Notes From the Editor
The regime of capital continues to ravage the planet for the sake of profit and capital accumulation. Undoubtedly, this is the most consequential of these crises facing humanity today. The continued warming of the planet is one example of how the Earth’s ability to sustain life as we know it is at risk. Scientists report that 2023 was “virtually certain” to be the warmest in 125,000 years.
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The rule of capital necessitates super-exploitation of labor on a global scale that has created a system of global apartheid based on class relations, ownership of resources, and wealth accumulation. Data on global inequalities shows that the wealthiest 10% of the people in the world own 76% of global wealth. They receive more than 52% (on average $334 per day) of the global income while the poorest 50% share only about 8% (on average $10 per day) between them.
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The rule of Capital is failing on its own advertised terms: “This year’s report found that the majority of billionaires that accumulated wealth in the last year did so through inheritance as opposed to entrepreneurship,” Benjamin Cavalli, head of strategic clients at UBS Global Wealth Management, said in a statement. “This is a theme we expect to see more of over the next 20 years.”
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US imperialism continues to ravage the lives of millions of people in the global south. For example, the US persists in defying the will of nearly the entire world to maintain a criminal policy of economic strangulation of Cuba for its disobedience of the US diktats. On 2 November the UN General Assembly voted for the 31st time on lifting the criminal 60+-year unilateral US blockade of Cuba. The vote was 187 in favor, 2 opposed, and 1 abstention. The two opposed votes were cast by the USA and Israel, with Ukraine abstaining.
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Henry Kissinger died on November 29 at age 100 without facing trial for all the blood on his hands. That is an indictment of a political system that cannot deliver a minimum of justice for perpetrators of mass murder. We might say that a requirement for high office in an empire as opposed to a genuine republic is precisely the willingness to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. This willing warmonger’s actions and decisions led to the deaths of over 3 million people across the globe. Here is what the US Department of State said on his death: “A statesman in every sense of the word, he felt a duty and desire to serve America.” Those who know a thing or two about this vile man and the machinations of the US Empire know that he did not ‘serve America” but the US Empire.
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US imperialism’s addiction to war continues apace. The latest example is the full support and backing of the genocidal assault waged by Israel on the people of Gaza by the US, ostensibly in response to the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas fighters. Several articles in this issue of Left Turn deal with this subject. However, here we would like to include a local item about the ongoing genocide in Gaza: The people of Easton, PA send $367,656 annually of their taxes to the Israeli military to maintain a brutal settler colonial apartheid regime. But the Easton City Council removed a Resolution introduced by Councilmember Taiba Sultana that called for a ceasefire in Gaza even though most Americans favor it. The mayor of Easton, Salvatore J. Panto Jr., also refused to back the resolution. People in every city in the US should know exactly how much they are contributing to the Israeli military forces from their taxes and pressure their city councils to pass resolutions demanding a truce in Gaza. Our taxes and our silence make us all complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
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The dehumanization of the Palestinians is so prevalent that the maiming and killing of by now over 11,000 innocent Palestinian infants and children in Gaza evokes no visible or public compassion, empathy, or condemnation from the political class even though there are thousands of videos out there reaching millions of people. There is so much cultural work that needs to be done in combating Islamophobia before we can hope to have a world in which the US policymakers find it difficult to kill Arab others with impunity and without any remorse. You could say given unchallenged Islamophobic framings, the public kills the Arabs in its minds first before the politicians kill them in real life. If one ever needed proof of the power of ideas that frame the way we see the world, one need not look further than how our society is reacting to the barrage of harrowing daily images of the deaths of hundreds of the most vulnerable in Palestine with the full complicity of our political class. The one silver lining in all this is the shift in the attitudes of the 18–29-year-old age group who are now more sympathetic to the Palestinians than to Israel. Perhaps the future will be brighter than meets the eye.
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Fake Imperial Feminism: A tweet by Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor to Biden: “The United States will continue to press for the rights of women and girls, and work with the international community to hold Iran accountable for the violations of the Iranian people’s human rights.” Note that Mr. Sullivan is arguably the chief enabler of Israel in the Biden administration in the ongoing killings of more than 11,000 innocent Palestinian women and infants in Gaza in the past 80 days. He does not care about the violations of women’s rights. That should be clear. He cares not for the deaths of thousands in Gaza, killed with his direct support in one place but feigns concern for the rights of the living women in another. He is not revealing the hidden agenda behind his statement.