Daily News Digest April 27, 2024
Images of the Day:
Carlos Latuff: Against the Genocide, Then and Now! 
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, and The 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 Still Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World!
The Majority of the World, Despite the Media Monopoly’s Lies, are Opposed to the Palestinian Genocide and Global Warming — The 1% Minority Funds Them! At, this Time in History, Capitalism is Exposing the Fact That it is Opposed to Majority Rule/Democracy!
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:
“To sustain this level of blind support for Israel, the U.S. must erode its own democracy. And that is what we see happening on U.S. campuses now,” said Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, sharing a video of police tasing an Emory student who was already being held down on the ground. — Violent Arrest of Emory Professor Spotlights Brutality of Police Crackdown on Campus Protests
Suroeme Court Judge Any Barret: Judge Amy Coney Barrett was unable to name all of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution during her Supreme Court confirmation hearing Wednesday, forgetting the right to protest when a senator asked her to name the five freedoms Wednesday afternoon.: Amy Coney Barrett Forgets Right to Protest is a First Amendment Freedom
The First Amendment and Abortion Rights have Been Under Attack for a ong Time! Before the Federalist Supreme Court Judges were approved by the Senate, they stated that they interpreted the constitution on the basis of the ‘intent of the forefathers when they wrote the constitution’. The Bill of rights was never the intent of the forefathers! Despite these statements, the Senate in a bipartisan vote, approved their nomination to the ‘Supreme’ Court!: Those whom, the powers that be, now call the ‘Forefathers of the Constitution’, were the ones who led the counter-call to the Declaration of Independence. Instead of codifying the constitution to guarantee our “certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, they refused to include the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights and even the 1689 English Bill of Rights in the original draft of the constitution! Due to the revolutionary consciousness at that time, it became very clear that the States would not ratify the constitution, these ‘forefathers’ had to declared that the first act of congress would be the enactment of the Bill of Rights, in order to get the states to approve the constitution. (Rhode Island held out, until the actual deed was done.). Nevertheless, the constitution was written to allow only white males of property to vote, legalized slavery, and stated that Black People were only 4/5 human. As Noam Chomsky stated in his interview on American History and Democracy: . . . If you go back to the record of the Constitutional Convention, which took place in 1787, almost immediately after the end of the war, you see that they are already moving in another direction. James Madison — who was the main framer, and one of the Founding Fathers who was most libertarian — makes it very clear that the new constitutional system must be designed so as to ensure that the government will, in his words, “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority” and bar the way to anything like agrarian reform. The determination was made that America could not allow functioning democracy, since people would use their political power to attack the wealth of the minority of the opulent. Therefore, Madison argues, the country should be placed in the hands of the wealthier set of men, as he put it. . . . To this day, we have a government and state apparatus that is designed to “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority” — Democracy for white and wealthy men only! — My Forefathers and The 1%’s Forefathers
Pocasts/Videos of the Day:
An Establishment Scholar’s Indictment of the West’s ‘Blind Support for Israel’s Slaughter in Gaza’
Police Violently Crack Down on Emory University’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment Police used tear gas and stun guns to break up the encampment as they wrestled people to the ground
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
Not a Cent, Not A Bullet for the Israeli War Machine: Statement on Wave of Gaza Solidarity Student Protests Across the United States over 60 universities and colleges have seen students and faculty organising encampments in a growing movement against the massacre in Gaza. A whole generation is being politicised and drawing conclusions about the nature of imperialism, the role of the police and the state and the need for collective action.
U.S. Funded Plestinian Genocide:
Leaked USAID Document Concludes Israel Impeded Gaza Aid “Biden is breaking the law and defying his own agencies to fund Israeli war crimes,” said one observer. Officials at the United States Agency for International Development concluded in a confidential memo to Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel is violating a White House directive by blocking humanitarian aid from entering the besieged Gaza Strip during its ongoing genocidal assault on the Palestinian enclave, according to a report published Friday. Devex‘s Colum Lynch reported that the confidential communication—entitled Famine Inevitable, Changes Could Reduce But Not Stop Widespread Civilian Deaths—states that USAID “assesses the government of Israel (GOI) does not currently demonstrate necessary compliance” with a February 8 White House memo requiring the secretary of state to obtain assurances from governments receiving U.S. military aid that such assistance is used in compliance with human rights law.
USAID: Israel has already Imposed Unavoidable, Exponential Famine on Gaza outpacing Somalia’s Prominent foreign policy journalist Colum Lynch has an exclusive at the Devex site, which is devoted to economic development news and has a special relationship to the US Agency for International Development. Lynch has seen a memo entitled “Famine Inevitable, Changes Could Reduce but Not Stop Widespread Civilian Deaths,” which was produced by food security experts in US AID and the State Department, and which they sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. These US officials gave the memo a subheading that is damning for the Israeli government of PM Benjamin Netanyahu: “Israel-imposed administrative challenges are preventing the delivery” of food.
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?
Nature Degradation Could Cause 1 12% Loss to UK GDP
- Damage to the natural environment is slowing the UK economy, and could lead to an estimated 12% reduction to GDP in the years ahead – larger than the hit to GDP from the global financial crisis or Covid-19.
- First-of-its-kind analysis quantifies the impact that nature degradation, both domestically and internationally, could have on the UK’s economy and financial sector.
- These risks need to be acknowledged and addressed to strengthen the UK’s economic and financial resiliency.
- The work was led by the Green Finance Institute (GFI), with a technical team involving the UK’s top researchers: the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, the University of Reading, the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR).
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
The Chris Hedges Report: Revolt in the Universities University students across the country, facing mass arrests, suspensions, evictions and explusions are our last, best hope to halt the genocide in Gaza. Student protesters across the country exhibit a moral and physical courage — many are facing suspension and expulsion — that shames every major institution in the country. They are dangerous not because they disrupt campus life or engage in attacks on Jewish students — many of those protesting are Jewish — but because they expose the abject failure by the ruling elites and their institutions to halt genocide, the crime of crimes. These students watch, like most of us, Israel’s live-streamed slaughter of the Palestinian people. But unlike most of us, they act. Their voices and protests are a potent counterpoint to the moral bankruptcy that surrounds them. Not one university president has denounced Israel’s destruction of every university in Gaza. Not one university president has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. Not one university president has used the words “apartheid” or “genocide.” Not one university president has called for sanctions and divestment from Israel. Instead, heads of these academic institutions grovel supinely before wealthy donors, corporations — including weapons manufacturers — and rabid right-wing politicians. They reframe the debate around harm to Jews rather than the daily slaughter of Palestinians, including thousands of children. They have allowed the abusers — the Zionist state and its supporters — to paint themselves as victims. This false narrative, which focuses on anti-Semitism, allows the centers of power, including the media, to block out the real issue — genocide. It contaminates the debate. It is a classic case of “reactive abuse.” Raise your voice to decry injustice, react to prolonged abuse, attempt to resist, and the abuser suddenly transforms themself into the aggrieved.
Poisoning the American Mind: Student Protests in the Age of the New McCarthyism We live in an age of increased disasters and encroaching fascism. This is a historical moment marked by a systemic attempt by an emerging authoritarianism to disable language and dissent of any substantive meaning, remove actions from the grammar of moral witnessing, and disassociate power from institutional justice. As all levels of society are hollowed out, notions of democratic community, the social contract, and compassion give way to a politics in which all matters of responsibility are individualized, privatized, and removed from broader systemic considerations. The habits of oligarchy are animated by fear and reproduced through relentless attacks on human possibilities, while “the disorder of real history is replaced by the orderliness of pseudo-history.”[1] In a time of widespread suffering and unrest, higher education is feared for its critical functions and students are expected to be silent, unresponsive to wider social issues, and ignore the relationship between the dynamics of power, marginality, and knowledge. Amid the expansion of the military-industrial complex and the carceral state, faculty and students are expected to look away or inward, unresponsive to the language of imagined futures.
Labor:
Economy:
The U.S. Economy is Not What It’s Cracked Up To Be Living on credit cards, lots of Americans are going broke. They survive paycheck to paycheck, and that money covers credit card bills, specifically exorbitant interest, continuously piling up. That’s the case for those lucky enough to have credit cards. Last year the number of destitute, homeless Americans shot into the stratosphere, reaching a record high; no surprise, considering half of all Americans can’t afford a $1000 emergency. That emergency, increasingly, includes a rent hike, so it’s no wonder so many of our countrymen and women sleep under the stars. At least they can afford food, you say? Well, food costs 36.5 percent more than five years ago, and for those living in their cars, working multiple jobs, gas ain’t cheap either. This matters because those cars have to move to different parking spots, so as not to attract hostile police notice.
Catch and Kill Protection Rackets: Trump, Weinstein, Epstein and Wall Street Trump and Catch and Kill: Yesterday, David Pecker, the former Chairman and CEO of American Media Inc. (AMI), the parent company of the National Enquirer tabloid, testified for a third day in the 34-count criminal trial of former President Donald Trump in New York. Pecker continued to expand on the sordid details of a catch and kill operation he had agreed to operate with the active involvement of Trump and his then attorney, Michael Cohen. The operation involved buying up stories about Trump’s salacious affairs with women and then killing them from publication in order to help Trump’s campaign for the presidency in 2016. There was also an understanding that Pecker would run negative articles about Trump’s political opponents in the National Enquirer.
World:
George Monbiot: Casting Out Angels Peaceful protesters are facing extreme and multiple punishments for the same offence: the offence of trying to defend Earth systems. When the traditional ruling class was obliged to concede to demands for democracy, it gave away as little as possible. We could vote, but it ensured that crucial elements of the old system remained in place: the House of Lords, the first-past-the-post electoral system, prerogative powers and Henry VIII clauses, and above all a legal system massively and blatantly biased towards owners of property. In combination, these elements ensured that the system remained predisposed to elite rule, even while it pretended the people were in charge. The portcullis excluding us from power has never been properly lifted since the Norman conquest. The relationship between rulers and ruled remains, in effect, a relationship between occupier and occupied. For almost a thousand years, we’ve celebrated those who resisted in folklore and fantasy: the Robin Hood myth commemorates Eadric the Wild and other “silvatici” who held out in the woods, launching raids against the occupiers. But in the real world, few dare to raise their heads. The hatred, disgust and fear with which elite power has long regarded the people is reciprocated with fear and deference: we know what happens when we step out of line.
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
Infectious Disease Experts Warn Bird Flu Outbreak Bigger Than Previously Thought Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina said “the worst case scenario” is that this could turn into a “massive pandemic.” For weeks, the dairy industry has been gripped by a highly contagious virus that is threatening to only get worse. Federal regulators announced this week that samples of pasteurized milk tested positive for H5N1, the strain of bird flu that has jumped from poultry to cows with one recent infection in an American.