Daily News Digest October 15, 2024
Images of the Day:
Ted Rall: Climate Change Believes in You
The Declining U.S Dollar!: Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Purchasing Power of the Consumer Dollar in U.S. City Average is $31.70. ( Index 1982-1984= $1.00)
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:
When a flood carries off a father or hurricane winds collapse a wall which crushes a child, providing money for relief is “complicated” and victims must be patient. The bourgeois politicians and media mouthpieces call it a “horrific tragedy” and offer their “thoughts and prayers.” When it is an American-made bomb blowing apart a Palestinian or Lebanese family, they call it Israel’s “right to defend itself,” which they are happy to bankroll with seemingly no limit. They’ve promised Israel $3.8 billion a year between now and 2028, adding to the more than $310 billion paid out to Israel since its founding. The US military has a budget of $916 billion and is the single greatest polluter on the planet. The government has provided only $270 million, so far, for relief from Helene, with more being cobbled together for Milton’s impending landfall. Money for imperialist slaughter is already earmarked. What about relief money for disasters which the ruling class itself intensifies? That will take some time, you see. — Hurricanes Helene and Milton: Billions for War, Pennies for Disaster Relief
srael’s Motto Is “We Can Have Peace Tomorrow If We Just Kill A Few More People Today” But it’s always today. Tomorrow never comes.
Opposing The Western War Machine Is The Most Important Thing You Can Do
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.
US Silent as Over 100 Nations Back UN Chief Nations worldwide are backing U.N. chief Guterres after Israel declared him “persona non grata.” The U.S. was not among the more than 100 United Nations member states that signed a new letter of support for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres after Israel’s foreign minister declared him “persona non grata” and barred him from entering the country.
U.S. Foreign Policy Has Created a Genocidal Israel Without massive, unconditional U.S. military subsidies, Israel would have had to practice diplomacy with their neighbors years ago. As beirut burns under Israel’s bombs, it is obvious for anyone who is paying attention that America has long incubated the emergence of the worst possible version of Israel. Decades of U.S. foreign policy have rewarded and accelerated a downward trajectory of genocidal politics and actions in both Israeli society and government. And now, with the full backing of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Israel is driving wave after wave of escalating violence in its ongoing push to eliminate any opposition to the continued expansion of a Jewish state in lands where millions of Palestinian, Lebanese, and other people already live.
United States Armed and Funded Middle East War/Palestinan Genocide:
When Biden Says ‘He’s a Zionist’ — Believe Him!
Patrick Lawrence: Truths That Come Out Like the Sun read the other day the latest paper put out by those good people who run the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute. It is called “United States Spending on Israel’s Military Operations and Related U.S. Operations in the Region, October 7, 2023–September 30, 2024” and has all sorts of information in it. Since the Zionist state began its latest assault on the Palestinians of Gaza a year ago, the Biden regime has spent $22.76 billion financing it, and this is a very conservative figure even by the three authors’ reckoning. That same paper has a remarkable graph showing the growth of U.S. military aid to Israel (grants and loans, in constant 2024 dollars) during the 65 years from 1959, when it was zero, to this year, when it reached $18 billion. There was a sharp spike in the years following the 1967 war, when the policy cliques in Washington began to consider the Zionist state a strategic asset in the region. And then I read a related paper the people at Watson finished recently. “The Human Toll: Indirect Deaths from War in Gaza and the West Bank, October 7, 2023 Forward” measures and analyzes, as the introduction explains, “the impact on population health of the destruction of public infrastructure, livelihood sources, reduced access to healthcare, water, and sanitation, and environmental damage.” Then, beginning with the next sentence, the paper starts to hit you hard: “For instance, 96 percent of Gaza’s population (2.15 million people) faces acute levels of food insecurity. According to an October 2, 2024, letter to President Biden from a group of U.S. physicians, 62,413 people in Gaza have died of starvation.”
It’s So, So Bad, And It’s About To Get A Whole Lot Worse “And as horrifying as both these developing stories are, they’re going to be shifted to the back burner as soon as Israel begins its planned attack on Iran 5 Things a Year of Israeli Genocide in Gaza Has Taught Us About Palestine and the World Palestinians, despite the military occupation, the siege, and the numerous failures of their leadership, remain political actors, with powerful agency. And they have global support. The new global consciousness that has developed around the Palestinian struggle may have already achieved the required critical mass which will, with time, result in the much-coveted paradigm shift: justice for the Palestinian people. Palestinians, despite the military occupation, the siege, and the numerous failures of their leadership, remain political actors, with powerful agency. And they have global support.
Protests Surge as Governments Support Genocide and Climate Catastrophy As violence escalates in Gaza and Lebanon, protests against government support for genocide grow worldwide Much of the world looks bleak in the fall of 2024. Israel’s assault on Gaza, the world’s first livestreamed genocide, goes on unchecked, with material and diplomatic support from powerful countries. Emboldened by this support, Israel is now attacking Lebanon as well. Large numbers of people in countries abetting the genocide are appalled at their own governments’ position, and are using a multitude of tactics to demand their governments stop supporting genocide, but their governments are stubbornly sticking to their position.
Chalking Bans and ID Checks at Protests Repress Palestine Solidarity on Campus Many new forms of campus repression are stifling Palestine solidarity organizing. As the genocide in Gaza rages on, U.S. universities welcomed students, faculty and staff back this fall by rolling out a red carpet of repression. The dedication to stifling pro-Palestine speech and action comes amidst unfathomable death and destruction brought by the siege on Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon. While official Palestinian Ministry of Health statistics report over 42,126 dead in Gaza with more than 10,000 more missing, given the massive destruction of health care infrastructure, these numbers are a vast underestimate. The Lancet projects the genocide may have already caused up to 186,000 deaths in Gaza alone. This is to say nothing of the unprecedented bloodshed and massive displacement in the West Bank.
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!
Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Weekly Average CO2 at Mauna Loa Week beginning on October 06, 2024: 422.16 ppm. Weekly value from 1 year ago: 418.47 ppm. Weekly value from 10 years ago: 395.73 ppm. Last updated: October 13, 2024
The Big Picture: Khashayar Javanmardi Explores the Decline of the Caspian Sea The world’s largest enclosed body of water, the Caspian Sea, is surrounded by jeopardies. Declining water levels from global heating have been exacerbated by increasing levels of extraction from the Volga and the Ural, the Russian rivers that flow into it. Satellite photographs show the sea shrinking at a dramatic rate. And each year increasing levels of pollutants from the five coastal states that border the Caspian contaminate it with spills from growing numbers of oil and gas fields, and with industrial and domestic waste from expanding coastal towns and cities, a magnet for internal migration.
Carbon Capture Means More Pollution for Black Communities in Cancer Alley The existing racial injustices of the petrochemical industry are being expanded in the name of fighting climate change. Rosemary Green and her husband live mere feet away from a massive chemical storage depot that hugs the Mississippi River just west of New Orleans. Over 200 tanks of the International-Matex Tank Terminals (IMTT) hulk beside their modest home on Fourth Street in the historic Black community of Elkinsville in St. Rose. Green and her neighbors have been complaining about the plant’s fumes and periodic tank fires for years
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
4 Million Americans Excluded From Election by Felony Voting Bans The Sentencing Project on Thursday released a report estimating that 4 million U.S. adults are ineligible to vote in the 2024 election due to felony disenfranchisement, including a disproportionate number of people of color. The research and advocacy group’s 40-page report, Locked Out 2024, finds that 1.7% of adults nationwide are disenfranchised due to felony voting bans, and in certain states—including swing states that could decide the presidential race—that figure is far higher. Advocates for restoring voting rights to people with felonies argue that disenfranchisement laws are racist and undemocratic. “Felony disenfranchisement remains a critical barrier to full civic participation, particularly for communities of color,” Kara Gotsch, executive director of the Sentencing Project, said in a statement. “Felony disenfranchisement echoes policies of the past, like poll taxes and literacy tests,” she added. “Felony voting bans keep communities that have been historically unheard and under-resourced from having equal representation in our democracy. It’s time to guarantee voting rights for all, including those with felony convictions, to create a truly inclusive democracy.”
Labor:
Economy:
Slash and Burn: Is Private Equity Out of Control? From football clubs to water companies, music catalogues to care homes, private equity has infiltrated almost every facet of modern life in its endless search to maximize profits Whenever I ponder the enormity of the multitrillion-dollar industry known as private equity, I picture the lavish parties thrown by Stephen Schwarzman – and then I think of the root canals. Schwarzman is the billionaire impresario of Blackstone, the world’s most colossal private equity firm. In August, he hosted a 200-person housewarming party at his $27m (£21m) French neoclassical mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. It was a modest affair compared to the grand soiree he threw himself at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate for his 70th birthday, in 2017. That black-tie bash was itself a sequel to his multimillion-dollar 60th, in 2007, which became a symbol of the sort of Wall Street excess that led to the global financial crisis. The Palm Beach party, which some reports say cost more than $10m, featured Venetian gondolas, Arabian camels, Mongolian acrobats and a giant cake in the shape of a Chinese temple. “Brilliantly stimulating” was the billionaire industrialist David Koch’s review. Gwen Stefani serenaded Schwarzman as Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and several members of her father’s cabinet looked on. It was a world in miniature, ruled over by a modern Croesus – the perfect symbol for a form of money-making that has infiltrated almost every facet of modern life. Preschools and funeral homes, car washes and copper mines, dermatologists and datacentres – private equity is anywhere and everywhere that money changes hands. If it can in any way be marketed or monetised, private equity firms have bought it – from municipal water supplies to European football clubs to the music catalogue of the rock group Queen. By some estimates, these firms now control more than $13tn invested in more than 50,000 companies worldwide. “We cannot overestimate the reach of private equity across the global economy,” Sachin Khajuria, a former partner at Apollo Global Management, which manages half a trillion dollars in assets, wrote in 2022.
DraghiEurope in an ‘Existential’ Crisis’ Former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi has produced a revealing study on behalf of the EU on the (lack of) ‘European competitiveness’. The former ‘saviour’ of the euro outlines an imperialist offensive as the solution. Draghi’s study speaks for itself: the EU is being left behind by the US and China. He analyses: once the EU in particular benefited from global free trade, but today it finds itself on an ‘unequal global playing field’ that must now be ‘redressed’. The second major problem is the lack of innovativeness in European industry, which is leaving labour productivity in Europe trailing behind the US and China.
Bloomberg News Writes Puff Pieces on Jamie Dimon While Its Parent Does Business Deals with the Bank He Heads, JPMorgan Chase For years now, we have observed the digital front page of Bloomberg News treating JPMorgan Chase’s Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, as the wise, venerable statesman of Wall Street. (See here, here, and here for a quick background.). That reverential treatment has continued as the bank Dimon is charged with overseeing has admitted to the following: laundering money for the largest Ponzi scheme mastermind in history, Bernie Madoff; rigging foreign exchange markets; rigging trading in U.S. Treasury securities and the precious metals markets; using depositors’ money from its federally-insured bank to trade derivatives in London and lose at least $6.2 billion of its depositors’ money; bribing Chinese officials with jobs for their relatives in order to get business deals in China.
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
Lenin Between the Revolutions: the Writings That Led to October The year 1917 stands out as a turning point in human history. For the first time, the downtrodden, toiling masses fought back – and won! But we can say with certainty that that victory was only possible because of the presence of a theoretically trained and practically steeled party, the most revolutionary party in history, the Bolshevik Party. But even that party would have failed to achieve such a task without the crystal-clear and razor-sharp leadership of Lenin. We publish here the introduction to a brand new selection of Lenin’s invaluable 1917 writings. The Revolutions of 1917: Lenin Selected Writings is a new selection of Lenin’s works published by Wellred Books – the publishing house of the Revolutionary Communist International. In this introduction, Rob Sewell explains the immense lessons of 1917 for communists today, bringing out the development of Lenin’s ideas between the February and October revolutions.
Nihon Hidankyo’s Nobel Peace Prize Win Could Not Have Come at a More Important Moment With the world, our species, facing the greatest danger of nuclear apocalypse since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, this year’s Peace Prize will refocus world attention on the urgency of renewing nuclear disarmament diplomacy. The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo is long overdue and could not come at a more important time. The Hibakusha (A-bomb witness/survivors) of Nihon Hidankyo have been among the world’s most courageous and steadfast advocates of nuclear disarmament. The organization has focused on three core demands: preventing nuclear war, eliminating nuclear weapons, and obtaining essential medical care for A-bomb victims.