Daily News Digest June 11, 2019

Daily News Digest June 11, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this 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.

Image of the Day:

The AMA is violating one of its most important ethical principles: ‘Do Not Harm’  Outlaw Human Gene Patents

Quotes of the Day:

To Be Foretold Is To Be New Forewarned:  “We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost‘s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.” ― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring(1962)

 Videos of the Day:

Plastic Reflectic interactive installation for plastic soup foundation Plastic Reflectic (2016) is an interactive kinetic installation that lets the spectator reflect on the concept of the growing plastic problem in our oceans. These plastics move from human waste into nature’s food chain and slowly inter tangle with our muscle and fat tissues, turning humanity slowly into plastic. The installation reflects its audience in plastic pixels made from ocean plastics from around the world. The interaction with the installation empowers the spectator with the thought that their movement at this moment can influence the evergrowing plastic problem later.“The Day Israel Attacked America” June 06, 2019 “Information Clearing House” – Extensive Interviews with USS Liberty Survivors’ – Audio tapes obtained by award winning British film maker Richard Belfield prove what every USS Liberty survivor, former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer have said all along: that Israel deliberately attacked an American ship.  The plan was to sink it, blame Egypt, and draw the US into the Six Day War on the Israeli side, but the heroism of the Liberty crew in fighting ship damage, often while wounded, prevented it from sinking with all hands. The tapes are featured in “The Day Israel Attacked America” by film-maker Richard Belfield, whose previous production credits include National Geographic TV and Discovery Channel.

D Day: Mythology of America as Liberator Feeds Trump’s Militarism It was the Soviet army that broke Hitler’s back at Stalingrad, but the myth that the American army liberated Europe, serves aggressive U.S. policy, including Trump targeting Iran – historian Peter Kuznick joins Paul Jay

Tennessee Passes Law Designed to Intimidate Black Voters Successful voter registration drives among Blacks have motivated Tennessee lawmaker to pass bill with onerous fines for simple registration mistakes, which will cause voters to think twice about registering. We speak to Ezra Rosenberg of the Voting Rights Project

Saudi King Calls on ‘Despots’ to Mecca for Emergency Meeting on Iran Prof. As’ad AbuKhalil says Saudis attempts to create a united front against Iran has dismally failed. Summits categorically reject the `deal of the century’ by Jared Kushner

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!

Company part-owned by Jared Kushner got $90m from unknown offshore investors since 2017 Overseas investment flowed to Cadre while Trump’s son-in-law works as US envoy, raising conflict of interest questions A real estate company part-owned by Jared Kushner has received $90m in foreign funding from an opaque offshore vehicle since he entered the White House as a senior adviser to his father-in-law Donald Trump. Investment has flowed from overseas to the company, Cadre, while Kushner works as an international envoy for the US, according to corporate filings and interviews. The money came through a vehicle run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven that guarantees corporate secrecy. By Jon Swain While the World Watches Trump, It’s Missing What’s Really Going OnTake Donald Trump’s desire to furnish Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with billions of dollars of extra weapons so that they can increase the ferocity of their war in Yemen against the Houthis – whose support from Iran, such as it is, prompts much of the international abuse against the Islamic Republic. French intelligence officers in Washington have apparently discovered that this is no routine request from Riyadh but a desperate appeal to Washington, because so promiscuous has been the Saudis’ use of US munitions against Houthi rebels (and civilians, hospitals, aid centres, schools and wedding parties) that they are running out of bombs, guided and unguided missiles, drone parts and other “precision” arms to be used on one of the poorest countries in the world. By Robert Fisk

Killing Us Cruelly With Their Greed    (Parody of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel) By Elizabeth Keyes

We knew they racked up mass wrongs.                                                                         We knew their evil guile.                                                                                                    And so we came to hate them.                                                                                Cold-blooded like reptiles.                                                                                          These are savage monsters.                                                                                                The stranglers of our dreams.                                                                                      Numb to the pain of our serfdom,                                                                    Straining our lives with their schemes.                                                               Killing us cruelly with their greed.                                                                               Destroying our whole world with such ease.                                                     Killing us cruelly with their greed. (Read More)

Trump Admin’s Latest Rail Safety Rollback Sets up Industry to Make Its Own RulesThis week, the Trump administration’s Department of Transportation (DOT) withdrew another rail safety recommendation originally proposed during the Obama administration. In the process, the agency made quite clear that it has no plans to further regulate the rail industry, especially the dangerous and continued transportation of oil and ethanol in unsafe tank cars. The latest proposed rule to be withdrawn would have required two-person crews on trains. Supporters of this rule argue that two-person crews are safer because the job of operating a train is too demanding for one person, new technologies are making the job more complex, and fatigue becomes a more serious issue with only one crew member. Since 2017, the Trump administration has already repealed a regulation requiring modern brakes for oil trains and canceled a plan requiring train operators to be tested for sleep apnea.By Justin Mikulka Environment:

More Microplastics in Deep Sea Than Great Pacific Garbage PatchMicroplastics have infiltrated the earth’s largest ecosystem: the deep ocean. Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute(MBARI) used small drone submarines to take sea-water samples from the ocean surface all the way down to the floor, at 3,200 feet. They found that there were actually more microplastics 1,000 feet below sea level than there are in the Great Pacific Garbage PatchUSA Today reported. The findings come as people around the world prepare to celebrate World Oceans Day Saturday and gives new insight into how plastics impact the entire marine environment.  By  Olivia Rosane

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Labor:

Economy:

World:

AMLO Can’t Do This Alone On Friday, April 19, 2019, an armed commando group burst into a restaurant in the town of Minatitlán, Veracruz, where a birthday celebration was underway. Under the pretext of looking for a bar owner known as “La Becky” — a transsexual woman who, reputedly, had betrayed Los Zetas to offer her money-laundering services to the rival cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación — the commandos mowed down fourteen of the partygoers, including a one-year-old baby. Over the course of the following weekend, the gruesome massacre made international news while the hashtag #AMLORenuncia (“AMLO Resign”) fluttered its way across social media feeds. By Colin Mooers  and Kurt Hackbarth

“We Deliberately Spread Hiv/Aids In South Africa”The atrocities of South African apartheid have yet to reveal themselves in full. That is the reality set forth by a seemingly innocuous documentary which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Cold Case Hammarskjöld explores the death of former UN secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjöld in a mysterious plane crash near Ndola, Zambia in 1961. Who knows what filmmakers Mads Brügger (Danish) and Göran Björkdahl (Swedish) were expecting to find when they embarked on their journey to make the film, but what matters is where the story took them: to someone who would fuel the flames of a well-concealed conspiracy relating to the origins of the HIV/AIDS virus in Southern Africa. By ZamaMdoda

Sudan: the whip of the counter-revolution spurs on the revolutionThe number of casualties at the hands of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia in Sudan, after they clamped down on the protests last week, has reached 113. But if the people at the top who ordered this butchery thought it would quell the revolt of the Sudanese people, they clearly miscalculated. By Frad Weston

Iran Denounces Trump’s ‘Hollow’ Offer of Negotiations After US Imposes Latest Sanctions “The American policy of maximum pressure is a defeated policy.”Accusing the Trump administration of “economic terrorism,” Iran’s foreign ministry said Saturday that the latest sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump demonstrate that the U.S. is not serious about pursuing negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear power. By Julia Conley

A Vast Archive Exposed The Secret History of Kidnapping and Assassination in Guatemala. Now it’s Under Threat.In late may, Guatemala’s interior minister held a press conference to announce that he was reviewing the public’s right to access the country’s Historical Archive of the National Police, citing security concerns and suggesting that it was time for his agency, which oversees the country’s security forces, to take the archive back from the Ministry of Culture. This is no featureless bureaucratic debate. At stake are literally miles of paper files — nearly five miles, in fact — related to Guatemala’s brutal internal armed conflict, which contain clues to the whereabouts of people who were forcibly disappeared decades ago. By Cora Currier

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!

Demanding End to ‘Rotten’ Opposition to Medicare for All, Doctors and Nurses to March on American Medical Association’s Annual Meeting“It’s time for the AMA to join the majority of physicians who support improved Medicare for All.” “America’s doctors see the harm that our profit-oriented, fragmented healthcare system imposes on patients—and how it impedes our work as physicians.” —Adam Gaffney, Physicians for a National Health Program By Jake Johnson