In Their ‘House’ Rape is not a Felony! — The 1%’s Feudal ‘Rights’ of the First Night, Rape and Plunder: There’s an alleged ass-grabber in the Senate and a self-described pussy-grabber in the White House. In Alabama, an alleged ephebophile who stands accused of assaulting young women—including one as young as 14—is running for a seat in the Senate. He enjoys support of the pussy-grabber in the Oval Office. The “dean of the House” paid $27,000 in taxpayer dollars to a woman who accused him of sexually harassing her; he stands accused of harassing other staffers, as well. The congressional Office of Compliance has paid some $17 million in public funds since 1997 to settle workplace disputes, according to Politico’s Elana Schor; unknown are the number of those that involve allegations of sexual harassment. And this is just a snapshot of our current moment of reckoning in politics. Add in the allegations, admissions, and apologies from the worlds of entertainment and journalism, and you’d be forgiven for turning a skeptical eye on virtually any man who’s ever occupied a position of power in our society. — This Is What Patriarchy Looks Like
NATO’s military intervention in Libya in 2011 has justifiably earned its place in history as an indictment of Western foreign policy and a military alliance which since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been deployed as the sword of this foreign policy. The destruction of Libya will forever be an indelible stain on the reputations of those countries and leaders responsible. But now, with the revelation that people are being sold as slaves in Libya (yes, you read that right. In 2017 the slave trade is alive and kicking Libya), the cataclysmic disaster to befall the country has been compounded to the point where it is hard to conceive of it ever being able to recover – and certainly not anywhere near its former status as a high development country, as the UN labelled Libya 2010 a year prior to the ‘revolution’. Back in 2011 it was simply inconceivable that the UK, the US and France would ignore the lessons of Iraq, just nine years previously in 2003. Yet ignore them they did, highlighting their rapacious obsession with maintaining hegemony over a region that sits atop an ocean of oil, despite the human cost and legacy of disaster and chaos which this particular obsession has wrought. —Libya “Chose” Freedom, Now It Has Slavery
White House Memo Justifying CFPB Takeover Was Written by Payday Lender Attorney The lawyer who wrote the Office of Legal Counsel memo supporting the Trump administration’s viewpoint that the president can appoint Mick Mulvaney as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau represented a payday lender in front of the CFPB last year. By David Dayen
The New Information War:How Social Media Is Leveling the Playing Field Between Governments, Militants, and Ordinary People Decades before smartphones, the internet, and social media, the philosopher Marshall McLuhan, who worked on media theory, predicted a future world war fought using information. While World War I and World War II were waged using armies and mobilized economies, “World War III [will be] a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation,” McLuhan said, a prophecy included in his 1970 book of reflections, “Culture Is Our Business.” By Murtaza HussainThe Party of Lincoln or the Party of Booth? Ever wonder why a draft from the Bank of Ontario was found on the corpse of John Wilkes Booth? The Montreal branch of the bank was one of the places that Robin Philpot, my Canadian publisher, pointed to when he took me on a tour of the Confederates’ Montreal hangouts. I also saw the grounds where the Royal Theater once stood. Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson Davis were greeted with a rousing rendition of “Dixie” when they attended a performance after the war. by Ishmael Reed
An illustration published in May 1863 of the Richmond Bread Riots. Library of Congress.
Environment:
Storms Hit Poorer People Harder, From Superstorm Sandy to Hurricane Maria The ferocious “frankenstorm” known as Sandy that ripped through greater New York City five years ago remains one for the record books. Like this year’s hurricane season, it racked up tens of billions of dollars in economic damages. Superstorm Sandy had another close, yet underappreciated, similarity to this year’s hurricanes: less affluent groups of people suffered more, both in the initial damage and recovery. An analysis by a team I led at Stony Brook University shows that Sandy’s destructive path across Long Island, from Brooklyn to the Hamptons, was not as even-handed as media coverage often made it seem, both in its initial impact and people’s recovery. The storm season of 2017 has already left behind an even more dramatic version of this story: Following Hurricane Harvey, Houston quickly switched water and electricity back on and emptied most emergency shelters. Meanwhile, several weeks after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, much of the island is still in “survival mode.” Both hurricane seasons expose the close ties between severe weather events and social inequality. — By Chris Sellers, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)
Poor Not So Poor
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Civil Rights/ Black Liberation:
The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights Movement (Kindle Price: $5.99)How slave labor built and financed major U.S. cities Urban inequality in the U.S. can be traced to unresolved issues and injustices lingering from the slave trade era To understand the contemporary challenges of race in American cities and the relationship between African Americans and urbanization, we must examine the role of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the development of maritime cities. Contemporary forms of urban inequality in the United States can be traced to unresolved issues and injustices lingering from the slave trade era. By Carl AnthonyLabor:
Domestic Workers Face Rampant Harassment on the Job, With Little Protection Yet many women in the United States are presently enduring harassment and assault that they dare not publicly share for fear of losing their job, or experiencing other forms of retaliation, including deportation. These women include the approximately 2 million domestic workers — nannies, housekeepers and caregivers — in the United States, who work and sometimes live inside of the homes of their perpetrators. By Sheila Bapat
Economy:A Private Citizen Would Be in Prison If He Had Citigroup’s Rap Sheet Since its financial meltdown in 2008 and unprecedented bailout by the U.S. taxpayer, Citigroup (parent of Citibank) has been repeatedly charged by its Federal regulators with odious crimes against its pooled mortgage investors, credit card and banking customers, student loan borrowers, and for its foreclosure frauds. It has paid billions of dollars in fines for its past misdeeds while new charges pile up. In 2015, it became an admitted felon for participating in rigging foreign exchange markets. In short, Citigroup is a lawbreaking recidivist. If it were a mere human, it would be serving a long prison term. Instead, its fines for charges of egregious acts are getting smaller, not larger. By Pam martens and Russ Martens
World:
Venezuelan regional elections – why did the PSUV win? Statement of Lucha de Clases Last month the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (“PSUV”) won a decisive electoral victory in the face of an extremely difficult economic and political situation. However, despite temporarily stabilising the political situation in Venezuela, this victory has done nothing on its own to alleviate the growing tensions in Venezuela. Meanwhile, the pressures of inflation and the shortage of goods which have been weighing heavily on the masses for several years require an urgent solution.
Daily News Digest November 28, 2017
How Payday Lenders (Loansharks) Prey Upon the Poor 
Quotes of The Day:
The Party of Lincoln or the Party of Booth? Ever wonder why a draft from the Bank of Ontario was found on the corpse of John Wilkes Booth? The Montreal branch of the bank was one of the places that Robin Philpot, my Canadian publisher, pointed to when he took me on a tour of the Confederates’ Montreal hangouts. I also saw the grounds where the Royal Theater once stood. Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson Davis were greeted with a rousing rendition of “Dixie” when they attended a performance after the war. by Ishmael Reed
Labor: