Daily News Digest April 24, 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:
Pocasts/Videos of the Day:
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
Games Biden Plays During 2023, Washington made formal promises to Venezuela it had no intention of keeping. It is obvious now that the aim was to lay the groundwork for discrediting the upcoming Venezuelan presidential elections, to bolster the extreme, violent opposition parties they favour, and to waste precious diplomatic time and energy of the Venezuelan government. These duplicitous mind games can now be seen for what they are: part of the relentless efforts of successive US administrations to derail the Bolivarian Revolution and gain control over the Venezuelan natural resources, especially its petroleum industry. Between May and September 2023, a series of meetings were carried out between the governments of Venezuela and the United States in Milan, Qatar, and Mexico.[1] The USA requested that the meetings be held in secret. As a result, in September, official representatives of each country signed two MOUs: one on the Venezuelan migration to the USA which Venezuela would help with; and the second in which the USA commits to rescind all sanctions against the country by 5 March 2024 as soon as the election process began.[2] It appeared that the penny finally had dropped in the mind of US officials: that the large number of Venezuelan migrants at their border was largely caused by the illegal sanctions the US has imposed on Venezuela. Even the New York Times has noted this.[3]
U.S. Funded Plestinian Genocide:
Against Israel and US Misuse of Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombing to justify Gaza Genocide Israeli politicians, including Benjamin Netanyahu, have made references to air bombings of Germany and Japan during WWII as well as the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to justify their genocide of Palestinian people. In response to global outrage against the continued “unconditional” US military aide to Israel, US law makers have also legitimized US support for Israeli genocide of Palestinians and US blocking of humanitarian aides by reproducing similar references to WWII. For example, according to the New York Times, Tim Walberg, a member of the House of Representative (R-Michigan), “openly mused during a town hall meeting on March 25 about wiping out Gaza,” telling his constituents “Get it over quick” and that “it should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima.”
Israeli Squatter-Settlers in Palestinian West Bank Expanding at Fastest Rate in History, as They Attack Indigenous Towns While the world’s eyes have been on Gaza, Palestinian villages in the West Bank have been subjected to savage attacks by extremist Israeli settlers. In Al-Mughair village in Ramallah area, settlers, protected by the Israeli army, killed two Palestinians. They also burned dozens of Palestinian properties and vehicles and killed animals.. The settlers’ violence also claimed two more Palestinian lives in Nablus area. This past weekend was no different to the one before it in the violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers’ towards the Palestinians with more attacks on numerous hamlets.
‘Damning’ Independent Probe Finds Israel Has Yet to Provide Evidence Against UNRWA The U.S. House on Saturday passed a bill including a prohibition on funding the agency, due to Israel’s unsubstantiated claims that UNRWA employees have terrorism links. Countries that have continued to suspend their funding of the United Nations’ top relief agency in the occupied Palestinian territories were left with “no room” to justify their decision, said critics on Monday as an independent investigation into Israel’s allegations against the organization revealed Israeli officials have ignored requests to provide evidence to support their claims. Catherine Colonna, the former foreign minister of France, released her findings in a probe regarding Israel’s claims that a significant number of employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) were members of terrorist groups.
Is Washington’s Defense of Israel’s War Destroying the Edifice of the Liberal International Order? We are in an age of firsts. The October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel set off a conflict in which non-state actors have played an unprecedented role. In the aftermath, Israel replied with massively disproportionate force, such that its actions have been found plausibly to constitute genocide by the International Court of Justice. In further response, the Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemeni’s Houthi military, supporting the Palestinian cause, engaged Israel and its allies. The Iranian direct military assault on Israel for the first time came in response to another first; the Israeli attack on Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1, 2024. Iran has already claimed it was reacting in self-defense, riposting to an attack that killed seven Iranian officials, including two top commanders responsible for Iran’s Syria and Lebanon operations coordination. Iran’s massive aerial attack marks the first direct strike by Iran on Israeli territory from Iranian soil. The cost of Israel’s total war on Gaza — and Washington’s unstinting support for it — can be counted in dollars, but must also be counted in the loss of credibility for key pillars of the post-WW II international order.
Ralph Nader:Palestinians as “The Others” Throughout history, military empires have reduced their victims, their subjugated, and their abducted to a state of “The Others.” The political and mass media institutions usually follow suit by supporting their empire’s predatory policies with slanted coverage. Such is the case with the U.S. global and the Israeli regional empires. The U.S. federal government and the mainstream media often move in lockstep.
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?
Ultra-Processed People The Science Behind Food That Isn’t Food A manifesto to change how you eat and how you think about the human body. It’s not you, it’s the food. We have entered a new age of eating. For the first time in human history, most of our calories come from an entirely novel set of substances called Ultra-Processed Food. There’s a long, formal scientific definition, but it can be boiled down to this: if it’s wrapped in plastic and has at least one ingredient that you wouldn’t find in your kitchen, it’s UPF. These products are specifically engineered to behave as addictive substances, driving excess consumption. They are now linked to the leading cause of early death globally and the number one cause of environmental destruction. Yet almost all our staple foods are ultra-processed. UPF is our food culture and for many people it is the only available and affordable food. In this book, Chris van Tulleken, father, scientist, doctor, and award-winning BBC broadcaster, marshals the latest evidence to show how governments, scientists, and doctors have allowed transnational food companies to create a pandemic of diet-related disease. The solutions don’t lie in willpower, personal responsibility, or exercise. You’ll find no diet plan in this book—but join Chris as he undertakes a powerful self-experiment that made headlines around the world: under the supervision of colleagues at University College London he spent a month eating a diet of 80 percent UPF, typical for many children and adults in the United States. While his body became the subject of scientific scrutiny, he spoke to the world’s leading experts from academia, agriculture, and—most important—the food industry itself. But more than teaching him about the experience of the food, the diet switched off Chris’s own addiction to UPF.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Columbia Faculty Walk Out Over Student Suspensions, Arrests for Gaza Protests While expressing gratitude for solidarity actions, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar—whose daughter was suspended—said that “this about the genocide in Gaza and the attention has to remain on that.” Over 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by U.S.-backed Israeli troops, and Columbia University students have been suspended and arrested by New York Police Department officers in recent days for protesting the slaughter—which led to a walkout by the Ivy League institution’s faculty on Monday. The Guardian reported that “hundreds of members of the teaching cohort at Columbia walked out in solidarity with the students who were arrested” while “students put protest tents back up in the middle of campus on Monday after they were torn down last week when more than 100 arrests were made.” Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of IfNotNow, a Jewish-led U.S. group that organizes against Israel’s apartheid, declared: “Solidarity with these faculty members. Shame on establishment politicians and agitators who are smearing the anti-war protest at Columbia as anything other than what it is: a courageous stand for freedom and peace.”
New Rule Will Protect Medical Records for Out-of-State Abortions Under HIPAA Doctors can’t tell law enforcement about a patient’s abortion if they had the procedure in a state where it’s legal. Health care providers aren’t allowed to tell law enforcement about a patient’s abortion if they received the procedure in a state where it is legal, it is protected by federal law, or it is permitted by state law, the Biden administration said Monday. The new rule is based on the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. It could shield patients’ medical information if they live in a state with an abortion ban and travel elsewhere to seek care. Those are details that could show up in their health records if they seek subsequent medical care in their home state.
Creeping Police State:North Texas Organizers Knock Doors to Stop $50M “Cop City Dallas” Bond Package A $150 million police training center is being planned for the University of North Texas at Dallas campus. Dallas, Texas—On a balmy, overcast morning in South Dallas, more than 20 organizers slowly trickled onto the playground benches at Glendale Park. Armed with snacks, flyers and canvassing scripts, they soon paired off and headed to their respective neighborhood turfs for the day. Their goal? To let their neighbors know that a new $150 million police training center, or “Cop City Dallas,” is being planned for the University of North Texas at Dallas (UNT) campus, and that they still have a chance to stop it by voting against Proposition F, which would dedicate at least $50 million taxpayer dollars toward the project, in the May 4 bond election.
Labor:
‘Militant’ Trade Union Leaders and the Coming Labour Government Following a wave of industrial struggles over the past couple of years, the trade union movement is at an ebb. Instead of mobilising workers, union leaders are waiting for Labour. Once again, this demonstrates the need for fighting leadership. “The working class is back!” So declared Mick Lynch, RMT general secretary, in the summer of 2022, as a year-long strike wave began to rock the country. After forty years of defeats and retreats, the working class in Britain had begun to wake up and flex its muscles. And during this upheaval, a layer of more militant leaders came to the fore of the trade union movement. From Lynch himself, to Sharon Graham of Unite, to figures like Kevin Courtney in the NEU: these left union leaders spoke boldly and defiantly about standing up to the Tories and the bosses, and fighting for workers.
Economy:
The Fed Tallies Up a Big Threat to Financial Stability in the U.S.: “Runnables” at $21.3 Trillion Last Friday, the Federal Reserve released its semi-annual Financial Stability Report. In the prior five years, the spring edition of the Fed’s Financial Stability Report was released in May. This year, for reasons we can only guess at (nervously), the Fed released the spring edition early, in April. Given that last spring the second, third and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history occurred, handing over $30 billion in losses to the federal Deposit Insurance Fund, and one of those banks (Silicon Valley Bank) experienced the fastest run on its deposits in U.S. history, one particular item in the new report that caught our attention was this: “Overall, estimated runnable money-like financial liabilities grew 8.8 percent to $21.3 trillion (75 percent of nominal GDP) over the past year, as a decline in uninsured deposits was more than offset by an increase in assets under management at MMFs [Money Market Mutual Funds]. As a share of GDP, runnable liabilities remained above their historical median.”
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