Daily News Digest June 21, 2019

Daily News Digest June 21, 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.

Images of the Day:

Student Loan Shark

Palestinian loss of land – from the UN treaty of 1947 to 2015Quotes of the Day:

Physicists find themselves in a position not unlike that of Alfred Nobel himself. Alfred Nobel invented the most powerful explosive ever known up to his time, a means of destruction par excellence. In order to atone for this, in order to relieve his human conscience, he instituted his awards for the promotion of peace and for achievements of peace. Today, the physicists who participated in forging the most formidable and dangerous weapon of all times are harassed by an equal feeling of responsibility, not to say guilt. And we cannot desist from warning, and warning again, we cannot and should not slacken in our efforts to make the nations of the world, and especially their governments, aware of the unspeakable disaster they are certain to provoke unless they change their attitude toward each other and toward the task of shaping the future. — Listen as Albert Einstein Calls for Peace and Social Justice in 1945

 Videos of the Day:

The Real Reason The U.S. Is Picking A Fight With Iran

Congressional Hearing on Slavery Reparations Draws Huge Crowd

Venezuelan Opposition Scrambles in Wake of Humanitarian Aid Scandal

 Billions Stolen From Black Families by Predatory Lending

 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!

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace — Brinksmanship:

However, Mr. Trump told reporters later that he believed the strike on the American drone was likely unintentional. “I find it hard to believe it was intentional,” Mr. Trump said, adding that it was perhaps a general or someone “under command” of the Iranian government who mistakenly authorized the strike. “It could’ve been somebody who was loose and stupid,” he continued.Mr. Trump did say that he would react differently if it was an American pilot who was shot down. —Trump says he believes strike by Iran was not intentional

Trump downplays Iranian shootdown of U.S. surveillance droneAn unarmed U.S. surveillance drone was shot down by a missile fired from Iran, the Pentagon said Thursday, but U.S. and Iranian military officials disputed whether the unmanned aircraft was in Iranian airspace and President Trump downplayed the attack, calling it a mistake. The incident was the most serious military clash between the U.S. and Iran since the Pentagon began beefing up its presence in the Middle East in early May, saying intelligence indicated that Iran was preparing to attack U.S. forces or allies. By David S. Cloud

Putin warns US force against Iran would be ‘disaster’ after drone shot downVladimir Putin has described the prospect of armed conflict between the United States and Iran as a “catastrophe” that would lead to a spike in violence and increase in number of efugees. The Russian president described Iran as “a Shiite nation … ready to defend their country to the hilt.” “It’s very difficult to assess what will happen if military forces are engaged,” he said. “I very much hope that events do not follow such a scenario.”  By Oliver Carroll

Nearly 71 Million People Forcibly Displaced Worldwide As Of 2018, U.N. Report SaysA record 70.8 million people had been forcibly displaced by war, persecution and other violence worldwide at the end of 2018, according to the latest annual Global Trends report by the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The figure represents an increase of more than 2 million in the number of refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people from the year before, and a near 65% increase from a decade ago. It is also the highest number in UNHCR history.  By Ashley Westerman

What About Venezuela’s Hacked Power Grid?  Russia and the US are engaging in tit-for-tat hacking of each others’ power grid, the New York Times is reporting, in what is really a kind of cyber “cold war” where the hackers from each country’s military and intelligence services load electronic “explosives” in the computer systems of critical infrastructure of the other, that in a crisis or war could be “detonated” to create chaos or bring down electric gridsBy Dave Lindorff

The U.S. Capitalism’s Puppet R0ber Barons: Guaidó’s Star Fades as His Envoys to Colombia Allegedly Commit Fraud With Humanitarian Funds for Venezuela  In an investigative report, “Envoys of Guaidó Appropriate Funds for Humanitarian Assistance in Colombia” (June 14, 2019), Editor in Chief of PanAm Post, Orlando Avendaño, details the alleged “diversion of money, embezzlement of funds, inflation of bills, fraud, and threats [by representatives of self proclaimed president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó] in order to surround themselves with luxuries.” By William Camacaro — Frederick B. Mills

Cops Lie: It’s Bad Journalism to Take Cops at Their Word When mainstream news outlets fail to fact-check the police, they fail their readers and they fail our society. Time and time again, by uncritically presenting claims made by police as truths, mainstream news outlets condone and enable the scourges of police violence, racism and mass incarceration in our communities. This is true throughout the country, but a closer look at recent newspaper articles in Chicago, where I live and take part in anti-prison organizing, illustrates the dynamics of these journalistic failures. By Matthew McLoughlinEnvironment:

The Battle to Stop the Shoreham Nuclear Plant, Revisited“Shoreham Action is One of the Largest Held Worldwide,” was the headline in The New York Times about an event which happened 40 years ago this month. The article told of how “more than 600 protesters were arrested” on June 3, 1979 at the site of the then under-construction Shoreham nuclear power plant and “15,000 demonstrators gathered” on the beach fronting the plant in the protest of it.By Karl Grossman

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

The Ruling Class Will Not Tolerate the Sanders-Led Assault on Austerity  By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor     The whole point of the austerity project is to disempower workers and concentrate wealth at the top. The rulers will kill to keep that dream alive. “The Democratic Party’s capture by leftish elements is unthinkable to the oligarchs.”With 24 Democrats running for president and most of them lying about their plans for the nation and the world, the current US electoral arena may seem chaotic. But the fog clears dramatically if one understands that the corporate duopoly is designed to systematically narrow the electoral choices available to the populace so that, at end of the process, the rule of Capital remains secure. The duopoly party both facilitates and legitimizes the rule of the rich and is, therefore, a profoundly anti-democratic institution. In such a arrangement, majorities never get what they want — which is the evil genius of the system. The only path to democracy is over the dead carcasses of the duopoly parties. By Glen Ford, BAR executive editorWill Black Students Stand Up For debt Forgiveness and Free Tuition? When They Do Will Anybody Cover It  This time the philanthropist was Robert F. Smith, a black billionaire who pledged to pay the tuition and loans of the entire Moorehouse class of 2019. The media showed us the grateful students and their families jumping up and down thanking Jesus, going on after a while about how their mamas and aunties had worked and prayed for a miracle like this. This is about what you expect. But something was missing. Apparently none of the media covering the Moorehouse tuition giveaway – not MSNBC or USA TODAY or CNN or Fox or any of them could find a student or group of students from Moorehouse or anyplace else to stand up and say that college tuition was already free in a number of countries, and that saddling grads with crippling debt was unfair and immoral.   Amy Goodman, interviewing one of the 2019 Moorehouse grads made space for the new grad to say something like this Twice in the interview, she almost appeared to try to pull the answer out of the young man, but he gave no sign that collective solidarity against predatory lenders and wih other students was something he understood. Ben Jealous was a friend of the family, he was Afro-Brazilian and his mother worked and prayed really hard. If Oprah wasn’t there, she definitely wrote the script. It fell to former NAACP head Ben Jealous to make the points that student loans are inherently predatory, and that student debt should be eliminated. Would that Ben Jealous had spoken so plainly when there was a black president in the White House for two terms. By Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor

Labor:

New Manufacturing Jobs are Not Union Jobs  That point would have been worth mentioning in a NYT article on the fact that most new manufacturing jobs have been in prosperous areas of the country rather than in areas that lost numbers of manufacturing jobs in the last decade. While the economy has been added a moderate number of manufacturing jobs since 2011, the number of union members in the industry has continued to fall. By Dean Baker