Daily News Digest January 2, 2024
Images of the Day:
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”
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:
These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes – nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the “good” and the “bad,” to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil – all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called “insecticides,” but “biocides.” — Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962
Normally it takes 3-5 years, after the transition, to begin to achieve the previous levels of productivity. Cuba had the task of feeding its population while undergoing this transformation.The Greening of Cuba is a documentary on how well the Cubans have met the challenge. One of the gains of the Cuban Revolution has been the development of education. Although Cuba has only 2% of the population of Latin America, it has 11% of the PhD’s in Latin America. Cuban scientists were mobilized — not to protect chemicals as in this country — but to develop the alternative organic model . In the past few years Cuban scientists and planners have accelerated this process by using sophisticated biotechnology techniques, such as the mass production of naturally occurring local organisms to create biopesticides and biofertilizers. Among the alternative tactics being used for pest control, the most important are conventional biological controls based on mass releases of parasitic and predatory insects and the use of biopesticides. — Organic Farming — Cuba: “The Road Not Taken”: The Other Cuban Revolution
Videos of the Day:
Glen Greenwald: Sahra Wagenknecht on the Ukraine War & the State of German Politics
TRT World: “Gaza Faces ‘Catastrophic Hunger’ Warns UN”
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
We Must Reckon With the Most Dangerous System of Extinction Humans Ever Created Capitalism, especially U.S. militarized capitalism, is a structural extinction force we need to confront foremost. Capitalism is killing us. That’s the unequivocal message of a new book, Dying for Capitalism: How Big Money Fuels Extinction and What We Can Do About It by Charles Derber and Suren Moodliar. The authors draw critical links between capitalism, militarism and environmental destruction to show how nothing short of radical change is required to shift the deadly course humanity as a whole is now on. The book blends historical and contemporary analysis with a concluding interview from 2062 based on speculative fiction. Derber and Moodliar call for a “new abolitionism” that draws wisdom and inspiration from the movement to abolish slavery and for a deep understanding of how our most critical problems are intertwined. Derber, a professor of sociology at Boston College, has written 26 books — on politics, democracy, fascism, corporations, war, capitalism, climate change, the culture wars and social change. Some of his other recent books include Welcome to the Revolution, Moving Beyond Fear, and Capitalism: Should You Buy It? In this exclusive interview with Truthout, Derber discusses how the myth of American exceptionalism undermines the solutions to the existential threats we face today, why “green capitalism” is an oxymoron, and the need to
Adolph Trump and Genocide Joe: Race, Blood, Vermin, and Weimar Lefties still struggling even now with Trump’s Fascism Denial Syndrome (TFDS) might want to look at the orange “populist’s” recent statement on immigrants: “They are poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they have done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world they’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.” This is straight up Hitlerian rhetoric, replete with eugenicist, Darwinian, white supremacist, and genocidal suggestions that nonwhite people are despoiling the genetic stock of the white fatherland.
A Danger of Contagion: How the War on Palestinians Threatens the Entire World These are pivotal times. The horrific attacks on civilians in Gaza carry enough of a humanitarian imperative to demand a permanent cease-fire and a truly free Palestinian state, but for those individuals motivated by a largely non-empathetic pragmatism, there are other reasons to shut this monstrosity down. The danger of escalation to a worldwide event increases by the day. The stand-alone vote at the UN from the US (even the UK at least abstained) shows the precarious nature of this ride-or-die alliance with Israeli Zionism. The world is not with the US or Israel on this one. Live-streamed genocide will do that to you. The fact that Israel will likely see itself mired down in guerrilla-style urban skirmishes which can never be truly won will likely erode some of the support from even the Israeli population. We have all seen how these situations have played out in the past. The public desires a quick and magnificent victory and when this does not occur, the leaders start looking for other avenues to shore up support. A certain way to do this would be to escalate the conflict into neighboring areas in an attempt to pull the United States in (even more than it already is) and to obfuscate the initial cause of what could become a worldwide conflict. We have already seen this happening with Israeli strikes on neighbors as well as the assassination of Iranian Gen. Mousavi. It is obvious that Netanyahu wants this to spread.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
Unmitigated Horror: Guernica, the Warsaw Ghetto, and Now Gaza “Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized.” – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, The Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2023. “The painful commonality between the tragedies of Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto is the utter disregard for human lives in a war setting by the citizens of even the most enlightened countries. Such disregard is so much more painful when it is committed by ‘our own people,’ whether it be American soldiers in Vietnam and Iraq or the Israeli soldiers in Gaza.” – Alex Hershaft, A Survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, The Washington Post, December 22, 2023.
Israel uses Starvation as a Weapon of War in Gaza “Bread in those days was like gold.” These were the words of a survivor of the siege of Leningrad, arguably one of the darkest chapters of World War II and a haunting reminder of the horrific toll exacted upon populations deliberately deprived of essential resources. The use of mass starvation as a weapon of war echoes a historical barbarity that humanity should have long transcended. This egregious strategy, reminiscent of past sieges where starvation was deliberately employed as a tool of warfare, highlights the dire consequences of collective punishment on innocent civilians. In Gaza, Israel has been deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food and other essentials to the besieged enclave’s 2.2 million people. While Gaza has been under Israeli siege since 2007, on 9 October 2023 Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant declared a total blockade on Gaza as Israeli forces launched a full-scale war on the Palestinian territory.
The Erasure of Palestinians . . .“The Arab’s” range of emotion is limited to frothing, fanatical rage. We refuse to see his grief. The moral certainty of these people, completely ahistorical, is crazy-making. As I try to make sense of the madness, I keep returning to one word: erasure. How else to explain a roomful of people hissing at and shouting down a rabbi who did nothing more than call for a cease-fire? If the Palestinians—the humans with full lives who love and are loved and feel pain—don’t exist (or are synonymous with Hamas), we don’t have to complicate our care for the lives of Israeli civilians with care for the lives of Palestinians. Erasure quiets cognitive dissonance, and anyone who calls for a cease-fire can then be demonized as someone who doesn’t care about the only lives that are seemingly at stake: Israeli lives.
Israeli Killing of West Bank Children Hits ‘Unprecedented Levels’ in 2023 UNICEF says this has been the deadliest year on record for Palestinian children in the illegally occupied Palestinian territory. More Palestinian children were killed by Israeli forces in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2023 than in any previous recorded year, the United Nations Children’s Fund announced on Thursday.
Yes, Western Powers Are ‘the baddies’ in Gaza There is nothing humanitarian about bombing trapped civilians in Gaza, turning their tiny prison enclave into rubble, reminiscent of earthquake disaster zones but this time an entirely man-made catastrophe.
Environment:
Fossil Fuel Giants to Lavish Shareholders With Record Paydays as Climate Crisis Deepens “The global energy crisis has been a giant cash grab for fossil fuel firms,” said one campaigner. “And instead of investing their record profits in clean energy, these companies are doubling down on oil, gas, and shareholder payouts.” “The global energy crisis has been a giant cash grab for fossil fuel firms,” said one campaigner. “And instead of investing their record profits in clean energy, these companies are doubling down on oil, gas, and shareholder payouts.”
Legal Battle Over Native Fishing Rights Heats Up in Alaska as Salmon Disappear While tensions over salmon management in Alaska aren’t new, they’ve been exacerbated by recent marine heat waves. When salmon all but vanished from western Alaska in 2021, thousands of people in the region faced disaster. Rural families lost a critical food source. Commercial fisherfolk found themselves without a major stream of income. And Alaska Native children stopped learning how to catch, cut, dry, and smoke fish — a tradition passed down since the time of their ancestors.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
From America’s Guantánamo to Saudi Arabia’s Guillotine Many former detainees who have been repatriated to their home country or resettled in a third country have found themselves in either another prison or in what we call Guantánamo 2.0. Shortly after the U.S. repatriated the cleared prisoner and Saudi engineer Ghassan Abdullah al-Sharbi to his home country, he disappeared, adding to the growing list of men who, once released from Guantánamo, walk into conditions much worse, including execution. Attempts to find these men are met with silence from the U.S. and the implicated countries. Why? When given the opportunity to be transferred out of Guantánamo, it’s hard to think of any reason why any incarcerated person would want to stay. That is, unless they were going to be sent somewhere that likely could be or would be worse than the U.S.’ infamous offshore prison. This past March, Ghassan al-Sharbi, a Saudi engineer who was detained at Guantánamo for over two decades without trial, was transferred to his home country. Instead of being cause for celebration however, al-Sharbi feared for his life and shared his fears with a fellow prisoner with whom he was departing to Saudi Arabia.
Labor:
Economy:
World:
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
Great Ormond Street to Look At Home Air Pollution When Diagnosing Illnesses Pioneering initiative to consider children’s addresses after coroner ruled air pollution a factor in death of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, nine Doctors at Great Ormond Street are being encouraged to consider air pollution levels at their patients’ home addresses when assessing the causes of their illnesses, under an innovative pilot scheme. Data showing the average annual air pollution rates at patients’ postcodes has been embedded in patients’ electronic files, so that clinicians can help families understand whether their child has been exposed to elevated risk.