Daily News Digest May 29, 2024
Images of the Day:
How Capitalism Affects the Environment
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”
The Rise of Capitalism was Under the Banner of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity! Now There is Less Liberty, More Inequality, and Less Fraternity of Humanity! Every Day, From Global Warming to Global War There is a New Example of Capitalism in Imperialist Decay!
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:
Death from a thermobaric weapon is articulated by two events. The first is the release of the fuel aerosol. The second is the igniting of the aerosol. Within the immediate vicinity of the explosion, flesh is pulverized, blown to bits or melted as the temperature reaches up to 3000°C, about half as hot as the sun. The burning fuel can be inhaled, incinerating a person from the inside out. Lungs, ears, sinuses and intestines are particularly vulnerable, collapsing as the vacuum created by the combustion sucks the oxygen from the surrounding air… In its latest siege on Gaza, Israel has been accused of using thermobarics. The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has demanded investigation into the deaths of Gazan civilians whose bodies were obliterated in Israeli bombings. (The organization inaccurately referred to thermobaric weapons as “banned.”) According to Thomas Newdick, a writer at The War Zone, Israel may have used a thermobaric Hellfire AGM-114N missile, which appeared in an IDF photo shared on social media with distinctive red markings that set thermobaric Hellfires apart from other Hellfire missiles. After public speculation about whether the missile was thermobaric or another variant specific to the Israeli military, the IDF removed the photo and replaced it with a regularly marked AGM-114. — The Gruesome Frontier of Thermobaric Weapons
According to the South China Morning Post, the free-trade deal, under negotiation since in 2004, is nearing completion. The report stated, “In January, Chen Weiqing, who was then China’s top envoy to Saudi Arabia, said about 90 per cent of the terms of the free-trade negotiations between China and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries had been completed.” — Arab State Leaders to Meet With Xi Jinping in China
Podcasts/Videos of the Day:
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
Israel’s Gaza War is Unwinnable United States intelligence agencies now openly recognise that Israel’s plan to eliminate Hamas in Gaza is futile. Pro-war Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee told CNN on May 12: “I want Hamas gone … [But] I worry that the number of civilians that are dying are ultimately going to provide permanent recruiting material to Hamas, and Hamas will remain a threat for years to come to Israel.” He also said that “every intelligence expert has come to the conclusion that you are not going to be able to eliminate Hamas”. When a whole people are being attacked, those who can — in Gaza this means mainly young men — seek to join groups fighting back, whether this is Hamas’ armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, Islamic Jihad, or others, irrespective of whether they politically supported Hamas before Israel’s invasion. Even pro-war, pro-Zionist newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times — well informed by intelligence agencies — echo this assessment.
US Interventionists Busy in Bolivia as Political Crisis Looms Delegates loyal to President Luis Arce dominated the 10th Congress of Bolivia’s Movement toward Socialism (MAS) Party held in El Alto in early May. They selected Grover García, chief of a governmental agency and formerly of a farmworkers’ union, to be MAS’s new leader, replacing former president Evo Morales in that capacity. Another MAS gathering on June 10 takes place in Cochabamba to elect other Party leaders. One more, a “unity congress,” happens there on July 10, in territory friendly to Morales. He conditions his participation on the MAS Party and his own presidential candidacy for 2025 not being eliminated. Division within the MAS Party is good news for the U.S. government. It had opposed MAS political power from the beginning of Morales’ progressive rule in 2006 until a U.S.-backed coup ousted him in 2019. Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, retained popular support throughout his tenure. His government overcame repeated attacks from oligarchic, racist, separatist, and U.S.-allied political forces based largely in Bolivia’s eastern departments, notable for rich oil and gas deposits and industrial-scale agriculture. MAS governments, with Luis Arce as minister of economy and public finance, achieved social advances, reduced poverty, nationalized oil and gas extraction and production, carried out land reform, and elevated the status of Bolivia’s majority indigenous population.
U.S. Funded Plestinian Genocide:
Burning the Indigenous Population up in their Tents is an old Colonial Technique of Genocide The Israeli air force bombed a refugee tent camp west of Rafah City around 8:45 pm local time on Sunday. The time is important, since +972 Mag reported that the Israeli total war on Gaza is being conducted by AI programs. One of them is called, sadistically, “Daddy’s Home.” The Israelis are tracking Hamas militants through the day but wait to strike at them when they come come at night, ensuring that their wives, children, relatives and friends are also killed. The AI program is set up to allow 15 to 20 noncombatant, civilian deaths for every member of the paramilitary Qassam Brigades killed in the attack. The eight missiles that struck the camp killed 2 Hamas operatives and left others 45 dead, mostly burned up in their flammable tents, the majority women and children.
Revealed: Israeli Spy Chief ‘Threatened’ ICC Prosecutor Over War Crimes Inquiry The former head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, allegedly threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation, the Guardian can reveal. Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the years leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestinian territories.
Netanyahu Under Fire After Calling Rafah Massacre a ‘Tragic Mistake’ “This was intentional,” said U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib. “You don’t accidentally kill massive amounts of children and their families over and over again and get to say, ‘It was a mistake.'” Palestine defenders on Monday blasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for claiming the previous day’s bombing of a refugee camp in Gaza that killed at least 50 people and injured dozens more—many of them women and children—was a “tragic mistake.” The attack on the tent encampment in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood—an Israeli-designated “safe zone” in the southern city of Rafah—ignited an inferno that burned people alive inside the tents in which they were sheltering. Graphic images showed charred and melted tents and bodies, including a small child whose head was missing. Israeli officials—who habitually deny Israel Defense Forces (IDF) massacres—admitted to carrying out the strike, which they said killed two top Hamas members.
Israel’s Tents Massacre in Rafah Is a Heinous War Crime In a flagrant violation of international norms and humanitarian laws, Israel continues to act with total impunity in Gaza, enjoying Western complicity, and emboldened by U.S. unconditional military and diplomatic support.
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?
As the 1% Gets Richer, the Planet Gets Warmer: April 2024: Earth’s 11th-Consecutive Warmest Month on Record An astonishing 34 nations or territories set or tied their hottest April readings, including seven all-time highs for any month. April 2024 was Earth’s warmest April since global record-keeping began in 1850 and was the planet’s 11th consecutive warmest month on record, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, or NCEI, reported May 14. Record heat was unusually widespread, with 14.7% of the world’s surface experiencing record heat. The only month on record with a greater coverage of record heat was September 2023,
Deadly Heat in a Political Jungle World heat is worse than ever. The entire planet is sweating. Every summer is hot but never like this. In America, it’s a national election year in the face of global record heat. What are candidates’ positions on CO2-infused heat? World heat is worse than ever. The entire planet is sweating. Every summer is hot but never like this. In America, it’s a national election year in the face of global record heat. What are candidates’ positions on CO2-infused heat? It’s extremely significant that global heat is just as bad in the world’s oceans, which have absorbed 85-90% of planetary heat, serving as a heat reservoir for decades. But now, the ocean’s starting to strut its hot stuff. According to Copernicus, April was the 13th month in a row that global sea surface temperatures between 60 degrees latitude south and 60 degrees latitude north have been the warmest on record for the month. Astoundingly, nearly 30% of the world’s oceans were above 28C (82.4°F) too hot for a bath, in April 2024, setting a record. Both the Mediterranean and Black Seas also had sharp upward trends for the month. Has civilization lost its ocean heat cushion? Consequently, heat deaths are on the rise and look to escalate, by a lot, and soon. This is a worldwide crisis like none other. It requires world leadership to do something, soon, like the day before yesterday. But, how soon and will it be enough and who’s willing?
US’s Electric Vehicle Boom Is Deepening the Suffering in the Congo Black transit activists in the U.S. are calling attention to the plunder of the Congo for cobalt mining. … The nation, fractured by war, disease, and famine, has seen more than 6 million people die since the mid-1990s, making the conflict the deadliest since World War II. But, in recent years, the death and destruction have been aided by the growing number of electric vehicles humming down American streets. In 2022, the U.S., the world’s third-largest importer of cobalt, spent nearly $525 million on the mineral, much of which came from the Congo. As America’s dependence on the Congo has grown, Black-led labor and environmental organizers here in the U.S. have worked to build a transnational solidarity movement. Activists also say that the inequities faced in the Congo relate to those that Black Americans experience. And thanks in part to social media, the desire to better understand what’s happening in the Congo has grown in the past 10 years. In some ways, the Black Lives Matter movement first took root in the Congo after the uprising in Ferguson in 2014, advocates say. And since the murder of George Floyd and the outrage over the Gaza war, there has been an uptick in Congolese and Black American groups working on solidarity campaigns
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Labor:
Economy:
What Went Wrong With Capitalism? Ruchir Sharma has a book out called What went wrong with capitalism? Ruchir Sharma is an investor, author, fund manager and columnist for the Financial Times. He is the head of Rockefeller Capital Management‘s international business, and was an emerging markets investor at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. With those credentials of being ‘inside the beast’ or even ‘one of the beasts’, he ought to know the answer to his question. In a review of his book in the Financial Times, Sharma outlines his argument. First, he tells us that “I worry about where the US is leading the world now. Faith in American capitalism, which was built on limited government that leaves room for individual freedom and initiative, has plummeted.” He notes that now most Americans don’t expect to be “better off in five years” — a record low since the Edelman Trust Barometer first asked this question more than two decades ago. Four in five doubt that life will be better for their children’s generation than it has been for theirs, also a new low. And according to the latest Pew polls, support for capitalism has fallen among all Americans, particularly Democrats and the young. In fact, among Democrats under 30, 58 per cent now have a “positive impression” of socialism; only 29 per cent say the same thing of capitalism.
World:
Arab State Leaders to Meet With Xi Jinping in China Leaders from Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia and UAE expected to arrive in Beijing starting Tuesday and plan to discuss the war in Gaza and free trade. China is expected to welcome four leaders from the League of Arab States this week to meet with President Xi Jinping and attend the 10th Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum. This event underscores China’s active role in fostering peace and stability in the region. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, Tunisian President Kais Saied and the United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan are set to land in Beijing starting May 28 with talks anticipated to center around Palestine as well as a free-trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council.
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
Clues From Bird Flu’s Ground Zero on Dairy Farms in the Texas Panhandle In early February, dairy farmers in the Texas Panhandle began to notice sick cattle. The buzz soon reached Darren Turley, executive director of the Texas Association of Dairymen: “They said there is something moving from herd to herd.” Nearly 60 days passed before veterinarians identified the culprit: a highly pathogenic strain of the bird flu virus, H5N1. Had it been detected sooner, the outbreak might have been swiftly contained. Now it has spread to at least eight other states, and it will be hard to eliminate. At the moment, the bird flu hasn’t adapted to spread from person to person through the air like the seasonal flu. That’s what it would take to give liftoff to another pandemic. This lucky fact could change, however, as the virus mutates within each cow it infects. Those mutations are random, but more cows provide more chances of stumbling on ones that pose a grave risk to humans.