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 13, 2017
Images of the Day:
Trump Assumes Command of Obama’s Gestapo
The Democratic Party — Graveyard of Movements
Quotes of the Day:
The Following Quotes Confirm My Statments About the Merging police State:
From Hooray for the new Patriotic police state Obama won’t veto law that turns military into domestic police force: It flew through the House today and should pass the Senate shortly. Along with the usual gazillion dollars for the Pentagon to buy death machines from military contractors via lobbyists/former members of Congress, the NDAA will also allow the military to seize U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and throw them in Gitmo forever. Remember how the terror prison at Guantanamo Bay was originally filled, after 9/11? And remember how a fraction of the prisoners held and tortured there for years had anything to do with Al Qaeda, because they were just random goat herders or whatever, picked up because the military and the CIA paid a per-head bounty on “terrorists”? Yeah well same thing now, but in the United States! . . .
From: The National Defense Authorization Act Passes Again in 2013 – Are You Watching Your Back? : . . .This behemoth, 1,600 page charter, allotting $662 billion of taxpayers’ money towards defense funding, contained controversial, vaguely-worded provisions that allow for detention of persons – including Americans here at home – indefinitely by the military without trial or military tribunals, and contains implications for abuse of presidential powers by significantly broadening the scope of executive authority with a simple pen stroke. Specifically, sections 1021 and 1022, reminiscent of Draconian laws, authorized indefinite detention by the armed forces without trial – this, despite the Constitution’s sixth amendment which guarantees right to fair trial for all, and the Posse Comitatus Act which limits governments’ use of military intervention to enforce laws. . . .
From Glenn Beck’s : Aw, cute: Obama’s civilian army (FEMACorps) just graduated it’s first class: . . . Remember when Barack Obama asked for a civilian defense force as strong and well funded as the U.S. military? Well, here’s Obama’s first graduating class of FEMACorps workers. The kid in the video sums up pretty well how disturbing this is when he says ‘we don’t really know what our job is’ while adding that he’ll go wherever the government sends him. Nothing like a little brownshirt army to have at your beckon call. . . . You remember, how long was it, how long ago was it that I said that AmeriCorps is going to be working with the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA and it’s not going to be a good thing? Remember they mocked me for that?” Glenn asked Stu on radio this morning. The prediction was prompted by Obama saying, . . . We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded. . . .
The only way to stop the current slippery slide into a police state is for mass action in the streets and, concurrently, a break from lessor evil pro-capitalism politics, which has taken us to this monstrous evil point of destruction of our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! If we do not break with this policy, human beings are doomed as a living species as capitalism goes global in its quests for profits at the expense of the environment.! — Roland Sheppard, Obama’s Coup D’état
Videos of the Day:
From Obama to Trump: Two Videos Showing The Development/Emerging of a Police State:
From Glenn Beck’s : Aw, cute: Obama’s civilian army (FEMACorps) just graduated it’s first class:
Donald Trump signs executive order giving police greater authority The President has signed three orders to tackle ‘public safety’ moments after he swore in Jeff Sessions as Attorney General
Trump’s Remarks on Media Overlook US State Terrorism Donald Trump is right in the sense that the corporate media does not cover terrorism committed by the United States and its allies, says author Beau Grosscup
US:
Ninth Circuit Court: Trump’s Immigration Ban ‘contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy.’:
From Court Rules Against Trump, Keeping Immigration Ban on Hold for Now: . . . Read the full Ninth Circuit decision.
IV. Reviewability of the Executive Order:The Government contends that the district court lacked authority to enjoin enforcement of the Executive Order because the President has “unreviewable authority to suspend the admission of any class of aliens.” The Government does not merely argue that courts owe substantial deference to the immigration and national security policy determinations of the political branches —an uncontroversial principle that is well-grounded in our jurisprudence. Instead, the Government has taken the position that the President’s decisions about immigration policy, particularly when motivated by national security concerns, are unreviewable, even if those actions potentially contravene constitutional rights and protections. The Government indeed asserts that it violates separation of powers for the judiciary to entertain a constitutional challenge to executive actions such as this one. There is no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability, which runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy.
The First Amendment May Not Protect Us: Trump’s FCC Intensifies War on Press By Michael Corcoran
Revealed: FBI terrorism taskforce investigating Standing Rock activists FBI representatives have contacted several ‘water protectors’, raising alarm that an indigenous-led movement is being construed as domestic terrorism By Sam Levin
Six Patriots Players Are Refusing To Meet Trump, Raising The Pressure On Their Teammates Tight end Martellus Bennett was the first to back out of the traditional post-Super Bowl White House trip. Fans have been stepping up pressure for more team members to boycott the meeting. By Jim Dalrymple II
TPP is not dead: It’s now called the Trade In Services Agreement Think the ideas behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership or the so-called “free trade” regime are buried? Sadly, no. Definitely, no. Some of the countries involved in negotiating the TPP seeking to find ways to resurrect it in some new form — but that isn’t the most distressing news. What’s worse is the TPP remains alive in a new form with even worse rules. Meet the Trade In Services Agreement, even more secret than the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And more dangerous. by Pete Dolack
Environment:
Video: How U.S. States and Cities Can Take on Climate Change in Spite of Trump’s Denialism
Looming Climate Catastrophe: Extinction in Nine Years? The latest, from a blog called Arctic News, warns that by 2026 — that’s just nine years from now — warming above the Arctic Circle could be so extreme that a massively disrupted and weakened jet stream could lead to global temperature rises so severe that a massive extinction event, including humans, could result. by Dave Lindorff
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Energy News:
“Massive blast” rips through nuclear plant — “Smoke billowed from building as explosion led to massive fire” — Expert: Incident “very serious” — “Number of people have been left feeling unwell” (VIDEOS)
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights
. . . The rewards for what we achieved in the civil rights movement have more than corrupted the movement,” he said. “What happened in the black community, when they finally won the right to vote, they picked the ones who they knew, which is not to be unexpected. But the ones they knew were all the leaders. They knew Jesse. They knew Andy Young. They knew John Lewis. They pushed them right into the electoral political sea. Go run the state. Go run the government. Become a senator. I even encouraged them to do that as the next step to the civil rights movement. When you get the opportunity for that presence in government, let’s fill it with our best. Well, our best were guys in the movement. Once they went off into electoral politics, they abandoned the community. They abandoned that work. They abandoned that developmental process. . . . — Harry Belafonte
Black History Month:
Negroes with guns – Robert F. Williams
First published in 1962, Negroes with Guns is the story of a southern black community’s struggle to arm itself in self-defense against the Ku Klux Klan and other racist groups. Frustrated and angered by violence condoned or abetted by the local authorities against blacks, the small community of Monroe, North Carolina, brought the issue of armed self-defense to the forefront of the civil rights movement. Under the leadership of Robert F. Williams (1925-1996), Monroe became the test case of the right of blacks to armed self-defense when law and order broke down. In 1961 Williams was framed for kidnapping and had to flee the country with his family. From exile in Cuba, Williams told his story of the Monroe case to Marc Schleifer in a three-hour interview, beginning with his return to his home town of Monroe in 1955 as a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, when he joined the local chapter of the NAACP. Williams described his involvement, supplemented by material from Williams’ articles and editorials featured in the newsletter, The Crusader — which Williams and his wife Mabel continued to publish in Cuba for a circulation of thousands — and an interview with John Schultz first published in Studies on the Left. These materials became Negroes with Guns. The single most important intellectual influence on Huey P. Newton, the founder of the Black Panther Party, Negroes with Guns is a classic story of a man who risked his life for democracy and freedom.
From Stokely Carmichael’s Speech at University of California, Berkeley:
Thank you very much. It’s a privilege and an honor to be in the white intellectual ghetto of the West. We wanted to do a couple of things before we started. The first is that, based on the fact that SNCC, through the articulation of its program by its chairman, has been able to win elections in Georgia, Alabama, Maryland, and by our appearance here will win an election in California, in 1968 I’m going to run for President of the United States. I just can’t make it, ’cause I wasn’t born in the United States. That’s the only thing holding me back.. . . I’m never going to be put in that trick bag; I am all black and I’m all good, dig it. Anything all black is not necessarily bad. Anything all black is only bad when you use force to keep whites out. Now that’s what white people have done in this country, and they’re projecting their same fears and guilt on us, and we won’t have it, we won’t have it. Let them handle their own fears and their own guilt. Let them find their own psychologists. We refuse to be the therapy for white society any longer. We have gone mad trying to do it. We have gone stark raving mad trying to do it. . . . I look at Dr. King on television every single day, and I say to myself: “Now there is a man who’s desperately needed in this country. There is a man full of love. There is a man full of mercy. There is a man full of compassion.” But every time I see Lyndon on television, I said, “Martin, baby, you got a long way to go.” So that the question stands as to what we are willing to do, how we are willing to say “No” to withdraw from that system and begin within our community to start to function and to build new institutions that will speak to our needs. In Lowndes County, we developed something called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. It is a political party. The Alabama law says that if you have a Party you must have an emblem. We chose for the emblem a black panther, a beautiful black animal which symbolizes the strength and dignity of black people, an animal that never strikes back until he’s back so far into the wall, he’s got nothing to do but spring out. Yeah. And when he springs he does not stop. Now there is a Party in Alabama called the Alabama Democratic Party. It is all white. It has as its emblem a white rooster and the words “white supremacy” for the write. Now the gentlemen of the Press, because they’re advertisers, and because most of them are white, and because they’re produced by that white institution, never called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization by its name, but rather they call it the Black Panther Party. Our question is, Why don’t they call the Alabama Democratic Party the “White Cock Party”? (It’s fair to us…..) It is clear to me that that just points out America’s problem with sex and color, not our problem, not our problem. And it is now white America that is going to deal with those problems of sex and color. . . .
Labor:
Universal basic income: utopian dream or libertarian nightmare? Universal basic income (or UBI), an unconditional payment to all citizens, has become part of the economic zeitgeist in recent times, embraced by advocates on both the Left and the Right as a solution to the symptoms and sores of the crisis-ridden capitalist system. By Adam Booth
Economy:
Video: Economy still turning down —We never really recovered from ’08 — The longest economic contractions since the 1930s
World:
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare: