Daily News Digest Archives
Daily News Digest September 22, 2016
Images of the Day:
Slaughterhouse Six: Saudi Arabia appears to be using U.S.-supplied white phosphorus in its war in Yemen 
Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.
Quote of the Day:
What public service is being offered by a museum that celebrates the Tuskeegee Airmen but thus far has given no public indication that it will explore the significance of the Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiment? Bombing foreigners who engage in human experimentation makes a better story than just bombing foreigners while engaging in human experimentation. The story can be told with the flaws of segregation, later remedied or in the process of quickly being repaired. There is value in that story. It’s not without its merits. But it is fundamentally false and may just get us all killed. — The African American History Missing from the Smithsonian
Videos of the Day:
The MOMENTUM Behind Jeremy Corbyn
To the surprise and dismay of many Labour MPs in the UK, Corbyn was elected with the backing by Momentum and is expected to win again next week in an another leadership election, says Professor Leo Panitch
An ongoing civilian massacre Obama and Clinton love The US/Saudi assault on Yemen
U.S.
The Courtiers and the Tyrants We must not confuse the political elites who function as courtiers to corporate power with the tyrannical leaders who actually drive corporatism. Our real enemy, lurking behind the curtain, is usually faceless and anonymous. By Chris Hedges
Assange, Manning and Snowden: Standing Up for the Conscience of Truthtellers Last week, Oliver Stone’s biopic “Snowden” hit the theaters. The film illuminates the life of Edward Snowden between 2004 and 2013, aiming to humanize one of the most wanted men in the world. Just before its release, a public campaign was launched urging President Obama to pardon this renowned NSA whistleblower. The massive US government persecution of truthtellers over the past years has exiled conscience from civil society, locking it behind bars and driving it into asylum. Yet, despite these attacks, it refuses to die. by Nozomi Hayase
Celebrating the One Percent: Is Inequality Really Good for the Economy? What they do is to use “inequality” as a takeoff point to project their own views on how to make society more prosperous and at the same time more equal. These views largely depend on whether they view the One Percent as innovative, smart and creative, making wealth by helping the rest of society – or whether, as the great classical economists wrote, the wealthiest layer of the population consist of rentiers, making their income and wealth off the 99 Percent as idle landlords, monopolists and predatory bankers. by Michael Hudson
Court Sides With Native American Protesters, Intervenes To Stop Dakota Access Pipeline Pending Hearing A federal appeals court has given a temporary victory to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe as the #NoDAPL fight continues. Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., a Dakota Access Partnership attorney admits his company has lost $5 billion in market value in only the last couple weeks! By Jeremiah Jones 
Environment:
An American tragedy: why are millions of trees dying across the country? A quiet crisis playing out in US forests as huge numbers of trees succumb to drought, disease, insects and wildfire – much of it driven by climate change By Oliver Milman and Alan Yuhas 
Massive sinkhole leaks more than 200 MILLION gallons of RADIOACTIVE water from fertilizer plant into Florida’s main source of drinking water (but plant owners insist there’s no risk!)
- Sinkhole opened up beneath a pile of waste material and drained into the Floridian aquifer system
- System is the principal source of groundwater for most of the state
- Mosaic discovered the sinkhole at the plant in August but did not inform the public of its existence for three weeks
- Company said there is ‘no risk’ of contamination to drinking water
- Incident comes less than a year after Mosaic settled $2billion federal lawsuit with the US Environmental Protection Agency
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
“We’re Freedom Fighters”: The Story of the Nationwide Prison Labor Strike The first national prison labor strike in US history launched on September 9. Billed as a “Call to Action Against Slavery in America,” the spark for the action came from the Free Alabama Movement (FAM), a prison-based organization that has been mobilizing across the state since 2012. Alabama has one of the most overcrowded prison systems in the country. By James Kilgore
Black Agenda Radio for Week of September 19, 2016
Kaepernick’s Example Spreads “Like Wildfire”: The same reality confronts the U.S. today as in 1776, said Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston: “If you treat a people atrociously, you should not expect them to stand by you.” The third stanza of the “Star-Spangled Banner” “explicitly denounces Black people, since they fled en mass to British lines in the War of 1812 and helped to torch the White House in August, 1814,” because the British promised freedom for those who would fight the slave-holding white settlers. Football star Colin Kaepernick’s defiance of the national anthem and flag “is spreading like wildfire,” said Dr. Horne, “and hopefully it will help people to begin to interrogate our past and our present.”
Black Youth Activists “Lobby” for Legislation on Capitol Hill: Black Youth Project 100 and the National Black Justice Coalition launched a lobbying campaign, last week, coinciding with the Congressional Black Caucus’ yearly extravaganza. BYP100 spokesperson Samantha Master said the group’s legislative priorities include the College for All Act, the Health Equity and Accountability Act, the Healthy Families Act, and the Equality Act, among others. “We are going beyond just simple criminal justice reform,” said Master. “We are taking the stance to abolish the system that continually marginalizes Black people.” The lobbying work is intended to be “simultaneous with and intertwined with our base-building work and our grassroots advocacy work,” she said. The overall goal is to build “public policy agendas that create a world where Black people can live in dignity.”
Despite Video, Feds Will Not Charge Cop in Killing Jerame Reid: The police car video clearly showed Jerame Reid’s hands raised in surrender when a Bridgeton, New Jersey cop shot him dead at point blank range, on December 30, 2014.Yet, the local U.S. attorney has refused to charge the officer with any crime. “We categorically reject that decision not to bring a civil rights investigation,” said Larry Hamm, chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress, which has been holding weekly demonstrations at the Federal Building in Newark demanding “justice for Jerame Reid.” Hamm said the Justice Department sets the “bar so high” to prove police culpability, “it’s like a rigged game.”
Mother of Drowned Girl Finds Comradeship in Uhuru Movement: Kunde Ngudi Mwamvita, whose 16 year-old daughter, Dominique, and her two 15 year-old best friends drowned to death when the car they were driving was forced into a pond by Pinellas County, Florida, sheriff’s deputies, was a featured speaker at the Independent People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement’s annual conference and 25th anniversary, this past weekend, in Ferguson, Missouri. Ms. Mwamvita is suing the county. “We have to be strong,” she said. “But, I can’t be strong by myself. I had to join a group of people who said, ‘Enough is enough -— not one more Black life!’”
Darren Seals is Sixth to Die Suspiciously in Ferguson: Upstairs from the Uhuru Movement conference at Ferguson’s Greater St. Marks Church, family, friends, and “movement” folks attended the funeral of Darren Seals, the 29 year-old activist, rapper and General Motors worker whose body was found in his car, shot and incinerated. Seals’ passing was noted on Kiilu Nyasha’s San Francisco Bay Area television show, “Freedom is a Constant Struggle,” by Cephus Johnson, the uncle of Oscar Grant, whose January 1, 2009, killing by a transit cop set off demonstrations that many believe mark the beginning of the current mass movement against police terror. “Darren Seals is the sixth young man since Michael Brown to be assassinated in Ferguson,” said Mr. Johnson. “It appears to be an assassination that is directly related to the police.”
World: 
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare: