Daily News Digest February 14, 2024
Images of the Day:
Latuff: China Perspective calls for war mobilization. As an undertaker, NATO needs conflict, bloodshed for earnings. So it spreads fearand panic in order to ensure its member countries continue to contribute military funding. 
Ted Rall: The Power of the Palestinian Vote
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!
Quotes of the Day:
Rosa Parks has become a symbol of courage for our time and for all time. All over the world, she ranks with Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the pantheon of 20th-century heroes and sheroes who have expanded our notion of what it means to be a human being. But in becoming an icon, Parks has been turned into a shadow of her real self. Few people are aware of her lifetime of struggle before and after that fateful day in 1955, when her refusal to give up her seat on an Alabama bus triggered the 13-month-long boycott that launched the modern civil rights movement. How many people know that, unlike Gandhi and King, she refused to rule out the righteous use of force? Not only did she admire Malcolm X, she flew down to Monroe, North Carolina, just a few years ago for the funeral of Robert Williams, the outspoken advocate of armed self-defense by the black community. — Book Review: Rosa Parks by Douglas Brinkley, reviewed by Grace Lee Boggs — The Lessons of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Podcasts/Videos of the Day:
“Worst-Case Scenario”: Noura Erakat on Israel’s Looming Invasion of Rafah
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
From Gaza to The United States, Who Will Protect Childran? Turning Down Food Aid for Poor Children is Shockingly Callous This plot line could have come from one of Charles Dickens’ novels about upper-class depravity: “Miserly governors refuse to provide gruel for poverty-stricken ragamuffins.” Unfortunately, this is not a novel, but modern-day reality taking place in 15 states, where right-wing officeholders have scorned a federal program to provide food this summer for millions of children mired in poverty.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
Hawaiʻi Health Workers Call for End to Genocide Dr Hammam Alloh, a 36-year-old nephrologist, was killed in an airstrike on his family home on November 13. Prior to his death, when asked why he was not leaving his patients at the Al Shifa Hospital, he replied: “If I go, who would treat my patients? We are not animals. We have the right to receive proper health care. You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years, so I think only about my life and not my patients?”
Dutch Court Blocks Weapons Parts for Israel Over ‘Undeniable’ Risk to Gaza While the Dutch government plans to appeal, one campaigner expressed hope that the verdict “can encourage other countries to follow suit, so that civilians in Gaza are protected by international law.”
Environment:
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’!
‘Lead or Lose’: 21 Arrested Blockading Biden Campaign HQ Over Climate, Gaza “This is an emergency. We’re choking on smoke, our homes are flooding,” said Sunrise Movement. “Biden needs to act like it.” ‘Lead or Lose’: 21 Arrested Blockading Biden Campaign HQ Over Climate, Gaza “This is an emergency. We’re choking on smoke, our homes are flooding,” said Sunrise Movement. “Biden needs to act like it.” Displaying signs that read, “Fund Climate, Not Genocide,” nearly two dozen campaigners with the Sunrise Movement on Monday were arrested after assembling at U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign headquarters and issuing the latest warning that Biden will lose crucial votes from young people unless he ends his support for Israel’s massacre in Gaza and takes bold climate action.
The Brockovich Report: Landmark Cancer Study Shows Impact of Toxic Drinking Water st Camp LeJeune Once again, the science is in, confirming what advocates have been saying for years. One of the largest cancer incidence cohort studies in the U.S. just came out, and it shows alarming rates of cancer for civilian and military personnel who lived and worked at North Carolina’s Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, considered one of the worst toxic sites in the United States.
Revealed: The 1,200 Big Methane Leaks From Waste Dumps Trashing the Planet The huge leaks of the potent greenhouse gas will doom climate targets, experts say, but stemming them would rapidly reduce global heating There have been more than 1,000 huge leaks of the potent greenhouse gas methane from landfill waste dumps since 2019, the Guardian can reveal.Analysis of global satellite data from around the world shows the populous nations of south Asia are a hotspot for these super-emitter events, as well as Argentina and Spain, developed countries where proper waste management should prevent leaks
Human Activity Pushing More Than 1 in 5 Migratory Species Toward Extinction: UN “The global community has an opportunity to translate this latest science of the pressures facing migratory species into concrete conservation action,” said one U.N. official.
Atmospheric River Storms are Getting Stronger, And Deadlier. The Race to Understand Them is On Atmospheric river storms are getting stronger, and deadlier. The race to understand them is on. As the climate crisis supercharges storms over the Pacific, scientists are creating tools that can measure them from the inside. The storm raged over California for more than five days. As the powerful atmospheric river made landfall, furious winds and torrential downpours ripped trees from their roots, turned streets into rivers and sent mud cascading into homes.
The Employer Protection Agency: EPA again OKs Use 0f Toxic Herbicide Linked to Parkinson’s Disease Agency’s draft report backs paraquat’s safety but lawsuit’s plaintiffs say EPA ignored evidence of Parkinson’s risk The US Environmental Protection Agency is doubling down on its controversial finding that a toxic herbicide is safe for use across millions of acres of American cropland, despite what public health advocates characterize as virtual “scientific proof” the product causes Parkinson’s disease.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Racist Southern Economic Model Betrays Workers Governments across the South hype corporate-friendly policies of low taxes, little regulation, and obstacles to union organizing. Touted as promoting economic development, these ploys actually use racial divisions to keep all labor down. Labor historians have long written about the destructive role of racism to organizing, especially in the South, as well as heroic battles led by Black workers there. In October 2023, the pro-labor think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI) made an important contribution. Its report, “Rooted in racism and economic exploitation: The failed Southern economic development model,” lays bare how the South’s extreme pro-business policies were developed after slavery to keep Black people down and the supply of cheap labor high.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott: The Power of Organization and Solidarity Early in the morning of Monday, December 5, 1955, the buses of Montgomery, Alabama began their routes, expecting to pick up and carry tens of thousands of commuters to the first workday of the week. But as the routes continued throughout the morning, it became clear that the buses would not fill up. The entire Black population of Montgomery was staying off the buses, beginning the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It would last 382 days, and bring both the city of Montgomery and the bus companies to their knees in the face of the sustained, well- organized refusal to ride. This concerted action was years in the making. Aside from the indignities of segregation in most public places and workplaces, Black people were treated just as badly on buses, being forced to sit in the back and enter only through the back door, being forced to defer to white passengers and drivers, and occasionally being arrested or even shot if perceived as unruly or disrespectful. Earlier in 1955, a fifteen-year-old Black girl, Claudette Colvin, had been arrested for refusing to budge on orders from a bus driver. On December 1, Rosa Parks was famously arrested for the same reason.Parks had not planned to resist a drivers’ orders, or to get arrested and become a symbol for resistance to Jim Crow, on that particular day. But she also didn’t just have tired feet from a long day’s work, prompting her to spontaneously sit down. Parks, like most Black people, had hated the Jim Crow segregation for her entire life. She had been an active member of the local chapter of the NAACP for ten years, had attended the now famous Highlander Folk School, had been active with local labor leaders like E.D. Dixon of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and knew she could expect support from the Women’s Political Council (WPC), which one historian has called “the most militant and uncompromising voice” of Black Montgomerians in this period.
Labor:
Opposition is Growing Against Labor/Management ‘Partnership‘: California State Faculty Mobilize For a No Vote Faculty in the California State University system, the largest public university system in the United States, went on strike on Monday, January 22 across all 23 campuses in the state. They are represented by the California Faculty Association (CFA). In November, 95 percent of union members who voted authorized a strike action in response to the system’s refusal to budge on union demands. These demands included an across-the-board pay raise of 12 percent and raises in the salary floor for lecturers—poorly paid, contingent adjunct faculty who teach on a per-course basis with no guarantee of future classes. In addition to the wage demands, the union, which touts itself as an anti-racist, social justice union, had asked for an increase in the number of gender-inclusive restrooms and lactation/nursing spaces on all campuses; the hiring of more mental health counselors (who currently labor under a ratio of one counselor to 2500 students); an expansion of family leave from six weeks to a semester; and limits on armed policing on campuses.
Economy:
A Growing Number of Economists Are Joining the Fight to Rein In the Big Banks Big banks have captured the financial regulatory system and are driving inequality. We need to bust their club. The fortunes of the five richest men in the world have “shot up by 114 percent since 2020,” according to a January 2024 Oxfam report on global inequality, while “nearly five billion people have been made poorer.” This most recent gross increase in wealth and income inequality builds on global trends that took hold in the early 1980s, with the decades-long increase in inequality being particularly large in the United States compared to other developed nations. Wealth inequality is typically higher than income inequality, which in turn feeds higher future income inequality. Indeed, income inequality in the U.S. continues to rise, according to the latest report from the Congressional Budget Office, utilizing data through 2020.
Five Wall Street Banks Hold $223 Trillion in Derivatives — 83 Percent of All Derivatives at 4,600 Banks According to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), derivatives played a major role in the financial crash of 2007 to 2010 in the United States, the worst financial crisis in the U.S. since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The FCIC wrote in its final report: “…the existence of millions of derivatives contracts of all types between systemically important financial institutions — unseen and unknown in this unregulated market — added to uncertainty and escalated panic….” Americans believed that the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 would fulfill its promise of reining in concentrated risks like derivatives. It did not. (See our report from 2015)
World:
The Montgomery Bus Boycott: The Power of Organization and Solidarity Early in the morning of Monday, December 5, 1955, the buses of Montgomery, Alabama began their routes, expecting to pick up and carry tens of thousands of commuters to the first workday of the week. But as the routes continued throughout the morning, it became clear that the buses would not fill up. The entire Black population of Montgomery was staying off the buses, beginning the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It would last 382 days, and bring both the city of Montgomery and the bus companies to their knees in the face of the sustained, well- organized refusal to ride. This concerted action was years in the making. Aside from the indignities of segregation in most public places and workplaces, Black people were treated just as badly on buses, being forced to sit in the back and enter only through the back door, being forced to defer to white passengers and drivers, and occasionally being arrested or even shot if perceived as unruly or disrespectful. Earlier in 1955, a fifteen-year-old Black girl, Claudette Colvin, had been arrested for refusing to budge on orders from a bus driver. On December 1, Rosa Parks was famously arrested for the same reason.Parks had not planned to resist a drivers’ orders, or to get arrested and become a symbol for resistance to Jim Crow, on that particular day. But she also didn’t just have tired feet from a long day’s work, prompting her to spontaneously sit down. Parks, like most Black people, had hated the Jim Crow segregation for her entire life. She had been an active member of the local chapter of the NAACP for ten years, had attended the now famous Highlander Folk School, had been active with local labor leaders like E.D. Dixon of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and knew she could expect support from the Women’s Political Council (WPC), which one historian has called “the most militant and uncompromising voice” of Black Montgomerians in this period.
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
Ohio: Fund Public Schools, Not Vouchers Tanisha Pruitt, Ph.D., wrote the following statement on behalf of Policy Matters Ohio last June. She urged the legislature not to expand vouchers. Her plea was ignored. The legislature decided to raise the cap on vouchers to 450% of the federal poverty level. Given research that shows the failure of vouchers in Ohio and elsewhere, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the Republican dominated legislature doesn’t care about the state’s children or their future.:
Regardless of race, neighborhood, or how much money is in their parents’ bank account, every child should be able to attend an excellent school that has everything they need to learn and grow. Every dollar spent on vouchers makes this vision less achievable. Vouchers take public money and give it to private schools, with real consequences for the 90% of our kids who attend Ohio’s public schools. With their recent budget proposal, Senate leadership has shown they are willing, even eager, to sacrifice Ohio’s kids to ram through a universal voucher scheme they’ve been planning for years. The Senate plan would make EdChoice vouchers — worth $8,407 a year for students in grades 9-12, and $6,165 a year for those in grades K-8 — available to households with incomes up to 450% of the federal poverty rate. (For a family of four, that’s about $135,000 a year.) And they wouldn’t stop there: Senate leadership would also allow households making more than that to get 10% of the value of EdChoice vouchers, subsidizing a discount on private school tuition for the children of the wealthiest Ohioans. . . .
