Daily News Digest August 20, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!

During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

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!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day: 

New Jersey Lifts Prison Ban of ‘The New Jim Crow’ After ACLU Criticism Bendib: “Domestic” TerrorismQuotes of the Day:

A Fraction of the 1% Own and Control The Mass Media:

In 2004, Bagdikian’s revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations — Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) — now control most of the media industry, in the U.S. General Electric’s NBC is a close sixth

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called “alarmist” for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly. In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote ‘in the U.S., fewer than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass media’—controlling almost all of America’s newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. He predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies. This was greeted with skepticism at the time. When the 6th edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market. More than 1 in 4 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world’s largest media corporation. —Media Reform Information Center

Videos of the Day:

Why Corporate Media Doesn’t Talk Honestly About Racism Media conversations about racism are rarely accurate, let alone honest, facilitating the status quo and hindering systemic change. A discussion between Dylan Rodriguez, Eddie Conway, and Jaqueline Luqman

How The Mainstream Media Fuels America’s Income Inequality Machine From medicare for all to neoliberal tax subsidies for major corporations the mainstream media often bolsters the notion that a more fair and equitable society is not possible

 The “Toxic 100” Worst Polluters Michael Ash of PERI discusses the “Toxic 100” index, which ranks the top 100 corporations in the US, including the U.S. government, according to the degree to which they pollute the air, the water, and contribute to greenhouse gases. The index assists in divestment campaigns and in identifying opportunities for green growth

A Lack Of Migrant Labor is Forcing Farmers in the Us To Stop Growing Crops

The Secret History of Koch IndustriesDe-Facto Annexation of Kashmir Means India as a Secular State is Ending

Democracy Now! : The Great Land Robbery: How Federal Policies Dispossessed Black Americans of Millions of Acres Over the 20th century, black people in the U.S. were dispossessed of 12 million acres of land. Half of that loss — 6 million acres — occurred over just two decades, from 1950 to 1969, a period largely associated with the civil rights struggle. This mass land dispossession, which affected 98% of black agricultural land owners, is part of the pattern of institutional racism and discrimination that has contributed to the racial wealth gap in the United States. Many of the driving forces behind this land theft were legal and originated in federal policies, as documented by Vann Newkirk, staff writer at The Atlantic. His latest piece for the magazine is the September cover story: “The Great Land Robbery: The shameful story of how 1 million black families have been ripped from their farms.”

North Korea Suspends Talks With South Korea Because of U.S. Sanctions  While U.S.-North Korea nuclear talks fail to proceed because of a lack of unanimity within the Trump administration, the North suspended peace talks with the South because of the U.S.’s refusal to lift economic sanctions, says Tim Shorrock

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.— The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich!

The Priorities of the United States A Comparison Between Military Spending and Spending to Repair The Crumbling Infrastructure:

America’s Defense Budget Is Bigger Than You Think  Each year, Congress approves hundreds of billions of dollars for the US defense budget—but the real number exceeds $1 trillion.   Final tally: $1.2542 trillion So our final annual tally for war, preparations for war, and the impact of war comes to more than $1.25 trillion, more than double the Pentagon’s base budget. If the average taxpayer were aware that this amount was being spent in the name of national defense—with much of it wasted, misguided, or simply counterproductive—it might be far harder for the national-security state to consume ever-growing sums with minimal public pushback. For now, however, the gravy train is running full speed ahead, and its main beneficiaries—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and their cohort—are laughing all the way to the bank. By William D. Hartung and Mandy SmithbergerThe Nation’s Infrastructure Needs ImprovementAcross the United States, years of neglect (Deferred Maintanecnce)-R.S.) have resulted in crumbling roads, bridges in need of repair, inadequate public transport, outdated school buildings, and other critical infrastructure needs. In its most recent report card on the condition of America’s infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave U.S. infrastructure a D+ or “poor” rating. The engineers estimated the cost of bringing America’s infrastructure to a state of good repair (a grade of B) by 2025 at $4.6 trillion, of which only about 55 percent has been committed.^[4] Improving roads and bridges alone would require $1.1 trillion more than states, localities, and the federal government have allocated. Schools need another $380 billion beyond what’s been invested. (See Figure 1 and Table 2 in the Appendix.) Other studies have supported and built on the ASCE findings. For instance, America’s drinking water treatment and distribution systems need $473 billion in investments over the next 20 years, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.^[5] Over half of America’s public schools need to be repaired, renovated, or modernized, according to a U.S. Department of Education survey.^[6] And almost 20 percent of the country’s roads are in poor condition, according to the Federal Highway Administration’s most recent survey.^[7Environment

The Isle of White: a Tale of the Have-Lots Versus the Have-Nots  The island of North Haven in the Penobscot Bay, Maine, is an eastern establishment, white-shoe summer-place overlain on a diesel swilling, bottom feeding lobster-industry that supports the year-round residents of this tiny, fractal-shored resort. It is washed by the Gulf Stream and reports the fastest rising ocean temperatures in the Western hemisphere, dramatic sea level rises and a devastated eco-system. Comprehensively cleared of its old-growth hardwood forests in the nineteenth century, its second growth pines are now attacked by bark beetles moving north under the duress of a warming climate. In place of the diseased trees, the severely invasive, non-native Buckthorn is proliferating. Lashed by several hurricanes in the twentieth century, the island now awaits the first of this century’s superstorms. Already, beaches are eroding into the bay at alarming rates. By John Davis

Put an End to the Endless War Inflicted Upon Our National Forests  To facilitate the fabrication of stumps, roads, and erosion in America’s National Forests, now the Trump administration has proposed to alter the USDA Forest Service’s [USFS] implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA]. The 1969 NEPA was specifically designed to achieve three main things: 1) require agencies like the Forest Service to use science to take a full and fair hard look at the potential environmental impacts of projects such as timber sales, 2) clearly disclose to the public this scientific information and the reasoning underlying their decisions, and 3) provide a clear legal mechanism for you, me, and all Americans to be meaningfully involved in the decision-making process on our National Forests and other public lands. This power-grab by the Trump administration would trash all three of the NEPA’s fundamental goals. One of the ways they intend to circumvent NEPA and increase logging is by drastically expanding the use of the “Categorical Exclusion [CE]”. By Steven Krichbaum

When we talk about the U.S. as the “world’s policeman,” much of the beat Uncle Sam walks is paved with oil. The Persian Gulf, the Niger River Basin Region of Africa, the Horn of Africa, the South China Sea, Central Asia, Venezuela and Libya are all places of U.S. “national interest” because U.S. policymakers are really interested in preserving the dominant role of hydrocarbons in the global economy. Why else would the U.S. Navy base its Fifth Fleet in Bahrain? Or how about the U.S. base in Djibouti or the increasing tempo of deadly kinetic operations in Somalia? Both have everything to do with the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, strategically located between Djibouti and war-torn Yemen. Along with the Strait of Hormuz and the Suez Canal, it’s one of the Middle East’s three major oil transmission points. — We Can’t Confront Climate Change While Lavishly Funding the Pentagon

Week 134: Trump Will Save Endangered Species Only When It’s Cheap Plus, Bernhardt tries to sink offshore wind, and our first-term president takes credit for building a plastics factory that was announced seven years ago.  Scientists warned us three months ago that as many as one million species could face extinction as a result of human failures like habitat destruction, poaching, and climate change. It was a call to action. A rallying cry for all governments, businesses, and individuals to make a heroic effort to preserve the world’s disappearing biodiversity.   This week, the Trump administration responded . . . by gutting the nation’s most important species protection law. By   Brian Palmer

As Climate Crisis Grows, Temperatures Set Global RecordsCivil Rights/Black Liberation:

To End Private Prisons and Prison Forced Slave Slave Labor or  The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness! — Eliminate the Exception Clause In the 13thAmendment to the Constitution!:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Sanders Unveils Plan to End Cash Bail, Ban Private Prisons, and ‘Fundamentally Transform’ US Criminal Justice System “If we stand together, we can eliminate private prisons and detention centers. No more profiteering from locking people up.” Decrying America’s status as the “world’s leading jailer,” Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday released a comprehensive plan to confront the crisis of mass incarceration, end the criminalization of poverty, and dramatically overhaul the U.S. criminal justice system. By Jake Johnson 

Labor:

The Silence of the Oil Workers’ Trade Union Bureaucracy is Deafening — Oil Bosses ‘Arrange’ a Crowd for Trump Rally:  Workers Were Reportedly Ordered Not to Protest or Show Any ‘Resistance’ at Trump Rally in Pennsylvania “Field reports from the Banana Republic of America.” The choice for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County was clear Tuesday: Either stand in a giant hall waiting for President Donald Trump to speak or take the day off with no pay. “Your attendance is not mandatory,” said the rules that one contractor relayed to employees, summarizing points from a memo that Shell sent to union leaders a day ahead of the visit to the $6 billion construction site. But only those who showed up at 7 am, scanned their ID cards, and prepared to stand for hours—through lunch but without lunch—would be paid.”NO SCAN, NO PAY,” a supervisor for that contractor wrote. By Jake Johnson

Mass layoffs for workers; millions for GM, Ford and Chrysler CEOs Next month, with the expiration of the labor contract for 155,000 US autoworkers at Ford, GM, and Chrysler, auto executives will once again demand that workers sacrifice their own livelihoods for the “good of the company.” Tough economic times are around the corner, the companies will say. The automakers are strapped for cash and need a war chest to confront a turbulent world economy, stiffening global competition, and the disruption caused by driverless cars and electric vehicles. If workers do not want to see more layoffs—like the thousands already fired at GM this year—they had better work longer, harder, and for less money. The United Auto Workers (UAW) —whose executives took kickbacks from the auto companies—will say that workers have no choice but to accept the companies’ demands. But the fact is that every dollar taken from workers through pay cuts goes to pay for stock buybacks, financial speculation and the yachts and mansions of the corporate executives and the billionaire capitalists whose interests they represent.

Economy:

Jeffrey Epstein Learned His Sexual Depravity from Wall Street; Then Took It to the Next Level From 1976 to 1981, Jeffrey Epstein worked for the Wall Street investment bank, Bear Stearns. Epstein was found dead in his jail cell on August 10 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking of underage girls, dozens of whom he allegedly sexually assaulted after grooming them first with “inappropriate touching.” Bear Stearns collapsed in the early days of the 2008 financial crisis and was purchased by JPMorgan Chase. One of the last acts of Bear Stearns’ CEO, Jimmy Cayne, was to make a $2 million payment to a woman who charged that the legendary Chairman of Bear Stearns, Ace Greenberg, had engaged in “inappropriate touching.” The young woman was said to have had a witness to her charges. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

 World:

Further mass protests in Hong Kong Hundreds of thousands of people took part in a mass rally and march in Hong Kong yesterday in defiance of a police ban and despite driving rain. The protest movement sparked by attempts by the city’s administration to pass legislation allowing extradition to China has now entered its 11th week, with no sign of subsiding. By Peter SymondsIndia, Pakistan exchange artillery-fire, threats over Kashmir Tensions between South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed states have escalated in recent days, with India and Pakistan accusing each other of preparing to attack, and their military forces exchanging lethal artillery fire across the Line of Control (LoC) that separates the Indian and Pakistani-controlled portions of Kashmir. On Saturday, New Delhi said one of its soldiers had been killed in what it called an unprovoked Pakistan-initiated, cross-border artillery exchange. By Keith Jones

 Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare! 

 Lung Disease Outbreak: First Casualties of the War on Vaping?  On August 15, Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services announced “a cluster of people with severe lung disease who all reported recent vaping or dabbing (vaping marijuana oils, extracts, or concentrates).”  CNN reports more than 120 similar cases nationwide based on a survey of state health departments. By Thomas Knapp

Campaign Renews Demand for Ban on ‘Killer Robots,’ Calls Out US Obstruction Without a binding treaty requiring “meaningful human control over the use of force,” say campaigners, lives could “be taken based on algorithms” By Andrea Germanos

Daily News Digest August 12, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!

During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

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!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

While in El Pasco, Trump, the Terrorist President, Responded to His Follower’s White Terrorist Shootings,  in El Paso Texas, by Descending Upon and Terrorizing Immigrant Workers and Terrorizing Their Children in Mississippi, who had recently won a workplace battle against sexual harassment, national origin and race discrimination.  From: the August 9 Democracy Now ShowMass ICE Raids in Mississippi After Workers Fought for Better Conditions Leave Kids Without Parents:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swept through seven poultry processing plants in Mississippi this week and arrested 680 people. It was the largest single-state raid in U.S. history. The mass arrests also came on the first day of the school year, and some children walked home from school only to find their doors locked and their family members missing. Wednesday’s raids targeted chicken processing plants operated by Koch Foods, one of the largest poultry producers in the U.S. Last year, the company paid out $3.75 million to settle an Equal Employment Opportunities Commission class-action suit charging the company with sexual harassment, national origin and race discrimination, and retaliation against Latino workers at one of its Mississippi plants. Labor activists say it’s the latest raid to target factories where immigrant workers have organized unions, fought back against discrimination or challenged unsafe and unsanitary conditions.

Images of the Day: 

Linking El Paso Massacre to ICE Raids, Sanders Says Trump’s Campaign of Terror Against Immigrants Must Be DefeatedQuotes of the Day:

Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone. — The Diary of Anne Frank Mortality Quotes

The interlocking institutions work in many ways but one means is the so-called “revolving door.” The merger of finance capital with government has been well documented by Nomi Prins. This CBS News analysis lists the names of Goldman Sachs executives “at the highest reaches of power both in Washington and around the world.” Two recent reports by Public Citizen document the connections between Federal Trade Commission officials and the corporations they are supposed to regulate and the routine transfer of politicians to the front ranks of corporate lobbyists. The same kind of dual office holding is business as usual for the military-industrial complex. ”— Climate Crisis Means the Ruling Class has Failed. Can the Working Class Inherit the Earth?

Politicians have long manipulated public perceptions of immigration, turning immigrants into a scapegoat for issues like unemployment and economic troubles. In recent months, immigrants and refugees have also been tacked with the blame for terrorism by populist leaders like Donald Trump. Immigrants, however, are not to blame for terrorism or a litany of other legitimate grievances. Populists simply use them because they’re an easy target. — It’s not just Trump. Immigrants are the global right’s main scapegoat.

 Videos of the Day:

Democracy Now! Mass ICE Raids in Mississippi After Workers Fought for Better Conditions Leave Kids Without Parents

Death by Police is Now the 6th Leading Cause of Death Among Young Men

Exclusive: Baltimore Cop Convicted of Pulling Gun on Pedestrian He Almost Hit

New IPCC Report Warns of Vicious Cycle Between Soil Degradation and Climate Change

In the Quest for Gaza’s Oil: New Israeli Military Strategies for Annexation and Undermining Palestinian Identity

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.— The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace!

‘Progressive’ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Votes for War Budget!:

Deficit Hawks Are Enabling The Next US War — The U.S. Budget is Rigged To Hold Essential Domestic Programs Hostage o The Pentagon’s War Chest. Back in April, progressives in Congress succeeded in halting a vote that included a military budget increase.  In July, most of those same progressives — including powerhouses like Reps. Barbara Lee and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — voted to support a military budget that was slightly larger even than what they’d rejected in April. What changed? As Democratic and White House leadership announced a backroom budget compromise and put it up for a vote in July, congressional progressives faced a seemingly impossible choice: They could vote to support new spending on programs that alleviate poverty and create opportunity, but they would also have to support more spending on the U.S. war machine. Or, they could vote against new Pentagon funds and risk massive budget cuts to programs like housing and food assistance, education and job training. By Lindsay KoshgarianChelsea Manning faces $441,000 in fines and another year in jail for refusing to testify against WikiLeaksFederal District Judge Anthony Trenga rejected a motion Monday from imprisoned whistleblower Chelsea Manning to reconsider the imposition of daily fines for her principled refusal to testify before a grand jury impaneled to bring frame-up charges against WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange. . . . The 31-year-old former Army intelligence analyst is being vindictively pursued by the Trump administration for her role in exposing US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. She leaked to WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of military war logs, diplomatic cables and the infamous Collateral Murder video, which showed an Apache helicopter airstrike in Baghdad that killed at least a dozen civilians, including two Reuters journalists. By Niles NiemuthEnvironment:

Killing Fields

Best Science That Money Can Buy: Trump’s EPA Kills

Headline: Trump’s EPA defies California rules, says glyphosate in Monsanto’s Roundup is OK

Internal Monsanto records just filed in court show that a corporate intelligence group hired to “to take the temperature on current regulatory attitudes for glyphosate” reported that the White House could be counted on to defend the company’s Roundup herbicides. In a report attached to a July 2018 email to Monsanto global strategy official Todd Rands, the strategic intelligence and advisory firm Hakluyt  reported to Monsanto the following:“A domestic policy adviser at the White House said, for instance: ‘We have Monsanto’s back on pesticides regulation. We are prepared to go toe-to-toe on any disputes. — White House Has “Monsanto’s Back on Pesticides,” Newly Revealed Document Says

Dow Chemical has close ties to the President. Among other things, the company reportedly donated $1 million for Trump’s inauguration and its CEO previously played a chief advisory role to the president, heading up his now defunct “American Manufacturing Council.” — NRDC Sues EPA Over Latest Refusal to Ban Pesticide Toxic to Kids’ Brains

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must ban chlorpyrifos—a pesticide linked to learning disabilities in children—from food in the U.S., according to litigation filed today in the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals by Earthjustice on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and a coalition of labor and health organizations. It is the second lawsuit the groups have filed against EPA over the chemical since the Trump administration refused to take action in 2017. “We will not stand by while the Trump administration fights to keep this poison on the food we feed our kids,” said Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, senior scientist at NRDC. . . .   — NRDC Sues EPA Over Latest Refusal to Ban Pesticide Toxic to Kids’ Brains

“EPA knows this stuff is toxic—its own scientists have been sounding the alarm for years now—but this administration is shameless in its push to keep it on the market. We are urging the court to side with children over a powerful chemical industry with friends in high places. Chlorpyrifos does not belong on our food or in our fields.” — NRDC Sues EPA Over Latest Refusal to Ban Pesticide Toxic to Kids’ Brains

Climate Crisis Means the Ruling Class has Failed. Can the Working Class Inherit the Earth? The climate crisis is proof positive that the ruling class is an utter failure — but it will not fall on its own. Can the working class rise to the challenge? It sure will help if we understand that our class interests are not merely the economic needs of working people — no matter how important that is — but the universal interests of a healthy planet for all the people. Let’s start acting like it.The corporate solutions to the climate crisis must dodge the causes of the crisis. The ruling class uses deception and secrecy to limit public debate. When the facts become obvious and overwhelming corporate politicians simply refuse to debate it. Gag rules are back in fashion. When the people demand a Green New Deal the same politicians water it down and disarm it. By Richard Moser

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

The first civil and human rights movement by and for Black people started during the Civil War and the period of Black Reconstruction that followed. It was a time of radical hopes for many freed slaves. But it was also a time of betrayal. Then President Andrew Johnson and the non-radical Republicans, in collusion with the Democratic Party, the party of slavery, sold out the early post-war promises for full equality and “40 acres and a mule”. Instead, the promise of equality was soon replaced by the restoration of the property rights of the former slave owners in the South. This was accomplished by the Compromise of 1877   How did they accomplish this betrayal? The answer is simple—terrorism. They used police and terroristic Ku Klux Klan violence. These extra-legal activities laid the basis for the overthrow of Black Reconstruction and the institutionalization of legal segregation (Jim Crow) in the former slave states. To enforce Jim Crow, Black people were, for decades, indiscriminately lynched and framed. — The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights Movement

Roaming Charges: Small Stains on the Pavement Many of the liberals talking the loudest about “white supremacy” on MSDNC have only known its privileges, thus they would have us believe white supremacy resides only in the vile minds of the KKK and Aryan Nations, instead of the racist forces operating inside the banks, the school boards, the police, the FBI, the Pentagon that degrade, impoverish and kill people every single day. By Jeffrey St. Clair

Mass-Shootings as Expressions of U.S. Racism Nineteenth century U.S. racism, resting in part on biblical myth (the curse of Ham) and Social Darwinist notions of racial hierarchies, focused on the defense of slavery and suppression of uppity blacks. Its cruelest, most terrorist tool was the lynching. Twenty-first century racism rests on the myth of a lost golden era of white (“White”) prosperity and happiness in the Promised Land, a halcyon time gradually stolen by waves of unwelcome unassimilable brown people; it focuses on whites as victims, and the expulsion and exclusion of these others. Its current weapon of choice is the mass-shooting. By Gary Leupp 

 American Exceptionalism = Mass Murder  By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor     U.S. police agencies, including the FBI, are incapable of mounting an effective offensive against their soul mates in the armed white right. “The FBI has always behaved as if armed white supremacists were a potential reserve force to help crush Black rebellions.”    In the Age of Trump, the New York Times and other corporate media have discovered that militant white supremacists are over-represented among the practitioners of the nation’s peculiar pathology: massshootings.                                                              Patrick Crusius, the El Paso gunman who last weekend killed 22 people and injured dozens, mostly Latinos, was apparently a devotee of the French racist writer Renaud Camus, who warned that whites were in danger of being “replaced” by  non-white immigrants.      Before going on his Wal-Mart rampage, Crusius posted online that he was resisting “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”            The Times notes  that the shooter who killed 51 people at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand , last March, left a manifesto with the same title as Camus’ book, The Great Replacement, which is also thought to have inspired the shooter that killed 11 congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue  in October of last year, as well as the gunman that attacked a synagogue outside San Diego , in April.     According to “replacement theory,” Jews are the orchestrators of non-white people’s incursions on “white” territory. The white supremacists that marched in Charlottesville, Virginia , during the first summer of Trump’s presidency, chanted, “Jews will not replace us!”

Labor:

Government Union Busters:  You Can Bet That the ICE Armed ICE Raiders in Mississippi Did Not Just Target Immigrants, but also, That ICE Targeted Those Workers, That Were Targeted by Their Employers, as the Worker Leaders, Who Were Involved in the Struggles Against Discrimination of the Chicken Factories and the Unionization of Those Plants!

Economy  

#Trillion Swindle: Higher Education Usury

Student Debt Crisis: Today, August 7 2019, The Student Debt Crisis Reached  $1,654,792,448,885!

The Truth About Student Debt: 7 Facts No One Is Talking About  The facts seem stark: About 45 million Americans now owe a stunning $1.6 trillion in student debt. That’s roughly one in every four adults, nearly double the number who had higher education loans 15 years ago. Among millennials, the number is one in three, often cited as a reason why so many young adults can’t afford to buy a home, get married, have a family or move out of their parents’ basements. eanwhile, the average amount that undergraduates borrow has shot up 60 percent over the same period, and defaults on loans have jumped as well. More than one-quarter of students can’t keep up with their payments 12 years after borrowing, vs. 18 percent just a few years ago, and that number is projected to hit 40 percent by 2023. With default can come heartache: It can ruin people’s credit scores, wreck their ability to borrow or rent an apartment and, in some areas, cause their professional licenses to be revoked.   Given all that, it’s not exactly shocking that a lot of people are using the word “crisis” to describe student debt these days. Or that college loans and the pain they can cause have become a hot topic in the 2020 presidential campaign. Nearly every candidate is turning up the hyperbole and offering a proposal for debt relief, from the modest (hello, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke) to the sweeping (nice to see you, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren). By Diane Harris

Malaysia Indicts 17 of the “Untouchables” at Goldman Sachs  When it comes to serial and systemic frauds perpetrated by big banks on Wall Street, the U.S. Department of Justice typically punts. It will either not charge the bank itself or it will issue a felony charge along with a non-prosecution agreement that lets the bank settle the charges without a trial. These tactics by the Justice Department are why Wall Street crimes remain serial and systemic in nature.  This morning, the Attorney General in Malaysia stunned Goldman Sachs with an indictment of 17 of its former and current executives. That came on the heels of criminal charges filed last December by Malaysian authorities in the same matter against three Goldman Sachs subsidiaries and two former Goldman employees, Tim Leissner and Roger Ng. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

‘Huge Victory for Press Freedom’: Brazil Supreme Court Bars Bolsonaro From Investigating Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept, applauded the court for protecting journalism against “repressive, retaliatory acts threatened by the Bolsonaro government” By Jake Johnson

 Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!

Big Pharma: Gouges, Casualties, and the Congressional Remedy! ­The Congress can overturn the abuses of Big Pharma and its “pay or die,” subsidized business model for its drugs. Big Pharma’s trail of greed, power, and cruelty gets worse every year. Its products and practices take hundreds of thousands of lives in the U.S. from over-prescriptions, lethal combinations of prescriptions, ineffective or contaminated drugs, and dangerous side-effects. The biggest drug dealers in the U.S. operate legally. Their names are emblazoned in ads and promotions everywhere. Who hasn’t heard of Eli Lilly, Merck, Pfizer, and Novartis? Big Pharma revenues and profits have skyrocketed. In 2017, the U.S. consumers spent $333.4 billion on prescription drugs. By Ralph Nader

Daily News Digest August, 2019

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Daily News Digest August 29, 2019

Daily News Digest August 28, 2019

Daily News Digest August 27, 2019

Daily News Digest August 26, 2019

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Daily News Digest August 22, 2019

Daily News Digest August 21, 2019

Daily News Digest August 20, 2019

Daily News Digest August 19, 2019

Daily News Digest August 15, 2019

Daily News Digest August 14, 2019

Daily News Digest August 13, 2019

Daily News Digest August 12, 2019

Daily News Digest August 9, 2019

Daily News Digest August 8, 2019

Daily News Digest August 7, 2019

Daily News Digest August 6, 2019

Daily News Digest August 5, 2019

Daily News Digest August 5, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!

During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

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!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.    Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!

Images of the Day: 

U.S. Interest Payments to Equal Social Security Spending by 2048: CBO (But Every Year, Social Security Uses it Trust Funds to Buy US Savings Bonds. So the Principal and the Amount of Interest Due to Social Security Keeps Expanding and So the Debt Owed, in Interest to Social Security Keeps Expanding the Debt Bubble)

What Crisis? It Ain’t Broke, So No Need To Fix It

Quotes of the Day:

Speaking About the New Federal Budget and National Debt Increase.  Almost All Major Newscasters Newspeak That There Is A Social Security Debt Crisis  — Setting The Stage For  Impending Cuts In Social Security Benefits.:

The Myth:   Both of those, Medicare and Social Security, on trend to double or nearly double. And they are already one of the largest spending amounts, Judy. And if you look at this, Medicare, Judy, right now, it is on track to run through its trust fund in seven years.  So, if lawmakers don’t deal with this, benefits will be cut. —  PBS Newhour, The Long-Term Debt Mplications of Senate’s New 2-Year Budget

The Facts:   The bottom line is that Social Security is more financially sound today than it has been throughout most of its 69-year history, according to Social Security trustees’ numbers. If workers in 2050, who will be earning on average 68 percent more in real, inflation-adjusted dollars than they are today, have to pay 1 or 2 percent more of their income in taxes—as they have in the past—they won’t be able to complain much. They will still enjoy higher living standards than we do today. And Social Security will provide much larger real annual benefits for longer retirements when their turn comes. The impending crisis of Social Security is a myth. Without it, however, Bush’s initiative to slash benefits and partially privatize the program wouldn’t have a prayer. — Mark Weisbrot and Dean Baker  What Crisis? It Ain’t Broke, So No Need To Fix It

The Bailing Out of Wall Street: 

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression… The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.  The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG. — Bernie Sanders, Bernie, It’s Time to Audit the New York Fed

 Videos of the Day:

Negative Interest, Debt Jubilee?As interest rates head into negative territory and Greek debt yields less than US Treasury debt, DOUBLE DOWN asks economist and historian, Dr. Michael Hudson if any economic theory has ever suggested negative interest rates. Not since back to the Bronze Age does he recall anything like this being suggested. That’s because, for thousands of years, economic beings have chosen to hold debt jubilees. Negative rates achieve that a bit slower but they do the same thing eventually by bringing the volume of savings on the asset side of the balance sheet down to the volume of debt that can be repaid. Hudson believes rates will quickly go as negative as 25% …

Democracy Now!: “You’re Gonna Kill Me”: Bodycam Video Shows Dallas Officers Mocking Man as He Died Pinned to Ground

Why did Tulsi Gabbard Meet with Assad? Let’s Hear it From Her.

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.— The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace!

For one, they are driven by sane powerful economic forces, gainfully employed in afflicting a vulnerable population. The rapacious, unregulated capitalism of the kind that now shapes the Trump agenda prepared the ground of the opioid crisis in Appalachia, the Midwest Rust Belt, and elsewhere by engendering the inequalities and hardships that drive so many to despair.— The Opioid and Trump Addictions: Symptoms of the Same Malaise

As the Prisons Grow — From the New Jim Crow to the New Slavery:  America Has Gulags in Its Own Backyard    Plucking chickens for for-profit companies, caring for elderly patients without any training, and other forms of hard, uncompensated labor are sanctioned in the United States as court-mandated rehabilitation for drug-related charges. As the deficit of rehab care in the U.S. grew during the far-reaching opioids crisis over recent years, what are essentially work camps—where detainees work for no money or face prison time, despite often not even being convicted of a crime—started to pop up all over the country.  In a hard-hitting series for Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, investigative journalist Shoshana Walter details the shocking discoveries she and her former Reveal colleague Amy Julia Harris, now at The New York Times, made as they investigated long-term residential treatment programs in which recovering addicts worked for such employers as Exxon, Shell and Walmart—and received no pay. By Robert Scheer‘We Cannot Keep Handing Over Billions to Military-Industrial Complex,’ Says Sanders as Senate Passes Massive Pentagon Budget“The Pentagon is set to grow by $90 billion and reach $738 billion next year. For $90 billion, we could double nutrition assistance or provide $7,000 to every child in poverty.” By Jake Johnson

Those ‘rat infested’ places in Baltimore? They’re owned by Trump’s son-in-law Davon Jones doesn’t have to look far to see the irony in President Donald Trump’s tweets that Baltimore is a “rat and rodent infested mess.” His apartment owned by the president’s son-in-law has been invaded by mice since he moved in a year ago. “I don’t know how they come in,” Jones says. “Every time I catch them, they come right back.” Jared Kushner’s family real estate firm owns thousands of apartments and townhomes in the Baltimore area, and some have been criticized for the same kind of disrepair and neglect that the president has accused local leaders of failing to address. Residents have complained about mold, bedbugs, leaks and, yes, mice — plenty of mice. And they say management appears in no hurry to fix the problems.Environment:

‘We Urgently Need to Change Our Way of Living,’ Experts Warn as Heat Wave Causes Historic Ice Melt in Greenland“More than 12 billion tons of water will have entered the ocean by tonight, permanently raising sea levels.” The heat wave that smashed records in Europe last week has now reached Greenland, where it is causing the world’s second-largest ice sheet to endure one of its most exteme melting events ever documented, leading experts to express fresh concerns about what the global climate crisis will mean for future sea level rise. By Jessica Corbett

According to the U.S. Geological Survey3, if all of the ice caps melted, it is estimated that sea level could rise more than 80 meters or 262 feet. The potential catastrophic results of global warming and the threat to humanity’s future should become an immediate concern.  If thr Greenland Ice sheet melted the sea level would rise 6.55meters or over  21 feet!                                                                                    Table 1. Estimated potential maximum sea-level rise from the total melting of present-day glaciers. Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Reparations Rising – With Permission from White Democrats  Black people are not obligated to defend opportunists and servants of 
white capital in Baltimore just because they were called out by Trump. By Glen Ford, BAR executive editorFreedom Rider: Trump and Baltimore   
Anyone feeling the need to defend Baltimore from Trump’s opinions ought to talk about what really ails that city. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR editor and senior columnistTrump and Black Misleadership Class: Collaborators in the Defense of White Power Black people are not obligated to defend opportunists and servants of 
white capital in Baltimore just because they were called out by Trump. By Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist​​​​​​​Russiagate Fanatic Michael Isikoff’s Curious Project Seymour Hersh has been right about some of the biggest stories of our times, and he thinks the DNC email theft was an inside job. By Ann Garrison , BAR contributor Megan Rapinoe: Fake Progressive The con of diversity is all that distinguishes Democratic Party elites and white feminists from the big Orange Menace in the White House. By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributorBad Hombre Defense By Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residenceWait!
Call the Cream Team—
Dershbag’s a lawyer,
Slick Willy’s a lawyer—
Wait!
Before you suicide the accused
Serial pedophile predator
who could flip and name names,
Before he has a heart attack, or
viagra overdose                                                                 Before he hangs himself with
dental floss; or a garbage bag
There’s the Bad Hombre Defense:
He’s rich, he can have any woman
he wants! Why would he fool with
teenage trailer trash? Why? Why? . . .

The “Total Anarchy” of Wet Cops No matter how many Black people cops kill and abuse, corporate media amplify voices that shift victimhood onto the police force.By Josmar Trujillo A Legacy of Violence and Land Appropriation Bethesda Moses African Cemetery  Montgomery County officials thought no one would care about a “bunch of dead black folks.” By BAR Editor and Columnist, Dr. Marsha Adebayo and Chris Rigaux

Nancy Pelosi: The leader of the “Hizb al-Shaitan” Pelosi is not transparent like Trump in her cunning moves but, like Trump, is averse to any challenge to the status quo. By B.R. GowaniMarkets and Margins: An interview with Etant Dupain The Haitian market woman has been marginalized by the same forces that oppress and prey on her nation. By The Public Archive 

Chicago Police Compiling Dossiers on People Who Speak at Police Board Meetings Even cops that testify before the board have had their files updated. “’Totally inappropriate,’ said the city’s newly elected Black mayor.” By Monique Judge

Black Agenda Radio for Week of July 29, 2019      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:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.

• US Was Model for South African Apartheid The US acted as midwife to South Africa’s apartheid system, said  Gerald Horne, author of “US Imperialism and Anti-Communism vs. Liberation of Southern Africa, from Rhodes to Mandela.” Horne, a professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and possibly Black America’s most prolific living political writer, said the US Carnegie Corporation formulated “the blueprint” for South Africa’s apartheid system, imposed in 1948 as “a combination of neo-slavery and Jim Crow on steroids.”

• Mumia Book Supplants Howard Zinn “Mumia has decided to go to the next level and replace Howard Zinn,” the revered author of “A People’s History of the United States,” said Todd Steven Burroughs, an author and biographer of Mumia Abu Jamal, at a roundtable discussion of Abu Jamal and Stephen Vittoria three-part book, “Murder Incrporated,” at Newark, New Jersey’s Source of Knowledge bookstore. Mumia and VIttoria bring a “decolonized perspective” to US history, said Burroughs. On Prison Radio, Abu Jamal said voters should reject Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy because of his support for the 1990s Crime Bill, a bankruptcy act that enslaved students to college debt, and the Iraq war.

• Mackler Running Against War “If we’re going to change anything in the word,” said Socialist Action Party presidential candidate Jeff Mackler, “we need to build a massive, united social movement that challenges the inherent prerogatives, interventions and wars of capitalism.”

Labor:

Economy:

Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Unemployment Charts   The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.  The U-3 unemployment rate   is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.  The ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment Rate for July 2019 is 21.0%.

Bernie, It’s Time to Audit the New York Fed  On July 21, 2011 the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), released the first-ever government audit of the Federal Reserve in its 98-year history. The audit came about as a result of the determined efforts of Senator Bernie Sanders to force transparency on the secretive Wall Street bailout actions of the Federal Reserve during the 2008 financial crash and the years that followed. Sanders successfully tacked an amendment on the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 that mandated a top-to-bottom audit of how much the Fed had spent on its bailout and the financial institutions to whom it went. By Pam Martens and Russ MartensWorld:

UN Report on Child Casualties Blacklists only Muslim Perpetrators Secretary General Antionio Guterres presented the report on child casualties in war to the Security Council on Friday. Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen are the areas with the highest numbers of child casualties, followed by Palestine. Nearly all the children killed were Muslim

US Withdraws From 1988 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty  The United States will no longer be prohibited from having ground-launched intermediate-range missiles.   U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Friday that the United States has abandoned the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) signed with Russia and invites China to be part of “a new era” of arms control. Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!

Daily News Digest July 18, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

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!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.

Images of the Day:

Bendib: BiPartisn Harmony Against the 99%

Quotes of the Day:

As explored in “PG&E Under Flame,” California’s top utility has invited serious question about the company’s commitment to safety. To recap; state authorities are heavily investigating PG&E’s role in causing the Camp Fire that claimed at least 87 lives in November. Alongside a crisis of reputation, the company is facing billions of dollars in damages.  Amidst this turmoil, PG&E will likely file for bankruptcy in the next two weeks. The utility announced on Monday that they are indeed exploring filing for bankruptcy protection (after much speculation), and their stock quickly tumbled by over 50%. While in the best of cases bankruptcy should be providing protection for as many parties possible, in this case it unfortunately may have the worst impact on the most vulnerable — fire survivors, workers, and in general the 16 million people PG&E serves. Here’s how: 1. Customers and victims of negligence won’t see justice. — If PG&E Goes Bankrupt, Who Benefits? Not Us

Videos of the Day:

Trump’s Racist Rhetoric is Deliberate – Will It Lead Us to Fascism? 

Sudan Transition to Civilian Rule Endangered as Foreign Interests Prevail

Why A 20-Year Old Climate Activist is Suing the Federal Government

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.— The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace!

Latin Americans No Longer Allowed: Trump Abolishes Right To Asylum On Us Southern Border The Trump administration is today implementing an “interim final rule” drafted by the US Justice and Homeland Security Departments that will effectively seal the US southern border to men, women and children seeking asylum from violence and repression in Central America and beyond. In yet another assertion of untrammeled executive power, Trump’s asylum decree rides roughshod over both US and international law. The interim rule orders US border officials to summarily deny asylum to anyone who “enters or attempts to enter the United States across the southern border after failing to apply for protection in a third country outside the alien’s country of citizenship, nationality, or last lawful habitual residence through which the alien transited en route to the United States.” By Bill Van AukenAs US Modernizes Its Nuclear Arsenal, Costs and Risks Soar  Trump’s $2 trillion makeover for the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal is certain to trigger a deadly new arms race. On July 16, 1945, the U.S. detonated the first-ever nuclear device in the New Mexico desert. Less than a month later, it dropped two more atomic bombs, destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing and injuring more than 200,000 civilians. Today, 74 years later, President Donald Trump has elbowed his way to the precipice of war threatening fire, fury and obliteration against one state that has nuclear weapons (North Korea) and one that doesn’t (Iran). In June, shortly after Trump reportedly called off a military strike against Iran with just 10 minutes to spare, he lashed out on Twitter: “Iran cannot have Nuclear Weapons!” By Jon LetmanEnvironment:

PG&E Robber Baron Redux

California 99% Taxpayers to Pay For PG&E’s Deferred Maintenance (The 1% Don’t Pay Taxes.):

• Report: PG&E ignored repairs on aging power lines Pacific Gas & Electric, which is blamed for some of California’s deadliest recent fires, knew for years that dozens of its aging power lines posed a wildfire threat but avoided replacing or repairing them, it was reported Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal, using company documents obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act, reported that the utility told the U.S. Forest Service in 2017 and 2018 that 49 aging steel towers on one transmission line needed replacement and another 57 needed replacement of their hardware and aluminum lines. The Journal previously reported that PG&E delayed safety work on the line, known as the Caribou-Palermo line, for five years.

• California Assembly Passes $21B Wildfire Fund for Utilities Gov. Newsom promises to sign bill meant to save the state’s other big utilities from following PG&E into bankruptcy, and to impose a new fire safety regime.

• PG&E says power line inspections revealed 10,000 problems — some in need of immediate repair All of the work is included in a recent fire-prevention plan PG&E — like other investor-owned electric companies — was required to submit to state utility regulators. They signed off on PG&E’s plan in May, and U.S. District Judge William Alsup made PG&E’s compliance with the document part of the terms of its probation arising from the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion.

Environmental Racism:

Fighting To Survive In Louisiana’s Death Alley

More News From Louisiana’s Cancer Alley: What Is Happening In America’s Cancertown Is Tragic, Immoral And Evil “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people” (Isaiah 10:1). I was reminded of this verse from the Bible when I read about the town of Reserve in Louisiana. It is the place in America with the highest risk of cancer due to air toxicity, caused by a raft of government and corporate failure that has deprived residents – many of whom are poor and black – of their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Reserve is home to the Pontchartrain Works facility, the only chemical plant in America to produce chloroprene, a likely carcinogen, that has spewed from the plant for almost 50 years. US government science has indicated this makes the risk of cancer in that area 50 times higher than the national average. What is happening in Reserve, the subject of a year-long Guardian series, is ugly. It is tragic. It is immoral. And it is evil. By Reverend William Barber

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Freedom Rider: The Trump and Pelosi Lovefest  Trump and Pelosi are birds of a feather when it comes to beating up on dissident women of color. “Pelosi probably rose in Trump’s estimation when she dismissed her brown skinned caucus members.” In 2007 this columnist declared that Nancy Pelosi is our enemy. She was the new Speaker of the House after Democrats emerged victorious in the 2006 elections. But they didn’t oppose George W. Bush and the Republicans the way their voters wanted them to. Little has changed since that time. Democrats mobilize in order to defeat the Republicans but still end up with snake in the grass leadership like Pelosi. By Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnistFive Myths of American Exceptionalism Killing the Left Part 1.  Adherence to American exceptionalism kills the left and then takes it to the Democratic Party-run graveyard for burial. “The anti-Russian campaign has given the FBI and the CIA a public relations facelift.” American exceptionalism is not merely an ideology that presumes the United States to be the beacon of (white) civilization, progress, and humanity. While this is the overarching definition, its function and form are not always visibly draped in the symbolism of American racist folklore so deeply embedded in the cultural life of the Empire. In my co-authored book American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News-From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror, the myths of American exceptionalism are debunked, critiqued, and revised from an anti-imperialist perspective. However, a major focus of the critique is the devastating impact of innocence and exceptionalism on the left in the United States. Here are five myths of American exceptionalism subtly killing the left. By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributorGang of Four   By Raymond Nat Turner , BAR poet-in-residence                                                                        I say, YAY,  I say, MORE, I say, GO, Gang of Four! Rock that boat on the Democratic Party Plantation— every “State of the Union,” hearing and “investigation”  Joust with the stupid, ugly, ignorant corporate clown fancying his weird, absurd, porcupine rug as a crown But he’s mere misdirection—though lewd and loud for ol’ Pentagon pickpockets working the crowd—
Bombing babies, locking little children in cages—
part of their daily war crimes and weekly outrages! (More)

There’s No Such Thing as a “Progressive Prosecutor” in a System Designed to Criminalize Blackness  Incremental changes are treated as if they are touchdowns when they are just moving the chains. “We must be wary of a Democratic party trying to co-opt the left political messaging to placate radical demands of transformation.” When reminiscing on her reign as California’s District Attorney and Attorney General, presidential candidate Kamala Harris referred to herself as a “progressive prosecutor” in her memoir The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. Though this falls in line with the blatant attempt by Harris and her team to rebrand her career in a Democratic presidential primary field that is shifting evermore leftward, review of her case records paints a very different picture. By Gyasi LakeWhy Are So Many Black Families Losing Their Land?  The Reels brothers spent eight years in jail for refusing to leave their plot of land in North Carolina. “Since 1910, black families have been stripped of hundreds of billions of dollars because of lost land.” In the Spring of 2011, the brothers Melvin Davis and Licurtis Reels were the talk of Carteret County, on the central coast of North Carolina. Some people said that the brothers were righteous; others thought that they had lost their minds. That March, Melvin and Licurtis stood in court and refused to leave the land that they had lived on all their lives, a portion of which had, without their knowledge or consent, been sold to developers years before. The brothers were among dozens of Reels family members who considered the land theirs, but Melvin and Licurtis had a particular stake in it. Melvin, who was 64, with loose black curls combed into a ponytail, ran a club there and lived in an apartment above it. He’d established a career shrimping in the river that bordered the land, and his sense of self was tied to the water. Licurtis, who was 53, had spent years building a house near the river’s edge, just steps from his mother’s. By Lizzie Presser

 Detroit Targeted for Massive Facial Surveillance  A Black elected police commissioner was manhandled at a public meeting for protesting a draconian facial recognition scheme. “Across the globe, from Ferguson to China, these technologies are being used to target activists.” The Detroit Police Department and the Mayor have given us the strongest reason yet to call a halt to the use of facial recognition technologies and Project Green Light .  Mayor Duggan and Chief Craig have asked us to have faith in their judgment, but they cannot even tolerate criticism from an elected Police Commissioner. They condone pushing him to the floor, handcuffing him, and hauling him off to jail because he made forceful comments during a routine Commission meeting.  They cannot handle public criticism without resorting to force and violence. Yet they are asking us to “trust them” with some of the most intrusive and dangerous technology now available. By Shea HowellBernie Sanders’ Present Fight against Corporate Rule vs. the Bernie of 1989  Sanders used to preach that “we can’t tail after the Democrats,” but now he’s selling the pipedream of reforming the Democratic Party. “The Bernie Sanders campaign seeks to corral socialist sentiment inside the corporate Democrat Party just as the Trump campaign seeks to corral fascist sentiment inside the corporate Republican Party.” Recently, former leader of the self-destructed faux left group, the International Socialist Organization, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor , was giddy hailing Bernie Sanders and his reform-the-Democratic-Party bandwagon. She alleges “Sanders linked the possibility of ending capitalist oligarchy to a “political revolution” that calls on the many to stand up to the few.” She claims Sanders calls for “a complete transformation of the country.” “He named capitalism as the culprit and democratic socialism as a solution.”  “What a breathtaking turn of events” she adds. By Stansfield SmithThe U.S. Economy Still Puts Blacks at the Bottom of the Barrel  If this is a thriving economy, then the next crash is going to obliterate Black people, entirely.  “For nearly every indicator, blacks cluster near or at the bottom – history endlessly repeating itself.” Trump’s rise in the polls is said to be due to a thriving economy, with stocks soaring and official unemployment at a 50-year low.  Trump claims blacks also fared very well. Republican and Democratic politicians, including Barack Obama, like to say that a “rising tide lifts all boats” – even the Black dinghies. So Trump is blowing the same horn. By  Ken MorganIsrael’s Indispensable Service to Oil Thieves and Empire  Israel began as a European colony and has remained interlocked with imperial power, unfailingly serving as the West’s beachhead in the Middle East. “Israel’s role would be to suppress pan-Arab nationalist movements that preached ‘Arab oil for the Arabs’ in defiance of Western ‘interests,’” — Israel, A Beachhead in The Middle East: From European Colony to US Power Projection Platform By Bruce KatzToo Many Africans?  To address “overpopulation,” the richer countries must do two things – consume less and stop stealing Africa’s resources.“Africa does not have anything like the overpopulation problem that England has.” “What are all these famines in Ethiopia ? What are they about? They’re about too many people for too little land. That’s what it’s about.”– Sir David Attenborough [1]The cry that the world is overpopulated is more than two hundred years old, from a period when perhaps a billion people stood on the planet. There are now nearly eight times as many and it’s become normal to blame them – us – for the ills which beset “nature.” There are just too many of us, and we’re using up too many of the world’s resources. But how true is this really? And, what should be done about it? By Stephen Corry Africans Solving African Problems: Bringing Peace to Sudan  The road to peace in the Horn of Africa once again ran through Eritrea, the socialist country the West loves to hate.  “Credit must be given to those who deserve it, the leadership of Eritrea.” he recent peace deal being implemented in Sudan was brokered by African leaders without any interference or even input by non African players ie the UN or western countries. As a matter of fact the deal was made in Asmara, Eritrea where the head of the Sudanese military that had overthrown the long time despot Omar Al Bashir sat down for two days with Eritrean mediators, agreed to the deal, flew back to Khartoum and announced the deal a few hours later. By Thomas C. Mountain

Black Agenda Radio for Week of July 15, 2019 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:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.

• Voices for Black Reparations – Then and Now  Democrats may have recently “discovered” reparations, but Black activists held a World Tribunal on Reparations in 1982, in New York City. Speakers include Afeni Shakur, the former Black Panther and mother of Hip Hop legend Tupac Shakur. African People’s Socialist Party chairman Omali Yeshitelaputs the reparations struggle in historical perspective.

• Russia-China Alliance Sets Stage for Global “Great Leap Forward”  US aggressions pushed Russia and China into an ever-deepening alliance that is now changing the direction of global trade and development, according to Anthony Monteiro, the Philadelphia-based Duboisian scholar. The US intelligencia, said Monteiro, is “incapable of looking at the world and finding solutions that will allow humanity to take a great leap forward.”

  Janet and Janine Africa “Free at Last”

• New York City is preparing a “Free At Last” celebration for MOVe organization survivors Janet and Janine Africa, who were recently released on parole after 41 years in prison. Political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal is sponsoring the event at the People’s Forum on Friday, July 19, said Gwen DeBrow, of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home.

• Defend the Venezuelan Embssay Protectors The four US activists arrested for defending the Venezuelan embassy from supporters of Donald Trump’s hand-picked puppets face up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine. Glen Fordhas this commentary.

Labor:

Economy:

Senator Compares Facebook’s Libra Association to Spectre in James Bond Movie  Yesterday the U.S. Senate Banking Committee assembled to hear Facebook’s David Marcus explain how the company wants to create a global digital currency called Libra, to be run by a Switzerland-based global organization called the Libra Association, made up of 27 members from the fields of payment systems, technology, telecommunications, blockchain services, venture capital, nonprofits and academic institutions. Given Facebook’s serial history of abusing the privacy rights of its users and selling their data without their permission, not to mention its role in facilitating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, we immediately went to check out the names of the nonprofits that had signed up to monitor this sprawling international monetary system cooked up in a Facebook lab in a year’s time.  By Pam Martens and Russ MartensWorld:

 Britain: BBC’s Panorama hatchet job – stop the smears! Oppose the anti-Corbyn conspiracy! “Labour was on the brink of civil war last night as Brexit and anti-Semitism threatened to split the party,” bellowed the Tory Daily Mail last week. “Jeremy Corbyn has been rocked by fierce and high-level infighting on both issues ahead of a nightmare week.” Such hysteria has been widespread across the Tory media. It is echoed constantly by Labour’s right wing. It constitutes a deliberate campaign to ramp up a ‘coup’ against Jeremy Corbyn. What is driving this hysteria? They are alarmed that if Boris becomes Tory leader, Corbyn could win a general election. Everything is therefore being done by the capitalist establishment – including their stooges in the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) – to discredit Corbyn. By Socialist Appeal (Britain)

 Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!

Jazz Pharmaceuticals: how to make billions off the sick  The pharmaceutical industry is a very profitable business, particularly if you lack a moral compass. Jazz Pharmaceuticals 15-folded its value in seven years on the back of one drug, for which it charged through the roof. There is a type of drug that is known in EU and US law as an “orphan drug”. This is a drug developed specifically for a rare condition or disease. If a drug is approved for orphan status, the pharmaceutical company that submitted the application is granted a period of exclusivity on the drug. In the EU, that period is 10 years and in the US it’s seven years. This is regardless of whether this drug has any patent rights associated with it.  By Niklas Albin Svensson

Daily News Digest July 11, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

The Epoch of Imperialist Decay: Both Clinton and Trump Flew on the Epstein’s Lolita Express                (I wonder if they got frequent flier miles?)

Jeffrey Epstein’s Rolodex: A Guide to His Famous Friends and Acquaintances (Video)

Jeffrey Epstein connected to Trump and ClintonFrom Jeffrey Epstein’s Rolodex: A Guide to His Famous Friends and Acquaintances: In this week’s statement, Clinton said he knew nothing of Epstein’s “terrible crimes” and that the two hadn’t spoken in a decade. But the picture of their relationship painted by the former president doesn’t square with flight logs that put Clinton on Epstein’s jet, dubbed the “Lolita Express,” 26 times between 2001 and 2003. Or with Gawker’s 2015 report on Epstein’s little black book, which included “21 contact numbers and various email addresses for Clinton.” Alleged Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre also claimed in a 2015 affidavit that Clinton visited the financier’s private island, though Clinton denies it. The claim has never been corroborated, and there are no Epstein-related allegations of sexual misconduct involving Clinton. Trump’s comment about Epstein’s taste in women has gotten a lot of attention in the past few days for obvious reasons. But it’s not the only thing connecting the two men. Epstein and Trump lived near each other in Palm Beach, ran in the same social circles, and records show Trump flew on the “Lolita Express.” Four years ago, Giuffre alleged that while working as a towel girl at Mar-a-Lago, she was recruited by Epstein’s longtime friend Ghislaine Maxwell to become one of his sex slaves. The year was 1999, and Giuffre was 16 years old. In court documents, Bradley Edwards, an attorney who represented several of Epstein’s alleged victims, said Epstein was banned from Mar-a-Lago because he “sexually assaulted an underage girl at the club.” The claim has not been confirmed.

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

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!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.

Images of the Day:

PG&E Robber Baron Redux

PG&E admits its equipment likely sparked California’s most destructive wildfireQuotes of the Day:

Epstein, a billionaire financier, was arrested in New Jersey last Saturday on charges of running a sex trafficking ring that involved luring underage girls to his New York and Florida residences, and taking them on global flights on his airplane, dubbed the “Lolita Express.” Epstein was first accused of abusing underage girls, some of them as young as 14, more than a decade ago, and he evaded prosecution potentially due to his high-profile connections.   A key challenge investigators faced when first targeting Epstein in the mid-2000s was an inability to obtain evidence through subpoena. A 2005 search of Epstein’s Palm Beach home came up empty in its quest for computers that investigators suspected contained critical evidence connected to his alleged sexual abuse of young girls.   In 2007, a federal grand jury subpoenaed the computers. That August, Acosta, who is now Donald Trump’s labor secretary, entered into plea agreement discussions with Epstein. Because of those talks, a motion to compel production of Epstein’s computers was delayed, according to the Miami Herald. Epstein held out, however, resisting the deal because it would require him to register as a sex offender. The FBI continued investigating and in March 2008, according to the Miami Herald, preparations were being made to take the case to a new federal grand jury.   That would prove unnecessary, as Epstein agreed to a deal with Acosta. Without notifying the 32 identified victims, the federal government reached a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein in exchange for his guilty plea in state court to a minor offense. He pleaded guilty on June 30. — Jeffrey Epstein Shipped Himself A 53-Pound Shredder And A Carpet And Tile Extractor, Maritime Records Show

The request draw a sharp rebuke from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press secretary Nathan Click late Monday: “While California is working hard to reduce wildfire risk and create a sustainable energy future, PG&E is requesting massive increases in costs to ratepayers in order generate profits for investors – all while wildfire victims sit in bankruptcy. The governor strongly believes ratepayers shouldn’t be on the hook for unnecessary increases as the state’s process plays out.”Along with an earlier rate increase proposed in December, PG&E’s new request would increase average household bills by $22.67 a month for electricity and natural gas, beginning in January 2020. —Gavin Newsom blasts PG&E’s request to raise rates and profits as debate over wildfire costs rages

Videos of the Day:

US Women’s Soccer Team Stands for Equal Pay and Confronting Trump 

Honduras Now Ruled By A “Criminal Gang” – With Western Government Support

Poll: Religion in Decline in Arab Countries, Anger at the U.S Growing

The Pentagon’s Carbon Boot PrintTwo new studies show that the U.S. military consumes more fossil fuels—and emits more greenhouse gases—than many countries

Left Forum 2019, The End of the “End of History”Left Forum 2019, The End of the “End of History”: The Left Alternative to Conservative Liberalism. The Failure of Fukuyama’s Forecast, Dr. David Harvey, Dr. Michael Hudson, Dr. David M. Kotz, Dr. Alexander Buzgalin, LIU Brooklyn, 6-29-2019, New York City, New York, Sponser: Center for Modern Marxist Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

The Epoch of Imperialist Decay:

Jeffrey Epstein connected to Trump and Clinton

Jeffrey Epstein’s Rolodex: A Guide to His Famous Friends and Acquaintances

Both Clinton and Trump Flew on the  Epstein’s Lolita Express (I wonder if they got frequent flier miles?)

From Jeffrey Epstein’s Rolodex: A Guide to His Famous Friends and Acquaintances: In this week’s statement, Clinton said he knew nothing of Epstein’s “terrible crimes” and that the two hadn’t spoken in a decade. But the picture of their relationship painted by the former president doesn’t square with flight logs that put Clinton on Epstein’s jet, dubbed the “Lolita Express,” 26 times between 2001 and 2003. Or with Gawker’s 2015 report on Epstein’s little black book, which included “21 contact numbers and various email addresses for Clinton.” Alleged Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre also claimed in a 2015 affidavit that Clinton visited the financier’s private island, though Clinton denies it. The claim has never been corroborated, and there are no Epstein-related allegations of sexual misconduct involving Clinton.  Trump’s comment about Epstein’s taste in women has gotten a lot of attention in the past few days for obvious reasons. But it’s not the only thing connecting the two men. Epstein and Trump lived near each other in Palm Beach, ran in the same social circles, and records show Trump flew on the “Lolita Express.” Four years ago, Giuffre alleged that while working as a towel girl at Mar-a-Lago, she was recruited by Epstein’s longtime friend Ghislaine Maxwell to become one of his sex slaves. The year was 1999, and Giuffre was 16 years old. In court documents, Bradley Edwards, an attorney who represented several of Epstein’s alleged victims, said Epstein was banned from Mar-a-Lago because he “sexually assaulted an underage girl at the club.” The claim has not been confirmed.

U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.— The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace!

Lies About Iran Killing US Troops in Iraq Are a Ploy to Justify WarOne of the many myths that have been used to justify the push for war with Iran led by National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is that Tehran is responsible for the killing of more than 600 U.S. troops during the Iraq War. By Gareth Porter,Abusing Those Who Served— Veterans Affairs Police Are Supposed to “Protect Those Who Served.” They Have a Shocking Record of Brutality and Impunity.  Derrick Hathaway SERVED multiple tours in Kosovo, contributing to a NATO peacekeeping mission aimed at preventing ethnic cleansing. While Hathaway envisioned his Marine mission as a humanitarian one, he soon became ashamed of his work. In the course of mapping safe routes for NATO forces, Hathaway’s platoon would perform no-knock home raids to search for weapons or contraband, leading to tense confrontations with frightened families. “It was martial law,” Hathaway said. “That left a nasty taste in my mouth. All we were doing was feeding a new form of hate.” By Jasper Craven

CIA Torture Unredacted: Four-Year Investigation Reveals What Was Hidden in US Senate Torture ReportNew report is the most comprehensive public account of one of the most disturbing elements of America’s so-called ‘War on Terror’One night in October 2001, shortly after al-Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, a private jet touched down in Karachi. Masood Anwar, a prominent Pakistani journalist, received an unexpected tip from a friend in the airport: “There were men in masks. They took a hooded man onboard in the early hours. Someone videotaped the entire thing. No one was allowed near the site.” Anwar’s story, although no one knew it at the time, would be the start of a thread which led to the heart of the Central Intelligence Agency’s most secret “War on Terror” operation: the “rendition, detention, interrogation” (RDI) programme, a nine-year covert effort which had scores of prisoners flown around the globe to be tortured in undisclosed sites.  By Crofton Black

Environment:

‘Completely Terrifying’: Study Warns Carbon-Saturated Oceans Headed Toward Tipping Point That Could Unleash Mass Extinction Event “Once we’re over the threshold…you’re dealing with how the Earth works, and it goes on its own ride.” The continuous accumulation of carbon dioxide in the planet’s oceans—which shows no sign of stopping due to humanity’s relentless consumption of fossil fuels—is likely to trigger a chemical reaction in Earth’s carbon cycle similar to those which happened just before mass extinction events, according to a new study.By Julia Conley‘Bomb Trains,’ a New Book on the Deadly, Ongoing Threat of Oil by RailOn July 6, 2013, a train hauling crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken region derailed in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, resulting in fires and explosions that killed 47 people and wiped out a large part of the small Canadian town’s center. At the time I was living in Albany, New York, which had become a major distribution point for Bakken oil delivered to the Port of Albany in mile-long trains like the one that devastated Lac-Mégantic. In the six months following the deadly disaster, several more trains of Bakken oil derailed and exploded across North America. As the risk of these oil trains became very apparent, I began investigating how the trains could be allowed to travel through communities like mine in Albany and started publishing my findings here at DeSmog. Now, just after the six year anniversary of the Lac-Mégantic disaster, I have compiled all of that research into the new book Bomb Trains: How Industry Greed and Regulatory Failure Put the Public at Risk. By Justin MikulkaIgnorance Is Strength”:                                               Trump’s USDA Suspends Honeybee SurveyThe U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) annual honeybee count has fallen victim to budget cuts, CNN reported Saturday. The suspension of the Honey Bee Colonies report is at least the third bee-related data set to be halted or reduced under the Trump administration, and comes three weeks after Trump’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved the emergency use of bee-killing pesticide sulfoxaflor on 13.9 million acres. It also comes as the population of bees, which help pollinate a third of edible crops, has been declining since 2006. By Olivia RosaneCompliance With Mandated Testing for Lead in Drinking Water in School Districts in New Jersey —  Abstract:  Preventing lead exposure from all sources is critical for children’s optimal health and development. The crisis in Flint, Michigan, drew attention to the role of drinking water in lead exposure. School drinking water might pose significant risks due to aging infrastructure and the particular conditions of water use in schools. In 2016, New Jersey mandated that school districts test all drinking water outlets for lead and specified procedures that districts must follow. This study assessed compliance with this mandate. Districts were required to report results on their websites, so we used district websites as the unit of analysis to assess compliance with testing and reporting procedures and to identify schools that had reported maximum concentrations of lead in water. Most districts complied with the mandate to test their drinking water (90%) and the majority complied with online reporting requirements to some extent (87%). Most districts (79%) had one or more outlets in their district that exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s action level of 15 ppb. Mandated testing for lead in drinking water in schools is an important policy that can prevent childhood lead exposure. New Jersey should consider lowering the action level at which lead in drinking water should be remediated.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Black Agenda Radio for Week of July 8, 2019

• Bruce Dixon “a Real Soldier” of the Movement: BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon, the former Black Panther and lifelong activist who died from blood cancer at age 68, was “ a real soldier in the sense that he was willing and eager to take on any aspect of the liberation struggle and to explore all of the questions that face us, with the aim of creating the most efficient mechanisms for movement politics,” said BAR executive editor Glen Ford, speaking at the Left Forum conference in New York City.

• Money Rules in US, Not the People: “If the people who write or bundle the checks ca decide who becomes president, then that is proof-positive that we do not have a democracy,” said BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley, speaking at the Left Forum conference in New York City. This dictatorship of the rich is embedded in the raucous façade of duopoly party politics, which compels people to choose one villain or the other. “Anybody that didn’t vote for the Democrats is blamed for Trump being in the White House,” said Kimberley.

• The Banks are King of the Imperial Order:BAR contributor Danny Haiphong told the Left Forum that “anti-imperialism is the only antidote” for US-led global austerity. “The leftish elements in the Democratic Party have little problem with the fact that US military supremacy is the backbone of imperialism,” said Haiphong. “Tulsi Gabbard has been blacked out just for uttering the notion of anti-interventionism”

• Race to the Bottom is Imperial Plan: “The decline in US living standards and economic security is not a side effect of globalization – it is the intended effect of this global regime that is being imposed,” said BAR executive editor Glen Ford, at the Left Forum in New York City. “The capitalist imperial consensus is to destroy all impediments to the most profitable exploitation of labor and technology.” That’s why most new US employment consists of “shit jobs.”

• All US White Groups Implicated in Slavery and Black Oppression: Katrina Browne, a descendant of Rhode Islanders who were the “largest slave-trading family in US history,” told a congressional committee considering the HR 40 reparations study bill that all of US society was “implicated” in slavery. This includes immigrants that arrived after Emancipation, who were allowed to “leap-frog over Black families, with devastating consequences to the present day.” Browne is producer of the Emmy-nominated film, “Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North.”

• Mumia Says He’s Going Blind: : The nation’s best known political prisoner recently noticed “that I could no longer see a single face” among the “river of men passing by” in Pennsylvania’s Mahanoy prison. “I realized to my horror that I was functionally blind,” said Mumia Abu Jamal, who has faced several medical crises in his 38 years of incarceration in the death of a Philadelphia cop. “My vision has become sp poor that I’ve used voices to recognize people, as a blind man does.”

• US Non-Wars Kill Millions

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:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.

Labor:

Economy:

With Three Felony Counts Already, Did JPMorgan Chase Really Need to Own a Ship Containing 20 Tons of Cocaine?  CEO of the Wall Street mega bank, JPMorgan Chase, has weathered one scandal after another during his tenure, including the bank pleading guilty to an unprecedented three criminal felony counts in the past five years. Now the bank is back in the news for owning a massive container ship which was seized last week in the Philadelphia seaport by U.S. Customs and Border Protection following the discovery of 20 tons of cocaine located in containers on the ship on June 17. The cocaine is estimated to have a street value of $1.3 billion. By Pam Marten and Russ MartensFollowing Deutsche Bank’s News, Every Major Wall Street Bank Closed in the Red YesterdayAs of early this morning, Deutsche Bank’s restructuring plan is looking a lot like the lifeboat plan for the Titanic. Research analysts have expressed skepticism that the plan will work and the bank’s stock performance is backing up that assessment. In overnight trading in Frankfurt, the stock had cumulatively lost 10 percent of its value in less than two days of trading since the details of its restructuring were made public. Deutsche Bank’s shares also trade on the New York Stock Exchange, which opens at 9:30 a.m. By Pam Martens and Russ MartensWorld:

British Citizen Assassinated  for Oposing The 2003 Iraq War and Its  Justification of Iraq’ Weapons of Mass Destruction!:  Damning new evidence that Dr Kelly DIDN’T commit suicide: The disturbing flaws in the official government story surrounding the death of Blair’s chemical weapons expert

• Official explanation was that the weapons expert had taken his own life

• But since Dr Kelly’s death in 2003, time has done nothing to dispel suspicion

• Successive governments have refused to allow full coroner’s inquest to be held

More than 15 years have passed since Dr David Kelly was found dead in an Oxfordshire wood in one of the darkest episodes of Tony Blair’s time as Prime Minister.. . . He was quite used to confrontation and pressure: he’d been a weapons inspector in Iraq, for goodness’ sake. I thought his famous grilling by the Foreign Affairs Committee had been distasteful, and symptomatic of the committee’s stupidity, but it hadn’t been that bad. And the affair was tailing off. Politics was breaking for the summer, both the BBC and I had refused to confirm or deny whether David was my source, and the battle between us and Downing Street had essentially reached stalemate.  What a lot I didn’t know. Even now, almost precisely 10 years since David Kelly’s last journey, we are still learning just how extraordinary and inexcusable the behaviour of our rulers was – both towards him, and in the wider cause, defending the Iraq war, for which he was outed and died. On July 18 2003, I did not consider myself a shockable person; I was an experienced, sceptical journalist with, I thought, a realistic idea of how politicians, intelligence officers and civil servants behaved. But over the months and years that followed, my views, and those of most of the country, changed. To borrow the famous words of David Astor over Suez, we had not realised that our government was capable of such folly and such crookedness. By  Miles Goslett

Britain: the rise and fall of the Tory Party The Conservative and Unionist Party is in the midst of a monumental crisis. This is more than raised voices and red wine on the sofa – this is an existential crisis that threatens to tear the party apart. The Tory Party was once the envy of the ruling classes across the world. But now the Conservatives are regarded as a laughing stock. The party’s reputation lies in tatters. It is caught in a political vice, threatened from all sides with complete collapse. And so much for this ‘Unionist’ party. A recent YouGov poll of Tory members found that 63 percent would risk seeing Scotland go independent in order to carry out Brexit. The same survey suggested that 59 percent wanted Brexit even if it led to Northern Ireland leaving the Union  By Rob SewellLabour Leader Corbyn to Demand Second Referendum on Brexit  The Labour leader said his party would campaign for remaining in the EU in the case of such a national vote. The Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn Tuesday said that he will request the next British prime minister to put the Brexit plan to a second referendum on the European Union membership, adding that his party would be in favor of a remain vote.Syriza’s election defeat: A balance sheet of a political betrayalThe election defeat Sunday of the Syriza (“Coalition of the Radical Left”) government brings to a close a strategic experience for the Greek and international working class. When Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras took office four years ago, pledging to end the European Union (EU) austerity Memorandum, the entire middle-class pseudo-left declared the party’s victory a massive triumph for the working class and a “radical” alternative to capitalism. These forces held Syriza up as a model for all the parties and political leaders “of the 99 percent”—from the Podemos party in Spain to British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and America’s self-styled “socialist” candidate Bernie Sanders. Instead, Syriza imposed a set of deeper austerity measures than any government in modern history, save the Stalinist Communist Party in its dissolution of the USSR, while turning the country into a quasi-police state and carrying out the most draconian anti-refugee policy in all of Europe.

Greece: political conclusions from the general elections of 7 July – part oneOn July 6, 2013, a train hauling crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken region derailed in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, resulting in fires and explosions that killed 47 people and wiped out a large part of the small Canadian town’s center. At the time I was living in Albany, New York, which had become a major distribution point for Bakken oil delivered to the Port of Albany in mile-long trains like the one that devastated Lac-Mégantic. In the six months following the deadly disaster, several more trains of Bakken oil derailed and exploded across North America. As the risk of these oil trains became very apparent, I began investigating how the trains could be allowed to travel through communities like mine in Albany and started publishing my findings here at DeSmog. Now, just after the six year anniversary of the Lac-Mégantic disaster, I have compiled all of that research into the new book Bomb Trains: How Industry Greed and Regulatory Failure Put the Public at Risk. By Stamatis Karagiannopoulos – editor of EPANASTASI (“Revolution”) and Marxistiki Foni (“Marxist Voice”)  Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!

PG&E Robber Baron Redux

PG&E admits its equipment likely sparked California’s most destructive wildfire

PG&E Caused California Wilafires — PG&E Once Again Wants Ratepayers for PG&E’s Deferred Maintenance Profitable Policy of Deferred Maintenance  PG&E asked California regulators Monday for a hefty increase in rates and profits, raising average customer bills by more than $20 a month, saying the hike is needed to attract investment capital and deal with wildfire safety as the utility struggles in bankruptcy.

The request draw a sharp rebuke from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press secretary Nathan Click late Monday: “While California is working hard to reduce wildfire risk and create a sustainable energy future, PG&E is requesting massive increases in costs to ratepayers in order generate profits for investors – all while wildfire victims sit in bankruptcy. The governor strongly believes ratepayers shouldn’t be on the hook for unnecessary increases as the state’s process plays out.”Along with an earlier rate increase proposed in December, PG&E’s new request would increase average household bills by $22.67 a month for electricity and natural gas, beginning in January 2020. —Gavin Newsom blasts PG&E’s request to raise rates and profits as debate over wildfire costs rages

Below is my essay that waswritten 13 tears ago.: PG&E Ripoff: Return of the Robber Barons

 Daily News Digest July 4, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

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!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.

Image of the Day:

Frederick Douglas Invasion And Immigration Are Two Sides To The Same Coin

Quotes of the Day:

The Fourth of July— Why I celebrate the Fourth of July I celebrate and support the Declaration of Independence as a revolutionary document.

Due to the present destructive course of American capitalism, which in its quest for a Pax Americana and its perpetual wars, puts the property rights of capitalism and their ‘right’ to make a profit before, to paraphrase the Declaration of Independence, our unalienable Rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness — the right to a safe habitat for humanity and our very existence as a species; it therefore follows, that, To secure these rights, it is our right and our duty, to throw off such an economic system and its government To provide our own ‘New World Order’ to provide for our future security! To quote Fidel Castro, “Tomorrow it will be too late to do what we should have done a long time ago!” — Roland Sheppard

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour. — Frederick Douglas, July 5, 1852

Videos of the Day:

Capitalism Tells the World: Profits Come First! Burn Baby Burn!: G20 Members Dole Out Coal Subsidies Despite Climate Crisis Talk  A new report documents G20 member states giving $63.9 billion in subsidies per year to King Coal, while professing the urgency of the climate crisis. The study says this may “underestimate the actual amounts of support provided,” due to lack of transparency in finance figures U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.— The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace!

Democrats Are Complicit in Trump’s Fearmongering About Immigrant YouthWhenThey See Us, Ava DuVernay’s miniseries about the wrongful convictions of the Central Park Five, was the most-watched series on Netflix during the first half of June. The runaway success of this painful series about Black and Brown boys who were caught up in a national hysteria about violent “wolfpacks” of dark-skinned youth is the latest moment in an ongoing societal reckoning with the racist mass incarceration policies of the ’80s and ’90s.  Of course, not everyone is taking part in this reckoning. Donald Trump refuses to apologize for his own prominent role in persecuting the Central Park Five — in 1989 he took out full–page newspaper ads that proclaimed his desire to “hate” the accused teenagers, his hopes that they “be forced to suffer,” and for New York to bring back the death penalty. Trump continues to insist on their guilt years after overwhelming evidence exonerated them. By Danny KatchEnvironment:

Capitalism Fouls Thing Up!Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Progress?

Brown v. Board of EducationThe Resegregation of American Schools

Black Agenda Radio for Week of July 1, 2019

• Corporate Media Monger for War The corporate media seemed disappointed that President Trump “pulled back” from attacking Iran after that nation shot down a US spy drone. Said BAR senior columnist Margaret Kimberley: “For all of their alleged opposition to Trump, we can see that they are all still very much on board with the imperial project and with the belief that the United States has the right to intervene anywhere in the world, at any time.”

• Starving Black Schools and Scapegoating Communities Although many urban school districts are returning to local control following state takeovers, these Black and brown schools remain underfunded, said Jeff Bryant, senior correspondent for Our Schools. “The school districts that need the most money because of poverty issues, the density of special needs students – many of these districts actually get the least money from the state” and will wind up in the same shape as before states seized control.

• The Dem’s Pale Version of Green New Deal Howie Hawkins, candidate for the Green Party’s presidential nomination and the original architect of the Green New Deal, later adopted by the Greens, said leftish Democrats are putting forward a “diluted” version of his brainchild. The watered-down Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez measure is a non-binding resolution, but Hawkins notes that House Speaker Pelosi “won’t bring it to the floor for a vote.”

• Eddie Africa is Free MOVE activist Eddie Africa was released from a Pennsylvania prison after four decades of incarceration in the death of a Philadelphia policeman. The officer likely died from police gunfire in the 1971 confrontation.Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, said Africa was subjected to “a kind of cruelty that most prisoners have never seen nor imagined,” including beatings and an attempt to castrate him.

• Jalil Muntaqim’s Family Awaits Him Billie Bottoms Brown, the 85 year-old mother of Anthony Bottoms, also known as Jalil Abdul Muntaqim, hopes to take her son on a sea cruise if he is granted parole in September, his eleventh appearance before the board. Muntaqim has spend 48 years in prison in the death of two New York City cops. His co-defendant, Herman Bell, was released last year over the objections of the governor and the mayor. Billie Bottoms Brown says she’ll try to help Muntaqim “relax, unwind and try to reacclimatehimself to outside of those walls.”

Labor:

Economy:

One part of ehe Uncounted: Youth Who Never Were Employed: The July 2018 labor force participation rate for 16- to 24-year-old men, at 61.1 percent, was down 1.2 percentage points over the year. The rate for young women, at 60.0 percent, rose 1.2 percentage points during the same period, reducing the gap in labor force participation between young men and women. Whites had the highest youth labor force participation rate in July 2018, at 62.8 percent. The rate was 56. 5 percent for Blacks, 43.3 percent for Asians, and 58.0 percent for Hispanics. Over the year, the labor force participation rate rose for Hispanics (+1.4 percentage points) and declined for Asians (-4.1 points). The decline among Asians offset a similar increase (+4.3 percentage points) between July 2016 and 2017. Labor force participation rates in July 2018 for Whites and Blacks were essentially unchanged from a year earlier .— Employment and Unemployment Among Youth Summary

WikiLeaks Bombshell: Emails Show Citigroup Had Major Role in Shaping and Staffing Obama’s First TermSudan and Algeria have avoided mistakes of 2011Images of popular protests that recall the revolutionary movement of 2011 have dominated news from the Arabic-speaking world for months. Uprisings began in Sudan on December 19 and in Algeria with the marches of February 22. They revived memories of the huge, peaceful demonstrations early in the Arab Spring that shook Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and Syria. Commentators have been more cautious this time, asking questions rather than commenting directly, mindful of the bitter disappointment that followed their initial euphoria over the Arab Spring. The repression of the 2011 uprising in Bahrain, crushed after only a few weeks with the help of the other oil monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), could have been the exception, given the unique characteristics of that club of states. But two years later the region entered a counterrevolutionary phase, with a new chain reaction going the other way.  By Gilbert Achcar

Paul Weiss, the Law Firm that Has Represented Citigroup through Serial Fraud Charges, Is the Number One Donor to Democratic Presidential Hopeful Kamala HarrisAccording to the Center for Responsive Politics, which keeps meticulous tabs on political campaign flows, as of this morning, the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison – which has represented Citigroup through more than two decades of serial fraud charges – is the number one campaign donor to the Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator Kamala Harris. As the Center notes, the money isn’t coming from the law firm itself, but from its “PACs; their individual members, employees or owners; and those individuals’ immediate milies.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Algeria, Sudan…: The Seasons After the Arab Spring — Recent uprisings in Sudan and Algeria have avoided mistakes of 2011  Images of popular protests that recall the revolutionary movement of 2011 have dominated news from the Arabic-speaking world for months. Uprisings began in Sudan on December 19 and in Algeria with the marches of February 22. They revived memories of the huge, peaceful demonstrations early in the Arab Spring that shook Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and Syria. Commentators have been more cautious this time, asking questions rather than commenting directly, mindful of the bitter disappointment that followed their initial euphoria over the Arab Spring. The repression of the 2011 uprising in Bahrain, crushed after only a few weeks with the help of the other oil monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), could have been the exception, given the unique characteristics of that club of states. But two years later the region entered a counterrevolutionary phase, with a new chain reaction going the other way.  By   Gilbert Achcar

WikiLeaks: Citigroup Exec Gave Obama Recommendation of Hillary for State, Eric Holder for DOJ  The Presidential election of 2008 was held on November 4, with Barack Obama winning on a promise of delivering “hope” and “change” to a nation in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At that time, Citigroup was a financial basket-case. It had already received $25 billion from the government’s bailout program known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in October; it was secretly receiving hundreds of billions of dollars more each month in below-market rate, revolving loans from the Federal Reserve — information which the Fed refused to make public despite multiple Freedom of Information Act requests from the media; and Citigroup was just 19 days from more hemorrhaging, requiring an additional government infusion of $20 billion and asset guarantees of more than $300 billion. Citigroup’s stock was at $13.99, a decline of 63 percent in just 12 months and it was on its way to eventually trade as a penny stock, at 99 cents.By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 11, 2016World:

Sudan and Algeria have avoided mistakes of 2011  Images of popular protests that recall the revolutionary movement of 2011 have dominated news from the Arabic-speaking world for months. Uprisings began in Sudan on December 19 and in Algeria with the marches of February 22. They revived memories of the huge, peaceful demonstrations early in the Arab Spring that shook Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and Syria. Commentators have been more cautious this time, asking questions rather than commenting directly, mindful of the bitter disappointment that followed their initial euphoria over the Arab Spring. The repression of the 2011 uprising in Bahrain, crushed after only a few weeks with the help of the other oil monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), could have been the exception, given the unique characteristics of that club of states. But two years later the region entered a counterrevolutionary phase, with a new chain reaction going the other way.  By   Gilbert Achcar

Istanbul elections and the brewing crisis in TurkeyThe mayoral election in Istanbul on 23 June 2019 represents a significant blow to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) won with almost 55 percent of the vote, bringing an end to the AKP’s dominance of the city, which lasted over 20 years. Despite being a local election, it has been become a rallying point for anti-AKP sentiments and ultimately a damning referendum on the current leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. By Oliver Brotherton

Reject Colonialism; Fight Extradition Law with Class politics  Hong Kong’s massive movement against the Beijing sponsored extradition law is showing no signs of fizzling out, after 500,000 people joined a march yesterday, the anniversary of the handover from Britain to Hong Kong. However, the movement is already at a crossroads, for it has reached a limit of what can be achieved without leadership and programme.  By Dan MorleyHealth, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!

Full Transcript: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?   By Frederick Douglass

“What to the Slave is the Fourth July?” by Frederick Douglass is not only a brilliant work of oratory. It speaks to our every frustration spurred by the gap between the ideals of the United States and the reality we witness every day; between the Bill of Rights and our decaying civil liberties; between the USA’s international declarations of human rights and the ordered drone attacks backed by presidential “kill lists”; between the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and a nation that leads the world in jailing its own citizens; between our highest ideals and our darkest realities. Here’s hoping people take the time to read the entirety of Douglass’s brilliant speech; even though his were words that spoke directly to his moment in history, they still ring with an unsettling power. As Douglass says: “Had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”— Dave Zirin

Daily News Digest July 1, 2019

Daily News Digest June 28, 2019

Daily News Digest Achives

Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace” Could Still Be Published Today!During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and  The Iron Heel.

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!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.

Image of the Day:

It Is Not Wat – It Is Murder!

Encironmental Racism: ‘The environmental front line’: Patterns of development affect West Berkeley residentsQuotes of the Day:

The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped. — Hubert Humphrey 

You cannot be a moral person and support Israeli apartheid and colonialism — I’m sorry. We salute the Jewish survivors who strip away the phony moral justification for opposing BDS against Israel. —Ajamu Baraka

Let’s be clear: The Trump admin sent a drone into what Iran says was its sovereign airspace. The US knew Iran would shoot it down in self-defense—but the US gov also knew the corporate media would obediently portray this as Iranian “escalation,” helping justify Trump’s aggression.  — Ben Norton

“In the Trump world, there is no bargaining, only ultimatums,” said PEER executive director Tim Whitehouse, a former EPA enforcement attorney — With New ‘Imposed Contract,’ Trump’s EPA Tries to Neuter Worker Rights

Videos of the Day: 

“Bernie Sanders is the Enemy to Entrepreneurs” Says the Co-Founder of Home Depot

Honduras Erupts on Eve of 10th Anniversary of Coup

Istanbul Election Shakes President Erdogan’s Power

Where Do the Politics of Reparations Go From Here?

 U.S.:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.— The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace!

The Bi-Partisn Government Child Snachers:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Condemns Pelosi’s Move To Pass Senate Border Funding Bill Without Changes: ‘Hell No’  Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke out against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi Thursday for deciding that the House should approve a Senate-passed border funding bill without first trying to make changes. “Under no circumstances should the House vote for a McConnell-only bill w/ no negotiation with Democrats. Hell no,” the 29-year-old congresswoman tweeted about the Senate version of the bill, which will provide $4.6 billion in funding for operations at the southern border but without aspects many House Democrats had hoped to include. “That’s an abdication of power we should refuse to accept. They will keep hurting kids if we do.” In an earlier tweet, Ocasio-Cortez noted that the bill was not negotiated with the House despite Democrats offering “crucial amendments to protect  children and families.” “None are even being considered,” she added.

Trigger Happy Joint Chiefs of Staff Thin They can Win a Nuclears War: Don’t Leave Nukes on the Shelf. Use Them!  On June 20, the London Guardian ran a curious headline: “Nuclear Weapons: Experts Alarmed by New Pentagon ‘War-Fighting Doctrine.” Last week, a report from the Joint Chiefs of Staff was briefly available to the public on the Pentagon’s website. Titled “Nuclear Operations,” the report describes nuclear war in such upbeat terms that you will almost look forward to it. By Charles PiersonSyrian Refugee Terror Plot or Latest in Pattern of FBI-Manufactured Terrorism Cases? On the surface, the story of 21-year-old Syrian refugee and Pittsburgh resident Mustafa Mousab Alowemer has the elements to strike fear in many Americans and give ammunition to the Trump administration for its war on immigrants and refugees, especially those who would dare to flee violence in countries like Syria. By Kris HermesJockpocalypse: From the Ballpark to Team TrumpA half-century ago, the sporting Cassandras predicted that the worst values and sensibilities of our increasingly corrupted civic society would eventually affect our sacred games: football would become a gladiatorial meat market, basketball a model of racism, college sports a paradigm of commercialization, and Olympic sports like swimming and gymnastics a hotbed of sexual predators.  Mission accomplished! By Robert Lipsyte

Our ‘Crotch Grabbing President’: After Demanding ‘Human Decency, Plain and Simple,’ Highlights Magazine Commended for Powerful Rebuke of Trump’s Abuse of Children  “When a 72-year-old, apolitical children’s magazine feels the need to speak out you know we are lost as a country.” The popular children’s magazine Highlights is receiving praise on Wednesday after issuing powerful condemnation of the Trump administration’s family separation policy at the border, with its CEO saying the U.S. government’s current behavior is an affront to both “moral courage” and the publication’s core belief that “children are the world’s most important people.”  By Julia Conley

‘It is a Stain on Our Country’: Warren Joins Protest Outside Child Detention Facility in Florida“There are a lot of different ways that we get in the fight. And one of them is that you show up.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of the frontrunners for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, joined a protest in front of a migrant detention center Wednesday morning—hours before she was expected to join nine other members of her party for the first primary debate.  “There are a lot of different ways that we get in the fight,” Warren said to supporters on social media. “And one of them is that you show up.” By Eoin Higgins

The U.S.-Iran Imbroglio: Dangerous Lessons To Be Learned  The bizarre decisions and events over a 48-hour period between the United States and Iran outlined the dangerous times that we are confronting and point to Donald Trump as the most dangerous aspect of all.  Iran is a problem for U.S. interests, but not a genuine threat.  The same cannot be said for Trump whose instability and unpredictability threaten not only the United States but the entire global community.  The fact that his key advisers—National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—are bellicose and even irrational worsens the situation.  The absence of a genuine national security process and the decline of U.S. diplomacy contributes to a situation that finds the Department of Defense and the Pentagon, without adult or even civilian supervision, playing an outsized role. By Melvin Goodman

Instigators of a Persian Gulf Crisis  Recent weeks have seen tensions between the United States and Iran soar, initially after a May 2019 incident in which four commercial vessels were struck in the Gulf of Oman (two Saudi oil tankers, one Norwegian and an Emirati ship), ebb thereafter and escalate yet again when a similar attack took place a month later on the Japanese Kokuka Courageous and Norwegian Front Altair tankers, also in the Gulf of Oman. By Rannie Amiri

Fool Me Twice Yogi Berra experienced “deja vu, all over again”. Marx revised Hegel, saying history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. Bush the Lesser, riffing on who to blame for being fooled, got lost in his trope. Now unctuous, obtuse Pompeo is selling war on Iran, bringing all three to mind. You’d heard the one about the Gulf of Tonkin LBJ pitched?  And the one about Iraqi WMD Step’nfetchit Powell sold, ominously shaking a vial of foot powder?  And Obama’s somber rap about “Assad gassing his own people”? The question now is whether the American Public will do Charlie Brown to Lucy’s football trick again? By Paul EdwardsCivil Rights/Black Liberation:

Environmental Racism — Where They Built the Freeways: People Of Color Live With 66% More Air Pollution, US Study Finds African Americans in the north-east and mid-Atlantic are exposed to 61% more pollution particles from burning gasoline People of color live with 66% more air pollution, US study finds African Americans in the north-east and mid-Atlantic are exposed to 61% more pollution particles from burning gasoline. By Emily HoldenLabor:

With New ‘Imposed Contract,’ Trump’s EPA Tries to Neuter Worker Rights  Agency announces new collective bargaining agreement—which was not agreed upon The Trump administration continued its attacks on federal workers this week with a new “agreement” that would kneecap the power of unions representing EPA employees. The development, as watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility  PEER) noted Wednesday, is a new “Master Collective Bargaining Agreement” between the federal agency and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). Far from an agreement, said PEER, the document is really an “edict.” It was not the result of negotiations. “In the Trump world, there is no bargaining, only ultimatums,” said PEER executive director Tim Whitehouse, a former EPA enforcement attorney. By Andrea Germanos

At #WayfairWalkout Actions, Workers Denounce Company Profiting From Child Detention “The safety and well-being of immigrant children is always worth fighting for.”Protesters filled Boston’s Copley Square Wednesday afternoon as part of the “Wayfair Walkout,” where the company’s employees staged a work stoppage to protest the retailer profiting from President Donald Trump’s child detention policies. Hundreds of Wayfair workers and supporters took part in the Wednesday action both in Boston and in Brunswick, Maine. The Boston Globe reported that management “indicated there will be no retaliation for employees who participate in the walkout.”  By Eoin Higgins

Economy:

Terrorists? Titans Of Wall Street?Wall Street Banks, In Drag as Trade Associations, Fight Indictments for Manipulating Precious Metals MarketsOn July 18 of last year, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted two Merrill Lynch precious metals traders, Edward Bases and John Pacilio, charging them each with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution and one count of commodities fraud each.  Pacilio was further charged with five counts of spoofing. (Spoofing is where a trader uses a high-speed computer to issue a rapid barrage of buy or sell orders, with no intention of executing the trades, in order to mislead the market and gain an advantage for his own position in the market.)   On Tuesday of this week, a unit of Merrill Lynch was given a deferred prosecution agreement in the same matter by the Justice Department in exchange for an agreement to cooperate. Merrill also agreed to pay a measly $25 million in fines and disgorgement. (The amount of the fine and disgorgement is like a fly on the backside of an elephant. The parent of Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, had profits of $7.3 billion in just the first quarter of this year.) Merrill’s promise to “cooperate” is also looking quite specious. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

The Wolves Have Turned on Each Other on Wall Street   Some decades back, the late MIT economist Lester Thurow wrote this:  “Essentially, the economic problem is like that of the wolf and the caribou. If the wolves eat all the caribou, the wolves also vanish.”               What Thurow did not take into consideration is that if the wolf pack is large enough, it can survive for quite a while by turning on other wolf packs.  That’s what is happening right now on Wall Street. The wolves are at war with each other.   The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have filed a lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission and are slinging mud in court at a former, long-tenured JPMorgan Chase executive, Brett Redfearn, who now polices them at the SEC.     We’ll get to all that in a moment, but first some background. By Pam Martens and Russ MartensWorld:

Jeremy Corbyn | Our Schools

Jeremy Corbyn: Stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia now.

Venezuela Reveals Video, Audio Evidence Linked to April 30 CoupVenezuelan Minister of Communication, Tourism and Culture Jorge Rodríguez revealed Wednesday videos and evidence providing more details about the April 30 failed attempted coup, including division within the opposition forces that was a factor in the plan’s failure, while also the involvement of several foreign governments in the financing of the coup and its operatives.  “What Guaido doesn’t know, is that we had people in all the meetings where they planned hits on members of the government; we have all the recordings, videos and information necessary to face down a coup,” Rodriguez told reporters.Holocaust survivors condemn ‘massacre’ of Palestinians, call for BDS against Israel A group of Holocaust survivors and descendants of those targeted by Nazi Germany have harshly criticized Israeli actions in Gaza and called for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Following a letter from survivors of the Holocaust printed in the New York Times on Saturday, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, which helped coordinate the letter, organized a press call Monday, where some of those who signed the letter spoke out against the assault on Gaza. By Alex Kane

When the puppet talks back to the puppeteer, the pepeteer is in trouble:Iraqi President: US Has No Right to Use Iraq as ‘Staging Post’ for Attack on Iran  “There is no military solution to this problem.” Iraqi President Barham Salih said Tuesday that the United States has no right to use his country as a launchpad for a strike against Iran. Salih, in his interview with CNN‘s Christiane Amanpour, also talked about the adverse impacts his own country has felt as a result of U.S. imposed sanctions, stressed the need to prevent another war, and warned that tearing up the nuclear deal entirely “could be disastrous for the entire neighborhood as a whole.” By Andrea Germanos

Health, Education, and Welfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let The People Vote on Healthcare!

Spain’s Revolution Against Franco: the Great Betrayal Under the most difficult and dangerous conditions, Spanish workers launched a strike movement that is unparalleled in history. Nothing remotely resembling it can be seen in Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy. Beginning with the heroic movement of the Asturian coalminers 1962, there was wave after wave of strikes, general strikes, demonstrations and protests.   This was a genuine revolution, which could and should have gone far further than it did. The Spanish workers and youth did everything in their power to bring about a revolutionary transformation of society. If they did not finally succeed, that was no fault of theirs. The Spanish revolution of the 1970s was shamefully betrayed by the leaders of the Communist and Socialist parties, who entered into an agreement with former fascists like Adolfo Suarez in order halt the revolutionary movement in its tracks. The result of this betrayal was the so-called democratic transition, which was merely a fig leaf to conceal the continuation of the old regime under the guise of a “parliamentary monarchy”. By Alan Woods

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Daily News Digest Archives

Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace”

During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program:1. Austerity, 2. Scapegoating Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal Immigrants’ for Unemployment, and, if necessary,3. The Iron Heel.

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! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.

Image of the Day:

Bendib:Billionaires R-Us 

Quotes of the Day:

Robert Reiner claims that “(to) a large extent, a society gets the policemen if deserves.” Mr., Reiner is extremely optimistic about the police or extremely cynical about society. But undeniably, the history of our society is reflected in the history of its police. Much of that history clashes with our nation’s patriotic self-image. The history of America’s police is not the story of democracy so much as it is the preventionof democracy. Yet there is another story, an ever-present subtext—the story of resistance. It too, drives this narrative, and if there is a reason for hope anywhere in this book, we may find it here—amidst the slave revolts, strikes, sit-ins, protest marches, and riots. — Kristian Williams, in his forward of his book, Our Enemies in Blue Police and Power in America.

A Real Emergency: The United States’ Crumbling Infraststure:

Instead of using taxpayers’ money to build his useless $5.7 billion border wall — which migrants would cross anyway, whether by digging tunnels under it or climbing over it — Trump should use that money to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure. As anybody who flies from Beijing or other modern Asian airports to the United States can tell you, arriving at the biggest U.S. airports increasingly feels like landing in a Third World country. Rather than building a “big, beautiful wall” in the desert, Trump should modernize airports in New York, Los Angeles and Miami.   Our roads, bridges and internet connectivity are way behind other industrialized countries. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates that the country will need to spend about $4.5 trillion by 2025 to update its infrastructure, including roads, bridges and dams.­­ —Andres Oppenheimer, Instead of a border wall to fix a crisis that doesn’t exist, Trump should use the billions to fix America’s crumbling infrastructure

Videos of the Day:

Trump’s allies get set for fierce fight over emergency declaration

Public Citizen: Trump’s National Emergency Declaration Paves Way for Sweeping Authoritarianism

 U.S.:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to introduce bill blocking Trump’s ‘fake national emergency’ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joaquin Castro have announced new legislation they intend to introduce as part of an effort to block Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration over the US-Mexico border. The Democratic politicians pointed to the National Emergencies Act that provides Congress the ability to “terminate the President’s emergency declaration”, according to Mr Castro. In a tweet following the announcement, Ms Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive freshman representative from NewYork City, wrote: “JoaquinCastrotx and I aren’t going to let the President declare a fake national emergency without a fight.” By Chris Riotta

Worshipping the Electronic ImageDonald Trump, like much of the American public, is entranced by electronic images. He interprets reality through the distortions of digital media. His decisions, opinions, political positions, prejudices and sense of self are reflected back to him on screens. He views himself and the world around him as a vast television show with himself as the star. His primary concerns as president are his ratings, his popularity and his image. He is a creature—maybe the poster child—of the modern, post-literate culture, a culture that critics such as Marshall McLuhan, Daniel Boorstin, James W. Carey and Neil Postman warned us about. By Chris Hedges 

Presidents’ Day Can Kiss My AssHere at Truthout, we observe our own holiday today: Native Sovereignty Day, recognizing the civil rights, human rights and humanity of the many peoples who were damn well here first. Doing so, we acknowledge that in a world without colonial displacement and genocide, the very concept of a “U.S. president” would not, in fact, exist. How did we wind up in this bizarre situation? Is our presidential fixation just an ossified holdover from British colonial days, some atavistic and self-destructive yearning to be ruled by an untouchable absolute leader? Is it the God thing, a lazy surrender to the Divine Right of Kings because having no say whatsoever is an easy out in a complex world? Or are we all captives of a mass mainstream news media which loves to cover the presidential horse race because it fills air time and column inches, thus sparing them the grind of actually reporting on policy and substance? By William Rivers Pitt

Environment:

Lack of proper health and safety regulation allows Robber Baron Contaractors to plunder government funds!:

Feinstein-Pelosi Obstruct Justice On Tetra Tech Eco-Fraud At Treasure Island & Hunters Point 6-17-18  (Video)

 Suspect Hunters Point shipyard contractor did similar work at Treasure Island

• US sues Tetra Tech over Hunters Point shipyard work, claiming widespread fraud

Corporate managers accused of directing an extensive fraud in the cleanup of San Francisco’s toxic shipyard led similar projects at nearby Treasure Island — work that apparently has never been rechecked since fraud at the shipyard was discovered, even as a $5 billion real estate development on the island speeds ahead. Tetra Tech EC, a subsidiary of the government contracting giant Tetra Tech Inc., is being sued for fraud by whistle-blowers and the Department of Justice. Federal prosecutors say the firm cut corners and falsified radiation tests while serving as a cleanup contractor at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, a mothballed naval base tainted with radioactive substances that last for thousands of years and can cause cancer. By Jason Fagone and Cynthia Dizikes

Big Energy:

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

The Best Police Money Can Buy  In the Fox series APB, police misconduct doesn’t exist, and privatization and technology can fix any problem. If one were to produce an infomercial proclaiming the benefits of a corporate-run high-tech police state, the result might be something like the new Fox series APB. The show follows the adventures of billionaire engineer Gideon Reeves (played by Justin Kirk), who, after witnessing a friend’s murder while on hold with 911, decides the cops are due for an upgrade.By Kristian Williams

Labor:

Economy:

Daily Update (February 18th to 19th): Unexpected Plunges in January Production and December Retail Sales Signaled Weakening Economy and Likely Early-2019 Recession; 12.6% Annual Decline in St. Louis Fed’s January Adjusted Monetary Base Was Worst Since Onset of Great Depression’s Second Down-Leg

4,823 U.S. Banks Have Disappeared Since 1999At the end of 1999, the year thatPresident Bill Clinton and his  Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin brokered the deal to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and allow the casino investment banks on Wall Street to gobble up deposit-taking banks, there were 10,220 federally insured banks and savings institutions in the United States. Today, that number stands at 5,397, a decline of 47 percent according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). What exactly happened to those disappeared banks?  We examined FDIC data to see if the sharp falloff in bank numbers was from failures or mergers. We found that the vast majority of the decline resulted from banks being absorbed in mergers. By the end of 2005, six years after the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the U.S. still had 8,832 federally insured banking institutions. But in just that year alone, 315 banks were lost to mergers. By 2010, the number of U.S. banking institutions had dropped to 7,657 with 197 institutions absorbed that year through mergers. In years 2015, 2016 and 2017, there were a total of 786 federally insured banking institutions absorbed through mergers.   The loss of competition in banking services has unleashed an unprecedented concentration of the life savings of Americans being held as deposits at a handful of behemoth Wall Street banks which simultaneously engage in high risk securities and derivatives trading – the very combination that led to the epic Wall Street banking collapses in 2008 and the 1930s. By Pam Martens

World:

Britain: Bye bye Blairites! Now show the rest the door Good riddance. This will be the sentiment amongst grassroots Labour members towards today’s news that a group of seven Blairites are splitting from the party. Delight at their departure will be mixed with immense anger towards the treacherous role that these right-wingers have been allowed to play over the past few years. The task now is to kick out the rest of the saboteurs who remain at large inside the Parliamentary Labour Party. This is why we need mandatory reselection. The announcement by the splitters came as a surprise to nobody. The names of those who have chosen to leave reads like a Who’s Who list of the most consistent Corbyn critics – a veritable rogues gallery of careerists and big business politicians. The shock is not that these gangsters have left the party, but that it has taken so long to get rid of them! By Adam Booth 

Britain: students rise up to fight capitalism’s climate crisis At least 10,000 students across the UK walked out of school on Friday 15 February, marking the arrival of the international School Strike 4 Climate movement in Britain. This movement has already mobilised hundreds of thousands of students in over 40 countries, with young people around the world participating in incredibly militant strikes and marches – the aim of which is to force governmental action on climate change. On Friday there were protests in around 60 locations nationwide. The largest event was in London, where a demo in Parliament Square attracted thousands of students. Ages ranged from sixth form down to primary school, with many students coming straight from classes, still wearing their school uniform. Supportive teachers and parents also joined in. It was clear, however, that this strike was organised and led by the students themselves. By Helena Nicholson

Economy:

Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:

The Day the Music Died: Malcolm X’s Assassination, Feb. 21, 1965 by Roland Sheppard (First Published by the San Francisco Bayview )

In the afternoon of Feb. 21, 1965, I went to the Audubon Ballroom to hear Malcolm X speak. I also went to sell the newspaper, The Militant, a radical newspaper that printed the truth about Malcolm X, published his speeches and publicly defended him.

When I got to the ballroom, things were radically different – there were no cops. Normally, Malcolm’s meetings in Harlem were crawling with cops. As I was selling papers, Malcolm X approached the Audubon Ballroom. I offered to sell him the latest issue, but he told me, “Not today, Roland. I am alone and in a hurry.”

A while later as I entered the meeting room, again I did not see any cops. I went in to sit down where I normally sat along with the rest of the press in the front and the left side of the room. On the way to my seat, Gene Roberts, who later surfaced as a police agent member of the Black Panther Party, told me that I could not sit at my regular place but that on that day I had to sit in the front row on the right side of the hall, facing the stage.

As I sat down, I glanced over to where I normally sat and saw a large Black man with a navy blue-gray trench coat. When the meeting started, all was quiet as the crowd listened to Benjamin X introducing Malcolm X.

When Malcolm approached the podium, he gave the normal Muslim greeting for peace. At that point a disturbance occurred in the room. Two men were standing about halfway back in the room and to the right of Malcolm on stage. One was shouting, “Get your hand out of my pocket!”

Malcolm was trying to calm things down, when the men — one later identified as Talmadge Hayer — started running down the right aisle shouting and firing a pistol at Malcolm and ran out the exit doors by the stage, to the right of Malcolm X

Suddenly I heard gunshots fired from all over the place, and I instinctively hit the floor. When I looked up, I saw Malcolm X standing up and glaring down at one of his assassins. At that point, from the corner of my eye, nearby to my left, I saw a flash from a gun as I watched Malcolm X fall down and back about 10 feet.

In that instant, as Malcolm died before my eyes, I suddenly realized how big he was and I realized that he was a giant in stature and in the world. This vision of Malcolm X, being assassinated, has haunted me ‘til this day.

The fatal blast, which I later found out to be from a shotgun, came from the area where I had seen the large Black man with a navy blue-gray trench coat! When I left the hall, Malcolm’s bodyguards told me that they had caught two of the assassins, one who was shot – Talmadge Hayer – and one whom the police took away.

A few weeks later, when I was questioned in the Harlem police station, I was shown a series of photos of people whom I recognized as members of the Nation of Islam or Malcolm’s organization. I also saw a picture of the large Black man with a navy blue-gray trench coat that I had seen at the Audubon Ballroom.

I was thinking of how to respond to the cops and how to say that I did not recognize the photos of Malcolm’s friends and supporters and the members of the Nation of Islam. I then told the cops that I had to go to the rest room.

When I got to the men’s room door, I saw the same large Black man coming out of the men’s room that I had seen in the Audubon Ballroom and in the photos that had just been shown to me. He walked by me, past the desks of the secretarial pool, and went to his office inside the police station!

At that point I knew that he and the government either killed Malcolm X or were part of the assassination plot. I became very nervous thinking about what I was going to say to the cops when I got back and how I was going to get out of the station alive.

I then came up with, “I cannot recognize anyone, for all Black people look the same.” The cops nodded in agreement and we were allowed to leave the police station.

Malcolm X was one of my heroes. He was the most honest mass leader that I have ever known or seen. He was a great orator and his speeches seemed like a conversation between himself and the audience.

His speeches were like music to my ears and have inspired me for the rest of my life in the fight for social justice. He was so human in his orations. I still remember him when he made the “Harlem Hate Gang Scare” speech at the Militant Labor Forum on May 29, 1964, and other speeches in which he chuckled a “heh heh” when he was about to make a special comment.

At that forum, he said: “It’s impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg … The system of this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, this social system, this system period. It is impossible for it, as it now stands, to produce freedom right now for the Black man in this country — it is impossible. And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg (heh heh), I’m certain you would say it was a revolutionary chicken (heh heh).”

Both he and Martin Luther King had come to similar positions about capitalism and the Vietnam War at the time of their death. That is why this government assassinated them. No one has followed in their footsteps.

From the point of view of this government, the world leader in political assassinations, the two assassinations worked. For to this day, no mass leader has had the courage to pick up where they left off. They were able to silence the art, science and truth of these two great orators. To me, Feb. 21 is “the day the music died.” It was the saddest day of my life.

For an in depth explanation of the government’s assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, read my article, “The Assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.”

Update: The assassin with the shotgun

On April 30, 2010, I received an email from John Judge, director of the Coalition on Political Assassinations, referring to an April 22, 2010, article titled For the First Time in History, The Face of William Bradley, Shotgun Assassin of Malcolm X-El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, in a Public Safety Campaign Commercial for Mayor Cory Booker! by Abdur-Rahman Muhammad.

In that article is the picture shown here of William Bradley, who is the man that I had seen in the Audubon Ballroom and in the photos that the Harlem police showed me while I was being interrogated. Bradley was the man I saw coming out of the men’s room, walking by me, past the desks of the secretarial pool, and into his office inside the police station, as I was going to the men’s room!

As I wrote in my original 2009 essay: “At that point I knew that he and the government either killed Malcolm X or were part of the assassination plot.” And now I know his name. William Bradley is the man that Talmadge Hayer identified as the one who shot the shotgun. Zak Kondo also identified William Bradley as the assassin with the shotgun.

In his article, Abdur-Rahman Muhammad states: “Although his name has been in the public domain now for well over three decades, ever since 1977 when Hayer filed his affidavit with famed lawyer William Kuntsler naming his accomplishes, nevertheless a face has never been attached to the name. Historian and member of the committee researching this story Zak Kondo published a marvelous book two decades ago on the assassination of Malcolm X, wherein he explored quite a bit of biographical material on the five assassins. Spike Lee even named the five killers in the credits of his movie. But in all of these years none of them, including ‘Willie’ Bradley, has ever filed a libel suit. And for good reason – they would lose.”

This video, “MALCOLM X The Assassination of Malcolm X,” shows the police catching a second man after Malcolm’s assassination.
MALCOLM X The Assassination of Malcolm X
Uploaded by polobylimsa. – Watch the latest news videos.

A new improved video, “The Hunt for William Bradley,” by Karl Evanzz in association of Shabazz Productions, identifies the man rescued from the crowd by the police as William Bradley. The video is contained in a collection of clips titled “Naked Lies: The Continuous War Against Malcolm X.” Shabazz Productions had previously produced: Omar Shabazz “Inside Job: Betrayal of the Black Messiah.”

Roland Sheppard is a writer and activist and former BA of the Painters Union in San Francisco. Email him at info@rolandsheppard.com  and visit his website, https://rolandsheppard.com/

Daily News Digest February 18, 2019

Daily News Digest Archives

Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace”

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.

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! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.

Images of the Day:

This is a Real American Emergency

Who Are The Refugess? 

 Toxic Chemicals in Your Drinking Water

Quote of the Day:

As many of us heard the news about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, we were both shocked and horrified that dangerous levels of lead could be present in the tap water used by a city full of people. But just because the water where you live isn’t contaminated by lead does not mean that it is truly safe. In fact, new research suggests that the drinking water used by more than six million Americans may have very high levels of toxic chemicals.— Toxic Chemicals in Your Drinking Water

Videos of the Day:

Trump Declares an Imperial Presidency – Paul Jay  Trump’s emergency order threatens to create an all powerful presidency and weaken a constitutional order that allows the elites to settle their differences within an electoral process – Paul Jay joins guest-host Jacqueline Luqman of ‘Luqman Nation’

Haiti Whistleblower Says Jovenel Moise, Michel Martelly are Drug Dealers and Murderers In this tell-all video, a former government enforcer turned whistleblower, named Jonas Belizaire, says puppet President Jovenel Moise and Michel Martelly are drug dealers and murderers and he was an eyewitness to their crimes.

‘Victory’ Deal Reached to End First Denver Teachers Strike in 25 Years

The Book: The Age Of Surveillance Capitalism

 U.S.:

Incarceration vs. education: America spends more on its prison system than it does on public schools – and California is the worstBy Valerie Bauman Social Affairs Reporter For Dailymail.Com

• Most American states spend more on their prisons than they do on education – and California is the worst, investing $64,642 per prisoner compared to $11,495 per student – a $53,146 difference in spending priorities

• The reasons include an incarceration rate that has tripled over the past three decades, the higher cost of caring for people in prisons 24 hours a day, and the higher number of workers required to operate a prison

• New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Rhode Island round out the top states spending more on prisons 

Trump’s Broken Promises to the Land of “American Carnage” In late November, General MotorsGM) announced that it had no plans to allocate any new products to its Lordstown, Ohio, plant after it discontinues production on the Chevrolet Cruze this March. The move essentially ends the plant’s last 1,600 jobs, and represents only the latest dispatch from the heartland of what President Trump has called “American carnage.” For 52 years, the Lordstown plant, nestled in Trumbull County in the state’s Mahoning Valley, served as one of the nerve centers of the Youngstown-Warren area. Youngstown produced steel: Miles of blast furnaces perpetually lit up the night skies, and locals referred to the accompanying pollution as “pay dirt,” since the steel mills meant prosperity.

Is Trump’s National Emergency a Step Toward Fascism? President Trump has now declared a national emergency to fund his long-sought border wall. It is no surprise that when a fascistic president like Trump starts throwing around the idea of a national emergency, media outlets like Esquire start asking whether “it might be time to start fireproofing the Reichstag,” a clear allusion to Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933. But is the comparison justified? Is Trump’s declaration of a national emergency a threat to American democracy?The short answer is: National emergencies are normal … until they’re not. The United States has been in a state of nearly continual national emergency since the passage of the National Emergencies Act in 1976. Trump’s national emergency would be the 32^nd national emergency currently in effect. Others include selective embargoes on Syria, Libya, and South Sudan and opposition to the “Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Congress can override a president’s national emergency, but only with a two-thirds majority vote. By Mark Bray 

Massive Rapid Response Protests Planned to Fight Trump’s National Emergency ‘Power Grab’“If Trump declares a national emergency for his racist and wasteful wall, expect thousands to hit streets in rapid response protests just days later—a mass, rapid visible outcry against the real emergency.” By Jake Johnson 

In Libya, “We Came, We Saw, He Died.” Now, Maduro? Libya is in a state of anarchic turmoil, with various groups fighting each other for control of the country, and as the Wall Street Journal reported last September, “Islamic State is staging a resurgence in chaotic Libya, claiming more than a dozen attacks in the North African country this year and threatening to disrupt the flow of oil from one of the world’s most significant suppliers.” To such mainstream media outlets as the Wall Street Journal the fact that oil supply is being disrupted is much more important than the savage IS attacks that result in slaughter of so many innocent people who are only foreigners, anyway. By Brian Cloughley

Trump administration condemned over delaying action on toxic drinking water EPA to spend at least another year considering whether to restrict toxic chemicals found in drinking water… The chemicals – known as PFOS and PFOA – are found in nonstick pots and pans, food packaging, and firefighting foam sprayed in drills on military bases. They seep into soil and groundwater in areas where they are manufactured and used. In high levels, the chemicals are linked with kidney and testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, high cholesterol and problems in pregnancy. The chemicals are so prevalent that they are estimated to be in the bloodstreams of nearly all Americans. By Emily Holden 

Environment:

New Poll Shows Increased Bipartisan Desire to Act on Climate Change The results, released in December, also show widespread bipartisan support for a Green New Deal and renewable energy

US coastal businesses hit by everyday impact of climate change, study shows Annapolis seeing sea rise at about twice the global rate. Flooding there foreshadows problems other coastal towns can expect When the parking lot in the bustling tourist zone of downtown Annapolis floods, the employees at Pip’s Dock Street Dogs restaurant take off their socks and shoes, wrap their legs in trash bags and wade out into the water. A lot of the time, it’s not even raining. High tides intensified by sea-level rise are just pushing the water inland, overwhelming the drainage system. By Emily Holden 

The Green New Deal, Capitalism and the State The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created by Richard Nixon in 1970 as the official response to the nascent environmental movement. As laid out in the recently released Poison Papers, it was structured to be dependent on research from private firms that were paid by the chemical producers it regulates. Given the limited market for this research, these firms either roduced research conducive to the interests of their customers or they went out of business. By Rob Urie

Big Energy:

‘It’s About Economics’: Two Coal Plants to Close Despite Trump’s Tweet Trump is losing his rallying cry to save coal. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) voted on Thursday to retire two coal-fired power plants in the next few years despite a plea from the president to keep one of the plants open.Earlier this week, the president posted an oddly specific tweet that urged the government-owned utility to save the 49-year-old Paradise 3 plant in Kentucky. It so happens that the facility burns coal supplied by Murray Energy Corporation, whose CEO is Robert Murray, is a major Trump donor.But the TVA board of directors voted 5-2 in favor of closing that plant as well as the Bull Run plant in Tennessee. By Lorraine Chow

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Labor:

World:

Cuba Warns US Moving Special Forces Closer to Venezuela Under Guise of ‘Humanitarian Intervention’“It is worth recalling that similar behaviors and pretexts were used to by the U.S. during the prelude to wars it launched against Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya.” By Jessica Corbett

Economy:

Daily Update (February 15th to 18th): Unexpected Monthly Plunges in January Industrial Production and Manufacturing, and December Retail Sales Signal a Weakened Economy and Increasingly Likely Early-2019 Recession. — John Williams

Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:

Workers’ democracy in the Russian Revolution – part twoThe Russian Revolution is the greatest event in human history, because for the first time the working class not only led a revolution, but took power directly into their own hands and proceeded to transform society. The act is slandered as undemocratic, when in reality it involved the most far-reaching and revolutionary democracy the world has ever seen. In this two-part article, Daniel Morley explains how this worked in practice. By Daniel Morley

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said billionaires shouldn’t exist as long as Americans live in abject poverty  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said a society that allows billionaires to exist while some Americans live in abject poverty is “immoral.”

• She said Americans shouldn’t normalize economic inequality by idealizing the super-rich during a conversation with author Ta-Nehisi Coates at an event honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday.

• The New York Democrat recently suggested the US should hike marginal tax rates on Americans making more than $10 million.

“I’m not saying that Bill Gates or Warren Buffett are immoral, but a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong,” Ocasio-Cortez said during an event honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday. By Eliza Relman

Daily News Digest February 15, 2019

Daily News Digest Archives

Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace”

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.

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! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.

Images of the Day:

Quote of the Day:

Helen KellerVideos of the Day:

In Caracas, Ordinary Venezuelans Speak to The Real News About Venezuela’s CrisisCitizens of Venezuela wait in line to sign a petition denouncing U.S. imperialism. Dimitri Lascaris reports from Caracas

U.S.:

  Doomsday Redux: the Most Dangerous Weapon Ever Rolls Off the Nuclear Assembly Line  Last month, the National Nuclear Security Administration (formerly the Atomic Energy Commission) announced that the first of a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons had rolled off the assembly line at its Pantex nuclear weapons plant in the panhandle of Texas. That warhead, the W76-2, is designed to be fitted to a submarine-launched Trident missile, a weapon with a range of more than 7,500 miles. By September, an undisclosed number of warheads will be delivered to the Navy for deployment. By James Carroll

Neoliberalism Or Death: The U.S. Economic War Against Venezuela The U.S. Is Weaponizing humanitarian aid in an effort to sell its regime change campaign against Venezuela. This week on Intercepted: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi officially endorses the attempted coup in Venezuela, joining forces with Donald Trump and his posse of neoconservatives. Venezuela’s Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Ron responds to the threats of military action and the reports about covert U.S. activity in the country. He also discusses the impact of the sanctions on Venezuela. Former United Nations rapporteur Alfred de Zayas is accusing the U.S. of attempting to “asphyxiate” Venezuela with economic warfare and says the U.S. should be investigated by the International Criminal Court. Zayas wrote a U.N. report on Venezuela in late 2018 that was scathing in its assessment of U.S. policy toward Venezuela under both Obama and Trump. He talks about what he found during his investigation. And we go inside the mind of journalist Sam Husseini, who tried to ask convicted criminal Elliott Abrams about his past and the present U.S. lies about Venezuela.

Environment:

Capitalism’s Ownership of Global Warming  Capitalism not only owns global warming, there’s a big red mitigation arrow pointed at the heart of today’s rampant capitalism, which is eerily similar to the loosie goosie version of the Roaring Twenties, but with a high tech twist.By Robert Hunziker

Big Energy:

In Fuel to the Fire: How Geoengineering Threatens to Entrench Fossil Fuels and Accelerate the Climate Crisis, the Center for International Environmental Law (CEIL) warns that geoengineering, which includes technologies to remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide and to shoot particles into the atmosphere to block sunlight, potentially offers more of a problem for the climate than a solution. By Justin Mikulka

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America

Kristian Williams: I doubt that your readers need to be told that police brutality and racism are real problems. But the history I recount in Our Enemies in Blue may help make sense of why the institution operates the way that it does. Looking at the history of policing from the slave patrols to our current period of militarization and mass incarceration, I argue that racism and violence are central to the institution’s function. In other words, rather than ask why the institution doesn’t do what it is “supposed” to do—bringing justice, protecting the innocent, etc. —I think we get further by starting with what it does do, and then looking for the reasons it does that. Taking that approach, and recognizing that throughout their history the police have reliably served the interests of white supremacy, we may get a clearer idea of what the role of the police really is, and it also tells us something about the centrality of racism to our entire society. — Black Agenda Report Book Forum:  Kristian Williams’s “Our Enemies in Blue”

Pelosi Sabotages Medicare for All, But Corporate Media Pretend Not to Notice  When the top Democrat secretly plots to subvert a proposal supported by the vast majority of her party, that’s supposed to be news — unless the corporate media decide otherwise. “The plutocrat-owned press is protecting Pelosi from the extreme embarrassment.” Thanks to Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid in 2016, his signature Medicare for All proposal is the litmus issue for Democrats in the unfolding 2020 campaign. With supermajority support among Democratic and independent voters and backed by more than half of Republican s, the single payer scheme was endorsed by a majority of Democratic candidates in November’s House races. Most of the declared Democratic presidential candidates claim to back Medicare for All, including even New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who has accepted more money from Big Pharma than any other member of his party . So compelling is the issue, a Politico-Harvard poll shows that fully 84 percent of Democrats want the party to make Medicare for All “an extremely important priority.” By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor

Labor:

The War at the Point of Production: The ‘Killing Fields’ of the United Statescontinues with safety regulations cut and fewer Occupational Health Doctors:

To achieve the objective of establishing occupational and environmental medicine as a clinical entity within mainstream medical care and education, a new approach to training and certification is needed. We recommend that the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and the American Board of Family Practice (ABFP) offer certificates of added qualifications to diplomates in internal medicine and family practice who have advanced training or experience in occupational and environmental medicine. The certificate of added qualifications in geriatric medicine offered by the ABIM and ABFP is a model for such an approach. We recognize that implementing a similar program for occupational and environmental medicine would be controversial. Nonetheless, we believe that it would be effective in remedying the shortage of clinicians in this field, particularly in locations not readily served by academic medical centers. This strategy might also increase interest in occupational and environmental medicine among primary care specialists by offering a second certificate of added qualifications to board-certified specialists who participate in one additional year of clinical specialty training. We also recommend an alternative approach to certification of the full-fledged specialist in occupational and environmental medicine: a streamlined dual-certification program overseen by a primary care specialty board (ABIM or ABFP) and by the American Board of Preventive Medicine. A similar process has been adopted by the ABIM with the American Board of Pediatrics, the American Board of Emergency Medicine, and the American Board of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.  Most primary care physicians are inadequately prepared to respond to the growing need for clinical services that address the real and perceived problems of occupational and environmental illness. A recent community-based survey identified physicians as one of the most trusted but least informed sources of information about the risks of chemical exposure.¹⁴ This gap between trust and knowledge must be narrowed. Substantial changes in medical education are needed at the undergraduate level as well as in the training of clinicians, teachers, and researchers in occupational and environmental medicine. Taken together, the six measures recommended in this article can alleviate the current pressing shortage of physicians in occupational and environmental medicine. — Meeting the Growing Need for Clinical Services

‘No One Should Be Surprised’: After Long Career Stiffing Workers, Trump Blocks Back Pay for Federal ContractorsAs a real estate mogul, Donald Trump was notorious for swindling low-wage workers out of pay. Lack of back pay for low-wage contractors also called a “policy and political failure” for Democratic leaders, who were accused of failing to publicly fight the president’s cruelty By Jake Johnson

World:

Capitalist Deregulation Kills: Mine Flood Kills 23, Zimbabwean Officials Fear Final Death Toll Thirty-eight miners traveled down into a pair of mines Tuesday and so far, not one living survivor has been found. Zimbabwean officials continue to search for miners after a gold mine outside the capital, Harare, flooded earlier this week.”So far twenty-three people have been confirmed dead and fears are that more miners could have perished,” police spokesperson Charity Charamba said.

Britain: cancer and Capita – NHS outsourcing disaster deepensOn 14 November 2018, the British Medical Association (BMA) uncovered a system error by Capita, an outsourcing company responsible for ‘business processes’. Capita’s negligence led to 48,000 women not receiving their letters for cervical cancer screening and follow up, potentially putting many lives at risk. Dr Richard Vautrey, BMA GP committee chair at the time, stated:“This is an incredibly serious situation, and it is frankly appalling that patients may now be at risk because of this gross error on the part of Capita. Some women will now be left extremely anxious because they have not received important correspondence, particularly letters about abnormal smear test results that need urgent follow up. This has been caused solely by Capita’s incompetence.” By Dan Langley

Britain: Brexit crisis will reshape political landscape foreverWith the Brexit clock ticking, British big business is getting increasingly panicked at the prospect of a no-deal departure from the European Union. “Businesses risk being hung out to dry,” remarked Adam Marshall, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, a leading voice of UK bosses. The ruling class is growing weary of Theresa May and her can kicking antics, which only add to uncertainty and instability facing British capitalism. By Adam Booth

Economy:

Welcome To Chapwood Index
The Real Cost Of Living Increase Index   The Chapwood Index reflects the true cost-of-living increase in America. Updated and released twice a year, it reports the unadjusted actual cost and price fluctuation of the top 500 items on which Americans spend their after-tax dollars in the 50 largest cities in the nation.  It exposes why middle-class Americans — salaried workers who are given routine pay hikes and retirees who depend on annual increases in their corporate pension and Social Security payments — can’t maintain their standard of living. Plainly and simply, the Index shows that their income can’t keep up with their expenses, and it explains why they increasingly have to turn to the government for entitlements to bail them out.

Citigroup Pats Itself on the Back for Disclosing It Pays Women 29 Percent Less than Men In a blog post on January 19, Citigroup’s head of Human Resources, Sara Wechter, wrote that “Citi’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is longstanding.” She next bragged that “Last year, Citi was the first financial institution to publicly release the results of a pay equity review.” Three paragraphs later, we get the cold, hard facts: “median pay for women globally is 71% of the median for men” at Citigroup.   By Pam Martens

Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:

CEH’s Ansje Miller Responds to EPA’s PFAS Action Plan“Considering the magnitude of the public health crisis posed by our increasing exposure to the hazardous class of the ubiquitous toxic Per- And Polyfluoroalkyl Substances(PFAS) chemicals, indications are that EPA’s action plan is woefully inadequate and lacks the necessary urgency. These chemicals have been linked to liver and kidney damage, thyroid disease, asthma, decreased fertility, pregnancy complications, lower birth weights, and cancer. Some 110 million Americans drink water with dangerous PFAS levels and PFAS have been found in the blood of an estimated 98% of Americans.

Daily News Digest February 13, 2019

Daily News Digest Archives

Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace”

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.

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! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.

Images of the Day:

Signe Wilkinson: State of the Union Address

Quotes of the Day:

Previously noted (Jan 24), the Review estimates that shutdown-delayed reporting of 4q2018 GDP will show the economy slowed more than expected. Headlinea 1q2019 GDP remains on track for an annualized real quarterly contraction, likely marking the onset of formal recession. The Federal Reserve’s excessive interest rate hikes and tightening of the last year triggered the pending recession, not the government shutdown, which only exacerbated the circumstance. Recent shifting FOMC-policy language suggests something of a GDP downturn also is in the Fed’s internal forecasts.  — John Williams, Shadow Government Statistics

Videos of the Day:

Danny Glover on the Conflict Over Venezuela  Actor and activist Danny Glover places the conflict over Venezuela in the context of a long history of US-led coups in Latin America

A Green New Deal for India?A new report from the Political Economy Research Institute puts forth a proposal to boost equity while lowering carbon

U.S.:

Deported parents may lose kids to adoption, investigation finds“We have the kids in the U.S. and the parents down in Central America, and now they’ll bring all these child welfare agencies into play… It’s just a recipe for disaster.” As the deportees were led off the plane onto the steamy San Salvador tarmac, an anguished Araceli Ramos Bonilla burst into tears, her face contorted with pain: “They want to steal my daughter!”  By TheAssociated Press

Stephen Cohen on War with Russia and Soviet-style Censorship in the US“I had been arguing for years — very much against the American political media grain — that a new US/Russian Cold War was unfolding — driven primarily by politics in Washington, not Moscow,” Cohen writes in War with Russia. “For this perspective, I had been largely excluded from influential print, broadcast and cable outlets where I had been previously welcomed.” By Russell Mokhiber

Ah, Yes,’ Says Ocasio-Cortez of Trump After Jab at Green New Deal, ‘A Man Who Can’t Even Read Briefings Written in Full Sentences’New York Democratic shows no tolerance for presidential ignorance surrounding visionary plan designed to help save humanity and planet By Jon Queally

Nearly 15,000 Counter Trump Event With El Paso Rally to Reject ‘Hatred and Bigotry’“We’re standing together to show them the truth about our border community. A border wall is not needed, there is no immigration crisis, and asylum seekers have rights.” Less than a mile away from the El Paso, Texas stadium in which President Donald Trump delivered what critics described as a bigoted and lie-filled case for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, as many as 15,000 Texans rallied and marched Monday night in a powerful display of opposition to both the wall and the broad anti-immigrant agenda it represents.  By Jake Johnson 

Peter Jackson’s Cartoon War When director-producer Peter Jackson’s World War I film, “They Shall Not Grow Old,” which miraculously transforms grainy, choppy black-and-white archival footage from the war into a modern 3D color extravaganza, begins, he bombards us with the clichés used to ennoble war. Veterans, over background music, say things like “I wouldn’t have missed it,” “I would go through it all over again because I enjoyed the service life” and “It made me a man.” It must have taken some effort after the war to find the tiny minority of veterans willing to utter this rubbish. Military life is a form of servitude, prolonged exposure to combat leaves you broken, scarred for life by trauma and often so numb you have difficulty connecting with others, and the last thing war does is make you a man. By Chris Hedges

Glenn Greenwald Defends Rep. Ilhan Omar: Criticizing Israeli Lobby & AIPAC Is Not Anti-Semitic Democratic Congressmember Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is facing criticism today after commenting on a tweet by Glenn Greenwald. On Sunday, Greenwald tweeted, ”GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy threatens punishment for @IlhanMN and @RashidaTlaib over their criticisms of Israel. It’s stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans.” Rep. Omar retweeted his post and added the line: “It’s all about the Benjamins baby.” She later named AIPAC as the organization paying American politicians to be pro-Israel.

Greenwald: How Can Democrats Support Trump’s Push for Regime Change to Seize Venezuela’s Oil? The U.S. and Russia have proposed opposing draft resolutions at the U.N. Security Council as the leadership crisis in Venezuela deepens. The U.S. is calling for elections in Venezuela and for international aid deliveries to be allowed to enter the country. The Russians called out international intervention in the affairs of Venezuela and the threat of foreign military action. The Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro is accusing the United States of attempting to stage a coup. We speak to The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald about the actions of Washington and of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Environment:

‘We Have Entered the Age of Environmental Breakdown’: Report Details World Nearing Runaway CollapseA new report from U.K. researchers is being praised as “absolutely brilliant,” “essential reading for policymakers,” and “a clarion wake-up call to the world.” By Jessica Corbett

The World Is on the Brink of Widespread Water Wars My friend Mark Oats, a farmer in Australia, recently sent this note to me: Last night I looked through the Bureau of Meteorology App at the monthly rainfall figures for January, and temperatures.The region around Byron Lismore has had 1.6 percent of average rainfall for January and is 2.6C degrees warmer than average. 98.4 percent less rain than normal. Virtually nothing — and hence the people, plant, animal and food pressures growing.By Dahr Jamail

Big Energy:

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Black Agenda Radio, Week of February 11, 2019 By Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford 

• Black Agenda Radio – Never Trust an Oligarch

• Black Agenda Radio – Dems Are Not Serious Or Socialist

Labor:

Fred Klonsky: Denver Teachers Strike Over Low Wages, Merit Pay That Forces Teachers to Compete for Money We will have more commentary on the Denver teacherss’ strike. Here, Fred Klonsky reminds us of the much-ballyhooed, but ultimately failed merit pay called ProComp, that substituted merit pay for adequate salaries.Don’t pay attention to Democratic Senator Michael Bennett, who claims to favor the teachers but was superintendent of the Denver public schools who launched corporate reform and lost many millions in tricky financial deals while he was in charge. He was anti-union when he was superintendent and is a big supporter of VAM. By  Diane Ravitch

World:

Venezuela: A Diplomatic Coup?VA’s on-the-ground journalist Paul Dobson explains why Guaido’s attempted coup has had next to no impact within Venezuela. Many living outside of Venezuela have been following the ongoing attempted coup d’etat with fully deserved attention. Not only does it set a worrying precedent of blunt-edged US meddling in the region, but it also runs against the Venezuelan Constitution and local laws. The recognition of an unelected leader by a host of governments also clearly violates the cornerstone of international law, including the United Nations and Organisation of American States charters, as well as foundational principles safeguarding countries’ right to sovereignty and self-determination.

Study: 80% of Venezuelans Oppose Foreign InterventionThe Vice President for Planning of Venezuela, Ricardo Menendez, indicated that the encirclement and financial sabotage by the US has generated losses of 60 billion dollars. In an interview for teleSUR, Venezuela’s Vice President for Planning Ricardo Menendez said that about 80 percent of Venezuelans reject any interventionist action against the South American nation.

London Gangs: a Tragic Remnant of British ColonialismLondon is plagued by street gangs. By the year 2016 there were an estimated 3,600 gangsters. According to government figures, these form some 225 gangs. Of these, 58 gangs are regularly active and are thought by police to be responsible for two-thirds of gang-related offences, including assault, theft, murder and, most of all, drugs. Ethnically, gangsters are mainly white, Asian, black and Eastern European. In the absence of official data, on-the-ground reports suggest that the majority of gangsters dealing in drugs, where the most violent crimes occur, are young black males, particularly Jamaican. This is not only a symptom of how successive British governments have failed young ethnic minorities, it reflects the tragic legacy of colonialism. by T.J. Coles

The Iranian Revolution Turns Forty: Dare to Know, Have the Courage to Act! Legend has it that in 1972 when the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai was asked about the impact of the French Revolution his response was that “it’s too soon to say.” Although the accuracy of the story has been questioned, I believe that legendary response remains historically apposite. What revolutions do, their failure or success, their lasting impact, their tangible and intangible achievements are often expressed in contradictory terms and difficult to ascertain. The Iranian revolution of 1979 is not an exception. Iranians mark the fortieth anniversary of their revolution at a moment that cries of regret are commonly heard all over the country, in rural areas as well as in urban centers.   By Behrooz Ghamari Tabrizi

Economy:

All of a Sudden, Fixing American Capitalism Is on Everybody’s Mind Wall Street, the epicenter of American capitalism, brought down economies around the globe in 2008, including a banking, housing and foreclosure crisis in the U.S. Why is it just now that fixing American capitalism is on everybody’s mind? One answer is that it will be a central focus in the 2020 presidential campaign while a more nuanced reading is that the current dystopian billionaire administration has everyone grasping for answers as to how we got here. By Pam Martens

Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:

Opening a Dangerous FloodgateThomas Corbett, a former for-profit college executive, speaks out against plans by the U.S. Department of Education to weaken requirements for oversight of college quality. U.S. secretary of education Betsy DeVos has recently launched an effort that may result in an abdication of her responsibility to safeguard federal taxpayer funds. Specifically, she seeks to eliminate and weaken many of the requirements put in place to protect taxpayers and students from being wrongly billed for a subpar college education. In doing so, she gravely underestimates the reality inside for-profit education companies and fails to realize that not all colleges put students first. By Thomas Corbett

Daily News Digest February 8, 2019

 Daily News Digest Archives

Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace”

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.

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! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.

Images of the Day:

Money For War

Food for Thought

Quotes of the Day:

One of Vidal’s explanations of the forces behind the current policies of the US government is the consolidation of wealth through corporate mergers. One result from the “merger mania” of recent decades is the consolidation of the mass media (book publishing, broadcasting, newspapers, etc.) under the control of six giant multinational corporations —  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (201)

Videos of the Day:

Tupac – Keep Ya Head Up … You know it’s funny when it rains it pours, They got money for wars, but can’t feed the poor. Said it ain’t no hope for the youth and the truth is It ain’t no hope for tha future

Edwin Starr – War (Original Video – 1969) War, huh, good god  What is it good for Absolutely nothing, listen to me

U.S.:

The Mother of All Bombs: U.S. Foreign Policy Following the horrific destruction left in the wake of World War II, the United Nations in its seminal and founding document, the Charter of the United Nations, set out to prevent future wars among member nations. The Charter’s admonition against war was also voiced in the lessons learned from the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals in its condemnation of war: starting or waging a war against a territorial integrity, political independence or sovereignty of a state, or violation of international treaties or agreements.  are crimes against peace  and “makes all war crimes possible.” By Howard Lisnoff

US ‘Regime Changes’: The Historical Record 

As the US strives to overthrow the democratic and independent Venezuelan government, the historical record regarding the short, middle and long-term consequences are mixed.We will proceed to examine the consequences and impact of US intervention in Venezuela over the past half century.We will then turn to examine the success and failure of US ‘regime changes’ throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Corporate Titans Target Venezuela  Ruling elites have united behind the Trump administration in its illegal, unjust and brutal attempt to meddle in the internal affairs of Venezuela. Democrats and Republicans alike have fallen in line, revealing the degree to which the two parties march in lock step when the geopolitical prerogatives of the one percent are at stake. By Bruce Lesnick

Environment:

2018 was world’s fourth hottest year on record, scientists confirm

• World 1.5F hotter than average set between 1951 and 1980

• Current five-year stretch the warmest since records began

Global temperatures in 2018 were the fourth warmest on record, US government scientists have confirmed, adding to a stretch of five years that are now collectively the hottest period since modern measurements began. The world in 2018 was 1.5F (0.83C) warmer than the average set between 1951 and 1980, said Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). This means 2018’s average global temperatures were the fourth warmest since 1880, placing it behind 2016, 2017 and 2015.  

Big Energy:

Louisiana and Isle de Jean Charles Tribe Seek to Resolve Differing Visions for Resettling ‘Climate Refugees’ After DeSmog broke the news that the Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe (IDJC) was considering ending its partnership in a $48 million climate change resettlement project, talks have restarted between the Louisiana Office of Community Development (OCD) and the Tribe in an attempt to fix the rift. On January 24, Pat Forbes, executive director of the OCD, met with IDJC Chief Albert Naquin and local officials. “The door is back open to find common ground,” Chief Naquin told me after the meeting. By Julie Dermansky

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

The Harrowing Prison Report Mass Media Chose to Ignore The United States, by all metrics, has one of the cruelest prison systems in the world. In addition to having 25 percent of the world’s prison population (with just 5 percent of the world’s people), U.S. prisons use tortuous solitary confinement, tolerate widespread sexual violence, host massive racial disparities, and routinely abuse children, among other human rights violations. By Adam Johnson

Freedom Rider: Democrats are the McCarthyites The unceasing torrent of Russiagate lies turns Democrats into war hawks and causes liberals to spout nonsense that was once consigned to the fringe right wing. It’s worse than the old McCarthyism.“Liberals who might once have opposed a hot war would now be the first to support it.” A recent poll indicated that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to hold pro-war views . That revelation is hardly surprising considering the degree to which their party has promoted the trope of Donald Trump as a Russian government asset. This strategy is a focal point for them and a weapon to be used against the Republicans instead of the political opposition their voters need. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR editornd senior columnist On Venezuela and NATO, the Democratic Party is the “Assistance” Not the “Resistance” to Empire   Black, working and poor people can expect no relief from Democrats, who will continue to divert the nation’s resources to foreign wars and coups. “Only Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, and Ilhan Omar have voiced any kind of opposition to the Trump Administration’s coup against Venezuela from the Democratic wing of the ruling class.” By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor  

Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, Trump and the State of Imperial DeclineBernie Sanders’ anticipated second run for the presidency is the 6-ton elephant in the Democratic boardroom. But the rich owners of the Party would rather lose to Trump again than win with Sanders “Sanders’ outstanding primary showing represented the strongest electoral challenge to austerity of the century.” For the entirety of the 21st century the Lords of Capital have offered nothing but deepening austerity and endless war to the “home” populace of the imperial countries. The Great Meltdown of 2008 brought the global capitalist system to the very brink of collapse, impoverishing tens of millions and imprinting a profound sense of dread and insecurity on a new generation. Were it not for the strength of China’s command economy and the $19 trillion Federal Reserve bailout of U.S. and European banks, the global capitalist system might have come totally undone. Instead, the system’s concentration of wealth mechanisms were put on overdrive. No wonder, then, that polls show 18 to 29 year-old Americans favor socialism (51%) over capitalism (45%), and that Black Americans are even more socialist-minded than that. And no wonder a U.S. president felt compelled to exorcise the demons of socialism in his State of the Union Address: “Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country,” Donald Trump told the imperial Congress. “America was founded on liberty and independence — not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor

HR 1 Cuts Green Party Campaign Funding, Sics Homeland Security and Political Police on the LeftHR 1 is the premiere legislative initiative of Democrats in the 116th Congress. It contains 571 pages of proposals and findings and such, but only two of HR 1’s dozens of provisions have a reasonable chance of passing the House and obtaining the bipartisan support in the Senate needed to become law. The first is a provision of HR 1 which deputizes the intelligence, police and prison establishment and their contractors to produce an annual report on the threats posed to the security of the US electoral system posed by Americans who might be under the influence of foreign powers. HR 1 cites as the “congressional findings” justifying the legislation a set of cowardly accusations levied by an anonymous group but given wide distribution by the Washington Post, as Glen Greenwald wrote about at the time. Greenwald mentions that Black Agenda Report was one of the institutions anonymously accused. Still, the cowardly accusations somehow count as “congressional findings” robust enough for HR 1 to institutionalize an annual report from the Pentagon, the the intel, the cops and their contractors. By Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor

Cory Booker Hates Public Schools Cory Booker rose to prominence as a fanatical backer of school privatization, yet poses as a friend of public education and teachers. “Booker has openly praised Republican leader Betsy DeVos’s organization American Federation for Children.” Sen. Cory Booker (NJ–D) announced his presidential campaign last week. There’s plenty about Booker’s record worth examining, from his extremely cozy relationship with pharmaceutical companies to his bizarre public defense of Wall Street. But nothing in Booker’s past is as damning as his record on schools. By Eric Blanc

Tasers Claimed 49 Lives in 2018 Through Police Violence  There have been a total of at least 1,081 deaths after the use of Tasers since the weapon began coming into widespread use in the early 2000s. “No government agency tracks how often Tasers are used or how many of those deployments prove fatal.” Taser death is a form of police violence that is claiming lives in the United States despite being called non-lethal, a recent Reuters report revealed. By TelesurThe U.S. is a Political Prison, Kamala Harris is a Prison Guard  Black Agenda Report and other independent media sources have repeatedly been called “fake news” or “Russian propaganda” by the political gatekeepers of the U.S. empire. Trump has been used as a convenient excuse for the ruling elites to discredit those who tell the truth about the ruthlessness of the system. This became even more evident after journalist Marzieh Hashemi was indefinitely detained for over a week by the U.S. government without any formal charges against her. Last week, I wrote that Hashemi’s incarceration and treatment is a product of the U.S. imperial war on independent journalism. The crime committed against her is also a reminder that the U.S. itself is a political prison. By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor 

Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party Vows to Resist South African Government’s Privatization Move  “In the name of ‘efficiency,’ thousands of workers will be retrenched so that the politically connected capitalist elite of the ANC can continue to enrich themselves.” The working class unions in South Africa, including the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), have been resisting the rampant privatization move of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) for months. One of the workers’ struggles was in the state energy enterprise, Eskom, for wage hike and against privatization. NUMSA claimed that the government was intentionally weakening Eskom to pave the way for private corporate players. The two unions also opposed the Independent Power Producer (IPP) program. Under this plan, the government proposed to diversify power sources by making use of renewable energy produced by private, multinational companies. NUMSA clarified that they are in support of renewable energy, but opposed to the way the ANC (African National Congress) government is implementing it. The Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party (SRWP), a new political party associated with NUMSA, vowed to take forward the struggle. Irvin Jim, general secretary of NUMSA and a member of the National Core of SRWP, writes about the struggle against the Cyril Ramaphosa-led South African government’s privatization move. By Irvin Jim, NUMSA General Secretary

On Venezuela and NATO, the Democratic Party is the “Assistance” Not the “Resistance” to Empire  Black, working and poor people can expect no relief from Democrats, who will continue to divert the nation’s resources to foreign wars and coups.  “Only Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, and Ilhan Omar have voiced any kind of opposition to the Trump Administration’s coup against Venezuela from the Democratic wing of the ruling class.” The Trump Administration has pursued an open-air coup against the socialist government of Venezuela , with Pence and company nominating the unelected oligarch Juan Guaido as “interim” president of the oil-rich nation. Guaido resides in a National Assembly stock full of white racist oligarchs seeking to overthrow the rule of Bolivarian socialism. The Venezuelan Supreme Court ruled the decisions of the National Assembly illegitimate earlier in 2019 and the people of Venezuela elected President Maduro with sixty-eight percent of the vote in an election that was boycotted by the rightwing opposition in 2017. None of these facts are of any concern to the U.S. empire, which is primarily interested in reproducing itself and the profits that legitimize its racist system. And Bolivarian socialism has been an enemy of the elites since 1998 when the people of Venezuela rejected the U.S. empire by electing the socialist and anti-imperialist military leader Hugo Chavez.

Labor:

Economy:

 Bank of England refused to return $1.2bn in gold to Venezuela – reports Britain rejected Venezuela’s request to withdraw $1.2bn in gold stored in the UK, according to reports. It was enough for the self-declared and US-backed ‘president’, Juan Guaido, to support the alleged move. The Bank of England blocked Venezuela’s attempts to retrieve $1.2 billion worth of gold stored as the nation’s foreign reserves in Britain, sources told Bloomberg on Friday.According to the media outlet, officials in Caracas have for weeks been trying to withdraw the gold, with Calixto Ortega, the head of Venezuela’s central bank, traveling to London in mid-December to seek access to the nation’s assets.

World:

Venezuelan Opposition Begins to Fissure as US Military Threats MountVA’s Lucas Koerner speaks to Sky News Australia about growing divisions within the Venezuelan opposition as the White House ramps up its threats to intervene militarily in the South American country. By Sky News Australia

Venezuela: Results and Perspectives 1950-2019

During the post WWII decade, the US, working through the CIA and the Pentagon, brought to power authoritarian client regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Peru, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil and several other countries.In the case of Venezuela, the US backed a near decade long military dictatorship (Perez Jimenez ) roughly between 1951-58.

The dictatorship was overthrown in 1958 and replaced by a left-center coalition during a brief interim period. Subsequently, the US reshuffled its policy, and embraced and promoted center-right regimes led by social and christian democrats which alternated rule for nearly forty years.  In the 1990’s US client regimes riddled with corruption and facing a deepening socio-economic crises were voted out of power. As the US strives to overthrow the democratic and independent Venezuelan government, the historical record regarding the short, middle and long-term consequences are mixed. We will proceed to examine the consequences and impact of US intervention in Venezuela over the past half century. We will then turn to examine the success and failure of US ‘regime changes’ throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Venezuela: Results and Perspectives 1950-2019

During the post WWII decade, the US, working through the CIA and the Pentagon, brought to power authoritarian client regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Peru, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil and several other countries.In the case of Venezuela, the US backed a near decade long military dictatorship (Perez Jimenez ) roughly between 1951-58. The dictatorship was overthrown in 1958 and replaced by a left-center coalition during a brief interim period. Subsequently, the US reshuffled its policy, and embraced and promoted center-right regimes led by social and christian democrats which alternated rule for nearly forty years. In the 1990’s US client regimes riddled with corruption and facing a deepening socio-economic crises were voted out of power, By James Petras

Either Washington or Venezuela, Savage Capitalism or Socialism: A Conversation with Luis Britto Garcia In this exclusive interview with Venezuelanalysis, an acclaimed writer and committed Bolivarian talks about the short and long term defense of Venezuela’s sovereignty. By Cira Pascual Marquina

France: for a workers’ government! The power of the yellow vests movement never ceases to surprise – and intimidate – its adversaries. Of course, the bourgeois and their lackeys (in politics and the media) know that poverty exists. They hear about it, distantly, but they are totally disconnected from the real living conditions of the people, their suffering and their problems. Then, from their lofty position of privilege, with all their power and their fortune, they said to themselves: “a little more or a little less austerity, what difference will that make?” The answer hit them like a ton of bricks. This is an editorial if the French Marxist journal, Révolution, originally published on 1 Feb 2019

Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:

Despair: U.S. Priorities: Warfare — Not Healthcare

Daily News Digest February 5, 2019

 Daily News Digest Archives

Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace”

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.

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! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.

Image of the Day:

America First!

Quotes of the Day:

In a 1926 essay for The Nation, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, Hughes described the group, which came together during the Harlem Renaissance, when hanging out uptown was considered a lesson in cool: We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.— The Elusive Langston Hughes

Why is the United States so intent on regime change? Because Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, and the United States is its biggest customer. Within two days of his self-inauguration as “interim president,” Guaidó began a process to restructure and privatize Venezuela’s oil industry for the benefit of multinational corporations. Drawing a parallel with George W. Bush’s Iraq war, Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) tweeted, “It’s about the oil … again.” Indeed, Halliburton, exempted from the new sanctions against Venezuela, is once again benefitting from regime change, like it did in Iraq. Bolton didn’t pull any punches when he stated at a press conference that, “We’re in conversation with major American companies now. … It would make a difference if we could have American companies produce the oil in Venezuela. We both have a lot of stake here.” The Trump administration appears intent on privatizing Venezuela’s oilin order to maximize the profits of US oil companies at the expense of the Venezuelan people and the rule of law. — Marjorie Cohn, The US Is Orchestrating a Coup in Venezuela

Videos of the Day:

Withdrawal From INF Nuclear Treaty Brings us “Closer to Doomsday” Than any Time Since 1950’s Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces agreement is one of the most important international treaties and its cancellation will mean a full return to the nuclear arms race and closer to nuclear disaster, says Peter Kuznick of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American UniversityOver 40% of US Households Are One Paycheck Away From Poverty

War Criminal Elliott Abrams Headed To Venezuela

U.S.:

The US Is Orchestrating a Coup in Venezuela  As Venezuela’s second president, Simon Bolivar, noted in the 19th century, the US government continues to “plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.” From engineering coups in Chile and Guatemala, to choreographing a troop landing at the Bay of Pigs intended to establish an exile government in Cuba, to training Latin American strongmen at the School of the Americas in torture techniques to control their people, the United States has meddled, interfered, intervened and undermined the democracies it claims to protect. . . . There is a major difference, however, between the 2002 coup attempt and the Trump administration’s current effort to change the regime in Venezuela, Golinger says. She told Truthout that unlike the situation in 2002, “when the Bush administration worked behind the scenes to back a coup d’état against Chávez with multimillion-dollar funding and political support to the opposition, the Trump administration is now pursuing regime change in  iVenezuela in plain sight.”By Marjorie Cohen

Not ‘Left-Wing Fantasy’ But ‘Mainstream’: Poll Shows Enormous Public Support for Higher Taxes on Rich  “Raising taxes on the wealthy isn’t just good policy. It’s also good politics.”Likely 2020 contenders and progressive members of Congress have proposed a variety of plans in recent days to make the rich pay more in taxes and begin reversing soaring inequality—from a wealth tax to a 70 percent top marginal rate to a higher estate taxon the richest families—and a survey published on Monday found that such ideas are extremely popular among the American public. By Jake Johnson

Despite Demand for End to ‘Dangerous’ US Meddling, Trump Says Troops to Venezuela ‘An Option’“It’s not up to the U.S. or anyone else to decide Venezuela’s future. After all, when has U.S. meddling ever ended well for the people in the targeted country?” By Jon Queally

Report Warns Trump Giving Wall Street ‘Green Light to Ramp Up Risk’ as Penalties Against Big Banks Plummet“How can Trump call himself ‘tough on crime’ while he lets the industry that crashed our economy 10 years ago get away with slap-on-the-wrist penalties?” By Jake Johnson

Environment:

Thwaites Glacier Startles Scientists  “It’s a disturbing discovery,” according to Pietro Milillo, a radar scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, who co-authored a recently published study: Heterogeneous Retreat and Ice Melt of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica, Science Advances, Vol. 5, No. 1, Jan. 30, 2019. It’s only within the past 10 years that NASA’s IceBridge Mission has served as the largest airborne survey of Earth’s polar ice, providing unprecedented three-dimensional views of Antarctica’s ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice. Scientists are now able to peer into glaciers with remarkable accuracy to see what’s happening. By Robert Hunziker

Don’t Fence Me In Send me off forever but I ask you please Don’t fence me in Years ago, I recalled standing on the Arctic Coast in Alaska’s Arctic Wildlife Refuge looking south across the coastal plain towards the Brooks Range. One of my impressions was that I saw what the Great Plains might have looked like in the days before livestock. To me, it was the lack of fences which was one of the most remarkable features of that place. Yet fences are so ubiquitous that they are virtually invisible to most people—until you are someplace like the Arctic Coast where they don’t exist. Fences run across even some of the most remote parts of the West. The invention of barbed wire in 1874 provided an inexpensive and effective means of corralling domestic livestock on open ranges. Since that time, barbed wire has been strung across most of the western United States, including on public lands without any oversight or consideration of its negative impacts on wildlife. Not only is it a pain for humans to cross, but its influence on wildlife is also far more significant. By George Wuerthner

Big Energy:

Fossil Fuel Industry Attacks Budweiser’s Pro-Wind Super Bowl AdThe pro-wind power Budweiser ad that Anheuser-Busch will air during the Super Bowl on Sunday is being attacked by the fossil fuel industry. The Kentucky Coal Association is among the groups attacking the Budweiser ad, which has already racked up nearly 14 million views on YouTube. Their attack was echoed by the website ClimateDepot.com, a project of a coal-backed group called the Committee for Constructive Tomorrow.  By Dave AndersonCivil Rights/Black Liberation:

MLK’s Radical Final Years: Civil Rights Leader Was Isolated After Taking On Capitalism & Vietnam War As we mark the beginning of Black History Month, we look at “Always in Season,” a disturbing new documentary that examines lynching in the United States both past and present. It interviews Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, which built the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery to remember the more than 4,000 African Americans lynched in the United States. It also looks closely at the case of Lennon Lacy, a 17-year-old African-American high school student who, on August 29, 2014, was found hanging from two belts attached to a wooden swing set in a largely white trailer park in Bladenboro, North Carolina. At the time of his death, Lacy was dating an older white woman. Local authorities quickly determined his death to be a suicide, but Lacy’s family and local civil rights activists feared authorities may have been covering up a lynching.

Labor:

Despite Backlash, Teacher Strikes Are Spreading Across Country Teachers in Colorado, Virginia and Oakland, California, were newly emboldened this week as they watched teachers in Los Angeles return to their classrooms after a successful six-day strike with an increase in pay and support staff. Now, they too are making their demands for fully funded schools known, with some moving closer a strike of their own. The LA strike has reverberated strongly in northern California, where educators face many of the same issues, including ballooning class sizes and meager support staff. The Oakland Education Association, whose members have been without a contract since July 2017, began a four-day strike authorization vote Tuesday. The last of the union’s 3,000 memberswill vote today, and an authorization could lead to Oakland teachers’ firststrike since 2010. The authorization votes come on the heels of hundreds of Oakland teachers calling out sick January 18 in a wildcat “sickout” action to rally and march for school funding.

Economy:

Shadow Government Statistics Alternate Unemployment ChartsThe seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.

World:

Corbyn calls for snap election to help put an end to austerity Labour leader wants people ‘bearing the brunt’ of nine years of austerity to have their say Jeremy Corbyn has called for a snap general election during a meeting of anti-poverty charities in Glasgow. He said people who have experienced “the brunt of nine years of austerity” must be allowed a new vote. The Labour leader met with voluntary organisations and charities working to tackle poverty in south-west Glasgow on Saturday, where he criticised “Tory cuts” while pointing to double-digit yearly increases in food bank use and falling life expectancy in Scotland’s most populated city. “People are suffering under austerity as a direct result of Tory cuts in Westminster passed down by the SNP in Holyrood,” he said. “The people who are bearing the brunt of nine years of austerity cannot wait years for a general election. They need a general election now.”

How The Murders Of Journalists In The Middle East Are Brushed Aside  It’s encouraging to hear that Agnes Callamard, the UN’s execution expert, is at last in Istanbul to lead the “independent international inquiry” into the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Better late than never, perhaps, but the old UN donkey clip-clops upon the world stage according to the politics and courage of the panjandrums beside the East River in New York. By Robert Fisk

Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:

Monsanto Exposed as Source for White Phosphorus Used in Gaza MassacreMonsanto has earned the dubious reputation of being one of the most hated companies in the world. Its grand proclamations of working to feed the world and help the environment have been exposed for a sham. Their genetically modified (GM) crops have not increased yields, despite claims to the contrary.What they have done is:

• encouraged monoculture, industrialized, chemical-dependent farming,

• 2) smothered the sustainable, non-GM farmer,

• waylaid beneficial insect populationsand aquatic habitats with Bt toxins,

• caused the emergence of several superweeds,

• increased the use of chemical herbicides, notably RoundUp, and 6) undertaken a giant human heath experiment with GM foods. By Justin Gardner

Debunking Industry Lies, Analysis Shows Medicare for All Would Cut Costs, Boost Efficiency, and Save Lives“For people who care about evidence—not ideology—the facts are clear: Medicare for All is the most efficient and most just approach to provide healthcare for everyone in America.” By Jake Johnson
A Historic Document: A Bill of Rights for Working People

A Bill Of Rights For Working People (1976)

Today we are ruled by a new tyranny. Industrial and financial barons govern by the rule of profits, denying us the basic democratic and social rights we need for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness:”

America is in a developing crisis. The quality of life for most people is going from bad to worse. And the present system offers no hope for the better.

There is no end to wars—one after another since the end of World War If. After Korea came Vietnam; now the Middle East is like a powder keg.

Huge stockpiles of atomic weapons are a constant reminder of the threat of nuclear war.

Pollution is destroying our environment—from the water we drink to the air we breathe.

The economic crisis is worsening.

Breakdowns, shortages, layoffs, soaring prices—each week it’s harder to get by. Suffering the most are those at the bottom of the ladder—Blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and other doubly oppressed people.

Neither the Republican administration nor the Democratic Congress offers a solution. They are only interested in shifting the responsibility and escaping the blame.

They pit white workers against Blacks in a struggle for jobs, housing, and education.

They blame all working people, claiming we eat too much and live too well. They say that inflation will slow down if we live in colder rooms and stop demanding higher wages.

They blame people in other countries. They point to a “population explosion” in poor countries as a burden on the American economy, while the corporations they represent plunder the resources of these same countries.

They say Arabs cause the energy crisis, as if the skyrocketing profits of U.S. oil monopolies weren’t responsible.

The Democratic and Republican proposals are clear: Don’t struggle to defend your living standards; pay the costs of foreign wars; eat less and pay more; deport foreign-born workers; use less electricity and gasoline, forget about safety, Social Security, and jobs.

This way of handling the economic crisis can be stated in nine words: “What’s good for big business is good for America.”

The Rockefellers, DuPonts, Mellons, Morgans, and other families like them who run the country think they were born with rights that come first no matter what happens to the welfare and security of the rest of us. For the sake of profits they think ifs perfectly justifiable to lay off tens of thousands of workers, to destroy our environment, or to plunge the country into war.

They are a tiny minority who brush aside the rights of the American people.

 

Daily News Digest February 1, 2019

 Daily News Digest Archives

Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, under banner headline: “There Is No Peace”

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.

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! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.

Images of the Day:

Who Needs Elections? Ask the US About the Government Your Country Should Have

Quotes of the Day:

Video of the Day:

Economic Update: Yellow Vests & Tax Reformwith Richard Wolff  This week: Updates on “yellow vests” spread to the United Kingdom; Jeffrey Pfeffer’s book Dying for a Paycheck; the “bail-in” scam; the gentrification of airplane seats and postal banking; a major discussion of needed and deserved tax reforms and gentrification as an injustice created by the market. 

U.S.:

United States Falls Deeper Into Corrupt Nation StatusThe U.S. is no longer in the top 10, or even the top 20, of least corrupt nations. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2018 was released today and the United States has fallen four points deeper into corruption than last year. The U.S. now ranks below Luxembourg, Estonia and France, coming in at number 22 on the chart. In the Americas region, only Canada came in among the top 10 least corrupt nations, earning a number 9 ranking. (View the full list here.) Zoe Reiter, Acting Representative to the U.S. at Transparency International said this about the report: “A four point drop in the CPI score is a red flag and comes at a time when the US is experiencing threats to its system of checks and balances, as well as an erosion of ethical norms at the highest levels of power. If this trend continues, it would indicate a serious corruption problem in a country that has taken a lead on the issue globally. This is a bipartisan issue that requires a bipartisan solution.”The index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and business people. It reveals that the continued failure of most countries to significantly control corruption is contributing to a crisis in democracy around the world. While there are exceptions, the data shows that despite some progress, most countries are failing to make serious inroads against corruption.  By Pam Martens

The Racist, Imperialist War on Venezuela 

Donald Trump is simply exercising an imperial mandate handed down to him by Obama, who put “humanitarian” lipstick on the white supremacist pig of American exceptionalism. “The darker peoples of the world understand clearly that what is at stake is the sovereignty of nations and people’s right to self-determination.” In transferring control of Venezuelan property and assets to opposition party leader Juan Guaidó, the United States has committed an act of war against that country, and marked Guaidó as a traitor and agent of a foreign aggressor. The U.S. State Department announced that certification to Venezuelan accounts and assets in the U.S. was transferred last Friday to Guaidó, a 35 year-old member of the national assembly who declared himself president during a street demonstration in Caracas. Trump national security advisor John Bolton dared Venezuela to move against Washington’s chosen Quisling, warning there would be “serious consequences” if anyone attempted to “harm” Guaidó. The Venezuelan Supreme Court has frozen Guaidó’s accounts and barred the politician from leaving the country during an investigation of his “serious crimes that threaten the constitutional order,” but he continues to speak and move around the capital city. By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor

Your Complete Guide to the N.Y. Times’ Support of U.S.-Backed Coups in Latin America On Friday, The New York Times continued its long, predictable tradition of backing U.S. coups in Latin America by publishing an editorial praising Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. This will be the 10th such coup the paper has backed since the creation of the CIA over 70 years ago.A survey of The New York Times archives shows the Times editorial board has supported 10 out of 12 American-backed coups in Latin America, with two editorials—those involving the 1983 Grenada invasion and the 2009 Honduras coup—ranging from ambiguous to reluctant opposition. The survey can be viewed here. ByAdam H. Johnson 

Continuing Long History of Supporting US-Backed Regime Change, NYT Hands Venezuela Opposition Leader Op-Ed Megaphone  “Absolutely disgusting that the New York Times is giving Juan Guaidó space to appeal to governments around the world to support his efforts at a coup.” By Jake Johnson

150 Congressional Republicans Represent Fossil Fuel Companies Instead of Their CommunitiesLast week, we mocked the fossil fuel industry’s use of an outlet it owns to brag about perverting democracy — but we didn’t actually call out the politicians in the industry’s pocket. Lucky for us, the Center for American Progress Action Fund did just that this week. A new analysis from CAP tallies up the climate deniers in the 116th Congress. As it turns out, there are a lot: 150. But that’s actually an improvement from last year, when there were 180. Of those 180, 47 are no longer serving: 22 were defeated in 2018, 16 retired, five resigned, and four went to other positions.

A Brief History of Our Longest, Most Futile War Anyone who closely followed the U.S. war in Afghanistan since Oct. 7, 2001, knew it would end badly. The news that the U.S. has reached an agreementwith the Taliban for a peace framework is indeed a positive development, but it masks the fact that the war has largely been futile and destructive—and that the Taliban is the likely
victor.Over the past 18 years, the U.S. went from considering the Taliban an inconsequential enemy that would be easily defeated to negotiating with the dictatorial regime to now seemingly capitulating to its demands. This disastrous trajectory of events is well worth examining as the history of the United States’ longest war is written. By Sonali Kolhatkar    

Environment:

With Ocasio-Cortez/Markey Bill Reportedly on Horizon, Expert Says Green New Deal Must Include ‘Fossil Fuel Phaseout’The text of the bill, however, has not been finalized, according to Axios—meaning it is still unclear how closely it will align with the draft legislative document promoted by Ocasio-Cortez and the Sunrise Movement. That proposal called for a transition to 100 percent renewable energy within the next decade, a federal jobs guarantee program, universal healthcare, and a House Select Committee to hammer out the details.While welcoming the news, Greenpeace USA climate director Janet Redman said in a statement that any Green New Deal bill must include a “fossil fuel phaseout” for it to be taken seriously. Jessica Corbett

Big Energy:

Civil Rights/Black Liberation: 

Draft Bill for Hopkins Private Armed Police Force Already Drawing Backlash The group Students Against Private Police told The Real News in a statement the bill fails to address their concerns. “The administration continues, as they have throughout this whole process, to be vague, to avoid transparency, and to make the bare minimum of gestures towards the dialogue residents and students have been trying to engage them in,” the statement reads. They group also says the bill “co-opts the language of accountability,” but does not demonstrate how Hopkins “will address any of these issues.” By: Jaisal Noor

Prisons Across The U.S. Are Quietly Building Databases Of Incarcerated People’s Voice Prints It’s particularly alarming, they add, that the technology’s use in prisons can ensnare people beyond their walls. “Why am I giving up my rights because I’m receiving a call from somebody who has been convicted of a crime?” asks Jerome Greco, a digital forensics attorney at New York’s Legal Aid Society. Greco argues that the mining of outside parties’ voice prints should require a warrant. “If you have a family member convicted of a crime, yet you haven’t been, why are you now having your information being used for government investigations?” By George Josephand Debbie Nathan

Economy:

Confused Again: Trump Thinks His Trade War is Responsible for China’s Economic ProblemsThe New York Times had an article on the status of Trump’s trade war with China. While the piece pointed out Trump’s claim that his trade war is responsible for China’s economic problems, it didn’t point out that this is almost certainly not true.  In spite of Trump’s tariffs, China’s exports to the United States were up by more than $30 billion in the first ten months of 2018 compared to 2017. While their exports may have grown even faster without the tariffs, it doesn’t make sense that slower than expected growth in exports to the U.S. could be too big a hit to the Chinese economy. By Dean Baker

World:

Guaido Continues Diplomatic Efforts as Venezuelan Courts Open Proceedings against HimLocal and international authorities have also reacted fiercely to the recently announced oil embargo, describing it as “illegal.” Uruguayan President Tabare Vasquez revealed that EU Foreign Affairs High Representative Federica Mogherini called him Monday to discuss the possibility of Uruguay hosting an international dialogue summit to resolve the political crisis. Uruguay’s El Pais newspaper reported that “According to the President, Mogherini told him that ‘it is certain’ that Europe will not have the necessary majority to recognise Guaido as interim president of Venezuela.”Meanwhile, pressure is growing on Guaido in Venezuela, with the country’s Supreme Court issuing a travel restriction on the National Assembly Deputy following a request from Attorney General Tarek William Saab, as well as ordering the freezing of his local bank accounts whilst an investigation continues into his recent actions. The measures generated a vociferous response from the Trump administration Tuesday, who threatened “serious consequences” should either Guaido or any of their diplomatic staff be arrested.

Packed London meeting says: “US-UK, hands off Venezuela!” Narly 100 people packed the #HandsOffVenezuela meeting in London on 30 January, and heard Venezuelan ambassador Rocío Manero, Alan Woods (International Marxist Tendency), Steve Hedley (Assistant General Secretary of the RMT) and Jorge Martín (Hands Off Venezuela) discuss the ongoing imperialist coup in Venezuela, the UK’s role in it, and what can be done to fight it. The meeting also heard a message from John McDonnell MP, rejecting Trump’s attempt to manufacture regime change, and declaring solidarity with the people of Venezuela. Over 1,000 people followed the livestream of the meeting from
all over the world. 

Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:

Kansas: Students Walk Out to Protest Tech-Based Summit Learning Program  Mark Zuckerberg and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative funded the Summit learning program, which is computer-based online instruction. not personalized learning.Students in Kansas sent a message to Zuckerberg: Another student #walkout vs #SummitLearning – this time at McPherson MS in Kansas. Like earlier one in Brooklyn, protest was sparked by students’ frustrations about inadequacies of the online Learning program.  Waving signs and chanting No Summit, No Summit, No Summitthe students spent their afternoon out of class venting their frustration with the changes in their curriculum…. “It’s a learning program that is supposed to be a better way, but you are just on a computer,” said Drake Madden, a seventh grader. “Every time I get home, my head starts hurting.” he said. By  Diane Ravitch