Friday, April 05, 2024

Friday News in Early April of 2024.

 

President Joe Biden had a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden told Netanyahu that the humanitarian situation and the bombing of a civilian food aid truck (killing many innocent people) is unacceptable. Biden told him that he must take adequate steps to stop the killing of civilians or else. The Israeli strike recently killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen in Gaza. The World Central Kitchen workers identified themselves to the IDF before the strike took place. Biden was frustrated over that strike. We should all be outraged. We make a distinction between a far-right, pro-Trump Netanyahu government and the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians seeking a real ceasefire and a peaceful resolution. Biden approved more bombs for Israel on the same day when the strike on the aid workers existed which is disturbing to put it lightly. Biden wants Netanyahu to create a plan to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made Biden's point clear in Brussels. Therefore, Israeli hostages should be immediately freed along with a ceasefire to make sure that innocent people of Gaza who are Palestinians are shown human dignity and true respect.


A lot of news is going about today. Trump said that he wants the January 6th committee members to go to jail. That is fascism from him. No one is shocked by him. Anyone supporting Trump now is anti-democratic, and I don't care who it is. Glen Beck is supporting Trump again in 2024 showing his delusion. Beck is the same one who disrespected the victims of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005, and I remember this. The Trump appointee Judge Cannon rejects a bid by Trump to dismiss criminal charges in the classified documents case. This leaves Trump the option to go to trial and make the false claim that his actions are protected by the Presidential Records Act when he illegally used documents. Judge Cannon said that Trump's claims didn't meet the legal standard of dismissing the whole case. In a hearing last month, Cannon was skeptical of Trump's claim of unlimited power to decide which documents needed to be returned to the Archives under the Presidential Records Act. Judge Cannon didn't want to follow Special Counsel Jack Smith's request to make a final ruling on whether the theory of PBA could be used in the trial. She said that the demand was unprecedented and unjust.


One judge denies Trump's motion to delay the NY hush money trial until the Supreme Court rules on Presidential immunity. Judge Juan Merchan mentioned this ruling recently. He said that the motion was untimely, and Trump's lawyers had months to file a motion over the issue. This case is about hush money payments made during the 2016 Presidential campaign to Stormy Daniels. Jury selection is scheduled to occur on April 15, 2024. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges. In another case, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon (who was appointed to the federal bench by Trump in 2020) delayed rulings on what experts are routine legal questions that must be resolved before the case can go to trial. Cannon making delays to the documents' trial will most likely cause that trial to exist after the 2024 election is over. Special counsel Jack Smith doesn't agree with the judge's jury instruction request in the Trump documents case either.


Donald Trump saying that migrants aren't people, but animals is blatantly racist and offensive. Trump is notorious for his racism, xenophobia, and sexism. Many in the mainstream media have the responsibility to call Trump out on his regressive language. True Americans aren't just people of one ethnicity. Americans exist in every color, ethnicity, and background. Many far-right people believe in the lie and myth that no systematic racism or systematic oppression exists in America now, therefore we have a true meritocracy in American society. Obviously, we don't live in a meritocracy in America as documented by dozens and hundreds of mainstream sociological studies. Today, not in 1955, we have extremists banning books in schools, suppressing voting rights, fighting affirmative action, threatening judges plus election workers, and other evil policies in contradiction to the victories done by the Civil Rights Movement. In terms of drawing district lines, Republicans want more power. Trump talked about Ruby Garcia and lied to say that he spoke to the murder victim's family. The victim's family said that didn't happen. So, Trump once again is a habitual liar.



Days ago was 56 years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his final speech in public. It is the I've Been to the Mountaintop speech. It outlined his goal of defending the Memphis sanitation workers to have economic justice. After two black Memphis sanitation workers were accidentally crushed by a garbage machine in seeking to escape the rain, black workers said that enough is enough. They protested for their human rights and dignity. The "I Am a Man" picket image outlines the urgency of their activism. Dr. King expressed solidarity with them as a prelude to his Poor People Campaign. Dr. King exposed the apparent contradictions of mainstream capitalism and sought democratic socialism if necessary to address the massive economic inequality and racial oppression in American society. Dr. King said that winning voting rights and civil rights victories was good but not enough. You can give a human being the right to vote and deprive him or her of getting a living wage in claiming that is true freedom. Dr. King targeted the captains of industry for a radical redistribution of political and economic power was achieved, so all people would benefit, not just the one percent. Dr. King's "I Have Been to the Mountaintop" speech showed a large phenomenon or panorama of history showing how he wanted God to allow him to witness social movement for millennia. He also wanted boycotts of racist businesses along with building up black-owned institutions. It was stormy in Memphis during that night, and Dr. King was questioning whether to go to the location or not. He did and gave a stirring speech. At the end of the speech, he sat down feeling joyful and exhausted at the same time. Dr. King was a revolutionary who wanted to boycott the 1968 Summer Olympics, desired the poor to experience justice, and fought to witness an end to the Vietnam War (in the midst of stagflation and the necessity to invest in urban plus rural communities of America) via heroic activism. We know what happened the next day in Memphis, Tennessee, but it is important to be inspired by the Dream of human justice to live our lives in total accordance with the Golden Rule filled with goodwill, courage, humility, strength, and honor. At the end of the day, we have to embrace love and do the right thing to help our neighbors out. 



By Timothy



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