Daily News Digest August 21, 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:

Bendib: Post Office Quotes of the Day:

Susan B. Anthony did not want to be pardoned. She was very pointed about this. Not until all women had full equality (which we still don’t have). She said instead she would “urge all women to… the old revolutionary maxim that ‘Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.’” — Katie Hill (@KatieHill4CA) August 18, 2020

At the same time, the Pentagon deployed its aircraft carriers and other weaponry ever more threateningly in the South China Sea and elsewhere in the Pacific. The question is: What lies behind this upsurge in Trump administration China baiting? A likely answer can be found in the president’s blunt statement in a July interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News that “I’m not a good loser. I don’t like to lose.”    The reality is that, under Donald Trump, the United States is indeed losing to China in two important spheres. As the FBI’s Wray put it, “In economic and technical terms [China] is already a peer competitor of the United States… in a very different kind of [globalized] world.” In other words, China is rising and the U.S. is falling. Don’t just blame Trump and his cronies for that, however, as this moment has been a long time coming.  Facts speak for themselves. Nearly unscathed by the 2008-2009 global recession, China displaced Japan as the world’s second largest economy in August 2010. In 2012, with $3.87 trillion worth of imports and exports, it overtook the U.S. total of $3.82 trillion, elbowing it out of a position it had held for 60 years as the number one cross-border trading nation worldwide.     By the end of 2014, China’s gross domestic product, as measured by purchasing power parity, was $17.6 trillion, slightly exceeding the $17.4 trillion of the United States, which had been the globe’s largest economy since 1872.    In May 2015, the Chinese government released a Made in China 2025 plan aimed at rapidly developing 10 high-tech industries, including electric cars, next-generation information technology, telecommunications, advanced robotics, and artificial intelligence. Other major sectors covered in the plan included agricultural technology, aerospace engineering, the development of new synthetic materials, the emerging field of biomedicine, and high-speed rail infrastructure. The plan was aimed at achieving 70% self-sufficiency in high-tech industries and a dominant position in such global markets by 2049, a century after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. — Donald Trump is Losing His Tech War with China and Doesn’t Even Know It

 Videos of the Day:

DSA-backed challenger has a shot at Baltimore’s city council

Can California’s Prison Firefighter Program Be Reformed?

Will Biden do enough to fight the climate crisis?

Our electoral ‘choices’ aren’t enough, say activists

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!

Roaming Charges: Conventional Weapons at the DNC “The politics of the lesser evil has always had a nasty tendency to hold to the great old evil and thus to prepare the way for even greater new evils.” – Hannah Arendt  By Jeffrey St. Clair

The Day After Election Day The view passed down from on high in the U.S. is that elections are the effective and legitimate means of collective decision-making in the realm of the political. Conversely, on matters of war and peace, economic distribution, environmental wellbeing, healthcare, education, housing, and social welfare— the areas where collective outcomes matter, these are either considered ‘economic’ in nature, or elected representatives defer to markets, grant decision-making power to corporate pleaders, or act with unanimity across alleged ideological differences. By Rob UrieLesser Evil is Still Evil Every four years America is presented with a false choice, each one essentially a continuation of the status quo by different means, politically and economically related, but optically opposed. Biden had already said that nothing will fundamentally change if he is elected president, so why should any American bother to vote for this specific lesser of two evils? A lesser evil is still an evil. One way to understand the moral panic circling the election is precisely in understanding the Democratic platform, which is essentially ‘we are not Trump,’ though in every other way they are the same, touting strange notions like bipartisanship. By Tom Pazderka

Environment:

How the Climate Crisis is Already Harming America – Photo Essay The damage rising temperatures bring is been seen around the country, with experts fearing worse is to come limate change is not an abstract future threat to the United States, but a real danger that is already harming Americans’ lives, with “substantial damages” to follow if rising temperatures are not controlled. This was the verdict of a major US government report two years ago. The Trump administration’s attitude to climate change was perhaps illustrated in the timing of the report’s release, which was in the news dead zone a day after Thanksgiving. By Oliver Milman Battling “The Empire” of Gang Green Collaborators, Timber Industry, and Trump’s Forest Service in the North Cascades Several pseudo environmental groups joined forces with the timber industry and the Forest Service against the Alliance for the Wild Rockies after it filed a lawsuit last year against the Mission Restoration Project on Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in the Methow Valley west of Twisp, Washington. By Mike Garrity

Civil Rights/ Black Liberarion:

The Trial of Susan B. Anthony: An AccountSusan B. Anthony is not on trial; the United States is on trial.“–Matilda Joslyn Gage More than any other woman of her generation, Susan B. Anthony saw that all of the legal disabilities faced by American women owed their existence to the simple fact that women lacked the vote. When Anthony, at age 32, attended her first woman’s rights convention in Syracuse in 1852, she declared “that the right which woman needed above every other, the one indeed which would secure to her all the others, was the right of suffrage.” Anthony spent the next fifty-plus years of her life fighting for the right to vote. She would work tirelessly: giving speeches, petitioning Congress and state legislatures, publishing a feminist newspaper–all for a cause that would not succeed until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment fourteen years after her death in 1906.Susan B. Anthony Never Sought Anyone’s Pardon, But Trump Did It Anyway President Donald Trump has announced plans to pardon Susan B. Anthony, a suffragist, who was charged for voting illegally in 1872. He announced the pardon at an event commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment that granted women the right to vote in 1920. In November of 1872, Anthony persuaded election officials to allow her to vote in the presidential election. Shortly after, she was arrested — and, at her trial, was adamant that her crime was only unjust under “forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women,” she said. She was ordered to pay a $100 fine, but never paid the fine or went to jail. Her crime brought attention to the issue of women’s suffrage at the time, though the amendment wasn’t ratified until after her death. By Sharon Zhang

Free All Political Prisoners – and Say Their Names! It is righteous and correct to say the names of victims of police violence, but we must also “Say the names!” of our living political prisoners. By Glen FordFreedom Rider: “Feet to the Fire” and Other Lies When the Democratic Party ends its charade of a primary process and spits out the person most closely aligned with neo-liberal policies, the gas lighting begins. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnistTrump is Wrong, Joe Biden is not the “Radical Left.” He is an Enemy of Humanity Both candidates are jockeying for who can best gaslight the U.S. public into remaining loyal to one side of the two-party corporate duopoly or the other By Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing EditorBiden’s Philly Headquarters Rents a Fence to Stop the Poor People’s Army Cheri Honkala tells Ann Garrison that the Biden campaign headquarters threw up a rent-a-fence when they heard the Poor People’s Army was coming. By Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing EditorKopmala’s Padlocks and the Games Politicians Play The Big Business-backed Harris earned a reputation as a friend of the police and an agent of racially disparate mass incarceration. By Paul StreetModern U.S. Racial Capitalism: Some Theoretical Insights Anti-Blackness and antiradicalism function as the legitimating architecture of modern U.S. racial capitalism.By Charisse Burden-Stelly, PhDBeyoncé’s “Black is King” and the Pitfalls of African Consciousness With Black is King, Beyoncé and Disney have combined to sell audiences a lavishly fabricated Africa—one that is entirely devoid of class conflict. By Russell RickfordWhat I Fear About University Actions in the Context of Black Lives Matter  White folks at the university decided to set things right on race – without consulting Africana Studies. By P. Khalil SaucierBurundi to Demand Colonial Reparations From Germany and Belgium The East African country is a former German colony and lived under Belgian rule until gaining independence almost 60 years ago. By Deutsche WelleThe NYPD Is Withholding Evidence From Investigations Into Police Abuse By The NYPD has regularly failed to turn over key records and videos to police abuse investigators at New York’s Civilian Complaint Review Board. “ By Eric Umansky and Mollie SimonKamala Harris; Class Struggle and the Illusion of Identity in Capitalism Some Africans in America identify with people like Harris because THEY see their class interests, as she does, as being intertwined with the interests of the American capitalist system. By Ahjamu UmiLabor:

Work, work, proletarians, to increase social wealth and your individual poverty; work, work, in order that becoming poorer, you may have more reason to work and become miserable. Such is the inexorable law of capitalist production.” ― Paul Lafargue, The Right to Be Lazy

Workers’ Leisure Time Falls Despite Decline In Paid Hours As the economy contracts, the availability of paid work is in decline. Yet workers today also have less leisure time. Under capitalism, all the gains of productivity fall to an elite few. We need a socialist plan to end unemployment and overwork.Economy:

How the Climate Crisis is Already Harming America – Photo Essay The damage rising temperatures bring is been seen around the country, with experts fearing worse is to come limate change is not an abstract future threat to the United States, but a real danger that is already harming Americans’ lives, with “substantial damages” to follow if rising temperatures are not controlled. This was the verdict of a major US government report two years ago. The Trump administration’s attitude to climate change was perhaps illustrated in the timing of the report’s release, which was in the news dead zone a day after Thanksgiving. By Oliver Milman

Battling “The Empire” of Gang Green Collaborators, Timber Industry, and Trump’s Forest Service in the North Cascades Several pseudo environmental groups joined forces with the timber industry and the Forest Service against the Alliance for the Wild Rockies after it filed a lawsuit last year against the Mission Restoration Project on Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in the Methow Valley west of Twisp, Washington. By Mike Garrity

3-Time Felon JPMorgan Chase Wants to Burnish Its Image by Co-Branding with the U.S. Postal Service’s 91 Percent Approval Rating We have a marketing suggestion for the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors if it is nutty enough to accept JPMorgan Chase’s overture to place its ATM machines on the premises of U.S. post offices. The marketing idea goes like this: place a big red, white and blue sign over each JPMorgan Chase ATM machine that reads: “From the wonderful folks who were Bernie Madoff’s bankers.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

World:

Torturing Assange: An Interview with Andrew Fowler  It seems quite clear that there is an attempt by the British and US administrations to destroy Assange, either driving him to suicide or a psychological breakdown. He has had a lung condition for a number of years, which has not been properly treated, and is clearly suffering from huge stress. During his last court appearance over a video link, there were long pauses between his words, even when speaking his own name. By John Kendall Hawkins

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 ‘:’, 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

In an Era of Pandemic and Protest, STEM Education Can’t Pretend to Be Apolitical cross the U.S., the push to reopen schools is predicated on troubling beliefs about schools and families. Time at home is assumed to result in “learning loss” because our institutions measure learning and achievement by standardized test scores, and do not consider students’ families as a source of education. Besides chasing test score gains, the driving goal for reopening schools is facilitating parents’ return to work — regardless of the health consequences for all involved. However, this summer’s powerful protests against police violence and racism have pushed our public discourse to go beyond these misguided calls for a return to normalcy and reopening of the economy. The COVID-19 pandemic exposes the United States — the nation often upheld as the leader in scientific innovation — as unable (or unwilling) to use its vast resources to care for its people at the most basic human level. Yet the country rapidly mobilized its military and police to repress outrage against deep, persistent and violent anti-Blackness. By Daniel Morales-DoyleShirin VossoughiSepehr Vakil and Megan Bang

The Vaccine Race Has Become A High-Stakes Geopolitical Gamble Rich countries are spending billions to secure vaccine doses for their citizens — but not everyone can afford to play the global betting game. By   Matthieu Balu