Daily News Digest Archives
Daily News Digest July 13, 2016
Images of the Day:
Still Choosing Evil? 
The Government Lies
Quotes of the Day:
Excellent text examining the creation of the first police forces, which took place in England and the US in just a few decades in the mid-19th century. And explaining that they were not brought into being to prevent crime or protect the public, but primarily to control crowds: the working class, white and black. — Origins of the police
In Dallas, a US Army veteran who had served in Afghanistan, angry at the latest extrajudicial murders by police, killed five uniformed officers and shot several others at the tail end of a peaceful BLM protest. But individual terror, even when in response to the organized terror of the capitalist state, can only strengthen reaction. It cannot change the fundamental relation between the exploiters and the exploited, between the oppressor class and the oppressed. Leon Trotsky explained, “individual revenge does not satisfy us. The account we have to settle with the capitalist system is too great to be presented to some functionary.” — USA: Police Brutality, Racism, and the Politics of Polarization
Videos of the Day:
Bill Moyers Essay: The End Game for Democracy
Socialism — As American as apple pie? What is it actually?
U.S.
The Chilcot Report Fails to Speak Plain Truth — Bush Lied, So Did Blair: The newly released Chilcot Report on Iraq is British understatement, to a fault. In fact, it is understated so far as to miss the plain truth of the matter. Saying only that extremely questionable intelligence “was not challenged [by the Bush and Blair regimes] and it should have been” is failing to say plainly what the evidence so clearly shows: George W. Bush lied; so did Tony Blair. By Calvin F. Exoo
Images of Militarized Police in Baton Rouge Draw Global Attention: Photographs and video of heavily armed police officers wearing body armor and helmets arresting protesters in Baton Rouge over the weekend reverberated on social networks and in the world’s media, focusing new attention on the militarization of police forces across the United States. By Robert Mackey
The System That Killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile Cannot Be Reformed There are moments when atrocities are so horrendous that they paralyze. I am feeling that sense of immobility now. I already knew that on average, a Black person is extrajudicially murdered by the police or a vigilante every 28 hours in the United States, thanks to a study by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. I had yet, however, to witness this fact in real time, until yesterday.
Police have shot and killed at least 2,009 people since Ferguson: Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, and Walter Scott are just three of at least 2,009 people killed by police since August 9, 2014, the day of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri by German Lopez and Soo Oh 
Environment:
Another Disastrous Side Effect of Monsanto’s Notorious Roundup Pesticide Discovered The controversial main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup is being connected to algae blooms that have fouled drinking water and killed wildlife. By Lorraine Chow 
Ongoing/Big Energy Disasters:
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Kurdish Women Fighting Islamic State Group Send Solidarity to BlackLivesMatter
“To our Black sisters and brothers! The people of Kurdistan stand with you!” read the short statement posted by Dilar Dirik, a Kurdish writer along with a photo of women from the YPJ holding a #BlackLivesMatter placard. The YPJ, along with other progressive Kurdish groups in northern Syria, have been fighting the incursions of the Islamic State Group in northern Syria for close to two years, while also building participatory community
Without Due Process: From Mass Incarceration to Assassination: Never mind guilty before charged, the current status quo is assassination without evidence, charge or trial. Guilt is decided by the colour of your skin. by Maya Evans 
Black Agenda Radio for Week of July 11, 2016
Cops Kill Revolutionary Black Panther Leader
Friends and comrades of Angelo Brown, also known as General Houdari Juelani, charge he was “assassinated” by police in Belleville, Illinois, near East St. Louis, last month. Police claim the 35 year-old father of 15 children menaced them with a gun, however, his face and body showed signs of having been beaten. The cops “had been harassing him,” said Edwin Chanell, a lifelong friend and founder of the New Generation Black Council, which is dedicated to uniting gang members “against the real enemy.” He said Angelo Brown “was doing nothing but good stuff: feeding the homeless, giving out clothes,” and was popular in the community. “They are murdering us out here, and covering it up,” said Chanell.
Illinois State House Asks Obama to Study Reparations Issue
In a unanimous vote, the Illinois House of Representatives passed a bill that “calls on President Obama to create a commission to study the harms inflicted by slavery and discrimination and to determine how that damage can be repaired,” said Kamm Howard, of the legislative commission of N’Cobra, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. The move is historic, said Howard, “in the sense that it is the first legislation by a state body since Reconstruction that is calling on the federal government to intercede on behalf of the injuries that people of African descent today face as a result of enslavement and Jim Crow.”
Mass Incarceration in the U.S. and Palestine
On July 15, New York City’s Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz Educational Center will host a public meeting on mass incarceration of Blacks in the United States, and of Arabs under Israeli occupation in Palestine. “The only way they’ve been able to silence our resistance, here and there, has been through incarceration” and assassination, said Nancy Mansoor, one of the event’s organizers and a co-founder of Existence is Resistance. “In Palestine,” said Mansoor, “I don’t think there’s any youth that hasn’t been to jail.” Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, is among the scheduled speakers.
U.S. Targets Eritrean Economy
Frustrated that years of sanctions have failed to deter the small northeast African nation of Eritrea from its fiercely independent path to development, the United States is attempting to sabotage a giant potash project that “could end up bringing in as much as $30 billion to Eritrea,” said Thomas C. Mountain, an American journalist who lives in the country. The U.S. has targeted Eritrea because it “is a socialist country, like Cuba, and could stand out as a role model for Africa,” said Mountain. Eritrea is also one of only two countries on the continent that rejects any relationship with AFRICOM, the U.S. Military Command in Africa.
Obama is Greatest Education Privatizer in U.S. History
“Basically, what Barack Obama did was turn the Department of Education into a committee on school privatization,” said Danny Haiphong, a social worker and activist from Boston and a weekly contributor to BAR who authored a 3-part series on President Obama’s legacy. “It was Shock and Awe privatization. Charter schools increased by 62 percent under his first five years,” said Haiphong. “His whole plan was to hand the public schools over to hedge funds and capitalist interests that have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into for-profit charter schools,” and to boost “high-stakes testing scams like Common Core.”
Labor:
Health, Education, and Welfare: