Daily News Digest January 10, 2024
From: A World Without Problems
These are clear symptoms that the capitalist system has entered a period of terminal decline that threatens the very existence of civilisation, culture and perhaps even the future prospects of life on earth. This month is the hundredth anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the greatest revolutionary of modern times together with Leon Trotsky. Lenin warned that the continuation of the capitalist system represents the gravest threat to humanity. He said that capitalism is horror without end. His words have been entirely vindicated by all subsequent history. The capitalists and their political representatives have no solution to the present crisis. By their actions, they continually make a bad situation a thousand times worse. They are blundering from one catastrophe to another like a blind man stumbling towards a cliff. And they threatened to drag the whole world down with them. The system is terminally sick and no amount of reformist tinkering can save it. A root and branch transformation is the only possible solution. It is said that in a decisive moment, on the eve of battle, the first Christian emperor Constantine raised a banner with the sign of the cross, rallying his troops with the war cry: In hoc signo vinces – “In this sign thou shalt conquer”. Today, it is the banner of Lenin and Trotsky, of socialist revolution and Communism, that is destined to lead the workers and all the oppressed and downtrodden masses forward to a new and better world in which wars, poverty and oppression will be only bad memories of the past.
Images of the Day:
America’s Homelessness Problem 
Homelessness is a Housing Problem with Gregg Colburn
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!
Quote of the Day:
Capitalism thus can’t actually solve the housing question or address poor living conditions. These problems, Engels notes, “are merely shifted elsewhere!” The reason is foundational: “The same economic necessity which produced them in the first place, produces them in the next place also.” This applies as well to the over-development of cities. Because capital flows to wherever the rate of profit is highest, when capital becomes so concentrated in some cities—or certain areas of some cities—it flees and goes elsewhere. Investment in one geographic area is accompanied by disinvestment in another. This occurs in cyclical fashion: investment brings development, which brings over-development, which brings decline, which brings revitalization. This happens at all scales, from individual neighborhoods to the entirety of the globe. It’s a manifestation of capital’s “boom-bust” cycle. — Engels on the Housing Question: Wishful Thinking Vs. Real Solutions
It is perfectly clear that the existing state is neither able nor willing to do anything to remedy the housing difficulty. The state is nothing but the organized collective power of the possessing classes, the landowners and the capitalists as against the exploited classes, the peasants and the workers. What the individual capitalists (and it is here only a question of these because in this matter the landowner who is also concerned acts primarily as a capitalist) do not want, their state also does not want. If therefore the individual capitalists deplore the housing shortage, but can hardly be persuaded even superficially to palliate its most terrifying consequences, then the collective capitalist, the state, will not do much more. At the most it will see to it that the measure of superficial palliation which has become standard is carried out everywhere uniformly. And we have already seen that this is the case. — Part Two How the Bourgeoisie Solves the Housing Question, The Housing Question by Frederick Engels
Videos of the Day:
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
Patrick Lawrence: What Is Said and What Is Done Those Israelis: They are too honest sometimes, aren’t they? It is damnably inconvenient when they explain in perfectly plain terms that the Israel Defense Forces’ intent in Gaza is to ethnic-cleanse the territory of Palestinians, or that they think Palestinians—invoking the language of the Reich—are subhuman animals who ought to be slaughtered, or that the IDF’s brutality, referencing the violently forced removals of 1948, is meant to be Nakba 2. You can’t, after all, go around saying what you mean if you want to work with the Americans, whose leadership cliques long ago took up the practice of obscuring what they mean and what they are doing. If these people are going to run an imperium their own citizens are not supposed to see, the last thing required is clarity. Senior Israeli officials have made this mistake repeatedly since the Hamas incursion into southern Israel three months ago prompted the barbarity we now witness daily. As has been well reported, they made it again this week, when two of them came out and said the Gaza project is indeed an ethnic cleansing, the objective of which is to scatter the Gaza Strip’s 2 million–plus people to the winds.
The Pauperization of the United States: The Rich are Getting Richer While as the People are Getting Poorer!: In 2023: The Ludicrous Amount of Wealth of the U.S. Wealthiest Shot Up In 2023, we learned from the government that poverty and homelessness both increased in 2022. In 2023, there is also evidence of a massive surge in the already enormous wealth held by the wealthiest among us. . . .U.S is Number One—in Billionaires Worth Over $100 Billion The Bloomberg billionaires index indicates that U.S. billionaires hold 9 of the top 10 positions of the wealthiest people in the world. All 11 of the world’s wealthiest were worth over $100 billion at the end of the year. The two non-U.S. citizens were Bernard Arnault from France whose wealth came to $179 billion (up $17 billion for the year) and Carlos Slim of Mexico at $105 billion (up $31 billion for the year).
The Law of the Jungle: Our Teacher? Perhaps the primary value of war – from the point of view of national leaders and their loyal followers – is that it places 100 percent of the blame for whatever’s wrong on the other guy: the enemy. And thus there’s no alternative but to kill “him,” which nowadays amounts to slaughtering and dismembering anybody and everybody who lives in his sector of the planet, including children . . . though that part isn’t said out loud. It’s not even “winning” that matters, because in truth there is no winning when it comes to war, just ongoing preparation for the next one. Good ol’ George W. Bush described the phenomenon with such clarity in his 2002 State of the Union address, when he said that North Korea, Iran and Iraq – three countries the United States once controlled – constituted, in their defiance, “an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.”
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
Biden Sticks by Israel as Bloody War on Gaza Threatens to Expand Three months later, the White House still backs Israel as the war on Gaza threatens to devolve into broader chaos. The future of Israel’s war on Gaza is uncertain, but the Biden administration says it will continue supporting the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), even as the horrific war divides fellow Democrats and stokes fear that the United States is being pulled into a violent regional conflagration.
Poll: Americans Have No Idea What Biden Means When He Says He is a Zionist, Or What Israel’s Ideology Is They found that 62% of Americans have no idea what Zionism is. Zionism is, of course, a form of Jewish nationalism born in Central Europe in the late 19th century, which seeks to turn the Jewish religion into a platform for a state, and which excludes non-Jews from sovereignty over territory claimed by this Jewish state. In the case of Palestine, this ideology has produced the statelessness of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and has made citizens of Israel of Palestinian heritage into second-class citizens. That is, Zionism is akin to other ethnic supremacist ideologies such as white nationalism or the Baathist form of Arab nationalism (which made Kurds second-class citizens in Iraq and perpetuated their non-citizen status in Syria).
CNN Admits its Policy of Submitting to Israeli Censorship ‘Has Been in Place for Years’ CNN has long been criticized by media analysts and journalists for its deference to the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces in its coverage of the occupied Palestinian territories, and the cable network admitted Thursday that it follows a protocol that could give Israeli censors influence over its stories. A spokesperson for the network confirmed to The Intercept that its news coverage about Israel and Palestine is run through and reviewed by the CNN Jerusalem bureau—which is subject to the IDF’s censor.
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’!
Global Heating Will Pass 1.5C Threshold This Year, Top Ex-Nasa Scientist Says James Hansen says limit will be passed ‘for all practical purposes’ by May though other experts predict that will happen in 2030s The internationally agreed threshold to prevent the Earth from spiraling into a new superheated era will be “passed for all practical purposes” during 2024, the man known as the godfather of climate science has warned. James Hansen, the former Nasa scientist credited for alerting the world to the dangers of climate change in the 1980s, said that global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels, amplified by the naturally reoccurring El Niño climatic event, will by May push temperatures to as much as 1.7C (3F) above the average experienced before industrialization.
It Has Been Above 1.5C Since July 2003!: Michael Roberts Facebood Blog: Michael Roberts Facebook Blog: Prof Eliot Jacobson calculates the monthly deviation from the 1850-1900 IPCC baseline for the year 2023 of the average global temperature.
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
The Right to Protest?: Based Upon Who is Doing the Protesting:
Black Lives Matter Protesters Handed Harsher Sentences Than Capitol Rioters The myth that January 6 Capitol rioters are getting harsher punishments than protesters who took the streets against police brutality last year is being busted after a closer look at court documents reveals a different story. The Associated Press reviewed the documents of more than 300 federal cases involving protests following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers on May 25, 2020. The outlet found that over 120 people have pleaded guilty or were convicted of federal crimes including arson, rioting, and conspiracy. More than 70 of the people in the cases received an average of 27 months in prison and at least 10 people have been sentenced to five years or more in prison.
Federal Judges Have Shown Leniency in Nearly All Jan. 6 Cases Federal judges handling the criminal cases of hundreds of people charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol have overwhelmingly issued sentences far more lenient than Justice Department prosecutors sought, an analysis by The Intercept reveals. In 82 percent of the 719 January 6-related cases that have been resolved, and in which the defendants have either pleaded guilty or been convicted, judges have issued lighter sentences than federal prosecutors requested, the analysis of Justice Department data through December 4, 2023, shows. They imposed the same sentences sought by prosecutors in just 95 cases and harsher sentences in only 37.
Labor:
California Faculty Association Escalates Strike Actions Ahead of Contract Battle Demands include paid family leave, gender-inclusive restrooms, rules for expanding workloads and campus police reforms. The California Faculty Association (CFA), representing 29 thousand faculty at the 23 campuses of the California State University (CSU), held a series of rolling strikes against the largest public university system in the United States in December. The union has been engaged in contract reopener talks in advance of a full contract battle later this year.
Economy:
Out Today: A Deep Dive into the Dark Side of Banking and Its Handmaiden, Central Banks Last September, speaking at a conference sponsored by the nonprofit watchdog, Better Markets, to examine if “too big to fail” banks had materially changed in the fifteen years since the 2008 financial collapse, Anat Admati, Professor of Finance and Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, offered her assessment of the U.S. banking system: “Corruption has become the system.” Today, Admati’s celebrated 2013 book, The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It, co-authored with German economist Martin Hellwig, is being released in an expanded new edition. It is a must read for every American who is bold enough to remove their media tinted, rose-colored glasses and take a hard look at how the U.S. banking system got into the mess it’s in today.
World:
Armenians Suffering in Nagorno-Karabakh Are Going Largely Ignored in US Media One key reason is Israel, which maintains close ties with the dictatorship in Azerbaijan, trading weapons for cheap oil. In this exclusive interview for Truthout, sociologist Artyom Tonoyan discusses the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In this under-reported case of cultural genocide involving political persecution, strains on due process rights, torture, lack of healthcare and food supplies, tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians have fled from Nagorno-Karabakh region after surrendering to Azerbaijan on September 20. Azerbaijan is currently seeking reassurances from the United States to continue peace talks with Armenia.
The Problem of Refugee Camps in the Middle East and North Africa In 2024, 12 percent of “forcibly displaced and stateless people” are expected to be from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, said the United Nations. This displacement will be caused due to war, humanitarian crises, and environmental catastrophes. The number’s recent causes are the civil war in Sudan and the fallout from natural disasters in Turkey, Syria, Morocco, and Libya. This percentage does not include the millions of people in Palestine who have been displaced since 1948.
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