Daily News Digest October 24, 2019

Environment:

Scientists Fired By Trump Warn Particle Pollution Standards Don’t Protect People Group was disbanded by the EPA, but continued its work anyway, as Trump agencies roll back environment and health protections A group of scientist advisers dismissed by the Trump administration has concluded that national limits on fine particles of air pollution aren’t strong enough to protect people. The expert panel of epidemiologists and toxicologists was disbanded by the Environmental Protection Agency but decided to continue its work anyway. The members are issuing their warnings as US regulators are reconsidering a standard for particulate matter – the inhalable pollution that is 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair. The pollution can include any of hundreds of chemicals and come from power plants, cars, construction sites and fires. It is linked with breathing and heart illnesses and early deaths. By Emily Holden The Lost River Mexicans Fight For Mighty Waterway Taken By The US The Colorado River Serves Over 35 Million Americans Before Reaching Mexico – But It Is Dammed At The Border, Leaving Locals On The Other Side With A Dry Delta (This is the first story in our new series about ‘environmental ju stice’ – learn more by Nina Lakhani in San Luis Río Colorado)  he temperature is rising toward 45C (113F) as young brothers Daniel and Dilan Rodríguez skip towards a bridge over the Colorado River in the Mexican border town of San Luis Río Colorado. But there is no water flowing through the channel of one of the world’s mightiest waterways. The pair run down the river bank and cheerfully splash through stagnant puddles dotted about the riverbed. “We wish we had a river, so we could swim, and jump and sail my cousin’s boat,” said Daniel, 12. “At least we have puddles to make mud balls, that can be fun.”

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:Black Agenda Report’s 13th Anniversary: An Evening of Information and Inspiration for Liberation, and a Tribute to Co-Founder Bruce Dixon

Political Theology, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Limits of Social Democracy Universal equality has always run counter to the United States’ anti-Black and settler colonial roots. “The ruling class has no interest in delivering any aspect of AOC’s program.” These remarks were presented at the Political Theology Network Conference’s Panel, “Strategies for Anti-War Activism, Journalism, and Organizing,” in New York City. Communists define political theology as a peoples’ struggle against the ideological hegemony of the ruling class. The U.S. ruling class worships at the alter of endless austerity and war. Common sense under the dictates of U.S. empire sanctifies narratives of American exceptionalism and demonizes any challenge to corporate power. Ruling institutions in the U.S. ideologically condition workers and oppressed people to worship at the very same alter as the rulers who rob, imprison, and force them into an alienated existence. Capitalist property owners and their hirelings in Washington have complete control and influence over the so-called “mass media,” which is nothing but a profit-driven enterprise that regurgitates the so-called common sense of the ruling elites. The same could be said about the university system and the education system at large. By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributorBusting Tulsiasha Gabbardskaya and Jillia Steinakanova: What Could Go Wrong? With their Russiagate “The Democrats have come up with a permanent excuse for failure and they’re going to use it again in 2020.” Just when it seemed like our stupid politics couldn’t get more so, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton published The Book of Gutsy Women, then Hillary called Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein Russian assets. That tops Elizabeth Warren’s contributions to “Pow Wow Chow ,” a Native American cookbook, and besides, Pow Wow Chow was published way back in the 1980s, before Harvard University claimed   to have hired a woman of color   by referencing Warren’s dubious claim  to from 1/32 to 1/1,042 Cherokee ancestry, thanks to a great great great grandmother who was at least partially Native. By Ann Garrison , BAR contributorWhy I’m Voting No On UAW’s Deal With GM: A “Third-Tier” Worker  How can a union tolerate three or four different “tiers” of workers, with different pay scales and rights, and then call for “solidarity”? “We’re still not considered one whole union, like we’re not all equal.”  After more than a month on strike, the leadership at the United Automobile Workers (UAW) has negotiated a tentative agreement with General Motors (GM). Nearly 49,000 UAW members—concentrated mostly in the Midwest, with a few plants scattered in the South and Northeast—will stay out until their contract is ratified. And although union leadership has encouraged the rank and file to ratify the contract, many workers are unhappy with the highlights of the proposed deal. Numerous workers at the General Motors plant in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, tell In These Times that local union leaders are travelling to Buffalo, New York today, to read the full tentative agreement. Members have until October 25 to vote the contract in or to send the bargaining committee back to the table. By Mindy IsserStop The Turkish Invasion Of Syria The same jihadist head-choppers that the US deployed against Syria are now fighting alongside Turkey to occupy the northeast of the country. “Each of Trump’s efforts to get out of Syria has been opposed by bipartisan war hawks.” The crisis in Syria has taken a new direction with the Turkish invasion into the Northeast ostensibly to push the Kurdish peoples out. The US has added to this crisis by its green light to Turkey to attack after using the Kurds as a proxy force in the battle against ISIS. By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers“The Damned Don’t Cry: Pages from the Life of a Black Prisoner and Organizer” — a Review of a book by Frank Edgar Chapman, Jr.    Frank Chapman’s book should be on the shelf with the Autobiography of Malcolm X and Soledad Brother. “Chapman is very clear that it was the massive movement to free Angela Davis which paved the way to freedom for him and other political prisoners.”I’ve been waiting for this book. I first read an earlier draft of Frank Chapman’s memoirs in 2014. I thought then and now that this needed to get published, first and foremost, because the revolutionary movement needs it. As a result of the prison abolition movement, there is a broad awareness of the injustice of mass incarceration, but this book sees the revolutionary side of the misery. By Joe IosbakerAmerica’s Last Slave Ship Could Offer a Case for Reparations The riches that accrued from the last US slave shipment are in plain site of the voyage’s descendants in Mobile, Alabama. “The international slave trade was already outlawed, but Meaher wagered he could import slaves in defiance of the ban.” Alabama steamship owner Timothy Meaher financed the last slave vessel that brought African captives to the United States, and he came out of the Civil War a wealthy man. His descendants, with land worth millions, are still part of Mobile society’s upper crust. The people whom Meaher enslaved, however, emerged from the war with freedom but little else. Census forms that documented Meaher’s postwar riches list them as laborers, housewives, and farmers with nothing of value. Many of their descendants today hold working-class jobs. Now, the history of Meaher and the slave ship Clotilda may offer one of the more clear-cut cases for slavery reparations, with identifiable perpetrators and victims. By Jay Reeves

Labor:

Who is counting the ballots for the UAW-GM contract?After the United Auto Workers announced last week that local union officials had endorsed its sellout agreement with General Motors, a UAW press spokesman claimed that the union is a democratic organization whose members had the final say on whether to ratify or reject the deal. “Our members will make this decision. It is their contract. It is in their hands.” The entire process the UAW has used to get its deal ratified, however, has been anything but democratic. The Detroit Free Press posted an article Tuesday, “Here’s how the UAW-GM ratification process works and what members are voting on,” that revealed several important facts, including:

1. The voting is scheduled and run by UAW local election committees.

2. The local UAW halls use paper ballots.

3. The local UAW’s election committees count the ballots and report it to the international.

4. The local election committees police themselves.

5. There’s no overall audit of the vote.

In other words, there is absolutely no rank-and-file oversight of the voting process and nothing to prevent the UAW from committing vote fraud, stuffing the ballot or distorting the voting results. By Jerry White

World:

Lebanese Join Growing Protest Wave Against Austerity and Corruption Mass insurrectionary movements explode across the world The last few weeks have seen huge uprisings taking place across the world. This reflects the deepening global crisis of capitalism. We publish here articles on the titanic events unfolding in Ecuador, Chile, Haiti, Catalonia and Lebanon.

Underdevelopment and Poverty: The Impact Of The Worldwide Crisis Of Capitalism On Liberia The 1995 FIFA Player of the year, George M. Weah, has been in power for just a year and a half; and Liberia, often referred to as the “oldest independent African nation”, is suffering from severe austerity. The yoke of capitalism—neo-colonialism, imperialism, corruption and exploitation—has become an overwhelming burden resting on the shoulders of the worker and peasant masses of Liberian society, to such an extent that the soccer legend’s short presidency seems more like a decade. By Kwein W. Kwein II and Moses Uneh Yahmia

Economy:

Elizabeth Warren Demands Repo Loan Answers as NY Fed Repo Data Disappears From this past Friday evening through Sunday, if you clicked on any of the web pages at the New York Fed pertaining to the hundreds of billions of dollars it has been pumping out weekly to Wall Street’s securities firms since September 17, you saw the message below:We emailed the New York Fed’s media contact and asked why all of the other web pages at the New York Fed were working just fine but only its repo operation data and announcements had up and disappeared. We received no response. The web pages have since been restored with some tweaking that seems to have the intent of making this massive money spigot to Wall Street, for the first time since the financial crisis, appear to be just your ole run of the mill open market operation from your ole reliable New York Fed. By Pam Martens and Russ MartensHealth, 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! 

Military Spending’s Out of Control While Slashing It Could Easily Fund Medicare for All York Times suddenly ran an article on its opinion page explaining how to cut $300 billion from the $1-trillion military budget — enough, the article explained, to fund Bernie Sanders’ proposed program for an expanded Medicare program to cover all Americans without raising a dime in new taxes. By Dave Lindorff