusalem on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement backing the new Gaza hostage and ceasefire proposal from the US, which includes the Israeli leader’s demands and doesn’t include a permanent truce. “The Prime Minister reiterated Israel’s commitment to the current American proposal on the release of our hostages, which takes into account Israel’s security needs, which he strongly insists on,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. According to The Times of Israel, the statement was the first time Netanyahu publicly backed the US proposal even though it included his demands. Hamas rejected the proposal a day earlier due to the added conditions. In a statement, Hamas cited the lack of a permanent ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Blinken Warns of Ceasefire Deadline as US Pledges Even More Arms to Israel Israeli officials have repeatedly rejected the idea of a ceasefire even as the U.S. keeps up a charade of negotiations. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Monday that it may be the last chance for negotiators to achieve a ceasefire deal as Israeli leaders continued to reject a ceasefire and demanded that any deal allow them to exercise military control in Gaza. In remarks amid his visit to Tel Aviv, Blinken said that this round of negotiations is “the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a ceasefire, and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security.” Blinken suggested that an escalation of tensions between Israel and Middle Eastern countries opposed to the genocide would jeopardize the deal — seemingly insinuating that, if all-out war were to break out, negotiators would have no choice but to allow Israel to continue the genocide. This is ironic as senior officials from Iran and other countries in the Middle East have said that a ceasefire is the only way to draw down
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!
CO2-Driven Global Heating is a Silent Killer, Stalking the Vulnerable Extreme heat is a silent killer. From time to time, we hear about shocking cases of football players and other athletes who die suddenly while exerting themselves on hot days. Those deaths are certainly tragic, but statistically they are very rare. Most deaths from extreme heat are in older people, who frequently die alone inside their homes. They often die slowly, as the heat creeps up to and sometimes past body temperature, especially when heat domes park themselves over cities and keep the temperature high all day and all night. When such deaths happen, they rarely make the news. Of all the climate change disasters our world is already experiencing, heat is the top killer, as the World Meteorological Organization reported. The planet was more than 1.5 C above the pre-industrial baseline for 12 consecutive months from July 2023 to June 2024. In July this year, we saw the hottest three days ever on record, prompting a special statement from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Labor:
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics Commentary 8/19/23
Special Commentary – Inflation Review-Preview, Pre-Pandemic Into The Year Ahead, Follows Later This Week Updated Cpi Alternate-Data File Attached. Economic Review-Preview Special Commentary Follows Next Week Taking longer than anticipated, ShadowStats Commentaries will return to a regular publication schedule, following back-to-back Special Commentaries later this week and next, with the Inflation Review-Preview (2019 to 2025) pending this week, followed by the Economic Review-Preview (2019 to 2025) next week. Respective Comprehensive Reviews of and Outlooks for (1) Current Inflation Circumstances, and (2) Current Economic Conditions, will show both areas in continuing deterioration, despite Pre-Election reporting games being played with both CPI and GDP, otherwise suggestive of an intensifying, inflationary economic downturn.
For the Year of 2023 the Shadow Government Statistics Alternat Inflation Rate is 11.49%
As indicated on the above graph, as of December 31, 2023, Goldman Sachs Bank USA, JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., Citigroup’s Citibank and Bank of America held a staggering total of $168.26 trillion in derivatives out of a total of $192.46 trillion at all federally-insured U.S. banks, savings associations and trust companies. That’s just four banks holding 87 percent of all derivatives at all 4,587 federally-insured financial institutions in the U.S. that existed as of December 31, 2023.
World:
How US Big Tech Monopolies Colonized the World: Welcome to Neo-Feudalism US Big Tech corporations have essentially colonized the world. In almost every country on Earth, the digital infrastructure upon which the modern economy was built is owned and controlled by a small handful of monopolies, based largely in Silicon Valley. This system is looking more and more like neo-feudalism. Just as the feudal lords of medieval Europe owned all of the land and turned almost everyone else into serfs, who broke their backs producing food for their masters, the US Big Tech monopolies of the 21st century act as corporate feudal lords, controlling all of the digital land upon which the digital economy is based.
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