Daily News Digest October 8, 2024
Images of the Day:
UN Issues Recommendations for Universities Regarding Free Speech at Palestine Solidarity Protests
Td Rall: Trump Out to Destroy Democracy 
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”There is No Democracy! When Less Than 1% Control the Wealth, Production, and Price of Everything Produced and Consumed in the World! In the present period of unfettered Capitalism, the pretense of democratic rule does not exist, except in the minds of ‘socialists’ like Bernie Sanders and the Labor Bureaucracy! Capitalists view all struggles as struggles against capitalist rule! Transition demands immediately become revolutionary demands! Therefore, any resistence to the attack of capitalists has to be organized by those that understand this! 
Today, the United States Capitalists are Consolidating Themselves as the Supreme Capitalists! 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:
From summer into fall, SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 virus, ran up another epidemiological spike just as the feds sunset their pandemic control program. While the virus continues along a loop of boom and bust repeatedly reset by its capacity for evolutionary escape, putting people in the hospital and out of work at a steady clip, U.S. officials and well-connected epidemiologists have abandoned public health in both practice and concept. —Experts Sow Confusion About State of COVID Pandemic Amid Another Serious Wave
The Chris Hedges Report: Burn the Planet and Lock Up the Dissidents The fossil fuel industry, and the politician class they own, have no intention of halting the ecocide. As the climate crisis worsens, so do the laws and security measures to keep us in bondage. Norfolk, U.K. — I am sitting with Roger Hallam, his gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, in the visitor’s room at HM Prison Wayland. On the walls are large photographs of families picnicking on lawns, verdant meadows and children playing. The juxtaposition of the photographs, no doubt hung to give the prison visiting room a homey feel, is jarring. There is no escaping, especially with prison guards circulating around us, where we are. Roger and I sit on squat upholstered chairs and face each other across from a low, white plastic table. Roger’s lanky frame tries to adjust to furniture designed to accommodate children. Roger, one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, is serving a five-year prison sentence for “causing a public nuisance without reasonable excuse.”
Meta Is Aggressively Censoring Criticism Of US-Israeli Warmongering
My Enemy Is Not Iran. My Enemy Is The Western Empire. My enemies are the western imperialists and their Israeli partners in crime who are inflicting a waking nightmare upon the middle east and working to start a massive new war of unfathomable horror.
Never Let Your Government Tell You Who Your Enemies Are Our real enemies are in Washington and London and Tel Aviv. In Berlin and Paris and Canberra. In secretive government agencies in the state of Virginia, and in imperial propaganda institutions in New York and Hollywood.
The Western Media Helped Create These Horrors In The Middle East
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.
As Bombs Drop, Weapons Industry Stocks Take Off One wonders how the executives of these companies feel about their products being used for mass slaughter in Gaza and dangerous escalation in Lebanon. It’s a sad but familiar spectacle — as people die at the hands of U.S. weapons in a faraway war zone, the stock prices of arms makers like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin soar. A piece posted yesterday at Forbes tells the tale: “Defense Stocks Hit All-Time Highs Amidst Mideast Escalation.”
United States Armed and Funded Middle East War/Palestinan Genocide:
France Asserts Itself Against Netanyahu Over Lebanon: Macron Calls for Arms Embargo Against Israel In a radio interview with France Inter on Saturday, French president Emmanuel Macron called for an arms embargo against Israel over its ongoing attacks on Gaza and now Lebanon.
The Top 10 Things Israel did to Gaza before October 7, 2023
- In 1947-48, the Haganah and other militias of the Jewish community settled in British colonial Palestine against the wishes of the indigenous population declared war both on the British authorities and on the Palestinians, seeking to establish a state.
- The Israelis also stole the lands of the people of Gaza stretching toward Negev — their orange orchards and date palms. The Israeli conquests created Gaza as a “Strip,” detached from its economic hinterland and cut off from its markets in Akka, Tyre, and Bethlehem. Brides in Bethlehem used to use brightly colored cloth loomed in Gaza for their wedding gowns. Now Gaza became an economic basket case.
- Egypt jointly administered the Gaza Strip with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, putting the population on welfare since its economy no longer worked because it had been surrounded by Israel and it was burdened with hundreds of thousands of penniless refugees. The Palestinians of Gaza became stateless in 1948.
- Ben Gurion and some other Israeli leaders were ambitious to expand Israeli territory at the expense of neighbors, eyeing southern Lebanon, Egypt’s Sinai, and the Palestinian occupied territories.
- The Israeli military plotted all through the 1960s to find a way to occupy the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights. …
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!
Extraordinary October Heat Wave Scorches the West Through the Weekend
Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa Week beginning on September 29, 2024: 421.95 ppm. Weekly value from 1 year ago:418.35 ppm. eekly value from 10 years ago:395.61 ppm. Last updated: October 06, 2024
As the Waters Rise, A Two-Year Sentence for Throwing Soup. That’s the Farcical Reality of British Justice Why do the mass killers of the fossil fuel industry walk free while the heroes trying to stop them are imprisoned? The sentences were handed down just as Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina. As homes were smashed, trucks swept down roads that had turned into rivers and residents were killed, in the placid setting of Southwark crown court two young women from Just Stop Oil, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, were sentenced to two years and 20 months, respectively, for throwing tomato soup at the glass protecting Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. No prison terms have been handed to the people whose companies deliver climate breakdown, causing the deaths of many thousands and destruction valued not at the £10,000 estimated by the court in damage to the painting’s frame but trillions.
Can You Afford Climate Change? Consumer pocketbooks are taking the heat. Climate change is no longer a theoretical issue that will happen at some distant point in the future, like 2050 or 2100. Already, unprecedented climate change is happening on a regular basis and clobbering the American capitalistic system via consumer pocketbooks. People can’t afford ordinary life. They’re priced out of the market. Everything is getting more expensive by the year, every year. “We’re no longer in a world where climate change affects the economy, or where voters prioritizing economic or inflationary concerns are responding to something distinct from climate change—we’re in a world where climate change is the economy.”(Source: Everything’s About to Get a Hell of a Lot More Expensive Due to Climate Change, Wired, June 22, 2024). According to Uncle Sam: “Already, over half of U.S. counties – home to millions of Americans – face heightened future exposure to at least one of the three climate hazards described in this report: flooding, wildfire, or extreme heat.” (Source: The Impact of Climate Change on American Household Finances, U.S. Department of the Treasury, September 29, 2023)
Concerns Raised About Toxic Exposure in Aftermath of Helene Floodwaters “All of these rivers should be treated as hazmat sites,” a local official in western North Carolina said.
Exported Gas Produces Far Worse Emissions Than Coal, Major Study Finds Research challenges idea that sending liquefied natural gas around the world is cleaner alternative to burning coal
The Panama Canal Is Running Out of Water. Thousands May Be Displaced to Fix It. A proposed dam and reservoir along the Rio Indio could replenish the canal, but at a steep cost to local communities.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Finally Free, Assange Receives a Measure of Justice From the Council of Europe In his first public statement since his release, Assange said, “I’m free today … because I pled guilty to journalism.” The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Europe’s foremost human rights body, overwhelmingly adopted a resolution on October 2 formally declaring WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a political prisoner. The Council of Europe, which represents 64 nations, expressed deep concern at the harsh treatment suffered by Assange, which has had a “chilling effect” on journalists and whistleblowers around the world. In the resolution, PACE notes that many of the leaked files WikiLeaks published “provide credible evidence of war crimes, human rights abuses, and government misconduct.” The revelations also “confirmed the existence of secret prisons, kidnappings and illegal transfers of prisoners by the United States on European soil.”
Killing Field 5: A Journey Through the American Prison Introduction Are you ready for a gut-busting, eye-opening read that will leave you questioning the very fabric of the American justice system? Look no further than “Killing Field 5,” the latest installment in the explosive series that lifts the lid on the dark underbelly of the US prison system. Author and former inmate, Syed MD, draws on his own harrowing experiences behind bars to expose the shocking truth about deliberate medical negligence, religious persecution, and the corrupt, money-grabbing agenda of prosecutors and judges. Get ready to have your mind blown and your heart broken as you discover the reality of life behind bars in the land of the free. But don’t take our word for it, pick up a copy and join the fight for judicial reform today!
Labor:
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics Interim Commentary October 4, 2024
Setting the Stage for the Imminent Review-Preview Special Reports on U.S. Inflation and the Economy, Pre-Pandemic to Date:
- Michigan’s Full-Month Survey of September 2024 Consumer Sentiment Continued 30.6% (-30.6%) Shy of Ever Recovering Its February 2020 Pre-Pandemic Peak Level
- Such Also Confirmed That Actual U.S. Economic Activity Has Yet to Recover Its Pre-Pandemic Level, With Actual U.S. CPI Inflation Likely Running Well Above Its Headlined August 2024 Annual Pace of 2.53%
- Headline September U-3 Unemployment Notched Lower, From 4.2% to 4.1%, With the Broader Headline Measures Holding Steady at High Levels, Reflecting Increasing Counts of Discouraged Workers
- Headline Gold Prices Continue to Support the ShadowStats Alternate CPI Inflation Level, Versus the Much Lower Headline CPI
- Beware the Quality of Unusually Happy, Pre-Election Economic or Inflation Headlines
- Extended Details Follow in the Imminently Pending Review-Preview Inflation and Economic Commentaries in the Two Weeks Ahead Setting the Stage for the Imminent Review-Preview
- Special Reports on U.S. Inflation and the Economy, Pre-Pandemic to Date
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Latest September 2024 ShadowStats Alternate Inflation Is Consistent With Gold at $2,838 per Troy Ounce Unfolding: An Intensifying, Hyperinflationary U.S. conomic Depression
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Unemployment – September 2024 Note: The September Unemployment Numbers Are Posted in Today’s Accompanying Alternate Data File September 2024 U.3 narrowed from 4.22% in August to 4.05% September U.6 narrowed from 7.85% to 7.67% September ShadowStats Alternate held at 26.7%, based on the “BLS” continuous retirement of “Discouraged Workers” who no longer fit BLS definitions.
Chief Bankster!: For Whom the Buck Stops!
A Bank Regulator Provides a Frightening Look at the Trading Casino Jamie Dimon Has Built Inside His Federally-Insured Bank On September 24, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released its Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities for the second quarter of this year. The OCC is the federal regulator of banks that operate across state lines, which are known as “national banks.” The shorthand for this report should be the “Casino Report.” Increasingly, the report showcases how much dangerous trading activity the brokerage firms on Wall Street have been able to muscle into their federally-insured banking units where the deposits of millions of average Americans reside. Since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 under the Bill Clinton administration, Wall Street trading firms have been allowed to combine with federally-insured banks – creating an endless series of crises and bailouts.
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