Daily News Digest January 19, 2024
Images of the Day:
LaTuff: Israel World’s Most Moral Army 
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:
In fact, if Israel’s extreme far right government can get away with massacring 23,000 people, almost all of them innocent noncombatants and over 8,000 children, then International Humanitarian Law is a dead letter. This development, ironically enough, helps Vladimir Putin in his Ukraine campaign and so undermines the most important foreign policy objective of the Biden administration. Worse, it undermines any objection to war crimes or genocide, anywhere, ever, since it can plausibly be asserted that the US only cares about such matters when it can use these charges against a rival. We are being transported back to 1943, when the Axis could murder millions with impunity, and the Nuremberg trials are being branded a mistake. — South Africa at the Int’l Court of Justice: Israel’s Actions in Gaza Constitute Genocide
Videos of the Day:
Black Agenda Radio January 12, 2024
Congressional Candidate John Parker and the Gaza Relief Effort
Zuma Imprisonment: “Riots” or “Insurrection” in South Africa?
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
When Yemen Does It It’s Terrorism, When The US Does It It’s “The Rules-Based Order” We are ruled by murderous tyrants. By nuclear-armed thugs who would rather starve civilians to protect the continuation of an active genocide than allow peace to get a word in edgewise. Reading by Tim Foley. The Biden administration has officially re-designated Ansarallah — the dominant force in Yemen also known as the Houthis — as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity. The White House claims the designation is an appropriate response to the group’s attacks on US military vessels and commercial ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, saying those attacks “fit the textbook definition of terrorism.” Ansarallah claims its actions “adhere to the provisions of Article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” since it is only enforcing a blockade geared toward ceasing the ongoing Israeli destruction of Gaza.
US Officials Care More about Protecting Oil Tankers than Palestinians While Israel continues its military offensive in Gaza, the United States is directing a major military operation in the Red Sea, where U.S. warships are maintaining a persistent presence to protect shipping lanes. With its recently launched Operation Prosperity Guardian, the United States is leading a multinational military coalition to occupy the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab, where oil tankers and commercial vessels have come under attack by Houthi militants in Yemen. The U.S.-led military intervention has brought the United States into direct conflict with the Houthis, who insist that they will continue their attacks until Israel ends its military offensive in Gaza.
The Media Monopoly’s Newspeakers: How Mainstream News is Doing Israel’s Dirty Work of Sanitizing Slaughter The scale and brutality of Israel’s crimes in Gaza simply can’t be denied—yet many media outlets are finding a way. srael’s genocide in Gaza has undoubtedly become the most broadcasted atrocity in history. With massacre after massacre streamed daily to audiences in the billions, Israel’s crimes have now been witnessed as if firsthand by a huge portion of humanity. In spite of this, corporate news outlets have trafficked in coverage that all-too-often flouts a reality we can see before our eyes. This sort of unreliability evinces far more than a crisis of integrity in legacy media—it’s a sign of a deep political crisis that runs to the upper echelons of our system. Millions of US voters are turning against the Democrats over the carnage in Gaza, and rather than changing course, the powers that be are simply attempting to distort and pollute the narrative. Adam Johnson and Dan Boguslaw join The Real News to discuss the media’s blatant bias in reporting on Gaza.
Palestine Has Exposed How Our Governments Work for Their Own Interests, Not Ours We cannot rely on political bodies whose material interests are at odds with revolution. The Israeli occupation of Palestine has unfolded into an escalated genocide capturing the world’s attention. Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza and repression in the West Bank has led millions to ask, “Why won’t anyone stop this?”
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
Marjorie Cohn: Moral Army in the World” at Genocide Hearing South Africa presented a powerful and compelling case that Israel is violating the Genocide Convention. In a historic appearance before the International Court of Justice (ICJ or World Court) in The Hague, the legal team representing the Republic of South Africa presented a powerful and compelling case that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. South Africa asked the court to impose nine emergency “provisional measures” to stop the slaughter. South Africa “unequivocally condemned the targeting of civilians by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups and the taking of hostages on 7 October,” South African ambassador to the Netherlands Vusimuzi Madonsela said. But, he added, “no armed attack on a State’s territory no matter how serious — even an attack involving atrocity crimes — can provide any justification for, or defence to” genocide. Israel, he said, “has crossed this line.” Israel responded that it was one of the first states to ratify the Genocide Convention and for Israel, the promise of “Never Again” is “the highest moral obligation.” Israel’s position is that Hamas is responsible for the situation in Gaza and it accused South Africa of an “attempt to weaponize the term genocide.”
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’!
US Climate Scientist’s Defamation Case Over Online Attacks Finally Comes to Trial Michael Mann alleges, in lawsuit first brought in 2012, that attacks on his work by climate denialists amount to defamation. A lawsuit first instituted over 10 years ago, brought by an es teemed climate scientist over alleged defamation by a rightwing blogger and an analyst, goes to trial this week. The 2012 court case was brought by the University of Pennsylvania earth and environmental scientist Michael Mann, who is alleging that online attacks on his work amount to defamation. The litigation targets two writers: Rand Simberg, analyst at the rightwing thinktank Competitive Enterprise Institute, who published a piece comparing Mann to a convicted serial child molester, and the National Review blogger Mark Steyn, who in a blogpost favorably quoted Simberg and called Mann’s research “fraudulent”. (Mann originally went after both publishers as well, but in 2021 a court ruled that neither the Competitive Enterprise Institute nor National Review could be held responsible for the attacks.)
‘Frightening’: Greenland Losing 33 Million Tons of Ice Per Hour Due to Climate Crisis A new study finds the island’s ice sheet is retreating 20% more than previously thought. New research on the rate at which Greenland’s glaciers are melting shed new light on how the climate emergency is rapidly raising the chance that crucial ocean current systems could soon collapse, as scientists revealed Wednesday that the vast island has lost about 20% more ice than previously understood. Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory led the study, published in Nature, which showed that Greenland’s ice cap is losing an average of 33 million tons of ice per hour, including from glaciers that are already below sea level.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
The 1%’s Ruling Tribunal: Supreme Court Hears Koch-Backed Cases Designed to Unleash Deregulatory Bonanza “Everything from the climate to consumer safety could be worse off thanks to this potential decision and the corporate lobbyists who brought us to this point.” The conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments in a pair of cases taking direct aim at a critical precedent that, if overturned, would gut federal agencies’ ability to set and enforce regulations—a potentially massive blow to the climate, civil rights, public health, and more. Central to Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce is the so-called Chevron doctrine, which stems from a 1984 Supreme Court opinion that said judges should defer to federal agencies’ reasonable interpretation of a law if Congress has not specifically addressed the issue.
- South Africa’s Case at ICJ Also Exposes the US and the West South Africa’s charge of genocide against Israel proves that this very serious word should be used more often instead of being treated as a rarity. The U.S. and the nations of the west have committee.
- Sekou Odinga Has Joined the Ancestors But the Spirit of the Black Liberation Army And African Resistance Lives On! A commemoration of the life of comrade Sekou Odinga, a lifelong New African revolutionary, former political prisoner, and unstoppable force in the Black liberation movement.
- SPEECH: The Three Evils of Society, Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King’s radical critique of racism, militarism, and poverty can never be bought, bridled, controlled, or compromised.
- Red Sea Politics: Ethiopia, Somalia, and the US/EU/NATO An MOU pairing Ethiopia’s Red Sea ambitions with Somaliland’s secessionist aspirations heightens tensions in the Horn of Africa.
- When Arab Workers Stood Against Zionism In the 1960s Arab workers united and resisted reactionary regimes and the state of Israel.
- Righteous Protest Was Drowned Out As Empire Was Worshipped At Mother Emanuel AME Church The controversy surrounding Joe Biden being interrupted at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina resulted from his cynical use of a Black church for political purposes.
- Draymond Green and the Israeli Defense Force: Bullies of a Feather…. As Draymond Green continues his pattern of bullying behavior in the NBA, he has also aligned himself with a genocidal bully on the global stage.
- Namibia Rejects Germany’s Support of the Genocidal Intent of the Racist Israeli State Against Innocent Civilians in Gaza Namibia issues a statement in response to Germany’s declaration of support of Israel during the hearing at the International Court of Justice and its intention to intervene on that nation’s behalf.
- President Biden Campaign Disruption in Charleston A statement from Free Palestine Charleston regarding their recent protest against Joe Biden’s ongoing genocide in Palestine while he spoke at Mother Emanuel AME Church.
Labor:
Michael Roberts Facebook Blog: AI will affect 40% of jobs and probably worsen inequality, says IMF head. Analysis by the IMF, the international lender of last resort, says about 60% of jobs in advanced economies such as the US and UK are exposed to AI and half of these jobs may be negatively affected. But the technology will also help to enhance some humans’ productivity as AI improves their performance, it said. https://www.imf.org/…/Gen-AI-Artificial-Intelligence… “Roughly half the exposed jobs may benefit from AI integration, enhancing productivity,” wrote Georgieva, in a blogpost accompanying the IMF research. “For the other half, AI applications may execute key tasks currently performed by humans, which could lower labour demand, leading to lower wages.
AI-GPT: A Game Changer? ChatGPT is being heralded as a revolution in ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) and has been taking the media and tech world by storm since launching in late 2022. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT is “an artificial intelligence trained to assist with a variety of tasks.” More specifically, it is a large language model (LLM) designed to produce human-like text and converse with people, hence the “Chat” in ChatGPT. GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. The GPT models are pre-trained by human developers and then are left to learn for themselves and generate ever increasing amounts of knowledge, delivering that knowledge in an acceptable way to humans (chat). Practically, this means you present the model with a query or request by entering it into a text box. The AI then processes this request and responds based on the information that it has available. It can do many tasks, from holding a conversation to writing an entire exam paper; from making a brand logo to composing music and more. So much more than a simple Google-type search engine or Wikipedia, it is claimed.
Shadow Government Statistics December 2023 Unemployment and Payroll
Headline U.S. Unemployment Rates U.3 and U.6 versus the ShadowStats Alternate January 2000 to December 2023, Seasonally Adjusted [ShadowStats, Bureau of Labor Statistics]
Headline U.S. Unemployment Rates U.3 and U.6 versus the ShadowStats Alternate January 2019 to December 2023, Seasonally Adjusted [ShadowStats, Bureau of Labor Statistics] Official Recession and Unfolding
Economy:
Michael Roberts Facebook Blog: For the full year, the Chinese economy grew by 5.2%, exceeding the official target of around 5.0% and picking up from a 3.0% rise in 2022. T. his outcome has been treated as a failure by the Western media and mainstream economists. They reckon the Chinese economy is heading down as the population declines and its overall debt rises, along with a property crisis. But China’s manufacturing dominance is undiminished. Its manufacturing output is one-third of the world’s total manufacturing value-added, more than twice that of the US.In the last 30 years, China has more than doubled its world share while the US’s share has fallen by three percentage points. China’s share now exceeds that of the next largest manufacturers combined. In 1995 China had just 3% of world manufacturing exports, By 2020, its share had risen to 20%.
Shadow Government Statistics 01/16/2024 Commentary Background
- Pandemic Aftermath Continues to Ravage MonthlyHeadline U.S. Inflation and Economic Reporting
- · In Context of, and Aside from Pandemic-Era Annual Inflation of 8.01% in 2022 and 4.70% in 2021, Annual Average
- 2023 CPI-U of 4.13% Still Was the Highest Since 1991,
- Up from the 2019 Pre-Pandemic Annual Average of 1.8%
- 2023 Annual Average ShadowStats-Alternate CPI-U Was Up 12.0%,
- Versus 16.2% in 2022 and 12.7% in 2021, Otherwise Still at Its Highest
- Level Since 13.6% in 1980, When It Also Was Identical to Headline CPI-U
- Headline U.3 and the ShadowStats Alternate CPI Annual Inflation Rates
- Respectively Averaged 1.8% and 9.5% in Pre-Pandemic 2019
- That Said, the Headline December 2023 the Post-Pandemic
- Headline CPI Gained 3.35% Year-to-Year, Up from 3.14% in November
- The December 2023 ShadowStats-Alternate Consumer Price Index Gained 11.2% Year-to-Year, Up from 11.0% in November
- Neither the Headline Inflation nor Headline Real Economic Activity
- Are Close to Recovering Pre-Pandemic Levels of Stability
The DOJ’s Incestuous Relationship with Jamie Dimon Is Captured in a Graphic from an Historic Lawsuit On February 10, 2014, the non-profit watchdog, Better Markets, took a bold and historic action. It filed a federal lawsuit against the highest law enforcement agency and officer in the United States – the U.S. Department of Justice and the man who sat at its helm, Attorney General Eric Holder. The lawsuit challenged a $13 billion out-of-court settlement that had been agreed to by the Justice Department and the Wall Street mega bank, JPMorgan Chase, over its sale of toxic mortgages. Better Markets wrote on its website that this was at the time “The largest settlement in U.S. history from a single entity by more than 300%” and that it “granted JP Morgan blanket civil immunity for years of alleged, but undisclosed, pervasive, egregious and knowing fraudulent and illegal conduct that contributed to the 2008 financial crash and the worst economy since the Great Depression.”
World:
‘Developing Countries’ are Trapped in a New Debt Crisis Wealth flowing from poorest nations to the richest. World Bank and IMF must go! The World Bank report on the debts of “developing countries,” published on December 13, 2023 [1], reveals an alarming fact: in 2022, developing countries as a whole spent a record US$ 443.5 billion to pay for their external public debt. The 75 low-income nations that are eligible for loans from the International Development Association (IDA), a World Bank organisation that provides loans to the world’s poorest nations, paid a record US$ 88.9 billion to its creditors in the same year, 2022.
Burmese Junta Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place It has been over two months since the Northern Alliance – which is made up of armed ethnic organisations, as well as the armed wing of the Burmese Communist Party – launched ‘Operation 1027’ in northern Shan State in Burma. Other resistance forces have also attacked junta bases in the states of Karenni, Rakhine, Chin, Karen, Sagaing Region and Bago Region. As events are unfolding rapidly in Burma, this article can only provide the latest verifiable information. However, all signs point towards one clear outcome: the end of General Min Aung Hliang’s government.
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