Daily News Digest February 28, 2024
Images of the Day:
Latuff: Warmonger
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! 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 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 significance of this cannot be overstated, for the failure to acknowledge the humanity and dignity of all persons has lurked at the root of every racial caste system. This common thread explains why, in the 1780s, the British Society for the Abolition of Slavery adopted as its official seal a woodcut of a kneeling slave above a banner that read, “AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?” That symbol was followed more than a hundred years later by signs worn around the necks of black sanitation workers during the Poor People’s Campaign answering the slave’s question with the simple statement, I AM A MAN. The fact that black men could wear the same sign today in protest of the new caste system suggests that the model of civil rights advocacy that has been employed for the past several decades is, as King predicted, inadequate to the task at hand. If we can agree that what is needed now, at this critical juncture, is not more tinkering or tokenism, but as King insisted forty years ago, a “radical restructuring of our society,” then perhaps we can also agree that a radical restructuring of our approach to racial justice advocacy is in order as well. . . — Chapter 5, The New Jim Crow: Obama—the Promise and the Peril By Michelle Alexander
Pocasts/Videos of the Day:
Cornel West on the Ballot in South Carolina
In Gaza Now, It’s Worse Than Ethnic Cleansing In this episode of Centre Stage, our guest is Ilan Pappé. He’s an Israeli historian and professor at the University of Exeter. Pappé is known for his outspoken views on the Israeli-Palestinian question – drawing both praise and criticism. He’s the author of several books including “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”, in which he challenges the traditional Israeli narrative over the establishment of Israel in 1948. In today’s episode, Pappé discusses the dangers of the Zionist ideology and its impact on Israel and Palestine, the historical context of October 7, and his vision for a one-state solution.
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
Global ‘War on Fair Taxation’ Has Slashed Taxes for Richest 1% by a Third Years of tax cuts and elites’ “war on democracy” have fueled inequality and harmed G20 nations’ ability to fund basic public
Marjorie Cohn: US Refuses to Assure UK Judges That Assange Won’t Be Executed If He’s Extradited UK law prohibits extradition to a country that may impose capital punishment. On February 20 and 21, as hundreds of Julian Assange’s supporters gathered outside the London courthouse, a two-judge panel of the High Court of Justice presided over a “permission hearing.” Assange’s lawyers asked the judges to allow them to appeal the home secretary’s extradition order and raise issues that the district court judge had rejected without full consideration.
How Dare Tucker Carlson Let Putin Talk! Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin brought to light many contradictions of the mainstream media’s coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. To acknowledge these contradictions would spell disaster for corporate journalists. In the aftermath of Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin, some corporate journalists offered relatively detailed analysis of the interview, while many did anything but. Most often, they dissuaded audiences from watching the interview by assuring them that “nothing new” occurred, painting Carlson as a Russian stooge and dumbing down the interview as nothing more than a piece of pseudo-journalistic propaganda. In what was meant to be, by any credible journalistic standard, an engaging debate about Putin’s claims, was replaced by a stenographic narrative that repeated the lines of the State Department. It’s understandable why corporate media did this. Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, they have repeatedly called the war “unprovoked (also see here, here and here)” and characterized Putin as an expansionist warmonger with whom no one could ever reason. Putin’s explanations of the U.S. and NATO’s provocations against Russia, his admitting how long he tried befriending the West, his accounting of the nearly completed peace deal between Ukraine and Russia that Boris Johnson blocked at the beginning of the war, his clear declarations that Russia has no plans to expand its military presence beyond Ukraine, and his calls for diplomatic settlement of the war should raise serious questions for any reasonable audience member about Western media’s characterizations of Putin.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
UN Voices Alarm as Israel says Preparing for Rafah Invasion The UN chief warned Monday that an invasion of Rafah in far-southern Gaza would “put the final nail in the coffin” of aid operations, after Israel said its army had readied a plan to move civilians out of the packed city.
Netanyahu’s Last Battle Promises No Victory, Just Slaughter in Rafah The Palestinian city of Rafah is not only older than Israel, it is also as old as civilisation itself. Rafah has existed for thousands of years. The Canaanites referred to it as Rafia, and Rafia has been almost always there, guarding the southern frontiers of Palestine, ancient and modern.
Biden Sees March 4 Gaza Ceasefire, But 1.4 mn. Displaced Can’t Go Home President Joe Biden was at an ice cream shop with late night comedian Seth Myers on Monday, and was asked about the possibility of a Gaza ceasefire, according to Alex Marquardt and Donald Judd at CNN . He said, “Well I hope by the beginning of the weekend, I mean, the end of the weekend. My national security adviser tells me that we’re close. We’re close, it’s not done yet. And my hope is that by next Monday we’ll have a ceasefire.”
Israeli Filmmaker Faces Death Threats, German Probe After Condemning Apartheid The German government’s threat to investigate Yuval Abraham “for simply acknowledging the apartheid under which his Palestinian co-director lives, is both chilling and completely absurd,” said one film critic The historic wave of Jewish-led protests against U.S. complicity in Isreal’s genocidal war on Gaza continued Monday as members of the group Jewish Voice for Peace were arrested for occupying NBC headquarters in New York City in a bid to disrupt the taping of President Joe Biden’s appearance on a popular late-night TV show.
50 Arrested in Jewish-Led Protest of Gaza Genocide at Biden TV Taping “The president needs to start answering to the American people—not the far-right Israeli government indiscriminately bombing the people of Gaza,” said Jewish Voice for Peace. The historic wave of Jewish-led protests against U.S. complicity in Isreal’s genocidal war on Gaza continued Monday as members of the group Jewish Voice for Peace were arrested for occupying NBC headquarters in New York City in a bid to disrupt the taping of President Joe Biden’s appearance on a popular late-night TV show.
Aaron Bushnell: An Act Expressing the Rage and Frustration of Millions Yesterday afternoon, active-duty member of the US Air Force Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, in protest against US imperialism’s complicity with the war on Gaza. The news of this brave act of self-sacrifice by a single man has powerfully echoed through the hearts of hundreds of millions of men and women. They feel the same profound desperation at the scenes of the genocide being committed in Gaza; impotence as the collective military might of western imperialism is used to crush and murder a small, oppressed people; they feel the same choking rage at our bloodthirsty capitalist politicians here in the West who have allowed this slaughter.
The Chris Hedges Report with Rabbi Shaul Magid on Zionism and the Subversion of Judaism. Has Zionism, especially Liberal Zionist, exhausted itself? The humanistic constructs of liberal Zionism, always in conflict with itself because of its refusal to grant Palestinians equal civil and political rights, has led many Israelis to embrace a far more chauvinistic and fanatic religious Zionism. What does this mean for Israel? And, as important, what does this mean for Judaism? The Zionist movement, which became a dominating force with the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948, sought to shut out Jewish critics. It not only maligned Jews that did not embrace Zionism, but labeled them anti-Jews, self-hating Jews or counter-Jews. This war within Judaism between those who put Israel at the center of Jewish identity and those who did not ripped apart and continues to rip apart the Jewish collective. As Rabbi Shaul Magid writes, “The Talmudic sages teach that the heretic (apikorus or min) is actually worse that the idolater. In their estimation, unlike the idolator, the heretic subverts Judaism from the inside.” Rabbi Magid goes on to argue that the demand for the full Zionization of American Jewry is an attempt to brand all who do not give their primary loyalty to the State of Israel Jewish heretics, apostates. This battle within Zionism raises crucial questions. What role does exile play in Jewish belief? What role does the state of Israel play in Jewish belief? Is Zionism the only true refuge for Jews? Are Jews who reject Zionism and Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, who embrace lives outside of Israel, upholding or defying Jewish tradition? Is the nation-state the best or healthiest collective structure for Jews? Is a Jewish homeland, known by Jews as the Land of Israel, connected to sovereignty? Judaism existed, of course, long before the concept of sovereignty and the Land of Israel has been the homeland of the Jews for millennia without sovereignty. Is the concept of “homeland” or in Hebrew morasha (inheritance) dependent on statehood or even residence in Israel? Or is this concpet, in its origins, atheological concept? Joining me to discuss Zionism and its relationship to Jewish belief is Rabbi Shaul Magid professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University and the author of “The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance.”
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’!
Capitalism’s Wars for Oil: When Bodies Start Stacking Up From Climate Change-Related Disasters, Will These Monsters be Held to Account?
Norfolk Southern CEO Got a 37% Pay Boost After Toxic East Palestine Crash “We need full compensation for the families and workers affected by the East Palestine train derailment—not a $3.6 million raise for its CEO,” wrote Sen. Ed Markey.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Labor:
Workplace Hazards Impacting the Environmental Health Workforce: A Study Among Practitioners in the United States Our study examined the occupational health and safety (OHS) issues that impact environmental public health workforces across various health departments in the U.S. The objective was to generate an OHS risk profile for the workforce to inform future preventative strategies. Data for our study were collected via a cross-sectional online survey (N = 158) supplemented by a virtual focus group (N = 7) discussion to confirm and explore some of the themes and data items that emerged from the survey. Descriptive statistics were used to provide information about the variables in the data sets and to identify relationships between them. Nonparametric tests were used to determine statistical significance between two or more variables that were not normally distributed. Focus group data were analyzed thematically. Our study indicates that the environmental health (EH) workforce in the U.S. is exposed to a range of significant workplace hazards. Some of the OHS concerns identified in our study are similar to those observed in Australia and New Zealand. Biological and chemical exposures appear to be important hazards; however, further study is required to determine the nature and mechanism of these hazards within the EH workforce. Furthermore, our study suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the health and safety of EH professionals.
Economy:
From Defusing the Derivatives Time Bomb: Some Proposed Solutions South Dakota’s Innovative Solution: The most readily achievable solution is probably that in a South Dakota bill filed on Jan. 29. The bill is detailed in a Feb. 2 article titled “You Could Lose Your Retirement Savings in the Next Financial Crash Unless Others Follow This State’s Lead”, which observes: … [I]f your broker … were to go bankrupt, the broker’s secured creditors (the people to whom the broker owes money) would be empowered to take the investments that you paid for in order to settle outstanding debts…. To avoid a catastrophe in the future, a nationwide movement is desperately needed to alter the existing Uniform Commercial Code. Of course, that won’t be easy to accomplish, especially because bank lobbyists and other powerful financial interests will almost certainly fight kicking and screaming to stop policymakers from taking away their advantage over consumers. The good news is, this “great taking” can be stopped at the state level. Americans don’t need to count on a divided Congress to get the job done. Because the UCC is state law, state lawmakers can take concrete steps to restore the property rights of their constituents and protect them in the event of a financial crisis. On Monday, South Dakota legislators introduced a bill that would do just that. The legislation would ensure that individual investors have priority over securities held by brokerage firms and other intermediaries. It would also alter jurisdictional provisions so that cases are determined in the state of the individual investor, rather than the state of the broker, custodian or clearing corporation. This would ensure that individual investors are able to rely on the laws of their local state.
World:
The United Nations: A talking Shop for Deaf Ears Israel’s war on Gaza has exposed the hypocrisy of the western ‘rules-based order’, and demonstrated the impotence of the United Nations and the international laws it adjudicates. In reality, the UN is nothing more than a tool of imperialism. The world is watching Israel’s war on Gaza with horror. Over 30,000 have been killed, half a million are facing hunger, and 2.2 million people are living in barbaric conditions. Already the western imperialists are spreading the conflict across the Middle East, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake.
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