Daily News Digest December 11, 2023
Images of the Day:
Now We Know Who the Real Terrorists Are!
Bendib: Cop Out 28
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: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, andThe 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 of the Day:
Biden’s Silence is Deafing!: Greta Thunberg
Gaza War/Genovide: The Difference Between the Violence of the Oppressor and the Violence of the Oppressed!:
The oppressed can be as violent as necessary, and their violence is always morally justifiable. The oppressors, on the other hand, can never employ force without incurring moral guilt. This moral asymmetry proves essential in evaluating the likely consequences of Freire’s pedagogy. He continues: Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons — not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized….It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the “rejects of life.” It is not the tyrannized who initiate despotism, but the tyrants….Force is used not by those who have become weak under the preponderance of the strong, but by the strong who have emasculated them. Paulo Freire
Overwhelmingly, the Israeli government does not accept international humanitarian law. Nor does it consider Albert Einstein’s wisdom that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Nor does it listen to the advice of Americans like Alan Wolfe, whose book At Home in Exile makes the case for Jewish flourishing without a Jewish state. Nor does it listen even to its own Orthodox former Knesset speaker, Avraham Burg, who makes the case for looking forward rather than backward in The Holocaust is Over; We Must Rise from the Ashes. Moreover, there is a logical contradiction in the constant invocation of Holocaust memory to justify Israeli brutality. On the one hand, we rightly deplore the state-sponsored violence that occurred in the Holocaust. And on the other, Israel demands deference to the Israeli state, irrespective of its behavior. Given our history, Jews should be rightly suspicious of any state, ever alert to the classic question “Who guards the guardians?” It isn’t possible, in good faith, to deplore and exonerate state-sponsored violence in the same breath. — “The Greatest Number of Jews Killed Since the Holocaust”
Videos of the Day:
COP28 Activists Say Palestine Solidarity Protests Calling for Ceasefire Face Severe Restrictions
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
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (2021)
In his new book, Gore Vidal makes a scathing attack upon the bipartisan domestic and foreign policies of the US government. The introduction to this book sets its theme, that the bombings of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 and the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City on September 11, were used, respectively, to justify the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996 and the current “war on terrorism”. Vidal explains that these bombings were in response to the more than 200 acts of war and (ongoing) worldwide military incursions by the US government since 1945, and the concurrent erosion of the Bill of Rights. Vidal refers to Newton’s theory “that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. Without condoning the attacks, Vidal explains that the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma, by Timothy McVeigh, was a response to the ongoing attacks on the Bill of Rights, and that the WTC attack, allegedly organized by Osama bin Laden, was a response to US government foreign policy/terrorism. Vidal also explains that wars are declared on nations and not on an indefinable term like “terrorism”. (As an afterthought, Vidal points out that the insurance companies do not have liabilities for an “act of war”, and so the declaration of “war on terrorism” may protect insurance companies from liabilities resulting from acts of terrorism.)
Biden Risking Losing Wave of Young Voters With Gaza Policy, If NotNow Leader Says “I have seen distrust and disappointment in President Biden reach an all-time breaking point,” she wrote.
Matt Taibbi: Sue the Bastards: Federalist, Daily Wire Take the State Department to Court Bookending the historic Consortium News suit, conservative news outlets take on the Global Engagement Center for funding “censorship enterprises” and blacklisting. In late October, the liberal anti-establishment investigative site Consortium News filed a historic suit against the United States of America and Newsguard Industries, describing a state-funded effort to label, defame, and stigmatize “media organizations that oppose or dissent from American foreign and defense policy.” Now, a pair of conservative media outlets, The Federalist and The Daily Wire, have filed a bookend suit to match the Consortium News action. This time the defendant is the Global Engagement Center, the State Department organization ostensibly dedicated to countering “foreign state and non-state propaganda.” Much as Consortium News alleged the Pentagon funded Newsguard to censor its critics, the Federalist/Daily Wire action alleges the State Department sponsored Newsguard and the U.K.-based Global Disinformation Index as “censorship enterprises” targeting domestic speech, in direct violation of its charter.
Due to US Government Subsidies to Big Energy and Big Pharma Monoplies, They Make Risk Free Profits! End Susidies to Cartels! Fact Sheet | Fossil Fuel Subsidies: A Closer Look at Tax Breaks and Societal Costs (2019)
How Your Tax Dollars Are Subsidizing Drug Companies Millions of Americans are seeing the cost of their medications go up. But what you might not know is that even as they rake in record profits, drug companies are getting two bites out of our pocketbook—once at the pharmacy and once during the creation and marketing phase of new drugs. Watch this video to learn how they get away with it and what we can do about it.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
Patrick Lawrence: Gaza Divides the World, Again Strong Nations and the Merely Powerful. My award for courageous elocution of the week goes hands-down to Samuel Moncada, Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, who addressed the General Assembly last Tuesday on the topic of Israel and its barbaric attacks on the Palestinians of Gaza. His remarks, which Consortium News reproduced, were appropriately lengthy. Here I draw from his introductory paragraphs: The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela robustly condemns the Israeli aggression against the civilian population in the occupied Palestinian territories. This is an operation of mass expulsion of an entire people in order to annex their territory by the occupying power. It’s a new cycle of expansionist terror, of so much that has been suffered by the Palestinian people over 75 years of occupation….
Rights Advocates Say US Has ‘No Justification’ to Veto UN Cease-Fire Resolution “Failure to act now, to enact a total cease-fire and end the siege, would be unforgivable,” said the secretary-general of Médecins Sans Frontières International. Ahead of an expected vote Friday evening, human rights advocates said there would be “no justification” for the U.S. to block a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, where the humanitarian situation is becoming more grave by the hour as Israeli bombings and ground operations intensify. The U.S.—one of five permanent Security Council members with veto power—has not explicitly threatened to veto the new resolution, which was put forth by the United Arab Emirates after U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Wednesday took the extraordinary step of invoking Article 99 of the U.N. Charter in an effort to spur the international body to action.
Islamophobia has Been One of the United States’ Justification for Waging Wars on Middle East Nations!: ‘Staggering’ Rise in Reports of Islamophobia During Gaza War “People and institutions have spent the past two months weaponizing Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias to both justify the ongoing violence against Palestinians in Gaza and silence supporters of Palestinian human rights.” Three university students were shot and wounded in Burlington, Vermont. A New York City food cart vendor was repeatedly harassed by a former U.S. State Department official. A six-year-old boy was stabbed to death in Plainfield Township, Illinois. Those are just three high-profile examples of what the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States said Thursday is a dramatic surge in Islamophobia across the country since U.S.-backed Israeli forces launched a devastating war on the Gaza Strip two months ago in response to a Hamas-led attack on Israel.
Patrick Lawrence: Gaza Divides the World, Again Strong Nations and the Merely Powerful. My award for courageous elocution of the week goes hands-down to Samuel Moncada, Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, who addressed the General Assembly last Tuesday on the topic of Israel and its barbaric attacks on the Palestinians of Gaza. His remarks, which Consortium News reproduced, were appropriately lengthy. Here I draw from his introductory paragraphs: The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela robustly condemns the Israeli aggression against the civilian population in the occupied Palestinian territories. This is an operation of mass expulsion of an entire people in order to annex their territory by the occupying power. It’s a new cycle of expansionist terror, of so much that has been suffered by the Palestinian people over 75 years of occupation….
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’!
Atmospheric CO2 Has Reached Levels Not Seen in 14 Million Years, New Study Finds We’ve already pushed the atmosphere beyond anything we’ve seen as a species, said a corresponding author of the study. The last time that levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide were as high as they are today, Greenland was free of ice and the savanna and grassland ecosystems where humans evolved didn’t exist yet. That’s the conclusion of a study published in Science Friday, which researchers say compiles “the most reliable data available to date” on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the last 66 million years.
‘This May be Our Last Chance’: Cop28 Talks Enter Final Phase ‘We cannot negotiate with nature’ says Denmark’s climate minister as talks to phase out fossil fuels hang in balance The next few days could be the world’s last chance of keeping global heating within safe limits, nations meeting for the Cop28 UN climate summit have been told.
COP28: One Capitalist Capitalist Opposed Ecocide! Mining Billionaire Andrew Forrest in Scathing Attack on Oil and Gas industry Australian magnate-turned-green-evangelist says companies that don’t stop burning fossil fuels will have ‘blood on their hands’ The Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest has used the backdrop of the Cop28 climate summit to pay for ads in more than 10 major newspapers around the world attacking the oil and gas industry and calling for fossil fuels to be phased out.
COP28: Where Fossil Fuel Industries Go o Gloat Another summit that has all the hallmarks of gross failure . . . The view from outside the conference is a matter of night and day. Fernando Racimo, evolutionary biologist and member of the activist group Scientist Rebellion, sums up the progress of ever bloating summitry in this field since 1995: “Almost 30 years of promises, of pledges,” he told Nature, “and yet carbon emissions continue to go up to even higher levels. As scientists, we’re recognizing this failure.” In Dubai, where COP28 is being held, representatives from the coal, oil and gas industries have come out in numbers to talk about climate change. They, it would seem, are the business leaders and stakeholders who matter. And such representatives have every reason to be encouraged by the rich mockery of it all: the United Arab Emirates is a top league oil producer and member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
After Years of Government Subsidies, Nationalize Big Energy Without Idemification!: Blueprint Offers Fossil Fuel Phaseout Solution: Nationalize Big Oil “If we are to truly start phasing out fossil fuels,” said a report co-author, “we must tackle the economic and political weight of the fossil fuel majors.” Over a week into the United Nations Climate Change Conference, a pair of groups on Friday unveiled a detailed report to argue that taking control of fossil fuel companies is necessary to accelerate the renewable energy transition—and explaining exactly how to do it. , , . The report—titled TotalEnergies: This Is What a Total Phaseout Looks Like—explains that “after decades of denial and overt obstruction, big oil and gas multinationals like TotalEnergies are now choosing to adopt a more subtle, and seemingly more constructive, narrative on the climate question. They’ve claimed to whoever would listen (mostly successfully when it comes to political leaders) that although they were definitely part of the problem, they were also part of the solution, if not the solution itself.”
Big Ag Shouldn’t Get to Dominate the Food Discussion at COP28 Agribusiness corporations that wield outsized power in the food system are using the exact same playbook as the oil and gas industry to delay meaningful action. If you haven’t been following food and agriculture developments at COP28, then you might not know that this year’s COP has been dubbed as the first “Food COP.” Food systems are responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and they are rarely subjected to scrutiny. But food-related emissions are finally under the spotlight at the annual climate negotiations, to complement actions on the much-needed fossil fuel phaseout.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Class Struggle and the Fight for Democratic Rights The pro-Palestine movement is being attacked through the curtailment of basic democratic rights. Meetings have been shut down. In some countries, demonstrations have been banned. And pro-Palestinian voices have been censored. Communists must fight these attacks. We defend democratic rights, even in a bourgeois democracy. But we do so for our own reasons and in our own way, based on working-class struggle. Bourgeois and petty-bourgeois liberals also talk about ‘defending democratic rights’. We have nothing in common with them. Communists must link the struggle for democratic rights with the struggle for socialism.
Black Loan Borrowers Would Be Particularly Hurt by the Blocking of SAVE Program “It’s time that every hardworking America is freed from the shackles of student debt,” one advocate said.
Labor:
The Pauperization of the Working Class:
Since June 2009 Americans have lived in the false reality of a recovering economy. Various fake news and manipulated statistics have been used to create this false impression. However, indicators that really count have not supported the false picture and were ignored. For example, it is normal in a recovering or expanding economy for the labor force participation rate to rise as people enter the workforce to take advantage of the job opportunities. During the decade of the long recovery, from June 2009 through November 2023, the labor force participation rate consistently fell from 65.7 to 62.8 percent. —Paul Craig Roberts, The Diminishing American Economy (Updated)
FRED: Labor Force Participation Rate is 62.8%
Economy:
Michael Roberts Facbook Blog: COP 28: Not a single G20 country has policies in place that are consistent with the Paris agreement’s goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C and meeting their “fair share” of emissions reduction. The assessment, based on data up to 5 December provided by the Climate Action Tracker.
Wall Street CEOs Want the Line Between a Federally-Insured Bank and a Wall Street Trading Casino Erased; Regulators Want Higher Capital to Prevent That David Solomon, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, let it slip out at yesterday’s Senate Banking hearing what is really driving the mega banks’ backlash against federal banking regulators’ proposal to raise capital requirements at banks with more than $100 billion in total consolidated assets. (Community banks would not be impacted by the proposed capital increases.)
World:
Food Insecurity Intensifies in Eastern Africa, a Consequence of Climate Shocks A recent report from the World Food Programme (WFP) highlights the escalating food insecurity crisis in eastern Africa, exacerbated by a combination of drought and devastating floods linked to the El Niño phenomenon. The grim situation is particularly evident in Somalia, where levels of hunger are reported to be among the worst in a decade, as shared by Petroc Wilson, Head of Communications at WFP Somalia. The challenges faced by communities in the region are vividly captured in footage provided by the organization, showcasing extensive flooding in central Somalia. The scenes depict some communities submerged chest-high in water, illustrating the severity of the crisis. These alarming developments coincide with the gathering of world leaders in Dubai for the COP28 climate talks.
Almost 100 Journalists Killed and 400 Imprisoned an 2023, says Report International Federation of Journalists says 68 killed covering Israel-Gaza war, more than in any other conflict in over 30 years A leading organisation representing journalists worldwide has expressed deep concern at the number of media professionals killed around the globe doing their jobs in 2023, with more journalists killed during Israel’s war with Hamas than in any other conflict in more than 30 years. In its annual count of media worker deaths, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said 94 journalists had been killed so far this year and almost 400 others had been imprisoned.
Health, Education, 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
Can’t Afford Healthcare?
Critics Say Biden Plan to Cut Drug Costs Too Friendly to Big Pharma “Federal agencies have shown themselves reluctant to act against unreasonable prices, and this new proposal may give them permission to continue to do nothing,” said one expert. While welcoming the White House’s willingness to tackle pharmaceutical companies’ patent abuse and high prescription drug prices, progressive critics argued Thursday that U.S. President Joe Biden must do more to challenge Big Pharma’s monopoly power.