Daily News Digest November 20, 2023
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Bendib: Define Hamas
Ted Rall: Cazans are “Expenable’ The international community seems generally fine with the destruction and death raining down on the Gaza Strip. Their main concern is that the carnage not spread to other places.
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:
The New Arab, The National, Al Jazeera and Mondoweiss. Based in Jerusalem, Jessica tells Jones and Ramos about her experience living in the region for the past month and dives into her recent pieces which focus on the leaked Israeli government document planning the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as well as other prominent issues within Israel including the plans to build a third temple at Al Aqsa and the spin off effects of Israel’s highly advanced surveillance apparatus. — Israel’s Secret Plan of Ethnic Cleansing
Video of the Day:
Israel’s Secret Plan of Ethnic Cleansing (video)
The Chris Hedges Report:With Reporter Max Blumenthal on How the Israeli Military Launched A Series of Attacks On Oct. 7 Designed to Kill Hamas Gunmen Along With Their Israeli Hostages.
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
Roaming Charges: Politics of the Lesser Exterminators
- As usual, the Democrats will learn all the wrong lessons from the off-year election results and continue forward with the hopeless Biden at the helm, while the Republicans will take their losses to prove they must work harder to undermine the few remaining strands of the democratic process in the US.
- After getting their asses-kicked in Ohio on abortion and marijuana, Rick Santorum came right out and said what many Republicans have long believed: “Pure democracies are not the way to run a country.”
- “Santorum, that’s Latin for asshole.”
- There’s nothing new here: In 1890, when Mississippi politicians designed the felony disenfranchisement lawsfor the state, they intentionally tied it to specific crimes they believed Black residents would be more likely to be convicted of.
- Calling the abortion vote “depressing,” Ohio Senator JD Vance said that Republicans need to work harder to persuade voters on abortion and push for “a national standard.” “We can’t give in to the idea that the federal Congress has no role in this, because if it doesn’t, then the pro-life movement is basically not going to exist.” . . .
Ilhan Omar Introduces Resolution to Block $320M Sale of Bomb Kits to Israel “We must not allow weapons sales that will be used to directly violate U.S. and international law,” Omar said. The resolution of disapproval is aimed at stopping a proposed $320 million transfer of guided bomb kits to Israel. The proposal for the transfer of Spice Family Gliding Bomb Assemblies, which can turn unguided bombs into ones with high accuracy, was approved earlier this year, and the State Department notified Congress on October 31 that the transfer is moving ahead. The resolution would revoke the license for the sale.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
‘Ghoulish Euphemisms,’ Poetry, and the Nightmare in Gaza In times of such horror and despair, poetry can go far beyond where journalism fails. Two centuries ago, Percy Shelley wrote that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Yet elite power has routinely vetoed their best measures. Still, the ability of poetry to inspire and nurture is precious, including when governments are on protracted killing sprees. But sometimes, conscience requires the withdrawal of poetic talent instead of helping to normalize the unconscionable. That’s what happened this week when the New York Times Magazine lost its poetry editor. Anne Boyer, a poet and essayist who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020, suddenly quit and released a powerful resignation letter. She denounced “the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza”—accurately calling it “an ongoing war against the people of Palestine, people who have resisted through decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.”
‘The Fear is Everywhere’: Israel’s Internal Crackdown As Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues, the Netanyahu government turns to fascist repression against dissenters from within. So for the last five weeks, I’ve been covering the events both in the south of Israel, but also in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and in the West Bank. Of course, as for many Israelis and Palestinians, the reality we knew before 7th of October completely changed. Personally, I was waken up by sirens on October 7th, and I drove immediately to the south. Already on the way south, I understood this is not another round of violence. I don’t like this word, but it’s not another escalation because unfortunately we’re used to cover this event. But already on the way we understood it’s a big scale attack. And while arriving to the south already on that day, the first hours of the Hamas led attack, we realized this is something different. The lack of police and army, it was clear the Israelis were not ready for it, the sights, the things we saw in [inaudible 00:02:37] and other cities of just bodies lying around, you understood as somebody who covers Israel and Palestine for almost 20 years, you know that here there’s, like on the Israeli side, there’s really good first responders and emergency forces. And when you see bodies lying for hours in the street, you understand the situation is not under control. Of course, in the days after, we could also gain access to the communities, mostly communities that were attacked by Hamas and we can witness in firsthand the killing of civilians, the systematic killing of civilians. And of course, in the following weeks, we continue to follow this, but as well the situation inside Israel with the hostages, with the struggle to bring them back, but as well the huge escalation towards any criticizing voices towards the Israeli government, especially Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, the limitation, the very harsh limitation of freedom of speech, mass arrests, police preventing any kind of demonstrations, calling even very simple, humanistic things like calling for ceasefire or stop killing children for both sides. So we’ve seen that as well.
Probe Demanded Over ‘Absurd’ Israeli Narrative About Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital “Israel needs to offer the outside world more than a few rifles and other armaments to justify its attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and ill and injured civilians,” said Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. A human rights monitor in Geneva on Friday called on the United Nations to help get to the bottom of Israel’s claim that its bombing and raid of Gaza’s largest medical complex this week was necessary to stop Hamas from running a vast military compound beneath it—an allegation that more than two days after the attack began, has been backed up only by images Israel released of a small cache of weapons.
The IDF is Coming Up Almost Empty in Search for Underground Hamas ‘Pentagon’ The US is backpedaling its support for Israel’s brutal invasion of Gaza; destruction of the entire northern half (or third) of the walled-off and blockaded territory that is home and prison for 2.3 million trapped Palestinians is occurring now that the IDF has achieved its objective of gaining control of the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The reason is that Israel has not been able to convincingly display the “underground command center” that it has been for weeks claiming justified its siege and eventual attack on that hospital. The pointed declarations that Israeli and US “intelligence” had made both governments, in Jerusalem and Washington, “confident” that there was a Hamas “command and control center” operating in a Hamas-constructed bunker under the hospital connected to a network of reinforced tunnels leading into and out of the hospital, have not been borne out. Instead, what the so-called Israel Defense Force (IDF) has offered up is a cellar constructed 40 years ago under Israeli supervision in a “Building 2” addition, according to a Newsweek report and a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. This basement, put in place well before the founding of Hamas, was long known as it was included in the hospital addition plan and meant to serve as a laundry room.
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’!
Hacker-for-Hire Who Targeted Climate Activists: ‘You Don’t Know Everything’ Yet “Justice will not be completely served in this case until those who hired Azari are exposed and held to account,” said one climate campaigner after the “Dark Basin” ringleader was sentenced. An Israeli private investigator sentenced Thursday to more than six-and-a-half years behind bars for his role in orchestrating a massive computer-hacking campaign targeting U.S. climate activists said “there will come a day” when mysterious details of the case—possibly including who paid him—will be revealed.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
The Slave Trade Helped?/Fueled the Capitalism’s Industrial Revolution! From Then, Until Now, Under Captialism Black Lives Haven’t Mattered!
Columbia University’s Suspension of Jewish Voices for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine is Arbitrary and Wrong We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our concern about Columbia University’s decision to suspend the university’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) for the remainder of the fall semester, thereby rendering them ineligible to receive funding or hold campus events. This decision, made in contravention of established rules of university governance and discipline, strikes us as a violation of your university’s avowed commitment to defend and respect the free speech rights and academic freedom of its students, faculty and staff. It is also contrary to your obligation to foster a campus culture in which students and other members of the Columbia University community are able to freely express and debate a broad range of opinions.
Labor:
Economy:
Michael Roberts: Xi Meets Biden This was the only second face-to-face meeting during the Biden presidency. It seems the aim was to clarify just how close the US and China are to conflict over Taiwan and other security issues, as well as trying to establish some semblance of trade progress after years of US moves to reduce China’s rise in hi tech and other products (EVs) that threaten US hegemony. Indeed, Xi was also meeting US business leaders to try and reassure them that they can invest in China, despite recent moves by the Chinese CP leaders to tighten controls on the capitalist sector. It does not appear much came out of the meeting apart from agreeing not to attack each other ‘by mistake’. But while the leaders ‘talked turkey’, the economic reality is that US efforts to strangle the Chinese economy are not working. Western ‘experts’ continue their never-ending message that China is close to a debt collapse; China’s property market is imploding; and above all, China’s previous phenomenal growth is now over and the economy since COVID is grinding to a halt and will end up like Japan, stagnating in a sea of debt. If this were really so, then Biden and American capital would have nothing to worry about – but they do worry and rightly so. Yes, China’s property bubble has burst and some very large private sector property developers are going bust. In previous posts, I have argued that it was a big mistake by the Chinese CP leaders to adopt the Western capitalist model for urban development. Instead of putting housing construction into the public sector to build homes at reasonable rents for the hundreds of millions of Chinese who have moved into the cities to work, the government allowed private developers (with billionaire owners) to do the job and now the result is a classic debt-driven bubble that has burst.
World:
Court Rules That Blockade OF Cuba Violates International Law An international tribunal that for two days analyzed the U.S. blockade against Cuba ruled today in Brussels that this policy violates international law and universal norms for peaceful coexistence. An international tribunal that for two days analyzed the U.S. blockade against Cuba ruled today in Brussels that this policy violates international law and universal norms for peaceful coexistence. It also stressed that the economic, commercial and financial siege imposed by Washington violates the UN Charter, which enshrines the sovereignty of countries, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and agreements of the World Trade Organization, among other
Humanitarian Crisis in Congo Is the Sinister Underbelly of “Green Tech” The “green tech” industry is reproducing the same colonial and extractive patterns that got us to the climate crisis. The humanitarian crisis in Congo has shocked the world, as 6.9 million people experience displacement due to violence from armed groups. What is not often talked about is that the suffering of Congolese communities is part of the sinister underbelly of emerging “green technology.” The mineral mining in eastern Congo, used in solar panels and electric cars, is behind much of the region’s violence. What is happening in Congo is a glaring example of how emerging “green” markets are relying on colonial practices to sustain their expansion. If we want to see a truly just energy transition, the reliance on colonial practices of extraction must be uprooted.
The British Parliament Votes for Genocide as the British People Demand a Ceasefire This week the abject ‘mother of all parliaments’ voted overwhelmingly against a ceasefire, thus supporting the continuing genocide of the Palestinian people. This was not a surprise. It is not the first time and it will not be the last that Britain misses an opportunity to be on the right side of history.
Health, Education, 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