Daily News Digest October 21, 2024
Images of the Day:
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:
Yesterday, I interviewed a refugee Ukrainian family in transition from their homeland looking for a permanent place to settle. They were being visited by evangelical church friends. Since I was teaching a course on current world conflicts, the conversation turned to Palestine/Israel where a number of references were made to Babylon and Jeremiah. After leaving them, I researched Babylon and evangelical beliefs and read the familiar story of captives taken from Jerusalem and forced to reside in Babylon in 567 BC. A generation later Cyrus conquered the city and allowed the captives to return. The passage referenced by the Evangelicals was: “Tell this news to the nations!/Wave a flag to make sure that people listen!/Do not try to hide anything/ …the people of Israel and Judah will return to their land/They will weep because of their sins… / Babylon has been like a gold cup of wine in the Lord’s hand/The nations of the world had to drink that wine/It made everyone become drunk/and so they all became crazy/But now Babylon will quickly fall/An enemy will destroy it/so weep for it!/Find some medicine that will make its wounds better/Perhaps it will become well again/Wave a flag and prepare to attack Babylon’s city walls!/ Bring plenty of guards to watch all around the city/Put soldiers to catch anyone who tries to escape/Yes, the Lord will now do everything that he has decided/He will punish Babylon’s people, as he said he would do/you people of Babylon, who live beside many rivers/it is now time for you to die…..”.(Jeremiah 50:1-51) — The Great Babylon: America’s Complicity in Gaza Atrocities
What’s Happening In Northern Gaza Proves Israel Lied About Everything We were always headed to this point. At some point they were going to have to stop lying about hostages and self-defense and human shields and taking out Hamas and just go “Haha yeah we’re stealing a bunch of Palestinian land actually.”
More Authoritarian Crackdowns On Speech That’s Critical Of Israel British “counterterrorism” police raided the home of Electronic Intifada editor Asa Winstanley on Thursday morning, seizing multiple electronic devices on suspicion that the journalist violated the UK’s 2006 Terrorism Act with his social media activity
You’re Not Crazy. This Genocidal Dystopia Is Crazy.
Another Phony Biden PR Stunt About Humanitarian Aid In Gaza
Robert Fisk and the Great War for Civilization (w/ Lara Marlowe) | The Chris Hedges Report
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.
The Chris Hedges Report: The Choice this Election is between Corporate and Oligarchic Power There is a civil war within capitalism. Kamala Harris is the face of corporate power. Donald Trump is the mascot of the oligarchs. Either way, we lose. The choice in the elections is between corporate and oligarchic power. Corporate power needs stability and a technocratic government. Oligarchic power thrives on chaos and, as Steve Bannon says, the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Neither are democratic. They have each bought up the political class, the academy and the press. Both are forms of exploitation that impoverish and disempower the public. Both funnel money upwards into the hands of the billionaire class. Both dismantle regulations, destroy labor unions, gut government services in the name of austerity, privatize every aspect of American society, from utilities to schools, perpetuate permanent wars, including the genocide in Gaza, and neuter a media that should, if it was not controlled by corporations and the rich, investigate their pillage and corruption. Both forms of capitalism disembowel the country, but they do it with different tools and have different goals. Kamala Harris, anointed by the richest Democratic Party donors without receiving a single primary vote, is the face of corporate power. Donald Trump is the buffoonish mascot for the oligarchs. This is the split within the ruling class. It is a civil war within capitalism played out on the political stage. The public is little more than a prop in an election where neither party will advance their interests or protect their rights. George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison in their book “Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism,” refer to corporate power as “housebroken capitalism.” Housebroken capitalists need consistent government policies and fixed trade agreements because they have made investments that take time, sometimes years, to mature. Manufacturing and agriculture industries are examples of “housebroken capitalism.”
Trump’s Coming Out Party: Swastikas at Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally Stir Controversy Controversy continues to swirl after the onstage display at Madison Square Garden last night, of a pair of 20-foot-high banners displaying black swastikas on a red field. They flanked Donald Trump’s podium and were brightly illuminated throughout the former president’s 80-minute address. Swastikas also appeared on a pair of cuffs encircling the upper sleeves of Trump’s blue suit jacket and on a gold-plated tie pin. Spectators close to the stage reported that there were brass swastikas dangling from the tassels of Trump’s loafers.
United States Armed and Funded Middle East War/Palestinan Genocide: When Biden Says ‘He’s a Zionist’ — Believe Him!
UNIFIL Under Fire: Israel Vs. The United NatIONS Israel’s war of words with the United Nations has escalated into deliberate IDF attacks on its peacekeepers in Lebanon. These provocations reveal the embarrassing impotence of the UN and Israel’s sense of utter impunity as it pushes for a new regional war. Since 7 October 2023, Israel’s already frosty relationship with the UN has deteriorated considerably, following criticism and legal rulings against the many atrocities Israel has committed in its genocidal war on Gaza – including the butchery of civilians and the killing of UN personnel. Of course, the “ironclad” support of US imperialism has turned all these criticisms and rulings into dead letters.
Jewish Students Mark Sukkot Holiday With Calls to End Israel’s Genocide in Gaza Some universities have torn down the student-built sukkahs, which are traditional structures for the Sukkot holiday.
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’!
Global Water Cycle Out of Balance for First Time in Human History, Report Says Researchers warned that policy makers must urgently “reframe the hydrological cycle as a global common good.” Decades of mismanagement of water resources, deforestation, and the fossil fuel-driven crisis of global warming have put “unprecedented stress” on the Earth’s water systems, according to a new report, and have thrown the world’s hydrological cycle out of balance “for the first time in human history.” The Global Commission on the Economics of Water, affiliated with the Dutch government and comprised of global experts, published the study on Thursday, warning that policymakers must urgently “reframe the hydrological cycle as a global common good,” recognizing that it is “deeply interlinked with the climate and biodiversity crises.”
China’s Green Energy Wave Enters the Middle East Facing rising trade barriers and diplomatic tensions with the US and the EU, Chinese renewable energy companies are turning to Middle Eastern states as an alternative market for goods including electric vehicles (EVs), lithium-ion batteries, and solar panels. The US, the EU and Canada have all imposed tariffs on Chinese EVs, amid accusations that Beijing is dumping excess Chinese production overseas and using unfair subsidies. “Global markets are now flooded with cheaper [Chinese] electric cars. And their price is kept artificially low by huge state subsidies,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in September last year. The EU has begun a probe into Chinese wind turbine companies. Then-Commission Executive Vice-President for Competition Margarethe Vestager warned that a wave of subsidised Chinese wind turbine exports: “is not only dangerous for our competitiveness. It also jeopardises our economic security.” The EU remains scarred by its loss of a trade war to China over the bloc’s solar power industry a decade earlier. Western governments and activists have also expressed concerns that China’s green sector is tied to human rights abuses like forced labour in Xinjiang.
Multilateral Banks Must Stop Funding the Factory Farms Fueling the Biodiversity Crisis Animal livestock is the leading driver of biodiversity loss. At the U.N. biodiversity summit next week, leaders must agree to shift finance towards more sustainable forms of food production. Our natural world is in crisis. An area the size of Portugal is deforested every year on average, and wildlife populations have declined by an average of 73% since 1970. Deforestation is a leading driver of the climate crisis, and wildlife loss can destabilize precious ecosystems.
It’s Time to Get Rid of Big Agriculture “Almost everything that’s wrong with America comes from that policy. We’ve destroyed our health, our environment, our communities.” Any urban street in America is guaranteed to be lined with popular fast food chains, the readily available nature of their products being the main attraction, with people barely giving a thought to the process behind getting the food from the farm to the table — or more likely, the take-out box. Joining host Robert Scheer on this week’s Scheer Intelligence are two people who dedicated their recent film, “Food and Country,” to understanding this process behind food in the United States and how big business, as usual, has almost complete control of the system. Renowned former food critic for the La Times and New York Times, former editor of Gourmet magazine, author of cookbooks and memoirs and PBS food guru, Ruth Reichl and film director Laura Gabbert discuss some of the key takeaways from the film. Gabbert asserts that big agriculture’s firm grasp on the industry is where the problems begin. Its lobby is amongst the biggest and Gabbert explains that there is no incentive to try and remedy the problems that come from this monopolization of an industry so essential to human survival. “I think that is really the crux of the whole problem, is money in politics,” Gabbert says. Reichl takes it back to what happened after World War II and how the U.S. government made an attempt to fight communism by cheapening the food making process, which turned farms into factories. “Almost everything that’s wrong with America comes from that policy. We’ve destroyed our health, our environment, our communities,” Reichl tells Scheer. 
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Texas Death Row Prisoner Wins Temporary Stay of Execution After Subpoena Lawmakers who oppose Robert Roberson’s execution turned to novel legal maneuvers in an effort to buy him more time.
From John Kiriakou: US Prisons Still a Disaster Zone: Most of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)’s facilities are in tiny towns, the mountains, or farming communities, where the labor pool is very limited. And the only people who are left there and are still looking for a job end up, well, at the BOP. The starting pay is $21 an hour, only slightly better than they might get at WalMart.
- The DOJ Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a damning report earlier this year criticizing the BOP for an inordinate number of preventable prisoner deaths. In 2023, there were 187 suicides, 89 murders, 56 accidental deaths and 12 attributed to “unknown factors” in BOP prisons. The OIG report attributed most of these deaths to “recurring policy violations and operational failures.”
- A federal judge in New York refused to send a convicted fraudster to the BOP’s Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, because the prison is “notoriously and, in some cases egregiously slow in providing medical and mental health treatment to prisoners” … lockdowns there are “tantamount to solitary confinement, which is increasingly viewed as inhumane” … and the prison’s “dreadful and grim conditions of confinement include contaminated drinking water, mold, vermin, and insects.”
- The DOJ Office of Inspector general complained that two unannounced “on-site inspections” of a BOP women’s prison in Tallahassee, Florida found “alarming conditions,” including outdated and rotten food being served to prisoners; rodents, insects, and their droppings being pervasive throughout the food preparation areas; cracked walls and ceilings conducive to rodent movement throughout the facility; and unhygienic bathroom facilities.
- A federal judge in the Northern District of California berated the BOP for its “botched and ill-conceived plan” to close the federal women’s prison at Dublin, California, the site of the so-called rape club. The judge called the previously unannounced closure plan “hasty and ill-timed” and allowed a class-action suit by prisoners to go forward. The judge also called the BOP “a dysfunctional mess.”
- A federal judge in Virginia sentenced a BOP lieutenant to three years in prison for failing to intervene in a prisoner’s preventable death. A BOP guard reported to the lieutenant twice that the prisoner was in medical distress. But the lieutenant denied two requests for emergency assistance, instead allowing the man to spend the last 100 minutes of his life on the floor of his cell. The DOJ inspector general called the lieutenant’s actions “appalling indifference leading to a needless loss of life.”
- Yet another Office of Inspector General report found that the BOP was engaging in “sham accreditations,” where the country’s primary prison accreditation organization, the American Correctional Association, was simply publishing the BOP’s own self-serving internal findings as their own reports, rather than actually conducting accreditation investigation. And then they charged the BOP $2.75 million for their trouble. That contract was not renewed.
Labor:
Economy:.
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