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 23, 2017
Image of the Day:
Naturally, The Common People Don’t Want War 
Quote of the Day:
. . .“It’d be remiss of me not to remind you, especially you younger writers, that you can be critical of your government and your society,” the three-time Oscar-winner said tonight at the Beverly Hilton. “You don’t have to fit in. It’s fashionable now to take shots at Republicans and Trump and avoid the Obamas and Clintons. But remember this: In the 13 wars we’ve started over the last 30 years and the $14 trillion we’ve spent, and the hundreds of thousands of lives that have perished from this earth, remember that it wasn’t one leader but a system, both Republican and Democrat. It’s a system that has been perpetuated under the guise that these are just wars justifiable in the name of our flag.” He continued, “No need to go through the victims, but we know we’ve intervened in more than 100 countries. It’s war of some kind. In the end, it’s become a system leading to the death of this planet and the extinction of us all. I fought these people who [perpetuate] war for most of my life. It’s important to remember: If you believe in what you’re saying and you can stay the course, you can make the difference. I urge you to find a way to remain alone with yourself, listen to your silences, not always in a writers room. Try to find not what the crowd wants so you can be successful, but try instead to find the true inner meaning of your life here on Earth, and never give up in your heart with your fight for peace, decency, and telling the truth.”. . . — Oliver Stone’s Critique Of America: It’s Not Just Donald Trump, “But A System” – WGA Awards
Video of the Day:
Whistleblower Teacher Says Defunded Public Schools Vulnerable to Mass Privatization
U.S.:
Oliver Stone’s Critique Of America: It’s Not Just Donald Trump, “But A System” – WGA Awards by Anthony D’Alessandro and Matt Grobar
Environment:
A Tribute to Andrew Schneider In this terrifying age of misinformation, “alt-facts”, and lies, a good reporter is highly valued. One that is willing to hit the pavement, talking to anyone about anything, and dig, dig, dig for the truth – that reporter is the best! Two-time Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist and public health hero, Andrew Schneider, was all that and more. Andy broke a story that became a national scandal of asbestos contamination and cover-up in Libby, Montana. Andy’s writing documented the suppression of government scientists, public health experts, and injured families. When I asked Andy what kept him going – for years – on that story, he said to me that he couldn’t give up on those people – ever. By Jennifer Sass
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Josh Fox Rallies Hundreds Demanding a Fracking Ban in the Heart of Gas-Drilling Country Demonstrators protest an executive order that could leave local communities vulnerable to contamination. By Alexandra Rosenmann 
Energy News:
TV: Scientists fear Fukushima radiation hitting US to worsen… “A lot of people are very concerned” — Experts: Billions are being exposed… Reactors “will continue to pour water into Pacific for the rest of time” (VIDEO)
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights: 
Freedom Rider: The Corporate Media Enemy Donald Trump and the corporate media are locked in mutual hostility, but they are both enemies of the poor and oppressed. Media tell non-stop lies about foreign leaders abroad and Black people here at home. As servants of corporate power, the media usually kow-tow to whoever wins the White House. They’ve made an exception for Trump, but that doesn’t make them honest journalists — just flunkies for the other party. by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Malcolm X and Human Rights in the Time of Trumpism: Transcending the Masters Tools Malcolm X understood that “oppressed peoples must commit themselves to radical political struggle in order to advance a dignified approach to human rights.” What’s needed is a bottom-up mass movement for People(s)-Centered Human Rights, a “political project in the service of the oppressed” that “names the enemies of freedom: the Western white supremacist, colonial/capitalist patriarchy.” Social revolution is the only solution. by BAR editor and columnist Ajamu Baraka
Continued Desecration of Bethesda African Cemetery: We Shall Stay in Our Resistance! Part II Ethnic cleansing is endemic in the U.S., from the cradle to the grave – and beyond. An African burial ground in Bethesda, Maryland, already paved over for a parking lot, now faces total destruction at the hands of developers. “Can anyone imagine the outrage that would ensue if the Arlington National cemetery or the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was being treated with the same disrespect as the Bethesda African cemetery?” by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Adebayo 
is Time to Move On from MoveOn.org and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex The revolution will not be subsidized — but well-funded facsimiles of “movements” dominate the political landscape of the U.S. “Left.” MoveOn.org “prides itself for exposing the corporate ties of the Republicans but is perfectly content with the corporate ties of the Democratic Party.” And Black Lives Matter “drew significant interest from a consortium of non-profits after receiving millions from the Ford Foundation and Google in 2015 and 2016.” by Danny Haiphong
The Global Dimensions of the Life and Legacy of Malcolm X The world cannot realize stability unless the drive for global domination by imperialism is overthrown. This truism was at the heart of Malcolm X?s struggles. The awareness and activism of people inside and outside the U.S. must be harnessed into a movement committed to fundamental transformation of the exploitative and oppressive system. by Abayomi Azikiwe
To the Memory of Malcolm X: Fifty Years After His Assassination Half a century after his murder, Malcolm X has been transformed into “a harmless icon, with his sharp revolutionary anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist political program diluted and softened.” Therefore, it is vital that we celebrate and study the real Malcolm X, who “rejected lesser-evilism and the two-party set up and division of labor that oversaw the capitalist system of racism, imperialism, and exploitation.” by Ike Nahem
Across the U.S., Police Contracts Shield Officers From Scrutiny and Discipline Union power has been in steady decline in the U.S. — except for police unions, whose contracts “often provide a shield of protection to officers accused of misdeeds and erect barriers to residents complaining of abuse,” according to a Reuters investigative report. Citizen complaints are seldom sustained, even in cities with police review boards. Cops in 18 cities can prevent release of documents showing prior allegations of brutality. by Reade Levinson 
Zambian Government Continues Crackdown on Media The Left is under growing pressure in Zambia, where a right-wing government holds sway. Police raided the home of Dr. Fred M’membe, a former editor of The Post, a progressive, mass circulation newspaper that was shut down earlier on spurious tax charges. The closure brought to four the number of Zambian media outlets shut down in less than five months. by Nate Singham
February is Black History Month:
The Black Agenda: Gary Declaration, National Black Political Convention, 1972
Introduction
The Black Agenda is addressed primarily to Black people in America. It rises naturally out of the bloody decades and centuries of our people’s struggle on these shores. It flows from the most recent surgings of our own cultural and political consciousness. It is our attempt to define some of the essential changes which must take place in this land as we and our children move to self-determination and true independence.
The Black Agenda assumes that no truly basic change for our benefit takes place in Black or white America unless we Black people organize to initiate that change. It assumes that we must have some essential agreement on overall goals, even though we may differ on many specific strategies.
Therefore, this is an initial statement of goals and directions for our own generation, some first definitions of crucial issues around which Black people must organize and move in 1972 and beyond. Anyone who claims to be serious about the survival and liberation of Black people must be serious about the implementation of the Black Agenda.
What Time Is It?
We come to Gary in an hour of great crisis and tremendous promise for Black America. While the white nation hovers on the brink of chaos, while its politicians offer no hope of real change, we stand on the edge of history and are faced with an amazing and frightening choice: We may choose in 1972 to slip back into the decadent white politics of American life, or we may press forward, moving relentlessly from Gary to the creation of our own Black life. The choice is large, but the time is very short.
Let there be no mistake. We come to Gary in a time of unrelieved crisis for our people. From every rural community in Alabama to the high-rise compounds of Chicago, we bring to this Convention the agonies of the masses of our people. From the sprawling Black cities of Watts and Nairobi in the West to the decay of Harlem and Roxbury in the East, the testimony we bear is the same. We are the witnesses to social disaster.
Our cities are crime-haunted dying grounds. Huge sectors of our youth — and countless others — face permanent unemployment. Those of us who work find our paychecks able to purchase less and less. Neither the courts nor the prisons contribute to anything resembling justice or reformation. The schools are unable — or unwilling — to educate our children for the real world of our struggles. Meanwhile, the officially approved epidemic of drugs threatens to wipe out the minds and strength of our best young warriors.
Economic, cultural, and spiritual depression stalk Black America, and the price for survival often appears to be more than we are able to pay. On every side, in every area of our lives, the American institutions in which we have placed our trust are unable to cope with the crises they have created by their single-minded dedication to profits for some and white supremacy above all.
Beyond These Shores
And beyond these shores there is more of the same. For while we are pressed down under all the dying weight of a bloated, inwardly decaying white civilization, many of our brothers in Africa and the rest of the Third World have fallen prey to the same powers of exploitation and deceit. Wherever America faces the unorganized, politically powerless forces of the non-white world, its goal is domination by any means necessary — as if to hide from itself the crumbling of its own systems of life and work.
But Americans cannot hide. They can run to China and the moon and to the edges of consciousness, but they cannot hide. The crises we face as Black people are the crises of the entire society. They go deep, to the very bones and marrow, to the essential nature of America’s economic, political, and cultural systems. They are the natural end-product of a society built on the twin foundations of white racism and white capitalism.
So, let it be clear to us now: The desperation of our people, the agonies of our cities, the desolation of our countryside, the pollution of the air and the water — these things will not be significantly affected by new faces in the old places in Washington D.C. This is the truth we must face here in Gary if we are to join our people everywhere in the movement forward toward liberation.
White Realities, Black Choice
A Black political convention, indeed all truly Black politics must begin from this truth: The American system does not work for the masses of our people, and it cannot be made to work without radical fundamental change. (Indeed this system does not really work in favor of the humanity of anyone in America.)
In light of such realities, we come to Gary and are confronted with a choice. Will we believe the truth that history presses into our face — or will we, too, try to hide? Will the small favors some of us have received blind us to the larger sufferings of our people, or open our eyes to the testimony of our history in America?
For more than a century we have followed the path of political dependence on white men and their systems. From the Liberty Party in the decades before the Civil War to the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, we trusted in white men and white politics as our deliverers. Sixty years ago, W.E.B. DuBois said he would give the Democrats their “last chance” to prove their sincere commitment to equality for Black people — and he was given white riots and official segregation in peace and in war.
Nevertheless, some twenty years later we became Democrats in the name of Franklin Roosevelt, then supported his successor Harry Truman, and even tried a “non-partisan” Republican General of the Army named Eisenhower. We were wooed like many others by the superficial liberalism of John F. Kennedy and the make-believe populism of Lyndon Johnson. Let there be no more of that.
Both Parties Have Betrayed Us
Here at Gary, let us never forget that while the times and the names and the parties have continually changed, one truth has faced us insistently, never changing: Both parties have betrayed us whenever their interests conflicted with ours (which was most of the time), and whenever our forces were unorganized and dependent, quiescent and compliant. Read More