Daily News Digest April 5, 2024
Images of the Day:
Carlos Latuff: The so-called only democracy in the Middle East managed to carry out their genocide, kill at least 7 western citizens working for an NGO, and announce the closure of Al Jazeera all on the same 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:
The answer of course is because the western news media are propaganda services for the western empire of which Washington is the central hub, and their job is therefore to make the US government look good. By emphasizing the point over and over and over again that the US president strongly disapproves of the Israeli regime’s behavior in Gaza, the imperial spinmeisters are distancing the White House from one of the darker chapters in the history of the United States even as Biden signs off on this mass atrocity day after day despite being fully capable of ending it at any time. — Stop Reporting On Biden’s Angry Feelings Toward Israel. It’s Not News. It’s Not Interesting.
Pocasts/Videos of the Day:
Road to Famine: Israeli Law Prof. Neve Gordon on Israel’s History of Weaponizing Food Access in Gaza
Black Agenda Radio March 29, 2024
This week we hear about how the latest round of unilateral economic coercive measures, sanctions, are harming the people of Cuba, who are nonetheless resisting this campaign against their government. But first we hear from members of a Black and Brown coalition in Chicago about their meeting with minister Naledi Pandor of South Africa and their ongoing mobilizations for solidarity with Palestine.
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
Stop Reporting On Biden’s Angry Feelings Toward Israel. It’s Not News. It’s Not Interesting. Stop telling us about the president’s feelings. Stop telling us he’s “angry” and “frustrated” with Israel. No one cares. Nobody gives a shit how Biden’s feelings feel about the government he’s helping carry out a genocide. All that matters is that he’s helping them commit genocide. The imperial media cannot stop babbling about how angry President Biden’s feelings are feeling toward Israel like it’s some kind of actual news story, even as this administration cheerfully pours mountains of weaponry into backing Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza. If you haven’t been following the mass media’s coverage of Biden and Gaza for the last six months, the entire thing can be summed up by the headline of a new Politico article, “‘Angry’ Biden not changing Israel policy after deadly strike on aid workers”.
U.S. Funded Plestinian Genocide:
Biden Approved Bomb Sale to Israeli Military on Same Day It Killed Aid Workers A State Department official told the outlet that it was approved before the aid worker killing, but officials have not reversed the approval, despite having the ability to do so at any time before the shipment is delivered. The sale approval came just after Israeli forces finished their total destruction of Al-Shifa Hospital. On the same day as Israeli forces carried out a hugely controversial and horrific killing of seven international aid workers for food charity World Central Kitchen in Gaza, the Biden administration approved yet another transfer of thousands of bombs to Israel, new reporting reveals, undermining U.S. officials’ public statements lamenting the workers’ killings. The Washington Post reported Thursday that sources within the Biden administration say officials rubber stamped the bomb sale on Monday.
Freedom of Speech Under Biden: Scholars Should Be Able to Speak Out Against Genocide Without Fear of Punishment The censorship of pro-Palestine speech on campuses is escalating. We must all work to resist this.
Palestine Advocates Slam Biden for Pushing $18 Billion Warplane Sale to Israel The deal involves the sale of as many as 50 F-15 fighters, as well as munitions, training, and other support. Palestine advocates on Wednesday slammed the Biden administration as it pushes Congress to approve the sale of $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets to Israel, despite public pronouncements of anger over ongoing Israeli atrocities in Gaza and a federal ban on the U.S. arms transfers to human rights violators.
Six Months Of Hell On Earth Half a year of insulting our intelligence. Half a year of insulting our humanity. Half a year of unfathomable suffering. Half a year of irreparable trauma.
- Six months of this now. Half a year.
- Half a year of genocide apologia.
- Half a year of the most outrageous lies you can possibly imagine.
- Half a year of seeing children’s bodies ripped to pieces and starved to skeletons on our social media feeds.
- Half a year of atrocities justified by something that happened way back in October, and didn’t even happen the way the news media tell us it happened. . . .
Israel’s Lavender Murderbot is Programmed to Kill up to a Third of all Palestinian Civilians in Gaza The incredibly brave and resourceful Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham revealed Wednesday in a hard-hitting piece of investigative journalism that the Israeli military has used two artificial intelligence programs, “Lavender” and “Where’s Daddy,” to target some 37,000 alleged members of the military wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The programs used GPS to discover when a Hamas member had gone home, since it was easiest to hit them there, ensuring that his wife and children would also be killed. If he lived in an apartment building, which most did, then all the civilians in neighboring apartments could also be killed– children, women, non-combatant men.
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?
How Industry Coordinated to Deny Li
Palestine Advocates Slam Biden for Pushing $18 Billion Warplane Sale to Israel The deal involves the sale of as many as 50 F-15 fighters, as well as munitions, training, and other support. Palestine advocates on Wednesday slammed the Biden administration as it pushes Congress to approve the sale of $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets to Israel, despite public pronouncements of anger over ongoing Israeli atrocities in Gaza and a federal ban on the U.S. arms transfers to human rights violators.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
The New Jim Crow: NYC Jails Flagrantly Deny Young People’s Legal Right to Education New court filings say that the city is violating an eight-year-old court order mandating access to education for people under 22. Last June, New York City Mayor Eric Adams spoke to graduates at Rikers Island who received their high-school-equivalence diplomas while serving in jail. “When you get your diplomas today,” Adams told the graduates, “I want you to stand up, lean back, be firm and strong and say, ‘I got this. When does the hard part start? I’m finished with the hard part. Now I’m moving forward to my destiny on what I want to accomplish.’” The group represented the successful fruits of a law that guarantees access to education to people incarcerated in city jails. The success stories, however, are only part of the picture. Other young people incarcerated in New York jails said in court filings that they’ve been repeatedly denied their legal right to education and that the city has failed to comply with a 2016 court order requiring education access for people between 18 and 21 held in in Department of Correction custody. In filings Wednesday, the plaintiffs in a decadeslong class-action suit against the city called for the appointment of a new court monitor to oversee implementation of the order.
New Electronic Monitoring Tech Piloted Both Inside and Outside of Prisons, Jails Some devices have the potential to reveal not just the wearer’s location, but also capture personal data. In an ad released last spring by top electronic monitoring manufacturer BI Incorporated, viewers are introduced to the VeriWatch, one of the latest in the company’s suite of digital surveillance tools. The short video follows a day in the life of a VeriWatch user: how he starts his morning unplugging his charger, getting ready for work, and snapping a selfie using his watch — which looks similar to an Apple Watch. Prepared for the day, he then grabs his keys, goes to work, and later returns home to spend quality time with his wife and son, being sure to charge the device along the way. The ad highlights how the VeriWatch departs from a typical smart watch available to the general public. For example, the selfie snapped in the morning isn’t for social media; it’s a biometric authentication to confirm the wearer’s identity to parole or probation officers. The ad also intends to convey how minimally the device impedes the user’s daily life. It seeks to show how this new era of electronic monitoring differs from the ankle monitors traditionally associated with “house arrest.”
- Israel and the U.S. are Gangster States Any sign of even tiny opposition is enough to send Israel into a frenzy of bloodletting. Hospital attacks, murders of aid workers, violations of the sovereignty of embassies, are all par for the Zionist course. Friends in Washington talk out of both sides of their mouths with condemnation but always end on the side of their partner in crime.
- STATEMENT: UN Palestine Commission – Partition recommendation – Statement from the Arab Higher Committee, 6 February 1948 The statement on the UN Partition of Palestine by the Arab Higher Committee is a reminder of the sordid history of the U.S. in the expropriation of land and the attempted ethnic cleansing of the people of Palestine.
- Eric Nshimiye, Another Rwandan American Facing Trial in Another Rwandan Witch Hunt The totalitarian state of Rwanda is guilty of many forms of transnational repression, including the lawfare exemplified in the case of Eric Nshimiye.
- The New Modern Day Militarized Fort! The wave of cop cities being constructed across the nation must be analyzed through the lens of settler colonialism and the state’s effort to maintain its dominance by expanding the police state.
- Another Sports Team Fleeces the PeopleThrough misleading deals, tax breaks, and false promises, capitalists and politicians plunder public resources for their own gain.
- MLK Jr. Gala Action & MLK Gala Speech In response to campus repression tactics, a coalition of students and faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) held coordinated disruptions during a university gala.
- BAP’s Africa Team and U.S. Out of Africa Network Applauds Niger’s Move to Expel AFRICOM In another step toward the achievement of its national sovereignty, Niger recently declared the United State’s military presence in the country illegal.
- 55th Anniversary of the NY Panther 21 Case The trial of the New York Panther 21 was the moment in the Black liberation movement that ushered in an era of intensified state repression and violence and increasingly aggressive tactics by radical forces.
- Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Uhuru 3 put state on trial in fightback against bogus charges Three members of the Uhuru Movement were recently indicted on charges related to operating as “unregistered foreign agents.” This attack has huge implications for free speech everywhere.
- Senegal Elects New President We hear from a Black and Brown coalition in Chicago about their meeting with minister Naledi Pandor of South Africa and their mobilizations for solidarity with Palestine.
- Investigation: The Palestinian Struggle for Labor Rights in Israel We talked to Palestinian workers whose underpaid labor provides part of Israel’s low-cost workforce. Their stories of organizing amid ethnic cleansing shed light on how this work is a crucial lifeline for Palestinians — now severed by the devastation of war.
Labor:
Economy:
There’s a Revival of the Dotcom-esque Froth in Today’s Markets; Cathie Wood Is Standing in for Henry Blodget and Jack Grubman; Nasdaq Is Playing Nasdaq Last 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. Wall Street On Parade only learned about this paper recently from one of our engaged readers. The paper was authored by John Griffin, Professor of Finance at McComb School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin and Alex Priest, Assistant Professor of Finance at the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester. The paper takes a forensic look – from an exhaustive number of perspectives – at why the income stream on Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) is being consistently overstated by 5 percent or more when sold to investors by certain originators of these loans. The largest participants in this overstatement of income are the same Wall Street mega banks that were bailed out by the U.S. taxpayer after they blew up Wall Street in 2008 with their subprime residential mortgage scams and then received trillions of dollars in secret revolving loans from the Fed for more than two years at below-market interest rates in order to resuscitate themselves. 
World:
George Monbiot: Small Revolution A remarkable political innovation in Devon could be the beginning of a new politics. This is what democracy looks like: hundreds of people queueing in the rain, seeking to take back control of a political system that treats voters like an afterthought. Last weekend, a remarkable democratic experiment reached its first conclusion. A process that began here in South Devon and is now spreading to other constituencies has allowed voters to reclaim the initiative from centralised and self-interested political parties. It directly confronts our unfair electoral system. This is what democracy looks like: hundreds of people queueing in the rain, seeking to take back control of a political system that treats voters like an afterthought. Last weekend, a remarkable democratic experiment reached its first conclusion. A process that began here in South Devon and is now spreading to other constituencies has allowed voters to reclaim the initiative from centralised and self-interested political parties. It directly confronts our unfair electoral system
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
Some Affordable Care Act Enrollees See Their Plans Switched Without Consent Policyholders can lose their doctors and access to prescriptions. Some end up owing back taxes. Some consumers covered by Affordable Care Act insurance plans are being switched from one plan to another without their express permission, potentially leaving them unable to see their doctors or fill prescriptions. Some face large IRS bills for back taxes. Unauthorized enrollment or plan-switching is emerging as a serious challenge for the ACA, also known as Obamacare. Brokers say the ease with which rogue agents can get into policyholder accounts in the 32 states served by the federal marketplace plays a major role in the problem, according to an investing by KFF Health News.