Daily News Digest April 17, 2017

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 April 17, 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:

Here’s how a 21,000-pound bomb like the one just dropped on ISIS in Afghanistan would affect your cityQuotes of the Day:

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of allied forces in Europe and later president of the U.S., also called it “completely unnecessary” and later told an interviewer,” It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Fleet Admiral William Leahy, the president’s chief of staff, believed that Japan would fall without the necessity of a land invasion. Leahy later wrote that, in dropping the bomb, “we had adopted an ethical standard common to barbarians of the dark ages.” (Eisenhower and Leahy quotes found at: Hiroshima:Who Disgreed With the Atomic Bombing

The US just dropped a MOAB bomb with a blast radius of 1mile on Afghanistan, knowingly taking innocent lives in it’s wake. Let that sink in. — Commander-in-Chief Trump Drops ‘Mother of All Bombs’ on Afghanistan

As The Trump administration is flexing its military muscle, having stood up to Syria and its ally Russia, and while it’s now relishing in the news it has dropped the nation’s largest most-powerful non-nuclear bomb on a cave complex in Eastern Afghanistan, one critic was quick to point out one little-known fact. Wikileaks tweeted a simple but true statement concerning the origin of the cave complex the Americans are so proud to have reportedly destroyed. “Those tunnels the U.S is bombing in Afghanistan? They were built by the CIA,” — WikiLeaks: The Afghan Tunnels the US Just Bombed — “They were built by the CIA”

The Elephant in The Room: Most predictions on catastrophic global warming climate change, are based upon the current rate of change for global warming. The elephant in the room, is that the rate of global warming increases, as global warming increases — the world’s catastrophic global warming is much closer than what is currently projected. As Fidel Castro stated, fifteen years ago in 1992,  “Tomorrow it will be too late to do what we should have done a long time ago!”  — Roland Sheppard

Videos of the Day:

Man facing Eights Years Due to Indicted Cops Wins Release Ivan Potts had already served two years after Baltimore cops recently indicted for racketeering and theft said he had a gun by Stephen Janis and Taya Graham

Trump’s Massive Bomb and Syrian Strike Both Deadly Propaganda Events Vijay Prashad and Paul Jay ask if the US “mother of all bombs” dropped on Afghanistan and the missile attack on a Syrian airbase, are PR events to show Trump and the US military will “fight without restraint” and “take on Russia”

U.S.:

Trump and the United States Ruling Class are the Mothers of all Terrorism: The Dropping of the ‘Mother of All Bombs’ is an Act of mass’ terrorism by the United States and Donald Trump upon the people of Afghanistan, who have suffered 16 Years of constant US bombing raids to deliberately kill civilians. And it was also dropped as a warning to Russia and the World. The United States has Demonstrated, as Fleet Admiral William Leahy Stated in his Opposition to the Bombing of Hiroshina’: “In dropping the bomb, we  (The United States) had adopted an ethical standard common to barbarians of the dark ages.” — Roland Sheppard

Democracy Now: Afghans Respond to Insult of U.S. Dropping Massive Bomb: “Would a Mother Do That to Any Children?” The “Mother of All Bombs” is the nickname for the bomb the U.S. dropped Thursday on Afghanistan, but our guests in Kabul say civilians there are asking if any mother would conduct such an attack. Basir Bita is a mentor with Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, and Dr. Hakim is a medical doctor who has provided humanitarian relief in Afghanistan for over a decade. He works with Afghan Peace Volunteers, an inter-ethnic group of young Afghans dedicated to building nonviolent alternatives to war. We are also joined by Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, who is just back from Afghanistan, and Wazhmah Osman, professor of media and communication at Temple University and member of the Afghan American Artists and Writers Association.MOAB attack on Isis was a baffling choice in cold-blooded terms of cost Using ‘mother of all bombs’ in Afghanistan to kill 36 militants – at $450,000 each – will not change its reputation as a white elephant By Peter Beaumont     An Assessment of the White House Intelligence Report About the Nerve Agent Attack in Khan Shaykhun, SyriaI am responding to your distribution of what I understand is a White House statement claiming intelligence findings about the nerve agent attack on April 4, 2017 in Khan Shaykhun, Syria. My understanding from your note is that this White House intelligence summary was released to you sometime on April 11, 2017. I have reviewed the document carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017.” by Theodore A. Postol

In Just Three Months, Trump Has Escalated Four Middle Eastern Wars In his less than three months in office, Donald Trump has escalated four wars, and all of his escalations have been failures. To be fair, Trump inherited all four wars from Barack Obama: Afghanistan, Iraq v. ISIL, Leftist Kurds v. ISIL in Syria, and targeting support and tactical advice to Saudi Arabia in Yemen. By Juan Cole

Bernie Sanders, the Company Man by Paul Street

The Iron Heel Killers at Work:  Snipers and Infiltrators at Standing Rock: Quashing Protests at Taxpayer Expense  Just this week files and photos obtained by journalist Mike Best from Ohio’s State Highway Patrol confirm that at least one sniper was deployed on a nearby hill, overlooking the protests. First, here’s a look at Indiana’s EMAC, which was asked to join North Dakota’s efforts to silence Standing Rock protests at taxpayer expense. For 18 days, from October to November of last year, 37 officers from Indianapolis PD were sent to North Dakota’s Morton County. Estimates of the cost of sending these cops, including their equipment, transport and commodities, exceeded $725,000. Wisconsin’s Dane County Sheriff’s Office also sent 13 deputies, with a total cost of $91,166 per day for an eight day stint. by Joshua Frank How Can We Stop the 1 Percent From Robbing Us? You’d get prison time for robbing a bank at gunpoint; bankers who rob customers get multimillion-dollar payouts. In an insightful song about outlaws, Woody Guthrie wrote this verse: “As through this world I travel/I see lots of funny men/ Some’ll rob you with a 6-gun/ Some with a fountain pen.” By Jim Hightower Black Liberation/Civil Rights

We’ve always wondered here at Black Agenda Report why none of the pro-capitalist advocates of black collective economic effort have noticed the black agricultural cooperatives of the Federation For Southern Cooperatives which has been around for 50 years, the more recent groundbreaking work of Cooperation Jackson in Jackson Mississippi or discuss the whys and wherefores of worker owned cooperative businesses. An even greater omission that speaks plainly to the class and gender biases of those touting black capitalist remedies as solutions to the dire economic situation of Black America is their failure to EVER mention labor unions, just about the only real world engines for collective economic empowerment ever invented. — Bruce A. Dixon

New Study Found No Link Between Immigration and Increased Crime in Forty Years of Data

Immigrants Do Not Increase Crime, Research Shows A group of criminologists show the claim of a link is false By Charis Kubrin, Graham C. Ousey, Lesley Reid, and Robert AdelmanEnvironment:

The Great Barrier Reef is experiencing mass coral bleaching for the second consecutive year, ushering in another global round of headlines above images of ghostly white corals and dying habitats. About a quarter of all the corals on the reef died from the 2016 event, mostly in the pristine north.  What were once dazzling multi-colored homes for myriad marine species are now graveyards of algae-swamped coral. Now the reef is bleaching again, with corals in the reef’s central area, popular with tourists, suffering the most. It’s too early to say how many of the corals will die from the bleaching. — Breitbart’s James Delingpole Denies Danger of Great Barrier Reef Bleaching — Again

For Cod’s Sake The filmmaker behind Sacred Cod, a new Discovery Channel documentary, talks about the future of a collapsing fishery “There are no cod left in Cape Cod,” says a New England chef with a shrug of his shoulders. And he really means no cod. The salty docks of Gloucester, Massachusetts—once the hub of American fishing culture, bustling with wind-blown fishermen hauling nets full of squirming fish—is nearly deserted. Due to decades of overfishing, coupled with warming oceans, fish counts within New England’s cod fisheries have dwindled to 3 to 4 percent of their historic levels, according to National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates. Populations are facing collapse. By Mikey Jane Moran Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:

Pruitt’s Coal Mine Speech Heralds Resurrection of “Dirty Polluting Past” EPA chief outlined vision for agency which guts environmental protections and bolsters fossil fuel industries by Nadia Prupis

Labor:

Economy:

Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Inflation Charts The CPI chart on the home page reflects our estimate of inflation for today as if it were calculated the same way it was in 1990. The CPI on the Alternate Data Series tab here reflects the CPI as if it were calculated using the methodologies in place in 1980. In general terms, methodological shifts in government reporting have depressed reported inflation, moving the concept of the CPI away from being a measure of the cost of living needed to maintain a constant standard of living.

World:

Australia Beckons a War With China by John Pilger Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:

[Video] The April Theses: Lenin rearms the Bolsheviks  In the latest video from our “In Defence of October” series celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Alan Woods — editor of “Bolshevism: the Road to Revolution” — discusses the events surrounding Lenin’s return to Russia on 16th April 1917. By Alan Woods Cancer Warning Labels Based on California’s Proposition 65 Labels warning that a product contains compounds that may cause cancer, birth defects, or reproductive harm are now required on many household items sold in California. But people all over the country see them because many companies put the labels on all items that contain these compounds, even if they’re to be sold in other states. The warning labels can be found on many kinds of products, such as electrical wires, jewelry, padlocks, dishes, flashlights, and pesticides, to name just a few.

Will meat come with a warning label in California? New Research Shows Greediest Charter School Operators Looting Taxpayers Via Real Estate Deals They run K-12 public schools, but reap private fortunes. By Jennifer Berkshire