Daily News Digest August 28, 2024
Images of the Day:
Political Cartoon of the Week: The Must-Have “PAC”-Cessory The goal of achieving political equality for all Americans is at the heart of the American Promise movement to get big money out of politics. While our democracy was founded on the premise of citizens who are free and equal to each other, reality has been a different story for many.
Four Died Trying The Prologue, available now on various platforms, is an overview of many of the themes that appear throughout. Chapter One: The World as it Was will reveal the Red Scare and the rise of the military-industrial complex. The next few chapters present a surprising new look at the Kennedy administration, ending with the President’s murder. Subsequent films delve into the courageous struggles of Malcolm X, Dr. King, and Robert Kennedy, each to the point of their deaths. From there, we will explore the overwhelming evidence that the major assassinations of the 1960’s were state crimes against democracy, and learn why understanding them in this way is essential to our moving forward in the present. All throughout this cycle of films, we will not lose focus on what these men “died trying” to accomplish, in hopes that the courage to face death for a world more peaceful, just, and free, may be passed to a new generation. Join the conversation and help bring our hidden history to light.
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:
Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune: One Who Pays for Something Controls It!
The Biodiversity Council, a not-for-profit expert group of scientists, said “key findings” of the report released by the authority late on Friday “gloss over the gravity of the situation”. Prof Catherine Lovelock, a council member and coastal ecosystems expert, said the “upbeat tone of the key findings contrast with the troubling detail held within the report”. The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, did not send out a media release or hold a press conference about the report – two steps that were taken by then minister Sussan Ley when the previous version of the report was released in 2019. On Friday morning before the outlook report was public, Plibersek was in Townsville with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, promoting $192m of spending to improve reef water quality and $100m for the marine park authority’s Reef HQ education centre.
Leck said the report was clear that keeping global heating to 1.5C was “crucial for the reef’s future”. “However, the report sheets responsibility for achieving a 1.5C outcome to the global community without acknowledging that the Australian government’s current climate targets are insufficient to give the reef a fighting chance.” — Albanese government accused of trying to ‘bury bad news’ about health of Great Barrier Reef
Podcasts/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.
If the US Enforces a Ceasefire in Gaza, It Will Be Only After the Palestinian Genocide is Completed!:
Israel’s Latest Attacks on Lebanon Mark Significant Escalation, Journalist Warns
Both Trumpism And Anti-Trumpism Are Fake, Decoy Revolutions Trump has been made the central figure in US politics around whom everything revolves, and whether the election is won by those who support him or those who oppose him, the imperial status quo is guaranteed to remain unchanged.
The 1%’s Pipers Call the Tune!: ‘Thanks to Citizens United’: 50 Megadonors Have Put Over $1.5 Billion Into 2024 Election The top 50 contributors “skew Republican” but the list includes donors to both major parties, an analysis from The Washington Post showed. Just 50 donors have contributed more than $1.5 billion in total to the 2024 federal elections, The Washington Postreported Monday, based on an analysis of Federal Election Commission data. The Post‘s top 50 list, which includes contributions reported by August 20, is comprised mainly of individual megadonors but also includes some organizations. Most of the contributions accounted for in the list have gone to super political action committees (PACs), which can accept unlimited funds from individuals and corporations, thanks to the 2010 Citizens United ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that loosened campaign finance law.
Plutonium Levels Near US Atomic Site in Los Alamos Similar to Chornobyl, Study Finds Much of the land near the atomic bomb’s birthplace ws converted to recreational areas, but toxic waste remains Soil, plants and water along popular recreation spots near Los Alamos, New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, are contaminated with “extreme concentrations” of plutonium, a new study has found, but calls for the federal government to act have been dismissed.
America’s Nuclear ‘Downwinders’ Deserve Justice It’s been nearly 80 years since the first atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico. Communities have been reeling ever since. For generations, Americans who live “downwind” of nuclear testing and development sites have suffered deadly health complications. And this summer, funding for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) expired, putting their hard-earned compensation at risk. Coming alongside sky-high spending on nuclear weapons development, this lapse is an outrage. Funding for these communities, which span much of the country, should be not only restored but expanded. … Over the generations since, tens of thousands of people have been affected. Health impacts include respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular diseases, birth defects, and elevated rates of cancer. We’re from New Mexico, the only “cradle-to-grave” state in which all steps of the nuclear production process — mining, testing, and disposal — occur together. We’ve lived near impacted communities our entire lives.
What Would America be Like if it was Like Gaza? On October 8, 2023, the Alien invasion long feared by science fiction buffs and Area 51 conspiracy theorists finally materialized, as unidentified anomalous phenomena (a.k.a. UFOs) appeared over America’s skies. The Aliens from beyond Pluto intercepted the US internet and announced that US exploratory satellites had killed thousands of their numbers with toxic electromagnetic transmissions and that they considered all US military personnel and veterans potential security threats. They would proceed to kill all of them. These targets included 1.29 million active duty service members along with 800,000 reserve and national guard members, including Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. They also included 16 million veterans. The Aliens hacked into all US databases and secured personal details of all these personnel including photos for facial recognition software. They deployed robots with video surveillance capabilities orders to track down and kill them all.
United States Funded Genocide in Israel:
A Detailed Look at What the US Doesn’t Want You to Know About Weapons It Sends to Israel If the Biden administration is truly concerned about the loss of innocent Palestinian life in Gaza, it can stop Israel’s atrocities by denying it the tools it needs to commit them. The Biden administration recently approved five major arms sales to Israel for F-15 fighter aircraft, tank ammunition, tactical vehicles, air-to-air missiles, mortar rounds, and related equipment for each. Though technically sales, most if not all of this matériel is paid for by U.S. taxpayers — Israel uses much of the military aid Congress approves for it effectively as a gift card to buy U.S.-made weapons. The total value of the five weapons sales exceeds $20.3 billion. More extraordinary than the price tag of these arms deals is that the White House made them public. Prior to last week’s announcements, it had disclosed just two arms sales to Israel. By March, the Biden administration had already greenlit more than 100 separate weapons deals for Israel, or about one every 36 hours, on average. The administration presumably kept the value of each arms deal “under threshold” to avoid having to notify Congress. From 2017 to 2019, the U.S. had approved thousands of below-threshold arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates worth a total of $11.2 billion. Exploiting this loophole helped the Trump administration avoid scrutiny of its enabling of a devastating and indiscriminate bombing campaign in Yemen. The Biden administration appears to be following the same playbook for the destruction it is enabling in Gaza. The White House isn’t shy about publicizing arms transfers to other countries. For example, it has been very transparent about the military aid it sent Ukraine since February 2022. Biden promotes arming Ukraine as industrial policy, marketing the military aid as a boon for domestic manufacturing and jobs. The Pentagon not only itemizes what specific matériel the U.S. sends to Ukraine, but also shows on a map where in the U.S. those weapons and equipment are made. By contrast, nearly all the publicly available information on U.S. arms transfers to Israel comes from leaks reported by the media. The Biden administration says very little about the weapons it delivers to Israel or how the Israeli military uses them. The following analysis is intended to shed light on both. In doing so, it helps explain why the Biden administration prefers to arm Israel in secret.
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!
We Humans are Embedded in a Web of Intelligent Life, Not the Pinnacle of a Hierarchy From the largest to the smallest and the oldest to the youngest creatures on Earth–Antarctic blue whales and coastal redwood trees, minute bacteria and human beings–we are all enmeshed in layers of relationships. We need each other, though some more than others. Plants evolved hundreds of millions of years before the first humans and transformed the Earth–through their creativity in surviving predators–into a livable environment for all animals, including humans. We needed plants for our evolution and need them now for our survival from climate disaster. They, however, did not need us for their existence and would survive without us. Putting humans at the top of the evolution chain as the crown of intelligent life, a western worldview, is–as some keenly grasp–mistaken. The baleful consequences of this simplistic hierarchy are everywhere: out-of-control climate, accelerating rates of animal and plant extinction, dead zones in the oceans and mass mortality of coral reefs; the vast pollution of land, air and water and the mounting likelihood of human extinction with nuclear war. All caused by humans, humans with financial and political power much more egregiously than others.
Albanese Government Accused of Trying to ‘Bury Bad News’ About Health of Great Barrier Reef Major report released at 4pm on Friday with no media release or a press conference from Tanya Plibersek On Friday morning before the outlook report was public, Plibersek was in Townsville with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, promoting $192m of spending to improve reef water quality and $100m for the marine park authority’s Reef HQ education centre. Leck said the report was clear that keeping global heating to 1.5C was “crucial for the reef’s future”. “However, the report sheets responsibility for achieving a 1.5C outcome to the global community without acknowledging that the Australian government’s current climate targets are insufficient to give the reef a fighting chance.” The report assesses the condition and trends of biodiversity, ecosystems and other measures, as well as forecasting an overall outlook for the reef’s future. The report’s executive summary said: “Future warming already locked into the climate system means that further degradation [of the reef] is inevitable. This is the sobering calculus of climate change.” The authority released the report after 4pm on Friday and said the reef’s fortune “remains one of future deterioration due largely to climate change”.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Homeless Sweeps Are Expensive, Useless and Cruel, Human Rights Watch Charges Punitive city policies are also woefully counterproductive, only perpetuating the very malady they purport to address.
Labor:
Economy:
In the Span of 72 Hours, Four People Tied to a Hewlett-Packard Criminal Case Died in Two Separate Events On May 12, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had extradited from the United Kingdom, Michael Lynch, the former CEO of Autonomy Corporation, to stand trial in the Northern District Court of California, alongside the former Vice President of Finance at Autonomy, Stephen Chamberlain. Among the numerous charges brought by the Justice Department were these: “…between 2009 and 2011, Lynch and Chamberlain, and other co-conspirators, (1) artificially inflated Autonomy’s revenues by backdating written agreements to record revenue in prior periods; recorded revenue on contracts that were subject to side letters or other contingencies that impacted revenue recognition; and improperly recorded revenue for reciprocal or roundtrip transactions…”. As part of this alleged scheme to defraud, according to the Justice Department, “…Lynch and Chamberlain caused Autonomy to make materially false and misleading statements directly to HP [Hewlett-Packard] regarding Autonomy’s financial condition, performance, and business during the negotiations between HP and Autonomy leading up to the August 18, 2011, announcement by HP to acquire Autonomy for approximately $11 billion.
World:
The World of the ‘Haves’ and the ‘Have Nots’:The Violence of Wealth and Income Inequality With each passing year wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of individuals and corporations. It is estimated that by 2030 the richest 1% in the world will possess two-thirds of all global wealth. And in a world dominated by money, with wealth comes political influence and power, the corruption of democracy and the perversion of policy making. The division between the rich and the rest, between wealthy and poor nations, is not a calm quiet space. It is a highly volatile cesspool, filled with animosity and resentment, ready to explode at any moment. It is a violent space. Income and wealth inequality are entrenched forms of social injustice. They exist to varying degrees in every country of the world and are the inevitable consequence of the unjust, pervasive socio-economic ideology, Neoliberalism.
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