Daily News Digest November 14, 2023
Images 0f the Day:
We’re Experiencing an Economic Boom!
World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, since then, 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”, is Still True for Today’s World!
Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capitalism Has Been Aware of the Comming Catastrophe of Global Warming Over 5 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 Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading Racism, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The very future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: 1. Austerity,2. Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 3. 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!
Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Now Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World!
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:
Fundamental to understanding Israel’s massacre of Palestinians and the wasteland they are creating in Gaza is to discern the blueprint that Israel’s founders drew up to create their Jewish homeland; what they called Eretz-Israel. Early Zionist leaders were explicit about what they deemed “transfer” plans to effect a “Jewish majority” in Palestine. Yosef Weitz (1890-1972)—known as the “architect of transfer”—served as director of the powerful Jewish National Fund’s Land Settlement Department. As head of what he deemed Transfer Committees, Weitz set in motion long-held Zionist plans to “transfer” (ethnically cleanse) and dispossess Palestinians from their homes, land and businesses. His diary entry from 12 December 1940 is revelatory: “It must be clear that there is no room in the country for both peoples….If the Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and spacious for us…. The only solution is a Land of Israel…without Arabs. There is no room here for compromises…There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, and to transfer all of them, save perhaps [a few].” Weitz also spoke about expanding the “Jewish state’s” borders to include areas in Lebanon and Syria. In a meeting on 22 June 1941 with Jewish National Fund Chairman, Menachem Ussishkin (1863-1941), Weitz wrote: “The land of Israel is not small at all, if only the Arabs will be removed, and if its frontiers would be enlarged a little; to the north all the way to Litani [River in Lebanon], and to the east including the Golan Heights . . . . while the [Palestinian] Arabs be transferred to northern Syria and Iraq. . . . From now on we must work out a secret plan based on the removal of the [Palestinian] Arabs from here . . . [and] . . . to include it into American political circles. . . . today we have no other alternative. . . . We will not live here with Arabs.” (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, 134-135) — The Roots of Catastrophe
Videos 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 today — my own government. MLK, Beyond Vietnam
Bad Times in Gaza and Ukraine: Good Times for the Military-Industrial Complex The New York Times headline said it all: “Middle East War Adds to Surge in International Arms Sales.” The conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, and beyond may be causing immense and unconscionable human suffering, but they are also boosting the bottom lines of the world’s arms manufacturers. There was a time when such weapons sales at least sparked talk of “the merchants of death” or of “war profiteers.” Now, however, is distinctly not that time, given the treatment of the industry by the mainstream media and the Washington establishment, as well as the nature of current conflicts. Mind you, the American arms industry already dominates the international market in a staggering fashion, controlling 45% of all such sales globally, a gap only likely to grow more extreme in the rush to further arm allies in Europe and the Middle East in the context of the ongoing wars in those regions. In his nationally televised address about the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars, President Biden described the American arms industry in remarkably glowing terms, noting that, “just as in World War II, today patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom.” From a political and messaging perspective, the president cleverly focused on the workers involved in producing such weaponry rather than the giant corporations that profit from arming Israel, Ukraine, and other nations at war. But profit they do and, even more strikingly, much of the revenues that flow to those firms is pocketed as staggering executive salaries and stock buybacks that only boost shareholder earnings further.
For A Century, the American Way of War has Meant Killing Civilians Indiscriminate airstrikes have been a U.S. hallmark from the “banana wars” to the forever wars. . . . Over the last century, the U.S. military has shown a consistent disregard for civilian lives. It has repeatedly cast or misidentified ordinary people as enemies; failed to investigate civilian harm allegations; excused casualties as regrettable but unavoidable; and failed to prevent their recurrence or to hold troops accountable. These long-standing practices stand in stark contrast to the U.S. government’s public campaigns to sell its wars as benign, its air campaigns as precise, its concern for civilians as overriding, and the deaths of innocent people as “tragic” anomalies. Such campaigns have mainly served to obscure the true toll of the American way of war, from the “banana wars” of the 1920s to the “forever wars” a century later.
US Foreign Policy Establishment Is Instrumentalizing Islamophobia, Report Shows A new report released by Rutgers University shows how anti-Muslim bigotry pervades U.S. discourse on Palestine. In his initial remarks after the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, President Joe Biden stated, “As long as the United States stands — and we will stand forever — we will not let [Israel] ever be alone.” Over the past month, the U.S. has maintained its position of unwaveringly backing the occupation State of Israel, even as casualties in Gaza rise to more than 10,000 and calls for a ceasefire mount. Congress, as a whole, has maintained a similar stance to the White House. The Senate and the House have introduced resolutions condemning the October 7 attacks, calling for the release of all hostages taken by Hamas, and “affirming the support of the United States for Israel’s right to exist and defend itself.” But some conservative lawmakers have taken even stronger anti-Gazan stances, calling for the redirection of humanitarian aid funds from Gaza to Israeli defense and characterizing all Palestinians in Gaza as antisemitic.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
The Chris Hedges Report: The Horror, The Horror Joe Biden will go down in history as an accomplice to genocide. May the ghosts of the thousands of children he has participated in murdering haunt him for the rest of his life. Israel’s genocidal attacks, which are killing hundreds of Palestinians a day, including some 160 children, have expanded to shelling the remaining hospitals in Gaza. DOHA, Qatar: I am in the studio of Al Jazeera’s Arabic service watching a live feed from Gaza City. The Al Jazeera reporter in northern Gaza, because of the intense Israeli shelling, was forced to evacuate to southern Gaza. He left his camera behind. He trained it on Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex. It is night. Israeli tanks fire directly towards the hospital compound. Long horizontal red flashes. A deliberate attack on a hospital. A deliberate war crime. A deliberate massacre of the most helpless civilians, including the very sick and infants. Then the feed goes dead. We sit in front of the monitors. We are silent. We know what this means. No power. No water. No internet. No medical supplies. Every infant in an incubator will die. Every dialysis patient will die. Everyone in the intensive care unit will die. Everyone who needs oxygen will die. Everyone who needs emergency surgery will die. And what will happen to the 50,000 people who, driven from their homes by the relentless bombing, have taken refuge on the hospital grounds? We know the answer to that as well. Many of them, too, will die. There are no words to express what we are witnessing. In the five weeks of horror this is one of the pinnacles of horror. The indifference of Europe is bad enough. The active complicity by the United States is unfathomable. Nothing justifies this. Nothing. And Joe Biden will go down in history as an accomplice to genocide. May the ghosts of the thousands of children he has participated in murdering haunt him for the rest of his life. 
UN Human Rights Chief Demands Investigation Into Israel’s Use of ‘High-Impact’ Explosives in Gaza “We have very serious concerns that these amount to disproportionate attacks in breach of international humanitarian law.” The United Nations’ top human rights official on Friday demanded an investigation into the Israeli military’s bombardment of densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip with “high-impact explosive weapons,” a call that came as Israel’s forces surrounded Gaza’s largest city and reportedly attacked several hospitals packed with wounded and displaced civilians.
Israel’s War on Gaza’s Hospitals and Patients: al-Shifa Bombed again, as 20 of 36 Hospitals Go Dark 60 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Update: Reuters reports that Al-Shifa hospital complex has been forced to cease operations after its final remaining generator was hit in a bombardment. As I write, dozens of premature babies in incubators are in danger, and two have reportedly died. The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that Friday saw an all-out attack by Israel on the hospitals in northern Gaza, leaving many of them inoperable and the sick and wounded untreated. Israeli fighter jets bombarded the main gate of the al-Shifa Medical Complex repeatedly, as Israeli ground troops advanced on it, facing small arms fire from Hamas guerrillas. The Israeli government brands the Gaza Strip’s hospitals operational centers for Hamas, but so far no proof of this allegation has been offered and the hospital doctors and staff deny it.
Environment:
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’!
Lost at Sea: Where Is All the Plastic? Millions of metric tons of plastic are produced annually. Countless large items of plastic debris are accumulating in marine habitats worldwide and may persist for centuries (1–4). Here we show that microscopic plastic fragments and fibers (Fig. 1A) are also widespread in the oceans and have accumulated in the pelagic zone and sedimentary habitats. The fragments appear to have resulted from degradation of larger items. Plastics of this size are ingested by marine organisms, but the environmental consequences of this contamination are still unknown. Over the past 40 years, large items of plastic debris have frequently been recorded in habitats from the poles to the equator (1–4). Smaller fragments, probably also plastic, have been reported (5) but have received far less attention. Most plastics are resistant to biodegradation, but will break down gradually through mechanical action (6). Many “biodegradable” plastics are composites with materials such as starch that biodegrade, leaving behind numerous, nondegradable, plastic fragments (6). Some cleaning agents also contain abrasive plastic fragments (2). Hence, there is considerable potential for large-scale accumulation of microscopic plastic debris.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Systemic Racism:
Despite the federal mandate to affirmatively further fair housing, the majority of federally assisted housing is clustered in low-income, segregated areas at high risk of lead poisoning. Decades of government-sanctioned discriminatory practices have burdened communities of color with increased poverty, segregation, substandard housing, and environmental hazards. Today, the black population has the highest rate of poverty at 24.1 percent compared to the white population at 9.1 percent. One-third of black children live below the poverty line and in high-poverty areas, nine times the rate of white children in poverty. The risk of lead poisoning falls disproportionately on minority children, as well, with black children nearly three times more likely than white children to have elevated blood-lead levels. One study found “extraordinarily high rates of lead toxicity” in black and Hispanic neighborhoods with “prevalence rates topping 90% of the child population.” The authors concluded, “Lead toxicity is a source of ecological inequity by race and a pathway through which racial inequality literally gets into the body.” — Contaminated Childhood: The Chronic Lead Poisoning of Low-Income Children and Communities of Color in the United States
There is an Association between Lead and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
People with ADHD may have trouble paying attention, controlling impulsive behaviors (may act without thinking about what the result will be), or be overly active. Although ADHD can’t be cured, it can be successfully managed and some symptoms may improve as the child ages.— Attention-Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Studies have shown that ADHD underdiagnosis contributes to harsher school discipline and to the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Black kids routinely face punishment, including criminal prosecution, for problem behavior and mental health conditions such as ADHD, while white kids are more likely to be diagnosed with behavioral conditions and receive medical treatment and support. There’s a common saying: “Black kids get cops, white kids get docs.” — Black Children, Especially Males, Face Alarming Gap in ADHD Diagnoses
Labor:
Economy:
Sent to Me By Email: Early November 2023 Consumer Sentiment Declined for the Fourth Month, Now 40.2% (-40.2%) Shy of Ever Recovering Its February 2020 Pre-Pandemic High Sentiment Killer: Expectations of Intensifying Inflation and Collapsing Economic Activity
- Culprit: Instead of the Cure, Federal Reserve Policies Are the Primary Source of High Inflation (Money Supply Growth) and Intensifying Recession (Rising Interest Rates)
- Yet, the November 2023 FOMC Kept Its September 2023 Outlook and Policy Intact, With High Interest Rates Purportedly to Kill Inflation from an “Overheating” Economy, Along with Its Inflation-Driving, Bloated Money Supply to Prop Systemic Liquidity Nonetheless, High Interest Rates Indeed Are Killing the Economy, and Bloated Money Supply Growth
- Has Driven Inflation All Along, Not a Fantasized Overheating Economy Irrespective of “Unchanged” November 1st Fed Policy, the FOMC Continues Heavily to Support Its Troubled, Controlling, Banking System with Liquidity and High Interest Rates
- Post-FOMC Reporting of October 2023 Reserve Balances with Federal Reserve Banks Showed a Year-to-Year Gain of 7.2%, Its Strongest Annual Jump Since February 2022
- Initial October 2023 Aggregate Monetary Base (Reserves plus Currency) Gained Year-to-Year by 4.9%, Its Strongest Annual Gain Since March 2022 The Difference Was in the October 2023 Economy-Oriented Currency in Circulation, with Annual Change Slowing to 1.8%, Its Weakest Growth in 15 Years, Since June 2008
Also Driving Inflation Is Unfettered Federal Spending to Record Debt and Deficit Levels
In the Fed’s “Overheating” Economy, Year-to-Year Growth in October 2023 Payroll Employment Slowed to a 31-Month Low of 1.90%, Weakest of the Post-Pandemic Era Headline October 2023 U.3, U.6 and ShadowStats-Alternate Unemployment Rates Hit Respective 22-Month, 23-Month and 28-Month Highs Against Year-End 2022, those Same Unemployment Rate Levels Increased by 0.4%, 0.7% and 1.0%, to 3.9%, 7.2% and 25.4% in October 2023, with a Surge in Discouraged Workers Spiking the Broader U.6 and the ShadowStats Number
U.S. Federal Debt Outstanding, Quarterly 1q1966 to 3q4023 and Early 4q2023 U.S. Congress and President Abandoned the $31.5 Trillion Debt Ceiling — The Latest November 7th Debt Hit a Daily Record of $33.723 Trillion, Following October’s Record Quarter-End As of November 7th 3023, the U.S. Federal Debt Hit a Record Level of $33,723,125,002,884.23 ($33.7 Trillion)
Bank Regulator Who Approved the Riskiest U.S. Bank Getting Bigger in May, Wants to Do a Survey on Why Trust in U.S. Banks Is Tanking Tomorrow, the Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing to question federal banking regulators on what they are doing to restore public trust and financial stability to the U.S. banking system after the second, third and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history occurred this Spring and caught regulators napping. One of the regulators scheduled to testify is Michael Hsu, the Acting Comptroller of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).
World:
Gaza War: Dockers at the Port Of Barcelona Show the Way Forward! A month after the Israeli government commenced its ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, the Organisation of Port Dockers of Barcelona (OEPB), has resolved “not to allow the activity of ships in our port that contain war material”. The USTP (Port Workers Union) also took the same decision on 8 November. From the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), we fully support the workers who have decided to take decisive action against the slaughter. This is the way to forward.
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