Daily News Digest August 30, 2024

Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:

Violence ExporterSince 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 Iron Heel

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:

Why are Things Expensive?

Podcasts/Vide0s of the Day:

The Middle East’s Roots Lie In the Fall of the Ottomans 

Washington’s Israel Policy Is Just Feigning Ignorance Of Israeli Depravity It’s so unfair how Israel’s neighbors keep attacking it completely unprovoked while Israel is just innocently minding its own business trying to commit a little genocide in peace. 

Black Agenda Radio August 23, 2024

Bwa Kayiman and the Haitian Revolution

Democrats Complicit in Israel’s Crimes

Beyond Cop Cities: Dismantling State and Corporate-Funded Armies and Prisons

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: The Sound of Enforced Silence Is there some connection, — not quite official but it may as well be— between censorship and presidential politics? I pose the question as a survivor of the Russiagate years, when illiberal liberals started talking about “free-speech absolutists,” and when corporate journalists cheered the censoring of unincorporated journalists so long as it was called “content moderation.”      I cannot answer my own question, honestly. But as this November’s elections draw near, a new and aggressive campaign to suppress dissent — in social media, at airports, on campuses, and elsewhere — is hard upon us. This is a trans–Atlantic, trans-national operation. Let us not fail to take note.     Straight off the top, you probably noticed that the Democratic Party’s openly undemocratic elite refused to allow any speaker of Palestinian background to address the convention in Chicago last week. We can read this, disgraceful in itself, as an indication of how the Democrats intend to deal with the Gaza crisis and other such foreign policy matters if they succeed in extending their power another four years.   Yes, they will continue supporting terrorist Israel and the Nazi-infested regime in Ukraine just as they have to date, but they will avoid talking to you and me about the imperium’s gruesome business as they conduct it. Silence on such matters will be as gold to these people, especially between now and Nov. 5. Kamala Harris, or the cynical operatives busily inventing Kamala Harris, are selling “joy” this political season, not any kind of sober, responsible view of our circumstances. Harris is supposed to ride into the White House on a carpet of good vibes. Gaza, the war in Ukraine, Washington’s provocations at the other end of the Pacific: Nah: All such questions are bad vibes.    One of the things the Russiagate years exposed was the close collaboration between the Democratic Party and the national-security state. People who know their history have long understood that “the intelligence community” — so odious, this term — has been, from its beginnings in the late–1940s, more liberal than conservative in its culture and sensibilities. Hillary Clinton’s embarrassing defeat in 2016 consolidated this relationship. It is now hard to tell where the Democratic Party ends and the national-security state begins.      I have been, since the Russiagate years, perfectly comfortable with the term “Deep State.” And here it comes again, reliant as always upon its appendages in the Big Tech social media platforms and the more repellant quadrants of corporate media as they attempt to extinguish all other-than-approved opinions and perspectives.

The New McCarthyism: Denouncing the University of Pennsylvania’s collaboration with the House Education Committee investigation of Faculty Members Larry Jameson Interim President, the University of [email protected] John Jackson Provost, the University of Pennsylvania [email protected] . . .  We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our grave concern about the apparent cooperation of the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) with the witch-hunt which the Republican majority on the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce is conducting against several members of its faculty, as well as faculty and students at other institutions of higher education. Your failure to resist the committee’s improper demands and resolutely defend your faculty makes a mockery of your university’s avowed commitment to academic freedom. 

Russia’s Lavrov Warns US That World War III Wouldn’t Be Confined to Europe “They have a mindset of a master sitting somewhere out there overseas and believing to be totally safe and secure, thinking that not only Ukrainians, but also… Europeans would be willing to do the dirty work and die for them.” 

Israel’s Attacks on Lebanon Since October 7 Have Displaced Over 100,000 People Israel’s cross-border strikes have already killed hundreds of civilians. Now, Lebanese people fear there’s more to come.   For months, Lebanon has been on edge as cross-border strikes between Israel and Hezbollah rattle the country. On October 8 of last year, Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel to show its support for Hamas; in the months that followed, its objectives changed to pressuring Israel to end the war on Gaza. Israel has bombarded Lebanon with greater ferocity, turning the south of Lebanon into a war zone and increasingly threatening to strike the capital, Beirut. According to Beirut-based journalist Lara Bitar, “The belief that war is imminent changes daily, if not hourly.”

United States Funded Genocide in Israel:   

If the US Enforces a Ceasefire in Gaza, It Will Be Only After the Palestinian Genocide is Completed!:

Democratic Party Convention: Lesser Evilism Strikes With a Vengeance and a Cacophony of Corporate Media Hype 24,500 full size posters reading “We Heart Joe” were held high by virtually every Democratic Party Convention delegate and attendee jammed into Chicago’s United Center to cheer for yesterday’s disgraced and withdrawn presidential candidate, Genocide Joe Biden.    That the Biden-Harris administration presided over a new congressionally approved $20 billion for the racist Zionist, apartheid Israeli slaughter of the Palestinian masses – now over 40,000 murdered and 10,000 more buried beneath the rubble of destroyed communities – was instantly disappeared from the DNC’s proceedings. The DNC’s 90-page platform statement placed zero blame for the ongoing US-backed Israeli genocide of the Palestinian masses. Indeed, not a single speaker condemned the record of “Genocide Joe.”

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!

Another Example of Capitalism as Failed System!: Mapping Safe Drinking Water Use in Low- and Middle-Income Countries     Editor’s Summary    The availability of safe drinking water is far from universal, but exactly how it varies geographically and why this occurs is not well understood. Greenwood et al. combined Earth Observation data, geospatial modeling, and household survey data to estimate that only one in three people in low- and middle-income countries have access to safely managed drinking water services (see the Perspective by Hope). Fecal contamination is the primary limiting factor, affecting almost half of the population of these regions. This means that more than 4.4 billion people in poorer countries lack safe drinking water, a number more than twice as high as some other estimates. —Jesse Smith.    Abstract     Safe drinking water access is a human right, but data on safely managed drinking water services (SMDWS) is lacking for more than half of the global population. We estimate SMDWS use in 135 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) at subnational levels with a geospatial modeling approach, combining existing household survey data with available global geospatial datasets. We estimate that only one in three people used SMDWS in LMICs in 2020 and identified fecal contamination as the primary limiting factor affecting almost half of the population of LMICs. Our results are relevant for raising awareness about the challenges and limitations of current global monitoring approaches and demonstrating how globally available geospatial data can be leveraged to fill data gaps and identify priority areas in LMICs.

Tell Us: Have You Been Affected by the US Insurance Crisis? We want to hear from people across the US who have been affected by the volatility of the home insurance market We know the industry is in an enormous state of flux amid the climate crisis and increasingly severe wildfires, floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters. Companies have been raising premiums, cancelling or refusing to issue policies, and pulling out of entire markets. The Guardian US has reported on the crippling effects for homeowners in Florida, California, Louisiana and beyond.

Black Liberation/Civil Rights:

Systemic Environmental Racism: The Brockovich Report : Water Problems Prevail In Watts & Jackson Why Do Communities Struggle To Find An Agency Or Elected Officials Willing To Admit Fault Or Help Them Clean Up Their Water?    A new study released this month reveals that about 4.4 billion people don’t have safe drinking water at home. That’s more than half the world’s population! What’s more is that the research indicates we had grossly underestimated how many people lack access to safe drinking water just a few years earlier. What gives?     Traditionally, researchers gathered information through household surveys, but the updated numbers were thanks to geospatial data and satellites, along with more thorough questions about water quality.     When you think about these parts of the world without access to clean drinking water, you don’t typically think of neighborhoods in the U.S.   ut increasingly, cities are struggling with the double punch of water infrastructure problems such as leaky pipes and chemical contamination, limiting access to safe water at home even in an industrialized country like ours.    Let’s look at Watts, a majority Black and Latino neighborhood spanning two square miles in South Los Angeles. It’s one of the most polluted neighborhoods in California, according to the state’s Environmental Protection Agency.     Just last week, a community-led study was released, which found toxic levels of lead in the tap water. 

Black Agenda Report

Labor:

United Flight Attendants Vote 99.99% to Authorize Strike “We have flight attendants who are struggling to make ends meet while our CEOs are on private jets,” said one union leader. “We want some respect shown in the contract.”    Hoping to leverage the looming Labor Day travel rush to secure better pay and working conditions, unionized United Airlines flight attendants on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly in favor of authorizing a strike if management fails to meet their demands.The United flight attendants—who are represented by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA)—voted 99.99%, with 90.21% of members participating, to greenlight a work stoppage unless they win concessions including a double-digit raise, more schedule flexibility, improved work rules, job security, and retirement benefits.

Economy:

World:

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 

Feds Kill Plan To Curb Medicare Overbilling After Industry Opposition Newly released court depositions show that agency officials repeatedly cited concern about pressure from the industry. A decade ago, federal officials drafted a plan to discourage Medicare Advantage health insurers from overcharging the government by billions of dollars — only to abruptly back off amid an “uproar” from the industry, newly released court filings show.    The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published the draft regulation in January 2014. The rule would have required health plans, when examining patient’s medical records, to identify overpayments by CMS and refund them to the government.     But in May 2014, CMS dropped the idea without any public explanation. Newly released court depositions show that agency officials repeatedly cited concern about pressure from the industry.