Daily News Digest September 19, 2024
Images of the Day:
Earth had its Hottest August in 175-Year Record NOAA Climate by the Numbers The average global land and ocean surface temperature in August was 2.29 degrees F (1.27 degrees C) above the 20th-century average of 60.1 degrees F (15.6 degrees C), ranking as the warmest August in the global climate record. This August marks the 15th-consecutive month of record-high global temperatures — which is itself a record streak. Europe and Oceania had their warmest August on record, Asia saw its second-warmest while Africa and North America each had their third-warmest August.
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:
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were the Slogans of the Capitalist Revolution Against Feudalism, Now, In Capitalism’s Decline, there is Less Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity !
Leon Trotsky foretold the ‘Partnership’ Between the Trade Bureaucracy and the Boss: From Leon Trotsky and the Iron Heel:
One must accentuate especially the role which Jack London attributes to the labor bureaucracy and to the labor aristocracy in the further fate of mankind. Thanks to their support, the American plutocracy not only succeeds in defeating the workers’ insurrection but also in keeping its iron dictatorship during the following three centuries. We will not dispute with the poet the delay which can but seem to us too long. However, it is not a question of Jack London’s pessimism, but of his passionate effort to shake those who are lulled by routine, to force them to open their eyes and to see what is and what approaches. The artist is audaciously utilizing the methods of hyperbole. He is bringing the tendencies rooted in capitalism: of oppression, cruelty, bestiality, betrayal, to their extreme expression. He is operating with centuries in order to measure the tyrannical will of the exploiters and the treacherous rôle of the labor bureaucracy. But his most “romantic” hyperboles are finally much more realistic than the bookkeeper-like calculations of the so-called “sober politicians.” It is easy to imagine with what a condescending perplexity the official socialist thinking of that time met Jack London’s menacing prophecies. If one took the trouble to look over the reviews of The Iron Heel at that time in the German Neue Zeit and Vorwärts, in the Austrian Kampf and Arbeiterzeitung, as well as in the other socialist publications of Europe and America, he could easily convince himself that the thirty-year-old “romanticist” saw incomparably more clearly and farther than all the social-democratic leaders of that time taken together. But Jack London bears comparison in this domain not only with the reformists. One can say with assurance that in 1907 not one of the revolutionary Marxists, not excluding Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, imagined so fully the ominous perspective of the alliance between finance capital and labor aristocracy. This suffices in itself to determine the specific weight of the novel. — The Fall of the Trade Unions
Podcasts/Vide0s of the Day:
The Chris Hedges Report:To the Israeli Soldier Who Murdered Aysenur Ezgi Eygi … There is a part of me that says you deserve this torment. There is a part of me that wants you to suffer for the loss you inflicted on Aysenur’s family and friends, to pay for taking the life of this courageous and gifted woman. Shooting unarmed people is not bravery. It is not courage. It is not even war. It is a crime. It is murder. You are a murderer. I am sure you were not ordered to kill Aysenur. You shot Aysenur in the head because you could, because you felt like it. Israel runs an open-air shooting gallery in Gaza and the West Bank. Total impunity. Murder as sport. You will, one day, not be the killer you are now. You will exhaust yourself trying to ward off demons. You will desperately want to be human. You will want to love and be loved. Maybe you will make it. Being human again. But that will mean a life of contrition. It will mean making your crime public. It will mean begging, on your knees, for forgiveness. It will mean forgiving yourself. This is very hard. It will mean orientating every aspect of your life to nurturing life rather than extinguishing it. This will be you
Ukraine Sits on Trillions Worth of Minerals. US Politicians Want Them
Mr. President, Please Don’t Listen to WaPo and Start WW3!
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.
Juan Cole: The Sphinx and the Sultan How Biden’s Bear Hug of Netanyahu Caused Washington’s Mideast Policy to Crash and Burn. At least one thing is now obvious in the Middle East: the Biden administration has failed abjectly in its objectives there, leaving the region in dangerous disarray. Its primary stated foreign policy goal has been to rally its partners in the region to cooperate with the extremist Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu while upholding a “rules-based” international order and blocking Iran and its allies in their policies. Clearly, such goals have had all the coherence of a chimera and have failed for one obvious reason. President Biden’s Achilles heel has been his “bear hug” of Netanyahu, who allied himself with the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis, while launching a ruinous total war on the people of Gaza in the wake of the horrific October 7th Hamas terrorist attack on
United States Funded Genocide in Israel:
Canada: Student Strike for Palestine Campaign Gains Momentum! This school year, RCP activists have launched a campaign for a student strike for Palestine. We have hit the ground on multiple campuses around the country and are happy to report that thousands of students are already supporting this campaign.
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!
Some Bright News for a Dismal Week Solar panels have, over the last months, suddenly gotten so cheap that they’re now appearing in massive numbers across much of the developing world. Not perhaps a week for good news—not with former U.S. President Donald Trump trying to initiate a pogrom in Ohio (and the Secret Service protecting him from a crazy right-winger). Not with insane floods across Central Europe where the blue Danube is now a raging brown monster, or in the Lake Chad region where hundreds are dead. But there’s something else going on behind the scenes—silently. And it’s happening in places where people need it most. Solar panels have, over the last months, suddenly gotten so cheap that they’re now appearing in massive numbers across much of the developing world. Without waiting for what are often moribund utilities to do the job, business and home owners are getting on with electrifying their lives, and doing it cleanly.
Report Reveals How US Taxpayers Are Unwittingly Subsidizing Climate Lies “It is high time for the American public to understand just how much charitable money is funding climate change disinformation and to recognize the key individuals behind this effort.” A report published Wednesday identifies nearly 140 “climate disinformation organizations” in the United States financed by wealthy donors who receive massive subsidies from the nation’s taxpayers. The analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and the Climate Accountability Research Project (CARP) explains that wealthy donors are “pouring billions of dollars” into nonprofit organizations to “advance misleading, self-serving agendas that do irreparable harm to our planet”—all while reaping the benefits of charitable contribution deductions in the U.S. tax code.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Report Warns of Global ‘Democratic Backsliding’ as Election Denial Surges “The success of democracy depends on many things, but it becomes utterly impossible if elections fail,” said Kevin Casas-Zamora, secretary-general of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. A report published Tuesday by an intergovernmental watchdog paints an alarming picture of the state of global democracy, showing that the quality of elections has declined around the world and losing candidates are rejecting outcomes with growing frequency, further eroding trust in electoral processes and institutions.
Georgia Woman’s Death Marks First Confirmed Case of Fatal Post-Roe Abortion Denial Amber Nicole Thurman’s death “is the logical outcome of the Georgia abortion ban working exactly as intended by horrifically punishing women who try to access abortion care,” said one advocate. Reproductive rights advocates have warned for years that abortion bans and restrictions like those now in place in 22 U.S. states would kill pregnant people, and have been dismissed as “hyperbolic” by right-wing lawmakers and activists. On Monday, new reporting shed light for the first time on the case of one woman whose “preventable” death was the result of an abortion ban—and as ProPublica reported, “there are almost certainly others.” The outlet reported on the story of Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28-year-old mother of a six-year-old son in Georgia, who realized she was pregnant in July 2022—weeks after the right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and just as the state’s six-week abortion ban was going into effect.
Labor:
Are the Employers Kicking the Labor Officials Out of Bed? End of the Illusion of the Labor Management Parternship?: Alarm as Trump Judge Sides With Company Claiming NLRB Is Unconstitutional “This is yet another move by a Trump-appointed judge in favor of wealthy corporations.” The National Labor Relations Board was prevented on Tuesday from moving forward with an unfair labor practices case against the social services tech company Findhelp, after a Trump-appointed judge granted the Texas-based firm’s request for a temporary injunction.
Postal Workers Plan Day of Action to Fight DeJoy’s Plan to “Modernize” the USPS Nationwide rallies will be held on October 1 to demand reforms and better working conditions at the postal service. The Postal Workers (APWU) will hold a national day of action on October 1, with rallies all across the country for better staffing and better service, a better contract that ends the two-tier wage system, and the right to speak to the board that governs the postal service. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s plan to “modernize” the Postal Service consists of condensing it. In the name of saving money, he is pushing to consolidate mail processing plants into fewer, bigger, more automated ones — which means cutting hundreds of jobs each time and slowing down the mail, especially for rural customers.
Economy:
Robber Baron Capitalism: Shady Loan Deals With JPMorgan Chase Put Chicago Schools in a Financial Vice Big banks like Chase have repeatedly targeted communities, taxpayers, and even our schools with predatory debt. It’s time to fight back. Chicago’s school year kicked off amid a looming budget crisis that jeopardizes stability for both students and teachers. At the heart of the issue is a silent killer of public education: predatory bank loans, particularly from JPMorgan Chase. During a bargaining session with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), I urged Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to stop allowing big banks to hold Chicago students hostage. Instead of delaying contract negotiations with teachers and risking program cuts that harm students, CPS and state officials should take legal action to recover the funds lost due to these toxic bank deals.
World:
UK Using Terrorism Law To Silence Journalists, Protestors Who Commit ‘Speech Crimes’ Among the most well-known examples of this crackdown are the arrests of British journalist Sarah Wilkinson and British-Syrian journalist Richard Medhurst. British police and prosecutors are relying on a recently adopted “speech crime” provision in terrorism legislation to target journalists, commentators, activists, and protesters. The crackdown accelerated after Israel launched its genocidal campaign against Palestinians following the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Among the most well-known examples of this crackdown is the case of British-Syrian journalist and commentator Richard Medhurst. Medhurst, the son of two United Nations peacekeepers, was arrested on August 15 by counter-terrorism police after his plane landed at London’s Heathrow airport. He was due to participate in a panel at the Better Days Festival in Devon.
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
Ohio Is Giving Millions in Taxpayer-Funded Grants to Religious Schools Critics warn that the state is using public money to expand a separate, religious system of education. The state of Ohio is giving taxpayer money to private, religious schools to help them build new buildings and expand their campuses, which is nearly unprecedented in modern U.S. history. While many states have recently enacted sweeping school voucher programs that give parents taxpayer money to spend on private school tuition for their kids, Ohio has cut out the middleman. Under a bill passed by its Legislature this summer, the state is now providing millions of dollars in grants directly to religious schools, most of them Catholic, to renovate buildings, build classrooms, improve playgrounds and more.