Daily News Digest December 13, 2023
Images of the Day:
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:
As a chronicler of the endless post-9/11 wars in the Middle East, I concluded that the end game was likely connected to oil and natural gas, discovered off the coast of Gaza, Israel and Lebanon in 2000 and 2010 and estimated to be worth $500 billion. The discovery promised to fuel massive development schemes involving the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Also at stake was the transformation of the eastern Mediterranean into a heavily militarized energy corridor that could supply Europe with its energy needs as the war in Ukraine dragged on. Here was the tinderbox waiting to explode that I had predicted in 2022. Now it was exploding before our very eyes. And at what cost in human lives? — Israel, Gaza, and the Struggle for Oil
Videos of the Day:
NATO/West or Global Majority? Unipolar Destruction or Multipolar Development? The World Must Choose
Watch: The Belmarsh Tribunal on Julian Assange, Press Freedom & More
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
United Nations Honor, United States Shame in Gaza The U.S. is more than a protector of Israel. It is now an accomplice in its genocidal attack on the Palestinian people of Gaza. The nearly unanimous vote in the UN Security Council on Friday calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza is a moment of honor for the United Nations and shame for the United States. By voting to stop Israel’s war on Gaza by a vote of 13 yes, 1 no (US), and 1 abstention (UK), the vast majority put itself on the side of international law. The US stood alone against international law, with its sidekick and tutor in imperial brutality, the United Kingdom, dutifully abstaining.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
Forced Migration as a Strategy of War: Israel’s Mass Displacement of Gaza Palestinians As a result of the monthslong Israeli air and ground campaign in northern Gaza Strip, more than 1.8 million of the strip’s population have been displaced from their homes. And with the operation heading into Gaza’s south, many are now fleeing areas they were told would be safer. This mass displacement – some 80% of the Gaza population – is a deliberate element of Israel’s military campaign, with complex objectives. In the early stages of the conflict, the Israeli military said it was emptying areas for civilians’ own safety – despite mass evacuation orders being against international law, except in very discrete scenarios.
Follow the Pipelines: Uncovering the Mystery af a Lost Spy and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil In Follow the Pipelines, investigative journalist Charlotte Dennett digs into her father’s postwar counterintelligence work, which pitted him against America’s wartime allies – the British, French and Russians – in a covert battle for geopolitical and economic influence in the Middle East. Through stories and maps, she reveals how feverish competition among superpower intelligence networks, military and Big Oil interests have fueled indiscriminate attacks, misguided foreign policy and targeted killings that continue to this day. Follow the Pipelines also brings new questions to the fore:
- To what lengths has the United States negotiated with the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS to secure Big Oil’s holdings in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen?
- Was the Pentagon’s goal of defeating ISIS a fraudulent pretext for America’s occupation of Syrian eastern provinces and a land grab for oil?
- Did the infamous double agent Kim Philby, who worked for the British while secretly spying for the Russians, have anything to do with Dennett’s death?
- Why have the US and China made North Africa the next major battleground in the Great Game for Oil?
Charlotte Dennett delivers an irrefutable indictment of these devastating external forces and demonstrates how decades of brutal violence have shaped the Middle East and birthed an era of endless conflict – all for oil.
The Chris Hedges Report: The Weapons Israel Tests on Palestinians Will Be Used Against All of Us As Antony Loewenstein explains, Palestine has been a testing ground for repressive technologies exported around the world, from spy software to killer drones. Whether it’s drone technology or the infamous Pegasus spy software, Israel has long developed and refined repressive technologies used by governments around the world by testing them on Palestinians. Antony Loewenstein, journalist and author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, joins The Chris Hedges Report for a deep dive into the disturbing links between Israeli Apartheid, the arms industry, and global repression of civilian populations.
World Health Organization: Gaza faces Epidemics; 449 Israeli Attacks on Health Services in Palestine World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Sunday confirmed more than 449 attacks on health services in Gaza and the West Bank since Oct. 7, saying “now the work of the health workers is impossible.” Speaking at a special session organised by the WHO executive board on the health situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, Tedros emphasised the catastrophic impact of conflicts on the health situation in Gaza, Anadolu Agency reports.
Ralph Nader: Israeli Government’s War Crimes – Enabled & Defended by Biden & Congress The humiliation of the U.S. government, which is actively complicit in providing the weaponry, funding, and UN vetoes backing the Israeli government’s attack on the civilian Palestinians/Arabs in tiny Gaza, is in plain view daily. All in the name of the unasked American people and taxpayers. Earlier this week, at a House of Representatives’ hearing, Trump toady Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) repeatedly assailed three University presidents with the question of would they discipline students calling for the genocide of Jews, without any evidence that this hateful speech is prevalent on campus. Pursuing her fulminations, Stefanik was cruelly oblivious to the real ongoing genocide in Gaza with her support of unconditional shipment of American F-16s, 155mm. missiles and other weapons of mass destruction used to kill children, women and the elderly who had nothing to do with the preventable October 7th Hamas violence. Meanwhile, a State Department spokesman continues to say that the Israeli government does not intentionally target civilians. With U.S. drones over Gaza daily, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has visual proof that the overwhelming bombing on civilian structures is killing innocent civilians.
Israeli Academics Join Call for US to End ‘Unconditional Support’ for Gaza Assault “I signed this statement because I believed until October 7th that harming the innocent is a crime, and I believe it even more today,” said one Israeli history teacher. Hundreds of academics, including faculty members from at least five Israeli universities, released an open letter Monday calling on the Biden administration to end its no-strings-attached support for Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.
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’!
‘A Scam All Around’: Navajo Nation Groups Oppose Hydropower Projects Navajo Nation environmentalists are opposing a “self-described jet setter” and French millionaire’s plans for a massive hydropower project they claim will adversely affect the land, water, wildlife, plants and cultural resources of the largest land area held by Indigenous American peoples in the US. The hydropower project in Black Mesa, Arizona, is awaiting approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Ferc) for preliminary permits and has incited fears over water use in an area already struggling with water accessibility issues.
Ecological Uprising Evicts Transnational Mining Company Panamanian socialist describes “the biggest mobilizations we have ever seen in this country” Panama’s Supreme Court has ruled that the contract signed between the state and Minera Panamá to operate the Cobre Panamá mine is unconstitutional, following weeks of mass sustained protests demanding its closure. Minera Panamá — a subsidiary of transnational First Quantum Minerals (FQM) — had been exploiting the huge open-pit copper and gold mine in the ecologically sensitive Mesoamerican Biological Corridor for the past 20 years. But under a new contract approved by Congress in October, Minera Panamá was set to extend its operations there for another 20 years, with further powers to expropriate nearby lands outside its existing concession and divert entire rivers for private use. To find out more about the mass environmental uprising that evicted a mining transnational, Green Left’s Federico Fuentes and Revista Movimento’s Antonio Neto spoke to José Cambra, a socialist activist and Association of Professors of Panama (ASOPROF) member.
A Slow-Rolling Disaster in Fracking Country Ex-employees at “West Virginia’s Chernobyl” speak out on lethal cancers, regulatory failure and contaminated drinking water. The year after he took the job, however, AOP Clearwater had shuttered. In 2013, it reopened as Fairmont Brine under the ownership of a Warrendale, Pennsylvania-based firm called Venture Engineering & Construction. Guthrie began working at the renamed plant that September. He and his new colleagues saw their jobs at the plant as honorable — it put food on the table and appeared to contribute to the local economy while serving the national interest. It would be nearly a decade before they understood the job was leading them into a living radioactive nightmare, that two of their co-workers would die from cancer—stomach and brain—and that they would be haunted by fears about their own exposure to some of the most toxic elements on earth. Guthrie now suffers a range of health issues that have sidelined him from manual labor jobs, led him to sell his cars to pay expenses, and left him wondering if he and his co-workers have unknowingly clipped their own lives short. “I would like to see some accountability,” Guthrie says. The plant has since become a West Virginia version of Chernobyl, with documented and ongoing radioactivity releases into the soil, water and air. Four former Fairmont Brine workers, two speaking on the record, tell Truthdig that corners were regularly cut at the facility. They describe tanks and impoundments of untreated wastewater being intentionally discharged into the local environment, and workers systematically plastered in waste without adequate protection.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
The United States has carried out a “carrot and stick (rewards followed by repression) policy toward the Black ghettos and Hispanic barrios. In the 1960s, government agencies used the “carrot” of the “war on poverty” in response to the inner-city rebellions. In the meantime, the “stick” of police repression and brutality was kept ready. Today they do not have the funds for the carrot; the new war on crime is the big stick approach to set back the gains won by the civil rights movement during the 1960s. The “three strikes and you’re out” policy is in reality an escalation of the repression of Blacks and the poor. In the process, a virtual police state is being established in the ghettos and barrios to prevent any organized resistance to the increased poverty that is being imposed by the present economic crisis.— Crime and Punishment: ‘Three Strikes and You’re Out’ Targets Blacks and Poor (1994)
Keeping People in Jail to Keep a Parmanent Supply of Labor for the Prision Inudtrial Complex: Court Overturns Part of 2021 California Law Modifying ‘Three Strikes’ Part of a California law allowing “three strikes” inmates to seek reductions in their life sentence if their third felony conviction was neither serious nor violent was ruled invalid Friday by a state appeals court, which said it conflicted with the voters’ intent to protect the public.
Survivors of UPenn’s Medical Experiments Demand Reparations Formerly incarcerated women demand accountability for enduring harm in University of Pennsylvania medical experiments. . . . While incarcerated people have long been test participants for medical experiments in the U.S., Kligman’s tests became increasingly well known and garnered partnerships with companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Dow Chemical Corporation. Kligman even conducted experiments in partnership with the U.S. Army with the injection of mind-altering, psychedelic compounds to determine their “MED-50,” or the minimum effective dose needed to disable and incapacitate 50% of a given population. As stated by historian Allen Hornblum, Kligman and the University of Pennsylvania transformed the city’s prison system into the “largest human experimentation center in North America.”
Labor:
Economy:
If Wall Street’s Mega Banks Are Safe and Sound as the Fed Says, Why Do They Need a Half Trillion Dollar Bailout Facility at the New York Fed? There is a battle raging between the Wall Street mega banks and their federal banking regulators. The regulators want the mega banks to hold more capital against their high risk trading positions to prevent a replay of the bailouts in 2008 and repo bailouts in the fall of 2019. The mega banks have launched a deceptive ad campaign and public relations battle to thwart that from happening. The federal regulators’ efforts to raise capital are being undermined by Fed Chairman Jay Powell’s perpetual testimony to Congress that the U.S. banking system is safe and sound and adequately capitalized
World:
For the Good of life, We Need to Have a War to Stop Fossil Fuels!: War for Oil Fears Grow as US Holds Military Drills in Guyana Amid Venezuela Dispute Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva offered to help forge a diplomatic solution, saying, “If there’s one thing we don’t want here in South America, it’s war.”
600,000 Workers Strike in Quebec: We Can Defeat the Hated CAQ Government! On Nov. 23, close to 600,000 public sector workers in Quebec were on strike. Considering that Quebec has around 4,439,000 people active in the labour market, this represents 13.5 per cent of all workers in the province! It is safe to say that everyone personally knows at least one person who went on strike that day: teachers, nurses, support staff and specialists in the fields of health, education and social services. This is the largest strike in the history of Quebec. This mass strike took place in the context of collective bargaining negotiations which began last spring. While all of the unions involved have an open-ended strike mandate voted everywhere with more than 90 per cent approval, only the FAE, representing 66,000 teachers, has been using it since Nov. 23. The others—the FIQ (the nurses’ union) and the Common Front, which brings together 425,000 workers from four different union federations (CSN, FTQ, CSQ and APTS, representing a wide-range of public sector workers sector jobs)—have organized separate strike days here and there in November.
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
From: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights Movement: To combat the rise of the Civil Right Movement, the “war on poverty” was first launched in 1964 along with the concept of “Black Politicians”. Malcolm X described this process in his Jan. 7, 1965 speech The Prospects for Freedom, at the Militant Labor Forum, in New York City (For complete an audio of the speech go here.): “ They have a new gimmick every year. They’re going to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet so he can walk around Washington with a cigar. Fire on one end and fool on the other end. And because his immediate personal problem will have been solved he will be the one to tell our people: ‘Look how much progress we’re making. I’m in Washington, D.C., I can have tea in the White House. I’m your spokesman, I’m your leader.’ While our people are still living in Harlem in the slums. Still receiving the worst form of education. But how many sitting here right now feel that they could [laughs] truly identify with a struggle that was designed to eliminate the basic causes that create the conditions that exist? Not very many. They can jive, but when it comes to identifying yourself with a struggle that is not endorsed by the power structure, that is not acceptable, that the ground rules are not laid down by the society in which you live, in which you are struggling against, you can’t identify with that, you step back. It’s easy to become a satellite today without even realizing it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power of economic dollarism. You can cut out colonialism, imperialism and all other kind of ism, but it’s hard for you to cut that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, you’ll fold though. “ After the assassination of Martin Luther King and the subsequent rebellions in the inner cities protesting his assassination, the Democratic Party’s “war on poverty” started laying dollars on any potential Black leaders and grooming Black Candidates. John Lewis, formally of SNCC, became enlightened, he ignored the Black Panthers and saw the Democratic Party, symbolized by a jackass, as his party. Most of what W.E. B. Dubois described as the “talented tenth” were bought off by this process. The more radical concepts that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X had developed at the time of their deaths disappeared from the scene. No one took up where they left off. The governmental policy, directed towards the ‘leaders’ of the civil rights movement, of the carrot (dollarism) and the stick (assassinations) had proven to be successful.