Daily News Digest August 24, 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:

Global Warming Has Come Home To Roost! Quotes of the Day:

This pipeline is just one of the ways poor communities and communities of color are over-policed and hyper-surveilled nationwide. But now, that narrative is beginning to change.    With the growing movement to defund police—and many schools facing steep budget cuts—public school districts are reckoning with police brutality inside the classroom. As a result, school boards nationwide, from Oakland to Phoenix to Minneapolis, have voted to remove cops from their schools and end contracts with police.         Removing police is an important first step towards disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline, but it needs to be part of a broader effort. After all, young people face the same racist policing outside their schools.As of a few years ago, Black youth were over five times more likely to be detained or committed to the prison system than white youth, leading to a lifetime of struggle. According to MIT research, 40 percent of people incarcerated as juveniles were locked up in adult facilities by the age of 25.      Again, researchers have found no significant behavioral differences between Black and white adolescents: They are roughly equally likely to get into fights, carry weapons, steal, use or sell controlled substances, or skip school. Yet it’s mostly children of color who are criminalized for these behaviors, and the impacts are far-reaching.     The school-to-prison pipeline is one of the most damaging aspects of mass incarceration in our country. It’s welcome news that many districts are moving away from officers in classrooms, especially when students have enough to worry about with the pandemic.    But schools parallel society at large, and the school-to-prison pipeline affects kids well outside the walls of the classroom. Efforts to defund the police must extend beyond those walls as well. — Ending the School to Prison Pipeline

It is fear of such a blockade that has seen China develop its Belt and Road Initiative along the old Silk Road to Europe and urgently build strategic airstrips on disputed reefs and islets in the Spratly Islands. In Shanghai, I met Lijia Zhang, a Beijing journalist and novelist, typical of a new class of outspoken mavericks. Her best-selling book has the ironic title Socialism    Is Great! Having grown up in the chaotic, brutal Cultural Revolution, she has travelled and lived in the US and Europe. Many Americans imagine,” she said, “that Chinese people live a miserable, repressed life with no freedom whatsoever. The [idea of] the yellow peril has never left them…    They have no idea there are some 500 million people being lifted out of poverty, and some would say it’s 600 million.” odern China’s epic achievements, its defeat of mass poverty, and the pride and contentment of its people (measured forensically by American pollsters such as Pew) are wilfully unknown or misunderstood in the West.    This alone is a commentary on the lamentable state of Western journalism and the abandonment of honest reporting. China’s repressive dark side and what we like to call its “authoritarianism” are the facade we are allowed to see almost exclusively. It is as if we are fed unending tales of the evil super-villain Dr. Fu Manchu. And it is time we asked why: before it is too late to stop the next Hiroshima. — John Pilger, Another Hiroshima is Coming…Unless We Stop It Now

 Videos of the Day:

Black August Honors the Legacy of Militant RebellionLumumba and Monifa Bandele talk about the history of Black August, continuing the legacy of freedom fighters and the Black August Hip Hop project.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!

‘Complete Bombshell’: Former Top USPS Official Reveals ‘Disturbing’ New Details of DeJoy Selection and Mnuchin Sabotage of Mail Service According to David Williams, Mnuchin required members of the USPS Board of Governors to “come to his office to kiss the ring.”In his first public remarks since resigning from the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors in protest at the end of April, David Williams on Thursday offered a number of alarming new details surrounding the selection of Trump megadonor Louis DeJoy as postmaster general and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s efforts to exert influence over mail operations and finances. By Jake Johnson

Why Payroll Taxes Are the Achilles Heel of Social Security On August 8th, Donald Trump took four executive actions on coronavirus relief. One was a memorandum deferring, to the end of the year, payment of the employee portion of the payroll tax for employees making less than $4000 biweekly. (Employer payments had already been deferred in the CARES act. By Jim KavanaghEnvironment:

Not Only Did the 1% Know Global Warming Was Coming, They Also Knew That Pandemics Were Coming — And Did Nothing! They Put Immediate Profit Gains Before Humanity and The Planet’s Other Living Creatures Both ‘Great and Small’!: Meatpacking Companies Dismissed Years of Warnings but Now Say Nobody Could Have Prepared for COVID-19 In documents dating to 2006, government officials predicted that a pandemic would threaten critical businesses and warned them to prepare. Meatpacking companies largely ignored them, and now nearly every one of the predictions has come true. By Michael Grabell and Bernice Yeung

The Climate Crisis Has Already Arrived. Just Look To California’s Abnormal Wildfires In the last decade, amid drought and searing heat, California has entered the ‘era of megafires’ and has become the ‘examplar for climate change extreme events today’ here’s an idea that when the climate crisis begins, we will know it. Movies present it as a moment when the world’s weather suddenly turns apocalyptic: winds howl, sea levels surge, capital cities are decimated. By Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano Extinction Rebellion Activists Launch Ocean-Focused Offshoot With Direct Actions Targeting Luxury Cruise Liner The group aims to “address cascading collapses in biodiversity due to overfishing, human-caused climate change, deep sea mining, and other marine emergencies.” By Jessica CorbettCivil Rights/ Black Liberarion:

Ending the School to Prison Pipeline This school year will be unlike any other. For starters, school districts across the country are grappling with budget cuts and pandemic safety. But there’s something else, too: In the wake of a national uprising against police violence, many districts are rethinking what constitutes school safety.   After the 2018 Parkland shooting, many districts rushed to put armed security guards and police officers in schools.    That year, states allocated an additional $965 million to law enforcement in schools.   The idea has been to keep children safe. But there’s simply no proof that armed security officers keep children any safer in schools—Parkland itself already had an armed officer on site.    In fact, there’s growing evidence these officers make many students less safe. For instance, Black students are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested at school than white students, despite exhibiting similar behavioral patterns. By Uma Nagarajan-SwensonBarbara Freese: Something’s Rotten in the Corporate States of America A new book by Barbara Freese explores eight stories about the unfettered corporate greed that has corrupted modern society and led to an astounding loss of life.  Beginning with the slave trade and leading all the way up to the climate crisis, author Barbara Freese’s “Industrial Strength Denial” examines eight of private industries’ most egregious crimes against humanity. On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” the author and former assistant attorney general of Minnesota joins Robert Scheer to discuss what the host calls “heinous behavior” on the part of the corporations involved in each case, and, most importantly, how the corporatization of the United States has allowed unfettered greed to cause irreversible harm and an astounding loss of life.Labor:

Economy:

Steve Bannon Is Arrested for Nonprofit Fraud after Using an Octopus of Nonprofits to Help Elect Trump One of the key right-wing architects of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Stephen K. (Steve) Bannon, was arrested early yesterday morning while cruising in the Long Island Sound on a 150-foot yacht owned by the fugitive Chinese billionaire, Guo Wengui, according to law enforcement officials. Bannon had served as CEO of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and as senior counselor and chief strategist to the president for the first seven months of his term. 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 ‘:’, 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

Crowded Reopenings Are Endangering Students and Setting Up Schools to Fail Long-term divestment in public education has brought U.S. schools to a dangerous crossroads. Seventeen years ago, against the advice of my parents, I decided to become a public school teacher. Once I did, both my mother and father, educators themselves, warned me that choosing to teach was to invite attacks from those who viewed the profession with derision and contempt. They advised me to stay strong and push through when budgets were cut, my intellect questioned, or my dedication to my tudents exploited. Nobody, however, warned me that someday I might have to defend myself against those who asked me to step back into my classroom and risk my own life, the lives of my students and their families, of my friends, my husband, and my child in the middle of a global pandemic. And nobody told me that I’d be worrying about whether or not our nation’s public schools, already under siege, would survive the chaos of Covid-19. By Belle CheslerOnly Medicare For All Can Beat Covid The U.S. has coped with Covid-19 far worse than any other country on the globe. Though much, much of this catastrophe of over 170,000 dead can be laid at Trump’s door, some of it has to do with the uniquely awful American system of for-profit health care. Those words, “for profit,” mean that the U.S. public health infrastructure, always stunted, had completely shriveled by the time the plague struck. Other countries dealt better with covid because they have different health care systems – single payer or Medicare for All systems, in other words, ones that are, to varying degrees, socialized. By Eve Ottenberg