Daily News Digest August 7, 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:

How Cartoonists are Portraying the Divide Between Trump And Fauci

 Quotes of the Day:

Why did the Fed do that? Because the largest deposit-taking banks in America are now also the largest trading houses, thanks to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 during the Wall Street-cozy Bill Clinton administration. For the prior 66 years, the U.S. had enjoyed a secure financial system because under the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933,  federally-insured deposit-taking banks were barred from owning securities issuers and trading houses. Instead of restoring the Glass-Steagall Act when Democrats held both houses of Congress in 2010, what the American people got instead was a toothless piece of financial reform legislation called the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. It provided the Fed with all the necessary loopholes so that it could run the very same Wall Street bailout programs, plus add more, in the next inevitable financial crisis. That financial crisis is now upon us and the Fed looks as out-of-control as it did when the government’s audit of its previous actions were released in 2011. We’re happy that little Sri Lanka had access to $1 billion and didn’t have to sell its U.S. Treasury bonds. But as American citizens, we’re more concerned with the 16 million unemployed American workers who have lost their $600 weekly federal unemployment supplement and are facing eviction for themselves and their children in the midst of a raging pandemic. —  The Fed Created an Emergency Lending Program to Hold Interest Rates Down; the Tiny Country of Sri Lanka Was the Major User

 Come you masters of war — You that build the big guns — You that build the death planes — You that build all the bombs — You that hide behind — You that hide behind desks  —I just want you to know — I can see through your masks —Come, you masters of war — You that build the big guns —You that build the death planes —You that build all the bombs —You that hide behind walls —You that hide behind desks
—I just want you to know — I can see through your —Masters of War, Bob Dylan

 Videos of the Day:

Revealed: How U.S. Gov’t & Hollywood Secretly Worked Together to Justify Atomic Bombings of Japan

“The Beginning of Our End”: On 75th Anniversary, Hiroshima Survivor Warns Against Nuclear Weapons

“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. Rax the Rich!  — They Can Afford To Pay!

National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee:  It was formed by civil rights advocates who disagreed with the decision of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) not to participate directly in the defense of people charged with violations of the McCarran Act (1950) by advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government.

The ACLU Has Never Done a Damn Thing for Me It’s actually worse than that in terms of the ACLU. When I was a school counselor in a public high school, the ACLU screwed me royally, even though I had helped them with the case of a student. A federal district court found for the student in a freedom of speech case, and I was a member of the school staff who was embarrassed publicly. But readers, let’s forget that specific case for a moment and get back to the complete lack of support from the ACLU, even though I was a member for some time, and a member of the ACLU’s anti-death penalty committee in a New England state. By Howard Lisnoff

Environment:

This is one of the most striking inequities of the modern era. Those who are least responsible for polluting Earth’s atmosphere are among those most hurt by its consequences. The average American is responsible for 33 times more planet-warming carbon dioxide than the average Bangladeshi.This chasm has bedeviled diplomacy for a generation, and it is once again in stark relief as the coronavirus pandemic upends the global economy and threatens to push the world’s most vulnerable people deeper into ruin. — A Quarter of Bangladesh Is Flooded. Millions Have Lost Everything.

Greenhouse Gas ‘Worst case’ emissions scenario is best match for reality The IPCC’s most extreme projection of the impact of global climate policies is tracking within one percent of actual results. The RCP 8.5 CO2 emissions pathway, long considered a “worst case scenario” by climate scientists, is the most appropriate for conducting assessments of climate change impacts by 2050, according to a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Death Toll Rises, Mass Power Outages After Isaias Storm Destruction At least nine people were killed, including a 5-year-old girl, and millions of others were left without power. At least nine people, including a 5-year-old girl with autism, were killed as Tropical Storm Isaias battered the U.S. East Coast with rain and fierce winds after making landfall as a hurricane in North Carolina. Millions of people were without power on Wednesday after felled trees downed power lines.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:

Irish Slaves? — Not Profitable: Irish people were unprofitable as slaves — The could easily assimilate into white america. Native Americans were not enslaved — They could escape to their native lands! BlacK Slaves, from Africa were kept enslaved for they could not assimilate into white America and they could not escape to their native lands.

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

United States: A new stage in Black Lives Matter’s Battle Against Trump’s State Violence ­­President Donald Trump has loudly targeted the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) as “left wing anarchists” and “terrorists”. He speaks of “carnage in the street” and “law and order”. But it is clear that the agents provocateurs are in the White House and its federal agencies Trump has unleashed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to bring military-style agencies onto the streets of Portland, Oregon and other cities to attack BLM in the mane of protecting federal property. Trump’s agents initiate the violence then blame demonstrators defending themselves for the confrontations. The right-wing media then broadcasts the images as “proof” that protesters are allegedly burning down cities. By Malik Miah

Political Prisoners: “Say Their Names” Unless folks are under the delusion that victory over the “fascists” is imminent, the condition of political prisoners should be a deeply personal, as well as political, concern to all activists. “Movement activists of today will inevitably become the political prisoners of tomorrow.”It has become a righteous ritual: the recitation of the names of those whose lives were snatched away by the armed agents of the U.S. state. Mass movements were assembled around the names Oscar Grant (2009) ,Trayvon Martin (2012) and Michael Brown (2014), prompting women of the movement to launch the #SayHerName campaign  in 2014, to “lift up” the stories of Black women victims of police violence, “who they are, how they lived, and why they suffered at the hands of police.” By Glen Ford, BAR Executive EditorFreedom Rider: How Trump Can Steal the 2020 Election The election was stolen from Clinton four years ago and the even weaker 2020 candidate can expect the same fate. “No one in the media or the Democratic Party gives a basic civics lesson or talks about how elections are really stolen.”Republicans win the presidency when they steal votes. Democrats need a huge turnout to undo the impact of so-called “spoiled ballots,” electronic vote machine theft and the removal of Democratic voters, i.e. Black people, from the rolls. These methods will of course be used in November and ought to be the basis for concerns regarding any electoral malfeasance. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnistAmerican Left Silence on China Helps Lay Foundation for the U.S.’ New Cold War When it comes to China, Democracy Now, Jacobin, The Nation and others on the imperial-minded US ‘left” are allies of white supremacy. “The racism that undergirds the New Cold War against China is nothing new.”The United States is waging a New Cold War against China. In rapid time, sanctions against the Communist Party of China have been leveled, the Houston consulate closed, and a host of other provocative measures employed by the U.S. political establishment. Largely missing from worldwide opposition to U.S. aggression toward China is the American Left. The U.S. political establishment has successfully convinced majorities in the United States that China is an inherently monstrous country controlled by organ-harvesting and Muslim-suppressing communists. This includes the American Left, which has said or done absolutely nothing to stop the U.S. elite’s dangerous maneuvers toward the People’s Republic. By Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor“We Need a National Industrial Commission, a Permanent One” Like the first Covd-19 relief package, the pending bill will have been written by “sleep-deprived staff and inattentive lawmakers who are making this all up on the fly.” “A Black Congressional district in Missouri got one-eighth the amount of Paycheck Protection Program funding that a white district in Idaho did.” Ann Garrison spoke to Bart Naylor, financial policy advocate  with Public Citizen , about the stimulus bill passed on March 25th and the one now pending: Ann Garrison: Most of us have heard that the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act is full of handouts to huge corporations, but I heard you say, in an interview  on WNHN-New Hampshire, that most of that money hasn’t yet gone out the door. If so, why not? By Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing EditorEssays on The Cult of White Feminism: The “Cos”-play of Elizabeth Warren  A Black artist looks at the role of White Feminism in neutralizing the Progressive and Socialist Left in America, and its consequences. “Iconicity can make even the most questionable ideologies look like unparalleled genius straight from the mind of God.”“Patients are patients because they are out of rapport with their own unconscious… Patients are people who have had too much programming – so much outside programming that they have lost touch with their inner selves.” ― Milton Erikson By Earl HazellAFRICOM Crying Russia in Libya: A Pot and Kettle Syndrome By Netfa FreemanRoberto Sirvent, The US waged unprovoked war against Libya and has militarily occupied Africa, but is still singing its old song that Russia is the aggressor on the continent. “Not one liberal politician will unequivocally declare that the US has no moral business in Africa and AFRICOM has no legitimate or altruistic purpose.” Despite its diminishing global heft, the US remains a superpower of hypocrisy. These days when it comes to Russia one can get a case study on US imperialism simply by inversing the accusations Washington levels against that country. By BAR Book Forum EditorNYPD “Jump Out Boys” Have Been Accosting People for Years When Trump’s federal cops snatched people off the street in Portland, folks cried “fascist,” but that’s an everyday occurrence in Black and brown New York.  “This is something that has been going on for years and that’s because the Manhattan DA Cy Vance has let the cops run wild without any accountability.”A silver minivan had been driving just ahead of a group of Black Lives Matter protesters in Manhattan when it came to a sudden stop. Five men in plain T-shirts and cargo shorts came pouring out of the vehicle and grabbed a young woman in the crowd off of her skateboard. They then violently placed her into the van, driving off, leaving surrounding protesters confused and upset about what just happened. By Katelyn BurnsDetroit is No Portland It would be lunacy to send troops to Detroit, as Trump has threatened. “This is pre-emptive warfare.” “I’m going to do something, that I can tell you, because we’re not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia, Detroit and Baltimore … Oakland is a mess … We’re not going to let this happen in our country.” – Donald Trump. The starting point of this discussion is the actual numbers. By Diane GeeBlack August and Black Liberation: “Study, Fast, Train, Fight.” We owe it to our ancestors and our incarcerated comrades to escalate the struggle against the white settler state and its imperial capitalist order. “Some of our incarcerated comrades have moved into their fifth decade shackled as the longest serving political prisoners on the face of the Earth.” Each August since 1979, the surviving sectors of the Black Liberation Movement, our supporters, and the new entrants into the ranks of resistors to the ongoing oppression against the African/Black masses and colonized peoples of this territory now called the United States and its settler state, have paid homage to our fallen freedom fighters and those incarcerated for decades in the cages of this country. By BAP National Coordinating CommitteeExamining the Wreckage White Supremacy and Imperialism Have Wrought Indigenous and African resistance and intellectual traditions provide key insights to the very nature of capitalism and how it has unfolded throughout space and time. “The young people in the streets are true revolutionary theoreticians, moving history along, sometimes at speeds that feel daunting.” The United States is on fire. As we write this introduction, we can read in the ashes and embers of smoldering cities the writing on the wall—the historic movements for Black lives against white supremacy have raised class consciousness to levels that we simply have not experienced in previous generations. We might ask, why are race and white supremacy so central to class consciousness? What can the history of settler colonialism teach us about this current moment? More importantly, what does a decolonization movement look like, and how is it informed by both Black and Indigenous traditions of resistance? These questions are monumental, and each deserves exhaustive treatments, something we can only gesture at here.  By Nick Estes and Roxanne Dunbar-OrtizLabor:

Big Brother Is Watching You!:    Over 1,100 Policing Agencies in the U.S. Have Bought Drones Capable of Recording Despite assurances from police that data will not be shared, it’s hard to imagine that if it exists, it won’t be used. In early June, Julie Weiner was at a Black Lives Matter rally in downtown Yonkers, New York, when she spotted a small drone in the sky, monitoring the protest. Weiner, a long-time Yonkers resident, immediately asked her city councilperson, Shanae Williams, who had organized the rally, whether the drone was being operated by the Yonkers police. Williams went over to talk to a group of police and returned to report that, yes, the drone belonged to the Yonkers Police Department. By Nick MotternFauci Is Getting Death Threats After a White House Campaign to Discredit Him White House coronavirus task force member Anthony Fauci said Wednesday that he and his family have faced harassments and threats from individuals who are angry about his medical advice on COVID-19. The threats made have been so extreme, Fauci said, that he’s had to hire security to protect his family. By Chris WalkerOf Course Sanders ia Silent about the Bigger Federal Reserve Bank Windfall Bailout of $Trillions to Wall Street!:   Sanders Bill to Tax ‘Obscene’ Pandemic Windfall of Billionaires Would Empower Medicare to Cover Every American for One Year “By taxing 60% of the wealth gains made by just 467 billionaires during this horrific pandemic, we could guarantee healthcare as a right for an entire year.” By Jake JohnsonHow the Fascists Won World War II This is a mystery story. This is a mystery story. It revolves around a building that—as you will all come to agree—should have been bombed. Before construction of the Pentagon during World War II, the two largest and most famous office buildings on planet Earth were the Empire State Building and the headquarters of German industrial behemoth IG Farben. Building these palaces of capitalism was a frantic race run in 1930-1931, at the opening of the Great Depression. Both edifices were designed to inspire awe, by “skyscraper” height in New York, by overwhelming grandiosity in Frankfurt. Unlike the original World Trade Center, both buildings still stand. There is no mystery about how the rugged steel frame of the Empire State Building survived the 1945 direct crash into its 79th floor by a twin-engine B-25 bomber, lost in fog over the city. How the IG Farben HQ survived World War II, however, is a mystery whose dark depths hold secret links between the past and the present. By H. Bruce Franklin

Photograph Source: View of the IG Farben Building from the Main Tower by EvaK – CC BY 2.5

Economy:

The Fed Created an Emergency Lending Program to Hold Interest Rates Down; the Tiny Country of Sri Lanka Was the Major User At Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s press conference on July 29, he persisted in his explanation that all of the Fed’s bailout programs are really about helping the American people get back on their feet. Here’s one more, among a growing mountain, of reasons to question that.  By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

Hiroshima & Nagasaki – 75 Years After the Atomic Bomb ibakusha. Have you heard the term? Simply put, the Hibakusha are people in Japan who survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War II (WWII). Many in the United States military saw the Japanese civilians as mere collateral damage, and those lives as a price to pay for trying to end a war that was already over. The facts are more nuanced. Although Hibakusha are people who survived the bombing of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, they were traumatized by seeing their families, friends, and homes destroyed within seconds, and many Hibakusha also suffered the lifelong aftermath of radiation poisoning. Since the meltdowns at Fukushima Dai-ichi, the term Hibakusha is applied to victims of Japan’s triple meltdown, who are also similarly facing radiation-induced illnesses and discrimination, because they too have been exposed to radiation. When Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds chief engineer, traveled to Japan, he visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It was there that Arnie learned that many victims of the Fukushima catastrophe were and still are receiving emotional support from the victims of the U.S. atomic bombs in WWII. By By The Fairewinds CrewEducation, 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 Healthcare

It’s Time to Socialize Big Pharma We don’t have to leave ourselves at the mercy of the most profitable sector on Earth to get the drugs we need. We must nationalize the pharmaceutical industry and turn the medicines millions rely on into public goods. In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar sparked viral outrage. When asked at a congressional hearing about whether any potential COVID-19 vaccine would be made affordable to all, Azar refused to be drawn into a promise. “We would want to ensure that we work to make it affordable,” he replied, “but we can’t control that price, because we need the private sector to invest … Price controls won’t get us there.”  His answer was lambasted by commentators: Senator Bernie Sanders called it “an outrage,” and Representative Jan Schakowsky tweeted that Azar was “giving Big Pharma a blank check.” The Verge insisted the move “could put everyone’s health at risk.” And yet, in the context of a system that relies on a profit-driven pharmaceutical industry to produce lifesaving drugs, Azar’s answer was relatively mundane. These companies’ business models are predicated on high prices and weak regulation, not altruism and the common good. By Fran Quigley, and Natalie Shure

MIAMI – AUGUST 07: A Publix Supermarket pharmacy manager retrieves a bottle of antibiotics from the shelf August 7, 2007 in Miami, Florida. Publix has decided to start giving away seven commonly prescribed antibiotics for free. The oral antibiotics will be available at no cost to any customers with a prescription as often as they need it. Publix will offer 14-day supplies of the seven drugs at all of the company’s pharmacies. The supermarket chain operates 684 pharmacies in five states. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)