Daily News Digest September 20, 2024

Daily News Digest Archives

Images of the Day:Zionist Goal:Eretz Yisrael

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”There is No Democracy! When Less Than 1% Control the Wealth, Production, and Price of Everything Produced and Consumed in the World!      In the present period of unfettered Capitalism, the pretense of democratic rule does not exist, except in the minds of ‘socialists’ like Bernie Sanders and the Labor Bureaucracy!   Capitalists view all struggles as struggles against capitalist rule! Transition demands immediately become revolutionary demands!    Therefore, any resistence to the attack of capitalists has to be organized by those that understand this!

Today, the United States Capitalists are Consolidating Themselves as the Supreme Capitalists!      Capitalism’s Gluttony is Demonstrated by It’s Quest for More and More Profits at the Expense of Humanity!     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 6 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 Five Horsemen of the the Apocalypse, Spreading  Racism,  War, Famine, Pestilence, Death, and Misinformation! 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 Iron Heel

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:

Zionism, Jewish nationalist movement with the goal of the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews (Hebrew: Eretz Yisraʾel, “the Land of Israel”). Though Zionism originated in eastern and central Europe in the latter part of the 19th century, it is in many ways a continuation of the ancient attachment of the Jews and of the Jewish religion to the historical region of Palestine. According to Judaism, Zion, one of the hills of ancient Jerusalem, is the place where God dwells. — Zionism

Let us consider at this point the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The G.A. advanced the UDHR in Paris on Dec. 10, 1948, just three years and two months after the U.N. was formally established. Here is Article 1 of the declaration. It is short and suitably to the point:  “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” These principles are of eternal validity. But try to imagine any group of world leaders — or any Western leaders, more to my point — speaking in such terms today.    This brief exercise gives us an idea of just where we are: a long way from home, I would say, in the matter of defending humanity’s humanity.      There are 30 Articles in the UDHR, all of them brief, some only one sentence. Article 6: “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” And some are remarkably pertinent to the crisis that defines our time. Article 15:      “Everyone has the right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.” — Patrick Lawrence: Defending Humanity

Podcasts/Vide0s of the Day:

What Is Eretz Yisrael?

The Systemic Roots of Western Islamophobia (w/ Peter Oborne) | The Chris Hedges Report

Black Agenda Radio September 13, 2024 In this week’s segment, we hear about the recent Israeli military incursion onto the occupied West Bank and the impact on the people there. But first, we discuss the recent debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and the 2024 presidential election.

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 : My own Government, I cannot be Silent. ― Martin Luther King Jr.

To this day, we have a government and state apparatus that is designed to “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” Democracy for white and wealthy men only! — Roland Sheppard, My Forefathers and The 1%’s Forefathers. 

Opposing Capitalism is a Defense of Humanity!: Patrick Lawrence: Defending Humanity Anyone taking up the question of our shared humanity in the late summer of 2024 must begin with mention of the Gaza crisis, or — with the escalating violence in the West Bank — the wider Palestine crisis.    These events are of world-historical magnitude. They challenge any idea of humanity we may have until now held as truths held to be self-evident, as we Americans would say.   That seems to be over now. It is as if an era in the human story has ended, and we enter upon one that requires us to think again, maybe for the first time since the 1945 victories, when those who came before us looked back upon the wreckage of the 1930s and 1940s and asked, “Where is our humanity?”   The events that lead us to this point are diabolic, something close to sheer evil. And how strange it is that the nation that leads us to this point represents the first half, the older half, of what we commonly call “Judeo–Christian civilization.”     Our shared task, in light of terrorist Israel’s war on the Palestinian people, is to begin the work — to wage another war, I would also say — in the cause of restoring our common humanity. This is a war against the indifference various forms of power incessantly encourage us to cultivate. To wage this war against power means learning from the crisis that defines our time — that makes this a world-historical moment — and then proceeding in a new direction.     There are different ways to think about this. “Defending the humanity of humanity” is something that must concern each of us as individuals. How many conversations have I had over the past 10 months, in how many different places, wherein people ask, “What can I do?” I cannot count them. Everyone seems to be asking this.    Posing the question is, of course, the first step toward answering it. Craig Murray, the Scottish activist and commentator, had a useful answer in a piece Consortium News published just a few weeks ago. “The paths of resistance are various, depending where you are,” Murray wrote. “But find one and take one.”

Harris Can’t Embrace Billionaires if She Wants to Win The vast majority of Americans believe that the United States economy is unfairly rigged to benefit the rich. In the past few weeks, the Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris, has proven that this is an accurate assessment. She initially backed her own administration’s initiative to increase top earners’ total tax rate including on capital gains to nearly 45 percent. This was included in President Joe Biden’s 2025 budget proposal. But soon after billionaire donors made it clear they preferred not to part with any fraction of their wealth, she pivoted, announcing in September that she backed a significantly lower capital gains tax rate of 33 percent.

Call to Action:  a Remarkable Open Letter on US Designation of Cuba as Sponsor of Terrorism  Ignacio Ramonet, academician and former editor of Le Monde diplomatique, has written an open letter to President Joe Biden. It offers nations, organizations, and individuals a golden moment for getting rid of a key piece of the U.S. system of economic blockade of Cuba. Ramonet argues in the strongest possible terms that the U.S. President must end the U.S. designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism (SSOT), and do it now. 

There can be No Justice if Judges for are Sale: Judge Aileen Cannon Failed to Disclose Attendance at Right-Wing Junkets In July, Cannon threw out the case that alleges Trump mishandled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence.  Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July, failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school.     Cannon went to an event in Arlington, Va. honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to documents obtained from the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University. At a lecture and private dinner, she sat among members of Scalia’s family, fellow Federalist Society members and more than 30 conservative federal judges. Organizers billed the event as “an excellent opportunity to connect with judicial colleagues.”

Biden’s Bear Hug of Netanyahu Is Undermining His Middle East Goals The alliance of U.S. partners in the region with Israel against Iran that Washington has long worked for seems to be coming apart at the seams. At least one thing is now obvious in the Middle East: The Biden administration has failed abjectly in its objectives there, leaving the region in dangerous disarray. Its primary stated foreign policy goal has been to rally its partners in the region to cooperate with the extremist Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu while upholding a “rules-based” international order and blocking Iran and its allies in their policies. Clearly, such goals have had all the coherence of a chimera and have failed for one obvious reason. President Biden’s Achilles heel has been his “bear hug” of Netanyahu, who allied himself with the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis, while launching a ruinous total war on the people of Gaza in the wake of the horrific October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

United States Armed and Funded Funded Palestinan Genocide:

Another Example of Genocide: Water, War and Women in Gaza The water crisis in Gaza is a problem of daunting proportions, with grave implications for the more than 2 million inhabitants of the Palestinian enclave.  The Coastal Aquifer from which Gaza pumps water is diminishing; but more dangerously, it is experiencing significant deterioration from seawater and highly saline groundwater intrusion, as well as sewage pollution.    Fast forward to 2024: Gaza’s water scarcity pollution is severely worsened by its forced closure of water and wastewater treatment plants due to Israel’s blockade of fuel to Gaza to run the plants in its 2023-2024 war. 

As a Former Hostage of the Palestinian Resistance, I Refuse to Support Genocide Reckoning and dealing with Israel’s culpability, not vengeance, is the only path to ending this recurring nightmare. … Later, my learning continued. I learned that the hijackers who held 300 hostages on three planes in the desert were not religious zealots. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was a secular group with a Marxist-Leninist ideology, whose goal was to establish one socialist democratic Palestinian state. They were political revolutionaries, seeking justice, to be heard and to return home. But it wasn’t until the Second Intifada in 2000 that I personally began to understand Israel’s provocations and aggression, its goal to undermine an independent Palestinian state with growing numbers of armed and illegal settlements, increasing civilian deaths, and the razing of thousands of farms and homes. The murder of American Rachel Corrie in 2003, along with the violent retaliation by Israel towards Palestinian people protesting injustice, further reified why I had been held hostage 30 years earlier — a tiny figure in a vast and bloody landscape of occupation, colonialism and genocide, which I was painfully beginning to grasp. 

450 Wounded, 14 Dead After Lebanon Hit With Second Wave of Device Explosions The attacks, which humanitarian groups noted are likely war crimes, are an escalation by Israel. People across Lebanon were hit with a second round of handheld device explosions on Wednesday, wounding over 450 people as hospitals are already overwhelmed with the scores of people injured across the country in a similar attack orchestrated by Israel the day before. 

Israeli Terrorist Attack on Hezbollah: Netanhayu Wants a Regional War At least nine people were killed – including a 10-year-old girl – and over 2,800 injured, many of them left in a critical condition, when pagers they were carrying exploded, in an unprecedented coordinated attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon. American officials said Israel was behind the attack, which had been prepared for months and takes place as Netanyahu’s cabinet just voted to widen the war aims to include the return of those who had been displaced from the north of the country to their homes, which is code for launching an invasion of Lebanon.

Environmanet:

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’!

We Must Hold These Monsters to Account!

Military Boot Print: The Environmental Cost of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza One of the most graphic depictions of the environmental costs of war was when 700 of Kuwait’s oil fields were set ablaze during the first Gulf War leaking an astounding 11 million barrels of crude oil into the Persian Gulf and creating a smoke plume stretching 800 kilometers. Nearly 300 oil lakes developed inland on the desert’s surface, contaminating the soils for many years.[1]     Two decades on and after many such disasters in war zones around the world and endless analysis and debate over the relationship between wars and climate change, Israel’s genocide in Gaza is once again exposing the lethal, planet-warming emissions of wars. Yet governments around the world, including ours, largely ignore the impact of foreign policy and defense choices on the climate.     According to a preliminary assessment published by the UN Environment Program (UNEP), the environmental impact of the war in Gaza is unprecedented, exposing the community to rapidly growing soil, water and air pollution and risks of irreversible damage to its natural ecosystems.[2] Another piece of research reveals that carbon emissions during the first two months of the war in Gaza were greater than the annual carbon footprint of more than 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations.[3]

The Brockovich Report:Is Convenience Slowly Killing Us? A New Study Finds 3,600 Chemicals in Human Bodies From Food Packaging On-the-go eating has become the norm for so many of us today. And why not? It’s fast, convenient, and you can choose foods from all kinds of restaurants. But what about all the packaging? It has environmental impacts and it also contains chemicals that can cause harm to our bodies.

How Researchers Measure Wildfire Smoke Exposure Doesn’t Capture Long-Term Health Effects − and Hides Racial Disparities Kids born in 2020 worldwide will experience twice the number of wildfires during their lifetimes compared with those born in 1960. In California and other western states, frequent wildfires have become as much a part of summer and fall as popsicles and Halloween candy.     Wildfires produce fine particulate matter, or PM₂.₅, that chokes the air and penetrates deep into lungs. Researchers know that short-term exposure to wildfire PM₂.₅ increases acute care visits for cardiorespiratory problems such as asthma. However, the long-term effects of repeated exposure to wildfire PM₂.₅ on chronic health conditions are unclear

Black Liberation/Civil Rights:

Black Agenda Report

Labor:

Economy:

The Stock Market Had a Psychotic Episode After the Fed Rate Cut Yesterday, Plunging 479 Points from the Day’s High The Federal Reserve yesterday cut its benchmark interest rate, the Fed Funds rate, for the first time in four years. The cut was by half a point rather than the customary quarter point increments typical of Fed rate moves. Only one member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), Michelle Bowman, voted against the action. Bowman wanted a quarter point cut according to the FOMC announcement.

World:

Sri Lanka’s Elections Two Dark Years After the Revolution Two years ago, the world bore witness to extraordinary events in Sri Lanka. On 9 July 2022, the Sri Lankan masses swept aside the heavy cordon of police outside the presidential palace as if it was little more than a cobweb. To the astonishment of the world, Gotabaya Rajapaksa had to flee in a panic.     This summer, those marvellous images have circulated repeatedly on social media. They were invoked first by young Kenyans who stormed the parliament building in Nairobi on 25 June; then by the Bangladeshi masses in the run up to 5 August, when the Prime Minister’s residence was taken and the dictator forced to flee; and finally, a third time, by Indonesian students who also attempted to storm the parliament building in Jakarta on 22 August.    [This article was written collaboratively between the comrades of the Sri Lankan Marxist organisation Forward and the editors of In Defence of Marxism.].    The example was a powerful one that has had an enduring effect around the world. In 2022, the ruling classes everywhere were horrified. Parliaments, presidential palaces, prime ministerial residences – the ruling class teaches that these places are sacred and inviolable.    But the Sri Lankan masses rudely showed how easily the people can eject the residents of these buildings when their minds are set on it. But once the masses ejected the Rajapaksas, the question was posed, who will take power? The masses had power at their fingertips but were not conscious of the fact. There was no revolutionary party present to make conscious the unconscious striving of the masses for power.

Education, Health, 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