Daily News Digest May 31, 2024

Daily News Digest Archives 

Images of the Day: 

Latuff: Rafah Invasion

Bendib: Unconditional Surrender

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 of Capitalism was Under the Banner of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity! Now There is  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:

It is important to point out that the same cast of cyber-bullies has run an operation against American universities under the rubric of “Canary Mission,” in coordination with the inquisitorial Ministry of Strategic Affairs. headed by the American Ron Dermer. So reported James Bamford in The Nation. Canary Mission smears and doxes students and professors at American universities who stand for Palestinian rights in an attempt to interfere with their careers and for the purpose of intimidating them and others into silence.    Both operations are Israeli government-inspired but aided by local agents. Despite the US federal law, FARA, which requires agents of foreign governments to register, Israeli such agents have been exempted from such requirements for political reasons, including Canary Mission and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. — Israel’s Stalking Operation against the ICC is Mirrored in its Canary Mission Attack on US Universities

Podcasts/Videos of the Day:

PFAS Cover-Up: How 3M Hid Risks of Forever Chemicals & “Gaslit” Scientist Who Tried to Sound Alarm 

“This Is a Crime”: Ken Roth on Israel’s Secret War Targeting the ICC to Derail War Crimes Charges 

Black Agenda Radio May 24, 2024

Repression of Palestine Solidarity at Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Part 2

International Criminal Court Action Falls Short in Addressing Israeli War Crimes

Biden Struggles in the 2024 Presidential Election

 

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 

From the Viewpoint of  United States Capitalism, There Is No World Law and Order — It Only Recognizes Pax Americana

Biden’s ‘Red Line’ is a Line Drawn With Palestinian Blood!:  Joe Biden’s Deceptive-Declaration Zigs & Deadly-Deed Zags As the keynote speaker at Morehouse College in Atlanta last week, Joe Biden listened to the class Valedictorian’s call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The President nodded and applauded with others in the assembly. In contrast, he had just approved another billion dollars in killer weapons for the genocidal Netanyahu regime to blow up what’s left of the Death Camps in Gaza. “Stop it, stop it now, Joe,” declared his wife, Dr. Jill Biden months ago. 

Newsflash:  Inequality in Neoliberal America If anyone is perplexed or surprised  why Americans are so upset about the economy, they should look no further than the Income Distribution and Dynamics in America (IDDA) recent report by the Federal Reserve Board of  Minneapolis and its data site that looks at the stagnation of American income and economic mobility in America.  It unfortunately confirms what we already know—the neoliberal state benefits unevenly and in ways that confound an ability to challenge it.    America is built upon two myths, the myth of equality and the myth of the American dream. The myth of equality is the idea that we all have an equal opportunity to succeed.  The American dream is the idea that by hard work, perseverance, and a little bit of luck, anybody can work themselves out of poverty and potentially become rich.   Yet we already knew from previous studies that neo-liberal economic policies have produced a gap between the rich and poor in America from the 1970s to the present that has largely benefited upper-income levels.  We also knew that economic mobility has largely stagnated.

Creating an All-American Homeland Security Campus The academic year that just ended left America’s college campuses in quite a state: with snipers on the rooftops and checkpoints at the gates; quads overrun by riot squads, state troopers, and federal agents; and even the scent of gunpowder in the air.    In short, in the spring semester of 2024, many of our campuses came to resemble armed camps.     What’s more, alongside such brute displays of force, there have been congressional inquisitions into constitutionally protected speech; federal investigations into the movement for divestment; and students suspended, evicted, and expelled, not to speak of faculty disciplined or simply dismissed.     Welcome to Repress U., class of 2024: a homeland security campus for the ages.

‘Higher Education” as Part of the Military Industrial Complex: A California University Reveals Its Ties to Israel’s Genocide in Gaza The release of previously withheld UCSB military contracts constitutes a win for the the Central Coast Antiwar Coalition and the UCSB Liberated Zone encampment. At long last, on May 20, 2024, the University of California at Santa Barbara, in response to a 2021 California Public Records Act request, finally released copies of its 2016-2021 military contracts with weapons manufacturers. Amid campus “Let Gaza Live” worker walkouts and encampments, UCSB revealed contracts with Israel’s weapons suppliers General Dynamics and Boeing, as well as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman–companies ensconced in nearby Goleta’s “infra-red valley” where engineers design the military eyeballs of fighter jets and night-vision goggles for soldiers to see darkness as daylight for nighttime surveillance.    The release of previously withheld UCSB military contracts constitutes a win for the the Central Coast Antiwar Coalition and the UCSB Liberated Zone encampment, whose supporters confronted administrators at UCSB’s Cheadle Hall to demand the university fulfill its legal obligation to comply with CPRA, as well as disclose UCSB’s financial portfolio, divest from holdings in military contractors and companies profiting from Israel’s occupation and genocide, and sever UCSB military contracts for weapons research and development.

US-Backed Camps in Northeast Syria Are Holding 29,000 Children in Detention Amnesty International reports that detainees are “being arbitrarily and indefinitely detained and forcibly disappeared.”

U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:

Israel Dropped US-Made Boeing Bombs in Rafah Tent Camp Massacre International condemnation of the attack hasn’t stopped Biden from supporting Israel.

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?

There is No Transitional Program to Stop Global Warming!: Capitalism Can’t Overcome the Laws of Physics  You can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet. That should be a commonplace idea. And that inevitably means facing up to the necessity of putting an end to capitalism in favor of an economic system of rationality, sustainability and equity for all the world’s peoples.      It can’t be said too many times that the concept of “green capitalism” is a chimera.    Unfortunately, belief in that chimera is not limited to the world’s center-left political parties; it extends to the world’s Green parties.     Various “Green New Deal” programs have been floated in recent years, generally revolving around a massive buildout of renewable-energy infrastructure and strengthening the social safety net. On their own, there is no rational argument that such programs, should they materialize, would not provide some benefits. But how transformative are such programs?     Here is where “green capitalism” rapidly falls apart. Liberal assertions that a transition to a green economy will be virtually cost-free are unrealistic. The costs of a transition to a greener economy are much less than the costs will be of continuing business as usual — how much will a three-meter rise in the sea level and massive disruptions to agriculture cost? — but the need to transition millions of employees to new employment, retrofit or replace transportation systems, adjust to new trade patterns and have access to less energy shouldn’t be minimized.      And the infrastructure to build solar panels, windmills and all else will use large amounts of resources, including toxic “rare earth” minerals.   Renewable energy, although vital if we are to have a future, isn’t a shortcut to reversing global warming.

Black Liberation/Civil Rights:

Black Agenda Report

 Labor:

Economy:

Academic Study Provides Hard Numbers to the Sick, Revolving Door Culture at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Citigroup On January 18, 2019 the Cambridge University Press published a stunning research paper from the Journal of Institutional Economics. The paper provides the hard numbers to support the thesis that federal banking and securities regulators have arrived at a deep understanding and acceptance that the more connections they acquire while working in government and the more prominent their position becomes – the fatter their future paycheck will be once they make the leap to a megabank on Wall Street.

World:

South Africa: Hanging On South Africa has a general election today with 28m citizens registered to vote.  Since the end of the apartheid regime three decades ago, the African National Congress (ANC) has won all the elections with substantial majorities.  But this time there is the possibility that the ANC will poll less than 50% of those voting.   The loss of the ANC majority, if it happens, will not be due to any increase in the vote share of the main opposition party, the mainly white-led liberal Democratic Congress (DC), whose strength is concentrated in Cape province.  The DC’s vote share is stuck at about 23%, more or less the same as in the last election in 2019.   The potential loss of votes by the ANC is to two supposedly more radical parties, split-offs from the ANC. First, there is the party of ex-President Jacob Zuma called uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) that is polling about 10% and would take votes away from the ANC in the eastern Zulu heartlands.  Zuma has been indicted for corruption and abuse of power when president.    The real worry for the ANC and behind them, South Africa’s business elite, is the rise of Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).  The EFF appeals to younger voters with its program to strip land from the wealthy, seize assets from the mining companies and spend the proceeds on education, free WiFi and electricity and 24-hour doctors’ clinics.  Both the MK and the EFF are showing around 11% of the vote in the opinion polls.     Why is there the possibility that the ANC, the party of South Africa’s overwhelming black majority with the historic legacy of Nelson Mandela, will poll less than 50% of the vote for the first time?  When I covered the 2019 election in a post, I wrote that “In those 25 years, the majority have not seen any startling improvement in their living standards, education, health and public services.  Indeed, for many, particularly young blacks, things are even worse.  Inequality of incomes, wealth and land is extreme; corruption in government and in the party of the black majority, the African National Congress (ANC), is rife.” 

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    

Bird Flu Testing Isn’t Reaching the Farmworkers Who Face High-Risk Exposure Just 40 Bird Flu Testing Isn’t Reaching the Farmworkers Who Face High-Risk Exposure Just 40 people connected to US dairy farms had been tested for the virus as of May 22, according to federal officials.people connected to US dairy farms had been tested for the virus as of May 22, according to federal officials. Farmworkers face some of the most intense exposures to the bird flu virus, but advocates say many of them would lack resources to fall back on if they became ill.    So far, only two people in the United States have tested positive after being exposed to a wave of bird flu spreading among cows. Those people, dairy farm workers in Texas and Michigan, experienced eye irritation.   Scientists warn the virus could mutate to spread from person to person like the seasonal flu, which could spark a pandemic. By keeping tabs on farmworkers, researchers could track infections, learn how dangerous they are, and be alerted if the virus becomes more infectious.

Factory Farms Cause Pandemics! From: The United States National Center for Biotechnology Information of the Institue of Health’s Essay Primary Pandemic Prevention: 

How Many Animals are Factory-Farmed?