Daily News Digest October 11, 2023
Images of the Day:
From Ukraine to Gaza — Closer to World War III!?: Threat to Israel From Hezbollah and Iran Raises Risk of Wider Conflict 10/09/23 Israel forced to deploy a significant part of its military to Lebanese border while readying invasion of Gaza As Israel combats the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, it faces the strategic question of whether Iran will direct its other protégé, the Lebanese Hezbollah, to open a second front in the north. Hezbollah and Israel have already engaged in limited artillery exchanges that, according to the militant group, on Monday killed three of its fighters. Hezbollah said it struck two Israeli military bases near the border using guided missiles and mortars, while the Pentagon warned the group to “think twice” before opening a second front and said the U.S. was prepared to come to Israel’s defense.
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”, is Still True for Today’s World!
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: 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!
Qu0te of te Day:
Euro Fossil Fuel Market: The greatest tragedy of the war in Ukraine lies in not recognizing the responsibility of the capitalist system and its motive – profit.” — Capitalism and Profit Fuel Wars Wall Street Journal
Videos of the Day:
Mohammed El-Kurd: How Much Palestinian Blood Will It Take to End Israel’s Occupation & Apartheid?
Refaat Alareer in Gaza: Israel’s “Barbaric” Bombardment Is Part of Ethnic Cleansing Campaign
Mohammed El-Kurd: How Much Palestinian Blood Will It Take to End Israel’s Occupation & Apartheid?
Environment:
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’!
After World War II Rosa Luxenburg Coined the Slogan: ‘S0cialism or Barbaism’! Now the Slogan is Ecoscialism or Ecocide!
Saltwater Threat to Louisiana Drinking Water to Grow Across US, Experts Warn Louisiana residents face crisis as seawater penetrates Mississippi but scientists say other coastal cities likely to be affected over time The threat to drinking water from the kind of saltwater intrusion currently creeping up the drought-hit Mississippi River towards New Orleans will increasingly be faced by coastal cities around the US, experts warn.
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 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
‘Genuinely Shocked They Aired It’: CNN Interview Cuts Through Pro-Israel Propaganda on Gaza “We should all have equal life, we should have all peace, we should all have justice, and we should live in dignity,” said Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. “The main way to achieve that is to end occupation, end the system of apartheid.” “There is one way to stop any violence and that is to end the Israeli occupation,” said Barghouti. “And that is for the United States to be fair. They cannot say that Israel has the right to defend itself, but we the Palestinians don’t have the right to defend ourselves… The only way to stop it is to tell Israel, ‘You have to respect international law, you have to end this illegal occupation and accept Palestinians as equal human beings.'”
The Media Monopoly’s Israel ‘Spin’ The Hypocrisy at the Heart of Western Reaction to Hamas’ Attack on Israel The collective punishment of two million Palestinians in Gaza, dependent on Israel for power because Israel surrounds and controls every aspect of their lives in the enclave, is a war crime.
War Profiteers’ Stocks Soar as Israel Bombs Gaza “As countries need to replenish their weapons, we do think defense companies will do very well,” said one expert. “War is good for business.” That’s what one defense executive said at a London arms conference last month, and what the stock market reflected on Monday, as Israel blockaded and bombarded the Gaza Strip—bombing the occupied Palestinian territory’s main university, residential buildings, a refugee camp, and a major hospital—in response to Hamas’ weekend attack that killed hundreds of Israelis
Lessor Evilism Breeds Fascism!: Chris Hedges: Fascism Comes to America The failure of the liberal class to halt the corporate assault on working people has spawned an ascendant Christian fascism that is poised to seize power and radically reshape America. The parting gift, I expect, of the bankrupt liberalism of the Democratic Party will be a Christianized fascist state. The liberal class, a creature of corporate power, captive to the war industry and the security state, unable or unwilling to ameliorate the prolonged economic insecurity and misery of the working class, blinded by a self-righteous woke ideology that reeks of hypocrisy and disingenuousness and bereft of any political vision, is the bedrock on which the Christian fascists, who have coalesced in cult-like mobs around Donald Trump, have built their terrifying movement.
Black Liberation/Civile Rights:
Labor:
Economy:
Mounting Climate Risks Could Lead to Destabilization of the Global Insurance Market Natural disasters now cost the U.S. insurance industry $100 billion a year. What happens when no one wants to pick up the tab? . . . In hindsight, it was the beginning of the dynamic now driving insurance markets. To handle massive payout events like Andrew, insurance companies sell policies across different markets — historically, a hurricane wasn’t hitting Florida in the same month a wildfire wiped out a town in California. They themselves also pay for insurance, a financial instrument called reinsurance that helps distribute risk across geographic regions. Reinsurance availability remains a major driver of what insurance you can buy — and how much it costs. But as climate change intensifies extreme weather and claims pile up, this system has been thrown into disarray. Insured losses from natural disasters in the U.S. now routinely approach $100 billion a year, compared to $4.6 billion in 2000. As a result, the average homeowner has seen their premiums spike 21 percent since 2015. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the states most likely to have disasters — like Texas and Florida — have some of the most expensive insurance rates. That means ever more people are forgoing coverage, leaving them vulnerable and driving prices even higher as the number of people paying premiums and sharing risk shrinks. his vicious cycle also increases reinsurers’ rates. Reinsurers globally raised prices for property insurers by 37 percent in 2023, contributing to insurance companies pulling back from risky states like California and Florida. “As events are getting bigger and more costly, that has raised the prices of reinsurance in those areas,” said Carolyn Kousky, the associate vice president for economics and policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, who studies insurance. “It’s called the hardening of the market.”
Michael Roberts Facebook Blog Re: The World in Economic Depression: A Marxist Analysis of Crisis “In the opinion of many Marxist economists, including the authors of this notebook, the prolonged and profound crisis that we are experiencing today is also a great depression. A discussion on the diverse theories of crisis in the capitalist economy is not idle intellectualising. Quite the opposite, it provides us with immensely important political conclusions on immediate bread-and-butter and life-or-death issues not only for our species, but for all living beings. The law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall turned out to be the most sound theory and the only one that explains the periodic recurrence of economic crises throughout the history of capitalism. Ws must prepare to wrest away parts of the world economy from the international bourgeoisie as the course of revolution unfolds. That is the only way that humanity can save itself from the increasingly destructive tendencies that capitalism has developed in the period of its twilight.” 
There Are Two Reasons that 75 Percent of U.S. Banks Didn’t Hedge Their Interest Rate Risk as the Fed Hiked Rates at the Fastest Pace in 40 Years An academic study released in April found that during the fastest pace of Fed interest rate hikes in 40 years, the majority of U.S. banks failed to hedge their interest rate risk. Among the key findings of the study are the following: “Over three quarters of all reporting banks report no material use of interest rate swaps.” “Only 6% of aggregate assets in the U.S. banking system are hedged by interest rate swaps.” “Banks with the most fragile funding – i.e., those with highest uninsured leverage — sold or reduced their hedges during the monetary tightening. This allowed them to record accounting profits but exposed them to further rate increases. These actions are reminiscent of classic gambling for resurrection: if interest rates had decreased, equity would have reaped the profits, but if rates increased, then debtors and the FDIC would absorb the losses.”
World:
Israel-Palestine: No to the Invasion of Gaza! End the Occupation! Hamas’s attack on Israel yesterday (Saturday 7 October) came as a shock, taking the Israeli Intelligence and military establishment by surprise, but it should not surprise us in the least. It is the direct consequence of the escalating violent suppression of the Palestinians promoted by Netanyahu, who is leading the most right-wing reactionary government in Israel’s history. The attack saw thousands of rockets launched from Gaza, with dozens breaking through the Israeli ‘Iron Dome’ anti-missile defence system, while hundreds of Hamas fighters crashed through the most-guarded border fence in the world, to attack border towns and military bases on Israeli soil. This resulted in hundreds of Israeli casualties (over 600 killed and 2,000 injured at the time of writing). The fighting is still ongoing more than 24 hours after the initial attack in at least eight out of the 22 targets taken over by the Palestinian commandos. New commandos are entering Israel from Gaza, with dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians taken prisoner and brought to Gaza. Hamas fighters have overrun a military base, destroyed Israeli tanks and other military equipment, and seized military vehicles, capturing Israeli military commanders, allegedly including Nimrod Aloni, a major-general of the IDF. This is unprecedented. The Israeli state has been humiliated and its response will be brutal. Netanyahu has declared a “State of War”, and is carrying out retaliatory bombings, which have already killed more than 300 Palestinians and injured 1,600. Israel immediately cut off the electricity supply to the Gaza Strip, with severe consequences for the 2.1 million Palestinian civilian population living there, and undermining the already fragile infrastructure and the healthcare system, which are already close to collapsing. — The Hypocrisy of Western Imperialist Governments!— The leaders of Western imperialist governments are now talking about the “right of Israel to defend itself”. Biden, Macron and reformist leaders like Starmer in Britain, in a hypocritical chorus, have condemned the attack on Israel, but conveniently remained silent for decades in the face of Israeli brutality. They all ignore the fact that, under Netanyahu’s cynical watch, violence by far-right Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem against Palestinian neighbourhoods have escalated exponentially, encouraged by guaranteed impunity and the open or covert complicity of the Israeli security forces. The attempts by Palestinian youth to resist the occupation have been met with disproportionate and systematic deadly violence by the IDF, with an endless string of attacks and targeted assassinations, culminating in the brutal onslaught against the Jenin refugee camp in July. All this, while armed settlers menace the Palestinian population.
Chris Hedges: Palestinians Speak the Language of Violence Israel Taught Them The indiscriminate shootings of Israelis by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance organizations, the kidnapping of civilians, the barrage of rockets into Israel, drone attacks on a variety of targets from tanks to automated machine gun nests, are the familiar language of the Israeli occupier. Israel has spoken this blood-soaked language of violence to the Palestinians since Zionist militias seized more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, destroyed some 530 Palestinian villages and cities and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in more than 70 massacres. Some 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed between 1947 and 1949 to create the state of Israel in 1948. Israel’s response to these armed incursions will be a genocidal assault on Gaza. Israel will kill dozens of Palestinians for every Israeli killed. Hundreds of Palestinians have already died in Israel air assaults since the launch of “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” on Saturday morning, which left 700 Israelis dead.
“Israel’s 9/11” Is a Slogan to Rationalize Open-Ended Massacre of Palestinian Civilians As in the aftermath of 9/11, official claims to be only fighting terrorism will continue to serve as PR smokescreens for a government terrorizing and inflicting mass carnage on Palestinians.
Israeli Army Official Admits Gaza Bombing Campaign Is Focused on ‘Damage and Not on Accuracy’ “Gazans have been saying Israel is indiscriminately bombing them, with no goal other than to level Gaza to the ground. Now Israel admits the same.”
Health. Welfare, and Education:
Commercialization Is Making Access to the New COVID Vaccine More Difficult As health care inequities deepen, pharmaceutical giants and insurers are maximizing profits. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip on Monday, pledging to block food and fuel from entering the occupied enclave and cut off the territory’s electricity — steps that international law experts and other observers decried as a clear war crime that will devastate civilians. “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” said Gallant. Using rhetoric that one commentator called “blatantly genocidal,” Gallant added that “we are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”