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 15, 2017
Image of the Day:
American ‘Justice’
Quotes of the Day:
If you live near the Atlantic Ocean — and millions of Americans do, along the most densely populated stretch of the nation — then you know the coastal flooding is always in the background. When a big storm like a Nor’easter barrels its way up the Eastern Seaboard, cities from Miami Beach all the way up to Maine can expect some beach erosion and possibly a couple feet of water piling up on waterfront thoroughfares. When there’s a major tropical-fueled storm, such as 2012′s devastating Superstorm Sandy, then the damage can be far worse — entire beachfront homes can be demolished as the dunes knocked over by a raging sea. But in the last few years, thanks to rising sea levels, which in turn have been largely caused by global warming, a number of Atlantic Ocean communities are finding flooding has become much more frequent, a routine occurrence. In fact, some towns say it now doesn’t take much more than a full moon and an unusually high tide for major roadways and homes near the waterfront to flood. Over the next generation, researchers have found, these types of flooding events are likely to occur as much as several times a week in some locales: — Stewart Smith, Flooding of Atlantic coastal cities about to get a lot worse
The chemical industry is well aware of the environmental health consequences of its products. The following is from Environmental Illness Briefing Paper published by the Chemical Manufactures Association, Washington, D.C. (1990): . . . There is no doubt that these patients are ill and deserving of compassion, understanding and expert medical care. However, nationally known experts in the fields of allergy, immunology and internal medicine say the assertion that environmental illness is a legitimate disease is unproven. Elaborate testing of the immune systems of these patients almost always indicates normal immune functions, and they rarely have increased infections. . . .
Videos of the Day:
The original monopoly The ruination of American health
Steve Mnuchin, Who Played Key Role in Foreclosure Crisis, Confirmed As Treasury Secretary
U.S.:
With Executive Order on Policing, Trump Declares Racialized War on Dissent By Flint Taylor
Trump Challenges the Limits of Executive Power The Trump administration’s behavior in the wake of the Ninth Circuit decision on the Muslim ban shows a clear contempt for due process and the separation of powers. But under the Constitution, the courts have a responsibility to check the president’s authority, especially if he is acting unlawfully. By Marjorie Cohn
Welcome to Trumpland: Obama’s Legacy by Luciana Bohne
Michael Flynn Out: From Trump’s “Full Confidence” to Midnight Resignation Having served just 24 days, US national security advisor quits after secret talks with Russian diplomat raise too many questions for him to answer by Jon Queally
Environment:
Questions about EPA-Monsanto collusion raised in cancer lawsuits Now it’s getting interesting. A new court filing made on behalf of dozens of people claiming Monsanto Co.’s Roundup herbicide gave them cancer includes information about alleged efforts within the Environmental Protection Agency to protect Monsanto’s interests and unfairly aid the agrichemical industry By Carey Gillam 
Financial Backers of EPA Pick Scott Pruitt Have Faced Hundreds of Pollution Actions By Sharon Lerner
‘Ghost Forests’ Appear As Rising Seas Kill Trees By Jon Upton
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights
Black Agenda Radio Week of February 13, 2017 (Listen)
Trump Pursues His Vision of a Whiter USA: The ban on Muslims is a step towards regulating the ethnic mix of the population.
Sanctuary Movement to Expand Its Resistance: Rather than go on the defensive, activists seek to broaden resistance to state oppression
A Millions March for Prisoners’ Human Rights: Abolitionists to converge on Washington in August to end mass incarceration.
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 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.
Modern Day Lynchings — Expanding Stand Your Ground — The ‘Right to Murder’Blacks’: Florida Disgraces Trayvon Martin Legacy, Moves to Expand Stand Your Ground by Michael J. Sainato
Black History Month:
Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Early 20th Century Harlem Radicalism
Hubert Harrison (1883-1927) is one of the truly important figures of early twentieth-century America. A brilliant writer, orator, educator, critic, and political activist, he was described by the historian Joel A. Rogers, in World’s Great Men of Color as “the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time” and “one of America’s greatest minds.” Rodgers adds that “No one worked more seriously and indefatigably to enlighten” others and “none of the Afro-American leaders of his time had a saner and more effective program.”
Born in St. Croix, Danish West Indies, in 1883, Harrison arrived in New York as a seventeen-year-old orphan in 1900. He made his mark in the United States by struggling against class and racial oppression, by helping to create a remarkably rich and vibrant intellectual life among African Americans, and by working for the enlightened development of the lives of “the common people.” He consistently emphasized the need for working class people to develop class consciousness; for “Negroes” to develop race consciousness, self-reliance, and self-respect; and for all those he reached to challenge white supremacy and develop modern, scientific, critical, and independent thought as a means toward liberation.
A self-described “radical internationalist,” Harrison was extremely well-versed in history and events in Africa, Asia, the Mideast, the Americas, and Europe. More than any other political leader of his era, he combined class consciousness and anti-white supremacist race consciousness in a coherent political radicalism. He opposed capitalism and maintained that white supremacy was central to capitalist rule in the United States. He emphasized that “politically, the Negro is the touchstone of the modern democratic idea”; that “as long as the Color Line exists, all the perfumed protestations of Democracy on the part of the white race” were “downright lying”; that “the cant of ‘Democracy’” was “intended as dust in the eyes of white voters”; and that true democracy and equality for “Negroes” implied “a revolution . . . startling even to think of.” Working from this theoretical framework, he was active with a wide variety of movements and organizations and played signal roles in the development of what were, up to that time, the largest class radical movement (socialism) and the largest race radical movement (the “New Negro”/Garvey movement) in U.S. history. His ideas on the centrality of the struggle against white supremacy anticipated the profound transformative power of the Civil Rights/Black Liberation struggles of the 1960s and his thoughts on “democracy in America” offer penetrating insights on the limitations and potential of America in the twenty-first century.
Harrison served as the foremost Black organizer, agitator, and theoretician in the Socialist Party of New York during its 1912 heyday; he founded the first organization (the Liberty League) and the first newspaper (The Voice) of the militant, World War I-era “New Negro” movement; and he served as the editor of the Negro World and principal radical influence on the Garvey movement during its radical high point in 1920. His views on race and class profoundly influenced a generation of “New Negro” militants including the class radical A. Philip Randolph and the race radical Marcus Garvey. Considered more race conscious than Randolph and more class conscious than Garvey, Harrison is the key link in the ideological unity of the two great trends of the Black Liberation Movement — the labor and civil rights trend associated with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the race and nationalist trend associated with Malcolm X. (Randolph and Garvey were, respectively, the direct links to King marching on Washington, with Randolph at his side, and to Malcolm, whose parents were involved with the Garvey movement, speaking militantly and proudly on street corners in Harlem.)
Harrison was not only a political radical, however. Rogers described him as an “Intellectual Giant and Free-Lance Educator,” whose contributions were wide-ranging, innovative, and influential. He was an immensely skilled and popular orator and educator who spoke and/or read six languages; a highly praised journalist, critic, and book reviewer (reportedly the first regular Black book reviewer in history); a pioneer Black activist in the freethought and birth control movements; a bibliophile and library builder and popularizer who helped develop the 135th Street Public Library into an international center for research in Black culture, and a promoter and aid to Black writers and artists. In his later years he was the leading Black lecturer for the New York City Board of Education and one of its foremost orators. Though he was a trailblazing literary critic in Harlem during the period known as the Harlem Renaissance, he questioned the “Renaissance” concept on grounds of its willingness to take “standards of value ready-made from white society” and on its claim to being a significant new re-birth. (He maintained that “there had been an uninterrupted,” though ignored, “stream of literary and artistic products” flowing “from Negro writers from 1850” into the 1920s.) Read More
Labor:
As the U.S. Stumbles, the World Is Watching — NervouslyEconomy: Today’s news headlines are not the stuff of confidence-building. It seems like a 241-year old democracy should have gotten its act together a lot better by now. Bloomberg News is reporting that 17 of the most prestigious colleges and universities in the country (including Harvard, Yale and Stanford) have filed court papers seeking to join a lawsuit in a Brooklyn Federal court against President Donald Trump’s hastily constructed Executive Order. The Order called for an immigration ban which has drawn a flurry of lawsuits, nationwide protests and a rebuke by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The schools told the court that during the last academic year, more than one million international students studied at U.S. universities and now, as a result of the immigrant ban, 42,000 scholars, including Nobel Laureates, are calling for a boycott of educational conferences in the United States. With a tepid growth rate of less than 2 percent since the financial crash, the last thing the U.S. needs is to drive a stake through the heart of the U.S. travel and lodging industry. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Spain: Podemos Citizens’ Assembly – a clear victory for the Left The resounding victory of Pablo Iglesias and his list of candidates at the Podemos congress, the National Citizens’ Assembly, is viewed as a great event for millions of workers and youth in Spain and, by extension, for the Spanish and European left. At the same time, it represents a defeat for the ruling class and the dark forces of reaction, who barricaded themselves behind the right-wing stance of Íñigo Errejón, with the vain desire of dealing a demoralizing blow against everything that is alive and is truly progressive in the country. By Lucha de Clases 
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare: