Daily News Digest June 13, 2019

Daily News Digest June 13, 2019

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!

UN expert: San Francisco’s homelessness crisis is a human rights violation and suggests ‘a cruelty that is unsurpassed’ By Aria Bendix

• Conditions for homeless residents in San Francisco are among the worst in the world, with many living in crowded camps filled with trash, feces, and discarded needles.

• In September, United Nations Special Rapporteur Leilani Farha released a report calling the crisis a “human rights violation.”

• Business Insider spoke with Farha about the root causes of homelessness — and what she sees as the most viable solutions.

• Farha doubled down on her previous comments, arguing that San Francisco’s homelessness crisis suggests a “cruelty that is unsurpassed.”

  Behind the US Espionage Act WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange faces 17 counts of violating the United States Espionage Act, for publishing material given to him by former US soldier Chelsea Manning. The material included documents that exposed US war crimes and other material about Washington’s wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, which the military wanted to keep secret from the public. The Espionage Act was passed in 1917 as the US entered the First World War. A product of wartime hysteria, it was first used against the Socialist Party (SP) and against anarchists and the anarcho-syndicalists of the Industrial Workers of the World, who opposed the war. Many were charged and convicted under the act, the most famous case being that of Eugene Debs, who gave a strong antiwar speech in Canton, Ohio, in June 1918, in which he also praised the Russian Revolution. By Barry Sheppard

‘This Is Sick’: Horror as Trump Administration Plans to Detain Migrant Children at Former Japanese Internment Camp“It feels as though history can’t yell any louder than this.” Lending even greater significance to the parallels commentators and historians have drawn between U.S. migrant detention centers and concentration camps of the past, the Trump administration is reportedly planning to hold more than a thousand immigrant children at an Oklahoma army base that was used as an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II.  By Jake Johnson

How Not to Honor Jamal Khashoggi Trump Rewards Saudi Arabia with Nuclear Secrets After the Saudis murdered dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in their consulate in Istanbul, the Trump Administration swung into action—and approved permits to transfer US nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. We learned this from Senator Tim Kaine on June 4. Senator Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate, represents Virginia where Khasshogi was a permanent resident. By Charles Pierson  Environment:

Nuclear waste will be classified as safer under a controversial Trump administration changeThe federal Department of Energy is changing how it will dispose of nuclear weapons waste, reclassifying what was formerly considered high-level radioactive material to a lower standard, officials said in a formal notice Wednesday. The new approach triggered immediate opposition in Washington state, South Carolina and Idaho, which contend that the Energy Department wants to bury dangerous waste in shallow pits. By Ralph Vartabedian

As New Pipeline Battle Looms, Texas Moves Toward Criminalizing Pipeline ProtestFor many environmentalists and landowners in Texas’s iconic Hill Country, Kinder Morgan’s 42-inch Permian Highway Pipeline is aptly named.The company’s planned 430-mile southeasterly route from West Texas to the Gulf would irrevocably scar this ecologically sensitive region, long defined by its porous hills of limestone that has, until now, managed to largely avoid oil and gas development in a state so defined by it. By Candice BerndKids Face Rising Health Risks from Climate Change, Doctors Warn as Juliana Case Returns to CourtA federal appeals court heard arguments as the government tried again to get the children’s climate lawsuit dismissed. The 21 children and young adults suing the federal government over climate change argue that they and their generation are already suffering the consequences of climate change, from worsening allergies and asthma to the health risks and stress that come with hurricanes, wildfires and sea level rise threatening their homes. By Nina Pullono

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Wrongfully Convicted, Behind Bars for 20 Years, He Taught Himself Law, Got Released, A $15m Settlement And A Job At A Lawfirm!Can you imagine being behind bars for 20 years, for a crime you did not commit, knowing that you had been framed? What would go through your mind, how would you deal with it? Well, one man used his time very wisely and has finally pulled himself out of jail and settled with the state. Rodell Sanders was awarded $15 million on September 28th. By Forest Parks

Freedom Rider: The Central Park Five and the Limits of Suffering  Corporate media green-light films that ratchet up an emotional response without motivating anyone to action. “Where is the movie about the Black Panther standoff with police in Los Angeles in 1969?” As a New Yorker this columnist will never forget the awful events that unfolded in 1989. When a white woman was raped, beaten and left unconscious in Central Park, five teenagers were swept up in a police dragnet. Anton McCray, Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana confessed on video after hours of food and sleep deprivation and in some cases separation from their parents or other adults. None had legal representation. They were all convicted and spent between 7 and 13 years in prison. They should have been released immediately when DNA testing proved that none of them had assaulted the victim.  By Margaret Kimberley, Bar editor and senior columnistUN Rapporteur on Torture Says Assange Could Die in Prison  Julian Assange has been moved to Belmarsh Prison hospital and the UN Rapporteur on Torture has warned that he could die there. “The Rapporteur said, ‘This is persecution, not prosecution,” by the US, UK, Swedish, and Ecuadorian states.’” Last week, someone who claimed to be a prisoner in London’s Belmarsh Prison sent a cell phone video of Julian Assange to Gateway Pundit reporter Cassandra Fairbanks via Twitter. The Gateway Pundit, RT , and Ruptly published the video online, but none of the corporate media did. Fairbanks said she had decided to publish the video on the Gateway Pundit site and summarize what she knew about it after seeing that the account tweeting it out had tweeted it at CNN. She said she imagined that CNN and other mainstream outlets would publish it with all the usual smears and disinformation, but that they wouldn’t want to publish it and source Gateway Pundit or the Russian government outlets RT and Ruptly. She also reported that her source said Assange had become a celebrity prisoner and that other prisoners wanted to meet and talk to him as soon as he arrived. By Ann Garrison, Bar contributorThe Torture of Assange Is Public Policy in U.S. PrisonsThe psychological torture imposed on Julian Assange is not unlike the decades of torture imposed upon  Black political prisoners in the US. “For exposing the crimes of war, Assange is being treated like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Sundiata Acoli, and the rest of the Black liberation movement’s soldiers who reside in prison.” Julian Assange is living a nightmare. The WikiLeaks journalist was hospitalized not too long after he was arrested and detained on April 11thfor publishing documents exposing U.S. war crimes and those of its affiliates. Assange has been kept in perpetual isolation in the U.K.’s Belmarsh prison, which is often called the U.K.’s Guantanamo Bay. The conditions of Assange’s confinement have been labeled as torture by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture and cruel and unusual punishment. Indeed, the arrest of Assange set a disturbing precedent for the level of control that imperialist governments such as the U.S. and U.K. wield over journalistic practice. Assange’s predicament also reveals the extent to which torture is public policy in the United States and its Western allies. By Danny Haiphong Bar contributorSome Critics Argue that the Internal Colony Theory is Outdated. Here’s Why They’re WrongThe internal neocolonialism thesis is not “race-centric” but anti-colonial, and explains Black elite behavior. “The internal colonialism thesis not only accounts for class distinctions among Black Americans but also provides an historical answer to the whyand howof Black class antagonism.”In the 1960s, nearly all Black Civil Rights leaders accepted the view that the oppressive conditions they faced were expressions of a global imperial logic, and the fundamental question confronting Black radical political theory of every kind was the question of Empire. Inspired by the anticolonial theorizing of Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, and Kwame Nkrumah, Black activists and intellectuals of many ideological stripes adopted what is known as the internal colonialism thesis– the idea that Blacks in the United States constitute an internal colony within the borders of the imperial mother country. By Patrick D. Anderson“The Black Godfather”: Clarence Avant and the Ruling Class Use of Black Pop Culture  Clarence Avant mastered pimping out Black identity to normalize the functioning of a nation premised on the oppression of his fellow Black citizens. “The Black Misleadership Class clearly has a division in the entertainment industry.” A Netflix documentary has recently premiered about a man unknown to many, who wielded inordinate influence in the music, entertainment, and film industry relative to his humble beginnings as a Black child from Climax, North Carolina. “The Black Godfather ,” as Clarence Avant is sometimes called, shows how Avant was a crucial ruling class asset in neutralizing the radical politics of the late 1960s. By Pascal Robert

After Massacre by Militia, Sudan’s Civilian Forces Reject Junta’s Legitimacy  Amid a reign of terror, the Sudanese Professionals Association called on the international community to recognize it as the sole representative of the people.  “The SPA also urged foreign powers to respect the country’s sovereignty and refrain from undertaking any action that might lead to a military intervention.” The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) has urged the international community to recognize it as the “sole legitimate representative of the Sudanese people.” The SPA, which led the protests that overthrew former president Omar al-Bashir in April, has been demanding that the Transitional Military Council that succeeded him hand over power to civilian forces. By Pavan KulkarniBlack Nationalism and Liberation  We would be better served by understanding black nationalism as both liberative and anti-racist. “We must avoid the pitfalls of incessant claims of post-racialism that insist that to see race is to participate in racism.”In a world where Donald Trump’s presidential nomination speech has been endorsed by a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan—yet Black Lives Matter activists are accused of reverse racism for asking to not be murdered by police—what constitutes hate speech has become increasingly convoluted. In the aftermath of police killings in Dallas and Baton Rouge, gunmen Micah Johnson and Gavin Long were immediately linked by media outlets to black nationalist groups such as the Nation of Islam (NOI), New Black Panther Party, Black Riders Liberation Party, and Washitaw Nation, despite their professions to have been acting alone. Not only did these depictions draw misleading lines to organizations that do not prescribe such acts of violence, they also overshadowed both mens’ backgrounds in cultures of military violence (Johnson joined the Army Reserves immediately after high school and Long was a former Marine sergeant). By Garrett Felber98.3 Percent of Ghana’s Gold Remains in the Hands of Multinational CorporationsThe amount of money pilfered by corrupt government officials pales in comparison to the wealth extracted by transnational corporations. “Fingers angrily pointed at corrupt governments, while the nations they govern are robbed blind by transnational corporations.” Every year, the vast majority of Ghana’s natural wealth is stolen. The country is among the largest exporters of gold in the world, yet—according to a study by the Bank of Ghana—less than 1.7 percent of global returns from its gold make their way back to the Ghanaian government. This means that the remaining 98.3 percent is managed by outside entities—mainly multinational corporations, who keep the lion’s share of the profits. In other words, of the $5.2 billion of gold produced from 1990 to 2002, the government received only $87.3 million in corporate income taxes and royalty payments. By Celina della CroceTariffs Or Free Trade Does Not Trump Imperialism  We need to offer solidarity to fellow workers around the world and refuse to be suckered into the nationalist anti-free trade campaigns. “Demand the cancellation of third world debt.” Recently, President Trump imposed a tariff on China.  Almost a month ago, Uncle Sam moved on the giant communications outfit Huawei, to cut off its suppliers and ban it from conducting U.S. business. Washington wanted to pressure Chinese hierarchy to agree to a more palatable deal to protect its flailing worldwide imperialist interests and domains. By Ken MorganCollateral White Skin Whiteness is practiced, not as a privilege, but rather a deputization.  “The primary reality of an oppressive system is its military reality.” San Francisco had its prison walls all picked out; prepared to unveil its latest awkward interpretation of imperialism. Two police officers exit a squad car. The United States power structure does not dialogue with us, it dialogues with our potential for resistance. And we receive the red and blue lights of its spokespeople as best as our political, spiritual, and psychic commitments permit.  The first time I was frisked by police, it was alongside my younger brother. I was an especially thin wrist’d nine. He was seven. I have been enjoying my poetry being proven right ever since.  By Tongo Eisen-Martin