Daily News Digest May 10, 2024
Images of the Day:
Ted Rall: Logic Broad Jump
The Chris Hedges Report: The Nation’s Conscience 
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, and 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! 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 Still Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World!
The Majority of the World, Despite the Media Monopoly’s Lies, are Opposed to the Palestinian Genocide and Global Warming — The 1% Minority Funds Them! At, this Time in History, Capitalism is Exposing the Fact That it is Opposed to Majority Rule/Democracy!
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:
Podcasts’Videos of the Day:
Macklemore – Hind’s Hall (Lyrics)
Black Agenda Radio May 3, 2024
New York Rent Protections Under Attack by Landlords and the Supreme Court
Police Killings Continue in Chicago
Black Canadian Politician Under Attack for Palestine Solidarity
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
U.S. Capitalism Exposes It’s Opposition to Democracy! It is Now Applying the Iron Heel to Decent!:
The Chris Hedges Report: The Nation’s Conscience The courageous stance of students across the country in defiance of genocide is accompanied by a near total blackout of their voices. Their words are the ones we most need to hear. I am sitting on a fire escape across the street from Columbia University with three organizers of the Columbia University Gaza protest. It is night. New York City Police, stationed inside and outside the gates of the campus, have placed the campus on lockdown. There are barricades blocking streets. No one, unless they live in a residence hall on campus, is allowed to enter. The siege means that students cannot go to class. Students cannot go to the library. Students cannot enter the labs. Students cannot visit the university health services. Students cannot get to studios to practice. Students cannot attend lectures. Students cannot walk across the campus lawns. The university, as during the Covid pandemic, has retreated into the world of screens where students are isolated in their rooms. The university buildings are largely vacant. The campus pathways deserted. Columbia is a Potemkin university, a playground for corporate administrators. The president of the university — a British-Egyptian baroness who built her career at institutions such as the Bank of England, World Bank and International Monetary Fund — called in police in riot gear, with guns drawn, to clear the school’s encampment, forcibly evict students who occupied a campus hall and beat and arrest over 100 of them. They were arrested for “criminal trespassing” on their own campus.
Washington U.: Protesting Severe Beating by Police of Prof. Steve Tamari, Arrest, Suspension of Faculty and Students Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association Dr. Andrew Martin Chancellor, Washington University in St. Louis [email protected] . . . We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our shock and revulsion at the brutalization by the police of Professor Steve Tamari of nearby Southern Illinois University Edwardsville as he peacefully participated in a protest for Palestinian rights on the Washington University in St. Louis (WU) campus on 27 April 2024. We also register our deep concern over the suspension of six of your faculty members for alleged participation in the same protest, as well as the arrest and suspension of many of your students.
This Generation’s Vietnam: Students are Protesting Israeli Genocide, meeting Media and Political Vilification Pitching Pro-Palestine protest encampments on their campuses, students risk their futures and physical safety by putting their bodies on the line, demonstrating against their Universities fueling the Israeli war machine. Administrators have responded with consequences not imposed en masse for decades: suspensions, expulsions and arrests. These brave anti-genocide protestors have taken to heart the words of Berkeley Free Speech leader Mario Savio, who said in 1964: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop!”
Opposing The War Machine Is Cool Again, And The Empire’s Getting Nervous American rapper Macklemore has released a single titled “Hind’s Hall”, the name given to Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall by anti-genocide protesters in honor of the six year-old Hind Rajab who was murdered in Gaza by Israeli forces. The artist says all proceeds from the track will go to UNRWA. The song with its accompanying video is such a scathing indictment of the US-backed destruction of Gaza that Google-owned YouTube promptly age-restricted it. Macklemore attacks Biden, the brutal police crackdowns on protesters, the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-semitism, US politicians and the Israel lobby, with lines that will haunt you for days like “The Nakba never ended, the colonizer lied.” This marks the first mainstream artist to take on this issue in their chosen medium with a track intended for widespread circulation. It probably won’t be the last. Opposing the Gaza genocide is quickly moving from the right thing to do to the cool thing to do, which is a major problem for the empire.
Amid Rafah Siege, Biden Officials Delay Report on Alleged Israeli War Crimes The report was supposed to be released this week — as Israel embarked on the beginning stages of its invasion of Rafah. As Israel intensifies its horrific blockade of humanitarian aid into Gaza, Biden administration officials have indefinitely delayed the release of a long-awaited report on whether the U.S. finds that Israel has violated international law in its genocidal assault of Gaza. Multiple congressional aides told Politico that the White House recently notified Congress of the delay, saying that the report won’t be finished by Wednesday as expected. If the report being prepared by the State Department finds that Israel is committing war crimes — which ex-Biden administration officials, experts and humanitarian groups have said Israel has committed countless times throughout its assault — then the U.S. will be compelled to suspend its military assistance to Israel.
Most Democratic Voters Believe Israel Is Committing Genocide, Poll Shows Fifty-six percent believe Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, according to Data for Progress and Zeteo. Aday after U.S. President Joe Biden commemorated the Holocaust, speaking about Americans’ “obligation to learn the lessons of history” to ensure another mass slaughter of a religious or ethnic group never takes place, new polling showed the majority of U.S. voters whose support Biden is counting on in November believe Israel — with U.S. backing — is now committing genocide. Journalist Mehdi Hasan’s new media organization, Zeteo, partnered with progressive think tank Data for Progress to poll 1,265 U.S. voters from April 26-29, as Israel’s ground invasion of Rafah loomed, threatening more than 1 million Palestinians in Gaza who have been forcibly displaced since October.
Cops on Campus are the Real Outside Agitators Nothing agitates a campus as dramatically as the arrival of the cops. Indeed, the cops have been the only real outside agitators on campuses across the country this Spring. They have brought upheaval and disorder by breaking up peaceful protests by disciplined students with a cause and ideals. And, of course, the administrators are responsible for calling in the cops. It’s the administrators who up the ante and invite confrontations and clashes. Blaming outsiders for rebellions and revolutions is one of the oldest and nastiest ruses in the world. And one of the newest, too. But it’s not working. New Yorkers and others aren’t buying the Columbia administration’s story that outside agitators are to blame for the protests that have taken place on the campus. As though Columbia students are too blind or too stupid to see the terrors inflicted on the people of Gaza by the Israeli military with weapons supplied by the USA. At UCLA some masked men with clubs attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators. The cops aren’t the only culprits now much as they weren’t in ‘68.
How Much Money Did the NYPD Waste Quashing Student Protests? We Tallied It Up. “Every dollar that we spend on policing, especially policing that is suppressing our constitutional rights in a democracy, is an affront.” The last big protests cost $150 million in NYPD overtime — with tens of millions more in lawsuit settlement … Mayor Eric Adams has called for Columbia to foot some of the bill, but New York City residents are, for now, the ones paying for that violent evening. Based on estimates of the size of the police force and the cost per officer, New York spent at least $200,000 on overtime alone for the four-hour raid to clear Hamilton Hall, according to an analysis by The Intercept.
U.S. Funded Plestinian Genocide:
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?
Mexico GM Corn Case Update: U.S. Assertions Rebutted by Civil Society Experts The U.S. position in support of corporate interests is stuck in a mythical past, when massive agribusiness claimed their products would save family farmers without harming consumers or the environment—claims we know are false. Mexico is taking a different approach to create greater resiliency and healthier alternatives that meet public demand.
The Brockovich Report: The Most Endangered Rivers Of The U.S. From South Carolina To Alaska, A New Report Calls For Urgent Action To Help Protect Our Sources of Drinking Water. Reductions in federal Clean Water Act (CWA) protections have left our rivers, streams, and wetlands at risk in the U.S., and a new report details which waterways are most endangered. Reminder: Last year, the EPA removed federal protections for a majority of the country’s wetlands to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Sackett v. EPA, narrowing the scope for the “waters of the United States.” This definition, and which waters should be protected, has been debated for the last four decades, even though the CWA was created to protect bodies of water such as streams, rivers, and bays from being destroyed by things like sewage, biological and radioactive waste, and industrial and agricultural waste. Smaller streams and wetlands connect to and contribute to our rivers. “All water is connected. We cannot allow pollution anywhere without risk to the rivers we rely on for our drinking water,” said Tom Kiernan, president and CEO of American Rivers, a nonprofit leader in protecting and restoring rivers throughout the country. “Our leaders must hold polluters accountable and strengthen the Clean Water Act to safeguard our health and communities.”
Parasites, Often Miscast as Villains, Are Ecologically Critical — and Declining Until recently, researchers had no idea climate change was wiping out important parasites.
Scientists Warn Climate Change Is to Blame for Brazil’s Worst Floods in 80 Years “The era of extreme climate effects is here,” one environmental economics expert warned. Devastating floods in the south Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul have killed dozens of people and displaced thousands more over the past several days, in one of the most catastrophic natural disasters the country has seen in decades.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
- Eric Adams and the NYPD Repress Dissent New York City Mayor Eric Adams may well be the very worst of the Black misleadership class.
- RESOLUTION: The Question of Palestine, Organization of African Unity, 1975
- Looking back at a time when African states acknowledged their shared anti-colonial struggle with Palestine and rebuked zionism for the white supremacist genocidal ideology and practice that it is.
- Rwanda: “Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship” Review
- Ann Garrison continues her series of reviews of books important to understanding the Rwandan Genocide and Rwanda as it is today during this 30th anniversary year of the 1994 massacres.
- Student Protests and the Rise of U.S. Authoritarianism The protests on college campuses across the country and the authoritarian crackdown on their calls for divestment reveal who the colleges and our government are truly accountable to.
- Rise of Militarized Policing in Response to Black Dissent The United States continues to grow the police state to serve as a bulwark of counterinsurgency.
- “Target Israel and we will target you”: U.S. Senators Play Schoolyard Bully Against the ICC The ICC recently revealed that U.S. Republican Senators sent a threatening letter to the ICC in response to Israel’s concern that an arrest warrant may be issued against it.
- Imprisoned Workers Bring State Lawsuit to Abolish Involuntary Servitude in Alabama’s Prisons On International Workers’ Day, the suit challenges the constitutionality of government actions to punish resistance to forced labor among the majority-Black prison population.
- Columbia Crackdown Led by University Prof. Doubling as NYPD Spook Rebecca Weiner is a Columbia U. professor who also serves as intelligence director of the NYPD. Mayor Eric Adams credits her with spying on anti-genocide student protesters and directing the militarized raid that dislodged them from campus.
- Three U.S. wars Threaten World War Three: $95 Billion Targets Palestine, Iran, Russia and China The recent aid package passed by the U.S. Congress reveals its true priorities – a multifront war that threatens the stability of the world.
- The State Department Report on Human Rights Blinken knew exactly what he was doing. The release of the State Department’s “2023 Country Report” on the eve of his arrival in China was no coincidence.
- Venezuela’s Vice President: We Must Reject US Militarization in Latin America, CIA Bases in Guyana United States imperialism in Latin America via SOUTHCOM is threatening the development of a true Zone of Peace in the region.
Labor:
Economy:
Goldman Sachs Shines Up Its Swamp Creature Reputation by Rehiring Robert Kaplan as Vice Chairman – the Guy Who Traded Like a Hedge Fund Kingpin While President of the Dallas Fed The swampiest trading house on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, issued a press release on Tuesday which was revolting – even to Wall Street veterans who are familiar with its scandalous history. (See Related Articles below.) The press release stated that “Rob Kaplan will rejoin the firm as Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs and a member of the Management Committee. He will be a member of the Executive Office and will be based in Dallas.”
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