Daily News Digest November 13, 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.

Always Remember That Obamba Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature, Started the United States Capitalist Austerity Program  — The Race to the Botom or the Pauperization of the 99%!

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.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day:

Real Casualties Since 1999 Quotes of the Day:

The Vast Oil Reserves in Iran Just Increased by 33% Capitalist Imperialism has its Eye on the Prize— Oil!— Roland Sheppard

Post-9/11 active-duty veterans have disability rates significantly higher than those of previous generations, according to a government report. About 41 percent of those who served after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in Afghanistan, Iraq and other war zones have disability ratings from the Department of Veterans Affairs, compared to 25 percent of veterans of other eras, according to the annual survey of veterans employment and status by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. — Post-9/11 Vets Have Far Higher Disability Ratings Than Prior Generations: Report

Videos Of the Day:

Dems and Repubs are Moneypots, Not Real Political Parties If the Democrats were a real, mass based party, they would never consider Joe Biden as their nominee because he has no support among the people that energize parties: the youth. By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor (Audio)

Iran Breaks Nuclear Agreement as the Risk of War Increases (Trump Broke the Agreement last Year)

Forgetting About Greensboro Keeps Us Unprepared for White Supremacist Violence

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! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.

Death by Oligarchy Oligarchs are blinded by hubris, wealth and power. Their cloying sense of entitlement sees them outraged by even the most tepid reforms or mildest of criticisms. They lack empathy and compassion, along with remorse or guilt, for what is done to those outside of their tiny, elitist circles. Privilege does strange and unpleasant things to human beings. I saw these distortions among my rich classmates as a scholarship student at prep school and at Harvard University, an institution designed, like all elite schools, to perpetuate the plutocracy. Living in privilege spawns callousness, even cruelty, to those less fortunate and feeds a bottomless greed. By Chris HedgesTrump’s Order to Defy Subpoenas Is Itself Grounds for Impeachment We’re headed for a separation of powers showdown between Congress and the president that will ultimately end up in the Supreme Court. The Constitution gives Congress the “sole Power of Impeachment.” Yet President Donald Trump has ordered all of his current and former senior advisers to defy congressional subpoenas to testify in the impeachment inquiry. Trump is claiming the subpoenaed witnesses have “absolute immunity” against civil or criminal liability for refusal to provide testimony. However, “absolute immunity” is a creation of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. No court, statute or constitution has ever recognized it. By Marjorie CohnBorders Don’t “Secure” Anything But Global Inequality One core understanding that I came away with was that the border has to be considered less as a place where an individual country demarcates and defends its sovereignty and more as a part of a fortifying global border regime. And to understand what this regime is and does, it needs to be expressed in its dramatic totality: More than 70 border walls, countless billions of dollars of surveillance technologies, hundreds of thousands of armed agents and more than 2,000 detention centers that incarcerate people for the crime of moving away from untenable situations, often from the Global South to the Global North. According to the International Organization on Migration, 32,000 people died or disappeared crossing such borders since 2014 – and that is an undercount, perhaps a drastic one, given that many deaths go unrecorded. All of this is in the context of more people on the move than ever before on Planet Earth, a number that is predicted to increase going forward as the climate crisis gets worse. By Anton Woronczuk

Environment:

The Fire This Tine: Demands for Bold Climate Action Mount as ‘All But Rainless’ Australia Faces ‘Catastrophic’ Fire Danger The extreme weather comes as a new report on G20 nations reveals that “Australia is behind [on] climate action in nearly every dimension.”Demands for bold government action to combat the climate emergency continued to mount in Australia Monday as the continent had hardly any rain for the first time on record while more than 100 fires burned across two eastern states.  By Jessica Corbett Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Black Agenda Radio for Week of November 11, 2019  Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.

  • Ruling Class “Crisis of Legitimacy” is Behind “Bernie Blackout” The ruling class is attempting “to establish its legitimacy, once again, without the popular mandate of broad sections of the people,” said Duboisian scholar Dr Anthony Monteiro. The corporate media “blackout” of Sanders “and others who represent anti-austerity proposals” like Medicare for All is part of the oligarchs’ repression of dissent. Similarly, Russiagate is designed to stir up a new Cold War and scare people into supporting the continued rule of the rich, said Monteiro.
  • Class Struggle and Revolution are Inseparable “If you don’t recognize class oppression, you’re siding with the oppressor,” said Jihad Abdulmumit, chairperson of the National Jericho Movement, speaking to a conference of the Black Is Back Coalition, in Washington, DC. The Jericho Movement fights for the rights of political prisoners, and is part of Black Is Back. “Even among Muslims around the world, we’re not just talking about some rituals; we’re talking about changing the fundamental structures of society, destroying the empire,” said Abdulmumit, a former Black Panther Party political prisoner.
  • White Supremacy Goes Back to the Crusades  The roots of western European anti-Blackness lie in the Middle Ages, in the Crusades to seize Arab lands, said Cord Whitaker, a professor at Wellesley College and author of “Black Metaphors: How Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking.” It was during this era that “you started to see the idea that darkness of skin, blackness, denoted potential evil,” said Whitaker. “It was still not the racial ideology we have today, but it was an important step in getting there.”

Labor:

Economy:

World:

 Bolivia and Venezuela: Two Countries, But Same Hybrid War A coup took place in Bolivia on November 10. The fact that the president of the country, Evo Morales, resigned it does not contradict the fact that a coup has taken place. Morales resigned forced by the military. The perpetrators of the Hybrid War were envisioning this same scenario for Venezuela but failed while they succeed in Bolivia. What made the difference? By Nino Pagliccia

 How Iran Back Forces Are Taking Over Iraq The protests – and the merciless government attempt to stamp them out – are the biggest threat to the power of the Iraqi political establishment since Isis was advancing on Baghdad in 2014. In many respects, the danger to the status quo is greater now because Isis was an existential threat to the Shia majority who had no choice but to support their ruling elite, however predatory and incompetent they had proved in office. By Patrick Cockburn

 Anger as record number of maimed troops are denied disability benefit in Government’s controversial assessments A record number of wounded war veterans have been denied disability benefits in the past year after undergoing tests carried out by the Government’s controversial assessment company.Hundreds of injured ex-soldiers are being declared fit for work by Atos Healthcare in spite of physical and mental injuries they suffered in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. By Mark Nicol

Hundreds of injured ex-soldiers declared fit for work by Atos Healthcare
  • Royal British Legion announce rise in soldiers having claims rejected
  • Soldiers forced to undergo demeaning physical tests by firm

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

Why Is Medicare for All Popular? Study Finds 34 Million in US Know Someone Who Died Because Healthcare Too Expensive “Want to know what American exceptionalism really looks like? Here it is.”Shedding more light on the fatal consequences of America’s privatized and profit-driven healthcare system, a study published Tuesday found that a staggering 34 million people in the U.S. know of at least one friend or family member who has died over the past five years due to their inability to afford sky-high treatment costs. By Jake Johnson