Daily News Digest January 5, 2024
Images of the Day:
Dither Accompli: The Biden Admistration will ultimarely come out in favor of a ceasefire. Bu it will only happen after Gaza is destroyed snf its Palestinian inhabitants have been drive out into the desert!
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”
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: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, andThe 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!
Quote of the Day:
Despite all of this, an $842 billion 2024 DoD budget was proposed by the Biden-Harris administration in March of this year. The proposal creates a $26 billion increase from the previous year’s budget and was carried out despite the American people’s renouncement of furthering such militaristic development. During the financially unstable time of the COVID-19 pandemic, Data for Progress conducted a poll regarding whether or not government funds should be reallocated from the Pentagon to industries working for fundamental human needs. “Voters Support Decreasing Defense Spending To Pay For Domestic Priorities” had 56 out of 82 respondents voicing their approval. In accordance with the people’s wishes, Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), proposed that the government instead make a 10% cut on military spending and perform a redistribution of current funds. Sanders argued that our current military spending is “unnecessary” — a valid opinion considering that nearly half of the Pentagon’s funding goes solely toward corporate defense contractors and not the military crew. Of the DoD’s available funds, only 24% is spent on military personnel, while 38% is spent on operations and maintenance “to operate, sustain, and maintain aircraft [and] weapon systems.” Meanwhile, the U.S. has the greatest poverty rate of any “developed” nation, leaving lower-class citizens in turmoil. Independent socioeconomic organizations such as the Poor People’s Campaign advocate for a significant slash in the Pentagon’s budget to alleviate the burden on lower-class Americans. They claim that “$350 billion in annual military spending cuts would make the nation and the world more secure.” In 2013 an American Prospect article found data supporting these claims: it would have taken only a quarter of what we spend on defense each year to “raise every American above the poverty line.” Despite the statistics and citizen dissatisfaction, the federal government still takes no action in carrying out the will of the people. — It is Time to Put an End To America’s Military-Industrial Complex
In 2023, the government spent about $6.3 trillion. About $1.4 trillion of that is the cost of Social Security, which has its own dedicated revenue sources, mostly payroll taxes. Then, $0.8 trillion was spent on Medicare, about half of which comes from general revenue. So let’s say the total federal spending that has to be funded from non-dedicated sources is $4.5 trillion ($6.3 trillion minus $1.4 trillion minus $0.4 trillion). This isn’t precisely right for various complicated reasons, but it’s close enough. The total aid the U.S. will be giving to Israel in 2023 and early 2024 will be about $18 billion. (That’s the $3.8 billion in normal annual aid, plus $14.5 billion in supplemental aid that’s been passed by the House and will surely be passed soon by the Senate.). If you want, you could argue that Israel uses this for things other than its attack on Gaza and its wider occupation of Palestinian lands. But let’s, in our thought experiment, apply the twisted logic of the U.S.’s laws against material support: All cash is fungible, which is to say that even if Israel doesn’t spend all the U.S. money killing Palestinians, those other expenditures free up money to put toward that purpose. It’s also true that the U.S. is supporting Israel’s actions in ways other than direct aid that also cost money: shielding Israel at the United Nations, sending the Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gerald R. Ford Carrier to the Mediterranean, etc. So let’s call it a wash and just use the $18 billion number. — I Calculated How Much of My Money the U.S. Sent to Kill Palestinians. You Can Too.
Videos of the Day:
From Plagiarism to Gaza: Khalil Gibran Muhammad on How a GOP Campaign Ousted Harvard’s Claudine Gay
“Voluntary Migration” or Ethnic Cleansing? Mouin Rabbani on Israel’s Push to Expel Residents of Gaza
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
Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza since Hamas’ October 7th attack has produced the most significant antiwar campaigning since the election of Barack Obama in 2008. For the first time in nearly two decades, we have the beginnings of an antiwar movement in the United States with thousands pro-Palestinian demonstrators regularly appearing on the streets of major U.S. cities. The largest Pro-Palestine demonstration in U.S. history took place on November 4, when nearly 300,000 marched against U.S. support for Israel’s war in Washington, D.C. Another national demonstration is planned for January 13, 2024 sponsored by the American Muslim Task Force for Palestine. — Generational Shift — Clearly, a generational change has taken place on the question of Zionism and the relationship of the U.S. to Israel. Beginning with the first Intifada in 1987 and the Israeli government’s brutal crackdown on unarmed Palestinians, sympathy for Palestinians began to take hold, especially among American Jews. The 2003 death of Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli militarized D9 bulldozer while attempting to stop the destruction of Palestinian homes in Rafah, was another example of this change. However, it was the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement during the last decade that changed the views of a younger generation on questions of racism, imperialism, settler colonialism, and indigenous struggles. — A New Anti-War Movement Emerges in America
Taxation Policy Demonstrates Who Rules! Government of the 1%, for the 1%, and By the 1%!: US’s Wealthiest Collectively Held $8.5 Trillion in Untaxed Assets in 2022 “This is why we need a billionaire income tax,” Americans for Tax Fairness said. An analysis released Wednesday shows that in 2022, the wealthiest people in the United States collectively held a “staggering” $8.5 trillion in wealth that is not — and might never be — subject to taxation. Examining recently released data Federal Reserve data for 2022, Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) found that the roughly 64,000 U.S. households with at least $100 million in wealth — less than 0.05% of the population — controlled more than one in every six dollars of the country’s “unrealized gains,” profits that aren’t taxable until the underlying asset, such as a stock position, is sold.
It is Time to Put an End To America’s Military-Industrial Complex Military funding has hit an all-time high and the defense industry continues to expand, causing the U.S. public’s growing political awareness to be drawn toward the federal government’s financial favoritism of our Department of Defense. The growing prominence of the military-industrial complex aggravates many as the U.S. government prioritizes the development of its armament industry over the livelihood of its citizens. Defunding the defense industry is vital for balancing the inequitable federal budget, and it is crucial that lawmakers begin to reroute funds toward our country’s citizens. This sentiment has existed since before the armaments industry’s prominence in the Cold War. On Jan. 17, 1961, former president Dwight Eisenhower delivered his presidential farewell address — one that shocked the American people. Eisenhower sent a message of warning, claiming that the rise of the U.S. military was a fiscal overindulgence in national defense. He believed our government must “maintain balance in and among national programs” and “balance between our essential requirements as a nation.” However, Eisenhower’s warning went unheeded, and the equitable federal budget he pleaded for was not honored in the early ‘60s and hasn’t been to this day.
FEC Filing Shows AIPAC Made Record Donations to Congress in November AIPAC’s PAC has already made more than $18 million in campaign contributions in the 2023-2024 cycle. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee delivered more than $3.7 million in November to the campaigns of U.S. lawmakers, the most it has ever doled out in a single month, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been working to convince members of the U.S. Congress to send more aid to Israel for its war against Hamas and to support primary challengers against representatives and senators who it sees as not sufficiently supportive of Israel’s response to the October 7 Hamas attack.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
80 Percent of Global Famine Is Currently in Gaza, UN Expert Warns “In my life, I’ve never seen anything like this in terms of severity, in terms of scale, and then in terms of speed.” Israel’s starvation campaign in Gaza is so severe that the vast majority of people across the world who are experiencing famine are located in Gaza, a UN food expert pointed out this week. There are currently roughly 706,000 people in total across the world who are in populations experiencing “catastrophic” or “famine” levels of hunger, global food researchers have found. Of those people, about 577,000 are Palestinians in Gaza, according to a recent report by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)
Groups100+ Global Rights Groups Urge Support for South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel at ICJ “It’s imperative that more states follow South Africa’s historic leadership,” said one advocate. “One clear and immediate way to do that is to file Declarations of Intervention supporting South Africa’s filing.” More than 100 international groups signed onto a letter released Wednesday by a newly formed Palestinian rights coalition, urging governments across the globe to formally support South Africa’s International Court of Justice case against Israel, accusing the government of genocidal violence in Gaza. The International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine is circulating the letter, which asks governments to file Declarations of Intervention before or after the ICJ’s hearing on South Africa’s claim. The case is scheduled to be heard on January 11-12. “Declarations of Intervention in support of South Africa’s invocation of the Genocide Convention against Israel will increase the likelihood that a positive finding of the crime of genocide will be enforced by the United Nations,” said the coalition. Groups that have joined the call include Progressive International, World Beyond War, the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation (PAL, PEN International-Palestine, and the National Lawyers Guild.
Once Netanyahu Completes the Genocide: Only 15% of Israelis Want Netanyahu to Remain in Power After Gaza War With his political career in peril, Netanyahu has every incentive to continue the slaughter and provoke a regional war. Only 15% of Israelis think Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu should remain in office once the Israeli campaign in Gaza is over, according to a new poll published Tuesday by the Israel Democracy Institute
Environment:
Recent Daily Average Mauna Loa CO2
- January 02: 422.37 ppm
- January 01: 422.23 ppm
- December 31: Unavailable
- December 30: 422.33 ppm
- December 29: 421.68 ppm
- Last Updated: January 3, 2024
California Snowpack Lowest in Decade Despite Hope With December Storms California snowpack lowest in decade despite hope with December storms First survey of season shows snow at 25% of historical average, with brown patches of vegetation across Sierra Nevada In the first snow survey of the season, California came up short – just 25% of the historical average – despite a spate of strong storms that caused flooding and landslides along the coast in late December.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Chicago Police Department Perpetuates Its Violence by Punishing Whistleblowers Police violence is not about “good apples” and “bad apples” — it is structural. Every time a new wrongful conviction comes to light in Chicago, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) brass employ the same rote excuse: It is just a “few bad apples” causing these injustices. They claim that the vast majority of CPD members are good, honest people who diligently enforce the law. The backlash faced by the few CPD officers who have actually attempted to oppose these “bad apples,” however, clearly demonstrates the falsity of this narrative.
Labor:
Economy:
Bill Dudley, Former Kingpin of Darkness at the New York Fed, Now Urges Transparency at the Fed William (Bill) Dudley served as President of the New York Fed from 2009 to 2018. (He was previously an executive at Goldman Sachs.) During Dudley’s tenure at the New York Fed, it secretly oversaw the largest and darkest bailout of Wall Street mega banks in global banking history. A Bloomberg News reporter, the late Mark Pittman, battled in court for years to get the details of those bailouts released to the public. Today, the former kingpin of darkness at the New York Fed, Bill Dudley, had the audacity to pen an opinion column for Bloomberg News, urging – wait for it – more transparency at the Fed.
World:
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
Thomas Ultican: “A Nation at Risk” Was a Pack of Lies The document that launched four decades of disastrous education policies was titled “A Nation at Risk.” It was a document produced by a commission appointed by Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Education, Terrell Bell. Thomas Ultican, retired teacher of advanced math and physics in California, noted that the conservative Hoover Institution released a book praising “A Nation at Risk” on its 40th birthday. Ultican had done his research on the report and concluded that it was a hit job, asham, a pack of lies. He recently heard James Harvey, who served on the staff of the commission that wrote the report; Harvey confirmed that the commission had literally cooked the books. It began its work determined to slime America’s public schools, and it cherry-picked data to make its case. As he shows in his review of that 1983 bombshell, it was not only filled with statistics sl lies, but it launched forty years of destructive “reforms.”
We Deserve Medicare for All, But What We Get Is Medicare for Wall Street Creating a sane healthcare system will depend on building a massive common movement to free our economy from Wall Street’s wealth extraction. The United States health care system—more costly than any on earth—will become ever more so as Wall Street increasingly extracts money from it. Private equity funds own approximately 9% of all private hospitals and 30% of all proprietary for-profit hospitals, including 34% that serve rural populations. They’ve also bought up nursing homes and doctors’ practices and are investing more year by year. The net impact? Medical costs to the government and to patients have gone up while patients have suffered more adverse medical results, according to two current studies. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently published a paper which found: “Private equity acquisition was associated with increased hospital-acquired adverse events, including falls and central line–associated bloodstream infections, along with a larger but less statistically precise increase in surgical site infections.”