Daily News Digest Archives
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: 1. Austerity, 2. Scapegoating Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal Immigrants’ for Unemployment, and 3. The Iron Heel.
Daily News Digest March 15, 2017
Democracy?: 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!
Image of the Day:
The Whole World in Trump’s Tiny Hands By Khalil Bendib
Quote of the Day:
Banker scoundrels aren’t the only big shots whose careers continue to ascend following reprehensible conduct. The following is a career update for some of the members of the “Psychiatry Hall of Shame,” including the group excoriated in the 2008 Congressional investigations, and another psychiatrist who conducted studies aimed at inducing psychosis—experiments that appeared to run counter to the Nuremberg Code of research ethics. Before updating psychiatry’s prominent national figures, first a prominent local psychiatrist in Cincinnati, where I live. In 2014, Melissa Delbello became Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati, and earlier this year, she was listed by Cincinnati Magazine as one of Cincinnati’s “top psychiatrists.” This despite the fact that in 2008, Delbello was rebuked by a U.S. Senator on the Senate Floor following a New York Times exposé about her. In 2008, Delbello was included in a Congressional investigation on psychiatrists violating federal and university regulations in their receipt of large sums of money from drug companies. An appalled U.S. Senator Charles Grassley told Americans how Delbello, in response to a reporter’s question about the money that she received from a drug company, had said: “Trust me, I don’t make much.” Delbello claims that she was misquoted by the New York Times reporter, but not in dispute is the fact that she had failed to accurately report her outside income in 2003 and 2004 from AstraZeneca, the manufacturer of the antipsychotic Seroquel, a drug which Delbello had done research on in 2002. The Times recounted how Delbello, in a 2002 published paper, reported that Seroquel in combination with Depakote is more effective for the treatment of adolescent bipolar mania than Depakote alone; but Delbello later acknowledged that this study—which had become an influential one in dictating prescription practice—was not conclusive. — Leading Psychiatrists Follow Top-Dog Bankers’ Guide to Career Advancement
Videos of the Day:
Tariq Ali: Global Empire — Afghanistan: War Without End!
Climate Scientist Slams Pruitt for Distorting Science of Global Warming Dr. Alan Robock responds to EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s comments on carbon dioxide and explains CO2’s role in the warming of the atmosphere
New Mike Brown Footage Discredits Ferguson Police Account Black Agenda Report’s Glen Ford says the police consistently manipulate public opinion with character assassinations and lies to justify the killing of black men
U.S.:
Woman Leading Flint Lead Poisoning Lawsuit Found Shot Dead in Her Home Sasha Avonna Bell, a woman leading the drive to sue the Michigan government over the Flint lead poisoning water crisis, has been found shot and killed in her home, M Live reports. She had claimed that her child was poisoned by the water after it was switched from the Detroit water system to the Flint river, (which officials hadn’t applied corrosion inhibitors to).
Trump’s Military Nostalgia (or ‘Victory at Sea’ All Over Again) Why do I mention this? Because I’m convinced that President Trump’s talk of rebuilding the U.S. military and “winning wars again” has been deeply influenced by the kind of iconography that was commonplace in Victory at Sea and the war movies of his youth. Consider his comments on February 27th, when announcing that he would request an extra $54 billion annually in additional military spending. “We have to start winning wars again,” he declared. “I have to say, when I was young, in high school and college, everybody used to say we never lost a war. We never lost a war, remember?” By Michael T. Klare
Why College Students Are Challenging Their Own Schools in the Fight Against White Supremacy Racial justice activists at the University of Michigan mobilized in response to a rash of racist incidents on campus this year, only to be ridiculed in the right-wing media and butt heads with school administrators over a proposed organizing space for students of color. Here’s a look at the powerful but often misunderstood movement challenging racism on campus. By Mike Ludwig 
Prosecutor says film’s edit of Michael Brown shooting distorts incident A prosecutor was critical Monday of store surveillance footage from a new documentary about the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, calling it a heavily edited attempt to distort an incident that occurred several hours before Brown died in an encounter with a police officer. The film-maker Jason Pollock responded by calling the St Louis County prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, a “master of deception” and standing by the video shown in his documentary Stranger Fruit. By Associated Press in Ferguson, Missouri
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
Videos:
UNAC Advocates “Independent Path” to Peace
NYPD Wields “Precision Policing” Like a Mass Incarceration Bomb
Mumia: “Lynne Stewart, Freedom Fighter, Presente”
Mumia and Other Inmates Endangered by Tainted Prison Water
Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 13, 2017
UNAC Advocates “Independent Path” to Peace: It is “ridiculous” to believe that the Russians somehow tipped the November election to Donald Trump. “What was Hillary Clinton offering,” asked Sara Flounders, of UNAC, the United National Anti-War Coalition. “She was promising, ‘You’re going to have more of the same for the next eight years,’ plus all kinds of military threats. And, they also moved farther to the Right. That was rejected.” UNAC is gearing up for its yearly conference, June 16 to 18, in Richmond, Virginia, under the theme: The Need for an Independent Path. “We don’t place a bit of confidence in the Republicans or Democrats,” said Flounders. “They both represent Wall Street and corporate power.”
NYPD Wields “Precision Policing” Like a Mass Incarceration Bomb: Community organizations are demanding a halt to massive police sweeps of New York City public housing projects, which have resulted in the arrest of hundreds of residents on RICO conspiracy charges. The cops call it “precision policing.” “They are charging people with laws that were designed to take on the Mafia in the 70s,” said Josmar Trujillo, of the Coalition to End Broken Windows. “That’s where the department has stared to focus in the ‘post-stop and frisk era,’ and that’s the scenario where we’re preparing to meet them head on.” The term “precision policing” is “very much an echo of the kind of overseas counter-insurgency the military” conducts, he said.
Mumia: “Lynne Stewart, Freedom Fighter, Presente”: Funeral services were held this weekend for the revered and indomitable attorney Lynne Stewart, who succumbed to breast cancer at age 77. “For decades, she and husband Ralph fought for New York’s political activists and revolutionaries, but mostly they fought for the freedom of the poor and dispossessed,” said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner. Stewart served four years of a ten-year federal prison sentence for vigorously defended her client. “Lynne Stewart was a people’s lawyer, beloved and respected,” said Abu Jamal. “May she ever be so.”
Mumia and Other Inmates Endangered by Tainted Prison Water: The State of Pennsylvania is intent on appealing a court ruling favorable to Mumia Abu Jamal’s demand that he and 5,000 other inmates be treated for hepatitis-C, a life-threatening, but entirely curable infection. Mumia’s condition is exacerbated by a water crisis that appears to afflict much of the prison system, as well as public schools in Philadelphia, said Sophia Williams, of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home, in an interview with BAR producer Kyle Fraser. Abu Jamal nearly died last year from complication related to hepatitis-C. By exposing him to foul, tainted water, the authorities are “continuing their project of slowly killing him.”
Environment:
World:
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare: