Daily News Digest February 21, 2019

  Daily News Digest February 21, 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: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  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.

Image of the Day:

Contain The Threat

Quots of the Day:

You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker! ― Malcom X

Videos of the Day: 

Haiti: Weeks of Protests Demanding the Resignation of the President

Economic Update: Economics of Conflicted Mothers

 U.S.:

The Real Emergency Isn’t About the Wall, It’s About the Separation of Powers  US president Donald Trump recently declared a “national emergency” under which he intends to divert money from the US Department of Defense’s budget and use it to build a wall on the US-Mexico border. No biggie, Trump said as he announced the “emergency.” Happens all the time (59 other times since 1976, to be exact). Purely routine. But it’s not routine at all. It is, in fact, a declaration of presidential dictatorship that shreds the US Constitution’s separation of powers requirements. By Thomas Knapp

Withdrawal Pains and Syrian Civil War: An Analysis of U.S. Media Discourse  President Donald Trump’s announced withdrawal of 2,000 U.S. combat troops from Syria is being met with strong criticism from the U.S. military establishment. [1] The attacks on withdrawal are reiterated in U.S. mass media outlets as well. Nowhere is this clearer than in the editorials of the paper of national record – the New York Times. By Anthony Dimaggio

When Saudi Arabia Gets the Bomb The world took a step closer to a Saudi nuclear bomb last week when President Donald Trump met with representatives from the US nuclear power industry. The meeting focused on reviving the stagnant US nuclear energy sector by promoting exports of nuclear technology to developing countries, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. By Charles Pierson

Environment:

Big Energy:

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline: Another Boondoggle in Virginia  Two pipelines– the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP)—earmarked for construction in Virginia have been the source of massive controversy. By Kenneth Surin

Revealed: How the Tobacco and Fossil Fuel Industries Fund Disinformation Campaigns Around the World Fossil fuel companies have a long history of adopting public relations strategies straight from the tobacco industry’s playbook. But a new analysis shows the two industries’ relationship goes much deeper — right down to funding the same organisations to do their dirty work. MIT Associate Professor David Hsu analyzed organisations in DeSmog’s disinformation database and the Guardian’s tobacco database and found 35 thinktanks based in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand that promote both the tobacco and fossil fuel industries’ interests. By Mat Hope

Civil Rights/Black Liberation

BAR Abolition Spotlight: Diana Block  Roberto Sirvent: Can you please tell readers of the Black Agenda Report a little about your background and the work you do?  Diana Block: The California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) was founded in 1995 by women prisoners and their advocates. One of our founding members was a Black woman, Charisse Shumate, with sickle disease who dared to challenge the abusive health care that she and others were receiving in prison. Throughout our history, CCWP has been committed to challenging the institutional violence imposed on women, transgender people and communities of color by the prison industrial complex (PIC). We center the struggle for racial and gender justice and we prioritize the leadership of the people, families and communities most impacted by the PIC in building this movement. Our visiting program at the women’s state prisons is at the core of all our work. Our programs evolve in response to the guidance and insights of the people we visit and the changing conditions within the prisons and jails. Within that framework our programs fall into four major areas. First, we monitor and challenge the abusive conditions inside of the women’s prisons, including grossly inadequate health care, sexual harassment and abuse, solitary confinement and overcrowding. Second, we fight for the release of women, trans and gender non-conforming prisoners through individual advocacy and systemic reforms of parole and sentencing systems, including the extreme sentence of Life Without Parole (LWOP). Third, we support women and trans people in their process of re-entering the community upon release so they are able to survive, grow and become involved in the struggles for civil rights and social change. Fourth, we work in coalition with others to promote decarceration strategies, shifting state and local priorities away from incarceration and punishment towards education, employment, housing and overall social transformation. By Roberto Sirvent, BAR Abolition Spotlight Editor Buried Alive: The Story of Police State Racism in Chicago  Chicago media care more about the safety of a killer cop and the Jesse Smollett saga than victims of the city’s rabidly racist police. “Van Dyke’s heinous crime was all too consistent with a longstanding pattern of excessive force and even murder on the part of the Chicago Police Department.”“I cannot bury my husband”— Tiffany Van Dyke, wife of Jason Van Dyke, the murderer of Laquan McDonald Among the many different forms taken by 21st century U.S.-American racism, one is the curious way in which white-owned corporate media and the criminal justice system racially differentiate worthy from unworthy victims. Take the case of Jason Van Dyke, the white Chicago police officer who coldly executed the Black teenager Laquan McDonald on the evening of October 20th, 2014. The dash-cam videotape of the execution has been viewed by many millions of people. By Paul Street

CHICAGO, IL – SEPTEMBER 05: Demonstrators protest outside of the Leighton Criminal Courts Building as Jury selection begins in the murder trial for Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke on September 5, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois. Van Dyke is accused of shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times and killing him on October 20, 2014. Protests erupted around the city after video of the shooting was released. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

“It’s Eco-Socialism or Death”  An interview with Kali Akuno Cooperation Jackson leader Kali Akuno on the Green New Deal, the need for mass civil disobedience, and the necessity of building an internationalist movement for eco-socialism. “We have to articulate a program that concretely addresses the class’s immediate and medium-term need for jobs and stable income around the expansion of existing “green” industries and the development of new ones.” The Green New Deal (GND) is now part of the national conversation. But for decades, social movements have been doing the on-the-ground work to resist fossil capitalism and envision a different future. Such grassroots social mobilization — but at a massive scale — is vital to ensuring the GND catalyzes transformative social change. As U.S. Intervention Germinates in Venezuela, We Must Not Forget the Implications for Haiti Haitians and Venezuelans are united by history and common struggle against the US behemoth that seeks to enslave the rest of the hemisphere. “Hugo Chavez provided cheap petroleum products and favorable credit terms to Haiti and 16 other nations.”As both Republicans and Democrats continue their plans to install a government in Venezuela that proves more tractable to their neoliberal agendas, we are also witnessing an uprising by the people of Haiti against the ongoing neocolonial control by the United States. The Haitian people are no strangers to the tentacles of United States interventionism, which has been ongoing since the 19-year occupation commenced by President Woodrow Wilson in 1915. The occupation included the seizing and relocation of Haiti’s financial reserves to the United States, as well as a re-write of the nation’s constitution, which, among other things, allowed for foreign entities to enjoy land-owning rights.   Black Alliance For Peace Letters from Our Readers Jahan Chowdhry, BAR Comments Editor  This week’s column discusses the Bernie Sanders campaign, Medicare for All, and white supremacy in Venezuela. The best letters came for “Freedom Rider: Black Voters Used to Destroy Bernie Sanders,” “Pelosi Sabotages Medicare For All, But Corporate Media Pretend Not to Notice,” and “In Venezuela, White Supremacy Is a Key Driver of the Coup.” In “Freedom Rider: Black Voters Used to Destroy Bernie Sanders” Margaret Kimberley argues that the liberal establishment is using false allegations of racism to turn black voters against the social democratic Senator  Prisons Are Building Databases of Incarcerated People’s Voice Prints  Hundreds of thousands of inmates’ voices have been imprinted, potentially ensnaring millions of family members, friends and supporters in the huge surveillance net. “Some programs even analyze the voices of call recipients outside prisons to track which outsiders speak to multiple prisoners regularly.” Roughly six months ago at New York’s Sing Sing prison, John Dukes says he was brought out with cellmates to meet a corrections counselor. He recalls her giving him a paper with some phrases, and offering him a strange choice: He could go up to the phone and utter the phrases that an automated voice would ask him to read, or he could choose not to and lose his phone access altogether. By George Joseph and Debbie Nathan BAR Book Forum: Roderick Ferguson’s “One-Dimensional Queer”  Gay liberation didn’t originate as a single-issue movement, and must confront neoliberalism and gentrification as well as anti-queer violence. By Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum EditorVenezuela: A Unique Experience in Protagonist Democracy?   The issue for us all is: No to military intervention in Venezuela and full support for the right of Venezuela to defend itself. By Arnold August Brazilian Police Massacre 13 Youth in Bolsonaro “Crackdown” In keeping with the new president’s declaration that the police do not “kill enough,” militarized cops swept through a Rio de Janeiro favela with deadly effect. Seu Jornal — Rede TVT, Mekim-na-Save Projek

How to Answer Trump? Make America a Socialist Country Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders won’t align with Venezuela out of fear of being labeled “authoritarian” by the ruling elite. “None of demands put forward by Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez are possible without a massive transformation of society, like that in Venezuela nearly two decades ago.” President Donald Trump expressed horror regarding socialism’s popularity among sections of the U.S. population at his latest State of the Union address. He vowed that the United States would “never be a socialist country.” Beneath the optics of Trump’s address and Nancy Pelosi’s “shade” clap is the stark reality that all sections of the U.S. capitalist oligarchy are at war with socialism at home and abroad.The social democratic and self-proclaimed “socialist” camp behind Bernie Sanders remains largely excluded from the halls of Washington and the ruling class certainly has no plans for that to change anytime soon. Oligarchs in the Democratic Party have flooded the 2020 primary with corporate candidates or faux-liberals who are more than willing to obey the dictates of neoliberal capital. ByDanny Haiphong, BAR contributorNellie Bailey and GlenFordBlack Agenda Radio, Week of February 18, 2019 

Economy:

Alternate Unemployment Charts: The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.

World:

International solidarity for Rawal Asad: free our comrade! An international solidarity campaign has been launched to demand the release of comrade Rawal Asad, who was arrested in Multan for the ‘crime’ of attending a protest. He faces a scandalous charge of sedition, which carries a sentence of 10 years to life in prison, and a judge has now officially denied his application for bail. In addition to demonstrations in Pakistan, comrades from all over the world have been protesting outside of Pakistani embassies, and sending pictures and messages of support calling for Rawal’s release, as reported below. We demand freedom for our comrade!

Economy:

Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:

Why the Government The Assassinated Malcolm X  And Martin Luther King Jr.  By Roland SheppardUntitled-2. . . It’s impossible for a chicke to produce a duck egg… The system of this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, this social system, this system period. It is impossible for it , as it now stands, to produce freedom right now for the Black man in this country — it is impossible.  And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg, I’m certain you would say it was certainly a revolutionary chicken. . . . — Malcolm X, Harlem ‘Hate Gang’ Scare Militant Labor Forum, May 29, 1964

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Photo: Marion S. Trikosko/Agence France-Press/Getty ImagesMartin Luther King and Malcolm X in 1964.

I first started to write about Malcolm X’s assassination, after I watched the 1992 CBS documentrary, The Real Malcolm X, An Intimate Portrait of the man, narrated by Dan Rather. I then saw that Spike Lee’s documentary movie, Malcolm X, had left out the most of the events in the last year of Malcolm’s life, starting with March 12, 1964 Press Statement By Malcolm X. When Denzel Washington, acting as Malcolm X, is shown addressing this press conference, right after Malcolm’s statement: “There can be no black-white unity until there is first some’ black unity”, Denzel Washington did not state what Malcolm X said next, which was “There can be no workers solidarity until there is first some racial solidarity,” The statement about ‘workers solidarity’ showed some of Malcolm’s thinking and outlook at that time — he was becoming anti-capitalist in his political thinking.

I felt compelled to write this essay to show why this government, “the assassination leader of the world “ assassinated Malcolm X. But when I began to read more of what King had stood for at the end of his life, that he also was becoming anti-capitalist in his political thinking, before his life was ended, I realized the United States Government had the same motive to kill both Malcolm X Martin Luther King. When I discovered and realized the complicity, of the government, in both assassinations, I then felt compelled to write this essay, based upon what I learned and my own personal experience. Read More