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 29, 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!
Images of the Day:
Health Care: Cuba vs. U.S.
Bendib: The Art of the Deal
Quotes of the Day:
“Tomorrow it will be too late to do what we should have done a long time ago.” Fidel Castro expressed the urgency of these problems in his speech to the Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro in 1992. He opened with these words: An important biological species is in danger of disappearing due to the fast and progressive destruction of its natural living conditions: mankind. We have now become aware of this problem when it is almost too late to stop it. It is necessary to point out that consumer societies are fundamentally responsible for the brutal destruction of the environment. They arose from the old colonial powers and from imperialist policies which in turn engendered the backwardness and poverty, which today afflicts the vast majority of mankind. With only 20 percent of the world’s population, these societies consume two-thirds of the metals and three-fourths of the energy produced in the world. They have poisoned the seas and rivers, polluted the air, weakened and punctured the ozone layer, saturated the atmosphere with gases which are changing weather conditions with a catastrophic effect we are already beginning to experience. The forests are disappearing. The deserts are expanding. Every year thousands of millions of tons of fertile soil end up in the sea. Numerous species are becoming extinct. Population pressures and poverty trigger frenzied efforts to survive even when it is at the expense of the environment. It is not possible to blame the Third World countries for this. Yesterday, they were colonies; today, they are nations exploited and pillaged by an unjust international economic order. The solution cannot be to prevent the development of those who need it most. The reality is that anything that nowadays contributes to underdevelopment and poverty constitutes a flagrant violation of ecology. Tens of millions of men, women, and children die every year in the Third World as a result of this, more than in each of the two world wars. Unequal terms of trade, protectionism, and the foreign debt assault the ecology and promote the destruction of the environment. If we want to save mankind from this self-destruction, we have to better distribute the wealth and technologies available in the world. Less luxury and less waste by a few countries is needed so there is less poverty and less hunger on a large part of the Earth. We do not need any more transferring to the Third World of lifestyles and consumption habits that ruin the environment. Let human life become more rational. Let us implement a just international economic order. Let us use all the science necessary for pollution-free, sustained development. Let us pay the ecological debt, and not the foreign debt. Let hunger disappear, and not mankind. Now that the alleged threat of communism has disappeared and there are no longer any more excuses for cold wars, arms races, and military spending, what is blocking the immediate use of these resources to promote the development of the Third World and fight the threat of the ecological destruction of the planet? Let selfishness end. Let hegemonies end. Let insensitivity, irresponsibility, and deceit end. Tomorrow it will be too late to do what we should have done a long time ago.
The headlines in the first three months of 2017 have made one thing clear: capitalism is killing the planet. Capitalism, the governing structure of nearly every society on Earth, puts profit above all other considerations. The consumer cycle is indifferent to proper disposal or reprocessing of discarded resources because such actions do not maximize profit. Oceans suffer greatly. They cover over seventy percent of Earth’s surface and are integral to the prosperity of all known life. Anthropogenic climate change is killing fish stocks and fundamentally changing marine ecosystems. Human activity is depleting oxygen in the oceans. Plastics are everywhere. Humans route roughly 150 million tones of plastic into the oceans each year. Microplastics from the likes of synthetic fabrics and vehicle tires choke ocean life and thwart marine diversity. Approximately 46,000 pieces of discarded plastic of varying sizes occupy any given square mile of ocean. They work their way up the food chain. Extinctions are commonplace. Critical areas of land, including wetlands and forests, are vanishing at astonishing rates. Earth has lost roughly ten percent of her wilderness since the 1990s. Humans threaten over sixty percent of the world’s primates with extinction. Harsh agriculture practices, tourism, and construction are rapidly killing grasshoppers across Europe, a critical food source for many animals including reptiles and birds. The middle class is going extinct as well. The world’s richest eight humans have as much money as the poorest half of the world’s population, and the richest one percent of the entire human population possess as much wealth as the rest of humanity. The aforementioned examples are just a drop in the bucket. These are not anomalies. Pollution is capitalist routine. Pollution is profit. Razing forest for profit is humdrum. Extinction is progress. Asphyxiating Earth is good for big business. Capitalism, the maximization of profit at the expense of animal and planet, is a plague of our own creation. The planet will eventually recover after humanity is gone or once humanity collectively agrees to prioritize the health of our only home. Humans are ill and capitalism is our collective infection. It must end. . . . — We’ve Let Capitalism Kill the Planet
Videos of the Day:
Health Care: Cuba vs. U.S.
Arrest of Omar Barghouti Comes Amidst Upsurge in International Support for Boycott of Israel
Sixth Year of War in Syria Marked by Tremendous Civilian Casualties In the last week alone there were several attacks against Daesh in Iraq and Northern Syria led by the United States in which civilian casualties were considerable, says Vijay Prashad
U.S.:
Trump’s Immigration Lies:
Lie # 1 Immigrant Murder Rate: This chart should put to rest any fears that the murder rate has spiked due to illegal immigration. It hasn’t. 
Lie # 2 Immigrant Crime Rate
Obamacare? Trumpcare? Why Not Cubacare? All we need to do is sign a contract with Cuba in which Cuba sends over some of its superbly trained doctors — particularly its GPs — to provide health care for free to any American who wants to take up the offer. Cuba already does this for much of Latin America and other parts of the so-called Third World. I suspect the cost of that contract will be billions less than what we are paying for Obamacare — and even less expensive in dollars and lives than what Trumpcare would have cost — while allowing anyone who so chooses to keep their current insurance plan and doctors. by Bruce Mastron
Ending Syria’s Nightmare will Take Pressure From Below Ominous developments in East Syria have drawn the United States and Russia into closer proximity increasing the likelihood of a violent confrontation. The Trump administration has embarked on a dangerous plan to defeat the terrorist militia, ISIS, in Raqqa. But recent comments by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggest that Washington’s long-term strategy may conflict with Moscow’s goal of restoring Syria’s sovereign borders. Something’s got to give. Either Russia ceases its clearing operations in east Syria or Washington agrees to withdraw its US-backed forces when the battle is over. If neither side gives ground, there’s going to be a collision between the two nuclear-armed adversaries. by Mike Whitney
Bill Clinton Laid the Groundwork for Trump’s Ugly Immigration Policies — Our 42nd president contributed a substantial share to the nation’s pattern of xenophobia. By Bill Blum 
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 27, 2017
U.S. Becomes Ungovernable, Elites Blame it on Russians: U.S. rulers are experiencing a “crisis of political governance, a meltdown of the political system,” due to the “collapse of the parties of the duopoly,” said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Philadelphia-based Duboisian scholar. The policies and practice of both parties “became antagonistic to the minimal expectations of the masses. ”The elite didn’t see it coming,” said Monteiro. “In order to reestablish their legitimacy, they have to say that the Russians hacked the election and are threatening western ‘democracy,’ itself.” The real crisis is “their inability to govern the country.”
Washington’s “Humanitarian” Military Doctrine Based on a Lie: It is a crime in Rwanda to point out that Hutus were massacred by Tutsis, as well as the reverse, during the bloodbath of 1994, or even to refer to the events as the “Rwandan genocide,” explained Ann Garrison, an Oakland, California-based journalist and frequent contributor to Black Agenda Report. The United States backs the regime’s narrative, that it was a one-sided genocide against Tutsis, because “the ideological infrastructure of ‘humanitarian war’ is that” the U.S. failed to intervene in Rwanda, and “therefore we have to bomb Syria, Libya, etc,” said Garrison. However, the U.S. did intervene in Rwanda in 1994 — to prevent international efforts to halt the violence, in order to insure that the U.S. favorite, the Tutsi warlord Paul Kagame, would win the war.
“There is a Storm a’Coming: Repression Breeds Revolutionary Resistance”: That’s the title of an essay by Khalfani Malik Khaldun, published by Prison Radio. Khaldun is an inmate of Wabash Valley prison in southern Indiana, and an activist in the prison abolition movement. “The condition of imprisonment is tantamount to enslavement,” he writes. “When prison crafts start walking off their jobs, or refuse to be agents of prison exploitation, the movement is winning. When we can improve our lines of communication from state prison to federal prison, to move as one, we are winning.” And, “when social media can be taken advantage of to promote a prison wide national protest, we are winning.” Listen Here
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.
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
