Daily News Digest March 7, 2019
Daily News Digest Archives
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:
U.S. Capitalist Want Venezuela’s Oil
Quotes of the Day:
The political right is uniting with establishment Democrats in denouncing presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders for his supposedly pro-dictatorship stance on Venezuela. And the media are piling on. Yet Sanders’ statements on the Venezuelan crisis were quite critical of President Nicolás aduro, saying his 2018 re-election was a vote “many observers said was fraudulent.” He condemned his “violent crackdown on Venezuelan civil society,” and insisted “humanitarian aid ” be allowed in the country. He has consistently maintained a strongly adversarial position to enezuela, calling Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez a “dead Communist dictator.” In fact, the 2018 Venezuelan elections were watched over and endorsed as free by over 150 international observers, although media uniformly ignored those bothersome facts (FAIR.org, 5/23/18 ). It should also be noted that “civil society” is not a neutral, but a highly loaded term (FAIR.org, 1/31/19 ). In a study of over 500 articles across a 20-year period, I found that the term was used exclusively to refer to the light-skinned US-backed Venezuelan elite, and never once to the largely black, largely working-class groups who support the government. — Alan MacLeod, Venezuela-Baiting: How Media Keep Anti-Imperialist Dissent in Check
On Saturday, Sacramento DA Anne Marie Schubert announced that her office would not bring charges against the two police officers, Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet, who shot and killed an unarmed Stephon Clark in his grandmother’s backyard last March. Clark was shot 20 times. He was holding a cellphone. The decision is appalling, but scarcely surprising. Between, 2005 and 2017, there were more than 13,000 fatal shootings by police, but only 80 cops were ever charged with manslaughter or murder. Of those 80 charged, only 28 were convicted of a crime. I wrote about the Clark case in CounterPunch magazine last year. — Jeffrey St. Clair
Videos of the Day:
Study: Loss of Stratocumulus Clouds Could Precipitate Extreme Global Warming
The Climate Denier Enablers Are the leaders of the Democratic Party paying lip service about climate change and creating conditions for a climate denier President to ignore the crisis? – with Jacqueline Luqman, Eugene Puryear, Norman Solomon and host Paul Jay
The Bolsheviks and the War World War One broke the 2nd International, as most of the workers’ parties supported their own ruling class and the war effort. Lenin and the Bolsheviks maintained a class position, opposing the war, even after the February Revolution, when many former opponents of the war became supporters. The Bolshevik war policy became a key pillar of the party’s programme as it led the working masses to victory in October 1917.
Protests Hit Brazil During Carnival
U.S.:
USA: “for a revolution against the billionaire class”—we need an independent socialist campaign! The 2020 presidential election has started. The fact that the Democrats won forty additional seats in the House of Representatives in the midterm elections has many of them smelling Republican blood. A number of candidates, including Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, and Corey Booker, have already launched their campaigns. Now Bernie Sanders has become the 10th official candidate—with many more yet to come—to announce his run for the Democratic Party’s nomination. What exactly does this mean? It means that Sanders is running in the Democratic Party, one of the two major big business political parties, to be their candidate for president. Almost without exception, all Democratic Party candidates who do not win the nomination support the official nominee in the final presidential contest. That is the way the system works. This is what Sanders did in 2016. Now, he has again decided not to try to provide an independent class outlet for millions of workers in 2020. Instead, he has chosen to try to channel their aspirations into the Democratic Party. We strongly disagree with this approach By Tom Trottier
Badge of Impunity: the Killing of Stephon Clark What does it take to awaken a somnambulant media these days? Getting shot in the back 8 times by trigger-happy cops while standing in your grandmother’s backyard while holding a cell phone? That was the fate of young Stephon Clark on the night of March 18, 2018 in the Meadowview neighborhood of Sacramento, whose ghastly murder by police briefly diverted the attention of the national press from its Trump fixation. But after a couple of days, MSDNC and the New York Times, were, like the White House, content to let Clark’s killing recede from the headlines and become just another “local issue.” By Jeffrey St. Clair
Abolish the Prison System America is the authoritarian carceral state par excellence, ignominious the world over for the zeal with which she imprisons her citizens, for the absurdity of her criminal charges and sentences, for the stark racial disparities that characterize her cynical applications of “justice.” It is ironic that the United States should bear the honorific title “land of the free” even as it has the world’s highest per capita incarceration rate. By David D’amato
Freedom Rider: Russiagate and Democratic Defeat It should now be clear to all honest and sane people that the only collusion was between the corporate media and the Democratic Party to spin a phony tale. “They pointed fingers at Bernie Sanders, the Green Party, Vladimir Putin and even leftist celebrities.” The Russiagate investigation is as much a witch hunt as the despicable Donald Trump always insisted. The charge that Trump colluded with the Russian government in the 2016 election has been abandoned even by the people who turned the allegation into a well paid cottage industry. The Mueller investigation has come up empty and Democrats are scrambling to keep their creation alive in order to make themselves politically relevant. They should be planning how to go about giving the people what they need and want. But Medicare for All and any other proposals that would benefit the masses are off the table for them and their corporate donors. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR editor and senior columnist 
Environment:
Since 2017, All Dutch Ns Trains Are Powered 100% By Wind Energy – Saving 1.4b Kgs C02 Emissions In the Netherlands, all NS’s 1,200,000 train journeys per day have been without CO2 emissions for 2 years already. A world’s first! Dutch Railways Saved 1.43 Billion Kilograms in C02 Emissions In two years time. Since 2017 , 100% of Dutch electric trains have been powered by wind energy. The Dutch Railways Company NS is the world’s first railway company that gets 100% of its energy from wind energy. This has already led to a savings of 1.43 billions kilograms of C02 emissions. By Michiel De Gooijer
DCCC Chair Accused of Echoing Right-Wing Talking Points After Calling Medicare for All Costs ‘Scary’“You know what’s more than a little scary?” responded one progressive group: “People dying and going bankrupt because our healthcare system is broken.” By Jake Johnson
Big Energy:
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
The Illusion of Race-Neutral Tax Policy Beginning with the Slave tax, the US has overburdened Black communities with taxes for services that they often don’t get. “Historic and current injustices continue to allow white communities to build wealth while denying the same level of opportunity to communities of color.” The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) recently worked with Prosperity Now , an organization committed to closing the racial wealth gap, to produce a report that reveals how the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act mostly benefited white families. It is well known that the bulk of the federal tax cuts flowed to the highest-earning households, who received the largest tax cut both in terms of real dollars and also as a share of income. [1] But as our analysis in the report (Race, Wealth and Taxes: How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Supercharges the Racial Wealth Gap) reveals, solely examining the tax law in the context of class misses a bigger-picture story abouthow the nation’s public policies not only perpetuate widening income and wealth inequality, they also preserve historic and current injustices that continue to allow white communities to build wealth while denying the same level of opportunity (and often suppressing it) to communities of color. By Misha Hill, Alan Essig, Meg Wiehe, Jenice Robinson, Steve Wamhoff and Carl Davis
Keith Tharpe and the Death Penalty’s Racist Roots The history of the death penalty in America is hewn from the hell of slavery, subjugation and the suffering of black people. “You don’t have to be a Justice on the Supreme Court to know a juror who uses racial epithets can’t be fair and impartial.” Recently, the appalling spectacle of a black man condemned by a Georgia jury, a jury that included a racist bigot, reentered the American consciousness; if you haven’t heard about this travesty of justice (yet), or, if you’ve forgotten its details, all you need to know about the Keith Tharpe case is: a now-deceased juror who sentenced Tharpe to death swore in an affidavit Tharpe was a “ni**er,” and further, “after studying the Bible,” he “wondered if black people even have souls.” Spared execution over these facts by a last-minute stay in September 2017, Tharpe’s case is, once again, back before the United States Supreme Court; the Court can grant a writ of certiorari, to consider the merits of Tharpe’s claim of racial bias, or, not.
