Daily News Digest Archives
Daily News Digest June 23, 2016
Images of the Day:
Behold The Efficiency of Capitalism!
Gun Control
Quotes of the Day:
At the present juncture, the US ruling class is betting their money on Obama as their ‘change’ candidate. As John Pilger wrote in his essay, From Kennedy To Obama; Liberalism’s Last Fling: “What is Obama’s attraction to big business? Precisely the same as Robert Kennedy’s. By offering a ‘new’, young and apparently progressive face of the Democratic Party — with the bonus of being a member of the black elite — he can blunt and divert real opposition. That was Colin Powell’s role as Bush’s secretary of state. An Obama victory will bring intense pressure on the US anti-war and social justice movements to accept a Democratic administration for all its faults. If that happens, domestic resistance to rapacious America will fall silent.” And US imperialism will have a seeming honest and glib president, to carry out Pax Americana and the politics of the Iron Heel more effectively. By making more and more bipartisan legislation that increase restrictions and the negation of rights that were supposed to be ours, according to the Bill of Rights, and increasing the power of the executives branch, the United States ruling class in now starting to lay the groundwork to establish the Iron Heel of outright political dictatorship, as foreseen by Jack London, in his 1908 book, The Iron Heel. — Roland Sheppard, (2008),“A Ponzi Scheme” The Economy is Only A Paper Moon
There is no longer any basis for support to the reformism and its ‘lesser evil’ politics. Worldwide the capitalist class is socializing their debts — transferring their losses to the working class and the poor. Now they are in frenzy in their search for profits and are stripping the working class and the poor any and all assets. This is what happened historically in the Roman Empire on its way to debt bondage and serfdom. The only solution for capitalism, at this time is the worldwide application of the Iron Heel, as described by Jack London in his book, The Iron Heel. — Roland Sheppard (2010), Occupy Wall Street Demonstrates The Need To Build An Organization of All Anti-Capitalist Forces!
“Although many Americans have been stopped for speeding or jaywalking, few may realize how degrading a stop can be when the officer is looking for more,” wrote Sotomayor. “This Court has allowed an officer to stop you for whatever reason he wants—so long as he can point to a pretextual justification after the fact.” Sotomayor said the court’s ruling had essentially classified all Americans as inmates in the prison-industrial complex. “By legitimizing the conduct that produces this double consciousness, this case tells everyone, white and black, guilty and innocent, that an officer can verify your legal status at any time,” Sotomayor wrote. “It says that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged.” — Sotomayor’s Blistering SCOTUS Dissent Warns America Is Turning Into a Prison State
Video of the Day:
Death of Dr. Kelly — How UK elites kill to get their way — Tony Blair wanted the war. Period.: The one credible witness “suicided”
U.S.
Barbarism, Civilization and Modern Politics: PTSD as a Political Football in a Hobbesian Age by John Grant
“ . . . It’s true, we need to better respect and honor our wounded veterans; but we also need to understand that “the wild” brought back by multi-tour combat vets from the “edge of the human circle” is not constructive for community or for civilization itself.”
Sotomayor’s Blistering SCOTUS Dissent Warns America Is Turning Into a Prison State Sotomayor cited James Baldwin, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Ta-Nehisi Coates to describe living in fear of “suspicionless stops” as a person of color. By Travis Gettys
Environment:
This violation of First Nation’s land and human health needs to be viewed in the larger social context of corporate power and governmental negligence. From the late 1940s till the early 1970s the Dow Corporation in Sarnia released over 300 tons of mercury into the St. Clair River and adjacent Aamjiwnaang First Nation’s community. The contamination was so severe, children retrieved handfuls of mercury from the river and commercial fishing was banned. The downriver First Nation’s community of Walpole Island required an alternative water supply. Environmental racism continues to plague Canada’s First Nations, including those living near Alberta’s Tar Sands. To our shame, environmental justice still eludes our nation. ‑ James Brophy, PhD and Margaret Keith, PhD
Clean up the mercury that’s poisoning Grassy Narrows’ water: Scientists tell us that Grassy Narrows’ river, their lifeblood, can be made safe again. We should seize this momentous opportunity. Get the facts / sign up to get alerts / take action / join the River Run http://www.freegrassy.net/ 
Unprecedented Bleaching Event Portends Mass Death of World’s Coral Ecosystems ‘It’s time to shift this conversation to what we can do to conserve these amazing organisms in the face of this unprecedented global bleaching event’ by Nika Knight
The world’s oceans are enduring the longest-lasting and most widespread coral bleaching event ever recorded, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). And the massive bleaching event is predicted to get even worse—extending into a third, unprecedented year. The current bleaching event has already all but destroyed Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and NOAA’s experts say that warm ocean temperatures will soon trigger bleaching in the northern hemisphere, “including around Hawaii, Micronesia, the Florida Keys and Puerto Rico,” the Guardian reports.
Ongoing/Big Energy Disasters!:
Fracking, the Failure of Mainstream Greens and the Corporate Control of U.S. Energy Policy The name of her new book is Frackopoly, but author Wenonah Hauter tackles issues beyond hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as fracking. She writes about energy spats past and present, explaining why she believes the energy industry won most of these fights and succeeded in monopolizing U.S. energy policy-making over the past 100 years. by Mark Hand 
Black Liberation/Civil Rights: 
Sanders Supporters Need to Split or Get Off the Pot by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Bernie Sanders is trying to figure out how to capitulate to Hillary Clinton and her corporatist masters next month, in Philadelphia. “The Sandernistas – now minus their commandante – can either slither into Hillary’s big corporate tent, or get down to the hard work of building an opposition, social democratic party that reflects the politics of around 40 percent of the U.S. public.” The alternative is perpetual defeat inside the Democratic Party.
Freedom Rider: Orlando Massacre and U.S. Foreign Policy by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
The terms “lone wolf” and “self-radicalization” make no sense when the FBI won’t leave Muslim Americans alone, but instead lures them into “terror plots,” and the U.S. provides arms, money and protection for jihadist terror overseas. The FBI tried to entrap – that is, recruit – Orlando gunman Omar Mateen, just as the U.S. recruited jihadists in Syria. “If Mateen’s crime was inspired by ISIS, any condolences coming from President Obama are phony.”
Black 6th Grader Nearly Lynched at School: Officials Deny Responsibility by BAR editor and columnist, Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo
On a school trip to a ranch, a gang of white students wrapped a rope around Black 12 year-old girl’s neck and almost lynched her to death. Seven white adult chaperones thought the girl’s horrendous injuries did not warrant medical assistance or a call to police. Waco, Texas, is famous for lynchings, a citadel of “utter contempt for black life and the lives of our children.”
Carl Dix on the Freddie Gray Case: “Take to the Streets if the System Lets This Killer Cop Walk” by BAR editor and columnist, Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo
If the Baltimore cop on trial for murdering Freddie Gray is acquitted without huge protest “it will signal to the authorities that they can continue to get away with beating us down till we’re completely broken,” says Carl Dix, of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network. Police lawyers contend Gray’s death was a “freakish accident,” but the brutality and torture inflicted on poor Black people “is built into the fabric of this system.”
Blowback Just in Time to Shape US Imperialism’s Presidential Elections by Danny Haiphong
The carnage in Orlando is blowback from U.S.-backed jihadist wars, yet Hillary Clinton, a key player in U.S. sponsorship of jihadists, seeks to profit politically from the horror. So does Donald Trump. “The fear that blowback unleashes has historically given the ruling class breathing room to further its anti-worker, pro-capital agenda.” Blowback is a right-wing wind, and “always ‘trumps’ the material interests of poor and working people in the US.”
Cornel West: Why There Is a Serious Danger of a Right-Wing Revolution in the US by George Souvlis and Cornel West
“We must choose between a neo-fascism in the making (Trump), neo-liberalism in the decaying (Clinton), and a neo-populism in the ascending (Sanders).” So says Dr. Cornel West, the nation’s most influential Black public intellectual and a key Bernie Sanders supporter. Not only are “the establishments in both the Democratic and Republican parties disintegrating,” says West, but “the neo-liberal sleepwalking in Black America is coming to an end.”
The Racist and Sexist Nature of Brazil’s New Government by Adam Bledsoe
In the wake of the “soft coup” in Brazil, Interim President Michel Temer has rolled back gains made by Afro-Brazilians. Temer is withholding land titles from quilombos, descended from Black maroon communities, where Blacks can continue “their long-held traditions of fishing, cultivating their own crops, collecting shellfish, and extracting fruits and vegetables from their land in the face of armed antagonists intent on erasing their very existence.”
Why Did America’s Ruling Elites Declare War on the Black Movement? by Abayomi Azikiwe
1966 was a watershed year, the historical juncture when the “civil rights” movement, which had been largely victorious in ending legally-mandated apartheid in the U.S., was overshadowed by the “Black Power” movement. Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwame Ture, of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, was at the center of the transformation that led to the founding of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense the same year.
Labor:
Economy:
Buckle Up: Brexit Vote and Stress Test Results Arrive Tomorrow By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Spain: Unidos Podemos makes gains in election campaign:The coalition between Podemos and United Left seems poised to overtake the Socialist Party, and according to some opinion polls is closing the gap with the ruling right wing Popular Party, which remains in first place. What are the implications for the day after, and what is the program on which Unidos Podemos stands? by Jorge Martín
Health, Education, and Welfare:
Class War in the Classroom by Andrew Stewart