Daily News Digest July 11, 2024
Images of the Day:
Zionist Goal: Eretz Yisrael the Mystical Land of Israel
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’s Gluttony is Demonstrated by It’s Quest for More and More Profits at the Expense of Humanity! 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 6 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 Five Horsemen of the the Apocalypse, Spreading Racism, War, Famine, Pestilence, Death, and Misinformation! 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:
Zionism: Jewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews (Hebrew: Eretz Yisraʾel, “the Land of Israel”). Though Zionism originated in eastern and central Europe in the latter part of the 19th century, it is in many ways a continuation of the ancient attachment of the Jews and of the Jewish religion to the historical region of Palestine, where one of the hills of ancient Jerusalem was called Zion.
No one denies that terrible things happen in the world, but the standard response of liberals and conservatives is that famine, plague, and war are natural problems that can never be eliminated. Human suffering is tragic, but unavoidable. The poor – and the sick, and the hungry, and the prematurely dead – will always be with us. Garry Leech disagrees. In Capitalism: A Structural Genocide, he argues that “structural violence [is] inherent in the capitalist system” and that “it results in death on a genocidal scale, thereby constituting a class-based genocide that targets the poor, particularly in the global south.” By structural violence, Leech means damage to humans caused by “the deprivation of people’s basic needs as a result of the existing social structures.” Obvious examples include hunger or disease caused by food and medicine being too expensive or kept off the market for business reasons. When such violence leads to large numbers of deaths, he argues, we must call it structural genocide. – Capitalism: A Structural Genocide Book Review:
Vide0s 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 : My own Government, I cannot be Silent. ― Martin Luther King Jr.
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! — Roland Sheppard, My Forefathers and The 1%’s Forefathers
Ted Rall: Most Likely to Protect Democracy
Stop the ‘Lesser of Two Evils’ Syndrome Liberals vote Democrat. Conservatives vote Republican. Most progressives vote Democrat. So has it been. That landscape is changing. This election debate revolves around “lesser of evils” as always, but the presidential candidates are more unpopular than ever. What issues matter most? Greater possibility for world war with nuclear weapons. Mother Earth enraged. Racism and inequality. Republican attacks on women, especially women’s health and right to control their own bodies? If I were not white, I might choose equality vs: racism as my first priority. Combating racism has certainly been number one for me even though I am white. Yet I also place war as number one, because the US’s endemic structure is rooted in war and racism-genocide under the banners of American Exceptionalism/Manifest Destiny/Monroe Doctrine.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
Patrick Lawrence: Netanyahu Goes for Broke It is a matter of record that the Zionist project has had extensive territorial designs on the lands known as Palestine since at least the early 20th century. As others have argued, the Israelis’ openly racist assault on the Palestinians of Gaza is to be understood not as a sudden eruption of violence, a departure, but as an especially savage continuation of Zionist conduct for more than a century. When history is brought to bear in this fashion, it becomes increasingly apparent that the invasion of Gaza since the events of last Oct. 7 ought not be seen in isolation. The more pathologically disturbed members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s freak-show regime — notably, but not only, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben–Givr, the finance and national security ministers — have never been shy on this point. They are entirely dedicated to the restoration of Eretz Yisrael, the mystical Land of Israel, which, variously interpreted through the ages, could extend at the extreme from the Red Sea all the way to the Euphrates Valley.
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’!
We Must Hold These Monsters to Account!
War is the Priority—Not the Environment!: ‘Climate Caught in Crossfire’ as NATO Emissions Surged Last Year “By 2030, we have to make a radical cut in emissions,” an author said. “Military spending… isn’t just not addressing the problem, but actually worsening the problem.” The militaries of North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries emitted an estimated 233 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2023, a sharp uptick that exacerbates climate breakdown and serves only to enrich weapons manufacturers, according to a briefing issued Monday by the Transnational Institute, a research and advocacy organization, and several other nonprofits. The 32 national militaries together emitted more carbon than the country of Colombia, which has a population of about 52 million people, the briefing says. NATO countries’ military spending increased from about $1.21 trillion in 2022 to $1.34 trillion in 2023, thanks in part to the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine. TNI used a spend-emission conversion factor to estimate the carbon cost of the spending.
Result of Labour Victory: Climate Expert Chris Stark Appointed to Lead UK Clean Energy Taskforce ‘Mission control centre’ to work with energy companies and regulators towards goal of clean and cheaper power by 2030. Labour has appointed one of the country’s foremost climate experts to lead a “mission control centre” on clean energy. Chris Stark, the former head of the UK’s climate watchdog, will head a Covid vaccine-style taskforce aimed at delivering clean and cheaper power by 2030. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said the centre would work with energy companies and regulators and would be the first of its kind in Whitehall, following Keir Starmer’s plan for mission-driven government.
‘Historic Victory’: Ecuadorian Judge Rules Pollution Violates River’s Rights The court ordered the city of Quito to clean up the Machángara River, citing the rights of nature enshrined in Ecuador’s Constitution. Environmentalists around the world this week cheered what they called a “historic” ruling by an Ecuadorian court that human-caused pollution violates the rights of a river running through the capital city of Quito. Responding to an application for a protective action filed by the Kitu Kara Indigenous people, a Quito judge on Friday found that municipal authorities are responsible for violating the Machángara River’s rights and ordered officials to devise a decontamination plan.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Extreme Inequality Is a Threat to Free Speech If money is speech, then speech isn’t free. Iwas a student in the late 2000s when I had my first brush with “cancel culture.” A campus group had invited Nick Griffin — a racist Holocaust denier and leader of a fascist British political party, among other charming things — to speak. Many shocked students, including me, called Griffin’s views vile and warned that violent extremists might come to support him. Eventually, the group rethought the invitation and canceled the event. Thank heavens. No one’s speech had been denied. Others had simply exercised their own. Yet a few short years later, campus protests like these became a bete noire for right-wing politicians, who produced countless diatribes against “woke mobs” and the “free speech crisis” on campus. Then, with ample backing from well heeled donors, they launched an actual war on speech, on campus and beyond. Protest has never been a threat to speech — it is free speech. What we’ve learned is that the real threat is inequality. Consider this spring’s campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza and U.S. support for it. Conservative politicians who’d thrown fits over free speech on campus cheered as police officers roughed up and arrested student protesters. Some even called to deploy the National Guard, which infamously murdered four Kent State students during the Vietnam era. Meanwhile billionaire CEOs like Bill Ackman led campaigns to out students who’d participated in the protests and blacklist them from employment.
The World War on Asylum From Mexico to the Mediterranean, rich countries would rather see refugees die than recognize their legal asylum rights. WHEN PEOPLE TOLD aid worker Fayad Mulla that as soon as asylum seekers land on Greek soil, they’re immediately chased by groups of “masked men” assigned to kidnap them, Mulla found it hard to lend the stories credence. Reports and rumors about black ops by Greek authorities have floated around for years, but the idea of state-sanctioned thugs running around beating migrants, throwing them in the trunks of cars, and forcing them back onto boats was too much for Mulla to believe. “It’s a European Union country,” he told an interviewer from the BBC, explaining his skepticism. That changed when he caught it on tape.
Labor:
Guaranteeing Labor for the Slave Labor Prisons: There’s a Junk Science Crisis in Criminal Convictions. Sonia Sotomayor Calls it Out in Alabama Bite-Mark Case. While the court refused to review the 1985 case of Charles McCrory, Sotomayor urged states to pass laws to help exonerate people imprisoned on debunked forensic evidence. Is there a constitutional right not to be convicted based on junk science? For years, the U.S. Supreme Court has failed to directly grapple with that question — so much so that Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently said that Congress and state legislatures should tackle the problem now instead of waiting on the courts to fix it.
Sleep Deprivation is a Form of Torture! Fighting for the Right To Sleep in Prison Michael Garrett sued the Texas Department of Criminal Justice more than a decade ago, and he’s working from inside to keep the case alive. Michael Garrett had been incarcerated since 1994 and had suffered nightly, unable to get any real rest for nearly 20 years before he decided to sue the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). He told his mother he was going to change the system. He would stand against policies that forced people to choose between necessities like sleep, breakfast, or clean clothes. He had a high school diploma, and he had wanted to be a lawyer when he was younger. He felt he had the skills and experience to advocate for himself and othersHe remembers telling his mom that by the end of his efforts, the prison system might actually thank him. Today, he laughs as he recalls her response: “No way in hell.” In March 2013, Garrett filed a federal lawsuit against TDCJ while he was housed at the McConnell Unit in South Texas. The suit said the prison’s 24-hour schedule was so packed and security checks so frequent that people inside were only being allowed about four hours of sleep per night, and even those were interrupted. The result is prolonged sleep deprivation that he says is damaging his health and violates his Eighth Amendment rights, which protect against cruel and unusual punishment. Michael Garrett sued the Texas Department of Criminal Justice more than a decade ago, and he’s working from inside to keep the case alive.
Economy:
During the 2008 Financial Crisis, While the Government Bailed Out the “Too Big to Fail” Wall Street, It Did Not Bail Out FICA!:
The Fund Created to Unwind a Failing Megabank Has a Problem: There’s No Money in It Last week the American Banker published an opinion article by Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr., the Professor Emeritus of Law at George Washington University. Wilmarth is the man who wrote the seminal book on the continuing threat to financial stability posed by U.S. megabanks – the same ones that blew up Wall Street and the U.S. economy in 2008. The title of Wilmarth’s article (paywall) is: “The FDIC’s resolution plan for failed megabanks is an empty promise.” The thrust of the article is this: the Dodd-Frank Act was passed by Congress and signed into law in 2010 – 14 years ago. One of its primary goals was to prevent taxpayers from having to rescue megabanks, as occurred in 2008. A key component of that goal is Title II of Dodd-Frank, which provides an Orderly Resolution Plan to unwind failing megabanks that does not require taxpayer or Federal Reserve bailouts. That Plan, in turn, requires a giant pool of instantly available cash, which Dodd-Frank calls the Orderly Liquidation Fund or OLF.
World:
Remembering the Complicity of French Imperialism in the Rwandan Genocide 30 Years On Three decades ago, between April and July 1994, the Rwandan government organised the extermination of almost 1 million people belonging to the Tutsi ethnic group. This genocide was aided and abetted by the French government, which both financed and armed those responsible, often referred to as ‘génocidaires’. But still, to this day, the French ruling class has not fully and openly recognized its responsibility for one of the most monstrous crimes of French imperialism.
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