Daily News Digest November 13, 2023
Image/Video 0f the Day:
Hundreds of Thousands of Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators March in London
World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, since then, 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!
Armistice Day and the Empire: A Name Change and the Catastrophe that Followed In 1954, the US Congress renamed Armistice Day to Veterans Day. The stated reason was to remember all generations of US veterans, not just veterans from the First World War. Congress advanced this rationale on the disingenuous notion that Armistice Day’s purpose was a celebration of veterans. It was not. Armistice Day’s purpose was to serve as a reminder of the horrors of the First World War and carry forward the declaration of those veterans of Never Again.
Käthe Kollwitz Poster Never Afain War!
Monopoly Capitalism
Ted Rall: Bibi Honey Poo and Biden, K-I-S-S-I-N-G The Biden Administration claims that there’s more to the president’s full-throated support of Israel than a blank check. They say that, privately and behind the scenes, he’s quietly pressuring Israel to minimize civilian casualties among Palestinians and that his public posture ensures that Israel will listen. Given that Israel kills 40 times more Palestinians than the reverse, it’s hard to imagine how much worse Israel could behave without Biden’s “behind the scenes” efforts.
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 of the Day:
Omer Bartov: So, look, this is a very complex issue, I agree. I think part of it is, frankly, ignorance about the reality on the ground in Israel-Palestine. And that has to do, obviously, not with your show, but with much of how the mainstream media in the United States is presenting things. But also, young people, students can find other sources of information to better know what is happening on the ground. So, generally, I think there’s a little bit of an issue of information. Antisemitism is real, as you say, and has been growing, and is a not just lamentable, but frightening phenomenon. And obviously, I have no sympathy with it. But there is, and there has been for a long time, a tendency to label any criticism of the state of Israel, any criticism of the policies of any particular government, let alone criticism of Israel as a state as such, as antisemitism. And that is a policy of the right wing in Israel, and that’s a policy of the right wing in this country, and it has nothing to do with the truth. One can be a Zionist or a non-Zionist or an anti-Zionist, and not be antisemitic. One can be, again, Zionist, but against particular Israeli policies. I very strongly support the existence of the state of Israel, and I’m highly critical of its policies, and some people would call me a self-hating Jew. But that is nonsense. That has to do with criticism of policies that not only function as oppression of Palestinians over a very long period of time, 56 years of occupation of Palestinians, a refusal by the Israeli government to ever talk about what happened in 1948, so this kind of shutting up the entire conversation, and at the same time a belief that Jews, like other nations, have a right of self-determination. So we have to separate the two. — “From the River to the Sea”: Omer Bartov on Contested Slogan & Why Two-State Solution Is Not Viable
Video of the Day:
The Chris Hedges Report with Code Pink activist Medea Benjamin On the Stranglehold the Israel Lobby Has Over Our Political System And How It Blocks a Ceasefire Resolution In Congress.
Live: Aerials of huge pro-Palestine march in London on Remembrance Day
“From the River to the Sea”: Omer Bartov on Contested Slogan & Why Two-State Solution Is Not Viable
Palestinian Groups Ask ICC to Arrest Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu for War Crimes & Genocide in Gaza
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 today — my own government. MLK, Beyond Vietnam
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
WHO Chief Says a Child Ii Killed Every 10 minutes in Gaza The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has described the situation on the ground in Gaza, from hospitals conducting operations without anaesthetics to the fact that a child is killed every 10 minutes. “Nowhere and no one is safe,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the UN security council on Friday. Gaza’s health system “is on its knees”, he said. He said there have been more than 250 attacks on health centres in Gaza and 25 in Israel since the start of the conflict last month. More than 100 UN colleagues have been killed. Half of the 36 hospitals in Gaza and two-thirds of its primary healthcare centers were not functioning, he said. Those that were operating were way beyond their capacities, he said.
Chris Hedges: Letter to the Children of Gaza Dear child. It is past midnight. I am flying at hundreds of miles an hour in the darkness, thousands of feet over the Atlantic Ocean. I am traveling to Egypt. I will go to the border of Gaza at Rafah. I go because of you. You have never been in a plane. You have never left Gaza. You know only the densely packed streets and alleys. The concrete hovels. You know only the security barriers and fences patrolled by soldiers that surround Gaza. Planes, for you, are terrifying. Fighter jets. Attack helicopters. Drones. They circle above you. They drop missiles and bombs. Deafening explosions. The ground shakes. Buildings fall. The dead. The screams. The muffled calls for help from beneath the rubble. It does not stop. Night and day. Trapped under the piles of smashed concrete. Your playmates. Your schoolmates. Your neighbors. Gone in seconds. You see the chalky faces and limp bodies when they are dug out. I am a reporter. It is my job to see this. You are a child. You should never see this. The stench of death. Rotting corpses under broken concrete. You hold your breath. You cover your mouth with cloth. You walk faster. Your neighborhood has become a graveyard. All that was familiar is gone. You stare in amazement. You wonder where you are.
750+ Journalists to Colleagues: ‘Tell the Full Truth’ About Israeli Atrocities in Gaza “This is our job: to hold power to account. Otherwise, we risk becoming accessories to genocide.” Hundreds of international media professionals have signed on to an open letter published Thursday demanding an end to Israel’s killing of journalists in Gaza and urging Western newsrooms to call Israeli crimes—including “apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide”—by their names.
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’!
More People Not Having Children Due To Climate Breakdown Fears, Finds Research Analysis finds concerns about environment key factor in having fewer or no children – but reasons differ around world
Exporting US Fracked Gas Is Far Worse For The Climate Than Coal, Study Finds If All Proposed Export Terminals Are Built, The Climate-Warming Emissions Would Be Equivalent To 532 Coal Plants. The Next Big Fight Over Fossil Fuels Is Brewing In Coastal Louisiana, Where Protests By Local Fishers Against Massive Liquified Gas Export Terminals Are Evolving Into A Nationwide Movement To Stop What A Growing Number Of Experts And Environmentalists Warn Is A Climate Emergency. Venture Global, A Giant In Louisiana’s Fossil Gas Export Industry, Is Awaiting Federal Approval For Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2), Which Would Be The Nation’s Largest Terminal For Liquefying And Exporting Refined Methane Overseas. CP2 Would Join Existing Terminals In A Region Where Petrochemicals Already Dominate, And A Cluster Of Additional Facilities Are Proposed Or Under Construction.
Climate Groups Plan to Appeal as Judge Upholds Biden Approval of Willow Drilling Project “Beyond the illegality of Willow’s approval, Interior’s decision to greenlight the project in the first place moved us in the opposite direction of our national climate goals in the face of the worsening climate crisis.”
75% of 104 Million Gallons of Fuel Removed from Hawaii’s Dangerous Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks Over 7,000 local residents have filed a class action lawsuit against the U.S. Navy for injuries suffered due to the leak. As of November 8, an estimated 79,768, 836gallons of fuel, or 75% of the 104,000,000 gallons stored in the 80-year-old massive leaking underground fuel tanks at Red Hill in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii has been removed. Nearly two years ago, in late November 2021, a massive leak of fuel flowed directly into Oahu’s drinking aquifer. Approximately 93,000 persons living in 17 residential areas around Pearl Harbor naval base were affected. Many are suffering major health problems from exposure to the toxic water. Over 7,000 local residents have filed a class action lawsuit against the U.S. Navy for their injuries. Where is the fuel going upon removal? Potential receiving locations for the ten fuel ship tanker deliveries include:
- Campbell Industrial Park, West Oahu, Hawaii
- Point Loma, California
- Selby, California
- Vancouver, Washington
- Manchester, Washington
- Sasebo, Japan
- Subic Bay, Philippines
- Port of Singapore
- Darwin, Australia
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Lawsuit Against Mountain Valley Pipeline Activists Sets an Alarming Precedent Protesters said that the lawsuit signals a concerning trend in movement repression, but it won’t quell their efforts. Alegal battle currently unfolding in southern Virginia will set the stage for future environmental protests. A Montgomery County Circuit Court judge signed an order on Nov. 2 imposing injunctions against six defendants and pipeline protesters in a lawsuit brought by Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), LLC, a joint venture between five fossil fuel companies: Equitrans Midstream Partners, LP, NextEra Energy Capital, Inc., Con Edison Transmission, Inc., WGL Midstream, and RGC Midstream, LLC.
Abortion Pills Go Global Regardless of the law, women can now access their own safe and effective abortion procedures in the form of these pills. Regardless of the law, women can now access their own safe and effective abortion procedures in the form of these pills. After Ohio’s recent vote to enshrine the right to have an abortion into the state’s constitution, host Robert Scheer dives deeper into one of the underappreciated and underreported aspects of the fight for abortion rights on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast.
Labor:
Economy:
Michael Roberts: Visions of Inequality Branco Milanovic, former senior economist at the World Bank, has written yet another intriguing book on global inequality. Over the years, Milanovic has established his reputation as the expert on global inequality through papers and books that accumulate detailed and revealing statistics on the inequality of wealth and income within nations, between nations; and between rich individuals in the West and poor people in the periphery; also showing the changing trends in inequality over the last century or more. But Visions of Inequality takes a different approach from the stats. Milanovic identifies those authors that he considers have the most important explanations of why inequality of wealth and income is so great between humans. As Milanovic puts it: “The objective of this book is to trace the evolution of thinking about economic inequality over the past two centuries, based on the works of some influential economists whose writings can be interpreted to deal, directly or indirectly, with income distribution and income inequality. They are François Quesnay, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, Vilfredo Pareto, Simon Kuznets, and a group of economists from the second half of the twentieth century (the latter collectively influential even as they individually lack the iconic status of the prior six).” The latter includes Thomas Piketty
World:
Brazil: Joint Rally Against Imperialist War by the Marxist Left And The PCB-RR Members of Marxist Left (the Brazilian section of the IMT) and the Brazilian Communist Party – Revolutionary Reconstruction met on the afternoon of Thursday 2 November 2 at the “Rally against imperialist wars – Ukraine and Palestine”, hosted jointly by both organisations. 200 people attended, including members and guests, with political reports delivered by Jorge Martín, representing the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), Gabriel Lazzari, representing the PCB-RR, and Serge Goulart, representing the Marxist Left. In his opening speech, Jorge Martín paraphrased Lenin, who said that capitalism is horror without end. What we are currently seeing in Palestine underlines this point well. As Jorge commented in his political report: “Thousands of people have been killed. People have been forced to leave their homes; hospitals, mosques, schools and other buildings are bombed daily. Access to basic necessities such as water, electricity, telecommunications and food has been cut off. What we are seeing, comrades, is not a war or a conflict. We are witnessing a massacre; a whole people is under siege, subjected to incessant bombings.”
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
Marx versus Malthus: Overpopulation or Senile System? The Reverend Thomas Malthus gained notoriety in the 19th century as an ardent defender of poverty and inequality. He asserted that the poor were not poor because of capitalist exploitation or injustice, but because there were simply too many of them, competing over limited resources. Today, Malthus’ ideas still circulate in various different forms, and have even gained some influence on the left. In this article, Adam Booth draws on Marx and Engels’ critique of Malthus to expose the false and reactionary implications of these ideas today. Western civilisation is crumbling as a swarm of immigrants takes our jobs and homes. Government budgets are being overwhelmed by a zombie zimmer-frame-wielding army of octogenarians, with an insatiable appetite for welfare and healthcare. The planet is burning because it is inhabited by too many people; because we are living beyond our means. All of this, and more, is regularly declared as fact on the front pages of the bourgeois press. These assertions, in one shape or form, are all a modern reflection of the reactionary ideas of Reverend Thomas Malthus, a late-18th/early-19th century cleric and economist, whose name is synonymous these days with the field of demography; and, in particular, with the theory that overpopulation is to blame for all of society’s ills and evils.