Daily News Digest March 25, 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! 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:
US Imperialism Losing its Grip An important role in this very complicated equation is played by the United States. Israel depends heavily on the US, in particular for its supply of key weaponry, especially of the electronically precision-guided type, which it needs to hit what it claims are Hamas bases inside Gaza. Without US support, Israel would be far more limited in its ability to continue its war. But in spite of all of Biden’s rhetoric about reducing the number of civilian casualties, there is one thing he is not prepared to do: to cut off the military aid. The hypocrisy of the man stinks to high heaven. — Why Israel has Delayed Its Attack on Rafah
Russia condemned the resolution for being both too little and too late, with that nation’s ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, describing the measure as “not enough” and noting that it failed to demand an actual, lasting ceasefire. Nebenzia further described the vote as a ploy to “throw [U.S. voters in support of a ceasefire] a bone” with a false ceasefire call. — US-Led “Ceasefire” Resolution Fails, Condemned for Not Demanding Real Ceasefire
Pocasts/Videos of the Day:
Glen Greenwald: IDF General Confesses: “War Impossible Without US”
Does Zionism Lead to Genocide? Scheer and Blumenthal also detail how, through censorship, false reporting and other aspects of the information war, the stories of Palestinians continue to get lost and misrepresented, especially with the strength of Israeli propaganda. “Zionism as applied in Palestine will always lead towards genocide. That’s the ultimate goal. They have to finish 1948. There’s no way to do it without genocide,” Blumenthal said.
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
The Importance of Social Class as a Power Category Besides Race and Gender to Understand What is Going on in the US A characteristic of the hegemonic political and media culture of the United States is the near invisibility of social class as a major determinant of power. Race and gender have finally started to attract attention in the political and media establishments, but social class appears either ignored or silenced. The dominant establishments depict the U.S. as if it is a classless society, where because of ample opportunities and a large degree of social and vertical mobility, it is possible for everyone to rise from the bottom of society to the top. The evidence, however, shows that the United States has social classes (with a social class structure not dissimilar to the ones that exist in most countries on both sides of the North Atlantic, which, incidentally, have more extensive social mobility than in the U.S.). Moreover, there is plenty of evidence that each social class in the U.S. has its own economic, social, and cultural interests, expressed and promoted through their influence over the U.S. political institutions, advancing those policies that increase or reduce, for example, the huge social class health and quality of life inequalities that exist in this country, the largest among developed capitalist countries. Class health inequalities in the U.S. are also larger than race and gender inequalities, a reality that rarely appears in the dominant political and media discourse.
Does Zionism Lead to Genocide? Scheer and Blumenthal also detail how, through censorship, false reporting and other aspects of the information war, the stories of Palestinians continue to get lost and misrepresented, especially with the strength of Israeli propaganda. “Zionism as applied in Palestine will always lead towards genocide. That’s the ultimate goal. They have to finish 1948. There’s no way to do it without genocide,” Blumenthal said.
U.S. Armed and Funded Palestinian Genocide:
The Chris Hedges Report: With Attorney Katherine Gallagher snd Palestinian Plaintiff Ayman Nijim On Their Lawsuit Demanding The Biden Administration Halt Weapons Shipments to Israel. The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed the lawsuit on behalf of the human rights organization, Defense for Children – Palestine; Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights group based in the occupied West Bank; and eight Palestinians and US citizens with relatives in Gaza accusing President Joe Biden and other senior officials of being complicit in Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza. The case is being heard in a federal court in California. Lawyers representing Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, have attended the proceedings along with the plaintiffs who accuse them of “failure to prevent and complicity in the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide.” Since the October 7 incusrion by Hamas and other resistance groups, which left some 1,200 people dead, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, thousands are missing, some 60,000 have been injured and nearly all of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people have been displaced. Israel’s blocage of humanitarian supplies and food have cause a widespread famine and many are dying of starvation and infectious diseases. The CCR complaint was filed in November last year. It charges that Biden, Blinken and Austin “have not only been failing to uphold the country’s obligation to prevent a genocide but have enabled the conditions for its development by providing unconditional military and diplomatic support [to Israel].” The CCR is asking the court to “declare that defendants have violated their duty under customary international law, as part of federal common law, to take all measures within their power to prevent Israel from committing genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza”. The group is also calling for the US to use its influence over Israel to end the hostilities against Palestinians in Gaza. Joining me to discuss the case is Katherine Gallagher, a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center
Does Zionism Lead to Genocide? Scheer and Blumenthal also detail how, through censorship, false reporting and other aspects of the information war, the stories of Palestinians continue to get lost and misrepresented, especially with the strength of Israeli propaganda.“Zionism as applied in Palestine will always lead towards genocide. That’s the ultimate goal. They have to finish 1948. There’s no way to do it without genocide,” Blumenthal said.
World Bank Report Finds Imminent Risk of Catastrophic Famine in Gaza Strip Findings come as UN secretary general calls on Israel to give unconditional access to Gaza for aid relief Half the population of the Gaza Strip is at imminent risk of famine as food shortages approach catastrophic levels for more than a million people, the World Bank has warned. Almost six months after the war between Israel and Hamas began, the Washington-based Bank said urgent action was needed to prevent widespread deaths from starvation within the next two months.
Why Israel has Delayed Its Attack on Rafah The 10 March deadline for the attack on Rafah has come and gone, and there is no attack yet. Could it be that Netanyahu is having second thoughts? The answer to that is clearly, no. The Israeli government is manoeuvring under pressure from outside, in particular from the US administration, while at the same time being internally divided. Is the US pressure due to humanitarian concerns on the part of Biden? The answer, again, is no. The US continues to support Israel in its genocidal onslaught on the Palestinian people, as testified by its increased military aid. So why the delay in the attack? In a previous article, Rafah onslaught: the spark that could set the Middle East alight, we explained the potential revolutionary consequences for the whole of the Middle East if Israel goes into Rafah, killing thousands of civilians on a scale that would dwarf the death toll in the more than five months of war so far. This has clearly concentrated the minds of the despotic regional regimes, from Egypt to Jordan and beyond, but also of the imperialists, who are seeking ways of stabilising the situation and of avoiding a wider conflagration. This, in part, explains the present apparent stalemate. Negotiations involving Israel and Hamas that aim to achieve some kind of ceasefire, albeit ‘temporary’, are ongoing. An Israeli delegation recently arrived in Doha to take part in indirect negotiations, with the stated aim of getting a better deal for Israel than what has been on the table so far.
How the Cognitive Dissonance of US Foreign Policy Fuels Genocide in Gaza Biden must not be allowed to play a deadly balancing act in which he privately demands for the war to stop while openly funding the Israeli war machine. When the foreign policy of a country as large and significant as the United States is governed by a case of cognitive dissonance, terrible things happen. These terrible things are, in fact, already taking place in the Gaza Strip, where well over 100,000 people have been killed, wounded or are missing, and an outright famine is currently ravaging the displaced population.
US Has Redefined “Human Shields” to Enable Israel’s Slaughter of Gaza Civilians President Biden and members of Congress have cynically reinterpreted “human shields” to flout international law The civilian death rate from the United States-backed Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip is the highest of any conflict since the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Rather than demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from Gaza in return for the release of Israeli hostages, President Joe Biden has vetoed multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions, rejected calls by progressive members of Congress to condition military aid, and used emergency powers to bypass public and congressional oversight to send additional bombs and missiles.
Glen Greenwald: IDF General Confesses: “War Impossible Without
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?
On the Great Barrier Reef and In Denial: Some Would Rather Get Crabby Than Face the Facts
CO2 Bursting into the Atmosphere CO2 is bursting into the atmosphere like never before, up and away, like it has wings. According to climate scientists, we’re fast approaching white-knuckle time. This reinforces the outlook for 2024 as expressed by WMO: “Every major global climate record was broken last year and 2024 could be worse.” (Celeste Saulo, secretary-general, World Meteorological Organization). Making matters more nerve-wracking yet, Carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere is setting new all-time records, soaring above expectations and well above previous readings at Mauna Lua Observatory, Hawaii: March 18, 2024, CO2 measured 426.02 ppm.March 15, 2023. CO2 measured 420.24 ppm. That’s +5.78 ppm in only one year. An increase of this magnitude has not been seen before. On a seasonal basis, the month of May is ordinarily the peak reading for the year. That’s still weeks away. The climate system as it relates to greenhouse gas emissions appears to have gone bonkers, out in left field.
The Paris Accords Set 1.5 °C as the ‘Point of No Return’ — Now That we are Over 1.5 °C is 2°C the New ‘Point of no Return’?: Climate Crisis could drive 200 million Africans to Extreme Hunger by 2050 African countries will suffer significant economic loss after 2050 if global warming is not limited to below 2°C, a new study by the Center for Global Development has found. Environment and energy economist Philip Kofi Adom is the author of the report. He synchronised many years of research by climate change scientists and researchers and found that west and east Africa will fare worst. We asked him about his findings. You found climate change will reduce Africa’s crop earnings by 30%. How will this affect people? If climate change continues on its current trend, crop production in Africa will decline by 2.9% in 2030 and by 18% by 2050. About 200 million people risk suffering from extreme hunger by 2050. The crop revenue loss of approximately 30% will cause a rise in poverty of between 20% and 30% compared to a no-climate-change scenario.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Labor:
Economy:
Stuctual Genocide That is Capitalism “The dominant class at the world level . . . has become the enemy of all humanity.” – Samir Amin, Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism? Garry Leech, an author who had previously penned a book on the FARC insurgency in Colombia (2011), has assembled a forceful denunciation of the status quo with Capitalism: A Structural Genocide. In essence, he argues cogently in this work that the devastating structural violence experienced by societies subjected to the rule of capital since its historical emergence – and that particularly felt by the world’s presently impoverished social majorities – is, instead of being an aberration or distortion of market imperatives, central and inherent to the division of society along class lines and the enthronement of private property. Even a cursory examination of the depth of human suffering perpetuated historically and contemporarily by the hegemony of capital should lead disinterested observers to agree with Leech that the catastrophic scale of violence for which this system is responsible can be considered nothing less than genocidal, however shocking such a conclusion might prove to be. 
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