Daily News Digest April 10, 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:
The starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare is a serious violation of the laws and customs of war. This conduct has been prohibited under IHL since the adoption of two Additional Protocols (AP) to the Geneva Conventions. — The starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare is a serious violation of the laws and customs of war. This conduct has been prohibited under IHL since the adoption of two Additional Protocols (AP) to the Geneva Conventions. — The Prohibition of Starvation as a Method of Warfare
Pocasts/Videos of the Day:
“Sea of Misery”: Gaza Unlike Anything I’ve Seen, Says NGO Head/Ex-CNN Journalist Arwa Damon
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 United States Promotes/Practices Starvation Warfare: Still Facing US-Backed Famine, Yemenis Want to Save Gaza From the Same Fate Millions in Yemen, where 80 percent are food insecure, protest every Friday in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Every Friday since October 20, 2023, protesters in Yemen have hit the streets to protest the war on Gaza. This solidarity comes as no surprise given Yemenis have long experienced war and famine. In a similar show of solidarity, in November Yemen-based Houthi rebels started targeting ships in the Red Sea to put pressure on Israel to end its war on Gaza. The Houthis, initially a rebel group aligned with Shia Islam formed in the late 1980s, eventually overthrew Yemen’s government in 2014, and have since retained control over significant areas of Yemen and its population. In response to Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, in early January the U.S. and U.K. began launching airstrikes on Yemeni soil and have, over the following three months, launched hundreds more. On Thursday, April 4, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said some 424 U.S. and British airstrikes in Yemen have killed 37 people and wounded 30 more. The U.S. attacks in Yemen are being carried out in a country that is still trying to recover from almost a decade of civil war and devastating attacks by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — attacks that were facilitated by military aid from the U.S. That conflict led to one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, with 80 percent of Yemenis still dependent on food assistance for survival.
What Are U.S. Assurances Worth? In the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the sentient computer HAL becomes unreliable and eventually homicidal. The cause of this is a contradiction in HAL’s programming. While programmed to act on and dispense information in a straightforward and accurate fashion, HAL is simultaneously programmed to lie about the true nature of his mission. As his human supervisor puts it in the movie’s sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, HAL “was told to lie by people who find it very easy to lie.” Those people were the one’s running the U.S. government. This is, of course, a bit of cinema fiction. However, the sentiment described about government lying, that it is done in an all too easy manner, is accurate and prevails in the real world. Indeed, so prevalent are government’s lies that citizens have long been cynical of political speech, while political leaders consider those who, in a public way, expose their practice of official duplicity, to be criminals.
Talk is cheap! If they are serious about the costs of rents, they would propose a national tent control law and all housing be affordable based upon the minimum wage law!: Jayapal, Sanders, and Khanna Say US Housing Crisis Must Be ‘At the Top of Our Agenda’ “We really need a revolution in housing and how we deal with housing,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders at a gathering on the issue. Rent is so high in the United States that half of the nation’s tenants can’t afford their monthly payments. Last year, more Americans than ever experienced homelessness after the temporary pandemic safety net collapsed. Mortgage rates and through-the-roof prices have left younger generations increasingly hopeless about owning a home. Those and other alarming facts constitute what’s broadly known as the U.S. housing crisis, which a group of leading progressive lawmakers is working to elevate to the top of the Democratic Party’s list of priorities ahead of the critical 2024 elections and beyond
U.S. Funded Plestinian Genocide:
Dangerous Deceptions and Outright Lies: Language in the War on Gaza
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 territoryand 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?
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
From The Assassinations of M.L.K. Jr. and Malcolm X: On Page 602, A testament of hope: the essential writings and speeches of Martin Luther: King states the course that he was planning to take in the fight for economic equality: “The Emergence of social initiatives by a revitalized labor movement would be taking place as Negros are placing economic issues on the highest agenda. The coalition of an energized section of labor, Negroes, unemployed, and welfare recipients may be the source of power that reshapes economic relationships and ushers in a breakthrough to a new level of social reform.”. . . He continues on Page 631: “There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum — and livable — income for every American family. “There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid, or day laborer. “There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peaces will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from remolding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a true brotherhood.” . . . These words have even more meaning in today’s world. At that time, the stock market was below 1,000 points. Today, it is above 10,000 points, and yet conditions for Blacks are still lower than after World War II. At the time of their assassinations, both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were embarking on a course in opposition to the capitalist system. It is clear from reading and listening to their final speeches that they had both evolved to similar conclusions of capitalism’s role in the maintenance of racism. That is why they were “neutralized”. Unlike Malcolm X, who never got the opportunity to act upon his convictions, Martin Luther King was organizing a movement to obtain his stated goals when he was assassinated in Memphis. He was in Memphis to build “the coalition of an energized section of labor, Negroes, unemployed, and welfare recipients” in support of striking municipal garbage workers. If such a force had been launched, the whole power of the antiwar and civil rights movement in the 1960s could have transformed the labor movement and become “the source of power that reshapes economic relationships and ushers in a breakthrough to a new level of social reform.” Such a coalition, as King envisioned it thirty-three years ago, is needed today. The best tribute to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X would be to begin anew to build a movement based on the ideas and the concepts that they had developed at the time of their untimely deaths. At the time of their assassinations, both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were embarking on a course in opposition to the capitalist system. It is clear from reading and listening to their final speeches that they had both evolved to similar conclusions as to capitalism’s role in the maintenance of racism. That is why they were neutralized/assassinated!
Nearly Half Of US Prisons Draw Water Likely Contaminated With Toxic PFAS – Report Around 1m people, including 13,000 youths, especially vulnerable because they can do little to protect themselves, co-author says Nearly half of US prisons draw water from sources likely contaminated with toxic PFAS “forever chemicals”, new research finds. At least around 1m people incarcerated in the US, including 13,000 juveniles, are estimated to be housed in the prisons, and they are especially vulnerable to the dangerous chemicals because there is little they can do to protect themselves, said Nicholas Shapiro, a study co-author at the University of California in Los Angeles.
Sentenced to Death by COVID — How US Prisons Became an Epicenter of the Pandemic COVID was so deadly due to US policies that view marginalized people as acceptable sacrifices to capitalism. April 10 will mark one year since President Joe Biden signed a congressional resolution that officially ended the COVID-19 “public health emergency.” The week before, over a thousand people in the U.S. died of the virus. Declarations like Biden’s aren’t just rhetorically frustrating, they have concrete negative effects. Formally ending the “public health emergency” meant that many of the health measures implemented to keep people safe from COVID ended. For example, Medicare, a public health insurance many disabled people have, has stopped covering free at-home tests, and PCR tests are no longer free. While some health insurance plans still cover testing, many uninsured people will have no access to free tests.
Labor:
FRA’s Final Rule on Train Crew Staffing is Lacking While Railroad Workers United (RWU) has long supported a federal regulation that would require all trains to have a minimum of a two-person crew, we have severe reservations about the Final Rule that was just released last week by the Department of Transportation (DOT). We continue to wade through the 223 Page document. Our concerns include – but are not limited to – the fact that this FINAL Rule appears to do the following:
- Preempts (nullifies) all state and local laws/rules requiring 2-person crews, many if not most of which have more stringent language without the loopholes and exemptions.
- Allows for “Exemptions” whereby rail carriers of any size may petition to allow 1-person operations in the future, claiming “new circumstances.”
- Allows that safety data collected by the rail carriers on the question of 2-person vs 1-person crews may be kept secret from the public and the workforce, yet be used to justify future “exemptions” allowing 1-person operation without challenge for inaccuracies, failing to provide for independent auditing of “safety” claims or statistics.
- Enables/encourages Class One Carriers to sell off local/regional assets to Class 2 (generally non-union) carriers in order to more easily facilitate 1-person operations.
RWU hopes to issue a formal statement on this Final Rule at some point in the coming weeks after further consultation with RWU members and other working railroaders. Meantime, please see our official statement expressing RWU’s concerns to the Federal Railroad Administration during the comment period in September 2022
Economy:
To Tackle Inequality, Start With Nonprofit Kingpins Why not press for legislation that denies nonprofit status—and the tax breaks that come with it—to nonprofits that pay their top execs at any rate over 20-to-1? How rich have America’s super rich become? The annual compensation of Steve Schwarzman, the chief exec of the private-equity colossus Blackstone Inc., offers up one telling yardstick. In 2023, we learned earlier this year, Schwarzman’s take-home actually fell some 30% off what he collected the year before. But Schwarzman’s overall payday for that year, even after that tanking, still amounted to a jaw-dropping $896.7 million.
World:
Turkish Elections: Erdogan Tastes Bitter Defeat As Class Struggle Rises On Sunday 31 March, the Turkish masses inflicted the biggest electoral defeat on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since he came to power more than 20 years ago. This was a vote against Erdogan rather than one for the bourgeois opposition, which inspired little enthusiasm. Nonetheless, these elections are symptomatic of a storm of anger that is wearing down Erdogan’s authority. His days could be numbered.
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