Daily News Digest October 23, 2024
Images of the Day:
Industrial Complexes: industrial complexes: Military, Medical, and Prison Industrial Complexes. They work to make the USA the greatest warmongering, unhealthy police state on the planet.
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:
According to the Harvard Civil Rights Project, which recently was forced to move to UCLA, the public schools have become more separate and unequal— the consequences of the last two decades of resegregation along economic, ethnic and racist lines. — The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights Movement
Historical note: Hezbollah, also a political Party and social service organization, was created to defend impoverished Shiite Muslims in southern Lebanon in 1982 right after the Israeli army once again invaded Lebanon and badly mistreated the residents during an 18-year-long military occupation. No matter what or who the Israeli Air Force’s American F-16 fighter aircraft bomb, no matter the deaths and injuries to thousands of Lebanese families, many of them children and women, Biden keeps unconditionally and savagely shipping weapons of mass destruction. He is violating six federal laws requiring conditions be met – such as not violating human rights or not obstructing U.S. humanitarian aid. Netanyahu is violating these and other conditions and mocking his major benefactor, the United States government. — Ralph Nader:, “Goodbye Lebanon”
US Civil War: America’s Second Revolution
Chris Hedges: How “Rat-Like Cunning” Got this Journalist into Hot Water Lara Marlowe and I discuss the time that Robert Fisk exposed the truth that the USS Vincennes shot down the civilian airline Iran Air Flight 655, and how it got him into hot water with his editors once Rupert Murdoch took over his paper.
Mr. President, Bibi has You by the Short Hairs!
Gabor Mate: ‘It’s like we’re watching Auschwitz on TikTok’
Glenn Greenwald: Repressive Terrorism Act Weaponized Against Israel’s Critics
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.
How the Nobel Peace Prize Just Peacewashed the Genocide in Gaza Hearing the announcement that Nihon Hidankyou had won the Nobel Peace Prize, Toshiyuki Mimaki-san pinched himself and said: “I thought it would have gone to the people working hard for Peace in Gaza.” Two days later, we witnessed the image of Sha’ban al-Dalou, a 20-year-old engineering student, burning alive in his tent outside the Al-Aqsa hospital in Northern Gaza, an IV still in his arm. These days, as we protest the genocide of the Palestinian people in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome here in Hiroshima, it is impossible not to recall the radioactive fires and mass death as part of a long lineage of American weapons experiments that continue to this very moment in Palestine.
Widening the War: The US Sends Troops to Israel The dangers should be plastered on every wall in every office occupied by a military and political advisor. Israel’s attempt to reshape the Middle East, far from giving it enduring security, will merely serve to make it more vulnerable and unstable than ever. In that mix and mess will be its greatest sponsor and guardian, the United States, a giant of almost blind antiquity in all matters concerning the Jewish state. In a measure that should have garnered bold headlines, the Biden administration has announced the deployment of some 100 US soldiers to Israel who will be responsible for operating the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. They are being sent to a conflict that resembles a train travelling at high speed, with no risk of stopping. As Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant promised in the aftermath of Iran’s October 1 missile assault on his country, “Our strike will be powerful, precise, and above all – surprising.” It would be of such a nature that “They will not understand what happened and how it happened.”
The Middle East: A Blaze of Imperialism’s Making Ever since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel, the logic of the situation in the Middle East has been moving in the direction of an escalation of the war beyond Gaza. All attempts to hold back this process have followed the same course. The Americans first state they don’t want an escalation. But each time Netanyahu does something to push towards widening the war, because he knows that the US will always fall on Israel’s side. This happened once again with Israel’s attack on Lebanon, with Biden stating that he “understands” Israel’s security needs, etc. After Iran’s retaliation following the assassination of Nasrallah, the Israelis were rubbing their hands. This was an opportunity to go for Iran’s nuclear research centres, to strike a blow against the country’s most formidable enemy, and perhaps draw the US into a wider war, which has been Netanyahu’s aim since the beginning.
United States Armed and Funded Middle East War/Palestinan Genocide: When Biden Says ‘He’s a Zionist’ — Believe Him!
The Generals’ Plan: An Israeli Blueprint for the Liquidation of Gaza A chilling scenario detailing Israel’s plan to liquidate northern Gaza through starvation and extermination was revealed by +972 Magazine. Originally published in Hebrew by journalist Meron Rapoport, the Israeli magazine outlined a hypothetical operation that bears a striking resemblance to current events in Gaza. Presented as a simulation of Israel’s plan in 2025, the key elements of the extermination plan – from the motives for mass expulsion to specific military strategies – align disturbingly with the ongoing assault on Gaza. Dubbed “Operation Order and Clean-up”, the plan in Rapoport’s scenario involves ordering the temporary evacuation of all Palestinian residents north of the Netzarim Corridor, ostensibly for their safety. However, the true intention, as openly declared by far-right ministers like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, is to impose a complete siege on the area, cutting off all supplies of water, food and fuel until those who remain surrender or die of starvation.
Leaked US Intel on Iran Attack Plans Also Confirms Israeli Nuclear Weapons Another of the alleged documents, which multiple outlets have been told appear authentic, confirm U.S. spying on Israeli military forces and shows “a strike on Iran” is “almost certainly” coming. “We have not observed indications that Israel intends to use a nuclear weapon.” That sentence is the concluding line from an allegedly leaked (or hacked) U.S. intelligence document posted online this week and later reported on by Axios, CNN, and other outlets. As Axios reported on Saturday, “U.S. officials are extremely concerned about a potentially major security breach after two alleged U.S. intelligence documents about Israel’s preparations for an attack on Iran were published by a Telegram account affiliated with Iran.” “The olive season has turned into a season of killing for the Palestinian people, whether at the hands of the Israeli army or armed settlers,” said one observer. The killing of a 59-year-old woman who eyewitnesses said was shot in the back by a member of the Israel Defense Forces while she was harvesting olives on her land in the West Bank on Thursday highlighted what one United Nations official called a “war-like” assault by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the illegally occupied Palestinian territory.
Revealed: The Israeli Spies Writing America’s News One year after Oct. 7 attacks, Netanyahu is on a winning streak.” So reads the title of a recent Axios article describing the Israeli prime minister riding on an unbeatable wave of triumphs. These stunning military “successes,” its author Barak Ravid notes, include the bombing of Yemen, the assassinations of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and the pager attack against Lebanon. The same author recently went viral for an article that claimed that Israeli attacks against Hezbollah are “not intended to lead to war but are an attempt to reach ‘de-escalation through escalation.’” Users on social media mocked Ravid for this bizarre, Orwellian reasoning. But what almost everybody missed is that Barak Ravid is an Israeli spy – or at least he was until recently. Ravid is a former analyst with Israeli spying agency Unit 8200, and as recently as last year, was still a reservist with the Israeli Defense Forces group. Unit 8200 is Israel’s largest and perhaps most controversial spying organization. It has been responsible for many high-profile espionage and terror operations, including the recent pager attack that injured thousands of Lebanese civilians. As this investigation will reveal, Ravid is far from the only Israeli ex-spook working at top U.S. media outlets, working hard to manufacture Western support for his country’s actions.
Juan Cole: Gazafying Lebanon—Israel Blows up Nabatieh City Hall, Kills Mayor and Aid Workers Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli military has begun giving southern Lebanon the Gaza treatment. Some 25% of Lebanese are under “evacuation orders,” which is to say that Israel is expelling them from their homes in preparation for further military operations against the Hezbollah Party-Militia. The U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon, Imran Riza, said Wednesday, “Health care facilities, mosques, historical markets, residential complexes, and now government buildings are being reduced to rubble. Displaced families continue to feel at risk, even after fleeing to safe areas.”
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’!
‘I’m Not Voting For Either’: Fracking’s Return Stirs Fury in Pennsylvania Town Whose Water Turned Toxic The small town of Dimock saw its water become brown, undrinkable, even flammable – and its residents are still feeling the effects Fracking has burst back on to the national stage in the US presidential election contest for the must-win swing state of Pennsylvania. But for one town in this state that saw its water become mud-brown, undrinkable and even flammable 15 years ago, the specter of fracking never went away.
Smoke Pollution From Wildfires may be Killing an Extra 12,000 People a Year, New Research Suggests Global heating particularly increasing risk of death from smoke inhalation in Australia, South America, Europe and parts of Asia
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
United States: Fearing Revival of Student Protests, Universities Attack Free Speech Rights University administrations, under intense pressure from their billionaire donors, are cracking down on pro-Palestine students and faculty on campuses across America. They’ve introduced draconian measures aimed at extinguishing the embers of last spring’s Palestine solidarity encampment movement, which sought to force colleges and universities to divest from Israel and the American imperialist war machine.
School Vouchers Have a Racist History and Troubling Impacts on Public Schools The voucher system came out of racist parents’ rejection of integrated schools in the ‘50s. It’s still hurting students. The push for “school vouchers” — the transfer of public funds into tuition subsidies for private secular and religious schools — has been a right-wing project from the start. Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who has been studying the right-wing push for school vouchers for more than 20 years, says his conclusion on school vouchers is unequivocal: Despite the right’s billing of vouchers as a way to ensure that all students have an equal chance to attend their school of choice, in reality the so-called “education freedom agenda” promoted by vouchers devalues public schools and reorients education from a public good to a private enterprise.
Are Schools Resegregating? Data Since 1991 says Yes! U.S. public schools that were “intensely segregated” tripled over the last 30 years, according to the Civil Rights Project. … By the Numbers:
- 2/3 The proportion of school districts once under court-ordered desegregation that have been released from court oversight since 1991 (Stanford University-USC).
- 4% The percent of “intensely segregated” U.S. public schools in 1988 (Civil Rights Project).
- 7% The percent of “intensely segregated” U.S. public schools in 2021 (Civil Rights Project).
- +35% The percentage increase of White-Black racial segregation in large school districts between 1991 to 2020 (The Segregation Index project by Stanford University and USC).
- +47% The percentage increase of segregation between poor and non-poor students in large school districts between 1991 to 2020 (The Segregation Index project by Stanford University and USC).
- 59% The percentage of charter schools that were “intensely segregated” in 2021 (Civil Rights Project)
Labor:
Economy:
Academic Paper Finds U.S. Banking System Is Less Safe Today than Before the 2010 Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Legislation Was Passed Four researchers at the University of Westminster School of Finance and Accounting in London have taken a hard look at the much-touted Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in the U.S. that was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010. The voluminous 848-page bill followed the greatest financial crash in the U.S. since the Great Depression. Unfortunately, it was big on word count and short on iron-clad reforms, leaving the implementation of final rules to be negotiated by revolving-door regulators and an army of Wall Street lobbyists and lawyers. (For how that has played out over the ensuing 14 years, see here, here, here and here.)
World:
Health, Education, and Welfare:
Billionaire Investors Are ‘Supercharging’ Housing Crisis: Report “Billionaires see housing as a way to boost their bottom line, instead of a necessity to survive.” A new report out Monday puts “into numbers the trend that ordinary Americans have known to be true for years,” said economic justice advocates behind the analysis: “Their everyday struggles of affording a home are made worse by the sweeping influence that billionaires have over the market.” The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) joined Popular Democracy in compiling a 71-page report titledBillionaire Blowback on Housing, aiming to get to the bottom of growing concerns in recent years about how Wall Street, as Democratic vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said earlier this month, is “buying up housing and making them less affordable.”