Daily News Digest February 7, 2019

Daily News Digest February 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:  1. Austerity, 2. Scapegoating Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal Immigrants’ for Unemployment, and 3. 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.

Images of the Day:

Bendib:US Exits Nuclear Treaty

Quotes of the Day:

There is a consensus among U.S. Congressional Investigators, former bankers and international banking experts that U.S. and European banks launder between $500 billion and $1 trillion of dirty money each year, half of which is laundered by U.S. banks alone. As Senator Carl Levin summarizes the record: “Estimates are that $500 billion to $1 trillion of international criminal proceeds are moved internationally and deposited into bank accounts annually. It is estimated that half of that money comes to the United States”. James Petras, “Dirty Money” Foundation of US Growth and Empire – Size and Scope of Money Laundering by US Banks  (2001)

Less Than A month after Democrats — many of them running on “Medicare for All” — won back control of the House of Representatives in November, the top health policy aide to then-prospective House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Blue Cross Blue Shield executives and assured them that party leadership had strong reservations about single-payer health care and was more focused on lowering drug prices, according to sources familiar with the meeting. — Top Nancy Pelosi Aide Privately Tells Insurance Executives Not To Worry About Democrats Pushing “Medicare For All” 

For the first time ever, a fish survey that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) conducts every autumn turned up zero Delta smelt throughout the monitoring sites in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in September, October, November and December 2018. . . . A number of factors have resulted in the decline of Delta smelt and the other pelagic species, including increases in toxics and invasive species, but no factor has helped precipitate the collapse of Delta fish species more than the export of big quantities of water to agribusiness and Southern California water agencies from the state and federal pumping facilities in the South Delta over the past 50 years, according to fish advocates. By Dan Bacher 

Unfortunately, taking the tax the rich road is the farthest thing from the minds of these top union misleaders. The AFT’s president, Randi Weingarten, a member of the Democratic Party National Committee, as well as the top leaders of the NEA, has long subordinated the issue of school funding to mobilizing teachers in every state to fund and support Democratic Party politicians at every level, regardless of their anti-union policies. In blue state California, where Democrats hold perhaps the largest majority anywhere, school funding stands near the bottom of all states, while the corporate interests of the state’s ever-increasing billionaires are prioritized to the hilt.  The future of teacher unionism, and indeed, with public education more generally, rests in the capacity of teachers to match and exceed the fighting example set by their red state sisters and brothers and in their collective capacity to help initiate their own working class party based on renewed, militant fighting unions and their allies among the nation’s oppressed and exploited. — Jeff Mackler

Videos of the Day:

How US weapons ended up with Iran and al Qaeda-linked fighters The US sold weapons to the Saudis and Emiratis. Now, some are in the hands of fighters linked to al Qaeda and Iran. CNN’s Nima Elbagir reports. #CNN #News  

Guiado and his allies Trump, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his National Security advisor have so far responded to such calls by escalation and rejection of any dialogue. They continue to call for the military to intervene, while sources in the United States have revealed that Trump is “seriously considering” military intervention into Venezuela if Maduro does not step down. To further the pressure, the United States imposed harsh economic sanction on the Venezuelan oil industry and its national oil company, while also blocking the bank accounts of the Venezuelan state in the United States, vowing to only remove such restrictions when Guiado achieves control of the state institutions. — Venezuela Confronts US-backed Right-wing Coup 

U.S.:

The True State of the Union “All the pomp and circumstance of the State of the Union speech was present last night — the introductions, the stage-managed applause, the honored guests — and this: Donald Trump giving the crowd his profile like Nero, sneering and gesticulating at the Democrats, clapping and clapping and clapping into his own microphone to keep the applause lines going like some starving seal in a two-bit circus. Standing under the lights last night, he looked like a new penny at the bottom of a truck stop toilet bowl, all copper sheen and the stink of ammonia.” I wrote that a year ago about the last State of the Union address, and I have no reason to doubt tonight will prove to be any different. These addresses have been, by and large, wildly overwrought exercises in fiction, ego-inflation and ersatz patriotism since Ronald Reagan decided to go big with them four decades ago. Now that Donald Trump has lumbered onto the scene, however, the charade has become quite completely surreal, a festival of lies, bombast and full-throated nonsense that beggars likeness. By William Rivers Pitt 

Bernie Sanders Uses Rebuttal To Fact-Check Trump’s State Of The Union Speech “I hate to say this, but not everything Donald Trump said tonight was true or accurate,” the senator said

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) delivered a rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday with a 30-minute speech that meticulously picked apart what Trump got wrong and the things he felt the president had failed to mention.  “I hate to say this, but not everything Donald Trump said tonight was true or accurate,” Sanders said at the top of his speech after offering his congratulations to Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, who delivered the Democratic rebuttal.  In his response, Sanders noted that Trump did not mention climate change, Medicare, voter suppression or Social Security ― issues that the senator said all Americans, not just Trump’s “billionaire friends,” face. “For many of President Trump’s billionaire friends, the truth is, they have never, ever had it so good,” he said. “But for the middle class and the working families of our country, the truth is that the economy is not so great.”. . . Sanders criticized the president for boasting about the booming economy, noting that only the wealthy were benefiting from the administration’s economic policies and tax cuts.“For many of President Trump’s billionaire friends, the truth is, they have never, ever had it so good,” he said. “But for the middle class and the working families of our country, the truth is that the economy is not so great.”

The 12-Step Method of Regime Change On 15 September 1970, US President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger authorised the US government to do everything possible to undermine the incoming government of the socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Nixon and Kissinger, according to the notes kept by CIA Director Richard Helms, wanted to ‘make the economy scream’ in Chile; they were ‘not concerned [about the] risks involved’. War was acceptable to them as long as Allende’s government was removed from power. The CIA started Project FUBELT, with $10 million as a first instalment to begin the covert destabilisation of the country. By  Vijay Prashad

Trump-Appointed Venezuela Coup Leader Plans Neoliberal Capitalist Shock Therapy Venezuela’s US-appointed coup leader Juan Guaidó plans to privatize state assets and give foreign corporations access to oil, the Wall Street Journal admitted. “Guaidó plans to implement the neoliberal capitalist shock therapy that Washington has imposed on the region for decades.” The Wall Street Journal reported that Venezuela’s US-appointed coup leader Juan Guaidó has already drafted plans for “opening up Venezuela’s vast oil sector to private investment” and “privatizing assets held by state enterprises.” By Ben Norton

Environment:

EU Legislators Urge UN to Compensate Kosovo Lead Poisoning Victims Roma Were Exposed to Toxic Lead in UN-Run Camps Yesterday, 55 Members of the European Parliament wrote to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, expressing dismay at the UN’s failure to remedy harm inflicted on ethnic minorities in northern Kosovo following the end of the war in 1999. The letter urges the Secretary General “to ensure that the victims of widespread lead poisoning at UN-run camps in Kosovo receive individual compensation, adequate health care and educational support.” By Katharina Rall

Big Energy:

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Black Agenda Radio, Week of February 4, 2019 By Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford

Labor:

Economy:

Bank of England refused to return $1.2bn in gold to Venezuela – reports Britain rejected Venezuela’s request to withdraw $1.2bn in gold stored in the UK, according to reports. It was enough for the self-declared and US-backed ‘president’, Juan Guaido, to support the alleged move. The Bank of England blocked Venezuela’s attempts to retrieve $1.2 billion worth of gold stored as the nation’s foreign reserves in Britain, sources told Bloomberg on Friday.According to the media outlet, officials in Caracas have for weeks been trying to withdraw the gold, with Calixto Ortega, the head of Venezuela’s central bank, traveling to London in mid-December to seek access to the nation’s assets.World:

Mexico a ‘Huge Clandestine Grave,’ Says Gov’t on Disappearances he undersecretary of Human Rights of the Ministry of the Interior, Alejandro Encinas of Mexico said Monday that Mexico in itself is a clandestine grave.Mexico has 40,000 registered missing persons, 1,100 clandestine graves, and 26,000 unidentified bodies. “We have inherited perhaps one of the most ominous signs of the previous regime,” said Enicas during the presentation of a plan to search for missing persons. He added that Mexico “is a great clandestine grave.”Mexico: Me’phaa Indians Slaughtered in Lust For Resources Latin America has experienced horrific genocides of the Indigenous peoples since the 1500s. 500 years later there is little sign that these senseless killings will cease. It seems that every day a heartbreaking tale emerges whereby a member of an Indigenous community in Latin America is murdered because of greed for land resources. Sunday, Feb. 4 was no different, as eight members of the Me’phaa community in Acatepec, Guerrero, Mexico were gunned down by unidentified armed individuals.

A Plague of Rats: How Years of Austerity Prompted Many Britons to Vote for Brexit The only state institution to help preserve this small and vulnerable community was the EU, so it is worth asking why so many of those living in Thanington voted Leave in the 2016 referendum. At first glance, their actions, repeated in many deprived areas receiving EU funds in England and Wales, appear to be an inexplicable example of social and economic self-harm. Nevertheless, it was probably the high Leave votes in deprived white housing estates which tipped the balance towards Britain voting for Brexit. So it is important to discover why people from such places voted as they did in such overwhelming numbers. Was it a vote very much determined by opposition to immigration, or was it a more general protest by the “left-behinds” and the “left-outs”?   By Patrick Cockburn 

Chavistas march against imperialism: what is the next step in Trump’s coup? Een though the ongoing imperialist coup in Venezuela has not yet succeeded, the impression one gets is that there is an inexorable march forward in its implementation, which is pushed mainly from forces abroad rather than from within Venezuela itself. The next step in the plan is the use of “humanitarian aid” as a provocation on the border with Colombia. There are now plenty of newspaper reports that detail the way this coup plot was hatched in the US, with the collaboration of Marco Rubio and top Trump administration officials. The planning had already been put in place under the Obama administration, let us not forget that it was he who signed the Executive Order declaring Venezuela a “threat” to US national security, which was the basis for sanctions. All further sanctions implemented by Trump have been implemented within the remit of that EO. By Jorge Martin

Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:

California: Board of West Contra County Schools Debating Charter Moratorium  Charter Moratorium to go Before School Board

WCCUSD Trustee Consuelo Lara is bringing a resolution supporting a Statewide Moratorium on the Growth of Charter Schools and strengthening oversight and transparency of current charter schools. The resolution puts the WCCUSD in step with the recent resolution passed by the Los Angeles School Board joining with the NAACP, the Journey for Justice Alliance, Black Lives Matters and many other organizations and governmental bodies which have demanded a stop to the expansion of Charters at the expense of publicly run schools. By Diane Ravitch

EU Legislators Urge UN to Compensate Kosovo Lead Poisoning Victims Roma Were Exposed to Toxic Lead in UN-Run Camps Yesterday, 55 Members of the European Parliament wrote to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, expressing dismay at the UN’s failure to remedy harm inflicted on ethnic minorities in northern Kosovo following the end of the war in 1999. The letter urges the Secretary General “to ensure that the victims of widespread lead poisoning at UN-run camps in Kosovo receive individual compensation, adequate health care and educational support.” By Katharina Rall

Trial of El Chapo Highlights Failure of U.S. War on Drugs, But Will U.S. Ever Be Held to Account? AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly, as President Trump is about to give his State of the Union address and demand the wall on the southern border, just as you said, with the fentanyl caught going through a legal port of entry, the big message of this trial, that it’s legal ports of entry that the drugs are coming through? CHRISTY THORNTON: I think that’s something that will be ignored, that Trump has continued to ignore the evidence there is. The idea that we can argue with Trump about the wall with sort of fact- and evidence-based policy has been shown to be untrue. The wall will absolutely not stop the vast majority of drugs from coming into the United States. It’s an ineffective policy. But increased border militarization as the compromise, as the thing that the Democrats are offering—not a wall, but further militarization, more personnel, more surveillance technology