Daily News Digest June 17, 2020

Daily News Digest Archives

Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Now Leads the World In  Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World! And Now the Total Caronavirs Deaths in the United  States are Over 20%  of the Total Death in the Entire World!

Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Was Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat 4 Years Ago and Did Nothing!

Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The very future of Humanity Is Now At stake!occupy1

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.Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 3.  The Iron Heel!  Always Remember:  That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he Established, in writing,  the United States Capitalist Austerity Program. —  The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!

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, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!

Images of the Day:

The Pandemic Award Goes To’Quotes of the Day:

Racism is Genocid:  In the final analysis, racism is evil because its ultimate logic is genocide. Hitler was a sick and tragic man who carried racism to its logical conclusion. And he ended up leading a nation to the point of killing about 6 million Jews. This is the tragedy of racism because its ultimate logic is genocide. — Marin Luther King, The Other America

20% of the Police Force Were War Veterans — Who Were Trained to Kill in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc..) — Before They Joined The Police Force!:   Twenty percent of cops are military veterans—and some are fighting to rid policing of fear-based training and a testosterone-fueled culture.  Nevertheless, just as law enforcement departments have been gifted billions of dollars in surplus military hardware, they have also relied on a military-to-police pipeline to fill their ranks. This pipeline was reinforced by the Obama administration, which put tens of millions of dollars into creating veteran police positions in cities and towns across the country. “Even as departments around the country have attempted a cultural transformation from ‘warriors’ to ‘guardians,’ one in five police officers is literally a warrior, returned from Afghanistan, Iraq or other assignments,” according to “When Warriors Put On the Badge,” a 2017 investigative report by the Marshall Project in partnership with USA Today. (Even though they make up 20 percent of police forces, veterans make up only 7 percent of the U.S. population, by federal estimates.) And while former service members have long been hailed as prototypical cops, the available data disagrees. The Marshall Project found that veteran cops in Miami and Boston were more likely than nonserving officers to have faced use-of-force complaints. The news nonprofit also calculated that one-third of fatal police shootings in Albuquerque, New Mexico, between 2010 and 2014 involved military veterans. A 2018 study of the Dallas police department found that veteran cops were more likely to fire their guns, regardless of their deployment history.  — The Police’s “Sheepdog” Problem

Videos of the Day:

Climate Crisis: Trump’s Regulatory Attack, DNC On Climate, California Fires, And Brazil COVID Chaos Under the cover of COVID-19 and protests, Trump hacks away at bedrock environmental law. Plus, a Democratic Party committee lays out its climate platform, wildfires erupt in California, and climate chaos engulfs Brazil and the Amazon Rainforest.

The Killing of Rayshard Brooks: Atlanta Police Shoot Dead Unarmed Man Who Fell Asleep in His Own Car

United States:

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 Reublicrats 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 tothe Rich.

Chris Hedges: Gaslighted by the Ruling Class We are trapped in an abusive relationship. When we finally have enough, our abuser comes after us with flowers and apologies, promising never to do it again. Oolice take the knee. NASCAR and the U.S. Marine Corps ban the display of the Confederate flag. Nancy Pelosi uses a kente scarf as a political prop. Joe Biden, one of the driving forces behind militarized police, the massive expansion of mass incarceration and the doubling and tripling of sentences, speaks at George Floyd’s funeral. The National Football League apologizes for its insensitivity to racism, although no teams appear to be negotiating with Colin Kaepernick

 Environment:

Experts Say $17.5 Billion Writedown by BP Prove Oil Giant Knows ‘Reserves of Oil and Gas Increasingly Worthless’ “Big Oil is finally admitting what we’ve been saying for the last ten years: their reserves of oil and gas are increasingly worthless because there’s no way to safely, or profitably, produce them.” By Eoin HigginsFrom Hurricane Maria to COVID, Gas Lobbyist-turned-Trump Energy Lawyer Uses Crises as ‘Opportunity’ Among a string of recent environmental rollbacks, President Donald Trump’s U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) aims to vastly narrow the scope of environmental reviews for those applying for liquefied natural gas (LNG) export permits. The proposal has been guided by Bill Cooper, a former oil and gas industry lobbyist who’s now a top lawyer for the DOE. By Steve Horn

Polluters Need Government Wrelfare to Stop Polluting?: Carbon Capture Will Require Large Public Subsidies to Support Coal and Gas Power In April, the Center for Global Energy Policy (CGEP) at Columbia University released a report concluding that, without major new subsidies from the American public, technologies for capturing heat-trapping carbon dioxide from coal and natural gas-fired power plants will remain uneconomical. By Justin Mikulka

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

From Emmett Till to George Floyd Several years ago a man called me and apologized for taking my time, but explained he had to speak with me since he was writing about the Emmett Till murder trial and “you are the only one who was there who is still alive.” I am still here, and I now see headlines comparing the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis to that of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. By Dan WakefieldSystemic Racism and the Killing of Rayshard Brooks The killing of 27 year old Rayshard Brooks on Friday, June 12th, in Atlanta, Georgia, occurred less than three weeks after the murder of George Floyd. Both were killed by a white police officer. It seems that 18 days of protests over the May 25 murder of Floyd did not deter from this new heinous murder. Brooks was shot in the back as he was running away from the two police officers who had fooled him by their seemingly cordial demeanor only to suddenly and unexpectedly handcuff him from the back. By F. Elizabeth Dahab

Black Agenda Radio for Week of June 15, 2020 With Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford

  • Repaying the Movement for Her Freedom Bresha Meadowsfaced long imprisonment in the shooting death of her abusive father when she was 14 years old, but was sentenced to a year in juvenile detention and six months at a mental facility because of the intercession of Survived and Punished and other activists. Now free, Meadows hopes to lead a life of social activism. “That’s my calling,” said the 18 year-old Ohioan. “If it was not for the activists and social media, I don’t think that I would have gotten out.”

  • Beware “Domestication” of Protest Opponents of transformational change are seeking to “domesticate” the protest movement with bland calls for “justice” for George Floyd, who is dead and beyond justice, said Ajamu Baraka, national organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace. “What we can do is put a critical view on the system that created the conditions that resulted in Floyd’s life being taken.” Activists also have an opportunity to build solidarity with global victims of U.S imperialism. “We have a responsibility as citizens of Empire to put a brake on the U.S. state,” said Baraka.

  • Police Must Answer to the Community The demand for community control of police ushers in a new stage of struggle, in which “young people are imagining a world where these tremendous institutions of imperialism and the police state are gone,’ said Max Rameau, an activist with Pan African Community Action (PACA), in Washington, DC. The PACA proposal would oversee police hiring, firing and operations by a board chosen from communities at random, like jurors.

Labor:

Economy:

Dirty Details Emerge as to Why Mnuchin Is Fighting Congress Over Releasing the Names of Recipients of PPP Loans Taxpayers’ money is being used to make the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. Thus, the public has every right to know the names of the recipients of those loans. Despite originally promising transparency, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is now stonewalling Congress on releasing a list of the recipients.  Congress sold the plan to the public on the basis that the loans would go to small businesses with less than 500 employees. The funds were to be predominantly used to keep workers employed and allow the businesses to survive the coronavirus shutdowns. Instead, our search of filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission reveals that dozens of debt zombie companies that trade on Nasdaq got the loans. Dozens of publicly-traded companies with large credit lines from banks got the loans. Dozens of companies with a lot more than 500 employees got the loans. It’s beginning to look like tens of billions of dollars in PPP loans were simply funneled out the door rapidly with little oversight into who was getting the loans. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

African Nations Draft Resolution To Investigate U.S. For Human Rights Violations The measure would launch international scrutiny of systemic racism against people of African descent in the U.S. African nations have prepared a draft resolution at the U.N.’s top human rights body that singles out the United States and would launch intense international scrutiny of systemic racism against people of African descent in the wake of recent high-profile killings of blacks by American police.

Britain: Grenfell three years on – statues come down whilst cladding remains up 14 June 2020 marked the third year since the sickening tragedy of Grenfell tower, in which years of negligence by Tory-run governments and the Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council led to a fire that claimed the lives of 72 people. The pain of that incident still resonates deeply through the working class. We are still no closer to justice since the last anniversary, with zero arrests of those responsible. And three years on, 23,600 homes occupied by an estimated 56,640 people are still covered in the flammable cladding responsible for the Grenfell fire.  By Dan Langley and Nico Baldion

Who Deserves a Nobel Prize During a Pandemic? A few weeks ago, I was talking to Noam Chomsky about the state of the world. At one point, Noam smiled and said that he is not aware of any German doctors in Italy, even though both countries are in the European Union; instead, Cuban and Chinese doctors went to Italy to help the Italians fight the global pandemic. —Cuban Medical Workers — Little wonder that there is a petition in circulation to award the Cuban medical workers with the Nobel Peace Prize. The Cuban Ministry of Public Health rapidly mobilized its medical teams—notably the Henry Reeve Brigade—to take their considerable skills to a range of countries, from Andorra to Venezuela. By Vijay Prashad

Health, Science, 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 ‘governn’, 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 to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People  Vote on Healthcare

Physicians for Informed Consent (PIC) Compares COVID-19 to Previous Seasonal and Pandemic Flu PeriodsThe public has been made aware of the number of COVID-19 deaths and reported cases that have occurred since the beginning of the current pandemic; however, the number of unreported cases has not been widely known or publicized. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that more than one-third of SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that can lead to COVID-19) infections are asymptomatic, meaning that initial estimations of its severity were grossly overestimated. Now, for the first time, Physicians for Informed Consent (PIC) has collated data from U.S. antibody studies and produced an educational document outlining how an accurate case-fatality rate (CFR) requires antibody studies in order to guide and measure medical care and public health policies

Corporations Will Seize Opportunities to Profit From the Pandemic In the months to come, we should be on the lookout for profiteering, and push to turn this into a moment for change. The inequality we live with every day gets magnified in moments of crisis. When the United States began locking down in March to prevent the spread of COVID-19, most people experienced profound disruptions to their daily lives. The spiraling economic consequences of this crisis are yet to be fully understood, but it has become clear that this crisis is no great equalizer. By  Sasha Hill