Daily News Digest April 3, 2024
Images of the Day:
Baltimore Bridge Disaster: Choose Your Explanation
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:
Who Owns This ‘Country’? The rich have spoiled almost everything. They have drivenresidents from any hamlet by the sea, gentrified cozy neighborhoods, some historical. High rises, boutiques replace funky local eateries, markets with ethnic foods. They make money off bad air that chokes, darkens skies. They make money sending jobs to sweatshops overseas. They raise rents higher, higher till most people have to leave cities, neighborhoods they grew up in, knew neighbors. They buy hospitals and turn a profit. No insurance? Out you go. Do you need a pill required to save your life? Big Pharma didn’t grow huge keeping drugs affordable. They love AI—never complains. No unions, pensions, benefits. If you don’t have the wealth this is no longer your country.
They buy politicians, elections. own media and in fact, you.
Pocasts/Videos of the Day:
The Chris Hedges Report: Hamas: How Israel Created Its Own Nemesis
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
“And it’s one, two, three four, US/Israel rushing into a wider war! And they don’t give a damn — next step is Iran!’: Israeli Airstrike On Iran Consulate In Syria Kills Six Including IRGC Commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps among dead in Damascus attack, state media says Israeli warplanes have destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing six people including a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Reporters at the scene in the Mezzeh district of the Syrian capital saw smoke rising from the rubble of a building that had been flattened, and emergency vehicles parked outside. The Syrian and Iranian foreign ministers were both seen at the scene.
U.S. Funded Plestinian Genocide:
Demanding ‘Immediate Removal’ of Netanyahu, Tens of Thousands Protest in Israel “Our country is being led by a gang of nut cases that jeopardize not only our existence but our well-being,” one demonstrator said.
West Bank Dispatch: As Israel’s Grip On Jerusalem Tightens, the City’s Status as a Lightning Rod for Mobilization Grows The twin Israeli offensives on Palestinians in Jerusalem during Ramadan and Easter made one thing clear: the war to assert the Zionist presence over the city has entered a new phase. Key Developments:
- On Monday morning, April 24, Israeli forces shot and killed Suleiman Ayesh Hussein Oweid, 20. Oweid was killed during an invasion of the Aqbat Jabr refugee camp located in the Jericho district. Since last year, Palestinian armed resistance has been spreading across the West Bank, including in Jericho, where the Aqbat Jabr brigade emergedearlier this year when Israeli forces killed five of the Brigade’s fighters, while continuing to target and detain their family members in the months to follow. Oweid is the second Palestinian killed in Jericho in the last two weeks.
- Also on Monday, hours after the killing of Oweid in Jericho, a car rammingwas carried out in Jerusalem. According to Israeli police, at least five Israelis were injured, including one 57-year-old who suffered an anxiety attack. The man who carried out the attack is reported to be from Beit Safafa, the last remaining Palestinian town in West Jerusalem. Israeli forces carried out punitive collective punishment against the family of the man, including the arrest of his wife from the family home. The man was identified as Hatem Abu Nijim, who is in his thirties and reportedly has a history of mental illness.
Israel’s Dictionary of Deception in Gaza Statements made by Israeli and other world leaders that may appear to be true, and that continue to be taken at face value, are in reality dangerously deceptive and aim to justify Israeli politics regarding violence towards Palestinians. Israel’s political and military leaders have produced so many outright lies regarding Gaza and Hamas that it might seem there is no point in wasting one’s breath on them. Consider the following statements and the contrary evidence for those not yet convinced:
- The IDF does not deliberately target civilians, journalists, medical facilities and staff, or restrict aid. In fact, the IDF has deliberately targeted civilians (as widely reported), journalists (as Human Rights Watch has detailed), and medical personnel (according to Amnesty International). It has also put various restrictions on aid.
- The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is harboring among its employees Hamas militants who took part in the October 7 massacres. Yet, Israel has not shared any information or evidence to back up its assertions while UNRWA has screened its 13,000 staff in Gaza on a biannual basis.
- Israel’s declared war on Gaza and the ongoing, undeclared war against Palestinians in the West Bank are “against Hamas” and “terrorists.” In fact, multiple Israeli governments, including the current one, have committed to appropriating all Palestinian territory and committing genocide against the Palestinians currently living there.
- Iran is the main financier and supporter of Hamas. In fact, other entities like Qatar have been the main supporters of Hamas, and Israel too was instrumental in creating Hamas to divide Palestinian sympathies.
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?
As Coral Reefs Face Extinction, Scientists Explore Deep-Freezing to Mitigate Crisis As climate change and pollution endanger the last remaining reefs, some have made plans for the underwater ecosystem after its eventual destruction. Coral reefs are some of the oldest, most diverse ecosystems on Earth, and among the most valuable. They nurture 25% of all ocean life, protect coasts from storms and add billions of dollars yearly to the global economy through their influences on fisheries, new pharmaceuticals, tourism and recreation. Today, the world’s coral reefs are degrading at unprecedented rates due to pollution, overfishing and destructive forestry and mining practices on land. Climate change driven by human activities is warming and acidifying the ocean, producing a reef crisis that could cause most corals to go extinct within a few generations.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Kamala Harris Touts Secret Service Program Encouraging High School Sping The Secret Service program stresses more behavioral monitoring as well as students spying on other students. When Vice President Kamala Harris toured the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School this week, site of the infamous 2018 Parkland, Florida, mass shooting, she pushed for more gun control and called for communities to accept more federal help in stopping school shootings. “I will continue to advocate for what we must do in terms of universal background checks and assault weapons ban” Harris said. But in a land where gun control is politically impossible, the only tangible help the Biden administration offers schools are resources to conduct better behavioral profiling of students, doing so through a Secret Service center founded to study the psychology of presidential assassins. The push, supported by a bipartisan bill that would strengthen the role of the Department of Homeland Security in school violence, would turn America’s schools into another adjunct of the national security apparatus, a veritable school for spies.
From Pro-Israel Advocates Are Weaponizing “Safety” on College Campuses Some schools are acting on the misbegotten notion that Palestinian freedom is a threat to Jewish safety.: It’s the stuff of far-right parody: an absurd example of “woke” culture. An Ivy League professor, invoking the language of “trauma response” and safety, in an email that refers to class members as “folx,” suggesting the removal of an emoji. Yet the professor’s email speaks to a broader problem of student safety being flattened into a question of whether students feel safe. And these aren’t the reactionary tropes of left-wing “snowflakes”: “Safety” is being invoked by pro-Israel students, many conservative and center-right, who believe that protests targeting the nation state constitute inherent attacks on them as Jews. The same dynamic played out in the fall at the same university. Last November, Columbia banned its chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, as The Intercept reported, because an “unauthorized event” put on by the groups “included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.” When challenged to name the threat, Columbia Senior Executive Vice President Gerald Rosberg said only, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the student groups, that “accusations that Israel was ‘a racist state committing genocide’ and ‘is an apartheid state’ could upset some people and ‘seem … like an incitement of violence.’”
Labor:
Economy:
Why AI, Under Capitalism, is a Failure Advances in artificial intelligence continue to make headlines, as AI has begun to play a role in everything from art and journalism to conspiracy theories and unemployment. While AI is clearly here to stay, it is equally clear that the capitalist class has no interest in using it to its fullest. Once again, capitalism’s brutal inefficiency and systematic misuse of such technology is profound evidence of the need for communism and economic planning.
Bitcoin 24 Last week, Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He ran the highly successful FTX bitcoin hedge fund that supposedly made millions for his clients. But Friedman was exposed and convicted of stealing $8 billion from his FTX customers. He was found to have siphoned billions in customer funds into FTX’s sister hedge fund, Alameda Research, to keep it solvent and line his pockets with his clients’ money. Friedman lived the good life, spending more than $200m in Bahamas real estate and in speculative investments. “Sam Bankman-Fried perpetrated one of the biggest financial frauds in American history – a multibillion-dollar scheme designed to make him the king of crypto – but while the cryptocurrency industry might be new and the players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new, this kind of corruption is as old as time,” the Manhattan US attorney Damian Williams said after the conviction. “This case has always been about lying, cheating and stealing and we have no patience for it.” Currently bitcoin and other crypto currencies have been experiencing a massive rise in price. Supposedly, cryptocurrencies have now escaped their image of involving fraudsters, scams and wild speculation to join the ‘respectable part’ of the financial world. The Friedman case has shown that to be a joke – along with a succession of other such ‘Friedmans’ over the last decade of the rise of crypto.
Study Finds Wall Street Mega Banks Have Overstated Income for Years on Commercial Real Estate Loans They Sell to InvestorsLast August, the Journal of Finance published a study by two finance professors that should have made bold headlines in every major business newspaper in America. It didn’t – suggesting that Americans will eventually learn about Wall Street’s chicanery in commercial real estate the same way they learned about Wall Street’s subprime residential mortgage scams after the 2008 financial collapse: from a movie like The Big Short or Inside Job.
World:
Venezuelan Election Laws are Designed to Guarantee Democracy Despite Personal Ambitions Venezuela has one of the most progressive constitutions in the world spearheaded by former president Hugo Chavez in 1999. Article 1 sets the tone: “The Republic of Venezuela is forever and irrevocably free and independent from any domination or protection by a foreign power.” This is binding to everyone in Venezuela. The constitution is supported by a strong set of regulatory legislation that is also applied judiciously by the different government bodies and Venezuelan institutions under a strict democratic process determined to defend its sovereignty and independence. One piece of legislation in particular is relevant these days as the country approaches a democratic presidential election on July 28. That is the Organic Law of Electoral Processes. However, one ambitious candidate is willing to break the law – and with it the democratic process – in order to succeed in her intentions. If you hear the US based media and some government officials you would think that Venezuela is a dictatorship that prevents political parties and presidential candidates to participate in the elections. One Venezuelan candidate would also try to convince you of that. She is Maria Corina Machado who is a member of one of the old Venezuelan elite families that has lost its prominence after the more egalitarian government of Hugo Chavez, but most dangerously represent the rightwing Vente Venezuela party determined to get rid of president Nicolas Maduro at all costs.
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