Daily News Digest May 17, 2021

Daily News Digest Archives

Images Of the Day:

Thousands Stand In Solidarity With Palestine In Rallies Held Across U.S., Cities Worldwide “Free Palestine” rallies have taken place in several major cities, including Washington, London, Montreal and Sydney, amid escalating Gaza-Israel violence. Throngs of people in countries including United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand took to the streets on Saturday to stand in solidarity with Palestinians amid the ongoing escalation of deadly violence in Gaza and Israel. Thousands of people rallied in Washington, D.C. Some waved Palestinian flags and signs saying “Free Palestine” and “Save Sheikh Jarrah,” a reference to a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. By Dominique MosbergenCarlos Latuff: Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years 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 future of Humanity Is Now At stake!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”During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: 1.Austerity,2. Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 3.  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!

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 0f the Day:

From the Hidden History of Zionism: “By 1914, however, the World Zionist Organization was already far advanced in its parallel bid to enlist the British Empire to undertake the break-up of the Ottoman Empire with Zionist assistance. Chaim Weizmann, who was to become president of the World Zionist Organization, made an important public announcement: ” ‘ We can reasonably say that should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence, and should Britain encourage Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in twenty to thirty years a million Jews out there, perhaps more; they would develop the country, bring back civilization to it and form a very effective guard for the Suez Canal.’ ” — Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann New York, New York, 1949 p.149

The ethnic description of “Semites” refers to a group of tribes that historically lived in the Middle East and includes both Jewish and Arab people who spoke Semitic languages. Many of the Arabs families who live in the territory that the British named “Palestine” have lived in that place through the conquest and subjugation by many different civilizations. —  Are Palestinians Semitic?

Whenever there is War in the Middle East — Big Oil Is Involved:

What About Israel’s Latest Assault on Gaza?: The current hostilities in Israel and Gaza are likely to continue Israel’s determination to further weaken Gaza and uproot Hamas, ensuring an Israeli monopoly over Gazan gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean.     As I explained in my book, former Israeli defense minister Moshe Ya’alon insisted that anticipated proceeds from Gazan gas sales (amounting to $1 billion)“would not likely trickle down to help an impoverished Palestinians,” but would instead “likely serve to fund more terrorist attacks against Israel.”   The 2008 and 2014 Israeli attacks on Gaza were staged in large part to uproot Hamas and deprive Palestinians of a having their own energy-based economy.     Sadly, in this age of trying to convert to alternative energy to reduce the dangers of climate change, the Great Game is now raging throughout much of Africa. Here is the key to understanding the “endless wars– that’s plural — ” that have plagued the war-torn Middle East, Central Asia, and now Africa — not just “the forever war in Afghanistan,” as President Biden has chosen to characterize US involvement. My parting advice to all who read this: Just follow the pipelines and you shall find the truth about what drives much of US foreign policy… and that includes the Nordstream II pipeline which will carry Russian natural gas to Germany and beyond, despite the mighty efforts of the US to stop its completion through sanctions against Russia and companies involved in the project. Now that a major American pipeline has been cyberattacked, the American people will have a greater awareness of the vital role played by pipelines in energy flows…and the role of “pipeline politics” in directing, protecting — or impeding — that flow, in the US and overseas. — Pipeline Politics: From Afghanistan to Gaza

Palestine Has Never Been Free of Imperialist Intervention! The Zionists Colaborated with Imperialism to Establish  a Settler/Aparthide State! (See The Intercommunal Conflict in Mandatory Palestine was the civil, political and armed struggle between Palestinian Arabs and Jewish Yishuv during the British rule in Mandatory Palestine, beginning from the violent spillover of the Franco-Syrian War in 1920 and until the onset of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War;    At the time, Britain was not even in control of Palestine, which was still part of the Ottoman Empire. Either way, my homeland was never Balfour’s to so casually transfer to anyone else. His letter read: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”  He concluded, “I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.”  Ironically, members of the British parliament have declared that the use of the term “Zionist” is both anti-Semitic and abusive. How Britain Destroyed the Palestinian Homeland

Videos of the Day:

Ralph Schoenman The Hidden History of Zionism

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 ownershipof the Reublicrats, who profit from war and the war budget, voted 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 To Pay!

Our reporting on the Riot Squad consists of a meticulously researched video and article. The members of the Riot Squad — this is a name they use — are journalists whose influential clips of violence connected to Black Lives Matter protests have been regularly featured in right-wing media, including Fox News. Our reporting found several instances in which this footage was selectively edited to remove crucial context, in one case editing out footage of a man wielding a machete at protesters. Some of this deceptively edited footage was played by Donald Trump’s defense team during his second impeachment trial and by a Republican senator during a hearing. The charge that the purpose of our project was to identify the Riot Squad so that they could be harmed by antifa is absurd. The article and video make clear that these individuals are journalists and that the violence they have experienced from left-wing protesters is inexcusable. The Riot Squad journalists are very public about what they do; they appear regularly on outlets including Fox News, BlazeTV, Newsmax, OAN, and Infowars. They are well-known to activists already. — The Intercept Stands By Its Reporting 0n Gab and The Riot Squad

Jalil Muntaqim: Support of Palestine is Not Anti-SemiticChris Hedges: Israel, the Big Lie Israel is not exercising “the right to defend itself” in the occupied Palestinian territories. It is carrying out mass murder, aided and abetted by the U.S. Nearly all the words and phrases used by the Democrats, Republicans and the talking heads on the media to describe the unrest inside Israel and the heaviest Israeli assault against the Palestinians since the 2014 attacks on Gaza, which lasted 51 days and killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children, are a lie.  Israel, by employing its military machine against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery and command-and-control, not to mention a U.S. commitment to provide a $38 billion defense aid package for Israel over the next decade, is not exercising “the right to defend itself.” It is carrying out mass murder. It is a war crime.Israel Isn’t Entitled to “Self-Defense” Against the People Under Its Occupation As Israel continues to pummel the Palestinian people with bombs and artillery shot into Gaza from troops amassed along its borders in preparation for a ground invasion, the Biden administration has reaffirmed its unwavering support for Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinians.     Israel could not commit its crimes without the overwhelming support of the U.S. government. U.S. officials are aiding and abetting Israel’s crimes with massive military aid and scotching any criticism of Israel in the UN Security Council.     President Joe Biden said he didn’t think Israel’s attack on Gaza has been a “significant overreaction.” He expressed his “unwavering support” for Israel’s“right to defend itself” from rocket attacks from Gaza, but he did not condemn Israel’s airstrikes that are killing Palestinian civilians and destroying residential buildings, or the Israeli attacks on worshippers at the Al Aqsa Mosque. By  Marjorie Cohn

Capitalism Kills! — The Breeding of Carcinogenic Babies!

On March 19, 2021, the OEHHA published a Notice of Intent “to list perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) (CAS RN 335-67-1) as known to the state to cause cancer” under Prop 65. The agency based this action upon a 2020 report by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) that concluded the chemical causes cancer.  The OEHHA requests public comment on the notice to be submitted through the OEHHA website. The comment period is open until May 3, 2021. — Prop 65 Is Coming for PFAS—California Companies, Take Note

When she got the testing results last winter her own previously high levels of PFOA had plummeted to practically zero but those of baby Oliver, whom she had been breastfeeding for 24 months, had soared to resemble a factory worker’s. His levels –222,000 parts per trillion (ppt) – were 100 times the national average. By breastfeeding Oliver from 2017 to 2019, Jacobs had unwittingly transferred the chemical to him – a chemical she had come to know was classified as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Even low exposures of PFOA had been linked to several types of cancers, many of which had become common in Hoosick Falls.— ‘Am I Going to Regret It?’: Forever Chemicals Dilemma For Breastfeeding Mothers

Study Finds Alarming Levels of ‘Forever Chemicals’ In Us Mothers’ Breast Milk Toxic chemicals known as PFAS found in all 50 samples tested at levels nearly 2,000 times what is considered safe in drinking water A new study that checked American women’s breast milk for PFAS contamination detected the toxic chemical in all 50 samples tested, and at levels nearly 2,000 times higher than the level some public health advocates advise is safe for drinking water. By Tom Perkins

This need, for more water, at the same time that the big energy companies have already sucking dry the Colorado water basin, at a time of drought in the southwest. (“The group, Western Resource Advocates, used public records to conclude that energy companies are collectively entitled to divert more than 6.5 billion gallons of water a day during peak river flows. The companies also hold rights to store, in dozens of reservoirs, 1.7 million acre feet of water, enough to supply metro Denver for six years.”– Department: Oil, Water Are Volatile Mix in West 2009

The Hoover Dam Made Life in the West Possible. Or So We Thought. Few things force you to confront hubris and genius at the same time as much as the magnificent harness on the Colorado River that created the largest reservoir in the United States. To build Hoover Dam in the 1930s, an army of Depression-era daredevils poured enough concrete to form a two-lane road from Seattle to Miami. The dam powered Los Angeles and birthed modern Las Vegas. Downriver canals made Arizona habitable year-round, delivered cold water to drinking fountains in Disneyland and created an Eden for winter vegetables in Southern California. Humans bent nature to their will to shape a civilization in an arid land. Now, human activity — the accelerant of climate change — is threatening those dreams. Lake Mead, the big man-made body of water behind the dam, has sunk to near its lowest level since it was filled, signaling ripples of change in the world made possible by the backed-up Colorado River. By Timothy Egan

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Many top Democrats including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris say the country is not racist, but is flawed by racist institutions. This is a concession that undermines the popular movement to abolish policing and replace it with a new safety force drawn from the communities that are under siege.     It is up to whites to explain to other whites why 1619 is important and why history must be inclusive and honest and discuss more than the history of white settlement and privileges.     Why Floyd Decision Matters*.    The George Floyd case and its aftermath is significant. Since former police officer Derek Chauvin’s conviction for Floyd’s murder, the Department of Justice has filed a civil rights case against Chauvin and three other cops.  While Scott and the Republicans reject the idea that policing is racist, until that is recognised, their proposals to reform policing will not save Black lives.     Unless “qualified immunity” for police is eliminated, any change will have limited meaning. Changes to police techniques, such as limiting chokeholds and no-knock warrants, without holding individual cops liable, solves little.      The police “unions” have the power to undermine modest reforms. The key demand is to abolish and replace policing as it exists.     Racist policing is the proof that this is a racist country. The failure to end policing as it is practiced shows how racist institutions are disadvantaging Blacks and other minorities.     Most local leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement don’t expect much from Biden or Congress. They will continue protests against police killings until fundamental changes are made, beginning with an end to qualified immunity. — Malik Miah,  United States: Republicans Step Up Racist, Anti-Democratic Attacks

Labor:

Economy:

For mainstream economists, profit simply does not matter. But even among the left-wing Keynesians, profit hardly appears. For them it is all about ‘demand’, about ‘speculation’ or about ‘financialisation’. These things all play a major role, but profit is the key category for understanding the capitalist process of production and accumulation. And it is important to put it in relation to a company’s investments: the rate of profit is the key to understanding how healthy an economy is. And profitability has tended to fall over the last 50 years, not linearly, but in a wave-like movement.      The high profits of tech companies such as Amazon, Apple or Alphabet are hiding the problem of profitability across the whole capitalist economy. There are a lot of unprofitable zombie companies and for most profit rates have fallen. We need to look at how this has affected investment. This is the central aspect that Marxian economic criticism can bring to the debate on the world economy.  Empirical evidence supports Marx’s law of the tendency to fall in the rate of profit. There are the counteracting factors to this law, but the law is the dominant factor. As far as we can measure the data, they suggest that there is a long-term trend towards falling rates of profit in the major economies. Every eight to ten years, capitalism plunges into crisis. We must continue to learn why these crises take place and what the political consequences.  — Michael Roberts, Some Notes On The World Economy Now

Morgan Stanley Has Paid Fines for Two Decades for Abusing Customers with In-House Products, Now It Plans to Stuff Bitcoin Futures into Its Mutual Funds and Retiree Annuities Morgan Stanley has more than 15,000 financial advisors calling clients each day with investment recommendations that are frequently engineered inside the firm. (These are known as in-house or proprietary products.) For the past two decades, we have been reading about regulatory fines against Morgan Stanley for abusing its customers in these home-grown offerings. In November 2000, Morgan Stanley’s Dean Witter unit was charged by the National Association of Securities Dealers’ regulatory arm with selling over $2 billion of Term Trusts to more than 100,000 customers using an internal marketing campaign that characterized the investments as safe and low-risk. The NASD Regulation complaint said that Dean Witter targeted “certificate of deposit holders and other conservative investors, many of whom were elderly with moderate, fixed incomes…”  By Pam Martens and Russ MartensWorld:

‘Nothing Is More Beautiful Than Solidarity’: Hundreds Mobilize to Stop Arrest of Immigrant Neighbors in Glasgow “This is what we need to be prepared to do again and again as the Tories bring in their new immigration proposals and demonize asylum seekers and refugees,” said MP Kim Johnson. Progressive lawmakers and immigrant rights advocates in the United Kingdom on Thursday into Friday applauded an impromptu show of solidarity in Glasgow, Scotland which forced immigration enforcement agents to release two men after they attempted to detain them in a dawn raid during Eid al-Fitr. By Julia ConleyEducation, Health, Science, 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 

Documents Reveal Pharma Plot to Stop Generic Covid-19 Vaccine Waiver Urging Biden’s reversal, industry lobbyists instruct Congress to talk up loss of jobs and fear of China. The pharmaceutical industry is distributing talking points, organizing opposition, and even collecting congressional signatures in an attempt to reverse President Joe Biden’s support for worldwide access to generic Covid-19 vaccines. The behind-the-scenes moves, revealed in documents obtained by The Intercept, come as the U.S. last week announced that it would support the World Trade Organization proposal, led by India and South Africa, to temporarily waive enforcement of intellectual property and patent rights on coronavirus vaccines. Without a radical expansion in vaccine manufacturing capacity, many developing countries will not achieve mass vaccination rates until 2023 or 2024. The waiver request, which was unexpectedly endorsed by Biden’s administration on May 5, is designed to provide legal immunity for drug firms to copy the formulas of existing vaccines to supply low-cost vaccines to low-income countries, much of which are facing delays that could prolong the pandemic. On Wednesday, Jared Michaud, a lobbyist with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade group that represents Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, and other major drug firms, sent an email laying out the industry’s role in coaxing lawmakers to push back against a waiver.“Reps. Buddy Carter and Vern Buchanan are leading the attached letter to President Biden expressing concerns with the Administration’s support for waiving IP protections related to COVID-19 vaccines under the WTO TRIPS waiver,” wrote Michaud. “We urge you to contact offices and ask them to sign onto this letter.” By Lee Fang