Daily News Digest Archives
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!
Daily News Digest February 10, 2017
Images of the Day:
Correta King’s Letter Re: Sessions
Boss Trump “Let Us Prey”
Quotes of the Day:
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. — Frederick Douglass
Ice shelves are the gatekeepers for glaciers flowing from Antarctica toward the ocean. Without them, glacial ice enters the ocean faster and accelerates the pace of global sea level rise. — NASA Study Shows Antarctica’s Larsen B Ice Shelf Nearing Its Final Act
Next up for collapse is the Larsen C, the size of Scotland, which has been around for 150,000 years. Should it disappear, it could require a re-write of sea level rise plans for coastal cities worldwide. Last August, I wrote about what that near-term worse case scenario might look like: Should its melt rate continue to trend above previous estimates, Antarctica may produce an extra foot of sea level rise by 2100, which would pose a threat to low-lying coastal areas worldwide. (For example: A post-Sandy study of New York City’s flooded subway system showed one tunnel escaped flooding by just three inches, saving the city hundreds of millions of dollars.) A new study on Larsen C, which now has a giant crack in its surface, showed that it’s now melting both from above and below, thanks in part to warmer ocean temperatures. — NASA: 10,000-Year-Old Ice Shelf in Antarctica Will Soon Be Completely Gone
Videos of the Day:
Billions Divested from Banks Backing Dakota Access Pipeline
Trump Administration Preparing for Deeper Involvement in Yemen
EPA Employees Speak Out Against Pruitt and Trump’s Anti-Science Agenda
US:
Roland Martin: That Hustla Ova There Tryna Sell Us School Privatization Roland Martin pretends to be a journalist. But what does a guy do when the one percent won’t pay for an informed public? Roland is a hustla for hire, and he’s found a dependable set of clients. Roland is all about blackening up and selling us the destruction and privatization of public schools, which is what both elite Democrats and Republicans want. Journalists tell the truth without fear or favor. Hustlas do what they’re paid to do, and the charter school sugar daddies pay well. By Black Agenda Report Managing Editor Bruce A. Dixon
DeVos, Obama, Booker, Trump – All Enemies of Public Education Betsy DeVos barely won confirmation as the next secretary of education, so dreadful is the performance of the charter schools she promotes in Michigan. But the educational atrocities of the DeVos schools are inseparable from the larger war against public education. Barack Obama doubled charter school enrollment, and Cory Booker, who hopes to be president, is a fanatical advocate of private school vouchers. Trump and Devos aren’t the only villains. By Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford
Environment:
The First Two Weeks of the Fight for our Environment The new Congress took office on January 3 and the Trump Administration began just two weeks ago. Already we have seen not only critical environmental and health safeguards under attack, but also the institutions that are the basis for our public interest protections, including the media, civil society, and separation of powers. It might feel like we are engaged in a sprint, but I have heard it better called a relay race. That means that across society, we need to share the baton and be on the same team to fight the attacks on our rights, environment and health, while finding ways to make progress. By Susan Casey-Lefkowitz
Unspeakable Ecocide and the Perils of Trump by Paul Street
The Fire This Time: Trump Against the Planet This administration is not just a cabal of ignoramuses. Behind the right’s climate denial is the economic reality that seriously combating capitalism’s war on the planet requires the defeat of the system. By John Bellamy Foster
A Crack in an Antarctic Ice Shelf Grew 17 Miles in the Last Two Months A rapidly advancing crack in Antarctica’s fourth-largest ice shelf has scientists concerned that it is getting close to a full break. The rift has accelerated this year in an area already vulnerable to warming temperatures. Since December, the crack has grown by the length of about five football fields each day. By Jugal K. Patel
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Good News and Bad News at Hanford, America’s Most Polluted Site It’s a new year and new administration, but the strong radioactive stench is the same out at Hanford in eastern Washington, home of the world’s costliest environmental cleanup. In January, a dozen workers reported smelling a toxic odor outside the site’s tank farms, where nuclear waste is stored underground. From April to December 2016, 70 people were exposed to chemical vapors emanating from the facility — and 2017 is off to the similar start. by Joshua Frank
Energy News:
Fox News: Breaking… “New fuel leaks have been discovered” at Fukushima — “Experts believe melted fuel is leaking” — Radiation levels could be over 5,000 sieverts — “Wow, this is a crazy story”… it only continues to get worse (VIDEO)
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights
Black History Month:
Harriet Tubman: Conductor of the Underground Railroad
After Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery, she returned to slave-holding states many times to help other slaves escape. She led them safely to the northern free states and to Canada. It was very dangerous to be a runaway slave. There were rewards for their capture, and ads like you see here described slaves in detail. Whenever Tubman led a group of slaves to freedom, she placed herself in great danger. There was a bounty offered for her capture because she was a fugitive slave herself, and she was breaking the law in slave states by helping other slaves escape. What do you think Tubman did when someone she was helping became frightened and wanted to turn back? — If anyone ever wanted to change his or her mind during the journey to freedom and return, Tubman pulled out a gun and said, “You’ll be free or die a slave!” Tubman knew that if anyone turned back, it would put her and the other escaping slaves in danger of discovery, capture or even death. She became so well known for leading slaves to freedom that Tubman became known as the “Moses of Her People.” Many slaves dreaming of freedom sang the spiritual “Go Down Moses.” — Slaves hoped a savior would deliver them from slavery just as Moses had delivered the Israelites from slavery. Tubman made 19 trips to Maryland and helped 300 people to freedom. During these dangerous journeys she helped rescue members of her own family, including her 70-year-old parents. At one point, rewards for Tubman’s capture totaled $40,000. Yet, she was never captured and never failed to deliver her “passengers” to safety. As Tubman herself said, “On my Underground Railroad I [never] run my train off [the] track [and] I never [lost] a passenger.”
Labor:
Will Industrial Child Labor Return? — The Rise of the CIO Led to Public Education and the End of Child Labor in the 1930’s!:
Child Labor in the United States
Estimates by the Association of Farmworker Opportunity programs, based on figures gathered by the Department of Labor, suggest that there are approximately 500,000 child farmworkers in the United States. Many of these children start working as young as age 8, and 72-hour work weeks (more than 10 hours per day) are not uncommon.
Agricultural work is demanding and dangerous. Children are regularly exposed to pesticides, greatly increasing their risk for cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that children are three times more susceptible to the pesticides’ carcinogenic effects than are adults. Environmental conditions (particularly extreme heat) and dangerous farming tools are even more immediate threats. A report by the Government Accountability Office suggests that 100,000 child farmworkers are injured on the job every year and that children account for 20 percent of farming fatalities. And yet, these abuses are, for the most part, legal under current U.S. law. The United States’ Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) prohibits those under the age of 14 from working in most industries, restricts hours to no more than three on a school day until 16, and prohibits hazardous work until 18 for most industries. However, these regulations do not apply to agricultural labor because of outdated exemptions based upon an agrarian society largely left to the past. Today’s farmworker children are largely migrant workers who deserve the same protection as other youth working in less dangerous occupations. . . .
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play. — Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn (1916)
Shocking Pictures Of Child Labor In America Less Than 100 Years Ago Doffers in Trenton Mills, Gastonia, North Carolina. Others as small and some smaller. Little girls too.
Economy:
Shadow Government Statistics Real U.S. Merchandise Trade Deficit (Census Basis)
World:
On Oil Spills, Alberta Regulator Can’t Be Believed: New Report Scale and impact of spills underestimated, finds ecologist researcher. A study commissioned at the request of a First Nation says the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) has not reported accurately on the scale or impact of daily crude oil and salt water spills in the petro province. The regulator has not provided “the public with accurate, credible, complete, unbiased and timely information and fails in its responsibility to protect the environment,” the study concluded. By Andrew Nikiforuk 
Brazil: In defense of democratic and trade union freedoms and workers’ rights International solidarity needed! The Union of Municipal Workers of Florianópolis (Sintrasem) is being attacked by the city and the judiciary. The workers’ strike against a package which involves the withdrawal of acquired rights, wage and pension cuts approved by the mayor Gean Loureiro (PMDB), was declared illegal by the Regional Labor Court which ruled an end to the strike, a daily fine of R$15,000.00 [US$5000] and, scandalously, decided that the proceedings would be secret! As if it were a criminal case against a criminal gang! By Esquerda Marxista
Pretty Much the Same Percentage of Trump and UK Voters Support Renewable Energy — And It’s A Lot It would be fair to assume a husky-hugging environmentalist from Oxfordshire and a farmer from Wyoming’s agricultural heartland possibly wouldn’t have a lot in common. But new polling suggests they may have one shared trait: they probably both quite like renewable energy. By Mat Hope
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
Donald Trump’s Buy One and Lose Two Regulation Deal is Unconstitutional So NRDC is joining forces with Public Citizen and the Communication Workers of America — and taking the president to court. By Rhea Suh
Martí in Fidel: All the Glory in the World Fits in a Kernel of Corn The last week of January holds special significance for Cubans, and indeed for the progressive men and women around the world. This year, January 25 marks the second month since the passing of Fidel Castro (who can forget November 25, 2016?). On January 28, which marks José Marti’s day of birth, Cubans pay a special tribute to his legacy. On December 27, 2016, the Cuban National Assembly of People’s Power held a debate on how to legislate the will of Fidel to reject any tendency toward the “cult of personality.” The law expressly bans the use of Fidel’s name “to denominate institutions, plazas, parks, streets, avenues and other public places, as well as any type of decoration, recognition or honorary title.” Likewise, it is forbidden to use denominations or images of, or allusions of any nature to, his figure “to erect monuments, busts, statues, commemorative strips and other similar forms of homage,” as well as to use it as a trademark or for other distinctive signs, domain name and designs for commercial or advertising purposes, except when it comes to the use of his name to denominate any future institution that might be created according the law to study his invaluable trajectory in the history of the nation. [1] by Arnold August
How Cuba Uprooted Race Discrimination By Harry Ring
During a visit to Cuba in the summer of 1960 I met a young woman who symbolized one of the most inspiring and dramatic accomplishments of the revolution there. She was a Negro, in her late teens. We met on a bus tour into the countryside. During our conversation, I asked her what she did. She replied that she was studying surveying and that when the course was completed that year she would go on to the University of Havana to become a civil engineer. An obvious thought came into my mind: Could she pursue such a career if she lived in the United States? Read More