Thanks again to Ten Bears for the link. If you ever run out of news and informative stuff to dive into, then seriously check out Ten Bears posts. He puts a ton of links on a page, enough to last a day of reading if you are interested in them all. https://homelessonthehighdesert.com/2024/01/19/frigsday-finally/
When the right attacked people supporting the Palestinians who had used the phrase from the river to the sea, claiming it was a saying to wipe out all Israelis. They got people fired over it. However when Netanyahu (Bibi) demands it for Israel which means genocide of the Palestinians, the right is quite fine with it. See it was not the phrase nor what it stands for that bothered the right, it was that some people defend the poor down trodden people being abused around the world. The right doesn’t like the left and they hate their supported right wing leaders / countries justly attacked, so they lash out to destroy any complaints against their right wing abuse and tyranny. Hugs. Scottie
The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports on the press conference in Tel Aviv on Thursday evening of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He vowed to continue the war on Gaza and vowed to attack Iran. “Who says we won’t attack Iran? We will attack it.”
At one point Netanyahu insisted that in any foreseen arrangement for the future, “Israel must control all the lands west of the Jordan.”
(It is worth noting that such a massive annexation of Palestinian territory would expand Israel from the river to the sea, and would permanently destroy any possibility of a Palestinian state.
When supporters of Palestinian rights use this phrase, Zionists allege that it is murderous toward Israelis. They are wrong — it is a demand for political rights for Palestinians. Marc Lamont Hill was actually fired from CNN for using this phrase in a pro-Palestinian speech at the United Nations. The odious Rep. Elise Stefanik got Claudine Gray fired as president of Harvard because she would not categorize the phrase, used in pro-Palestinian student demonstrations, as Antisemitic.
But when Netanyahu says it, we should in fact understand it to be murderous toward Palestinians, since no one in history has killed as many Palestinian civilians as Netanyahu.)
Netanyahu said, “Complete victory requires the return of our hostages to their homes, the disarming of Gaza, and security oversight over what enters Gaza.” He emphasized that “ending the war before achieving our goals will harm the security of Israel for generations.”
He said that his government had passed an enormous military budget that would help the army realize its war aims and achieve victory. He cautioned, “Victory will take more long months, but we are determined to accomplish it.”
He “completely rejected” the repeated assertions by present and former Israeli political officials in television interviews that victory is impossible. Faced with protests over his failure to bring back Israeli hostages, he insisted that it was military pressure that would free them. He said that ending the war would broadcast a message of weakness and it would then be only a matter of time until there was another bloodbath. He was referring to the sickening Hamas attack of October 7, the bulk of whose victims were innocent civilians.
Regarding reports that he had rejected the American suggestion of establishing a Palestinian state, the embattled prime minister, who is deeply unpopular, attempted to tie his fate to that of the nation, replying, “What the political parties call in Israel ‘the day after’ means for them ‘the day after Netanyahu.’ . . . Whoever speaks of the day after Netanyahu in reality is speaking of the establishment of a Palestinian state via the Palestine Authority. That isn’t the day that follows Netanyahu but is the ‘day after’ for the majority of Israeli citizens.”
He said of US influence in Israel that the Israeli prime minister must be able to say “no” even to the dearest of friends.
Barak Ravid reported this week at Axios that US President Joe Biden is deeply frustrated with Netanyahu’s intransigence and has not spoken with him in nearly a month. Ravid says during that last conversation, Biden was pressing Netanyahu to restore the funding he had cut from the Palestine Authority (the West Bank rival of Hamas). Netanyahu rejected all of Biden’s suggestions for a workaround. Biden allegedly said, “This conversation is over.” And, it has been over ever since.
On Sunday, some 400,000 protesters demonstrated in Washington, DC, against the ongoing war, alleging that Biden is facilitating genocide. Democratic Party leaders such as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer have expressed anxiety about the impact of Biden losing the Arab and Muslim American votes, which have sometimes been swing votes in Michigan and some other key states.
Netanyahu is on trial for corruption and fears going to jail if he loses his current position. Opinion polling suggests that he and his coalition partners would be crushed at the polls if the government fell and new elections were held now. Some polls show that only 15% of Israelis want Netanyahu to remain at his post once the war on Gaza ends. Many Israelis blame him for the security failures attendant on the October 7 terrorist attack. He in turn has represented himself as the only one who can stand up to pressure for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Ten Bears again has posted a must watch short historical video.I did not know a lot of the information in the video, and it so closely matches what some are trying to do today.I think that might be because the same people now older and wealthy enough to fund this grew up during that time believing in that idea.They couldn’t get it done then, they think they can now. We must not let them, we must stop them as they were stopped then.Hugs. Scottie
Discussing the incredible speech given by academic, activist, and BET host Marc Lamont Hill at Saint Sabina over the recent protest (and subsequent reaction) to Joe Biden’s speech at Mother Emanuel AME.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just said the quiet part out loud, in complete rejection of what the Biden administration has been trying to accomplish while at the same time taking all the money & aid the U.S. has been providing.
Accepting black and LGBTQIA people as equal and as qualified as white people is Marxist and wrong to these right wing jerks. Most who never served or would. Yet there beloved hard core he man ultra racist bigoted Russian army is getting its ass kicked by the multi cultural gay accepting male and female Ukraine army. Hugs Scottie
Far-Right Congressman Complains There Aren’t Enough White People Joining the Army
Rep. Paul Gosar blamed the drop in white recruits on the army’s supposed “woke Marxist ideologies.”
Profit is king, the poor are only livestock to create wealth for the wealthy, mindless uneducated drones to serve their betters / masters. Right wing billionaire bought a president and with that came all new courts aided by a willing republican congress. All to destroy any assistance for the lesser incomes / poor / workers and keep all power in the hands of the most wealthy people. In their minds they are the only real people, the public is not people like the wealthy are, they are a lessor people, a sub human class who should be kept desperate for any job at any low wage in any dangerous working conditions offered simply to survive. And to accomplish this the right keeps their people busy hating minority groups like immigrants, gays, trans, and even non-Christian groups. Hugs. Scottie
Side note: I had my spine epidurals yesterday, in the L4s5, both sides. Very painful. This morning I have my allergy shots, which last week left in a full-blown allergic reaction. The doctor was not happy when I saw him and talked to him about it. I suspect the nurses will grill me on it and lower my doses. Which means I will have to stay on once a week longer. Hugs. Scottie
Oxfam predicts first trillionaire within a decade, with gap between rich and poor likely to increase
Demonstrators in Davos on Sunday. A wealth tax of 1% to 2% on wealth above £10m could bring in £22bn a year for the UK. Photograph: Denis Balibouse/Reuters
The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes to $869bn (£681.5bn) since 2020, while the world’s poorest 60% – almost 5 billion people – have lost money.
The details come in a report by Oxfam as the world’s richest people gather from Monday in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum meeting of political leaders, corporate executives and the super-rich.
The yawning gap between rich and poor is likely to increase, the report says, and will lead to the world crowning its first trillionaire within a decade. At the same time, it warns, if current trends continue, world poverty will not be eradicated for another 229 years.
Highlighting a dramatic increase in inequality since the Covid pandemic, Oxfam said the world’s billionaires were $3.3tn (£2.6tn) richer than in 2020, and their wealth had grown three times faster than the rate of inflation.
The report, Inequality Inc., finds that seven out of 10 of the world’s biggest corporations have a billionaire as CEO or principal shareholder, despite stagnation in living standards for millions of workers around the world.
Will Elon Musk be the world’s first trillionaire? Photograph: Reuters
Compiled using data from the research company Wealth X and Forbes, it says the combined wealth of the top five richest people in the world – Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg – have increased by $464bn, or 114%. Over the same period, the total wealth of the poorest 4.77 billion people – making up 60% of the world population – has declined by 0.2% in real terms.
“People worldwide are working harder and longer hours, often for poverty wages in precarious and unsafe jobs,” the report says. “Across 52 countries, average real wages of nearly 800 million workers have fallen. These workers have lost a combined $1.5tn over the last two years, equivalent to 25 days of lost wages for each worker.”
Mirroring the fortunes of the super rich, it also says business profits have risen sharply despite pressure on households amid the cost of living crisis. It finds 148 of the world’s biggest corporations together raked in $1.8tn in total net profits in the year to June 2023, a 52% jump compared with average net profits in 2018-21.
Calling for a wealth tax to redress the balance between workers and super-rich company bosses and owners, the report says such a levy on British millionaires and billionaires could bring in £22bn for the exchequer each year, if applied at a rate of between 1% to 2% on net wealth above £10m.
Julia Davies, an investor and founding member of Patriotic Millionaires UK, a nonpartisan group of British millionaires campaigning for a wealth tax, said levies on wealth were “minuscule” compared with taxation on income from work.
“Just imagine what £22bn a year invested in public services and infrastructure could pay for; improving the lives of every one of us who live in the UK and providing our elderly, young and vulnerable with the care and support they need and deserve,” she said.
Oxfam said the most recent Gini index – which measures inequality – found that global income inequality was now comparable with that of South Africa, the country with the highest inequality in the world.
The world’s richest 1% own 59% of all global financial assets – including stocks, shares and bonds, plus stakes in privately held business. In the UK, the richest 1% own 36.5% of all financial assets, with a value of £1.8tn.
Aleema Shivji, Oxfam’s interim chief executive, said: “These extremes cannot be accepted as the new norm, the world can’t afford another decade of division. Extreme poverty in the poorest countries is still higher than it was pre-pandemic, yet a small number of super-rich men are racing to become the world’s first trillionaire within the next 10 years.
“This ever-widening gulf between the rich and the rest isn’t accidental, nor is it inevitable. Governments worldwide are making deliberate political choices that enable and encourage this distorted concentration of wealth, while hundreds of millions of people live in poverty. A fairer economy is possible, one that works for us all. What’s needed are concerted policies that deliver fairer taxation and support for everyone, not just the privileged.”
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