Daily News Digest August 31, 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 Deaths 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:

Blind Justice

As the World/California Burns: My Current Air Quality,  Is Hazardous!

Quotes of the Day:

 

“No matter how many times I watch these videos, I’ll never get used to how quickly police go from issuing commands to using deadly force,” Noah said on “The Daily Show.” “Like, whatever happened to warning shots or tackling a suspect? Like are we really meant to believe that the only two options a cop has are to do nothing or shoot somebody in the back seven times?”

“Even when wild animals are loose on the streets, they don’t always shoot to kill,” Noah continued. “They have tranquilizers, they have nets. I never thought I would wish for Black people to be treated at least like a wild bear, but here we are. … (The police) jumped straight to, ‘This Black man is going to try and kill us if we don’t kill him first.’ “

“The pattern repeats itself,” Noah said. “An unarmed Black person is shot by the cops. In response, people go into the streets. More law enforcement is sent in, and the chaos only continues to grow. … If I wanted to, I could prerecord five of these segments, go on vacation, and you’d probably never know.”

“Some guy decided to drive to Kenosha with his militia buddies to protect a business,” Noah said, using air quotes for the last three words. “No one drives into a city with guns because they love someone else’s business that much. … They do it because they’re hoping to shoot someone. That’s the only reason people … join these gangs in the first place, and yes, I said it, a gang. Enough with this militia (expletive). This isn’t the Battle of Yorktown. It’s a bunch of dudes threatening people with guns.” — Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert Weigh In On Kenosha Shootings And Protests nn ‘Daily Show’ And ‘Late Show’

 Videos of the Day:

This Is The Sheriff Of Kenosha County, In 2018, Calling For Crazy Ass Racist Shit

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!

Tired of Police Shootings? Cut Military Spending It goes without saying, but the police have certainly claimed the nation’s attention as of late. The national protests have quelled in some cities, but rage in others. Protests against police brutality have only brought more police brutality—instances of “excessive force,” like utilizing pepper spray and batons at a protestors’ violin vigil, shooting an unarmed civilian eight times while she was sleeping, or assaulting the eldery. The feds have even deployed the national guard and implemented harsh curfews. Where did this all come from? Recent escalations and increased militarization of policing are a direct consequence of our investment in military spending overseas. By Ann Marie Miller

ACLU Demands Immediate Resignation of Kenosha Police Chief, Sheriff, and Mayor The actions of the city’s top law enforcement officials, said the group, “uphold and defend white supremacy, while demonizing people who were murdered for exercising their first amendment rights and speaking out against police violence.” By Jon Queally‘Wild and Timely’ Report Details Infiltration of Far-Right Militias and White Supremacist Groups in US Police Departments The study comes amid unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the latest high-profile police shooting of a Black man and the shooting deaths of two protesters by an alleged far-right militia member. . . . The report was called “wild and timely” by attorney and writer Madiba K. Dennie, as it was released two days after police in Kenosha, Wisconsin appeared to welcome the presence of armed militias at a protest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man who was left paralyzed. As Common Dreams reported Thursday, cell phone video showed police telling armed white people that they “appreciated them being there” and handing them bottled water. One of the people in the video appeared to be a 17-year-old gunman who allegedly shot three people at the protest, killing two.  By Julia ConleyHidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement The government’s response to known connections of law enforcement officers to violent racist and militant groups has been strikingly insufficient. Racial disparities have long pervaded every step of the criminal justice process, from police stops, searches, arrests, shootings and other uses of force to charging decisions, wrongful convictions, and sentences.  As a result, many have concluded that a structural or institutional bias against people of color, shaped by long-standing racial, economic, and social inequities, infects the criminal justice system.  These systemic inequities can also instill implicit biases — unconscious prejudices that favor in-groups and stigmatize out-groups — among individual law enforcement officials, influencing their day-to-day actions while interacting with the public.

Environment:

No Fire Without Smoke The aesthetics of the apocalypse are a well-worn art history trope, and writing at a distance from the clustered fires up north, sparked by lightning strikes, their consideration is an extravagance only made permissible, perhaps, by the recent local experiences of the Thomas and Woolsey fires which ravaged areas north of Los Angeles in 2017 – 2018. These more recent fires, however, are the clearest indication to date of the anthropogenic, global warming provenance of California’s twenty-first century fire history.  The fires arrived with the full force of Revelations 4:8, “From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder.” By John Davis  Pouring Gas on the Fire: Trump Rebuked for ‘Breathtakingly Vicious’ Plan for Fossil Fuel Lease Sales in California Amid Historic Wildfires “More oil wells mean more greenhouse gases, more air pollution, and more destroyed habitat.” By Andrea GermanosPoverty and Petrochemicals Converge as Hurricane Laura’s Devastation Exposes Entire Gulf Coast as ‘Sacrificial Zone’ “The devastation wrought by Hurricane Laura is staggering. Climate denial is not a victimless crime, and it’s time for the fossil fuel industry to be held accountable.” By Kenny Stancil

Smoke rises from a burning chemical plant after the passing of Hurricane Laura in Lake Charles, Louisiana on August 27, 2020. Hurricane Laura slammed into the southern US state of Louisiana Thursday and the monster category 4 storm prompted warnings of “unsurvivable” ocean surges and evacuation orders for hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said “extremely dangerous” Laura would bring winds of 150 miles per hour and “destructive waves will cause catastrophic damage” to Louisiana and Texas. (Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

Civil Rights/ Black Liberarion:

Kenosha Unsurprising Kyle Rittenhouse, the demented white teenager affiliated with right-wing militia and thanked for his service by local police, shot two protesters dead in the streets of Kenosha with an AR-15 and then walked right past Kenosha County police with his weapon around his shoulders. The nation is saturated with deadly assault weapons at the behest of the neofascistic National Rifle Association. Psychotics and sociopaths regularly gain access to weapons of mass destruction like AR-15s in the “armed madhouse” that is contemporary America.  By Paul Street  [Rewind] Howard Bryant on the Revolt of the Black Athlete The ESPN writer’s book explores the responsibilities placed upon professional black athletes from Jackie Robinson to LeBron James to be role models for social justice Editor’s Note: We’re reposting this episode of “Scheer Intelligence,” with full transcript, which originally aired on July 13, 2018, apropos the Black Lives Matter work stoppages shaking up the professional sports world this weekHoward Bryant is a senior writer for ESPN.com and appears regularly on the sports network and NPR. His most recent book “The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism” is about the responsibility often placed upon professional black athletes from Jackie Robinson to LeBron James to be role models for social justice. In their conversation, Bryant tells host Robert Scheer that black athletes often come up against the conflict between their corporate sponsors and their desire for social justice and action. He says that unlike many black athletes that came before him, LeBron James seems to be successfully navigating this tension. And Bryant says the attacks on September 11th changed how sports are marketed to the public, having become a propaganda and recruitment opportunity for the military and police during games.Labor:

Economy:

The Fed in a hole At the Kansas City Fed Jackson Hole symposium, the annual jamboree ‘think-tank’ for international central bankers, US Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell announced the end of monetary policy as a tool to control inflation.  His speech of just a few minutes completely dropped the monetarist theory of inflation as proposed by Chicago free market economist Milton Friedman and pursued by his disciple and former Fed chief, Ben Bernanke. Powell also made it obvious that the Keynesian argument for inflation, namely as trade-off for full employment and rising wages, as graphically presented in the so-called Phillips curve, was also dead.

As Retirees Anguish Over a Sub One-Percent Treasury Note, U.S. Companies Are Suspending their Dividends at a Rate Not Seen Since the 2008 Crash Thanks to the behemoth banks on Wall Street that engineered the largest Inside Job in the history of global banking and cratered the economy in 2008, retirees are now looking at a yield of 0.75 percent on a 10-year U.S. Treasury note. That paltry yield compares to the 4 percent or higher that retirees have been able to get throughout much of the last century on a T-Note. The Federal Reserve is directly responsible for these unprecedented low yields. For much of the past 12 years, the Fed has been manipulating interest rates lower by buying up trillions of dollars in bonds (quantitative easing) in order to avoid crashing the Wall Street banks. The Wall Street banks are holding tens of trillions of dollars in interest-rate derivative bets — betting that rates won’t rise substantially or will drift lower. So the Fed has to make sure that’s what happens even if struggling Americans have to choose between paying rent or going hungry.By Pam Martens and Russ MartensWorld:

USA: TikTok and Trump – National Security for Which Class? China’s recent economic growth constitutes a major challenge to the dominance of US capitalism. As a result, hostility to China is now a bipartisan priority for the US ruling class. In addition to increasing military tensions and the imperialist contest over countries in Africa and elsewhere, this has recently been expressed in the relationship between the US and Chinese tech sectors, supported by their respective governments. Specifically, tensions have escalated around TikTok, a Chinese-developed social media service where users upload and share looping videos. TikTok is owned by a parent company, Beijing-based Bytedance, and headed by an American CEO, the former Head of Streaming for Disney. The service became influential in the US market after merging with Musical.ly—another Chinese firm with a large US presence. Absorbing Musical.ly profiles and user data in 2018 was critical to establishing their user base in the US, which is now sizable—an estimated 30 million out of 800 million active users worldwide. By Leroy JamesEducation, 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 

Here are the five things that President Trump did and failed to do that ushered in the coronavirus Trumpedemic.

  1. Degrading Our Preparation For a Pandemic: Donald Trump Disabled Two Early Warning Systems and Ignored the Lessons of His Own Pandemic Preparation Exercises
  2. Trump Ignored Warnings of the Coronavirus Threat And Rejected Decisive Action For Two Critical Months
  3. Trump Ignored The “Playbook” For Dealing With A Pandemic and Ignored the Anticipated Shortages of Essential Protective Equipment
  4. On Donald Trump’s Watch the Government Flubbed the Deployment of Coronavirus Testing, Crippling the Response
  5. Donald Trump Politicized the Crisis and Sabotaged the Shut Down