Daily News Digest August 6, 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 Different Classes of Healthcare

 Quotes of the Day:

Viva Cuba Libre!:

A potential coronavirus vaccine in Cuba used to treat 58 patients, including those with severe and critical conditions from COVID-19, gave promising results, according to a Cuban expert.    The CIGB 258 vaccine has an 84% survival rate, Verena Muzio, chief of the Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Center (CIGB), told the Mesa Redonda television program Wednesday.   Muzio said 72% of critically ill patients and 90% of severe cases recovered from the virus with the vaccine treatment. ba has 2,107 coronavirus cases and 83 deaths, while recoveries neared the 2,000 mark, according to the data compiled by US-based Johns Hopkins University. —  Cuba’s Potential Virus Vaccine Has Good Results: Expert

There is a greater strength than wealth, and it is greater because it cannot be taken away. Our strength, the strength of the proletariat, is in our muscles, in our hands to cast ballots, in our fingers to pull triggers. This strength we cannot be stripped of. It is the primitive strength, it is the strength that is to life germane, it is the strength that is stronger than wealth, and that wealth cannot take away. “But your strength is detachable. It can be taken away from you. Even now the Plutocracy is taking it away from you. In the end it will take it all away from you. And then you will cease to be the middle class. You will descend to us. You will become proletarians. And the beauty of it is that you will then add to our strength. We will hail you brothers, and we will fight shoulder to shoulder in the cause of humanity. “You” ― Jack London, The Iron Heel

 Videos of the Day:

Trump Has A Path To Victory. It’s Voter Suppression. The real threat facing the 2020 election isn’t Russian interference or voter fraud, it’s the GOP’s massive voter suppression effort, argues journalist Greg Palast.

“Despair and Destruction”: Doctor in Beirut Describes Harrowing Scenes After Massive Port Explosion

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.

Census Bureau
Maintains the Spirit of 1790 “Today, the Census Bureau maintains the spirit
of the objectives established in 1879 which was
to count everybody – citizens, non-citizen legal
residents, non-citizen long-term visitors
and undocumented immigrants.” It happens every ten years. The United States conducts a census—a systematic set of procedures we use to count the number of people living in the country. Mandated in Article I, Section II of the U.S. Constitution, the census was established in 1790 as the official method for determining the actual number of people living in the U.S. whether in residential structures, institutions or living unhoused. By  Sharon Kyle, JD

The American left has been disappearing into the thoroughly capitalist Democratic Party since the Communist’s Popular Front in 1936 and the Socialist Party’s realignment policy in the 1950s and 1960s. They went in and never came out as a distinctive left alternative. In the absence of a broad independent left party competing for votes, the Democrats have moved steadily to the right in search of swing voters.  The Republican Party now represents a revanchist white racism that has always been a force in American politics, but is now declining as it ages out and the country moves toward a majority of people of colour.    The GOP is over-represented in the states due to gerrymandered legislative districts, and the undemocratic Electoral College. The Democrats represent the corporate and professional-managerial mainstream as a party that would sit comfortably on the centre-right of the European political spectrum. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is allowed to make speeches, but the corporate wing makes the decisions. The mass base of both parties is the middle and upper-middle classes. The working class votes in low numbers.   The Democrats have no solutions to the life-or-death issues we face with the climate, inequality, and the new nuclear arms race. The Democrats have resisted climate action since the Clinton/Gore administration negotiated to weaken the Kyoto Protocols and then never pushed the Senate for ratification. Forty-five years of stagnant wages and growing inequality has led to declining life expectancy in the American working class. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved its Doomsday Clock the closest it has ever been to midnight. None of the major party candidates have addressed the new nuclear arms race as the last bilateral nuclear arms treaty between the US and Russia expires next February. —  Barry Sheppard, Hawkins: ‘Real Solutions Can’t Wait’ (Hawkins is the Green Party Candidate for President

Watchdog Demands to Know If Drug Maker Sitting on Possible Covid-19 Treatment Due to Patent, Profit Concerns “It is sadly predictable that Big Pharma responds to a global pandemic by trying to bring to market only those drugs that maximize its profits.” As Covid-19 cases and deaths continue an upward trajectory in the United States, a watchdog group and allied scientists Tuesday urged the federal government and Gilead, the maker of the promising drug remdesivir, to explain why they have not pursued a similar treatment that might be cheaper for consumers though possibly less profitable to the company. The drug in question, known as GS-4441524, closely resembles remdesivir in chemical makeup, Public Citizen and scientist co-signers wrote in a joint letter to Gilead and United States federal government agencies including the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.  By Lisa Newcomb

New Report Accuses Trump of ‘Intentional Disregard’ and Attack on Democracy Throughout Failed Covid-19 Response “What is becoming clearer each day is President Trump’s intent to use this chaos to create a crisis for our democracy.” By Julia Conley

SEC Launches Probe Into Kodak After Warren Raised Questions Over Lucrative Covid-19 Deal With Trump “If investors or Kodak employees were trading based on the unauthorized disclosure or discussion of nonpublic information, then it would appear to be a clear violation of securities law. The SEC should hold them accountable.”  By Jake Johnson

How Trump Managed to Lead the World with the Worst Response to the COVID Pandemic Six months ago, on January 30, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). Ten days before this, the Chinese government had said—to great alarm—that the coronavirus could be transmitted from human to human. The contagiousness of this virus led the WHO to make the declaration, which came a month after the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention told their counterparts in the United States about the virus. On the day that the WHO declared the PHEIC, Trump gave a press conference, where he bewilderingly said, “We think we have it very well under control.” From January 30 onward, the Trump administration’s response to the virus was incoherent and outrageously incompetent. By Vijay Prashad

Trump Accused of ‘Intentional Disregard’ (Depraved Indifference) and Attack on Democracy Throughout Failed Covid-19 Response “What is becoming clearer each day is President Trump’s intent to use this chaos to create a crisis for our democracy.”By Julia Conley

Environment:

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Black Lives Matter: Resisting the Propaganda of Status Quo Defenders First came the new names—Breonna TaylorGeorge FloydRayshard Brooks, and others—all added one by one to the long list of tragic, unjustifiable police killings of Black Americans. Then came the batons, the pepper spray, the tear gas, the flash-grenades, the helicopters, the armored vehicles, and the rubber bullets wielded against nonviolent Black Lives Matter protesters across the United States, from Minneapolis to New York City to Portland. And then came the chorus of privileged beneficiaries of our country’s discriminatory status quo, denying and defending the reality of brutal, racist, militarized, and unaccountable over-policing. By Roy Eidelson

Misleaders at a Funeral: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama Eulogizing Racial Justice in the Name of John Lewis Anyone who thinks it was fine and proper for the Jeffrey Epstein pal Bill Clinton to be a featured speaker at the funeral of John Lewis, a former Black Civil Rights icon, ought to read Elaine Brown’s brilliant 2002 book The Condemnation of Little B. In this classic radical Black text, Brown — a former chair of the Black Panther Party — tried to explain how the city of Atlanta, including its prominent Black citizens, had unjustly condemned a poor 14-year-old Black boy, Michael Lewis, for the murder of a white man visiting a well-known drug haven in one of that city’s Black ghettoes. Brown showed how Lewis’s conviction was “effectively predestined” by the “comfortable New Age racism of white liberals and middle-class blacks alike who have abandoned the cause of civil rights and equal opportunity.” By Paul Street

Environment:

‘Has BP Just Woken Up to the #Climate Emergency?’ Oil Giant Announces 40% Production Cut by 2030 Green groups say oil giant has much further to go, but announcement marks major industry shift. Amid declining fossil fuel consumption worldwide during the Covid-19 pandemic, oil giant BP on Tuesday said it would reduce its oil and gas production by 40 percent by 2030. Climate campaigners said the announcement—on top of a $16.8 quarterly loss—should be a warning to other giants in the industry about the economic writing on the wall when it comes to the future of fossil fuels. By Lisa NewcombCivil 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

Labor:

Economy:

Wall Street Banks that Got the Biggest Fed Bailouts Have Been Dogs to Shareholders Over the Past 15 Years Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell wants Americans to believe that the mega banks on Wall Street that hold trillions of dollars in federally-insured deposits, while peddling everything from high-risk derivatives to junk bonds to precious metals, “are a source of strength” during this economic downturn. The big problem for the Fed is the above two charts. The chart data comes from BigCharts at MarketWatch, owned by Dow Jones & Company. According to the first chart, Citigroup has lost 90 percent of its share value since January 3, 2005. (It dressed up its share price in 2011, doing a 10-for-1 reverse stock split, meaning shareholders who had previously owned 100 shares, now owned just 10 shares at a higher price.) Bank of America’s share price has lost half of its value and Morgan Stanley’s share price has been essentially flat for a decade and a half. Compare that to the Standard & Poor’s 500 (SPX) which is up more than 150 percent. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

What is required is not this or that reform, but fundamental change – a revolution, in fact.  In your hands you hold enormous power. Not a lightbulb shines, not a wheel turns, not a telephone rings without the permission of the working class.    It is necessary to mobilise that force to overthrow the vicious, corrupt and unjust regime that has brought your country to its present lamentable condition.  Do not listen to those who try to persuade you to stay off the streets, to await better times, to believe that the same people who reduced you to ruin will now perform miracles on your behalf. This is a lie, a blatant, scandalous lie – like all the other lies with which you have been fed for so long. You can have no trust in the government, and no trust in those parties and leaders that support it, directly or indirectly. Particularly dangerous and counterrevolutionary are those forces who seek to divide you on sectarian or religious lines. The only strength of the working class lies in its unity. We must not allow anybody or anything to undermine it. Christians and Muslims, Sunnis and Shi’ites, men and women, young and old – all the oppressed and exploited in society must unite against the common enemy. United we stand, divided we fall! Let that be the fighting slogan of the Lebanese socialist revolution! The masses can only trust their own forces. Once they are mobilised to change society, no force on earth can defeat you!. Lebanon: Beirut Explosion Rocks Corrupt Regime

Lebanon: Beirut Explosion Rocks Corrupt Regime A massive explosion caused untold destruction and bloodshed in the Lebanese capital yesterday. This tragedy was a disaster waiting to happen, and will provoke the anger of the masses against the corrupt clique at the top of society. Only working-class struggle can put an end to this intolerable situation, Alan Woods writes.

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

Hiroshima and Nagasaki Never Again!

Hiroshima August 7, 1945HiroshimaThe detonation of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima was a deeply sobering event for all Mankind.  The fact that man was capable of building a weapon with this kind of power meant that humans now had the ability to destroy every living thing on this planet. War-Related Disaster— Nuclear Weapons

Hiro2August 6 and 9 are the 63rd anniversaries of the destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs and the murder of hundreds of thousands of their citizens. Annual demonstrations take place at the nuclear weapons laboratories in Livermore, California and Los Alamos, New Mexico, at the nuclear weapons test site in Nevada and at the bomb factory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee to demand nuclear disarmament now.

One of the long-standing myths of U.S. history is that atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to “save lives.” The story is that the bombings, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, were necessary to bring World War II to an end.

In reality, the decision was purely political. Leading generals and admirals opposed the bombing. It was ordered to demonstrate the ruthlessness of the U.S. government.

Ronald Takaki wrote, in his article on the subject in the July 31, 2005 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, “During the days before that fateful Aug. 6, 1945, Gen. Douglas MacArthur learned that Japan had asked Russia to negotiate a surrender. ‘We expected acceptance of the Japanese surrender daily,’ one of his staff members recalled. When he was notified that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, the general was livid. MacArthur declared that the atomic attack on Hiroshima was ‘completely unnecessary from a military point of view.’”

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

Why then did the president make the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima? In fact Truman gave an order not to bomb Nagasaki. A memo published in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, (May/June 1998), states that Truman “had given orders to stop atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn’t like the idea of killing, as he said, ‘all those kids.’” Dirty Harry in San Francisco

So why was the bomb dropped?

Why were Truman’s orders on the second bomb not obeyed?

“Secretary of War Henry Stimson, for his part, regarded the atomic bomb as what he called the ‘master card’ of diplomacy towards Russia. However, he believed that sparring with the Soviet Union in the early spring, before the weapon was demonstrated, would be counterproductive. Before a mid-May meeting of a cabinet-level committee considering Far Eastern issues, Stimson observed that “the questions cut very deep and [were] powerfully connected with our success with S-1 [the atomic bomb Gar Alperovitz, in “Hiroshima: Historians Reassess” Foreign Policy (Summer 1995) No. 99: 15-34, where it is only available to subscribers; the section quoted is available online at page 4. A web version of the article on can be found at the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives website.

These new facts from history and Eisenhower’s memoirs show that the carnage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not to make Japan surrender and save American lives, but to warn the Soviet Union that the United States had the atomic bomb and its leaders were cold-blooded enough to use such a weapon of mass destruction. It was the opening salvo of the, “Cold War” and beginning of the process of “Pax Americana.”

August, 2008