Daily News Digest May 24, 2024

Daily News Digest Archives 

Images of the Day:

Miliary Industrial Complex & Colleges

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”

The Rise Capitalism was Under the Banner of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity! Now Ther Their Less Liberty, More Inequality, and Less Fraternity of Humanity!   Every Day, From Global Warming to Global War There is a New Example of Capitalism in Imperialist Decay!

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 Iron Heel

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:

J.D.  Rockefeller

The struggle against Zionist occupation is viewed accurately by Zionists, both within the United States and Israel, as sort of the last dying gasp of imperialism.    They’re trying to hold on to it. That’s why it’s scary. The liberation of Palestine would mean a radically different world, a world that moves past exploitation and injustice.     That’s why so many people who aren’t Palestinian and aren’t Arab and aren’t Muslim are so invested in the struggle. They see its significance. In quantum mechanics, there’s the idea of non-locality. says Hassan. Even though I’m miles and miles away from the people in Palestine, I feel deeply entangled with them,     in the same way that the electrons that I work with in my lab are entangled. As David said, this idea that the community of believers is one body, and if one part of the body is in pain, all of it pains. It’s our responsibility to strive to alleviate that pain. … We’re being portrayed as violent when it’s the universities who are calling police on peaceful protesters. We’re being portrayed as disrupting everything around us. But what we’re drawing on are tradition’s fundamental to American political culture. We’re drawing on traditions of sit-ins, hunger strikes, and peaceful encampments. Palestinian political prisoners have carried out hunger strikes for decades.    The hunger strike goes back to decolonial struggles before that, to India, to Ireland, to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Palestinian liberation is the cause of human liberation, he goes on. Palestine is the most obvious example in the world today, other than the United States, of settler colonialism. — The Chris Hedges Report, The Nation’s Conscience, Part II – Read by Eunice Wong

Podcasts/Videos of the Day:

Erdogan Warns of Wider Regional Threats From Israel’s War on Gaza

Black Agenda Radio May 17, 2024

Repression of Palestine Solidarity at Massachusetts 

IntegrateNYC Lawsuit Seeks to End Segregation in New York City Schools

Political and Humanitarian Crisis in Sudan

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

In a word, King demonstrated that you can’t advance democracy at home when you suppress it abroad. That vision rings as true today for Gaza as it did for Vietnam in 1967. Dr. King’s Words on Vietnam Still Ring True for Gaza

‘Genocide Is Your Legacy!’: Blinken Targeted by Protests at Senate Hearing “You will be remembered as the butcher of Gaza!” one demonstrator, later arrested, screamed at the U.S. secretary of state. Others stood up to call the nation’s top diplomat a “war criminal.” 

Can a U.S. Ally Actually be Held Accountable For War Crimes in the ICC? icc warrants against Israeli officials would mean they can’t travel — and their patrons in the U.S. would be pressured over continued arms sales. THE ANNOUNCEMENT TODAY that prosecutors from the International Criminal Court are seeking arrest warrants against top Israeli officials, alongside senior officials from Hamas, has triggered a political earthquake amid the ongoing expansion of the Israel offensive in the Gaza Strip.  Top ICC prosecutor Karim Khan’s announcement — coming after weeks of rumors that warrants may be imminent — stunned many legal observers of the court.   The news sparked immediate outrage from the U.S. government. Warrants against Israeli leaders would mark a new era for international humanitarian law where even close allies of the U.S. can be held to account for their actions

U.S. Funded Plestinian Genocide:

When Biden told the World he was a Zionist, as a Spokesman for US Imperialism, in the present context, it means that he and the 1% were in favor of Palestinian genocide!

Welcome to the Hedge-Fund Driven Neoliberal University There can be little doubt that neoliberalism has undermined, if not crippled, the notion of higher education as a democratic public sphere—a protective and courageous space where students can speak, write, and act from a position of agency and informed judgment. This should be a space where education does the bridging work of connecting schools to the wider society, connects the self to others, and addresses important social and political issues. It should also provide conditions for students to develop a heightened sense of social responsibility, coupled with a passion for equality, justice, and freedom. Instead, as Chris Hedges notes, universities increasingly have become “a playground for corporate administrators [who] demand, like all who manage corporate systems of power, total obedience, Dissent. Freedom of expression. Critical thought. Moral outrage. These have no place in our corporate-indentured universities.” 

Columbia Law School – Human Rights Institute Statement from Human Rights Clinics and Centers on Students’ Right to Peaceful         Protest We write as human rights clinics and centers at law schools across the United States and beyond to stand with students exercising their fundamental human rights to expression, peaceful assembly, and association.      As clinics and centers, we share the educational mission of training students to engage in advocacy and critical debate on human rights; to protect and expand civic space; and to safeguard human rights defenders worldwide.      We are deeply concerned that many of our universities are undermining human rights by enlisting police forces to disperse and arrest nonviolent student protesters calling for Palestinian human rights. Available information indicates that at the time of this statement, police have arrested more than 700 students, faculty, and staff in response to on-campus protests across the country.(1).   We recognize the responsibility of university administrators to ensure the safety and well-being of diverse communities and the challenges they may face in doing so. We condemn antisemitic speech and harassment, just as we condemn anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim speech and harassment, wherever it occurs—and especially, as law school clinics and centers, on or near university campuses. However, repressive and violent measures against peaceful protesters are not the answer. The academic freedom and human rights of our communities must be protected.    In the past week, university administrators across the country have called on police forces (2) to disperse nonviolent student protests and encampments.(3) At times, police have used excessive force on students, including batons, tear gas, tasers, and rubber bullets.(4) For example, at Emerson, students reported being dragged, beaten, and shoved to the ground.(5) At both Columbia and New York University (NYU), the New York Police Department (NYPD) deployed its Strategic Response Group, a unit which the ACLU of New York has called to be disbanded for its “history of escalation and violence.”(6) Police have also arrested and harmed protest observers, who are essential for ensuring the safety of protestors.(7) At Columbia, police arrested two law students acting as legal observers.(8) At NYU, the NYPD reportedly pepper sprayed one student reporter,(9) while at the University of Texas a photojournalist was arrested.(10).    These alarming developments are the latest escalation in a wave of repression of student speech in support of Palestinian human rights. Across academic institutions, we are witnessing the chilling of speech and closing of civic space. University administrators have abruptly closed student common spaces when protests were planned;(11) canceled events for unspecified security concerns;(12) issued new interpretations and guidelines to expand restrictions on assembly;(13) and taken disciplinary measures based on non-transparent rules or regulations against students peacefully organizing.(14) Students have also raised concerns regarding university administrators’ failures to adequately protect those who have been doxxed for their protected free speech, even when students have faced threats of physical and sexual violence.(15) These actions call into question our universities’ commitment to respecting human rights. 

WA Students Say Gaza Encampment Has Been Most Valuable Part of Their Education A solidarity encampment in Washington State is continuing to press Western Washington University to divest from Israel. Police have forcibly dismantled Gaza solidarity encampments at universities across the U.S., including those in Columbia

 University, UC Berkeley and University of Michigan, yet the encampment at Western Washington University (WWU) in Bellingham, Washington, is still going strong.   Students constructed the encampment on May 14 after hearing university administrators’ disappointing response to a list of demands that students had submitted on May 3.

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?

Microplastics are Everywhere:  The Brockovich Report: Study Finds Microplastics In Testicles The Ongoing Contamination Of Our Bodies: New Study Finds Microplastics In Testicles Plus: Latest Federal Surveys Identifies Funding Challenges For Drinking Water Systems & More “Microplastics found in every human testicle in study” It’s another huge cause for concern. The story published in The Guardian details findings in a new study, published in the journal Toxicological Sciences. Scientists tested 23 human testes, as well as 47 testes from dogs. They found microplastic pollution in every sample. The researchers also said the discovery might correlate to declining sperm counts in men.  As a reminder: microplastics are tiny plastic particles measuring less than 5 mm in length. 

Energy Experts, Frontline Advocates Call On Biden to Stop LNG Exports for Good “You cannot say that tripling or quadrupling the level of exports from today’s record highs is not going to result in significant financial harm,” one expert said.

Black Liberation/Civil Rights:

Black Agenda Report

 Labor:

Economy:

World: The Biggest Obstacle to Free and Fair Elections in Venezuela is the US For all the hullabaloo about “free and fair elections” in Venezuela by the US government, its sycophantic corporate press deliberately ignores the elephant in the room – namely, the so-called sanctions designed to make life so miserable that the people will acquiesce to Washington’s plan for regime change.     As Foreign Policy puts it, “Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro values his political survival above his country’s economic well-being.” Translated from Washington-speak, the US government is blackmailing the Venezuelan electorate with, in the words of Foreign Policy, “the looming threat,” of continuing unilateral coercive measures unless they vote against the incumbent in the presidential election on July 28.

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    

SNAP Benefits Didn’t Cover Cost of a Meal in 98 Percent of US Counties in 2023 With the Farm Bill up for reauthorization, any cuts to SNAP would devastate families struggling with food insecurity. According to a new analysis conducted by the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C-based think tank specializing in economic and social policy research, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits did not cover the cost of a modestly-priced meal in 98% of United States counties last year.    This analysis, which was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, included data from 2023 and found the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual cost-of-living adjustment had little effect on the adequacy of SNAP benefits that year; researchers also discovered that in the last quarter of 2023 a “19% shortfall existed between the $3.37 cost of a moderately priced meal and SNAP’s average maximum benefit.”