Daily News Digest April 23, 2019

Daily News Digest April 23, 2019

Daily News Digest Archives

Since World War I ‘the war to end all wars’ there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace,” Could Still Be Published Today!

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.

Images of the Day:

Military Budget Hits Record High!The Tree of Life is Dying!

Videos of the Day:

Michael Jackson’s Earth Song (Released for U.K. Earthday 1995)

Mueller and a Dangerous Moment in Human History – Jay and Curry The threat of nuclear war; the climate crisis; Trump’s regime change plans for Iran and Venezuela; and confrontation with China are far more significant threats than election meddling – former Pres. Clinton advisor Bill Curry and Paul Jay join host Jacqueline Luqman

Cut Military Aid, Not Humanitarian Aid, to Reduce Refugee Numbers Trump’s announcement to cut humanitarian aid to Central America will not have much effect. It’s the military aid that reinforces brutality in Guatemala and Honduras, says Prof. Adrienne Pine

Canada is Warming at Twice the Rate of the Globe, Says New ReportGreenpeace Canada analyst hopes study serves as a wake-up call for Trudeau government, but says “You can’t wake up a man who’s only pretending to be asleep” on climate change

Quotes of the Day:

Julian Assange

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.— The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace!

Bendib: Khassange

Who Are the Real Terrorists in the Mideast? Back when I still wore the uniform of a U.S. Army officer, and well before many of my former brothers in arms labeled me a traitor, I taught freshman (“plebe”) history at West Point. I loved asking my cadets provocative questions, the sort of queries they never heard in high school Advanced Placement U.S. history courses. Consider just one. At the end of the class on World War II, I always asked: “What is the moral difference between flying three planes into the Twin Towers and Pentagon—killing 3,000 civilians—and using hundreds of U.S. planes to firebomb Tokyo on March 9, 1945—killing some 90,000 civilians?” Suffice it to say that most cadets didn’t like this question at all. By Maj. Danny Sjursen

A man inspects the site of an airstrike by Saudi-led coalition in Sanaa, Yemen, on April 10. (Hani Mohammed / AP)

Environment:

Judge allows Flint residents to sue federal government for water crisis Federal Judge Linda Parker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan told Flint residents that they can sue the federal government over the city’s ongoing water crisis. By Soraya Joseph

Flint Residents ‘Will Get Their Day In Court’ After Federal Judge Rules They Can Sue EPA Over Water Crisis—”These lies went on for months while the people of Flint continued to be poisoned.” — As Flint, Michigan, marks five years since the city’s deadly water crisis began, a federal judge ruled in favor of residents who want to sue the federal government for not acting promptly to ensure the city had clean drinking water.  Residents filed suit against the EPA in 2017, demanding $722 million in damages and arguing that the agency was able to inform the city that its drinking water was contaminated months before it finally issued an emergency order. By Julia Vonley

Critics Say Louisiana ‘Highjacked’ Climate Resettlement Plan for Isle de JeanCharles Tribe Albert Naquin, Chief of the Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe (IDJC), often loses sleep over his tribe’s fate as its historic island homeland continues to lose land at an alarming rate. His dream to relocate the tribe from Isle de Jean Charles with a federal grant has turned into a nightmare. After helping the Louisiana Office of Community Development (OCD) win a $98 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Tribe no longer wants to be associated with the State’s project, which included $48 million earmarked to relocate the IDJC Tribe.  By Julie Dermansky

 Decrying ‘Toxic Alliance’ of Macron and Polluters, Climate Campaigners Stage One of France’s Largest Ever Acts of Civil Disobedience“Instead of regulating the activities of these polluting multinationals, Emmanuel Macron is rolling out the red carpet!”  — “We want to show that in reality, it is here that France’s climatepolicy is decided, in the offices of the big bosses.” — Clément Sénéchal, Greenpeace France — Parts of a major business district just outside of Paris city limits were “paralyzed” Friday when more than 2,000 climate campaigners staged what organizers described as one of France’s largest ever acts of civil disobedience. Peaceful demonstrators descended on La Défense to protest government complicity and companies fueling the global climate crisis. By Jessica Corbett

 Black Liberation/Civil Rights:

ENDLESS TRIALSBaltimore Police Tried to Kill Keith Davis Jr. Prosecutors Have Been Trying to Convict Him of Murder Ever Since. Nearly four years since that day, bits of shrapnel still in his neck, Davis remains in prison and is now facing his fifth trial stemming from the events of that day. As The Intercept reported at the time, a jury acquitted Davis of the robbery accusation and a host of other charges, but convicted him of possessing a gun, which hadn’t been fired, but was found on top of a refrigerator in the garage where he was shot. Davis and his attorneys maintain that the gun was planted. Then, days after that verdict, prosecutors charged Davis with murder, saying that the gun was connected to the unsolved killing of a security guard named Kevin Jones. They have been trying to convict him ever since. His fifth trial, and fourth for the same murder accusation, was scheduled for early April but has been postponed to the summer. With each trial, new evidence has emerged calling into question both police testimony and prosecutorial conduct in the case. Meanwhile, while Davis went between prison and court, trial after trial, Baltimore saw soaring murder rates and one police and political scandal after the other. And while Davis’s case is known to relatively few in Baltimore, and even fewer outside the city, his ordeal — which will be chronicled in a new podcast launching this week — is reflective of a city plagued by broken institutions and deep distrust in its justice system.  Puerto Ricans Are Resisting Policing as a Solution to CrisisIn Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico, author Marisol LeBrón shows how Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship to the U.S. has shaped policing in the archipelago as a form of “colonial crisis management.” Her new book exposes the ways policing harms marginalized communities and deepens social inequality. In this interview, LeBrón discusses the legacy of punitive “solutions” and the various ways Puerto Ricans are challenging state violence and building alternative forms of justice. By Anton Woronczuk

Labor:

Real Wage Charts factoring for real inflation and the other factor — To quote, from Leon Trotsky and the Iron Heel:“The treacherous role of the labor bureaucracy!” — The Graph Below is a Graphic Example of the Decline in Standard of Living of the Working Class, Since the Trade Union Bureaucracy Declared Itself to Be ‘In a (Domestic) Partnership With the Boss’! Starting in the mid-1980sThis ‘partnership’ gave birth to the one, two, three, three  ect. .. wage tier system! Selling out the futures of future young workers entering the labor force. And, since the lowest union wage is the immediately the highest non-union wage, this wage tier system cut the wages o the entire working class!   When I was a union official, I called this system labor’s rush to the bottom!  As in graphically shown in this. Shadow Government Statistics Graph: Graph 50: Real Average Weekly Earnings, Production and Nonsupervisory Employees, 1965-to-Date (Updates Graph 5 in Consumer Liquidity Watch No. 5)One of the most famous of these struggles was the 1985-1986 P-9 meatpackers’ strike against the Hormel Company in Austin, Minnesota, against the two-tier wage system that their international union, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), took credit for inventing. Local P-9 was one of the first UFCW unions to have this system imposed on it. The P-9 rank and file revolted against it and elected a new leadership to oppose it. The problem with the Hormel strike was that its strategy contradicted its goals—the strikers used what was called the “CorporateCampaign”strategy. — Roland Sheppard, The Fall of the Trade Unions

Stop & Shop Strikers Are Standing Up for All Grocery WorkersThe current New England grocery workers’ strike will likely have long-lasting national significance. The strike that started April 11 with 31,000 Stop & Shop grocery workers at about 240 supermarkets in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut is about to enter its second week. It is the largest private-sector strike in the United States since 2017 and the largest strike in the U.S. retail sector since the Southern California grocery workers’ strike of 2003-2004. By John Logan

 World:

Live Updates: Sri Lanka Gov’t Received Tips on Deadly Attacks, 13 Arrested So FarSeveral coordinated blasts have rocked the Sri Lankan capital Sunday killing 207 as many celebrated the Easter holiday. The South Asian country Sri Lanka was shaken with multiple blasts killing more than 200 people on Easter Sunday. Around 450 people are injured in one of the worst attacks in a country still reeling from a 26-year long civil war which ended in 2009. The responsibility of the attacks has not been claimed by any group or individual yet.

Police and security personnel stand guard outside the Shangri-La Hotel in Sri Lankan capital Colombo following a bombing attackNew Zealand’s new prime minister calls capitalism a ‘blatant failure’New Zealand‘s new prime minister called capitalism a “blatant failure”, before citing levels of homelessness and low wages as evidence that “the market has failed” her country’s poor. Jacinda Ardern, who is to become the nation’s youngest leader since 1856, said measures used to gauge economic success “have to change” to take into account “people’s ability to actually have a meaningful life”. By Chris Baynes

Economy:

Special Commentary Number 983-B  Economic and Financial-Market Review—April 22, 2019   UPDATED ALERT: As U.S. Economic Activity Turns Increasingly Negative, So Too Will the Stock Market and the U.S. Dollar

  • February Real Median Household Income and March Real Hourly Earnings Declined; Excessive FOMC Rate Hikes and Tightening Have Pummeled Consumer Liquidity
  • Sharply Deteriorating Retail Sales, Housing Starts, Manufacturing and Freight Activity, and a Trade Deficit Narrowed by Collapsing Imports and Consumption, All Signal Pending Contraction in Real Gross Domestic Product
  • New Recession Should Be Timed from November/Fourth-Quarter 2018 Peak; Fourth-Quarter 2018 GDP Growth Faces Further Downside Revision; First- and Second-Quarter 2019 Real GDP Quarterly Contractions Loom
  • Unusually Wide Range of Forecasts for Initial First-Quarter 2019 GDP, from 1.4% (N.Y. Fed) to 2.8% (Atlanta Fed), Reflect Turmoil in Shutdown Disrupted Data; Headline Estimate Should Come In Below or at the Low-End of Expectations, Ultimately Revising to Outright Contraction by July
  • Holding Rates Steady at Present, FOMC Should Be Easing by September Income Dispersion Is Worst Since Before the 1929 Stock Crash and Great Depression
  • Annual Drop in First-Quarter 2019 Monetary Base Was Greater Than the Inadvertent Plunge That Triggered the 1937 Second Down-Leg of the Great Depression
  • Spiking Gasoline and Oil Prices Are Reviving Headline CPI/PPI Inflation, Not the FOMC Canard of an Ever-Strengthening or Overheating Economy
  • Time for Congress to Overhaul the Federal Reserve?
  • S. Treasury Fiscal Operations Are Not Sustainable, Threatening U.S. Financial-Market and Dollar Turmoil, and Ultimately Hyperinflation

I’ve Seen Goldman Sachs From the Inside. We Need Public Banks. For far too long, Wall Street has wreaked havoc on people’s personal financial stability and our economy as a whole. I should know. As a managing director at Goldman Sachs in the early 2000s, I witnessed firsthand how the banking industry lined their pockets at the expense of customers. Not much has changed since then. After the mortgage fraud crisis of 2007-08, the biggest banks were slapped with $216 billion in fines – a drop in the bucket for firms that raked in a cool $237 billion last year alone. Infamously, not a single banker went to jail. Today, Wall Street banks continue to commit fraud, enjoy front-row lobbying seats in Washington, write legislation on their own behalf, and maintain easy access to credit courtesy of the Federal Reserve. By Noni Prins

Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!