Daily News Digest December 2, 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:
With such a valuable natural resource quite literally underfoot, what happens above ground can have a significant effect—for better or worse. Factory farms dense with animal life sustain high levels of surface water usage and contribute to water pollution through runoff. Considering that factory farms exploit and pollute groundwater aquifers, their overall environmental effects are devastating. “The National Water Quality Assessment shows that agricultural runoff is the leading cause of water quality impacts to rivers and streams, the third leading source for lakes, and the second-largest source of impairments to wetlands,” points out the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Factory farming touches every aspect of our planet, from emitting massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to contaminating the groundwater, rivers, lakes, and streams we rely on for fresh water. Factory farms house animals in crowded and often filthy conditions, subjecting millions of cows, chickens, and pigs to the worst forms of abuse for the entirety of their short lives. Driven by the demand for cheap eggs, meat, and dairy, the animal agriculture industry has disastrous consequences for the planet. This must change. — How Animal Agriculture Threatens Freshwater Supplies
Podcasts/Vide0s of the Day:
This Dystopia Depends On Hiding Inconvenient Truths This is a civilization made of deceitful thoughts, deceitful words, and deceitful deeds. Everything about it is fraudulent.
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!)
Migration isn’t the Problem! The Migration of Wealth to the 1% is the Problem! The most significant “migration problem” is not the movement of people across borders, but rather the migration of wealth into the hands of a small elite (1%) which ultimately drives people to migrate in search of better economic opportunities! Addressing wealth inequality is key to tackling the root cause of global migration issues! — Roland Sheppard
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.
Newly Exposed US History of Environmental Racism : How a San Francisco Navy Lab Became a Hub for Human Radiation Experiments
Part 1: OVERVIEW | Exposed, an investigative series
Rarely seen documents show a Cold War atomic research facility headquartered at Hunters Point conducted studies that exposed at least 1,073 people to potentially harmful radiation. The legacy of that era is a continuing risk to public health. In September 1956, Cpl. Eldridge Jones found himself atop a sunbaked roof at an old Army camp about an hour outside San Francisco, shoveling radioactive dirt. Too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam, Jones never saw combat. Instead, he served in the Cold War, where the threats to his life were all American. The previous year, Jones was one of thousands of U.S. troops directly exposed to radiation during aboveground nuclear weapons tests in the Nevada desert. Now he was being exposed again, this time to lab-made “simulated nuclear fallout,” material that emitted some of the same ionizing radiation as the atomic bomb. The exercise at Camp Stoneman, near Pittsburg, Calif., was one of many in a years-long program conducted by a key military research facility, headquartered at a Navy shipyard in a predominantly Black working-class neighborhood in San Francisco. A review by the San Francisco Public Press of thousands of pages of government and academic records, as well as interviews with affected servicemen, sheds new light on the operations of the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory at San Francisco’s Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. A new series launched on Monday in collaboration with the Guardian reveals that between 1946 and 1963, lab scientists knowingly exposed at least 1,073 servicemen, dockworkers, lab employees and others to potentially harmful radiation through war games, decontamination tests and medical studies.
The Bomb in Our Bodies: The Nuclear Cluster at Hunters Point The Nuclear Cluster @Hunters Point was unveiled to the San Francisco Health Commission on Sept. 3, 2024 (https://www.sf.gov/meeting/september-17-2024/september-17-2024-health-commission-meeting). The Nuclear Cluster @Hunters Point (NC@HP) is a cohort of 11 current and childhood residents living within the half mile perimeter of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard (HPNS) Federal Superfund site who have atomic bomb residues in high concentrations in their body burdens, detected in biomonitoring screenings independently conducted by the Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program and James Dahlgren Medical, between Jan. 19, 2021 and July 3, 2022. (See “The Bomb in Our Backyard”
40 Years of Human Experimentation in America: The Tuskegee Study The goal was to “observe the natural history of untreated syphilis” in black populations, but the subjects were completely unaware and were instead told they were receiving treatment for bad blood when in fact, they received no treatment at all. Starting in 1932, 600 African American men from Macon County, Alabama were enlisted to partake in a scientific experiment on syphilis. The “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” was conducted by the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) and involved blood tests, x-rays, spinal taps and autopsies of the subjects. The goal was to “observe the natural history of untreated syphilis” in black populations. But the subjects were unaware of this and were simply told they were receiving treatment for bad blood. Actually, they received no treatment at all. Even after penicillin was discovered as a safe and reliable cure for syphilis, the majority of men did not receive it.
Katherine Gallagher on Abu Ghraib Verdict This week on CounterSpin: It wasn’t the horrific abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, but the pictures of it, that forced public and official acknowledgement. The Defense Department vehemently resisted the pictures’ release, with good reason. Yet when, after the initial round, Australian TV put out new images, Washington Post executive editor Len Downie said they were “so shocking and in such bad taste, especially the extensive nudity, that they are not publishable in our newspaper.” The notion that acts of torture by the US military and its privately contracted cat’s paws are, above all, distasteful may help explain corporate media’s inattentiveness to the efforts of victims of Abu Ghraib to find some measure of justice.
United States Armed and Funded Terrorist Middle East War/Palestinan Genocide: When Biden Says ‘He’s a Zionist’ —Believe Him!
Hypocritical Rejection of Netanyahu Warrant: Washington Holds that the Int’l Criminal Court is only for Enemies and People of Color The arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are a diplomatic disaster for Israel, reported the Economist, a “hard stigma” for the Israeli leader, wrote the Guardian, and a “major blow”, said others. … The pro-Palestine camp, which as of late represents the majority of humankind, is torn between disbelief, skepticism and optimism. It turned out that the international system has a pulse, after all, though faint, but is enough to rekindle hope that legal and moral accountability are still possible. This mixture of feelings and strong language is a reflection of several important and interconnected experiences: one, the unprecedented extermination of a whole population which is currently being carried out by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza; two, the utter failure of the international community to stop the grisly genocide in the Strip; and, finally, the fact that the international legal system has historically failed to hold Israel, or any of the West’s allies anywhere, accountable to international law … The real earthquake is the fact that this is the first time in the history of the ICC that a pro-western leader is held accountable for war crimes. Indeed, historically, the vast majority of arrest warrants, and actual detention of accused war criminals seemed to target the Global South, Africa in particular.
Ceasefire Falters as Israel Launches Airstrikes, Artillery Shelling on Southern Lebanon The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire began Wednesday morning. Less than two days later, it seems to be faltering, with multiple reports of Israeli attacks across southern Lebanon, and claims of violations by both sides. Israel carried out an airstrike against the outskirts of Baysariyeh, which is near Tyre. They confirmed the attack, saying they were targeting a Hezbollah storage facility after seeing “terrorist activity.” They added in their statement that they were “acting to enforce violations of the ceasefire.” Though the claims of violations are coming from both sides, so far it is only Israeli forces whose violations actually involve firing. Lebanese people continue to try to return to their homes in the south, despite Israel’s military forbidding them to do so. There are multiple reports of Israel carrying out artillery shelling against towns and villages across southern Lebanon this afternoon. Strikes were reported against the towns of Halta, Taybeh, Khiam, and Rmeish. In Rmeish the attack damaged a supermarket and a home. Three were injured in Taybeh.
The United States Raises a Middle Finger to the International Criminal Court Finally, before history ends, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The indictment stated that there ‘are reasonable grounds to believe that both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity’. The court found sufficient reasons to believe that the two men ‘bear criminal responsibility’ for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts, and the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population. Almost immediately, US President Joe Biden condemned the court’s actions, stating that the ‘ICC issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous’. The United States, Biden said, ‘will always stand with Israel’.
Canada: Balance Sheet of the Student Strike for Palestine 85,000 students went on strike last week against Israel’s ongoing slaughter in Gaza. This was the largest student strike over international solidarity that Canada has ever seen. The strike took place on Nov. 21 with students from all the major universities in Montreal, both francophone and anglophone, as well as from colleges and CEGEPs. Over 1,000 people gathered in downtown Montreal for the main strike rally with speeches demanding an end to the genocide. For many schools, the strike continued through Nov. 22, denouncing the NATO summit taking place in Montreal that weekend. Another rally on that day drew another 1,000 people who gathered to let these imperialist war-mongers know that they are not welcome. Summing up the mood, one student said, “I didn’t know if striking could do anything, especially if it was just us, but considering it’s students across Quebec, it means something now. … I was like, how are people going to show up for something that doesn’t affect them directly? But people do, and they are!”
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!
Emergency Summit Regarding Antarctic Meltdown “Runaway ice loss causing rapid and catastrophic sea level rise is possible within our lifetimes.” (Source: Our Science, Your Future: Next Generation of Antarctic Scientists Call for Collaborative Action, Australian Antarctic Research Conference, November 22, 2024) Hundreds of scientists gathered in Australia for an “emergency summit” within the auspices of the inaugural Australian Antarctic Research Conference d/d November 2024. This gathering of 450 mostly “early-career” polar scientists flexed scientific muscles to alert the world to the what’s happening to our planet, taking off the gloves and coming out swinging. They claim we’re got a bigger problem than generally realized: “Efforts to slow down climate change through coordinated global action are paramount to protect the future of Australia, Antarctica, and our planet,” Ibid. “The experts’ conclusion, published as a press statement, is a somber one: if we don’t act, and quickly, the melting of Antarctica ice could cause catastrophic sea levels rise around the globe.” (Source: Emergency Meeting Reveals the Alarming Extent of Antarctica’s Ice Loss, Earth.com, Nov. 24, 2024)
Black Liberation Civil Rights:
Labor:
Economy:
World:
Health, Education, and Welfare:
A Win for Renters With over 2,300,000 renters in New York City, it’s a good bet most of them had to pay exorbitant brokers’ fees to land their apartments. Those brokers charged a fortune – natch, because with a 2023 city rental vacancy rate of 1.41 percent, they could set their fees sky high. But on November 13, the city council approved a new law with a veto-proof majority to make landlords fork over those fees. According to the New York Times that day, “the fee is typically more than one month’s rent, and right now the median rent is roughly $3,4000.” So up-front costs to get a new place in Gotham were often over $10,000. How ‘bout them apples? Make no mistake: this new law protects tenants, as the screams of outrage from their predators attest. Those screams were duly recorded in a second Times article November 16, though the article did note that “New York City is one of only a few cities in the United States where tenants pay for a broker they do not hire themselves.” That didn’t stop said brokers from absurdly alleging to the newspaper that this win for renters will in fact harm them and from one agent shedding crocodile tears that “it’s an absolute mess for tenants.” Why? Because, he claims rents may rise, so tenants will avoid those supposedly life-saving brokers and thus “have to do all the dirty work themselves.” Of course, he sagaciously omits that those altruistic brokers will therefore lose their fees.