Daily News Digest October 17, 2023
Images of the Day:
London: Hundreds of Thousands March in Support of Gaza
The Biggest Prison on Earth
Israeli Minister Eliyahu: The Palestinians aren’t under Apartheid, they’re Just in a Prison Camp Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Other members of the the extremist Jewish Power Party are adding fuel to the firestorm that broke out last week when the party’s leader and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir asserted that Israeli rights to move around the Palestinian West Bank took precedence over Palestinian rights to freedom of movement in their own land. Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu tried to uphold Ben Gvir’s supremacist assertions and to defend Israeli policy toward Palestinians, rejecting the label of Apartheid for it.
Capitalist Robber Barrons: Millions Kept From Employees
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:
The US military is puzzled about the outcry over the use of white phosphorus at Fallujah. After all, a 500-pound bomb is also destructive. My guess? You can’t go to war against Saddam on the grounds that he has stockpiles of chemical weapons, and then turn around and use incendiary bombs of a sort that much of the world regards as a form of chemical weapon. It is the hypocrisy factor. Not to mention that the international community is trying to get such weapons banned. — White Phosphorus Round Up George (Monbiot)
On Friday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said it would be “impossible” for civilians in Gaza to comply with the evacuation order without devastating humanitarian consequences. The UN chief called on the world to unite in support of the fundamental principle of protecting civilians, and “finding a lasting solution to this unending cycle of death and destruction.”— ‘Agonising Choice’ For Hospital Workers Amid Israeli Order to Evacuate — The World Health Organization (WHO) on Saturday strongly condemned Israel’s repeated order for 22 hospitals in northern Gaza to be evacuated, describing it as a “death sentence” for the sick and injured. With around 2,000 desperately ill patients inside their wards, WHO said the forced evacuation of both patients and health workers “will further worsen the current humanitarian and public health catastrophe.” The statement said the lives of those in intensive care or who rely on life support – including newborns in incubators and those needing hemodialysis – now hang in the balance. “Health facilities in northern Gaza continue to receive an influx of injured patients and are struggling to operate beyond maximum capacity. Some patients are being treated in corridors and outdoors in surrounding streets due to a lack of hospital beds”, said WHO. — Gaza: Forcing patients to Flee Hospitals a ‘Death Sentence’ Warns WHO
Videos of the Day:
Glenn Greenwald: Pro-Palestine Protests Outlawed in France/Germany
‘Silent Coup’—How Corporations Rule the World w/Matt Kennard | The Chris Hedges Report
The Chris Hedges Report Podcast: Stephanie Gibaud in June 2008 was ordered by one of her managers at the UBS Bank in Paris to destroy all her computer files that related to customers with offshore accounts in Switzerland. The order came in the wake of the 2007 American banker Bradley Birkenfeld’s disclosure of client information to the U.S. Department of Justice that suggested the bank was facilitating massive tax evasion schemes for its American clients – ultimately leading to a penalty of $780 million. Swiss banks have long been havens for those seeking to avoid taxes. In 2014, Credit Suisse would also plead guilty to sheltering money for its clients so they could avoid taxes and paid $2.6 billion in penalties. Gibaud was the only bank employee at UBS who refused to delete her files. She protested to UBS management and French regulators. Her documents would eventually help to identify 38,000 offshore bank accounts amounting to $ 12 billion dollars. UBS responded by trying to fire her as part of a mass redundancy of one hundred employees, during the 2008 financial crisis. The French Ministry of Work intervened, but her life at UBS became excruciating. She suffered harassment and discrimination along social and professional isolation. She endured constant anxiety and depression. UBS fired her in 2012. She was sued for defamation by the bank after writing her book “The Woman Who Knew Too Much, part of a series of law suits that plague her to this day. She requested compensation totaling 3.5 million euros. The judge gave her 4,500 euros, to cover her legal fees. UBS was eventually forced to pay a record fine in 2019 of $ 4.9 billion dollars. But Gibaud found herself financially ruined and blacklisted from the financial sector where she had spent her career.
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!
Biden Lied — Again!: ‘A Huge Step Backward’: US Export-Import Bank Approves Estonian Fossil Fuel Project The approval comes as the nation has signed off on $1.5 billion for overseas oil and gas projects so far this year, even though it pledged to stop doing so by the end of 2022. Despite President Joe Biden’s commitment to end investments in overseas fossil fuel projects, the U.S. Export-Import Bank on Thursday agreed to fund the Liwathon oil tank project in Estonia. The decision comes on top of the $1.5 billion that the U.S. has already promised to overseas oil and gas developments in 2023, in violation of a 2022 deadline to end international fossil finance.
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
The Real US Intelligence Failure? Letting Israel Turn Gaza Into a Prison. For years, U.S. officials have known that dire conditions in Gaza would lead to violence. They did nothing. As officials in Washington scramble to address the rapid outbreak of war in Israel and Palestine, they are sidestepping the fact that they believed that such a dramatic outburst of violence was likely. Since May 2021, when Hamas and Israel clashed in a brief war that left more than 200 Palestinians dead and much of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed, U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that living conditions in Gaza have become so intolerable that a cycle of violence would likely continue until the people of Gaza saw real improvements in their lives. “If there isn’t positive change, and particularly if we can’t find a way to help Palestinians live with more dignity and with more hope, the cycle’s likely to repeat itself,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged at the end of the May 2021 war.
Ralph Nader: After Hamas Attack, Israel Launches Genocidal Destruction “The cycle of violence expands, and what human rights advocates call “the open-air prison” of Gaza faces total obliteration by Israel.” prison” of Gaza faces total obliteration by Israel.” In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s horrific counterattack on mostly Israeli civilians and Israel’s hourly genocidal bombing on Gaza’s more than 2 million people – nearly 40% of whom are children – it is unlikely that the Western or U.S. mass media will focus on what should be the U.S. government’s response.
Roaming Charges: Gaza Without Mercy “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.” –—Yoav Gallant, Israel Defense Minister. When you declare total war against Gaza, which has been under perpetual siege since 1967 after being seized by Israel during the Six Day War, what is it you’re going to war against? There are no airbases, no army bases, no tank battalions, no air defense systems, no naval ports, no oil refineries, no rail system, no troop barracks, no armored personnel carriers, no howitzers, no satellite systems, no attack helicopters, no fighter jets, no anti-tank batteries, no submarines, no command-and-control centers. Just people, most of them women and kids. It’s why the entire population must be dehumanized, turned into “human animals” whose lives don’t matter.
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You won’t have to interrogate them afterward. They’re explicit about the war crimes they’re planning to commit.
- On Friday, the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, doubled down on the idea of collective punishment on the eve of a ground offensive, claiming there were no “innocent” Gazans and that all who remain (and, really, where can they go?) should pay the retributive price for Hamas’ attacks: “It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians [being] unaware, uninvolved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”
- When you declare total war against Gaza, which has been under perpetual siege since 1967 after being seized by Israel during the Six Day War, what is it you’re going to war against? There are no airbases, no army bases, no tank battalions, no air defense systems, no naval ports, no oil refineries, no rail system, no troop barracks, no armored personnel carriers, no howitzers, no satellite systems, no attack helicopters, no fighter jets, no anti-tank batteries, no submarines, no command-and-control centers. Just people, most of them women and kids. It’s why the entire population must be dehumanized, turned into “human animals” whose lives don’t matter.
- According to Johannes Steizinger, “human animals” was a term frequently used by the Nazi race theorists about Jews, Slavs, gypsies, and blacks, who held that “only some groups of people “groups of people meet the metaphysical criterion of being human. Members of these groups are considered as essentially and hence fully human. However, other groups are reduced to the biological sense of being human. They simply lack the metaphysical essence of humanity and are thus characterized as human animals. These creatures are human only from the naturalistic point of view, but not human from a metaphysical point of view. Thus, they are regarded as subhumans who are not fully human.” (Johnannes Steizinger, The Significance of Dehumanization: Nazi Ideology and Its Psychological Consequences, 2018.)
- The reaction in the US to Hamas’s attacks was more hysterical, the calls for ultra-violence more grotesque, and the lack of dissent more uniform, than in Israel itself (which is saying something because Netanyahu blustered this week that “Every member of Hamas is a dead man”)…
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Joe Biden controls the flow of money and arms to Israel and is one of the few global figures who could have exerted some restraint on Netanyahu’s vows to destroy Gaza as we know it. Instead, he played his customary role, one he has perfected over the last 40 years, of an enabler for the Apartheid State’s worst impulses. Biden stifled any voices inside his administration urging a ceasefire, doomed as those lonely calls may have been, and instead pledged “unwavering” support for an Israel regime that has consistently ridiculed him and repeatedly flouted modest requests that it curtail the violent encroachment of Israeli settlements into the West Bank. While Biden expressed condolences to the families of the Israeli dead and wounded, he said nothing about the Palestinian families in the confined ghetto of Gaza, whose neighborhoods were being pulverized by Israeli airstrikes financed by the US.
- A handful of Democratic lawmakers, led by Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush and Andre Carson, have called for a ceasefire. They’ve been swiftly rebuked by the Biden White House. In a press briefing on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierrefumed: “I’ve seen some of those statements this weekend. We’re going to continue to be very clear. We believe they are wrong. We believe they’re repugnant and we believe they’re disgraceful.”
Black Liberation/Civile Rights:
Labor:
United States of Pauperization: The US Government Has Abandoned the Nation’s Poor Poverty is a policy choice — one the U.S. continues to make despite the suffering of millions. On the island of Manhattan, where I live, skyscrapers multiply like metal weeds, a vertical invasion of seemingly unstoppable force. For more than a century, they have risen as symbols of wealth and the promise of progress for a city and a nation. In movies and TV shows, those buildings churn with activity, offices full of important people doing work of global significance. The effect is a feeling of economic vitality made real by the sheer scale of the buildings themselves.
Economy:
On May 1, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced that First Republic Bank had failed and that it was being sold to JPMorgan Chase. At the time, JPMorgan Chase was already the largest and riskiest bank in the United States. The sweetheart deal the bank got from the FDIC to take over First Republic included the FDIC eating 80 percent of any losses on single-family residential mortgages for 7 years and 80 percent of any losses on commercial loans, including commercial real estate, for five years. The FDIC also provided JPMorgan Chase with a $50 billion, five-year fixed-rate loan at an undisclosed interest rate. According to the filing that JPMorgan Chase made with the Securities and Exchange Commission last Friday, the deal also gave JPMorgan Chase something that it desperately needed: deposits. According to the 8-K filing that JPMorgan Chase made with the SEC on October 13, the acquisition of First Republic Bank added $47.2 billion to its deposit base in the second quarter and $66.7 billion in deposits in the third quarter.
World:
Israeli Airstrike on Gaza Civilian Convoy Kills 70—Mostly Women and Children: Report The alleged massacre followed an Israeli order for people in northern Gaza to evacuate to “save their lives” ahead of an expected massive ground invasion. After warning 1.1 million Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza ahead of an expected ground invasion of the besieged enclave, Israeli forces reportedly bombed a civilian convoy on Friday, killing 70 people—mostly women and children—according to the territory’s Interior Ministry.
Gaza Is a Prison Under Siege. This Is My Letter to the World Outside.Ahmed Abu Artema, a founder of the Great March of Return, on facing Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. Letter From the Gazan Prison I say to moderates in the United States and Europe that you have to go to the root of the problem in Palestine. Unfortunately, the world for decades didn’t care about the suffering, the genocide and the oppression of Palestinians. But just when Israel screamed, all the world suddenly awakened and started to talk as if the events started just on October 7.
Health. Welfare, and Education:
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