UC protests test the limits of Zionist fiction

Reprinted from Mondoweiss

The aftermath of the violence at UCLA illustrates that we live in an upside-down world where we decry property damage on college campuses as we fund the genocide in Gaza, and where we advocate for free speech until it says “stop the genocide.”

 

By UC Alumni 4 Palestine May 9, 2024  

 

UCLA Gaz solidarity encampment before it was cleared out by LAPD on May 1. (Photo: Social Media/X)

On April 30, a mob of Zionist vigilantes descended onto UCLA’s Palestine Solidarity Encampment, besieging it and waging horrific violence against students for hours throughout the night. On May 1, UCLA called in the LAPD to clear the encampment by force, unleashing yet another brutal attack on students before the blood from the previous night had a chance to dry. On May 2, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block hosted a town hall for UCLA alumni during which he glossed over the horrific events that took place on campus under his watch.

During his webinar, to an audience of 1000 alums unable to comment, Chancellor Block described the violence of the first night as a scuffle with some “pushing and shoving.” When asked about clearing the encampment the following night, he went so far as to praise police conduct as “patient” and “professional.” He claimed that police did not cause any “serious injuries” and that they had used techniques to “minimize harm.” He told these lies with a straight face as if his audience did not have access to the internet — as if we haven’t seen countless videos of rabid agitators beating students with metal rods and planks of wood, spraying students in the face with bear mace and launching explosives and other projectiles into the encampment. As if we haven’t seen the images of students bleeding profusely after being shot in the head with rubber bullets by brutal police forces. As if we haven’t heard the screams of terror as students fought for their lives on their own campus.

These outright lies from the Chancellor would have come as more of a shock if they did not perfectly align with the reality that we have all become accustomed to over the last six months: Zionism relies entirely on fiction, and its defenders will lie blatantly and shamelessly to uphold it, even in the face of irrefutable evidence. Without any substantive basis for the position, the best defense of Zionism has always been censorship and intimidation. Zionists are aware that even the tiniest opening for a legitimate conversation on the topic would send their entire argument crashing down.

A recent example of this phenomenon played out when Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of Berkeley Law, one of the most lauded legal minds of our time, was too afraid to let a student speak about Palestine during a school event held at his home. A vocal and staunch champion of free speech, Chemerinksy chose to shout over the speaker and silence her to avoid being confronted with her words — words he would not be able to refute. It is telling that Chemerinsky is able to argue persuasively and confidently before the Supreme Court, but cannot defend his position on Palestine before one of his students. 

The use of censorship and repression to uphold Zionism is not exclusive to university contexts; the incidents at UCLA and UC Berkeley are just two examples of a widespread phenomenon. Here are a few more examples: Israeli leadership continues to argue that civilians killed in Gaza are unfortunate collateral damage, even after it has come to light that the IOF uses AI to target men in their homes when they are with their wives and children. Western leaders proclaim that Israel has the right to use force in “self-defense,” while in reality, Palestinians are the ones who are afforded that right under international law as people living under a belligerent and illegal military occupation.

The New York Times — America’s paper of record — peddled an October 7 rape hoax that has been thoroughly discredited by multiple sources, and the paper has failed to pull the story from its site. In fact, the only effort NYT has made to correct the record for their journalistic malpractice has been launching an internal investigation to identify the source of the “leak” revealing the paper’s shoddy investigation. Every Biden administration spokesperson gets up on a podium and proclaims that Israel is working tirelessly to minimize civilian casualties, even as this administration bypasses Congress to send 2000-pound bunker bombs to drop on refugee camps. All these lies are told to manufacture consent for a genocide that killed more children in its first four months than were killed in all other conflicts globally in the last four years.

We live in an upside-down world where facts mean nothing and fantasy dominates. Where we rant and rave about property damage on college campuses as we fund the destruction and decimation of every home, hospital, and school in Gaza. Where university presidents resign for failing to protect students from protest slogans while Chancellor Block allows his students to be beaten to a pulp two nights in a row. Where we advocate for free speech until that speech says, “stop the genocide.” 

This perpetual manipulation and dishonesty is a sign of desperation — a last-ditch effort to salvage an indefensible ideology used to justify ethno-supremacy and apartheid. As these lies grow even more grotesquely convoluted, they accelerate the demise of the system they seek to defend.

Israeli Fascists Attack UNRWA Compund

 

Source: The Palestine Chronicle

Philippe Lazzarini*

View another video here.

 

This evening, Israeli residents set fire twice to the perimeter of the UNRWA Headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem. This took place while UNRWA and other UN Agencies’ staff were on the compound. While there were no casualties among our staff, the fire caused extensive damage to the outdoor areas. The

UNRWA headquarters has on its grounds a petrol and diesel station for the Agency’s fleet of cars. Our director with the help of other staff had to put out the fire themselves as it took the Israeli fire extinguishers and police a while before they turned up. A crowd accompanied by armed men were witnessed outside the compound chanting “Burn down the United Nations” (see video below from Israeli media). This is an outrageous development. Once again, the lives of UN staff were at a serious risk. In light of this second appalling incident in less than a week, I have taken the decision to close down our compound until proper security is restored. Over the past two months, Israeli extremists have been staging protests outside the UNRWA compound in Jerusalem, called by an elected member of the Jerusalem municipality.

This week, the protest became violent when demonstrators threw stones at UN staff and at the buildings of the compound. Over the past months, UN staff have regularly been subjected to harassment and intimidation. Our compound has been seriously vandalized and damaged. On several occasions, Israeli extremists threatened our staff with guns. It is the responsibility of the State of Israel as an occupying power to ensure that United Nations personnel and facilities are protected at all times. UN staff, premises and operations should be protected at all times in line with international law. I call on all those who have influence to put an end to these attacks and hold all those responsible accountable. The perpetrators of these attacks must be investigated and those responsible must be held accountable. Anything less will set a new dangerous standard.

 

Philippe Lazzarini is the Commissioner-General of the  United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) These comments were published from his official X (Twitter) account. @UNRWA

Gaza Genocide: Organized Labor Should Not Let The Students Stand Alone.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED
5-09-24

Frederick Engels said that, “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory”. This doesn’t mean theory is not important. But we learn so much through the struggle on the ground, in the workplace, the university, the community; through action. That’s what we are witnessing at this moment as students protesting the Zionists genocide in Gaza are being brutally assaulted by the US security apparatus and without doubt drawing conclusions from it. They are standing firm and they are on the right side of history.

The gang that occupies the US Congress and the class they represent are very concerned that the growing student movement could spread beyond the universities in to the community colleges and the working class communities of America, and particularly the ranks of organized labor. And so they should be.

Biden’s loyalty to Zionism---he is a Zionist and friend of the fascist Netanyahu this stupid bourgeois announces to the world---has nothing to do with fondness for Jews or their safety, the US ruling class is rife with anti-Semites, but a genuine concern that this European settler colony, US Imperialism’s only reliable ally in the region, has made a major blunder that threatens U.S. Imperialism’s interests in the region.

The heroic Palestinian resistance in Gaza to the Zionist genocide, against occupation and a decades old attempt to drive them and their culture in to oblivion, is the basis for the student rebellion which is spreading throughout the world.

The US ruling class and its western allies is having a hard time blaming everything on anti-Semitism which has lost much of its meaning since US efforts to link it to criticism of Israel and Zionism. Efforts to make the genocide a war against a political organization the US denotes as a “terrorist” have also lost traction.

The movement in support of Palestinians and their right to a state and the objection to hundreds of thousands of foreigners taking their land and homes on a religious basis is solid. It’s somewhat comical to listen to the mainstream US media, the BBC included, whine about anti-Semitism in this movement when so many young Jews are leading it and are openly anti-Zionist.

The situation has laid bare the class nature of society even further. In contrast to the Jews that are in the forefront of the opposition to genocide some Jewish billionaires are having to be more open about their support for the Zionists. Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots was one of the first to withdraw financial support from Columbia University. Now there is a more concerted effort to head off the storm.

Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban worth $3 billion and a major Democratic donor is angry at Biden and wants him to send more 2000-pound bombs. Real-estate billionaire Barry Sternlicht (worth $4.6 billion) has started a campaign to counter world opinion and raise billions to, “define Hamas to the American people as a terrorist organization.

According to Semafor.com, “Bill Ackman and Apollo CEO Marc Rowan criticized universities for their handling of pro-Palestinian student demonstrations, and Michael Bloomberg donated $44 million to Israel’s nonprofit emergency medical service.”

In the UK, anti-Zionist Jews have been expelled from the UK Labor Party for anti-Semitism. They declare themselves as “The wrong Kind of Jew.”  The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has called Jewish Voice For Peace a “hate group”

Here are some of the others that the campaign is appealing to and their net worth according to Forbes

Bill Ackman 4.3 billion USD

Barry Sternlicht  $4.6 billion

Eric schmidt $24.4 billion *

Michael Dell  $95.8 billion

Miriam Adelson worth, $42 billion is one of the 42 Israelis on Forbes 400 list in 2024. Such a small country has so many because many of them, like her, are US citizens or citizens of other countries.

So, while anti-Semitism, which is very real, and must be called out whenever it raises it’s ugly head, is simply being used in order to protect the investments of Jewish and non-Jewish capitalists that profit from the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the settling of European colonists.

We are in the midst of a shift in class relations globally. We should not fool ourselves, the response from the global elite will be ruthless and violent. They will attempt to divide us on racial, religious and gender lines. We must combat these divisions that undermine working class unity. Working people have the power to change the course of events. We have the numbers. If we don’t work, society doesn’t function.

I thank the Palestinian resistance for their heroic struggles and sacrifice that have changed the world in more ways than one.

*If you haven’t read it, check out When Google Met Wikileaks and support freedom for Julian Assange.

Seymour Hersh: THE PATTERN OF BIBI’S DESPERATE PROPOSALS

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a wreath-laying ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem on May 6. / Photo by Amir Cohen/Pool/AFP via Getty Images.

 

What a twenty-five-year-old memo by Daniel Ellsberg says about the past failures of Lyndon Johnson and the current horrors of Benjamin Netanyahu

Seymour Hersh

May 08, 2024

∙ Paid

The conversion of my friend Ellsberg, who died last June of cancer, from avid supporter of and adviser on the Vietnam War to perhaps its most important critic is well known. One of Dan’s major obsessions was with American leadership, specifically with the perversity of President Lyndon Johnson continuing to fight a war that many of his closest advisers knew could not be won. 

I thought of Dan after learning here in Washington that Israel’s—make that Benjamin Netanyahu’s—latest incursion into Rafah would be an all-out ‘go’ unless the Hamas negotiating team, now in Cairo, provides proof of the well-being of the thirty-three Israeli hostages said to be in its control. Without such proof, I was told by a senior American official, it will be “end game on.”

Which brings us to President Johnson. We now know that along with steadily increasing American troop involvement in the war and conducting bombing campaigns in both North and South Vietnam, he made no serious effort to engage in peace talks with the leadership of North Vietnam, despite a series of tentative offers from the North, whose basic precondition before serious talks was a temporary halt in the bombing. Time after time, as many histories of the war have reported, Johnson refused to agree to slow the bombing, and time after time such refusal led the North to turn away. He would announce that he was no longer running for re-election in March of 1968, when it was clear that the burgeoning antiwar movement in America, and the lack of success in the battlefield, made his re-election impossible.

Ellsberg, who never had a job after leaving government service and the national security sector, would go on to write a series of successful books and emerge as a leading spokesman for the anti-war and anti-nuclear movements in America. But he remained haunted by the war and by the seemingly irrational refusal of Johnson to agree to force the corrupt leadership of South Vietnam to join in settling the war with the North. 

He could not understand why Johnson refused to see what was obvious at the time—America and its corrupt allies in South Vietnam would never win the war in the South—and respond accordingly. In April of 1999, as the Clinton administration and NATO chose to bomb Serbia in a similarly unclear scenario, escalating the conflict there and producing more and more refugees, Ellsberg drafted a memorandum about the early days of the Vietnam War, when Johnson made a decision to expand the American involvement in Vietnam. At the time, as Ellsberg knew, Johnson’s decision “was seen by at least some advisers and perhaps by the top decision-makers” as having a “real possibility to end in catastrophe.”

At that decisive moment, Ellsberg wrote, “the decision maker acts as if he (usually male) sees only one kind of success and one kind of failure. . . . He sees his own humiliation, or loss of office or power as catastrophic—equivalently, indistinguishably catastrophic compared to other types of catastrophe such as . . . huge loss of life among his own people, enemy civilians, coerced enemy draftees, neutral neighborhood populations. . . . [T]he massacre of ‘others’ is privately seen by men in power . . . as secretly available to them as an instrument of power although they publicly acknowledge norms that rule this out as ‘unthinkable.’

“Could any human, not clinically insane,” Ellsherg asked, “really act as if losing an election was equivalent to any of these disasters?”

Ellsberg answered his own question with what he called an “empirical rule” that is being put in play today by Netanyahu in Gaza: “There is no limit to the number of human ‘others’ that a man or woman in power will endanger or destroy or torture or afflict to avoid an otherwise certain, short-run loss of power (or perhaps even prestige), or even to make it less than certain.”

Ellsberg called this leadership phenomenon “The Desperate Proposal Pattern.” He argued that the pattern was in effect throughout the Vietnam War in terms of who was viewed as the disposables: millions of Vietnamese were seen that way by the US leadership. Netanyahu is not alone in his use of disposables; Kennedy and Johnson consistently chose to bet on “long shots” in their attempts to win the unwinnable Vietnam War.

I took Ellsberg’s thesis to two Israeli veterans, and old friends, who have fought—in both cases suffering grievous wounds—and served as ad hoc advisers in past wars for Israel. Dan wouldn’t have been surprised at their willingness to acknowledge failure and the need to be rid of Netanyahu and his ruling coalition, and to work with Israel’s Arab neighbors. 

One quiet hero of many covert operations, some successful and some not, put it this way:

“This is a government led by a prime minister who is scared by his own shadow, indecisive, and compulsively mistaken, whose personal and political survivability are his sole and exclusive goals. Bibi has proven himself to be a master of propaganda, a magician of slogans and words that are impossible to achieve. . . . Even if he is forced out, there are no charismatic leaders to replace him. The IDF which served as the Israeli leadership greenhouse (now) produces many pale and gray generals. Most of the declared candidates to replace Bibi are unwilling to lead to a two-state solution.

“Israel faces an historic moment as most of the Sunni Arab states are ready and willing to accept her into a regional alliance based on military intelligence cooperation and economic teamwork. If we have the courage and energy to face reality and start with regional allies. . . . If we have the courage and energy to return to the real roots of Judaism: love your neighbor as yourself and  sanctify life and not death, we may survive and elevate the region with us.”

Another former Israeli officer who suffered a grievous injury in combat and survived, acknowledged the failures of the current war against Hamas. Following the Ellsberg thesis, he told me that Bibi viewed his “survival in power” in the wake of the failures in Gaza as “more important than finding an alternative to Hamas in Gaza, getting on the road to ending the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and normalizing Israel’s situation in the region.” 

The only way forward, he said, “is to replace Bibi and the extremist government with a centrist, pragmatic government. Short of replacing Bibi and his current coalition, it is difficult to see how Israel’s strategic defeat in Gaza can be transformed into a meaningful victory.”

A more senior Israeli, who spent years advising on the inside, in both war and peace, would have endorsed the optimism expressed above, in terms of a future Israel as a good neighbor, but saw the burden of the past as being much harder to overcome. Especially, as he told me, in the wake of the disaster in Gaza.

The existential crisis facing Israel and its leadership today, he said, “is the result of a very unfortunate set of historical accidents. Some of Ben Gurion’s mistakes regarding the religious politicians, then regarding the Moroccan Jews, then Golda’s 1973 Yom Kippur War, then Begin’s love for the ultra-Orthodox and the extreme religious Zionists and his hissing hate for the Kibbutzim.” (Menachem Begin’s conservative Likud Party was elected to office in 1977 and stayed in power until 1992.)

“This created a three-headed monster of parasitic anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodoxy fused with ultra-aggressive, ultra-Zionist nationalism and with rampant politico-financial corruption. This is a historical set of blunders that took place while the ‘Old’ Israel of my parents set in motion a highly successful civil society of basic decency, social care, science, creativity, and productivity. Ah, and secular values. 

“This [monster] society sprang to life last October 7 when the state system was heavily sedated. It [the Old Israel] has remained in opium slumber until today, [while] the headless-chicken-like-jerks [the new extreme religious right] allocating huge money to settlements and ultra-Orthodox Yeshivas. 

“Which of the two Israels will win?” he asked.

 

Inflation and interest rates: the US experience

michael roberts May 5 Once again the US Federal Reserve is in a quandary.  Does it cut its policy interest rate soon in order to relieve pressure on debt servicing costs for consumers and businesses and perhaps avoid a stagflationary economy (ie low or no growth alongside higher inflation); or does it hold its current interest rate for borrowing in order to make sure inflation falls towards its target of 2% a year? That’s what mainstream economists and investors in financial assets want an answer to.  But it’s not really the important issue.  What the Fed’s current quandary really shows is that yet again ‘monetary policy’ (ie central banks adjusting interest rates and money supply) has little effect on controlling inflation in the prices of goods and services that households and businesses must pay. Central bankers and mainstream economists continue to argue that monetary policy does make a difference to inflation rates.  But the evidence is to the contrary.  Monetary policy supposedly manages ‘aggregate demand’ in an economy by making it more or less expensive to borrow to spend (whether as consumption or investment).  But the experience of the recent inflationary spike since the end of the pandemic slump in 2020 is clear.  Inflation went up because of weakened and blocked supply chains and the slow recovery in manufacturing production, not because of ‘excessive demand’ caused by either a government spending binge or ‘excessive’ wage rises or both.  And inflation started to subside as soon as the energy and food shortages and prices ebbed, global supply chain blockages were reduced and production began to pick up.  I won’t go over the past evidence that inflation was supply-driven not demand-led, which is overwhelming.  But this meant that central bank monetary policy could take little credit for reducing inflation.  And here is the rub.  Inflation rates are beginning to creep back up again, particularly in the US.  US core inflation (which actually excludes food and energy prices) is now rising at over 4% a year on a 3m rolling average. And the reasons are two-fold.  First, food and energy prices have started to rise again.  Oil prices have picked up as the Houthis attack shipping in the Red Sea and Israel extends the war in Gaza towards Iran.  And a key raw material for industry, copper, is in short supply and now has a record price. The Fed is in a quandary and mainstream economists have been forced again to reconsider the efficacy of monetarism, the theory that inflation is caused by excessive money supply growth over output.  Central banks have been squeezing money supply growth supposedly to reduce inflation. But mainstream voices are showing uncertainty.  The FT published an article this week headed: The limits of what high interest rates can now achieve, commenting that “We need to be realistic about what monetary policy can and cannot do”. The article admits that “the effectiveness of monetary policy also depends on the structural economic drivers around it. After all, the era of benign inflation before the financial crisis was bolstered by elastic production and energy supplies. Looking ahead, using rates with unreliable lags to influence demand is a recipe for volatility, as supply shocks from regionalisation, geopolitics and less supportive demographics continue — unless there are offsetting productivity gains.”  The article concludes that “Fiscal and supply-side policy must get greater emphasis in the price stability debate. After all, a faulty faucet is even more useless if the plumbing has gone awry.” Nevertheless, the article continued to claim that monetary policy by the Fed and other central banks had helped to get inflation down.  The article cited various papers for this claim, from the Bank for International Settlements and the Bank of England.  But when you go to those sources, the evidence again is to the contrary.  Take the BoE paper quoted: it concludes that “UK inflation in 2021 is explained by shortages and energy price shocks, and in 2022 and 2023 also by food price shocks and labour market tightness. Inflation expectations have been more well-anchored than predicted by the model. Conditional projections suggest UK inflation will fall sharply in 2023 from disinflationary energy and food price effects, but the decline will slow markedly thereafter.”  So not much to do with ‘excessive demand’ Even at the home of monetarism, the Bank for International Settlements, is less than convincing in claiming that inflation was due to excessive money supply or even excessive demand.  The BIS paper focuses its attention not on the initial causes of the inflationary spike but on the likelihood that inflation will be ‘sticky’ and not come down much because of the risk workers taking advantage of ‘tight’ labour markets to boost wages.  The BIS is more worried about the hit to the profitability of companies than the fact that workers’ wages are still trying to catch up with a more than 20% rise in average prices since the end of the pandemic. “in tighter markets, there is a greater likelihood that bargaining power will shift in favour of workers and pass-through between wages and prices will gain strength.”  Oh dear.  But even the BIS admits that “adverse demographic trends and pandemic-related preference shifts on the supply side, can go a long way in explaining these dynamics.” The final mainstream argument for inflation is inflation expectations.  You see, households and even companies expect inflation to accelerate so households buy more and companies hike prices more, achieving even higher inflation.  The expectations theory is no theory at all.  It can only operate if inflation is already rising and so cannot explain the initial spike at all.  Expectations theory has been debunked as an explanation for rising inflation.  Now with falling inflation, the evidence for this ‘theory’ remains weak.  Allianz Research has disaggregated the 9 percentage point drop in America’s quarterly annualised inflation since the second quarter of 2022 using regression analysis. It found 5.5pp of the drop was driven by supply-chain snags simply unwinding. So that’s some 60% of the decline.  But AR reckons that 2.7pp of the 9% fall “was due to the Federal Reserve’s signalling, which helped to re-anchor inflation expectations.”  I leave you to believe what you make of the idea of ‘signalling’.  Another 2.2pp came from the impact of higher rates squeezing demand, which was needed to counteract the inflationary impact of supportive fiscal policy and labour shortages.  Even if you accept this analysis, it means that 60-80% of the decline in US inflation since the middle of 2022 was due to supply-side factors. And that brings us to the ‘stickiness’ of inflation.  Which components of the inflation index have not fallen despite central bank rate hikes?  The answer is housing costs and motor car insurance, which have risen sharply.  As the FT article admits: “Both are partly a product of pandemic supply shocks — reduced construction and a shortage of vehicle parts — that are still percolating through the supply chain. Indeed, dearer car insurance now is a product of past cost pressures in vehicles. Demand is not the central problem; there is little high rates can do.” The FT article concludes that “Either way, monetary policy is a catchall tool. It cannot control demand in a quick, linear or targeted manner. Other measures need to pick up the slack. Estimates suggest supply factors — which rates have little influence over — are now contributing more to US core inflation than demand.”  Well, actually throughout this inflation rise and fall, it has been supply that has been the main driver.  Where to now?  The risk now is that the US economy could slow down towards stagnation in output while inflation stays ‘sticky’ because of a new rise in commodity prices. The US economy ended last year growing in real terms (ie after accounting for inflation) at an annual rate of 3.4%.  This was greeted with euphoria by the mainstream and the financial media. “The U.S. economy is performing very well…We’re truly the envy of the world.” said one EconForecaster, James Smith.  But then in the first quarter of 2024, that real GDP growth annual rate slowed to 1.6%, the slowest rate since the first half of 2022. Moreover, the latest economic activity surveys, called PMIs, for the US make dismal reading.  Any level below 50 indicates a contraction.  In April, both the US manufacturing and services sector PMIs were below 50 for the first time together. Also, the jobs market is beginning to look frailer.  Sure, the official US unemployment rate is still below 4% (3.9%), but job hiring by US companies is dropping off, particularly among small firms as the National Federation of Independent Businesses survey of hiring intentions shows. And the NFIB survey seems a good forward indicator of jobs growth. And employees are now more reluctant to switch jobs, in case they do not get another. Indeed, over the past two years, most new jobs have been part time. While full-time employment (that always pays better and with better conditions) has stagnated. High interest rates as set by the Fed and other central banks are not controlling inflation.  Instead, they are raising debt servicing costs for particularly small companies just as corporate revenue growth also slows.  Profitability is thus being squeezed, except for the mega ‘Magnificent Seven’ companies.  The 'excess savings' that households built up during the pandemic lockdowns appear to have been exhausted. Confidence to spend among American households has fallen to its lowest level in almost two years as Americans become more pessimistic about future economic conditions. Back last November former NY Fed chief, William Dudley commented: “does the unemployment rate have to rise to 4.25-4.5 per cent for the Fed to achieve their “final mile” on getting inflation back down to 2 per cent? If you think it does, then a hard landing is highly likely.” Claudia Sahm, another former Fed economist reckons that if the unemployment rate runs some 0.5% pts above the bottom for three months, it is a very strong indicator of a recession in output.  Currently, this Sahm indicator is now 0.36 pp above the lowest such reading for the previous 12 months.  So not yet at the ‘recession’ threshold, but closing in. Much of the recent growth in the US economy has been achieved by large increases in immigration.  But from here, if the US economy will only avoid stagnation if productivity growth picks up. Moreover, what will keep inflation down would be a rise in output per worker per hour, ie an increase in new value.  Up to now, US productivity growth in the 2020s has remained relatively moderate. The hope is that AI will bring about a ‘productivity revolution’ setting the US economy on the road to a roaring 2020s where real GDP grows faster than the long-term average while inflation stays low.  At the moment, the opposite looks more likely.

 

The Palestinian Revolution is Giving Young People Meaning

 

Alon Mizrahi *

Palestine is giving young people meaning the capitalist, corporate world order viciously denied them.

At the most precise moment in history when it seemed a completely mechanical, vertical, and isolated form of existence was about to bury humanity for good, this genocide sparked a long-forgotten truth: that we (the people) are creatures of community; that we only find true joy and meaning in connecting with other people.

That we cannot be happy when others around us suffer.

Palestine is an actual and concrete struggle but it is also, and crucially so, an instrument of philosophical liberation of universal importance. And these kids are holding on to it as a buoy, so as not to drown in an ocean of cold and meaningless rituals that have no resonance with the human soul: be born, learn, learn a craft, accumulate material things, obey the system, have a family die.

They don't want it. They looked into their screens, and while we thought they were vanishing and ceasing to be in them, it is there they found life, and what it really means.

They want Palestinians to stop being mass murdered, displaced, and dehumanized, but they want the same thing for themselves. They want to feel human, and they reject the system that tries so desperately to humiliate, denigrate, and dismantle them.

As propheseid, the revolution is not televised, as establishment media is an essential part of the oppressing mechanism. But rather than let it fool you, see this violent denial for what it is: proof of the magnitude and potential of this movement.

The Palestinian Revolution may yet prove to be more consequential than the French one.

 

* Alon Mizrahi is a published author in Israel, born "to a Jewish Palestinian father and a Jewish Moroccan mother). But fighting for an audience for my nonconformist message of peace, equality, and freedom was always extremely difficult. The post-October 7th Gaza genocide made it quite impossible. It has become the right time for me to use my access to the English language, which is not my mother tongue, and connect with audiences and people from anywhere."

US Congress Shreds Free Speech at Home to Defend Israel Abroad.

 

Source

 

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED

May 1 2024

 

Oh, but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you anymore
You keep on saying, "Go slow"
Go slow

Nina Simone
Mississippi Goddamn

The US House of Representatives voted today on the Antisemitism Awareness Act and passed it 320 to 91 with 70 Democrats and 21 Republicans voting against the bill. This bill has been criticised for basing the legislation on the definition of anti-Semitism put forward by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which conflates anti-Semitism with criticism of the state of Israel.  The bill now heads to the US Senate. The bill mandates the Department of Education to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which classifies most anti-Zionism as anti-semitic.

Here are some of the aspects of the bill that I came across:

Calling for aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.

Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective -such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews

Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War Il (the Holocaust)

Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.

Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.

Denying the Jewish people their right to self determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.

Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

Anti-semitic acts are criminal when they are so defined by law (for example, denial of the

Holocaust or distribution of anti-semitic materials in some countries).

Without a doubt, the bill does point to clear examples of anti-semitism, or more accurately hatred toward Jews as Arabs also are Semites. I recall in my youth the term Arab Jews being quite common but then the state of Israel was only 20 years old.

But defending Jews is not the purpose of this legislation, defending Israel is. This is a very dangerous piece of legislation as it equates criticism of the actions of a nation state with attacks on a people because of their religious beliefs.

Is criticizing the historical English and British subjugation and genocidal war on the Irish people racist toward the English?  Not all Germans were Nazis. Is criticizing or referring to Nazis as racist anti-German? Zionism, is inherently a racist ideology and is not and should not be confused with Judaism. One is a political formation the other a religion, Zionism is barely 150 years old. Millions of Jews are anti-Zionist. Read Roger Silverman’s article on Zionism here.  And Mondoweiss: Zionism must be exposedand discredited

Katie Halper of the Katie Halper Show on You Tube writes on X, formerly Twitter: “This Bill is an abomination and anti-semetic in itself because it perpetuates the dual loyalty trope that all Jews are a monolith who support the state of Israel. Truly repulsive stuff.” Katie Halper on You Tube.

“I can’t totally speak to their intent,” Morriah Kaplan, strategic director at IfNotNow, which is focused on opposing the Israeli occupation, said of the organizations backing the definition, “but these are not people I trust to go after antisemitism.” Jewish Forward 1-26-21.

Jerry Nadler, the informal dean of the congressional Jewish Caucus, voted against the measure,  “Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful discrimination……The bill sweeps too broadly.” he said. 

Meanwhile the big business press in the US is playing the anti-semitism card to the hilt, “As antisemitism has surged to record levels since Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, many Jews feel Israel requires more support now than ever – as a refuge for Jews, who have long been an oppressed minority.”  CNN reports on May 1st as hundreds of students are being beaten, attacked and arrested by US security forces.

The reality is that the movement against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and decades long ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is to a large part led by young Jews. This is certainly the case in the US. We now have young Palestinian children thanking the US students for their support. Are we supposed to think that they don’t know many of them are Jews. I have an Arab friend from Yemen who refers to Jews as “our cousins” and I have never heard an anti-semitic word out of him but I have heard him curse the Israelis.

Naturally, the overwhelmingly Gentile US bourgeois is supporting the legislation along with their conservative Jewish colleagues. Their interests are under threat if the Zionist regime is weakened, it’s the only ally US imperialism can rely on in this important part of the world.

This is the crux of the matter and that’s what drives the US rogue regime and the US Congress to support the genocide.

I have long been an opponent of some Jewish Americans who are too complacent in the view that Jews are safe here from the events that occurred in Europe that led to the Holocaust. But I think it is a bit of a stretch to consider Jews an oppressed minority in the US but that doesn’t mean they can’t become one. Zionism and the actions of the Zionist regime in Israel increases the likely of such a development.

Conservative Jewish groups like the ADL and others are supportive of the legislation but other Jewish groups not to mention the ACLU have opposed it on the grounds that it is a barrier to free speech, First Amendment rights and the right to criticize a nation state.

It is important to remember that the largest Zionist group in the US is right wing or Evangelical Christians, and the US body politic is populated with them. However, this move to conflate Judaism with Zionism is a political strategy taken by US imperialism to defend its settler colony in the Middle East and the Christian right are a useful ally here as they are driven by biblical prophecy. 

The heroic sacrifices the Palestinian people have made in their struggle against occupation, Apartheid and genocide has transformed the situation in Palestine and the world’s perception of events. The endless meetings, talks about a Palestinian state and US guarantees of it at some nebulous point in time are shown now for what they really were: lies, lies and more lies. Decades of cruelty.

The Palestinians struggle has done more damage to the Zionist regime than decades of diplomacy. It has created a nightmare but Palestinians have been living that nightmare with no end in sight for 76 years. The Zionists have already lost the war.  I watched this video today and had to listen to the many Americans who are settlers in Israel and live on stolen land or in houses built on demolished Palestinian ones.

The state of Israel was created by the British and western capital as a foothold in the region after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after WW1 and also as a way of ridding Europe of its centuries old “Jewish problem.” Only after the betrayal of Stalinism and the horror of the Holocaust did the concept of Palestine as a home for Europe’s Jews gain any traction at all and they too are victims on that basis. It was Christian Europe that tried to exterminate Jews, not Arabs or Muslims.

There is a genuine danger here of a wider conflict but the main players are driven by the laws of the capitalist system. The US is under threat from all sides. It is losing in the competition with China. It has lost the Ukraine conflict after spending billions of US taxpayers' money and now its most important proxy in the Middle East that has received untold billions in money and weapons of mass destruction, is losing the battle for influence in the oil rich region.

In the long run, and time is running out, capitalism cannot solve this crisis and there will be more war, more fragmentation and chaos as global capitalism comes apart at the seams. Perhaps the most threatening of all is climate catastrophe which threatens human life as we know it. Only united action by the global working class, the formation of a global federation of democratic socialist states based on economic cooperation in harmony with nature not opposed to it, can show a way out. That is not utopian, it is necessary if we are not to be another one of those ancient civilizations that never made it.