Daily News Digest August 10, 2020

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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 Coronavirus Death Toll ‘Curve’ is not Flattening!  Quotes of the Day:

Countries that have taken radical action without delay have been able to contain or even eradicate the epidemic (and have not helped to spread the pandemic). This is particularly the case for Vietnam with 372 cases recorded, no deaths and no new contamination for several weeks. This is also the case for Taiwan with 449 cases identified and 7 deaths. Thailand has 3,220 infected, including 58 deaths; most importantly, there has been no new contamination for more than 45 days. As for mortality rates in Asia, we have 0.0 per 100,000 inhabitants in Vietnam, 0.03 in Taiwan, 0.08 in Thailand, 0.33 in China, 0.39 in Malaysia, 0.46 in Singapore, 0.56 in South Korea. In Europe we have 10.50 in Denmark, 10.94 in Germany, 16.09 in Portugal, 23.11 in Switzerland, 35.73 in the Netherlands, 35.97 in Ireland, 44.80 in France, 54.27 in Sweden, 57.83 in Italy, 60.79 in Spain, 67.50 in Great Britain and 85.64 in Belgium. Even taking into account the biases linked to the quality of epidemiological surveys and official information, these figures speak for themselves and the follow-up work carried out by Johns Hopkins University provides references. Health policy and self-mobilization of the population: Another noteworthy point is the role played by the basic health model. The intensive care capacity of a country like Vietnam is very low and yet, despite the very high risks (trade with neighbouring China), it has the best results. Indeed, basic preventive measures are not complex: tests, isolation of contaminated individuals, monitoring of people with whom they have been in contact, masks, hand washing, disinfection. In Sri Lanka, there have so far been “only” 11 deaths from 2,617 reported infections. This is explained by the fact that a highly developed public health system still exists, unfortunately threatened by neoliberal policies. In countries that have effectively contained the epidemic, public authorities have intervened in a coherent manner, often by mobilizing social networks for the implementation of health policies — whether by governments or administrations acting more or less autonomously of the political authorities, as in the astonishing case of Thailand. Finally, let us recall the major roles the popular culture of hygiene (Thailand, again) and of epidemic risk, as well as the self-mobilization of populations, have played. This was particularly the case in Hong Kong, where the inhabitants immediately and spontaneously masked themselves, contrary to the initial positioning of the authorities. In Vietnam, social networks denounced a wealthy woman who tried to escape the compulsory quarantine for anyone returning from abroad. The people called to order those French present in the country, who judged the wearing of the mask useless based on the (false) statements of their government — a government that for weeks advocated the exact opposite of what it should have done, making necessity (a general shortage) into a virtue. —  Covid-19: Asian contrasts and lessons

 Videos of the Day:

“The World’s Most Dangerous Man”: Mary Trump on Her Uncle, President Trump, & Why He Must Be Ousted

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!

Trump Is Not Immune to the Pandemic’s Political Death Sentence People seldom forgive governments that get them involved in losing wars or fail to cope with a natural disaster like the coronavirus. In the midst of the pandemic from hell, with a president who seems incapable of grasping the reality of, no less dealing with, the spreading virus, as deaths mount and cases cascade, in a land where a Covid-19 “second wave” in the fall isn’t conceivable because the first will never have ended, it’s easy to forget about pandemics past. In fact, I did. By EditorTrump Blasted for Naming ‘War Criminal’ and Iran-Contra Convict Elliott Abrams as Iran Envoy “Elliott Abrams has made a career of lying and committing criminal acts that have led to the death and suffering of innocent people from Guatemala to Iraq.” By Jake Johnson

Saying ICE Has ‘Lost the Right to Be Trusted,’ Federal Judge Orders Mandatory Testing at Detention Center Hit by Covid-19 Court order follows an outbreak at the Mesa Verde Detention Center and evidence that officials opted not to test detainees for fear of positive test results. By Lisa Newcomb

The COVID Interregnum A little over 500 years ago, Europeans, driven by a lust for riches and enabled by new technologies, colonized the Americas and set about making them productive in an entirely new way. The reasonably self-sustaining economies of the indigenous peoples were swept away and the organic and mineral resources of their lands were incorporated into systems of production that generated surplus wealth, by serving newly established markets in the Americas and around the world. Thus, was the New World enfolded into the then emerging system of capitalism. By John DavisThe First Cauality of War is the Truth:  War and Pandemic Journalism: the Truth Can Disappear Fast The struggle against Covid-19 has often been compared to fighting a war. Much of this rhetoric is bombast, but the similarities between the struggle against the virus and against human enemies are real enough. War reporting and pandemic reporting likewise have much in common because, in both cases, journalists are dealing with and describing matters of life and death. Public interest is fueled by deep fears, often more intense during an epidemic because the whole population is at risk. In a war, aside from military occupation and area bombing, terror is at its height among those closest to the battlefield. By Patrick Cockburn

Roaming Charges: Every Which Way to Lose By  Jeffrey St. Clair

  • Four years of Trump, the most precipitous collapse of the US economy in history and one killer pandemic later and we’re right back to where we were in the late summer of 2016…

  • How could this possibly be, you ask? Well, here’s Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee in hiding, demanding to know if a black journalist, who asked him a question he didn’t like, is junkie…

  • Biden could pick Angela Davis as his VP nominee and it wouldn’t be enough to mask his innate racism, which is deeply encoded into almost every strand of his political DNA.

  • Given every advantage, Biden will still stumble into every which way to lose, from scolding the progressive base to sabotaging his own roster of VP candidates…

  • Thousands are dying every day, millions are unemployed, their benefits running out, millions more are facing eviction and Biden’s driving around in his Corvette, cosplaying Steve McQueen? WTFingF…

  • These attacks on Karen Bass are getting more and more grotesque and nonsensical. All of the neocons who slithered out of the Reagan administration, including two presidents and two presidential nominees, backed the Apartheid regime as ADULTS, as did the top US client state (Israel), while the Cubans were helping to eradicate apartheidism across southern Africa…

  • Let’s a have an election about Cuba, starting with how many lives Cuban doctors have saved…

  • Covid-19 deaths per million”: Cuba: 8Florida: 361

  • Bass is also getting shivved in the media for speaking at the dedication of a new Scientology centernear her district in Los Angeles, an entirely normal event for politicians. \

  • Are the Scientologists any worse than the Catholics, Mormons, Southern Baptists or Hare Krishnas?

  • Cockburn had a fruitful relationship with their former supremo, Heber Jentzsch, who I believe the church has now disappeared. They’d done a lot of litigation against the CIA, drug companies, FBI and shared some of their discovery with us, which proved very useful in the writing of Whiteout.

  • I never met Heber, a former journalist with LA Free Press, but I talked to him many times until he went missingin 2004.

  • Now when I drive by that sprawling building in Hollywood, I wonder if he’s locked in one of those dark rooms, getting “readjusted”…

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.

The Uited States Uses Water and COVID as a Weapons to Continue Its Genocide Of Native Americans!:  Navajo Nation’s Shortage of Clean Water Is Impeding Efforts to Control COVID A disastrous legacy of exploitative drilling and mining has destroyed the Navajo Nation’s precious water resources. By Daniel Ross

US Hurricane Experts Predict ‘Extremely Active’ Storm Season — Noaa forecasts 25 possible storms with winds of 39mph and up —‘We expect more, stronger, and longer-lived storms than average’ —   The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NoaaA) has predicted an “extremely active” hurricane season in the US in an already record-breaking year for storms. By Amanda Holpuch

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

Labor:

So Far, This Century Has Been the Cerntury of the Declining Labor Participation Rate! There Has Not Been a ‘Recovery’ for the Working Class! —  The Working Class Has Been in a Depression For a Very Long Time!:  Fred Labor Force Participation Rate For July is 61.4%

In Every Capitalist Country, during this epic of Capitalism’s collapse, the working class is saddled, with a fifth Colum. within its ranks — The Labor and Social Democrat Union and/or Political bureaucracies!

Once the dust finally settles on the Corbyn-era, historians may ponder how different things might have been if these Labour staffers, and numerous Labour MPs, had spent their energies supporting their leader rather than working against him.  The number of extra votes in marginal seats that Labour needed in 2017 to give Corbyn a chance of being prime minister was an agonising 2,227. This will forever remain a sore point for many of us. Because as the leaked report exposed – we know that in 2017 party resources never reached many of the winnable seats that they should have, with allies of the small faction in party HQ standing in safe seats seen as the first priority.  We were a young and diverse team, mostly new to electoral politics and passionate about our jobs. Of course we made mistakes. But we came incredibly close to changing this country’s politics for good. Without the actions of this small group of highly experienced saboteurs, I genuinely believe we would now be three years into a Labour government investing in our NHS and public services – an outcome which surely would have better prepared the country for the Coronavirus pandemic. — I Saw From The Inside How Labour Staff Worked to Prevent a Labour Government

July 2020 Shadow Government Statistic s Alternate Unemployment Rate  is 30.0% Economy:

Robber Barons Are Running Free

Fed Chair Powell Had 4 Private Phone Calls with BlackRock’s CEO Since March as BlackRock Manages Upwards of $25 Million of Powell’s Personal Money and Lands 3 No-Bid Deals with the Fed Earlier this year, Wall Street On Parade reported that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, had an upward range of $11.6 million invested with the investment management firm, BlackRock, and its iShares Exchange Traded Funds, according to Powell’s 2019 financial disclosure form. Powell’s 2020 financial disclosure form is now available. It was signed by Powell on May 15, 2020 and it shows that Powell’s holdings in BlackRock investments have reached an upward range of $24.95 million – an increase of $13.35 million over the prior year’s upward range. (See Editor’s note below.)The date that Powell signed his latest financial disclosure, May 15, is noteworthy. It means that more than 45 days after the New York Fed had hired BlackRock to manage its commercial mortgage-backed securities program and its $750 billion primary and secondary purchases of corporate bonds and ETFs in no-bid contracts, Fed Chairman Powell saw no reason to avoid the conflict of interest of allowing BlackRock to continue managing upwards of $25 million of his own personal money.  By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World: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 Healthcare

You Cannot Open School Safely Unless You Add Funding to Public Schools To Make Them Safe! (You Need Smaller Class Sizes, for Social Distancing ect..)

A Result of the Unanimous Democrat/Republican Coronavirus Bailout: Private Schools Collected Billions from Federal Paycheck Protection Program Baptistnews.com reported this important piece of information. Private schools have scored billions from the Paycheck Protection Program. This represents a massive transfer of public funding to private and religious schools. Of course, this fulfills a major policy goal of the Trump administration. Americans United for Separation of Church and State reviewed federal records and calculated that private schools collected billions of dollars from the Paycheck Protection Program, which was enacted to save small businesses at risk of going bankrupt. By Diane Ravitch

Public Schools Getting Short Shrift (Again) In Coronavirus Relief Package “Reopen schools” is a good slogan, but it is far from a plan. The coronavirus continues to challenge public school administrators, teachers, parents and students who want a safe return to the classroom. Congress should do its part to support them, not exacerbate educational inequities by shuffling more taxpayer money to private schools.