Daily News Digest Archives
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: 1. Austerity, 2. Scapegoating Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal Immigrants’ for Unemployment, and 3. The Iron Heel.
Daily News Digest May 31, 2017
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 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:
Trump and the Pope 
Quote of the Day:
What became clear to anyone who attended the meeting was that these people did not come to the meeting just to tell “their truth” or to engage in a debate. Their intention was clearly to disrupt the meeting and prevent anyone else from expressing their points of view. What they clearly revealed was the undemocratic and reactionary nature of the Venezuelan opposition. The attempt to disrupt the meeting in London is not an isolated event. Venezuelan opposition supporters have organised a lynch mob against chavistas abroad, publishing the names and addresses of supporters of the revolution, government and embassy officials as well as those of their children and relatives and encouraged opposition supporters “to get them”. In Madrid, a threatening mob of opposition supporters besieged a cultural building of the Venezuelan embassy where a solidarity meeting was taking place and did not allow anyone out (with threats of violence) for 5 hours. Once people were finally allowed out, some of them were followed, harassed and punched, as was the case with a Peruvian national. — Defend Venezuelan revolution against reactionary opposition!
Video of the Day:
The Bomb Sends a Message to the World — Untold History (6/7) Pt.6 Peter Kuznick (co-author with Oliver Stone of The Untold History of the United States): The atomic bomb did not end the war with Japan, it was a threat to the Soviet Union that the US would dominate the post-war world
U.S.:
Donald Trump Is Now in Synch With U.S. Imperial Policyin Syria Four months after Donald Trump’s inauguration, the U.S. military is fighting Hillary Clinton’s war in Syria. The recent U.S. airstrike against a mixed column of Syrian, Iranian, Iraqi and Lebanese soldiers marks a major escalation, as the U.S. draws lines in the sand to claim parts of Syria as its own. Although the presence of the Russian air force has prevented the establishment of Clinton’s “no-fly” zones over Syria, the Americans appear to be attempting to establish “no-go” zones on the ground to provide sanctuary for their Islamic jihadist proxies. The larger goal is to seize eastern Syria, under the guise of fighting ISIS, severing the land route between Syrian government-held territories in the west and the Iraqi border, and further east to Iran. By Glen Ford / Black Agenda Report
CIA-armed militias are shooting at Pentagon-armed ones in Syria Syrian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners have over the groups they have financed and trained in the bitter 5-year-old civil war. By Nabih Bulos, W.J. Hennigan, and Brian Bennet
The U.S. Has Ramped Up Airstrikes Against ISIS in Raqqa, and Syrian Civilians Are Paying the Price On April 24, a group of Syrian women bundled themselves and their children into a car and attempted to flee the small town of Tabqa, outside of Raqqa. In recent months the sleepy principality had become the site of raging battles between Islamic State militants and U.S.-backed proxy forces, waging a campaign to drive ISIS from the country. Packed into the fleeing car were 11 people, including eight members of the al-Aish family: three women between the ages of 23 and 40, and five children, the youngest one just 6 months old. By Murtaza Hussain
The U.S. Has Released 417 Alleged Terrorists Since 9/11. The Latest Owned an Islamic Bookstore. Once considered so dangerous by the U.S. Department of Justice he was kept in solitary confinement for more than six months, Abdulrahman Farhane, a Moroccan-born U.S. citizen, will be released today from a Brooklyn halfway house, not far from where he once operated an Islamic bookstore. Farhane will be the 417th defendant to be released following a conviction on terrorism-related charges after the 9/11 attacks. By Trevor Aaronson
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Southern Poverty Law Center: Louisiana’s public defender system violates the rights of the poor “Louisiana’s public defense system is underfunded, unmonitored and wholly inadequate” The SPLC and allies asked a judge today to certify a lawsuit challenging Louisiana’s broken public defender system as a class action case — citing an expert report that describes how the state’s overburdened public defense system fails to protect indigent defendants’ constitutional right to counsel.
Black Agenda Radio for Week of May 29, 2017
Antar Lumumba Seeks to Reclaim City Hall in Jackson, Mississippi: Voters in mostly Black Jackson, Mississippi, will decide on June 6 whether Antar Lumumba will succeed his father, the veteran activist and lawyer Chokwe Lumumba, who died during his first year in the mayor’s office in 2014. Antar Lumumba won the Democratic primary with 56 percent of the vote. “If we can’t turn out the Black working class, then we are in trouble,” said Kali Akuno, of Cooperation Jackson and the Lumumba campaign. Jackson, the state capital, faces challenges of gentrification, high municipal debt, “threats of the privatization of our water system, and loss of our school system to a state takeover,” said Akuno.
Russians See Hostile U.S. Agenda: Longtime anti-war activist David Swanson recently returned from a trip to Russia. “I wanted to see what Russians thought about foreign policy, about the United States, and about all the ‘scandals’ in Washington that mention Russia all the time but hardly ever have any evidence in them,” said Swanson, publisher of the influential web site WarIsACrime.org. Russians are keenly aware of the history of U.S. encirclement and hostility towards their country. “They see opposition to Trump in the United States as all coming out of an anti-Russian agenda,” he said. “They have no idea, whatsoever, that people might dislike Trump for some other reasons.”
Black Colombians Strike Against Racism, Poverty and Violence: Riot police brutally attacked protesters in the mostly Black city of Buenaventura, the South American nation’s largest port. Charo Mina-Rojas, of Black Community Process, part of a broad spectrum of organizations behind a general strike in the city of half a million people, said water is unavailable 150 days of the year, the people “don’t have access to health care, teachers have not been paid in months,” and violence is rampant in poor neighborhoods controlled by paramilitary gunmen. “We don’t see opportunities for real peace in Colombia if Black people continue under these racist attacks by the national government,” said Mina-Rojas.
Mumia Supporters Demand Documents That Could Lead to a New Trial: In the wake of a court decision that former district attorneys who become judges should not be allowed to rule on cases they prosecuted, supporters of Mumia Abu Jamal are demanding release of documents related to the conduct of former Philadelphia DA Ronald Castillo. Supporters are urged to call the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office (215.686.8000) “to demand that files in Mumia’s case be turned over to Mumia’s lawyers, to attain real justice,” said Gwendolyn Debrow, of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home. Abu Jamal was convicted of murder in 1982 in the death of a Philadelphia policeman. “It’s time we pulled the lid off this case and expose this system, its corruption and violence and prosecutorial misconduct and the police framing of Mumia,” said Debrow.
Trump May Be Beginning of the End for U.S. Empire: In an essay for Prison Radio, the nation’s best known political prisoner described President Donald Trump’s “tweets and utterances” as “a daily cascade of craziness.” “Not since Watergate have we seen such a fury for the hide of a president,” said Mumia Abu Jamal. “This smells of corruption, of capitalist greed and excess, and of imperial arrogance on a grand, global scale. This feels like the beginning of the end.”
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.
Environment:
Whole Foods (Whole PayCheck) represents the failures of ‘conscious capitalism’ There’s no way to ‘fix’ corporations’ compulsion to produce ever more, ever more cheaply. It’s written into the DNA of global capitalism By Nicole Aschoff 
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Economy:
Exclusive: Wall Street Funds Hold Hundreds of Millions in Sanctioned Russian Bank Subject to Kushner Probe The 2017 Memorial Day weekend will inevitably go down in history as the three-day span when remembrances of our military veterans took a media backseat to President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and everything Russian. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World
Britain: Corbyn exposes failed ”war on terror” – to fight terrorism, fight capitalism! Jeremy Corbyn returned to campaigning for the general election last Friday with a speech that offered a response to the appalling Manchester terrorist atrocity and that sought to draw a clear line underneath the failed “war on terror”. By Daniel Morley
Defend Venezuelan revolution against reactionary opposition! On Monday 22nd May a sizeable group of Venezuelan opposition supporters attempted to disrupt a solidarity meeting in London. Who are they and what did they want? By Jorge Martin 
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
Leaks and Militarized Policing: Water Protectors are Proven Right As CounterPunch has told you, taxpayers are stuck paying for the opioid crisis created by Big Pharma to make more money. Late last year, the Senate approved $1 billion of our money for “opioid prevention and treatment programs” as part of the 21st Century Cures Act. by Michael J. Sainato