Daily News Digest June 6, 2024
Images of the Day:
The 1%’s Choice for President: Twiddle Dumb and Twiddle Dumber
Corrupt Self-Perpetuating Military-Industrial Complex
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 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:
Podcasts/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
ACLU Plans Lawsuit Over Biden’s Trumpian Attack on Asylum Rights “It was illegal when Trump did it, and it is no less illegal now.” The ACLU on Tuesday vowed to launch a legal challenge to U.S. President Joe Biden’s executive order barring migrants who cross the southern border without authorization from receiving asylum. Biden’s executive action invokes Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act—previously used by the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump to deny migrants asylum—”when the southern border is overwhelmed.
Why do Palestinians always “Die” in the Passive Mood, But Israelis are Never Named as the Killers? Since the creation of Israel on Palestinian land in 1948 and even before then, Israel used language as an effective weapon against the Palestinians. This contributed to enabling Israel to impose its narrative and to shape a public opinion largely willing to accept its version of history without considering the Palestinian prospective. This wouldn’t have been possible without biased media willing to abandon the basic ethos of journalism such as neutrality and impartiality. Instead, opinions were inserted in news stories as facts and ideology triumphed over professionalism. One example of that is when the British daily newspaper, the Times published an article on May 11, 2024 about the death of the Israeli hostage, Nadav Popplewell, titled ‘British hostage dies amid fears of wider Gaza offensive.’ The title ignored two important facts. The first is that the announcement made by Hamas about the hostage said that he was killed by an Israeli air strike, which was corroborated by an article published by Al Jazeera. The Times concealed Israel’s culpability and spoke of this dual Israeli citizen solely as “British.” Failing to mention that he was an Israeli makes it sound as if he was captured because he was British.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
U.S. Supported War for Terrorism: Israel Is Trapping Tens of Thousands Who Need Medical Evacuation in Gaza Over 10,000 cancer patients are trapped in Gaza, with all pedestrian crossings now closed. Tens of thousands of Palestinians who are in dire need of medical evacuation or care that is no longer available in Gaza are trapped in the strip, aid groups are reporting, with Gaza’s last pedestrian border crossing having been closed for a month and Israel blocking cancer and other patients from leaving the region. Since May 7, Israel has been blocking all medical evacuations from Gaza while also escalating its famine, bombing and forced displacement campaign, creating scores of complex medical cases that can’t be treated due to Israel’s destruction of the health care system in Gaza.
Columbia Law Review Refused to Take Down Article on Palestine, So Its Board of Directors Nuked the Whole Website The students who edit the journal sought out the article by a Palestinian scholar who was censored by Harvard Law Review last year. Last November, the Harvard Law Review made the unprecedented decision to kill a fully edited essay prior to publication. The author, human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah, was to be the first Palestinian legal scholar published in the prestigious journal. As The Intercept reported at the time, Eghbariah’s essay — an argument for establishing “Nakba,” the expulsion, dispossession, and oppression of Palestinians, as a formal legal concept that widens its scope — faced extraordinary editorial scrutiny and eventual censorship. When the Harvard publication spiked his article, editors from another Ivy League law school reached out to Eghbariah. Students from the Columbia Law Review solicited a new article from the scholar and, upon receiving it, decided to edit it and prepare it for publication.
Israel’s Little Reported War in the West Bank While opposing Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza, we should not forget another aspect of Israel’s genocidal project: the growing violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. Since Israel’s capture of the West Bank in the 1967 war, the area has been under direct military control. Over time, Israeli settlers have moved into the West Bank and East Jerusalem and, with backing of the military, are pushing Palestinians (who have no rights) from their lands, taking their water, burning down their olive trees and killing them. These actions violate international law concerning occupied territories and are backed by the United States and other Western powers. The extent of this war has been little reported in the mainstream media. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, since October 7, Israel has killed 516 Palestinians in the West Bank. When Israel launched its war in Gaza on October 7, it also mobilised thousands of military reservists from among Israeli settlers in the West Bank, to impose “wide-ranging restrictions on Palestinians, blocking the exits from their communities and barring Palestinian workers from entering Israel or the settlements,” reported the New York Times. This has increased the economic hardships on Palestinians.
Report: Vast Majority of Children Under 5 in Gaza Going Full Days Without Food Since Israel began its Rafah invasion, the amount of aid entering the region has dropped by two-thirds. The vast majority of children under the age of 5 in Gaza are regularly forced to go at least one full day without eating as Israel’s manufactured famine has intensified in recent weeks, aid groups have reported. According to a food survey conducted by humanitarian aid groups in May, 85 percent of children under 5 were deprived of food at least one day over a three day period. Official death counts reported by Gaza’s government do not include deaths by starvation; at least 30 children have been recorded starving to death in Gaza so far.
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?
In an Act Exposing That Capitalism Choses Ecocide! — The Empire Strikes Back!: Nearly Half of Journalists Covering Climate Crisis Globally Received Threats for Their Work! Groundbreaking new research also reports that 11% of surveyed have faced physical violence in their reporting Nearly half of journalists covering climate crisis globally received threats for their work. Groundbreaking new research also reports that 11% of surveyed have faced physical violence in their reporting Almost four out of every 10 journalists covering the climate crisis and environment issues have been threatened as a result of their work, with 11% subjected to physical violence, according to groundbreaking new research. A global survey of more than 740 reporters and editors from 102 countries found that 43% of those threatened “sometimes” or “frequently” were targeted by people engaged in illegal activities such as logging and mining. Some 30%, meanwhile, were threatened with legal action – reflecting a growing trend towards corporations and governments deploying the judicial system to muzzle free speech.
Oceans Face ‘Triple Threat’ of Extreme Heat, Oxygen Loss and Acidification Third of world’s ocean surface particularly vulnerable to threats driven by burning fossil fuel and deforestation, new research finds The world’s oceans are facing a “triple threat” of extreme heating, a loss of oxygen and acidification, with extreme conditions becoming far more intense in recent decades and placing enormous stress upon the planet’s panoply of marine life, new research has found. About a fifth of the world’s ocean surface is particularly vulnerable to the three threats hitting at once, spurred by human activity such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, the study found. In the top 300 meters of affected ocean, these compound events now last three times longer and are six times more intense than they were in the early 1960s, the research states.
Climate Change Worsens the Migration Crisis in Latin America More and more Latin Americans and Caribbeans migrate due to natural disasters, environmental degradation and the adverse impacts of climate change. In 2021 alone, more than 1.6 million new disaster displacements were recorded in the Americas. By 2050, the most pessimistic scenarios estimate that Latin America will have 17 million climate migrants. In parallel, between 1998 and 2020, climate and geophysical phenomena caused 312,000 deaths and directly affected more than 277 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the WMO. Against this backdrop, an event at the Latin American and Caribbean pavilion at COP28 explored new measures to adapt to climate change and migration policies to ensure that migratory flows in the region are orderly, safe and contribute to economic growth.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
The Incentives of Private Prisons A common criticism of private prisons is that they encourage the firms running them to cut services, programming, and training, since cutting costs maximizes profit, and the resulting increases in recidivism actually help keep prisons full and the payments coming in. This is not, however, a problem with privatization per se, but rather with the contracts the state chooses to write. If the state were to impose different contract terms—terms that were tied to successful results, not just to the number of people held—then private firms would have an incentive to focus on improving the outcomes of the people held in their facilities. Two prisons, one in Australia and the other in New Zealand, have adopted contracts along these lines in recent years. While there have certainly been some initial struggles, these prisons suggest that contracts that encourage private firms to focus directly on reducing recidivism are feasible–and in fact may be easier to implement for private prisons than for public ones.
Cynthia Teniente-Matson President, San José State University [email protected] . . .
Dear President Teniente-Matson and colleagues:
We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our grave concern at the decision of the San José State University (SJSU) administration to suspend Professor Sang Hea Kil of the Department of Justice Studies from all faculty duties. There is good reason to believe that this action constitutes an egregious violation of Professor Kil’s academic freedom as well as of her right to free speech.
Labor:
Nigerian Unions Shut Down National Grid and Airports as Indefinite Strike Begins Electricity substations shut down, flights suspended and parliament gates blocked in protest over minimum wage Nigeria’s main labour unions have shut down the national grid, disrupted airline operations and blocked the gates to parliament as they began an indefinite strike over the government’s failure to agree a minimum wage. A minimum wage of N30,000 (£15) a month, agreed in 2019, expired this April. The unions are asking for an increase to N494,000 (£257).
Economy:
Citybank Robberons:
A Former Exec at Citibank Raises Alarm Bells in Federal Court Over Failed Risk Controls Inside the Bank Kathleen Martin, a former Managing Director at Citigroup’s federally-insured bank, Citibank N.A., has sued the bank and her former boss, Anand Selva, in federal court in Manhattan. According to Martin’s lawsuit, she was hired for the express purpose of making sure that Citibank complied with a Consent Order from a federal banking regulator. Instead, Martin alleges, she was fired in retaliation for refusing to file false information with that regulator.
World:
Education, Health, 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