Daily News Digest December 18, 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:
O.K., now to the charge sheets further down in the text. Burisma, CEFC, the Romanian deal (which sounds especially sordid): They are nowhere to be found. In the Burisma case it gets positively weird. “The Defendant did not report his income from Burisma on his 2014 Form 1040,” the indictment notes on page 10. This is the last we read of what sounds like an open-and-shut case of tax evasion. I start to think Weiss’s indictment, whatever else it is and is not, is simply sloppy. Burisma, the Chinese, Hunter Biden’s other foreign involvements: Among these there are obvious, glow-in-the-dark violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, given Hunter Biden’s compensated activities on American soil in behalf of the Ukrainians, the Chinese and others. The FARA violations directly implicate the Big Guy in his crack-addled son’s apparently uninhibited limitless criminality. Which is why there is nothing on these violations in Weiss’s indictment. — Patrick Lawrence: That New Hunter Biden Indictment
His (Daniel Ellsberg’s) release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 — revealing crucial history about the Vietnam War while it was still underway — exposed how incessant deception got wars started and kept them going. He had seen up close just how easy it was for officials like Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to suppress doubts about American war-making and push ahead with policies that would, in the end, lead to the deaths of several million people in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. And Dan was haunted by the possibility that someday such deception might lead to a nuclear holocaust that could extinguish almost all human life on this planet. — The Doomsday Machine is Still On: Nothing Can Be Changed until it is Faced
Videos of the Day:
The Never Ending War on Terror Targets Freedom
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
Cornel West Doesn’t Think Joe Biden Will Make It To The General Election. Instead, the independent presidential candidate suggested the sitting president could suddenly end his reelection bid the way President Lyndon B. Johnson did when he shocked the nation in 1968. . . . He offered a simmering critique of the two frontrunners for the Republican and Democratic nominations. He referred to Trump as a “bona fide gangsta, Neo fascist, Pied Piper leading the country for the second civil war,” while he characterized Biden as a “milquetoast neoliberal with military adventurism, possibly leading the world toward World War III.” West said he couldn’t decide which candidate was worse. “I’m more concerned about Trump domestically,” West said. “I’m more concerned about Biden in terms of foreign policy.” . . .
Phantom Parrot: The War Against Freedoms | The London Circle Phantom Parrot is a new documentary covering the trials and tribulations of activists at the hands of security authorities and is also an actual intelligence program which sought, among other things, to invade the private lives of a number of activists to monitor their movements and restrict their capacity to travel and speak. Mohammed Rabbani was one of those activists, and his arguments against the alleged right of security authorities to obtain passwords and private information of suspects, are well known. Anas Altikriti talks with Mohammed Rabbani the Director of @CAGEInternational about this new documentary and about his own work on the encroachment of intelligence authorities into our private lives.
The Never Ending War on Terror Targets Freedom The revelations of people like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and John Kiriakou have allowed the world to know about the sly and insidious turn Western governments took following 9/11. From torture programs to mass surveillance to extrajudicial captures and killings, it has become clear how far these governments have poured away their own values and beliefs. Despite their best efforts to reveal the truth, whistleblowers, leakers, journalists can only show so much against the backdrop of entire governments. In the years since, hundreds, if not thousands of stories remain to be told about those most affected by these illegal and immoral measures, and Phantom Parrot, a new documentary by director Kate Stonehill, adds one more to the record.
Tlaib Says $900 Billion Military Budget ‘Impossible to Justify’ “While Americans struggle to access clean water, basic healthcare, and enough food for their kids, Republicans and corporate Democrats continue to waste our tax dollars on endless war,” she said
Patrick Lawrence: That New Hunter Biden Indictment Before wading through the latest indictment of Hunter Biden, this one for nine counts of assorted tax violations, we must consider briefly the record of David Weiss, the special counsel who signed the 56–page document made public last Thursday. Only then can we read the grand jury findings unsealed last week for what they are and are not. David Weiss is the Justice Department attorney in Delaware who has run the DoJ’s lengthy (as in slow-walked) investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged violations of tax and gun laws. Among much else, David Weiss appears to have connived with other Justice officials to cover up a Federal Bureau of Investigation finding that Hunter and President Biden accepted bribes of $5 million each from Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter sat on the board from April 2014 to April 2019.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
The Plague as Life: 327,000 Stricken with Infectious Diseases in Gaza In Albert Camus’ novel The Plague, a character at one point asks, “But what does it mean, the plague? It’s life, that’s all.” The plague has come to Gaza. What happens when you force 1.8 million people into a postage-stamp-sized territory and destroy or damage half of their dwelling places, breaking the water pipes with 2000-pound bombs? You create homeless people sleeping rough, with few toilets. Many people are forced to urinate and defecate in the streets.
Unmasking Media Complicity: The Urgent Call for Truth in Gaza Bisan Owda, a 25-year-old journalist from Gaza, recently expressed a bleak outlook: ‘I no longer have any hope of survival…I am certain that I will die in the next few weeks or maybe days.’ Bisan’s harrowing sentiment reflects the dangerous reality journalists face, risking their lives to expose the brutal truths obscured by the fog of war. Bisan and other Palestinian reporters, such as Motaz, another courageous photojournalist from the Deir al-Balah refugee camp, stand as unsung heroes amid a devastating genocide. Bisan, tearfully acknowledging the imminent danger she faces, and Motaz transitioning from documenting to surviving underscore the extraordinary courage of Palestinian journalists determined to unveil the truth.
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’!
Biden Offshore Drilling Plan Continues ‘Dangerous Cycle’ Offshore oil and gas drilling is not only dirty and dangerous, but it also supercharges the existing climate crisis,” said one campaigner. The Biden administration on Friday finalized a five-year plan for offshore fossil fuel leasing that was initially released in September and sharply condemned as a “climate nightmare.” The Department of the Interior (DOI) highlighted in a statement Friday that the 2024-29 National Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing Program has the fewest sales in history, with just three for the Gulf of Mexico set to be held in 2025, 2027, and 2029.
‘Employer Potection Agency’: Former EPA Official Says Agency Fails to Protect Public From Toxic Pesticides Former EPA official says agency fails to protect public from toxic pesticides Karen McCormack says regulators at environmental agency are discouraged from speaking up about dangerous chemicals Federal regulators are discouraged from speaking up about potentially dangerous pesticides, according to a former agency official. Karen McCormack, a retired Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientist who spent 40 years with the agency, told Al Jazeera’s investigative show Fault Lines that she believed the EPA was not fulfilling its mission to protect the public from harmful chemicals.
‘Welcome News’: EPA Starts Process of Vinyl Chloride Risk Assessment “This is one of the most important chemical review processes ever undertaken by the EPA,” said one of the agency’s former regional administrators.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
The Chris Hedges Report With Attorney Liz Komar on the Decay of the American Legal System, The Criminalization of Poverty and the Crisis Of Mass Incarceration. “Our system of mass incarceration, where we hold 25 percent of the world’s prison population although we are less and 5 percent of the global population.” Fifty years ago, the United States embarked on a path of mass incarceration that has led to a staggering increase in the prison population. Today, almost 2 million individuals – disproportionately Black Americans – are incarcerated in our nation’s prisons and jails. The prison population has grown 500% since 1973, the year America began to sharply increase its prison population. The social, moral, and fiscal costs associated with the large-scale, decades-long investment in mass imprisonment, The Sentencing Project notes, cannot be justified by any evidence of its effectiveness. Misguided changes in sentencing law and policy – not crime – account for the majority of the increase in correctional supervision. Mass incarceration instigates poor physical, psychological, and economic outcomes for the people who experience imprisonment, for their families, as well as for the broader community
Labor:
Sweden: Tesla Strike – A Taste of Working-Class Power Builders, painters, dockers, factory workers, electricians, postal workers: all are now acting together to win collective agreements for the workers at Tesla, in a battle that has become a decisive showdown. In Denmark, Norway and Finland, dock and truck workers have announced that they will join the fight. For a man who doesn’t hesitate to write the most hair-raising nonsense on his private kingdom X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk has been remarkably quiet about the Tesla strike. He only let loose a brief sentence when the full force of the sympathy strikes in Sweden became known: “This is insane”, he wrote. Truly it is an insane world, where ordinary workers challenge his power – and show they can win!
Economy:
Michael Roberts Facebook Blog: “On a path to crisis” Debt servicing costs in a clutch of the world’s poorest countries are set to soar to “crisis” levels as high interest rates damage already fragile economies, according to the World Bank, in its latest International Debt report. Re: World Bank International Debt Report 2023
World:
The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict and the Pipelines That Run Through It Given the country’s extensive energy resources, especially its oil and natural gas, U.S. officials have seen Azerbaijan as the key to creating a U.S.-led Caucasus Officials in Washington are doubling down on their efforts to create a new energy corridor that runs through the Caucasus, a major transit route for trade and energy that connects Europe and Asia. Focusing on Armenia and Azerbaijan, two countries at odds over land and history, officials in Washington hope to link the two countries with energy pipelines, despite Azerbaijan’s recent incursion into Nagorno-Karabakh, which resulted in more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians fleeing the territory in September.
A Flawed and Dangerous Presence: US Troops in Syria Despite a focus on boxing China in the Indo-Pacific, US involvement in the Middle East continues to be widespread and problematic. While Israel is given its regular steroid diet of murderous arms, US military personnel find themselves scattered throughout a myriad of bases and countries. Recently, Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul decided that Syria should not be one of them. In his bill to the Senate, Paul called for “the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in Syria that have not been authorized by Congress”, leaving a 30-day timeframe for the measure to take place. It notes, among a number of events, that US armed forces in Syria and Iraq since October 17 “have been attacked at least 52 times, with 28 attacks in Syria and 24 attacks in Iraq. Such attacks resulted in at least 56 members of the United States Armed Forces being injured, of whom at least 25 members have sustained traumatic brain injuries.” Such are the travails of empire.
Russia: Boris Kagarlitsky is Free! Boris Kagarlitsky, one of the most prominent left-wing sociologists in Russia, was released on 12 December after four-and-a-half months in jail. He was fined 600,000 rubles (around 6,000 euro) and faces restricted internet access for two years, avoiding further time in prison. A global campaign for his release, in which IMT comrades were prominently involved, was a factor in this victory.
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
‘Unacceptable’: US Homelessness Hits Record High Without significant and sustained federal investments to make housing affordable for people with the lowest incomes, the affordable housing and homelessness crises in this country will only continue to worsen,” warned one campaigner The number of people in shelters, temporary housing, and unsheltered settings across the United States set a new record this year, “largely due to a sharp rise in the number of people who became homeless for the first time.”