Daily News Digest August 4, 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!

Under Capitalism — Human Lives Don’t Matter  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  Racism,  War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The very future of Humanity Is Now At stake! By Roland SheppardLaura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the 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 Logic of The  Lessor Evilism Yesterday’s Greater Is Today’s ‘Lessor Evil’ “Socialist Democrat’! Read  1956 Republican Platform:

Quotes of the Day:

It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.” ― Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us 

The name Homeland Security grates on a lot of people, understandably. Homeland isn’t really an American word, it’s not something we used to say or say now. It has a vaguely Teutonic ring – Ve must help ze Fuehrer protect ze Homeland! – and Republicans must always be on guard against sounding Teutonic. — Peggy Noonan, Homeland Ain’t No American Word.

We live in a system which blatantly displays “White Justice and Black Laws” with random killing of Black and Brown people based upon the color of their skin. . . [T]he world is enraged after the traumatic news aired of an unarmed black man named George Floyd being brutally murdered by a Minneapolis officer named Derek Chauvin who strangled him to death as his knee pressed in this unarmed victim’s neck while George was handcuffed on the ground. This evil and diabolic murderer didn’t treat George Floyd with dignity and humanity. . . [It] has me disgusted and totally vexed. We’re pushed to the brink and forced to protest. It’s really happening; it’s called “CIVIL UNREST”! — Rev. Joy Powell, Free Joy Powell! America’s Political Prisoner for Fighting Police Brutality

 Videos of the Day:

The Secretive Source Of Cash Police Unions Use To Block Reform PAR investigates how police unions use taxpayer dollars to defend brutal police officers and block legislative change. We speak with a New York commuter who was arrested as a “violent” protester for stopping her bicycle to film the police.EU Shares Blame For Amazon’s Destruction, Research Shows EU countries are responsible for promoting deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions in the Brazilian Amazon by importing and consuming agricultural products contaminated with illegal deforestation, new research has found.

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 to the Rich.

Chart Where US Citizens Are Allowed To Travel This SummerAfter the 1% Get Tax Free Bailout By the Fedreserve Bank,  Cuomo Blocks Taxation of His 1% Buddies To Help Bailout the 99%!   NEWS: Cuomo Blocks Tax Hikes On NY Billionaires Bankrolling His Machine 43 of NY’s 118 billionaires have donated to Cuomo’s machine – now he’s blocking Dems’ initiative to tax billionaires, as those billionaires have seen their net worth skyrocket during the pandemic.   New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has stood firm against intensifying pressure to avert massive budget cuts by raising taxes on the many billionaires who live in his state. As that campaign to tax billionaires got a recent boost from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York’s Democratic state legislative leaders, Cuomo has insisted that he fears that the tax initiative will prompt the super-rich to leave the state. On Wednesday, he doubled down, warning that if the state tried to balance its budget through billionaire tax hikes “you’d have no billionaires left.” By David Sirota

‘This Is Terrorism’: With No Face Masks and No Warrant, Border Patrol Agents Raid Humanitarian Aid Station in Arizona and Detain 30 Migrants “As always when humanitarian aid in the borderlands is targeted, those who seek care are the ones that face the brunt of these violent escalations.” By Eoin Higgins

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters There is a real discrepancy in how you react as attorney general when white men with Swastikas storm a government building with guns. There is no need for the president to, quote, ‘activate you’ because they’re getting the president’s personal agenda done. But when black people and people of color protest police brutality, systemic racism and the president’s very own lack of response to those critical issues, then you forcibly remove them with armed federal officers, pepper bombs because they are considered terrorists by the president. By John G. Russell

‘Ignorance is Strength’:  ‘Continued Kindergarten-Level Logic’: As Covid Cases Surge Across US, Trump Repeats False Claim Rise Is Result of More Testing  President Donald Trump on Saturday took to Twitter after a game of golf to proclaim the ongoing rise in Covid-19 cases around the U.S. is due to increased testing around the country and not, as health experts have repeatedly explained, because the disease is continuing to spiral out of control around the nation. “This continued Kindergarten-level logic is why we lead the world in Covid cases and deaths,” tweeted Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) in response to Trump’s latest salvo blaming testing for the increase in cases. By  Eoin Higgins

Environment:

The Pandemic Highlights The Gruesome Animal Abuses At Us Factory Farms Stories have emerged of mass killings of chickens and pigs, a tiny fraction of daily abuses heaped on farmed animals ore than any event in recent history, the coronavirus pandemic has made plain the consequences of our abuse of animals. From the Chinese wet market where the virus likely emerged to the American slaughterhouses which have become key vectors of transmission, our ravenous demand for cheap meat has been implicated in enormous human suffering. But the suffering is not ours alone. The pandemic has also focused our attention on how American agribusiness – which has benefited from deregulation under the Trump administration – abuses animals on an industrial scale.  By Andrew GawthorpeThe Resistible Rise of Nuclear Gangsters…and Their Downfall It would be tempting to describe last week’s nuclear scandals — in three states — as something out of the Wild West. But Al Capone’s Chicago would be a more accurate analogy. While no actual shots were fired, some pretty powerful metaphorical ones were, warnings that engaging in criminal racketeering and fraud to fleece ratepayers over failing nuclear plants would not go unpunished. Over the course of just a single week, politicians, lobbyists and nuclear industry executives in Illinois, Ohio and South Carolina were reeled in and, in some cases, charged with high crimes for covering up illegal schemes that bought power, votes, legislation and huge bailouts for foundering nuclear power plants while squeezing ratepayers for the bill.  By Linda Pentz Gunter

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

There is no democracy in the United States! — Just democracy for the 1%!  When the order in the United States is economic and social inequality. The slogan ‘Law and Order’ means the maintenance of that order— Rich 1% First and the poorest of the 99% last!. Real democracy means that we all share the wealth equally! —Roland Sheppard

Free Joy Powell! America’s Political Prisoner for Fighting Police Brutality If you protest against police brutality in America, you are definitely going to get brutalized by the police. And lately, federal marshals, homeland security, ICE officers, and assorted militarized federal goons and thugs will pile on. If you led a movement against police brutality in Rochester, NY in 2006, like Rev. Joy Powell did, you will be set up on felony burglary and then murder charges, and spend a long time in prison—doing very hard time as a female, African-American, political prisoner. It’s important to make sure Rev. Powell’s story is out there, because she was in the forefront of the black effort to protest this most lethal form of white supremacy, and as the only political prisoner jailed for directly fighting police brutality, is paying dearly for it. By Linda G. FordLabor:

World Health Orgaization (WFO) Knew? |  WHO’s Complacency Over Work Virus Risks A World Class Disaster  Q&A: Tips for health and safety at the workplace in the context of COVID-19, published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on 26 June 2020, has revealed how the leaden-footed UN agency has neither the knowledge nor the capacity to advise on issues of work.

Racism Kills Studies have shown more Black and minority workers are employed in jobs with a high Covid-19 risk. Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the UK Trades Union Congress said: “Rather than just warm words, the government must now show that Black Lives Matter with action to protect black and minority ethnic (BME) people at work and to give all key workers the pay rise they have earned. BME communities must have confidence that their health is being taken seriously.”

Economy:

The Fed Has Secreted Away the Transactions of Three of Its Emergency Lending Programs Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Randal Quarles, the Vice Chairman for Supervision at the Fed, have stated in testimony before Congress that they would be providing transaction level details of their Section 13(3) Emergency Lending Facilities on a regular, ongoing basis. But the three oldest of those facilities, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF), the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF), and the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (MMLF), which were all created more than four months ago in mid-March, have yet to release any transaction level details to the public. The Fed is required to provide reports every 30 days on its emergency lending facilities. Those reports are located at this Fed website. If you scroll down, you will find that transaction level reports have been provided for four of the Fed’s emergency lending programs. But the three programs listed above, which are the oldest of the programs, have no transaction level details. By Pam Martens and Russ MartensWorld:

Pakistan: victory for IMT as Comrade Amin released – forward to revolution! Comrade Amin arrived at his home in Karachi in the early morning of 1 August, following 18 days in confinement, after being abducted on 14 July by the Rangers (a paramilitary organisation in Pakistan). His release was only possible due to our international campaign, and solidarity from comrades and sympathisers of the IMT across the whole world. Amin’s family and all the comrades in Pakistan are extremely thankful to all the comrades and friends who participated. By Lal SalaamTrotsky’s ideas more relevant than ever: international rally 20 August August 20 marks 80 years since the assassination of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky by a Stalinist agent in Mexico. The International Marxist Tendency is organising a rally to celebrate the life and ideas of Trotsky, which are today more relevant than ever. Education, Health, Science, 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 HealthcareDaily News Digest July 31, 2020

‘Picking Up At a Dangerous Pace’: 1.9 Million New Covid Cases in US in July  “A grim sign America lost its grip.” Coronavirus cases in the U.S. rose by 1.9 million and deaths from the disease by over 25,000 in the month of July, another sign of President Donald Trump’s failure to slow the pandemic. The numbers from July represent 42% of the country’s total cases since the outbreak began and a 69% increase in infections altogether. By Eoin Higgins