Daily News Digest March 6, 2019

Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace”

During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

Democracy?:  As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.

Image of the Day:

‘The Need to Abolish the Prison System’

American Military Dominance In One Staggering Chart

Quotes of the Day:

“We must answer their call. Our Mother Earth, militarized, fenced-in, poisoned, a place where basic rights are systematically violated, demands that we take action. Let us build societies that are able to coexist in a dignified way, in a way that protects life. Let us come together and remain hopeful as we defend and care for the blood of the Earth and of its spirits.” – Berta Caceres, Indigenous rights and environmental activist of the Lenca people, murdered in Honduras in 2016

“There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.” – Arundhati Roy

At a time when journalism consistently is said to be imperiled, two esteemed reporters beg to differ. Los Angeles Times reporter Patt Morrison and Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer point out a surprising fact about journalism through the ages. “The paradox,” Morrison says, “is that [journalists] were always in the hands of rich people, because those were the people who owned the printing presses. Some of them were only comparatively rich, some of them were truly rich, like the Jeff Bezoses of the world.” — The Uncomfortable Truth About Journalism’s Glory Days

Videos of the Day:

Sanders on Venezuela – Does His Critique of US Policy Go Far Enough? At the CNN town hall, Sanders opposed U.S. intervention in Venezuela, refused to call Maduro a dictator, or recognize Guaido, but he didn’t call for an end to sanctions – with Jacqueline Luqman, Eugene Puryear, Norman Solomon and host Paul Jay

U.S.:

Giving the Bomb to Saudi Arabia’s Dr. Strangelove The most dangerous foreign policy decision of the Trump administration—and I know this is saying a lot—is its decision to share sensitive nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia and authorize U.S. companies to build nuclear reactors in that country. I spent seven years in the Middle East. I covered the despotic, repressive kingdom as the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. And I, along with most Arabists in the United States, have little doubt that giving a nuclear capability to Saudi Arabia under the leadership of the ruthless and amoral Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would see it embark on a nuclear weapons program and eventually share weaponized technology with Saudi allies and proxies that include an array of radical jihadists and mortal enemies of America. A nuclearized Saudi Arabia is a grave existential threat to the Middle East and ultimately the United States. By Chris Hedges

The Global Assault on Indigenous Peoples  A few years ago when I was in Panama I was fortunate to spend some time with the indigenous Ngäbe–Buglé. They reside in the lush rainforest that blankets much of the country. Their villages are simple, but graciously laid out with the natural world around them. The people have a reverence for wildlife, using only what they need, and culture, ancestral ways and community are paramount. But as in every other place on the planet they have been under siege by the forces of capital. By Kenn Orphan

The War That Never Ends After Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un left their Summit meeting in Vietnam resigned to diplomatic impasse, it’s worth asking whether a time of peace and conciliation on the Korean peninsula might still be in sight. Given nearly insuperable roadblocks, could even the most congenial negotiations lead to full denuclearization of the North Korean regime? Is the United States, with all its imperial resources and leverage, willing to concede vital North Korean interests – above all, relief from economic sanctions and peace treaty to end the Korean War 65 years after military stalemate ended with a “temporary truce”? By Carl Boggs

Environment:

The Future Today: Germany: The world’s first hydrogen-powered trains are operating in northern Germany on a 100km stretch of track. Although costlier than existing diesel locomotives, the new zero-emissions engines are kinder to the environment. Equipped with fuel cells that produce electricity, the trains emit only water and steam instead of harmful carbon dioxide. The engines can run for 1,000km on a tank of hydrogen and store excess energy produced by the fuel cell on board in ion-lithium batteries. Train manufacturer Alstom told The Guardian it plans to deliver a further 14 of the new engines to Lower Saxony state by 2021. Interest in the new trains has been expressed by other German states and internationally from countries including the UK, Norway, Denmark, France and Canada

These countries are pioneering hydrogen power Renewable energy pioneers on the Scottish Orkney Islands are aiming to launch the world’s first seagoing ferries powered by hydrogen. The project represents just one application for a fuel that has the potential to clean up the transport sector. When generated using renewable energy, hydrogen gas reduces carbon dioxide emissions and provides a “greener” alternative to fossil fuels like oil or natural gas. Hydrogen is created by passing an electrical current through water to separate hydrogen and oxygen, leaving clean water as the only byproduct. A fuel cell allows the process to be reversed so hydrogen can then produce electricity. A number of countries are working to promote game-changing hydrogen projects. By Johnny Wood

Rethink Activism in the Face of Catastrophic Biological Collapse This is a hard piece to write, partly because we, too, are baffled. Environmental collapse, coupled with living in the sixth mass extinction, are new territory. We are still in the process of confronting the reality of living with the prospect of an unlivable planet. These thoughts emerge out of our sober forays into an uncertain future, searching for the right ways to live and serve in the present. The second reason for our reluctance to share this contemplation is anticipation of the grief, anger and fear it may trigger. We visit these chambers of the heart frequently, and know the challenges of deep feeling, particularly in a culture that denies feelings and pathologizes death. By Dahr Jamail & Barbara Cecil

Big Energy:

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

The Following Quotes By Jam Baldwin Are Still True 60 Years Later:

Harlem (The Black Community) is policed like occupied territory.—James Baldwin, A Report from Occupied Territory

And the police are simply the hired enemies of this population. They are present to keep the Negro in his place and to protect white business interests, and they have no other function. They are, moreover—even in a country which makes the grave error of equating ignorance with simplicity—quite stunningly ignorant; and, since they know that they are hated, they are always afraid. One cannot possibly arrive at a more surefire formula for cruelty. — James Baldwin, From ‘Victim’ to ‘Threat’: James Baldwin and the Demands of Self-Respect

Black Agenda Radio, Week of March 3, 2019

• Workers + Capitalism = Exploitation

• Venezuelan Elections Cleanest in the World

• The Black America – Palestine Connection 

Labor:

Economy:

Gallup Survey: Global Image of U.S. Plunges During Trump Administration In what has to be the most diplomatic understatement of the year, Jon Clifton, the Global Managing Partner of the polling organization, Gallup, had this to say with the release of the company’s 2019 “Rating World Leaders” report: “The image of U.S. leadership abroad is not good right now.” In reality, the U.S. had a 48 percent global approval rating in President Obama’s last year in office and that rating plunged to 30 percent in Trump’s first year in office. It now sits at 31 percent median approval across the 133 countries surveyed by Gallup. One of the most dangerous takeaways from the new Gallup report is that our closest allies think so little of the U.S. right now. The report notes that “Regionally, the image of U.S. leadership fared worst in Europe, where approval remained low and stable, dropping one percentage point By Pam Martens

World:

Venezuela and the Long History of U.S. Imperialism In April 1846, U.S. Army Colonel Seth Thornton led 80 dragoons toward the Rio Grande. Just above the river, they encountered 1,600 Mexican cavalrymen heading north from Matamoros. The Mexican cavalry quickly overpowered the much smaller U.S. force. Eleven Americans were killed, and forty-nine others were captured. When President James K. Polk received news of the skirmish, he declared, “Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil.” On May 13, the U.S. Congress declared war on Mexico. By Jacob F. Lee

Nigeria: 2019 general election reveals whole establishment is discredited The recent Nigerian elections reveal how discredited the two parties of the establishment have become after 20 years of bourgeois ‘democracy’, laying bare the ruling elite’s inability to solve any of the fundamental problems of society. While the APC has almost exhausted the overwhelming goodwill it enjoyed during its initial entry onto the stage, the PDP has equally proven incapable of overcoming the shock it received when it was booted out of power in 2015. By Ola Kazeem

Breaking the Silence: Inside the Israeli Right’s Campaign to Silence an Anti-Occupation Group On January 12, 2016, Yuli Novak called her staff of a dozen people together in their Tel Aviv offices to reveal the identity of a spy who had infiltrated the organization. At the time, Novak was the executive director of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli anti-occupation group that collects testimonies of Israeli soldiers operating in Palestinian territories. She informed the staff that a man calling himself “Chai” had been secretly videotaping them. Chai had been active with the group for a year and a half, visiting their office on a weekly basis, and had grown close to several staff members. By Mairav Zonszein

Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:

Nuclear winter is still a hot topic as a new arms race heats up The big question is how badly cities will burn in a nuclear war Nuclear winter—the long-suppressed reality of nuclear war For more than three decades, the United States political and media establishment has conducted a coordinated campaign to whitewash the dangers of nuclear war. Using discredited science from the 1980s, US officials have adopted the policy that a nuclear first-strike against Russia could be “successful” and that the environmental dangers posed by multiple atomic or thermonuclear detonations—so-called nuclear winter—have been “disproven.” Such attitudes toward the use of nuclear weapons take on a new and ominous light when one considers the neo-McCarthyite rhetoric being used by congressional Republicans and top Democratic officials against Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as provocations like the deployment of 4,000 US troops and accompanying tanks, artillery and armored vehicles in Poland along Russia’s border. As significant sections of the United States government are preparing for war with nuclear-armed Russia, they simultaneously reject 34 years of peer-reviewed scientific research showing that a nuclear exchange threatens humanity’s extinction. By Bryan Dyne 

Russian ambassador to the US warns arms control is ‘in crisis’ Anatoly Antonov said it is ‘impossible to win a nuclear war’ as Russia suspends participation in INF treaty with US Russia’s ambassador to the US has warned that arms control is “in crisis” and claimed that “some politicians and generals in Washington” were beginning to think in terms of winning a nuclear conflict. Anatoly Antonov was speaking on the day Vladimir Putin followed Donald Trump’s example in suspending participation in the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which is due to expire entirely in August unless there is an 11th-hour effort to save it. That would leave the 2010 New Start treaty as the last constraint left on the US and Russian nuclear arsenals, and that agreement is due to expire in 2021. Moscow has signaled its willingness to extend New Start, but the Trump administration has said it has not yet made up its mind on the issue.