Daily News Digest November 26, 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:

ThanksgivingQuotes of the Day:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement  May Rescue King Company from liability for building collapse: According to his lawyers and his wife, Ramírez Palma had reported safety concerns – including asymmetrical building measurements and uncured concrete too weak to support weight – to his supervisors at King Company, a New Orleans construction firm, before the deadly collapse. Construction managers allegedly told him to ignore the issues, according to Mary Yanik, senior staff attorney at the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, an advocacy group. . . . Ramírez Palma’s lawyers say his case illustrates how a crackdown on undocumented workers could also hamper investigations into the cause of the accident. —Worker Who Raised Alarm Before Deadly New Orleans Hotel Collapse To Be Deported

Videos Of the Day:

Abby Martin: The Legacy of 9/11 Abby Martin on 9/11: “Our so-called leaders want the legacy of 9/11 to invoke fear of the rise of Islamic terrorism, but if we just look at reality, it’s the very actions by the U.S. empire that’s unleashed this threat to people around the world.”

 How Fracking Is Taking Its Toll On Argentina’s Indigenous People – Video Explainer Should Democrats Attack Trump or Fight for Working Families? The attacks against Trump in the Democratic debate were eviscerating. But Bernie Sanders warned that even though he is a criminal, just attacking won’t be enough to defeat him.

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.

FYI: The U.S. Has Held A Record 69,550 Migrant Children In Government Custody In 2019

Another Clear Impeachable Offense That  The Democrats Ignore

The Trump Administration Was Ordered to Let These Migrants Seek Asylum. It Didn’t Tell the Judges Hearing Their Cases. A federal judge ruled Tuesday that migrants couldn’t be barred from asylum under a regulation that came out while they were waiting at the U.S.-Mexico border. The administration appears to be dragging its feet in complying. The Trump administration appears not to have informed immigration judges or prosecutors about a federal court ruling this week that ordered it not to block asylum for migrants who had agreed to wait at the U.S.-Mexico border. As a result, immigration judges are still hearing these migrants’ cases without realizing they are eligible for asylum — and some asylum-seekers may have had their claims erroneously denied. By Dara Lind‘Total Massacre’ as U.S. Drone Strike Kills 30 Farmers in Afghanistan Amnesty International said the bombing “suggests a shocking disregard for civilian life.” By Eoin HigginsBackground Info On US Drone Bombs: How The U.S. Made Dropping Radioactive Bombs Routine When the United States revealed in January that it is testing a more nimble, more precise version of its B61 atom bomb, some were immediately alarmed. General James Cartwright, a former strategist for President Barack Obama, warned that “going smaller” could make nuclear weapons “more thinkable” and “more usable.” However, what is little known is that for the past 25 years the United States and its allies have routinely used radioactive weapons in battle, in the form of warheads and explosives made with depleted, undepleted or slightly enriched uranium While the Department of Defense (DOD) calls these weapons “conventional” (non-nuclear), they are radioactive and chemically toxic. In Iraq, where the United States and its partners waged two wars, toxic waste covers the country and poisons the people. U.S. veterans are also sick and dying. By Barbara Koeppel 

Most People Pay a Higher Wealth Tax Than the Wealthy A long overdue tax on the wealth of the wealthy is finally being put forward as a means to fund government services and reduce economic inequality.[1] At this point, among Democrats, the Sander’s proposal goes the furthest and is estimated to raise $4.35 trillion over the next 10 years. As of the second quarter of 2019, the wealth of the 1% was estimated by the Federal Reserve Board to be $34.72 trillion. If their wealth remains unchanged during the next ten years, using the estimate of Sander’s wealth tax coming to $4.35 trillion, their wealth will be rehttp://www.blackcommentator.com/duced by less than 13% to $30.37 trillion. The 1% will continue holding a substantial sum and be in a position to exercise much power. By Rick Baum

Beware of the Medicare Disadvantage Corporate Trap – Wake Up AARP While the Democratic presidential candidates are debating full Medicare for All, giant insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare are advertising to the elderly in an attempt to lure them from Traditional Medicare (TM) to the so-called Medicare Advantage (MA) – a corporate plan that UnitedHealthcare promotes to turn a profit at the expense of enrollees. Almost one third of all elderly over 65 are enrolled in these numerous, complex MA policies the government pays so much for monthly. The health insurance industry wants more enrollees as they continue to press Congress for more advantages. Medical Disadvantage would be a more accurate name for the programs, as insurance companies push to corporatize all of Medicare, yet keep the name for the purposes of marketing, deception, and confusion. By Ralph Nader

No Billionaires, No Fascists, No Warmongers To the Socialist Future There’s probably no bigger sin in American politics than to imagine a world without war, inequality, and capitalism. Actually, imagining just a kinder, more equitable version of capitalism, one in which the existence of elite wealth is tempered by the peoples’ right to health care, a college education, affordable housing, strong workplace unions, full reproductive rights for women, and an end to racial discrimination is enough to be dismissed as a utopian ideologue by the high priests of the corporate media and political establishment.Indeed, it’s probably easier as some observe for most media pundits and mainstream politicians to envision the climate crisis bringing a cataclysmic end to all human civilization than to imagine the end of capitalism. To advocate the socialist vision of a world beyond capitalism, where the human needs of all prevail over the private profits of a few, is the quickest route to the trash dumpsters parked in the alleys outside the headquarters of CNN, MSNBC, and other corporate purveyors of news. By Mark Harris

Environment:

California to Sue Over Trump Water PlanThe Gavin Newsom Administration today announced two separate but related actions that will have a big impact on protections for Delta smelt, Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon and other endangered fish species. First, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) issued a controversial draft Environmental Impact Report on the long term operations of the State Water Project (SWP). Second, the Newsom Administration also announced that it intends to sue the federal government over the Trump Administration’s recent biological opinion that would increase water flows from federal water projects to corporate agribusiness interests in the San Joaquin Valley and away from the San Francisco Bay-Delta, imperiling endangered fish like the Delta smelt. By Dan Bacher

Most people don’t know that the big energy companies control most of the water in the San Joaquin Valley. Now, with fracking profitable in California due to the high price of fuel, they want to frack California and our water resources required by the fracking process. (As they are trying to do in the rest of the country.) This table if from pages 133-135 of Two Californias: The Truth About The Split-State Movement   BuMichael DiLeo, Eleanor Smith

The Arctic’s Oldest Ice Is Disappearing Before Our Eyes Stretches of the Arctic’s oldest ice, and its thickest – the last refuge ice that should survive even when the Arctic Ocean technically becomes ice-free in summers later this century — are now disappearing twice as fast as the rest of the Arctic icecap. Although the north polar ice is vulnerable to global heating, and has been thinning and retreating at an accelera-ting rate for the last 40 summers, researchers have always expected some winter ice to survive: they define an “ice-free Arctic Ocean” as one with less than 1 million square kilometres of surviving ice pack. By Tim RadfordCivil Rights/Black Liberation:

Labor:

Worker Who Raised Alarm Before Deadly New Orleans Hotel Collapse To Be Deported Honduran Delmer Joel Ramírez Palma, who has lived in New Orleans for 18 years, warned supervisors of safety concerns A construction worker who attempted to warn managers about building dangers and was seriously injured in last month’s deadly Hard Rock Hotel collapse in New Orleans, will be deported on Monday, his lawyers said this week. Delmer Joel Ramírez Palma, a Honduran citizen, was working inside the 18-storey building when it dramatically crumbled on to a busy downtown intersection on 12 October, killing three and injuring dozens. He survived a fall from the ninth floor to the sixth by swinging from a rope.By Lauren Zanolli

Economy:

‘Everything Is Not Fine’: Nobel Economist Calls on Humanity to End Obsession With GDP “If we measure the wrong thing,” warns Joseph Stiglitz, “we will do the wrong thing.” Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is warning the world that unless the obsession many world leaders have with gross national product (GDP) comes to end, there will be little chance of adequately fighting back against the triple-threat of climate destruction, the scourge of financial inequality, and the crises of democracy now being felt around the globe. In an op-ed publish Sunday in the Guardian, Stiglitz says that these interrelated crises of environmental degradation and human suffering have solidified in his mind the idea that  “something is fundamentally wrong with the way we assess economic performance and social progress.” By,Jon Queally

World:

The Lies About Assange Must Stop Now Newspapers and other media in the United States and Britain have recently declared a passion for freedom of speech, especially theirright to publish freely.  They are worried by the “Assange effect”.   It is as if the struggle of truth-tellers like Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning is now a warning to them: that the thugs who dragged Assange out of the Ecuadorean embassy in April may one day come for them.By John Pilger

John Pilger’s New Film In Cinemas And On Tv This December The new John Pilger film, The Dirty War on the NHS, will be released in cinemas in the UK on 1 December and broadcast on the ITV Network on 17 December. The film’s launch will straddle an extraordinary period in Britain, especially an election campaign which, for the first time for years, offers voters a genuine choice. The film’s theme, the privatisation and destruction of the NHS, is already a major election issue. “The Dirty War,” says Pilger at the beginning of the film, “is about democracy. Above all, it is a warning.” For screenings and tickets, go to www.thedirtywaronnhs.com

Education, Health, 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

Cuba has long had a nearly identical life expectancy to the United States, despite widespread poverty. The humanitarian-physician Paul Farmer notes in his book Pathologies of Power that there’s a saying in Cuba: “We live like poor people, but we die like rich people.” Farmer also notes that the rate of infant mortality in Cuba has been lower than in the Boston neighborhood of his own prestigious hospital, Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s.   All of this despite Cuba spending just $813 per person annually on health care compared with America’s $9,403.   In Cuba, health care is protected under the constitution as a fundamental human right. As a poor country, Cuba can’t afford to equivocate and waste money upholding that. This pressure seems to have created efficiency. Instead of pouring money into advanced medical technology, the system is forced to keep people healthy.  It’s largely done, as the BBC has reported, through an innovative approach to primary care. Family doctors work in clinics and care for everyone in the surrounding neighborhood. At least once a year, the doctor knocks on your front door (or elsewhere, if you prefer) for a check-up. More than the standard American ritual of listening to your heart and lungs and asking if you’ve noticed any blood coming out of you abnormally, these check-ups involve extensive questions about jobs and social lives and environment—information that’s aided by being right there in a person’s home. — How Cubans Live as Long as Americans at a Tenth of the Cost