Daily News Digest April 25, 2019

Daily News Digest April 25, 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:

Oh My God It’s  A Handout!Oil And Gas Giants Spend Millions Lobbying To Block Climate Change Policies 

Videos of the Day: 

Leaked John Kerry audio: White House wanted ISIS to rise in SyriaOn Wednesday, Wikileaks released new evidence of US President-elect Donald Trump’s assertion that Barack Obama was the founder of ISIS – A leaked audio of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s meeting with members of the Syrian opposition at the Dutch Mission of the UN on September 22. The audio also is an evidence of the fact that mainstream media colluded with the Obama’s administration in order to push the narrative for regime change in Syria, hiding the truth about arming and funding ISIS by the US, as it exposed a 35 minute conversation that was omitted by CNN.Kerry admits that the primary goal of the Obama’s administration in Syria was regime change and the removal of Syrian President Bahar al-Assad, as well as that Washingtondidn’t calculate that Assad would turn to Russia for help.

Trump’s Latest Iran Sanctions Show an Unraveling of US Foreign Policy

Economic Update: The #METOO Movement This week: Updates on Chicago in change; the decline of world trade; New York City’s “congestion pricing plan; the IMF comments on Trump’s trade war and the hi-tech monopolies; the 7 states suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture over school lunch deregulations; and Trump’s warning to House Republicans about socialism; Prof. Wolff interviews Dr. Harriet Fraad’s thoughts on the causes of the MeToo# movemen

Quotes of the Day:

The dominant system of political thought in this country, which produced both the creeping privatisation of public health services and this astonishing attempt to stifle free speech, promised to save us from dehumanising bureaucracy. By rolling back the state, neoliberalism was supposed to have allowed autonomy and creativity to flourish. Instead, it has delivered a semi-privatised authoritarianism more oppressive than the system it replaced.  Workers find themselves enmeshed in a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, centrally controlled and micromanaged. Organisations that depend on a cooperative ethic — such as schools and hospitals — are stripped down, hectored and forced to conform to suffocating diktats. The introduction of private capital into public services — that would herald a glorious new age of choice and openness — is brutally enforced. The doctrine promises diversity and freedom but demands conformity and silence. — George Monbiot, Neoliberalism promised freedom – instead it delivers stifling control Creeping privatisation is rolling back the state to create a new, absolutist bureaucracy that destroys efficiency

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!

Plundering Disaster Capitalism: Private power, public catastrophePG&E responsible for deadly California wildfire — again  According to the bankruptcy rules, settlement payments to wildfire victims will take a back seat to the claims of PG&E’s Fortune 500 creditors, like JPMorgan Chase & Co.   The power provider has worked the bankruptcy scam once before, in reaction to the 2001 California energy crisis that featured rolling blackouts. The turmoil was brought on as Enron and other energy traders exploited deregulation of the industry and caused wholesale prices to spike massively.  Deregulation starting in the 1990s freed energy providers from having to generate the power themselves. They now could buy it from wholesalers and then distribute it to consumers at a profitable markup, often piggybacking on existing power grids built with public money, creating a layer of parasitic middlemen. PG&E both generates energy itself and plays the buy-and-sell market. The reorganization plan coming out of PG&E’s bankruptcy in 2001 burdened consumers with $7.2 billion of the company’s debt. For its part, the utility survived “without major structural changes and with its top management intact,” according to bloomberg.com.Related Articles:

Siding With Corporate Power Over Worker Rights, Supreme Court Supports Company That Sought to Block Class Action Lawsuit In dissent, Justice Ginsburg says high court has “treacherously strayed.” By Andrea Germanos

Environment:

 The Most Horrifying Look at Monsanto Yet “Fear is the best weapon to awaken the reader,” says Samanta Schweblin, the acclaimed Argentine author of “Fever Dream.” “Fear is what makes you drop a book and run to your computer to Google what is happening, and think, ‘Can this happen to me? Is this really happening?’” “Fever Dream” certainly terrified readers across the globe after it was translated from Spanish into more than a dozen languages over the past few years. It was first published in English in 2017 and received ample critical acclaim, in part due to her considerable talent as a writer, but also due to the timeliness of the subject at hand: the horrors companies such as agrochemical giant Monsanto have inflicted on the planet and us all.By Natasha Hakimi Zapata

 Black Liberation/Civil Rights:

Black History:

 The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.  … If money … comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek, capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. — “Capital”, Volume One, Part VIII, Chapter 31, (the) “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist”.

A Century Later, a Little-Known Mass Hanging of Black Soldiers Still Haunts Us After Hurricane Harvey devastated Houston in September, recovery and clean-up workers discovered that vandals had smeared red paint over a historical marker at the one-time location of Camp Logan, recently rededicated to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Houston “riot” of 1917.   The paint covered the segment of the inscription that explained the history of the Third Battalion of the 24th United States Infantry, a predominantly black unit assigned to guard the camp during its construction shortly after the United States entered World War I.   Beneath the paint, the words read: “The Black Soldiers’ August 23, 1917, armed revolt in response to Houston’s Jim Crow Laws and police harassment resulted in the camps most publicized incident, the ‘Houston Mutiny and Riot of 1917.’” The Houston riot grew out of a confrontation between the soldiers and Houston city police, at the end of which sixteen white people were dead, including five policemen, with four soldiers also killed. It was one of the only riots in U.S. history in which more white people died than black people. By James Jeffey

Freedom Rider: Pompeo’s Truth About Lies The Secretary of State’s candid remarks remind us that US foreign policy is intended to punish those targeted as enemies, keep friends as vassal states, and disregard international law. “Pompeo is too stupid to keep his mouth shut.” “When I was a cadet — What’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s – it was like – we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.” — Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State It is rare for an enemy to give a gift the way Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did in a recent public speech . Pompeo said what anyone who has ever paid attention already knew. The intelligence agencies of the United States government are masters of deception and one should always assume that they are lying, cheating, and or stealing. By Margaret Kimberly

ISIS Attacks in DR Congo: A New Phase of a Western Scheme for Resource Plunder The new president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is asking for US help to fend off an alleged ISIS threat. “The idea of ISIS establishing a caliphate might seem comical if the indigenous people of Beni weren’t being massacred by the illegal resource trafficking militias already operating there.” In October 2017, a video calling for an Islamic State jihad in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) appeared online and in a few news reports. It was purportedly made in Beni Territory, within Congo’s North Kivu Province, where a phantom, so-called Islamist militia, the Allied Democratic Forces, has been blamed for massacres of the indigenous population that began in October 2014. By Ann Garrison

The War on WikiLeaks: Which Side Are You On? Assange’s arrest shows that “free speech” and “assembly” is defined as whatever the U.S. rulers are willing to tolerate. “The media in the U.S. is composed of corporate tools whose primary interest is the promotion of lies in the interests of power and profit.”On Thursday, April 11th, Julian Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy where he had spent over a half decade in virtual solitary confinement. The premier event of my co-authored book American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News-From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terrorhappened that same evening. The book was inspired in part by the work of WikiLeaks in lifting the veil of exceptionalism that has provided cover for U.S. war crimes since the War on Terror was declared in 2001. Assange’s arrest represents one of the darkest days for journalism in the history of humanity.His ouster from the confines of the Ecuadorian embassy and into the jaws of the imperial apparatus forces us to pick a side in the struggle in the war being waged on WikiLeaks through Assange. By Danny Haiphong

Political Theology Network Seeks Radical Anti-Imperial Perspectives on Religion and Politics  The upcoming conference aims to bring together scholars, activists, and artists motivated by a concern for justice. “We are looking for projects that challenge and transform conversations about political theology.” The Political Theology Network  invites BARreaders to submit proposals of 200-300 words for projects exploring political theology, broadly understood as an interdisciplinary conversation about intersections of religious and political ideas and practices.  The conference is scheduled for October 17-19, 2019, and will be held at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University, New York. Plenary speakers include: Michelle Alexander, Gil Anidjar ,Lap Yan Kung , and Najeeba Syeed. By   The Political Theology Network

The FBI Appears to Be Targeting Black Activists Counterspin interviews Nusrat Choudhury on the modern version of COINTELPRO. “This label of ‘Black Identity Extremists’ is based on nothing; there’s no credible evidence that such a movement or group even exists.” Janine Jackson interviewed Nusrat Choudhury about FBI targeting of black activists for the April 12, 2019, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript. By Janine Jackson 

Lawyers for the Left: In the Courts, In the Streets, and on the Air  People’s lawyers found the cracks and searched out open spaces in the law. “The law is constructed in the service of whatever social/economic system created it.”  “We were partying hard and having a great evening, a nd then the law arrived and spoiled everything.”  “She tries to keep the books accurately—squeaky clean, she says—but always just this side of the law.”  “I studied international law at Cambridge.”
“That just proves the law of gravity.”  “I fought the law and the law won.” By Bill Avery

“Imperialism Does Not Understand the Resistance of the Venezuelan People” Even the loss of the equivalent of a full year’s economic production due to US aggression has not broken the people’s will. “A new international monetary system is advancing, apparently with a gold backing.” Each time that the imperial economic attack intensifies against Venezuela, many glances are directed, by way of consultation, towards the economist Pascualina Curcio, one of the best analysts of the situation in the Caribbean country. Pascualina has been providing propositive guidelines on how to confront opponents who want to destroy Bolivarian Venezuela by attacking the currency, causing shortages and monitoring, as is happening today, through a criminal blockade. By Carlos Aznárez

The Expense of the American Dream Professor Gerald Horne shows that the Dark Continent was Europe, not Africa. “The slogans liberté, egalité et fraternité were fashioned to unite Europeans against Africans, not with them.” The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in Seventeenth Century North America and the Caribbean by Gerald Horne Monthly Review Press, 2018. By T.P. Wikinson

The Racist Dawn of Capitalism  A decade before his assassination at the hands of a nationalist in 1914, French socialist Jean Jaurès completed a historical work that radically changed the study of the French Revolution. Where others had focused on disputes over politics and political ideology, Jaurès’s four-volume Histoire socialiste de la Révolution française took as its subject the transformations wrought by an emergent capitalism, foregrounding irruptions within the French economyThrough a Marxist lens, Jaurès emphasized the conflict between the ancien régime and the newly empowered bourgeoisie and excavated from the archives of the revolution the struggles of French workers and peasants. By Perter James Hudson

Labor:

Labour endorses Extinction Rebellion activists after week of protest Shadow health secretary pledges to make climate change a central policy focus Labour endorses Extinction Rebellion activists after week of protest Labour has backed the Extinction Rebellion protesters who have carried out a week of civil disobedience and occupations to highlight the ecological emergency, likening them to the Chartists, suffragettes and anti-apartheid activists. Speaking in response to an urgent question in the Commons on Tuesday, the shadow energy minister, Barry Gardiner – who also holds the international trade role – said that alongside the school strikes, the protests organised by Extinction Rebellion were reminiscent of previous memorable struggles. “All of those victories were won by citizens uniting against injustice, making their voice heard. And Extinction Rebellion and the school climate strikersare doing just that,” Gardiner said. By  Matthew TaylorPeter WalkerDamien Gayle and Molly Blackall

 World:

The Commune is the Supreme Expression of Participatory Democracy: a Conversation with Anacaona Marin of El Panal CommuneThe Alexis Vive Patriotic Force, which has deep roots in Caracas’ 23 de Enero barrio, began planning a commune years before Chavez even proposed the communal path toward socialism. Yet when Chavez announced the plan to join communal councils into a higher form of organization, Alexis Vive wholeheartedly embraced the initiative and has since then built a highly successful commune called El Panal Commune[1] involving some 13,000 people. We spoke with a key cadre of El Panal about this project that is both economic and political to find out how it is coping with the crisis escalated by US aggressions. By Cira Pascual Marquina

Economy:

The Criminal Case Against Merrill Lynch: “Sinister,” “Whores,” “Beards”What the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) wanted to see the U.S. Justice Department pursue was a potential criminal prosecution of Stan O’Neal, the CEO of Merrill Lynch in the leadup to the financial crisis, and its then CFO Jeffrey Edwards, for “making materially false and misleading representations and omissions about (a) Merrill’s exposure to retained CDO positions, (b) the value of those positions and (c) the firm’s risk management.” The FCIC also believed that Merrill had lied “in the offering documents for its $1.5 billion Norma CDO that was sold to investors in March of 2007.”By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

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!

Payments to Hospitals Are Not Going to Hospital BuildingsIn keeping with accepted standards in debates on economic policy, we are now getting a debate on Medicare for All that is doing a wonderful job of ignoring the relevant issues. The focus of this debate is what Medicare for All will pay hospitals. As The New York Times tells us, if Medicare for All pays hospitals at Medicare reimbursement rates, many will go out of business. The reason why this is a bizarre way to frame the issue is that the payments to hospitals are not going to buildings. They are going to pay for prescription drugs (close to $100 billion a year), for medical equipment and supplies, for doctors and other health care personnel. They also pay for hospital administrators, and in the case of for-profit hospitals, some of the money goes to profits. Also, in recent years a growing chunk of the money has gone to buildings, as many hospitals have sought to attract high-end patients by making themselves more upscale than a facility that exists primarily to provide health care. By Dean Baker

An American Tragedy Is Unfolding in Our Classrooms. .    . This is the third time in my 14-year-career as a visual arts teacher that we’ve faced the upheaval, disruption, and chaos of just such a budget crisis. In 2012, the district experienced a massive shortfall that resulted in the firing of 344 teachers and bloated class sizes for those of us who were left. At one point, my Drawing I classroom studio — built to fit a maximum of 35 students — had more than 50 of them stuffed into it.   We didn’t have enough chairs, tables, or spaces to draw, so we worked in the halls. During that semester I taught six separate classes and was responsible for more than 250 students. Despite the pretense that real instruction was taking place, teachers like me were largely engaged in crowd management and little more. All of the meaningful parts of the job — connecting with students, providing one-on-one support, helping struggling class members to make social and intellectual breakthroughs, not to speak of creating a healthy classroom community — simply fell by the wayside. By Belle Chesler