Daily News Digest March 18, 2024
Images of the Day:
Priced Out and Fed Up, Tenants Demand a National Renters Bill of Rights
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! Globaly, With the Current Gaza War, The Right of Assembly is Under Attack! 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:
In The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man, Friedrich Engels wrote:. . . Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. …
In our society, the burden and blame of being unhoused sit squarely on one’s own shoulders – one is told that one’s situation is a result of some moral deficiency. In truth, the reasons why people become unhoused are myriad, shaped by our existence in the waning capitalist empire known as the United States. There isn’t one reason that can be considered “outside” a system which upholds the ills of capitalism, racism, ableism, misogyny, colonialism, ageism and the downright lottery of what situation you were born into. — I’ve Been Unhoused. It Could Happen to You. Let’s Stop Criminalizing It. The push to criminalize the unhoused should be treated as a threat to us all.
From Banning TikTok is a Power Grab for the Deep State: If the bill’s supporters get what they want, millions of Americans would find their ability to access TikTok terminated by the government, just in time for the November 2024 election. This radical state intervention was endorsed last week by the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a unanimous 50-0 vote, establishing a coveted bipartisan consensus in favor of expelling American users from their preferred social media platform. This extreme action is to be carried out, as usual, in the alleged name of “national security,” and to more aggressively combat perceived “foreign adversaries.” The bill names TikTok as a “foreign adversary controlled application,” with the “adversary” in question being China, but it also goes further and prohibits “applications” associated with the standard litany of official U.S. “adversaries”—Russia, North Korea, and Iran. More additions to the list are always possible, perhaps in the event that Cuba or Venezuela develop a short-form dance video app that becomes suspiciously popular with American teens. Another provision authorizes the President, who is currently Joe Biden and may soon be Donald Trump, to make unilateral determinations about whether certain applications “present a significant threat to the national security of the United States,” and therefore must be banned like TikTok. The criteria for making such a determination is left conspicuously vague. So if you really want to give Biden or Trump more unilateral power to control the proliferation of content online, this appears to be just the bill for you.
Pocasts/Videos of the Day: Dear Chil
“Anti-Zionism Is Not Antisemitism”: Palestinian Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian on Hebrew Univ. Suspension
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
Best Elections That Money can Buy/Own!: Analysis Shows ‘Unprecedented Surge’ of Dark Money Ahead of 2024 Elections “Contributions from dark money groups and shell companies are outpacing all prior elections and may even surpass the roughly $660 million in contributions from unknown sources that flooded 2020 elections.” Dark money groups are spending at record levels in their efforts to influence the outcome of the 2024 U.S. elections, an analysis published Wednesday by OpenSecrets revealed. According to the watchdog, the “unprecedented surge” in spending by dark money groups—which, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling don’t have to disclose their donors—topped $162 million in 2023, “surpassing the level of dark contributions seen at the same point in any prior election cycle.”
Exclusive-Musk’s SpaceX is Building Spy Satellite Network for US Intelligence Agency, Sources Say SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said, demonstrating deepening ties between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company and national security agencies. The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites, the sources said.
The Media Monopoly of The United States Supports Palestinian Genocide: The Chris Hedges Report With Ali Abunimah, Founder of the Electronic Intifada, on the Israeli Propaganda Machine and a Compliant Press That Reports Israeli Lies as Fact. Israel, like all settler colonial projects, is built on lies – the lie that the land historically belongs to the colonizers, the lie that Palestinians have no national identity, the lie that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, the lie that a peaceful settlement is thwarted by the Palestinians rather than the Israelis. This mendacity is especially prevalent when Israel carries out its murderous assaults against the Palestinians, including the current genocide in Gaza. The Hebrew word for this propaganda is “hasbara” or “explanation.” Hasbara is a combination of agitprop, ropaganda and censorship. It is designed to ensure unity among the Jews in Israel and abroad; sustain the support of allies, especially the United States; discredit and delegitimize critics who are branded, even if they are Jewish, as anti-Semites and control the narrative within the media and academia.
Pax Americana: More War is Already Planned!
Pentagon Publishes Proposal for Ethnic Cleansing and Colonization of Gaza; Destruction of Lebanon The call for genocide was written on behalf of the Department of Defense and published in the “US Army’s premier multimedia organization.” The official U.S. military publication Army University Press published an article written on behalf of the Department of Defense calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and destruction of Lebanon in a November 2023 online exclusive.
U.S. Armed and Funded Palestinian Genocide:
Smoke and Mirrors: How Israeli Agitprop Lies Become Fact That coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the US mass media is distorted by a bias in favor of Israel is hardly news to people more or less in command of their faculties. But events since October 7 have brought to light examples that go well beyond the usual daily distortions to outright lying—lies that rival those of the WMD fabrications used to justify the US invasion of Iraq.
Claims of Mass Rape by Hamas Unravel Upon Investigation Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks that resulted in at least 1,163 deaths, rumors began circulating that Israeli women were experiencing horrific mass rape and sexual violence. Months later, a position paper by Physicians for Human Rights Israel and a New York Times investigation convinced many observers that Hamas used rape as a weapon of war. But an investigation by YES! examining both reports, other media investigations, hundreds of news articles, interviews with Israeli sources, and photo and video evidence reveals a shocking conclusion: There is no evidence mass rape occurred.
Environment:
Fund Climate! — Not Genocide! 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’!
Capitalism’s Wars for Oil: When Bodies Start Stacking Up From Climate Change-Related Disasters, Will These Monsters be Held to Account?
Fury Over $500 Million US Export-Import Bank Loan to Bahrain ‘Climate Bomb’ “This approval signals another setback for Biden’s climate commitments, and cements the United States yet again as the worst of the laggard countries in violation of the promise to end international public finance for fossil fuels,” one campaigner said. Despite a Biden administration pledge to stop backing international fossil fuel projects by 2022, the U.S. Export-Import Bank announced Thursday that it would provide a $500 million loan for oil and gas expansion in Bahrain. The funding marks the fifth time that EXIM has chosen to back a fossil fuel project abroad since President Joe Biden joined the Clean Energy Transition Partnership (CETP) at the United Nations COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021.
Self-Accelerating Global Warming: Greenland Cascading 30 Million Tons Per Hour! Facing Future.tv recently conducted an interview about spooky new developments in Greenland. The ice sheet is cascading/gushing at unheard of rates never dreamed possible at this stage of global warming, or at any stage for that matter. The video opens with a statement by Peter Wadhams, professor emeritus Ocean Physics, Cambridge University, a leading authority on Arctic sea ice (A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic, Oxford University Press, 256 pgs): “Greenland’s rate of melt in summer was something that we knew about, and it was gradually increasing, then suddenly it’s multiplied itself by about 8 times; this is 30,000,000 tons an hour. When I was last up there it was more like 30,000,000 tons per day. That’s just something unheard of and so we’re really worried about what’s going on with Greenland.”
Table 1. Estimated Potential Maximum Sea-Level Rise From the Total Melting of Present-Day Glaciers. 
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Cash Bail Violates Due Process and Needs to End Poor people await trial behind bars while the rich go free. Many Americans haven’t heard of cash bail. But the idea is central to an election year battle over racism, policing, and mass incarceration. When arrested on suspicion of committing a crime, everyone in the United States has the right to due process and to defend themselves in court. But in a cash bail system, when judges set bail amounts, those who cannot pay the full amount remain jailed indefinitely — a clear violation of their due process rights — while the rich can pay their way out of jail. A 2022 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights examined the impact of cash bail and found that between 1970 and 2015, the number of people jailed before trial increased by a whopping 433 percent. There are currently about half a million such people stuck in jails across the nation who haven’t been tried or convicted of any crimes. The report also found “stark disparities with regards to race,” with Black and brown men most often subject to higher bail amounts.
FBI Raids California Prison Facing 63 Lawsuits Over Systemic Sexual Abuse Four days after 12 lawsuits alleged abuses by 23 prison employees, the FBI raided the prison known as “the rape club.” At 7:45 on Monday morning, employees at the federal correctional institution (or FCI) in Dublin, California, abruptly placed the prison on lockdown. “Everything seemed normal,” 58-year-old Rhonda Fleming told Truthout. Breakfast had been served as usual. After eating, she went to the education department to do some legal research. Ten minutes later, the entire prison was placed on recall — meaning that every incarcerated person was required to lock into their cells. Moments before they were locked in, some women saw FBI agents enter the prison. Others even witnessed part of the latest raid from their windows.
Labor:
Gues Who is Working Paycheck to Paycheck!: Rent Increases Are Driving Inflation — and Pessimism About Economy Under Biden Democrats say the economy is great, but millions of tenants are struggling to pay historic rent increases. We’re told that, at least by conventional measures, the U.S. economy is doing great: Inflation is cooling and unemployment remains low. Pundits claim consumers just feel like the economy is troubled because they are still adjusting to higher prices after a global pandemic, and that helps to explain President Joe Biden’s dismal poll numbers as he seeks reelection in November. However, traditional economic indicators often fail to capture the extreme wealth inequality in the United States. The rich have been getting richer for decades amid stagnating wages for workers. By 2023, nearly 80 percent of people making less than $50,000 a year were living paycheck to paycheck, along with 4 in 10 workers making more than $100,000 a year. The nation faces a deep crisis of housing and homelessness that gifted inordinate power to landlords, and it’s difficult to put a positive spin on the economy when you’re struggling to pay rent and the landlord ignores your calls to fix the plumbing. Nationally, rent remains a key driver of inflation, with costs rising 0.5 percent since January and 5.8 percent over the past year.
Monthly Number Of Part-Time Employees in the United States from February 2022 to January 2024 In January 2024, around 28.5 million people were employed on a part-time basis in the United States. This value is not seasonally adjusted. In line with the definition of the BLS, part-time workers are persons who usually work less than 35 hours per week.
Economy:
When the government gives figure of new jobs every month, since the declared end of the covid pandemic, part-time work has been most of the new jobs! (See Chart Above!)
Rent Increases Are Driving Inflation — and Pessimism About Economy Under Biden Democrats say the economy is great, but millions of tenants are struggling to pay historic rent increases. We’re told that, at least by conventional measures, the U.S. economy is doing great: Inflation is cooling and unemployment remains low. Pundits claim consumers just feel like the economy is troubled because they are still adjusting to higher prices after a global pandemic, and that helps to explain President Joe Biden’s dismal poll numbers as he seeks reelection in November. However, traditional economic indicators often fail to capture the extreme wealth inequality in the United States. The rich have been getting richer for decades amid stagnating wages for workers. By 2023, nearly 80 percent of people making less than $50,000 a year were living paycheck to paycheck, along with 4 in 10 workers making more than $100,000 a year. The nation faces a deep crisis of housing and homelessness that gifted inordinate power to landlords, and it’s difficult to put a positive spin on the economy when you’re struggling to pay rent and the landlord ignores your calls to fix the plumbing. Nationally, rent remains a key driver of inflation, with costs rising 0.5 percent since January and 5.8 percent over the past year.Rent Increases Are Driving Inflation — and Pessimism About Economy Under Biden Democrats say the economy is great, but millions of tenants are struggling to pay historic rent increases. We’re told that, at least by conventional measures, the U.S. economy is doing great: Inflation is cooling and unemployment remains low. Pundits claim consumers just feel like the economy is troubled because they are still adjusting to higher prices after a global pandemic, and that helps to explain President Joe Biden’s dismal poll numbers as he seeks reelection in November. However, traditional economic indicators often fail to capture the extreme wealth inequality in the United States. The rich have been getting richer for decades amid stagnating wages for workers. By 2023, nearly 80 percent of people making less than $50,000 a year were living paycheck to paycheck, along with 4 in 10 workers making more than $100,000 a year. The nation faces a deep crisis of housing and homelessness that gifted inordinate power to landlords, and it’s difficult to put a positive spin on the economy when you’re struggling to pay rent and the landlord ignores your calls to fix the plumbing. Nationally, rent remains a key driver of inflation, with costs rising 0.5 percent since January and 5.8 percent over the past year.
World:
Plundered and Corrupted for 200 Years, Haiti Was Doomed to End in Anarchy Successive foreign governments plunged it into unpayable debt and left its citizens in penury. In December 1914, the USS Machias dropped anchor in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Eight US marines disembarked, sauntered to the Banque National de la République d’Haïti (BNRH), removed $500,000 worth of gold belonging to the Haitian government – $15m in today’s money – packed it in wooden crates to carry back to the ship and thence to New York, where it was deposited in the vaults of the investment bank, Hallgarten & Co. Mitch McConnell loathes Trump more thanmost, but he’s been his top enabler | Sidney Blumenthal. The BNRH was Haiti’s central bank. It was also a foreign private corporation. Originally set up in 1880 through a concession granted to a French bank, pressure from America brought in US investors. By 1920, the BNRH was wholly owned by the American National City Bank. Haiti’s central bank it may have been but the Haitian government was charged for every transaction and the eye-popping profits spirited off to Paris or New York. Political turmoil in Haiti in the 1910s led to Wall Street demanding action to protect its investments. Washington obliged, sending in the marines. A year later, the marines returned in force, remaining there for the next 19 years, in an often brutal occupation. “I helped make Haiti… a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues,” Maj Gen Smedley Butler, a leader of the American forces in Haiti, wrote in 1935. The almost forgotten story of the bank robbery organised by the US state department is a small but illuminating moment in Haiti’s history. The forced resignation last week of prime minister Ariel Henry, the collapse of civil life and gang warfare on the streets have returned Haiti to international headlines. To make sense of the latest events, we need to understand not just where Haiti is today, but also how it got there.
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