AnarchoBolshevik

It is well-known that the U.S. war machine is the biggest single polluter in the world. While [the People’s Republic of] China increasingly focuses on developing electric vehicles and other green technologies to reduce global warming, [neo]imperialists are intent on expanding wars and ecocide.

In just over a week, two major hurricanes whose size, power and enormous rainfall is linked to climate warming — Hurricanes Helene and Milton — wreaked havoc on several states in the South. Rather than dedicate time, money and science to find ways to curb deadly and destructive storms stemming from climate change, Congress voted for billions of dollars more for weapons to Israel, while simultaneously cutting funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Fracking has been blamed for leaking millions of tons of methane — a greenhouse gas considered more potent than carbon dioxide. According to a new major research study, exported gas emits far more greenhouse gas emissions than coal. The research by Cornell University environmental scientist Robert Howarth found that LNG is 33% worse than coal in terms of planet-heating emissions over a 20-year period. (Guardian, Oct. 4)

The actual burning of natural gas only accounts for a third of total emissions. The process of drilling, moving, cooling and shipping gas from country to country uses twice as much energy. The review, published in the Energy Science and Engineering journal concludes that “ending the use of LNG should be a global priority.”

Workers should demand that instead of passing laws to protect fossil gas fracking, legislatures across the U.S. should pass laws to protect the planet by outlawing fracking.

Following the Al-Aqsa Flood that erupted in Gaza a year ago on October 7, 2023, Saleh wore a small Lebanese flag patch on the arm of his Jets’ sweatshirt shirt. This was part of the NFL’s Heritage Program in 2023 where players and coaches are encouraged to recognize their cultural backgrounds with patches and decals. He had worn the Lebanese flag patch on other occasions.

But that all changed once […] airstrikes began pounding the densely populated areas of Beirut on Sept. 27, after which there was a major defensive military response from the liberation organization, Hezbollah — a justifiable action in their ongoing struggle.

Joe Benigno, a former sports radio host at WFAN radio station, remarked in an interview on The Jake Asman Show on Oct. 8, that he believed that Saleh was fired due to the current situation in West Asia, particularly in Lebanon. Benigno told Asman, “There is no sugarcoating of what’s going on in the Middle East.”

Those who have denounced Saleh over social media have equated the Lebanese flag with the […] anti-U.S. Hezbollah flag — which Saleh should also have the right to wear.

The Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) has demanded an explanation from Jets owner Woody Johnson — who had been accused of making racist and sexist remarks while he was a member of the Trump administration in 2020 — on the firing of Saleh. Notably, Johnson is staunchly pro-Zionist.

The CAIR statement reads: “We commend Coach Robert Saleh for making history as the first American Muslim head coach in NFL history. Although no one should jump to conclusions about why the Jets fired Coach Saleh, the report that Jets security physically escorted Saleh out of the building does raise concerns about the possible motive for such unusual hostility—especially given that Saleh wore a Lebanese flag pin at a game just days ago and that owner Woody Johnson is a former Trump administration official who has been accused of making racially charged remarks. We encourage the Jets to thoroughly explain its unusually hostile reported treatment of Coach Saleh.”

As of this writing, the Jets ownership has not responded to CAIR’s concerns.

Some JVP activists chained themselves to the outside doors of the Exchange before police arrested more than 200 of the participants, including elders and descendants of Holocaust survivors. One of the main chants at the sit-in was “Gaza bombed, Wall Street booms. Fund health care, housing, FEMA, not genocide!”

Related: Support the students backing Palestine!

This qualitative operation comes to direct a new security and military blow to the zionist enemy at the height of its arrogance and security alert and proves that the resistance still has the final say in the field despite the scale of the aggression and the great sacrifices.

We praise the jihad and sacrifices of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, who are directing qualitative and painful blows to the zionist enemy in the field and deep within the usurping entity.

The fascist zionist enemy must await more of the might of our fighters in Palestine and Lebanon, and the usurping entity must realize that it is in an open war with the nation and that the continuation of its aggression against our people and our nation will inflict more losses, defeats, disappointment and failure on it.

We call for intensifying the qualitative and painful operations deep inside the criminal zionist entity, as the corrupt enemy only understands the language of force and spears and will not be deterred except by more blows to its head.

The U.S. government suffered a humiliating defeat when the Uhuru 3 won an acquittal on the main charge against them, absurdly alleging that they were “Russian agents.” Now the federal prosecutors plan to use the framed-up “conspiracy” conviction to put the leader of the African Revolution behind bars. But the movement of the people can stop them! Now is the time to mobilize, write letters to the judge ahead of the sentencing hearing and make plans to be in Tampa, Florida to pack the court on November 25!

Take Action:

1. Write for Justice: Letters to the Judge in Support of the Uhuru 3. Our goal is to gather at least 500 letters for each of the Uhuru 3 by the October 15 deadline. Your letters are critical in helping the court understand the positive impact of their decades-long fight for justice and self-determination. These letters to each person should be sent to their specific attorneys and will be used to argue for a lenient sentence at their sentencing hearing. Go to HandsOffUhuru.org/Letters
2. Pack the Courthouse! Attend the Uhuru 3 sentencing in Tampa, Florida on Monday, November 25. Go to HandsOffUhuru.org for more info.
3. Donate to the Hands Off Uhuru Legal Defense Fund. Fund the ongoing fightback as we prepare to launch our appeal to overturn the bogus conspiracy conviction. Go to HandsOffUhuru.org/Donate.

In a pair of 2010 cases, Citizens United v. FEC and SpeechNow.org v. FEC, the Supreme Court held that legal restrictions on independent political expenditures by corporations, unions, and nonprofits violate the First Amendment and that organizations may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on elections as long as they do not coordinate their spending with candidates, parties, and campaigns.

Much of the independent money spent on elections is funneled into two sorts of organizations—super PACs, independent political action committees that can spend unlimited amounts on political messaging and campaign ads but must disclose their donors, and tax-exempt 501(c)4 “social welfare” organizations, which cannot spend the majority of their budgets on political activity but do not have to disclose their donors.

Moreover, 501(c)4 organizations can, in turn, donate funds to super PACS, thereby rendering anonymous or “dark” expenditures by corporations and other deep-pocket donors intended to sway voters. Since 2010, the watchdog organization Open Secrets has tracked more than $2.8 billion in “dark money”—political expenditures from undisclosed sources—that has flooded into our elections.

The same legal loopholes that allow all wealthy corporations and individuals to spend millions in “dark money” to shape the political process also permit U.S. corporations that are subsidiaries of foreign companies, or that have significant foreign ownership, to pour untraceable money into U.S. elections. According to one estimate, 40 percent of U.S. corporate equity is owned by foreign investors.

A recent Open Secrets study of political expenditures by foreign-influenced corporations—corporations with more than 5 percent aggregate foreign ownership or individual foreign ownership of more than one percent—in state elections in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New York, and Washington found that such companies were responsible for $163 million in contributions from 2018 to 2022. Meanwhile, foreign-connected company PACs spent nearly $20 million on federal elections in 2022 alone.

And just like domestic dark money funders, foreign-connected corporations often funnel their political spending through various “shell” and “front” organizations that make their spending exceedingly difficult to trace. For example, oil and gas giants BP and Shell are both wholly owned subsidiaries of foreign corporations. They are also both members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is a major font of dark money spending, shelling out millions each year on “electioneering communication” in support of candidates it favors.

The Chamber refuses to disclose its members or how much they each contribute to the funding of the organization’s vast lobbying and political influence operations. As a result, there is no way of knowing how much of the dark money the group disperses originates with foreign-connected companies.

The issue of dark money spending by foreign-influenced companies, like dark money spending in general, has been largely ignored by the corporate media. Two years ago, the Federal Election Commission fined Canadian billionaire steel magnate Barry Zekelman’s businesses nearly a million dollars for making $1.75 million in illegal campaign contributions to American First Action, a pro-Trump political action committee, in 2018.

The fine was so unusual—and so large—that it received coverage in the New York Times and Newsweek. But, sadly, the FEC’s actions received more coverage in Zekelman’s home country of Canada than it did in the country whose election laws he violated.

In response to the question asked about calling the police for possible robbery when hearing the car alarm, about just 0.3 % of the respondents answered always call police and about 9% sometimes call the police while more than 90% of them have never ever taken any action. It can be explained by this fact; many people have learned that automobile theft alarms are often false. Therefore, when they hear one, they may disregard it because they have mentally conceptualized the automobile theft alarm stimulus as unreliable (Bliss et al., 2007; Hazalbaker, 1997).

The third question has been about the respondents’ reaction while hearing the car alarm; the collected answers were divided to 9 categories. The results are shown in table 1. The next question was about the real efficiency of car alarms in robbery prevention including none, low, medium, high and very high options, the results are summarized in Figure 2.

More than 75% of the responds, when asking if car alarm has ever interfered with the ability to sleep, was “Yes”. Beside that about 84% of the respondents have problem with its interference while studying at home or in the school (Figure 3). At an elementary school in Inwood, similar findings indicated that children in the noisier side of a school were 3 to 4 months behind in reading comprehension than children in quieter ones (Bronzaft and McCarthy, 1975).

[…]

As it arises from the questionnaires, about 66% of respondents are faced with car alarm sirens more than 3 times a day which is beyond their mental and physical bearing capacity, concerning the nature of the noise. It interferes with the ability of 76% to sleep and with the ability of 84% to study at school or home, particularly significant because they are students. The rated noise annoyance was on average 6.2 which is well above moderate.

It should also be mentioned that car alarms are especially harmful for two reasons. First, their variable noise can’t be “tuned out” as easily as steady sounds. Second, many new car alarms exceed 125 decibels (dBA). This is louder than the sound of a jet airplane taking off 200 feet away. Alarms erode the sense of neighborliness and mutual respect necessary for life in densely‐populated cities (Friedman et al., 2003).

On the other hand, just 3% of the respondents call police upon hearing the car alarm and 97% face it with fortitude, anger, no concentration and calmness, inconvenience, horror and stress (75%) and objection, seeking for the reason, worry about any possible incident (22%). It seems that the most important reason for taking no action is due to no belief in car alarms effectiveness as it is shown in figure(2) that just one‐third (36%) of the people believe that it has high and very high efficiency in car theft prevention.

Similar findings are reported in VTPI (2009); the authors stated that car alarms are not very effective at preventing thefts: most alarms are false and cars with alarms are just as likely to be broken into those without.

(Emphasis added.)

I’ve hated car alarms ever since I was little. I still remember that night when I was staying at a hotel and I obliviously pressed a car alarm button, forcing my uncle to run outside to turn it off, and waking up my grandfather, who got up to stare at me for a few dozen seconds before he returned to bed. I was embarrassed.

Several days ago there was an incident in my house where I was waiting in the garage for somebody and the car alarm suddenly exploded without warning. My driver had accidentally pushed the car alarm button when she was opening the door, and I was so exhausted—almost traumatized—from the incident that I hardly said anything that day and I stayed home the next.

Several hundred Stellantis workers and supporters rallied on Oct. 9 at the UAW Local 869 union hall to build support for a “yes” vote to authorize a strike and defend union jobs. Speakers included Local 869 President Romaine McKinney III, UAW Region 1 Director LaShawn English and President Fain. Local 869 represents workers at Stellantis’s Warren Stamping Plant.

Rally attendees applauded the fight-back message of all the speakers and signed cards pledging to vote in favor of striking Stellantis. UAW members sang along to “Solidarity Forever” as pro-labor musical artist Billy Bragg, in Metro Detroit for a concert, closed the rally.

When Hurricane Helene hit the big bend area of Florida’s Gulf Coast, it had absorbed a tremendous amount of energy from the super warm waters of the Gulf Coast becoming unusually wide and powerful. As it moved quickly inland it didn’t encounter dry soil conditions that generally rob hurricanes of their strength. Warm rains preceded it by a few days, so Helene was met by warm, wet soil until it hit the mountains of western North Carolina.

There it dumped all of the moisture it had collected from the Gulf. Months worth of rain came down in three days resulting in devastating floods and mudslides.

To avoid the deaths that these floods caused, the county authorities of Buncombe County, the county which includes Asheville, would have had to arrange for evacuations based on flood zones. They were indeed aware that a “flood event called Helene” was headed their way.

But the flood zone maps for Buncombe were last updated in 2010 (with updates scheduled for 2026), and no evacuation routes had been established in an area where most roads are narrow and twisty.

An areawide notification system was also missing. Even the limited, last moment notices given were only in English, despite 6% of the county’s population being Spanish-speaking.

The authorities decided that people staying put was the safest way to respond to the storm.

It wasn’t!

I extend my warmest greetings to you, those born later, who, despite slander and numerous falsifications of history, which can also be found in school books, are interested in the German Democratic Republic and its policies. You are confronted in this society with a lot of untruths about our state, a state that no longer exists. But I can assure you: We who were committed to the cause wanted to change the world and create a better Germany. So that never again will a mother weep for her son. Unfortunately, for many reasons, including our own fault, we have not yet succeeded. Much remains to be done.

And yet I think: We laid the groundw[ork and] we sowed the seeds. We will certainly not live to see the harvest. But I hope that you and your peers, your children and your children’s children will not forget that for 40 years there was an anti-fascist state in the east of Germany that had learned the lessons of two world wars and was a real alternative to capitalism and war.

[…]

Dear attendees, there are many reasons to like the GDR. And also many reasons to sharply criticize its shortcomings. But above all stands the word peace. The GDR never waged war. It was the German state of peace. In this context, I would like to recall the state telegram from Moscow to President Wilhelm Pieck and Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl regarding the founding of the GDR. I quote it, because it succinctly expresses the historical mission of the GDR:

“The formation of the German Democratic Peace-loving Republic is a turning point in the history of Europe.” And further: “There is no doubt that the existence of a peace-loving democratic Germany alongside the peace-loving Soviet Union precludes the possibility of new wars in Europe.” How true, how clear, how relevant!

[…]

Within a historically short period of time, West German governments destroyed what had been built up in the Soviet occupation zone and later in the GDR in terms of trust between the Germans and the peoples of the Soviet Union. Now, German politicians and the German media are stirring up hatred of Russians, hatred that I last experienced as an eight-year-old during the final phase of World War II. The old enemy stereotype — the “Russian” is to blame for everything — and the myth of the dangerous Russia is being revived. It is raising fears of Russia as if its troops were lurking around the corner.

[…]

In retrospect, we know that since the GDR ceased to function as a social corrective, social alienation has increased. The already existing gap between rich and poor is growing ever wider, and the chasm is now downright obscene. Patronage-based political parties embezzle funds intended for the common good. But resistance is growing.

Social interest from almost all segments of society is forcing the bourgeois parties to discuss the worst excesses. If only they were led to discuss this as energetically as they did when methodically disparaging East German personal histories and engaging in a blanket witch hunt of former employees of the GDR’s security forces, all in an effort to divert attention from their own country’s problems! The GDR will not serve as the Cinderella of German history.

What the GDR was, why it was founded, what historical achievements it had, what position it occupied internationally, how both German states were always on the brink of a possible nuclear war in a cold civil war, what the reasons for the defeat of the GDR were and what will remain of it — these are fundamental questions of German post-war history, indeed of European and world history — and much, much more than a “footnote of history” and also far more than the “green arrow.”

Judging objectively

I can be accused of idealizing the GDR. That may be. But in reality, I am merely advocating something that should be self-evident, namely that academics, politicians and media professionals, who were mostly socialized in the Federal Republic, should finally strive for an objective and historically fair evaluation of the GDR.

We, the contemporary witnesses, are still alive. And when we are no longer here, our experiences and memories will remain in the memory of our children, who were born in the GDR. And there were plenty of them, because the GDR was also a child-friendly country. But I cannot and I refuse to give up the belief that this world of war and exploitation will change from what it is today and that “the sun will shine more brightly than ever over Germany,” as the GDR anthem says.

(Emphasis original.)

Mattan here. I am the executive director of RSN and in 2017 I spent 110 days in prison because I refused to serve the […] occupation. A few weeks ago, Refuser Solidarity Network warned that hundreds of […] soldiers were on the brink of joining the growing refusers movement amid Israel's forever war in Gaza. Now, 130 soldiers have published an open letter and are threatening to refuse to serve unless a hostage release deal is signed immediately, and in effect, a ceasefire deal that could put a stop to Israel's assault. Many of the signatories have already declared their refusal.

For over 20 years Refuser Solidarity Network has provided crucial legal and strategic support to all Israeli refusers. As an organization that supports all war refusers, we must answer the call once again. That is why we are urgently requesting our supporters consider donating to bolster our movement.

130 Israeli soldiers and reservists signed onto the open letter that came out just this week. Addressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they are boldly conditioning their continued service on the signing of a deal for the release of hostages and an end to the war, the first mass wave of Israeli soldiers refusing service in protest of war and occupation seen in recent years.

We, reserve and regular servicemen and servicewomen, officers and soldiers, hereby declare that we cannot continue under these circumstances. The war in Gaza is sentencing our kidnapped brothers and sisters to death.

On that cursed day, October 7th, we awoke to a terrible and indiscriminate massacre, in which more than a thousand were killed and hundreds were kidnapped. We immediately enlisted to fight in our country's defense and to rescue the hostages held in Gaza.

It is now clear that the continuation of the war in Gaza not only delays the return of the hostages but also endangers their lives: many hostages have been killed by IDF bombings, many more than those who have been rescued in military operations.

We, who have served and continue to serve with dedication, risking our lives, hereby announce that if the government does not change course immediately and work towards securing a deal to bring the hostages home, we will not be able to continue serving.

For some of us, the red line has already been crossed, and for others, it is rapidly approaching: the day when, with broken hearts, we will stop reporting for service.

We call on the government: Sign a deal now to save the living hostages!

The letter makes the choice faced by [our] society very clear: it's either the hostages or the war, a recognition of the value of life or an insatiable hunger for more destruction. Faced with such a clear choice, this new refuser wave will only serve to mobilize more people to refuse in order to bring a stop to the mass slaughter in Gaza. It is important to remember that this letter is directed at the Israeli public, using language that resonates within contemporary Israeli discourse with the power to end the war now and force a ceasefire deal.

The letter poses fundamental questions for Israelis: Who are we dying for? Are war and death more valuable than our own lives? Is any of this in our interest? How much longer are we willing to sacrifice our own lives and those of our children on the altar of Jewish supremacy? We cannot pretend that the price of war, occupation and the ongoing Nakba borne by Palestinians and Israelis is symmetrical, quite the opposite. But we also know that overcoming the régime of ethnic supremacy in Israel/Palestine requires that Israelis also grapple with the price paid by a society which exists at the expense of another.

This new refuser wave is now pushing the most plausible challenge to the war from within Israel, more than even the mass Israeli protest movement pushing for a hostage deal. Unlike protest movements, there is a much longer history of the Israeli government bending to the demands of refuser movements. With your support, we can end this war now. Join us in supporting the refusers by making a donation.

In solidarity,

Mattan Helman
Executive Director
Refuser Solidarity Network

(Taken from an email sent to me by the Refuser Solidarity Network. Emphasis original.)

The “Little Arabia” neighborhood on Cleveland’s West Side was a sea of red, black, green and white flags on Oct. 5, as nearly 1,000 people marched and chanted for Palestine. Speakers pointed out that October 7 not only marks one year of genocide but one year of resistance.

On Oct. 5 in Denver the Palestine Coalition, along with Jewish Voice for Peace , Freedom Road Socialist Party, Denver Peace Action and over 700 supporters, gathered and marched through the Cherry Creek Shopping area. The march marked one year of Palestinian and Lebanese resistance, supported by people in the U.S. who are demanding the U.S. government — without which none of these wars could continue — stop sending money and arms to facilitate […] genocide against the Palestinian people.

[…]

Over 1,000 people marched in Seattle on Oct. 5 to protest the […] war on Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon. The demonstration marched from the waterfront to the Space Needle, showing strength in taking over vital attractions.

Microsoft workers carried a banner reading “No Azure for apartheid.” Azure, developed by Microsoft, is a cloud computing platform used by the […] Occupation Forces. The workers handed out a leaflet saying, “We, as Microsoft workers, refuse to remain silent while Microsoft is complicit in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.”

Demands raised to Microsoft were: “1. IOF off Azure; 2. Disclose all ties; 3. Call for permanent ceasefire; 4. Protect Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and allied employees.” (@noazureforapartheid)

(Emphasis original.)