Daily Archives: August 4, 2020

2020-08-04: Social Media Postees

Please be social by posting these ‘POSTEES’ on social media! (Copy the text of the postee below, then paste it on social media and the story images will also appear.)

US teachers protest against reopening of schools, demand safe working conditions
Peoples Dispatch | peoplesdispatch.org | 2020-08-04
Trade unions representing teachers and support staff from 35 school districts undertook the protest against the push to reopen in-person classes. Unions have argued that in-person classes could pose a risk to public health…
peoplesdispatch.org/2020/08/04/us-teache…

Teachers protest Jordan government’s closure of union and harsh crackdown
wsws.org | 2020-08-04
As poverty and social unrest rise, the government has used the draconian emergency laws introduced in March to curtail democratic rights.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/04/jord…

Armenia’s Risky Tovuz Strategy Dramatically Backfired
Andrew Korybko | thealtworld.com | 2020-08-04
The latest clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan occurred along their shared border in Tovuz, north of Nagorno-Karabakh. Both sides blame one another but a compelling argument can be made that Armenia was the aggressor. Azerbaijan has no dispute with Armenia over this territory and has nothing to gain by destabilizing this strategy region through which important international energy pipelines and the BTK railway pass. The Mingachevir Dam is also located nearby, and if Armenia attacked it during another war, then the consequences would be disastrous for the millions of Azerbaijanis downstream. | It’s actually…
thealtworld.com/andrew_korybko/armenias-…

Document exposes new US plot to overthrow Nicaragua’s elected socialist gov’t
Ben Norton | thegrayzone.com | 2020-08-04
A disturbing new document outlines plans for a US regime-change scheme against Nicaragua’s elected leftist government, overseen by USAID, to…
thegrayzone.com/2020/08/04/usaid-documen…

“Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”, 204 Atomic Bombs against 66 Major Cities, US Nuclear Attack against USSR Planned During World War II
Prof Michel Chossudovsky | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
According to a secret document dated September 15, 1945, “the Pentagon had envisaged blowing up the Soviet Union with a coordinated nuclear attack directed against 66 major urban areas.
globalresearch.ca/wipe-the-ussr-off-the-…

U.S. Cold War China Policy will isolate the U.S. not China
MBNJSD | dissidentvoice.org | 2020-08-04
CODEPINK (Credit) Tensions between the United States and China are rising as the U.S. election nears, with tit-for-tat consulate closures, new U.S. sanctions and no less than three U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups prowling the seas around China. But it is the United States that has initiated each new escalation in U.S.-China relations. China’s responses …
dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/u-s-cold-war-…

US GDP Collapses and Economic Rebound Fades
Dr. Jack Rasmus | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
This past week US economy collapsed in the 2nd quarter by 32.9% at annual rate and nearly 10% just for the April-June period. Never before in modern US history–not even in the worse quarters of the 1930s great depression–has the …
globalresearch.ca/us-gdp-collapses-and-e…

Another Hiroshima is Coming…Unless We Stop It Now
John Pilger | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-04
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/04/another-hiro…

Another Hiroshima is Coming…Unless We Stop It Now
John Pilger | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-04
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open.
counterpunch.org/2020/08/04/another-hiro…

Lee Camp: A Dozen Reasons Now is the Time for Housing as a Human Right
Lee Camp | mintpressnews.com | 2020-08-04
America is not based on hard work. Get it out of your head that this society is set up to be fair. Fair would be everyone with a roof over their head.
mintpressnews.com/lee-camp-evictions-rea…

John Bellamy Foster: Marxs Ecology — review
Eds. | mronline.org | 2020-08-04
Marx’s Ecology: John Bellamy Foster details the ecological foundation of Marx’s critique of capitalism and argues that it has great relevance to understanding the environmental crisis we face today.
mronline.org/2020/08/04/john-bellamy-fos…

Critique of the Gotha Programme — Karl Marx
Eds. | mronline.org | 2020-08-04
On this episode of Red Menace Alyson and Breht discuss ‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’ by Karl Marx…
mronline.org/2020/08/04/critique-of-the-…

‘Optimism of the Will’: Palestinian Freedom is Possible Now
Ramzy Baroud | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-04
In a recent TV discussion, a respected pro-Palestine journalist declared that if any positive change or transformation ever occurs in the tragic Palestinian saga, it would not happen now, but that it would take a whole new generation to bring about such a paradigm shift. As innocuous as the declaration may have seemed, it troubled…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/04/optimism-of-…

Lithuania’s Alleged Involvement in 2014 Ukraine Maidan Coup
Paul Antonopoulos | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
New scandalous information about the 2014 Maidan coup d’état in Ukraine has emerged that implicates Lithuania’s important role in instigating the violent events. David Zhvania, a former Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, revealed on his YouTube channel that the …
globalresearch.ca/lithuania-alleged-invo…

The WEF Knows Best: The Great Global Reset
Peter Koenig | dissidentvoice.org | 2020-08-04
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has just made a grandiose discovery and declared (21 July 2020) under the alarming title “This is now the world’s greatest threat — and it’s not coronavirus”. The superb discovery is listed as “Affluence is the biggest threat to our world, according to a new scientific report.” This “shocking and …
dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/the-wef-knows…

Europeans Are Waking Up to Government COVID Tyranny. Why Are We Still Asleep?
Rep. Ron Paul | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
Tens of thousands of Germans marched through Berlin on Saturday, proclaiming a “Day of Freedom” and demanding an end to government-mandated face masks and “social distancing.” The UK and Netherlands also saw large protests against their governments’ tyrannical actions in …
globalresearch.ca/europeans-waking-gover…

How Trump managed to lead the world with the worst response to COVID-19 pandemic
Vijay Prashad | peoplesdispatch.org | 2020-08-04
The United States leads the world in terms of absolute numbers of confirmed cases of COVID-19 as well as deaths. Vijay Prashad looks into how the US continues to fail to contain the spread of coronavirus…
peoplesdispatch.org/2020/08/04/how-trump…

Garifuna leaders in Honduras still missing after 16 days
Peoples Dispatch | peoplesdispatch.org | 2020-08-04
Armed men wearing bullet-proof vests with the insignia of the police and military kidnapped four members of the Honduran organization OFRANEH, as well another member of the Garifuna community member on July 18…
peoplesdispatch.org/2020/08/04/garifuna-…

The Pandemic Reveals a Europe More United Than the United States
John Feffer | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-04
During the Trump era, America increasingly seems like a motley collection of states brought together for reasons of territorial contiguity and little else. The conservative South is ravaged by a pandemic. The liberal Northeast waits patiently for elections in November to oust a tyrant. A rebellious Pacific Northwest faces off against federal troops sent to…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/04/the-pandemic…

Militarized BORTAC Border Patrol Raids & Ransacks Medical Camp on U.S. Border, Arrests 30 Migrants
Staff | democracynow.org | 2020-08-04
In Arizona, heavily armed Border Patrol officers raided the medical camp of humanitarian group No More Deaths and detained 30 migrants whose whereabouts are now unknown. It was the second raid in just two days on the camp, which provides water, food and medical attention to refugees crossing into the United States through the scorching Sonoran Desert. “Immediately after they entered the camp, the first thing they did was round up all of the No More Deaths aid workers and zip-tie them, remove their phones,” says Montana Thames, a humanitarian aid worker with No More Deaths. “It was very clear they didn’t want any…
www.democracynow.org/2020/8/4/no_more_de…

“It’s Basically a Death Sentence”: Hunger Strikers Demand Release as Virus Surges in ICE Jails
Staff | democracynow.org | 2020-08-04
People being held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails are holding work strikes and hunger strikes over the lack of access to personal protective equipment or quality medical care, and to demand their release. We speak with Joe Mejia, an asylum seeker who was among a group of prisoners at Yuba County Jail in California who led a hunger strike while he was held there for nearly 11 months. “That place is dangerous,” Mejia says. “It is a death sentence to detainees, especially right now with the coronavirus.”
www.democracynow.org/2020/8/4/ice_jails_…

Public Health vs. Politics: White House Scrapped Nationwide COVID-19 Testing Plan to Hurt Blue States
Staff | democracynow.org | 2020-08-04
As the U.S. coronavirus death toll passes 155,000, there is still no national testing program, with widespread shortages and delays hampering efforts to contain the pandemic. This continues months after President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner launched a White House task force with the goal of establishing a national testing plan. We speak to investigative reporter Katherine Eban, whose explosive Vanity Fair report chronicles Kushner’s fumbling efforts and the sudden decision to abandon the project on political grounds. “The participants expected that at any moment in early April, the plan would be announced,”
www.democracynow.org/2020/8/4/katherine_…

“Release Them All”: Calls Grow to Stop Jailing Immigrants as Transfers & Deportations Spread COVID
Staff | democracynow.org | 2020-08-04
The U.S. government continues to hold tens of thousands of asylum seekers and immigrants in detention centers and jails, ignoring the advice of medical experts as the coronavirus continues to spread. ICE has also continued to transfer and deport people — including those who are infected — making it a global superspreader. We speak with Luis Angel Reyes Savalza, an immigration attorney and co-director of Pangea Legal Services in San Francisco, who himself is undocumented and recently got arrested at a protest outside the mansion of California Governor Gavin Newsom demanding the release of people in sta…
www.democracynow.org/2020/8/4/luis_angel…

Refugees freed from Greek camp ‘hell’ left homeless
AFP | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
When Amir Hussein was finally allowed to leave the horrific migrant camp of Moria on the Greek island of Lesbos, it was supposed to be the end of a year-long odyssey.
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/03/1883562…

Assange Wins Award, Appears In Court Facing New Charges
_____ | popularresistance.org | 2020-08-04
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s case management hearing yesterday continued the travesty of legal due process to which he has been subjected for more than a decade. | The journalist and publisher is fighting extradition to the United States, where he faces politically motivated frame-up charges of espionage with a combined potential sentence of 175 years. He has not attended hearings via videolink for the last three months on the advice of doctors, due to his fragile state of health and the threat of exposure to coronavirus. | At the previous hearing on June 29, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser had scolded Ass…
popularresistance.org/assange-wins-award…

Trump RUINED our Venezuela coup and botched ‘winning play,’ cries Democrat Senator & gets ROASTED online
rt.com | 2020-08-04
The Democratic Party’s gripes with President Trump are many, yet the latest may be the most bizarre to date. One Senator argued that Trump’s brash personality bungled a perfectly good, American-style coup in Venezuela. | If Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) had his way, opposition leader Juan Guaido would be occupying the Presidential Palace in Caracas right now, after the successful ousting of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Despite the weight the US threw behind Guaido last year, the young upstart’s planned coup was a failure, and Murphy blames Trump for that loss. | 2/ In early 2019, an opportunity…
rt.com/usa/497111-trump-ruined-venezuela…

The Irrelevant UN
_____ | strategic-culture.org | 2020-08-04
The UN that exists today is not the one that had been intended. Today’s UN is just an international PR forum for nations. Part of that PR is the organization’s numerous ‘humanitarian’ operations, which concern what’s happening to suffering groups within nations, more than they actually concern the international relations between nations — which international relations were supposed to have been the UN’s focus and area of concern and authority. So, this UN — the one that exists — is basically a fill-in for the one that was intended. | The UN, in the vision of its initiator, who was the anti-imper…
strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/04/th…

The Government’s Failed Track-and-Trace System is a Disaster for England
Patrick Cockburn | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-04
Aggressive contact tracing is the strategy that will help most now, although it would have been easier to implement before Boris Johnson’s credibility was shredded When I got polio on a farm in the middle of the Irish countryside in 1956, an Irish Health Ministry official visited our nearest neighbour, a farmer called Dick Cunningham, the next…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/04/the-governme…

“ChinaGate” in the Making: US Hostility Toward China Is Bipartisan
Stephen Lendman | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
A key factor behind Trump regime hostility toward China is election year politics. | But what’s going on largely relates to China’s growing political, economic, industrial, technological, and military prominence on the world stage. | The US dominated the 20th century — …
globalresearch.ca/us-hostility-toward-ch…

The GOP Is Trying to Steal Away Our Right to Vote—Time to Fight Like Hell to Keep It
Jesse Jackson | commondreams.org | 2020-08-04
“Enforcing the right to vote should not be controversial,” writes Jackson. “It should enjoy support across the political spectrum.” (Photo: Common Cause) | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files…
commondreams.org/views/2020/08/04/gop-tr…

How Companies Can Keep Their Employees Safe During a Pandemic and Civil Unrest
Beau Peters | dissidentvoice.org | 2020-08-04
Ivan Samkov (Pixels) This is a year unlike most we have ever seen. Few could have predicted the continuous impacts of the coronavirus, a struggling economy, the civil unrest in the streets, and deeper conversations about race and civil liberties. On top of all of that, our businesses are beginning to reopen, and the masses …
dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/how-companies…

Anger grows across the US as closed-door talks continue on expired unemployment relief
wsws.org | 2020-08-04
Millions of American workers don’t know how they’ll pay rent or where their next meal will come from.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/04/unem…

Empire Is the Root of U.S.-China Hostilities
Jacob G. Hornberger | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
The biggest factor that has led the U.S. government to initiate a hostile relationship against China involves the concept of empire. An empire wants to be the only empire or at least the dominant empire. That is, it wants to …
globalresearch.ca/empire-root-us-china-h…

Media Grossly Underestimates Massive Turnout at Berlin’s “End of the Pandemic” Protest
John C. A. Manley | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
Heiliger Strohsack! CNN sure seems to have trouble with its estimates. First, they confuse a regular cold and flu season with the bubonic plague. Then they confuse a massive protest as being merely a “large crowd of far-right groups gathered …
globalresearch.ca/media-underestimates-m…

Open Letter To My Landlord #5
David Rovics | dissidentvoice.org | 2020-08-04
Our landlord doesn’t read my letters, as far as we know, but it feels like it’s only fair to write a letter each month, if we’re not going to be paying the rent. Well, hello again. This is the fifth full month in the pandemic, and the fifth month of the suspension on evictions here …
dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/open-letter-t…

Eight A-Bomb Haiku
David Krieger | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-04
Eight A-Bomb Haiku The desert glowed brighter than a thousand suns — everything changed Japan was clearly defeated … still the A-bombs found their targets The A-bombs killed and maimed massively — mostly civilians Hiroshima — city of a thousand cranes calls out for peace Nagasaki — may you be the last victim of an…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/04/eight-a-bomb…

New Orleans protesters shut down eviction court and block landlords’ entrance
Fight Back | fightbacknews.org | 2020-08-04
New Orleans, LA – On the morning of July 30, over 100 people gathered around the New Orleans Civil District Court building to demand that eviction court be closed. The crowd physically prevented landlords from entering. By the end of the demonstration, protesters shut down the entire court as well as city hall. | The demonstration began with a mock trial that sentenced the court judges and local and state leadership to be evicted for not taking action to protect renters. Above the scene, demonstrators hung a banner from the court roof that read “Eviction = Death.” During the trial, protesters placed furniture in…
www.fightbacknews.org/2020/8/4/new-orlea…

Trump installs ex-general and anti-Islam bigot in top Pentagon post
wsws.org | 2020-08-04
The appointment of retired Gen. Anthony Tata was carried out by means of a maneuver designed to bypass opposition from both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/04/tata…

Israel Confiscates 200 Dunams Of Palestinian Lands Near Bethlehem
IMEMC News | imemc.org | 2020-08-04
The Israeli occupation authorities confiscated, Monday, 200 Dunams of Palestinian agricultural lands in Kisan village, east of Bethlehem, south of occupied Jerusalem in the West Bank, in addition to issuing an order for demolishing a barn. Ahmad Ghazal, the deputy-mayor of Kisan village, stated that a large military force invaded …
imemc.org/article/israel-confiscates-200…

Stories Of Economic Despair From America’s Worst Economic Downturn Since The Great Depression Of The 1930s
Michael Snyder | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
The economic pain that we are witnessing right now is far greater than anything that we witnessed during the last recession. U.S. GDP declined by 32.9 percent on an annualized basis last quarter, more than 100,000 businesses have permanently shut …
globalresearch.ca/economic-despair-ameri…

Israeli warplanes bomb targets in Syria
Peoples Dispatch | peoplesdispatch.org | 2020-08-04
Israeli air force fighter jets, attack helicopters and other attack aircraft conducted airstrikes in southern Syria late on August 3, Monday. Israel claimed that the airstrikes were in retaliation to an attempted attack on Sunday along the northern Israel-Syria border in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. | The Syrian government is yet to confirm the specific locations targeted by the Israeli bombings. The official Syrian SANA news agency stated that the airstrikes caused significant material damage to Syrian government property, adding that no Syrians, civilian or military, were injured. | Syrian state media la…
peoplesdispatch.org/2020/08/04/israeli-w…

ATOMIC BOMBINGS AT 75: Scholars speak out against ‘unnecessary’ attacks
Consortium News | mronline.org | 2020-08-04
Japan was ready to surrender, making the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and Nagasaki two days later, totally unnecessary and morally indefensible, say a panel of scholars in two video discussions.
mronline.org/2020/08/04/atomic-bombings-…

Indefinite strike begins in Bolivia against postponement of general elections
Peoples Dispatch | peoplesdispatch.org | 2020-08-04
Over 24 major interdepartmental and inter-provincial highways and roads have been blocked by protesters to demand compliance with the decision to hold elections on September 6 in Bolivia…
peoplesdispatch.org/2020/08/04/indefinit…

Globalization and the End of the American Dream
David Rosen | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-04
Immanuel Wallerstein provocatively begins one of his essays with the following cautionary note: “Globalization is a misleading concept, since what is described as globalization has been happening for 500 years.” Nevertheless, in a 2000 article, “Globalization or the Age of Transition?,” Wallerstein notes that after WW-II the U.S. was…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/04/globalizatio…

Crossing the Creepy Line: Google, Deception and the ACCC
Binoy Kampmark | dissidentvoice.org | 2020-08-04
Belief in Google’s promises is much like believing in virgin births. For a company so proud of its pursuit of a transparent information environment, it has remained committedly opaque about informing customers on the way it gathers user data. Statements from the company over the years have not been reassuring, and should foster prolonged scepticism …
dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/crossing-the-…

The Tyranny of Lithium Extraction in Argentina
Yanis Iqbal | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
In the middle of a raging Covid-19 pandemic, Argentina has decided to accelerate the lithium mining sector. This intensification is occurring as a part of the larger expansion of Argentinean extractivism wherein the country has decided to triple its mining …
globalresearch.ca/tyranny-lithium-extrac…

Soldiers Demolish Barns Near Bethlehem
IMEMC News | imemc.org | 2020-08-04
Israeli soldiers invaded, Tuesday, Kisan Palestinian village, east of Bethlehem south of occupied Jerusalem in the West Bank, and demolished several barns. The army also delivered orders for the demolition of residential sheds near Hebron. Ahmad Ghazal, the deputy mayor of Kisan, said several army vehicles and bulldozers invaded the …
imemc.org/article/soldiers-demolish-barn…

Were the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a War Crime and a Crime Against Humanity?
Rossen Vassilev Jr. | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
The two most often cited reasons for President Truman’s controversial decision were to shorten the war and to save the lives of “between 250,000 and 500,000” American soldiers.
globalresearch.ca/were-atomic-bombings-h…

50 dead, over 2,700 injured in Beirut blasts
Peoples Dispatch | peoplesdispatch.org | 2020-08-04
The powerful blasts took place in the port area of Beirut devastating many buildings in the vicinity. The exact cause is still unknown although government sources said ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse was the reason…
peoplesdispatch.org/2020/08/04/50-dead-o…

Reckless President Trump: Escalation of US Aggressive Posturing against China
Junaid S. Ahmad | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
The dramatic escalation in America’s aggressive posturing was not to be unexpected. On the question of relations with Beijing, there certainly have been intra-elite battles on whether to treat China as an essential trading partner massively bolstering the US economy …
globalresearch.ca/crossing-limits-china-…

We Need an Economic Survival Package Not Another Stimulus
Dean Baker | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-04
There continues to be enormous confusion about what we should be trying to accomplish in the next pandemic relief package. This is best demonstrated by Republicans’ obsession with getting people back to work, with a mixture of cuts to unemployment benefits and return to work bonuses. Ignoring the questionable economic logic (there is zero evidence…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/04/we-need-an-e…

Censorship. Does the U.S. Military Assassinate Journalists?
Robert Fantina | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
As the cries of United States’ ‘exceptionalism’ are heard from the hallowed halls of Congress, one of the alleged hallmarks is freedom of the press. No nation, the breathless masses are told, protects press freedom like the United States. This …
globalresearch.ca/does-us-military-assas…

Shape Yourself Into The Perfect Weapon Against The Empire
Caitlin Johnstone | thealtworld.com | 2020-08-04
Do you want to win this thing? Actually win it? | By that I mean, do you actually want to create a healthy world instead of a world where we are ruled by lying, murderous, warmongering, oppressive, ecocidal, omnicidal sociopaths? Is that something you truly, deeply want? | It’s okay if you don’t, but be real with yourself about it. | A large percentage of the people who get involved in revolutionary political movements and criticism of establishment power structures, if they were honest with themselves, would admit that they do so not out of a sincere desire to replace the sociopathic ruling empire with something…
thealtworld.com/caitlin_johnston/shape-y…

China & U.S. power
Tony Norfield | mronline.org | 2020-08-04
Can China do much to fight back against the power wielded by the U.S. in the world economy? At first sight, that looks unlikely. China is big, but world trade is conducted in dollars, and the U.S. has economic, political and military influence across the globe.
mronline.org/2020/08/04/china-u-s-power/…

Undeterred by evictions, South Africa’s Abahlali baseMjondolo continues struggle
Peoples Dispatch | peoplesdispatch.org | 2020-08-04
Mqapheli George Bonono of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the shack dwellers’ movement of South Africa, talks about the struggles of those who are being evicted by authorities and the resistance they are putting up…
peoplesdispatch.org/2020/08/04/undeterre…

B’Tselem: “If You Build It, They Will Come”
BIICFHRIOT | imemc.org | 2020-08-04
B’Tselem — The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories: While the news is full of the plans to annex the West Bank and legalize construction in settlements — Israel is busy creating facts on the ground, as usual. Annexation or not, Israel has been demolishing homes in …
imemc.org/article/btselem-if-you-build-i…

Despite Official Reports, China Has Been Importing Millions of Barrels of Iranian Crude Oil
Simon Watkins | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
A number of high-profile reports last week cited data released on 26 July by China’s General Administration of Customs (GAC) as clear evidence that China did not import any crude oil from Iran in June ‘for the first time since …
globalresearch.ca/despite-official-repor…

State of Pandemic Disaster: Melbourne Moves to Stage Four
Binoy Kampmark | dissidentvoice.org | 2020-08-04
Melbourne — Being in control of a sinking ship is not enviable. Regulations previously passed have a museum feel to them, distinctly obsolete. Directions, once dictated with confidence, lack timbre. Coronavirus is serving as that most wily and cheeky of agents, with the most appropriate of accomplices: Homo sapiens. Human beings are fed up, munching …
dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/state-of-pand…

Federal Government Releases Bipartisan Anti-China Plan for Artificial Intelligence
Raul Diego | mintpressnews.com | 2020-08-04
A Washington think tank and Congress issued a bipartisan plan for AI, which utilizes the veneer of technology to formally cast China as the number one obstacle to US hegemony…
mintpressnews.com/federal-government-rel…

Dutch Government Ditches the Mask. Political Pressure Exerted on Sovereign Governments?
John C. A. Manley | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
Last Wednesday, the Dutch government decided not to impose any “national obligation” on its people to wear masks, reports Reuters. | The reason for opting out of the global masquerade? Minister for Medical Care, Tamara van Ark, asserted that …
globalresearch.ca/dutch-minister-cites-l…

Updated: PPS: “Israeli Soldiers Abduct Fifteen Palestinians In West Bank”
IMEMC News | imemc.org | 2020-08-04
Updated: The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) has reported that Israeli soldiers abducted, overnight until dawn hours Tuesday, fifteen Palestinians, including a young woman, during extensive and violent searches of homes across the occupied West Bank. The soldiers also shot two Palestinians in Jericho.
imemc.org/article/pps-israeli-soldiers-a…

Israeli Colonists Burn Two Palestinian Cars Near Nablus
IMEMC News | imemc.org | 2020-08-04
Several fanatic illegal Israeli colonists infiltrated, on Tuesday at dawn, into Far’ata Palestinian village, west of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, and burnt two cars in addition to writing racist graffiti. Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian Authority official who monitors Israel’s illegal colonialist activities in northern West Bank, said …
imemc.org/article/israeli-colonists-burn…

Are Face Masks Effective? The Evidence
Swiss Propaganda Research | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
1. Studies on the effectiveness of face masks | So far, most studies found little to no evidence for the effectiveness of cloth face masks in the general population, neither as personal protective equipment nor as a source control. | A May | …
globalresearch.ca/are-face-masks-effecti…

As Prison COVID-19 Cases Rise, A Mental Health Crisis Intensifies
Staff | therealnews.com | 2020-08-04
Family visits, job programs, and recreational activities have all been put on hold because of the virus.
therealnews.com/stories/as-prison-covid-…

New Reports Suggest Libyan Warlord Khalifa Haftar Is Working with Mossad
Raul Diego | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
Reports of Israeli support for the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar are nothing new, but as the apartheid state gains ground among Arab nations, the need to hide Mossad’s role in the destabilizing of oil-rich Libya may be disappearing. | *** | The …
globalresearch.ca/new-reports-suggest-li…

Cornel West and Tricia Rose Talk AOC, Racial Justice, and More
Staff | therealnews.com | 2020-08-04
The two say they want to address the urgency of the civil rights movement happening right now.
therealnews.com/stories/cornel-west-and-…

Israeli Settlers Attack Palestinians, Soldiers Set Fire to Palestinian-owned Crops
Ali Salam | imemc.org | 2020-08-04
A large group of illegal Israeli settlers, on Saturday evening, assaulted Palestinian families, north of Ramallah, in central occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Information Center reported. According to local sources, a large number of armed illegal colonists with dogs, attacked Palestinian families, including Sheikh Mohamed al-Hajj and his family in …
imemc.org/article/israeli-settlers-attac…

Israel Confiscates 327 Dunams Near Bethlehem To Build Colonialist Units
IMEMC News | imemc.org | 2020-08-04
The Israeli occupation authorities have issued orders from the confiscation of 327 Dunams (80.8 Acres) of Palestinian lands to build hundreds of units in an illegal colony east of Bethlehem, south of occupied Jerusalem in the West Bank. Hasan Breijiyya, the head of the Bethlehem office of the Colonization & …
imemc.org/article/israel-confiscates-327…

Slavery of Fear
Gilbert Mercier | dissidentvoice.org | 2020-08-04
Photo by Nathan O’Nions Flee, Flight or Freeze In the natural world, there are two kinds of responses to imminent threats: either flee or fight. Most of the time, in order to maximize chances of survival, the decision has to be made by individuals or groups in less than a split second. On one hand, …
dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/slavery-of-fe…

The Power Elite Has Always Run America. The Super Rich Bundled into the “Deep State”
Philip A Farruggio | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
Sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote a book in 1956 that (sadly) still resonates today. In his book ‘The Power Elite’ Mills focused on groups and individuals who help to control this Republic for countless generations: | the “Metropolitan 400”: members of | …
globalresearch.ca/power-elite-always-run…

Army Halts Construction Of Nine Palestinian Homes Near Salfit
Ali Salam | imemc.org | 2020-08-04
The Israeli occupation army issued, Sunday, orders halting the construction of nine Palestinian homes in Kafr ad-Deek town, west of Salfit, in central West Bank. Several army jeeps invaded the village and handed local residents the stop-work orders against the nine homes as a prelude to demolishing them, local sources …
imemc.org/article/army-halts-constructio…

How to generate unemployment and deflation
Heiner Flassbeck, R Reich and A Neubacher | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
The theory put forward by fair-weather philosophers that the pandemic will be a salutary shock leading to a better, more sustainable world is wrong. Forced renunciation and economic decline do not make anything better. Less is not more, but less. Corona is not an opportunity, it is an evil. We can only hope that one day it will pass.
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/03/1883562…

Saturday 8/8: How much do Black Lives Matter? Enough to share land values?
David Giesen | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
Join Zoom Meeting | zoom.us/j/94061550597?pwd=d1hRVUxITVYwUT… | Meeting ID: 940 6155 0597 | Passcode: uuc6Gd…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/03/1883563…

Wednesday 8/5: Email and Twitter Storm for Breonna Taylor!
Forbreonna | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
Online via Zoom…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/03/1883562…

HUFF Supports the UCSC Strike Demands
Robert Norse | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
Mostly long-distance (from the city to the campus is far longer distance than it needs to be) from HUFF (Homeless United for Friendship & Freedom) for the Campus Strike (see www.indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/02/188… ).
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/03/1883562…

Saturday 8/8: 75th Annual Hiroshima-Nagasaki Remembrance & Virtual Peace Lantern Ceremony
Monterey Peace & Justice Center | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
Online via YouTube livestream or Zoom…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/03/1883563…

Friday 8/7: HGP’s First Ever Story Exchange
Homeless Garden Project | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
Online: www.eventbrite.com/e/homeless-garden-pro…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/03/1883563…

Fifth COVID-19 Demonstration at San Quentin
Leon and Ruth | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
About 600 people marched to the west gate of San Quentin Prison on August 2nd. While they rallied inmates called out, confirming the horrific conditions inside the walls where the COVID-19 virus has spread like wildfire. | Top photo by Stephanie Mohan, Pro Bono Photo…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/03/1883564…

Sunday 8/9: #stillhere: 75th Commemoration of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki Teach-in 8/9
#sillhere Coalition | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
Online…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/03/1883563…

Connecting Dots! GAP Fisher Family Attacks ILWU & SF Malcom X Academy With A KIPP Charter
Labor Video Project | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
ILWU members, other unionists and supporters of public education rallied in San Francisco on August 1, 2020 at the GAP corporate headquarters. They spoke against GAP & A’s owner John Fisher’s plan to privatize the Howard Terminal in the Port of Oakland and and against the efforts of Doris Fisher, John’s mother to bust up the SF public school Malcom X Academy in Bayview Hunters Point. SF KIPP which she runs has sued the SFUSD to allow the KIPP school to grab more rooms from Malcom X Academy public school…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/03/1883563…

Judge upholds coronavirus pandemic eviction ban in San Francisco
Lynda Carson | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
Eviction Ban During the Coronavirus Covid-19 Pandemic:…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/03/1883564…

Thursday 8/6: #stillhere: 75th Commemoration of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki
#stillhere Coalition | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
Online livestream…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/03/1883562…

Wednesday 8/5: Free Graphic Design Workshop
Sunrise Movement Santa Cruz | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
Online: ucsc.zoom.us/j/92186550219
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/03/1883563…

Wednesday 8/5: Black and Brown Unity: West Cliff March & Speakout
#BlackAndBrownUnity | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
Cowell’s Beach parking lot, Santa Cruz…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/02/1883562…

Tuesday 8/18: Women’s Suffrage: The Road from Ratification to the Reality Over the Last 100 Years
Women’s Museum of California | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
Online…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/02/1883561…

Thursday 8/6: Virtual 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima & Nagasaki Commemoration from New Mexico
Pace e Bene and partner | indybay.org | 2020-08-04
Online via livestream…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/03/1883563…

COVID-19, Climate Change, And Chaos
_____ | popularresistance.org | 2020-08-04
COVID-19 and the protests for racial justice have drawn attention away from the mostly bad news about the environment. Yes, the skies in most parts of the world are a lot clearer these days as people stay home and auto emissions decline. But as one study points out, even if lockdown measures continue for the next several months, global carbon emissions will only drop by between 4 to 8 percent from last year. That drop would not be enough to make a dent in overall warming trends–and as the US and other economies recover, it will be back to “normal.”
popularresistance.org/covid-19-climate-c…

Ignorant, Arrogant And All-Pretentious
_____ | popularresistance.org | 2020-08-04
In Rumi’s Book Three of Masnavi, there is a story that goes as follows: Once, Jesus Christ was running away. His disciples, who had never seen Him like that, asked Him the reason, and He replied, “I’m running away from an ignorant man.” | “But my Lord,” they said, “you breathe life into death. You give sight to the blind. Why not, with your heavenly power, my Lord, turn this ignorant man into a wise one?” | “When ignorance accompanied by arrogance is incurable,” Jesus said, “there is no remedy except running away from such an evil.” | I would like you to recall three separate stories.
popularresistance.org/ignorant-arrogant-…

US Empire Of Bases Is Spreader Of US COVID-19 Disaster
_____ | popularresistance.org | 2020-08-04
American military personnel are getting sick in significant numbers in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. As The New York Times reported in a piece buried in the back pages of its July 21st edition, “The infection rate in the services has tripled over the past six weeks as the United States military has emerged as a potential source of transmission both domestically and abroad.” | Indeed, the military is sick and I think of it as both a personal and an imperial disaster. | As the wife of a naval officer, I bear witness to the unexpected ways that disasters of all sorts play out among military families and lately…
popularresistance.org/us-empire-of-bases…

US GDP Collapses And Economic Rebound Fades
_____ | popularresistance.org | 2020-08-04
This past week US economy collapsed in the 2nd quarter by 32.9% at annual rate and nearly 10% just for the April-June period. Never before in modern US history–not even in the worse quarters of the 1930s great depression–has the US economy contracted so quickly and so deeply! | All the major private sectors of the US economy–Consumption, Business Investment, Exports & Imports–collapsed in ranges from -30% to -40% in the April-June period. That followed first quarter prior declines in single digits as well.
popularresistance.org/us-gdp-collapses-a…

Racial And Ethnic Economic Inequality And The COVID-19 Pandemic
_____ | popularresistance.org | 2020-08-04
The Democracy Collaborative prepared a report, created for the Healthcare Anchor Network, that looked at how racial and ethnic disparities in the economy are showing up in the COVID-19 pandemic and in the public policy response to the pandemic. The report also covers how the economic effects of the pandemic will likely impact racial and ethnic inequality. | Every passing day brings new, painful evidence of how the COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately affecting people of color in the United States.
popularresistance.org/racial-and-ethnic-…

For Egalitarians, A Sudden Sense Of Possibility
_____ | popularresistance.org | 2020-08-04
Something seems to be in the air these days — besides coronavirus. A hopefulness. A boldness. A conviction that we now have a real opportunity for blunting the corporate power that’s done so much to make the United States the world’s most unequal wealthy nation. | How can we seize that opportunity? New reports from two veteran national advocacy groups — Public Citizen and Oxfam America — are offering up a gameplan. | Public Citizen released its “blueprint for reform” last week on the tenth anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act, the 2010 legislation that tried to clean out the corporate and financial…
popularresistance.org/for-egalitarians-a…

There Can Be No Equality Without Employment Opportunity For All
_____ | popularresistance.org | 2020-08-04
The employment opportunity that privileged the white male was much more than a job. By the 1960s, growing numbers of white men had employment that gave them steadily rising real earnings, often with decades of tenure at one organization. The “career-with-one-company” (CWOC) that had become the employment norm by the beginning of the 1960s included health insurance and a defined-benefit pension, both funded by the employee’s business corporation or government agency. This white-man’s world constituted the foundation for the “vast ocean of material prosperity” to which Dr. King referred.
popularresistance.org/there-can-be-no-eq…

28 Million Evictions Loom As Houses Sit Empty
_____ | popularresistance.org | 2020-08-04
Congress’s inability to actually represent the real-live human beings of America, combined with an economic system that rewards lack of empathy and an excess of greed, has brought us to a dark time when an oncoming tsunami of financial ruin, destitution and evictions towers over our heads, blocking out the sunlight. | The impending evictions may soon kick 28 million people/families out of their homes. To put that in perspective, only ten million people lost their homes during the 2008 economic crisis, and that was considered by anyone paying attention to be the craziest thing to ever happen.
popularresistance.org/28-million-evictio…

The Black Caucus And The Dictatorship Of (White) Capital
_____ | popularresistance.org | 2020-08-04
What makes the U.S. “chattering classes” so worthless is their refusal to talk about anything except those subjects that are approved for public discourse by the Lords of Capital, as certified by the high priests of corporate media. If the chattering classes were permitted to discuss truly important subjects — such as, Who Rules? — their yammering might hold some social value. However, the obvious fact of corporate dictatorship is also the great taboo. When the overarching reality of our times — the Dictatorship of (White) Capital, from which all of the planet’s existential crises flow — is verboten…
popularresistance.org/the-black-caucus-a…

‘How The South Won The Civil War’
_____ | popularresistance.org | 2020-08-04
If you think about the Civil War as a war between two different ideologies, two different concepts of what America is supposed to be, is it supposed to be a place where a few wealthy men direct the labor and the lives of the people below them, the women and people of color below them, the way the Confederacy argued? Is that America? Or is America what Lincoln and his ilk in the Republican Party in the North defined the democracy as during the Civil War? Is it a place where all men are equal before the law and should have equal access to resources? And of course, I use the word man there, but that’s because that’s…
popularresistance.org/how-the-south-won-…

United States Stealing Syrian Oil
_____ | popularresistance.org | 2020-08-04
The Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria has signed an agreement with an American oil company, well-placed sources with close knowledge of the deal told Al-Monitor. One of the sources said the agreement to market oil in territory controlled by the US-backed entity and to develop and modernize existing fields was inked last week “with the knowledge and encouragement of the White House.” The sources named the company as Delta Crescent Energy LLC, a corporation organized under the laws of the state of Delaware. The sources gave no further details about the company but would only say they had been…
popularresistance.org/united-states-stea…

There Can Be No Equality Without A Renewal Of Employment Opportunity For All
_____ | popularresistance.org | 2020-08-04
The employment opportunity that privileged the white male was much more than a job. By the 1960s, growing numbers of white men had employment that gave them steadily rising real earnings, often with decades of tenure at one organization. The “career-with-one-company” (CWOC) that had become the employment norm by the beginning of the 1960s included health insurance and a defined-benefit pension, both funded by the employee’s business corporation or government agency. This white-man’s world constituted the foundation for the “vast ocean of material prosperity” to which Dr. King referred.
popularresistance.org/there-can-be-no-eq…

Houston mayor orders police to punish residents who refuse to wear masks with $250 fines
rt.com | 2020-08-04
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner is ratcheting up enforcement of a state Covid-19 mask mandate, ordering police to cite residents who refuse to wear a face covering after being warned and to penalize them with a $250 fine. | “For months, we have been focusing on education and not citations, but now I am instructing the Houston Police Department to issue the necessary warnings and citations to anyone not wearing a mask in public if they do not meet the criteria for an exemption,” the mayor said Monday at a press briefing. | The citation comes with a $250 fine. Lives are at stake, so I am taking this step to save…
rt.com/usa/497008-houston-mask-mandate-f…

Trump hints at executive action against mail-in voting, threatens to sue Nevada
rt.com | 2020-08-04
US President Donald Trump has suggested he could sign an executive order pertaining to universal mail-in voting in the 2020 presidential race, arguing he has the authority to do so while reiterating warnings of election fraud. | As a number of states look to expand mail-in ballots for the November election amid concerns about the coronavirus, the president has repeatedly denounced the practice, telling reporters at a White House press conference on Monday that he could issue an executive order on the matter, though he did not specify what action he might take. | “I have the right to do it,” Trump said, arguing…
rt.com/usa/497013-trump-mail-in-executiv…

Media lives matter? More assaults on US journalists in 2020 than in previous 3 years combined, says press freedom watchdog
rt.com | 2020-08-04
The number of violent incidents directed at journalists has skyrocketed, according to the US Press Freedom Tracker, which said heavy-handed police tactics during BLM protests have made 2020 a uniquely dangerous year for reporters. | There have been more than 612 press freedom incidents so far this year, according to the group’s July tally. The figure includes more than 87 arrests, 140 physical attacks, 143 injuries from rubber bullets or projectiles, and 76 cases where equipment was damaged. There have also been dozens of cases of journalists being teargassed or hit with pepper spray. | Latest reported aggress…
rt.com/usa/497042-us-journalists-assault…

Media ramps up campaign to get Biden out of debates with Trump, offering various excuses other than their candidate’s failing mind
rt.com | 2020-08-04
Media outlets from the New York Times to CNN and Newsweek have offered Joe Biden various reasons over the past several days to skip debates with President Donald Trump. None mentions Biden’s fading ability to speak coherently. | A New York Times opinion piece on Monday suggested that presidential debates should be scrapped altogether because they’ve “never made sense as a test for presidential leadership.” | We didn’t need the debates to tell us that Trump had chosen to be the P.T. Barnum of American politics. For him, it was (and still is) all about the show, about distracting the public from reality. | CNN p…
rt.com/usa/497010-media-excuses-biden-de…

Are chrome grilles ‘designed to intimidate & kill pedestrians’? Liberals and conservatives fight over pickup trucks
rt.com | 2020-08-04
America’s love affair with the pickup truck is the latest battlefield in the unending culture wars, with liberal pundits decrying these 4,000-pound killing machines, and conservatives clinging to their beloved Rams and Silverados. | After an oblivious pickup driver nearly ran Dan Neil over in a Costco parking lot, the Wall Street Journal columnist echoed the arguments of the gun control crowd and focused his attention on the tool itself, and not the user. Why, he wrote, are these square-jawed vehicles getting so damn huge? | These “behemoths,” he wrote, are deadly for pedestrians caught in front of their chrom…
rt.com/usa/497005-pickup-trucks-kill-ped…

‘Erotic mind control community has a racism problem’: BLM activists go after hypnotists in latest bizarre witch hunt
rt.com | 2020-08-04
As street battles between murky federal agents, Antifa and various mom’n’pop protest groups over systemic racism continue in Portland, it appears a similar, but more insidious war is underway… in the erotic mind control community. | A seemingly never-ending thread, posted to Twitter by a self-professed 30-something white woman, who is part of the ultra-niche sexual community that some were convinced was made-up, details the sordid sins among hyperactive, horny hypnotists. | “So, I want to address something that will probably surprise no one: The…
rt.com/usa/497022-erotic-mind-control-co…

‘A bomb of some kind’? Trump says US military officials ‘think’ deadly Beirut blast was an ATTACK
rt.com | 2020-08-04
President Trump has claimed the blast that rocked Beirut was likely an “attack,” citing US military officials who “seem to believe” the explosion was not accidental, despite widespread reports it was a chemical warehouse accident. | The blast erupted at a port warehouse in the Lebanese capital on Tuesday, killing at least 70 people and leaving thousands injured. Though the exact cause of the explosion has not been determined, and no Lebanese official has labeled the incident an attack, Trump told reporters that the Pentagon believes a bomb was involved. | “It would seem like it based on the explosion,” Trump s…
rt.com/usa/497114-trump-beirut-attack-bo…

Illinois lawmaker calls for ABOLITION of ‘racist’ history classes until state comes up with more ‘inclusive’ alternative
rt.com | 2020-08-04
LaShawn Ford, a Democrat in the Illinois General Assembly, has called for an immediate halt to history classes that he claims “lead to white privilege and a racist society,” sparking concerns over an Orwellian revision of history. | “I’m calling on the state board of education to end the teaching of history and the local school districts to take immediate action by removing the current history books and curriculum practices that unfairly communicate our history,” Ford said on Sunday at an event in Evanston, Illinois. His vague plan calls for temporarily replacing history classes by devoting greater attention t…
rt.com/usa/497012-illinois-ford-abolish-…

Tribute to xenophobia? Anti-Trump activists face backlash for ‘statue’ in Portland linking Putin to alleged police brutality
rt.com | 2020-08-04
An activist group has unveiled a new ‘statue’ in Portland, Oregon which appears to connect Vladimir Putin to allegations of police brutality in the city. Isn’t that a bit xenophobic? Twitter observers have asked. | The collective, known as the Trump Statue Initiative (TSI), used live actors covered in gold, and standing on top of a large pedestal, to create the impression that a new monument had been installed in the city on Monday. | Their performance art piece showed Donald Trump holding up a selfie-stick and making a thumbs-up sign as men wearing gas masks and riot gear pull a protester holding a ‘BLM’ plac…
rt.com/usa/497015-trump-putin-portland-s…

Truman’s ‘Human Sacrifice’ to Subdue Moscow
_____ | strategic-culture.org | 2020-08-04
Peter KUZNICK | Sumiteru Taniguchi was one of the “lucky” ones. He lived a long and productive life. He married and fathered two healthy children who gave him four grandchildren and two great grandchildren. He had a long career in Japan’s postal and telegraph services. As a leader in Japan’s anti-nuclear movement, he addressed thousands of audiences and hundreds of thousands of people. He traveled to at least 23 countries. The organizations in which he played a prominent role were nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize. | Many of the more than 250,000 who lived in Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 were not so…
strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/04/tr…

Washington’s Campaign Against China Could Lead to War
_____ | strategic-culture.org | 2020-08-04
When prominent U.S. personalities such as Secretary of State Pompeo speak critically and scornfully about leaders and other prominent figures of countries with whose policies they disagree, they ignore or even welcome the fact that such attacks are heard not only by the persons at whom they are aimed. The citizens of the country concerned are unlikely to disregard such criticism, and even if they may agree with some of it — perhaps all of it — on a purely practical or individual basis, they do not accept the premise that their countries are in the wrong because some foreign representative sounds off a…
strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/04/wa…

State of Pandemic Disaster in Australia: Victoria Moves into Stage Four
Dr. Binoy Kampmark | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
Melbourne. | Being in control of a sinking ship is not enviable. Regulations previously passed have a museum feel to them, distinctly obsolete. Directions, once dictated with confidence, lack timbre. Coronavirus is serving as that most wily and cheeky of agents, …
globalresearch.ca/state-pandemic-disaste…

Government Should End Monopoly Control of Remdesivir
commondreams.org | 2020-08-04
______________________________…
commondreams.org/newswire/2020/08/04/gov…

COVID-19: We have a Treatment: Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). We do Not Need a Vaccine!
Dr. Pascal Sacré | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
We have a treatment in COVID-19 and it doesn’t have the support of Big Pharma and their experts! | Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is effective in treating COVID-19. | It is effective in halting the progression of the disease, provided it is given early …
globalresearch.ca/covid-19-we-have-a-tre…

World War II: US Military Destroyed 66 Japanese Cities Before Planning to Wipe Out the Same Number of Soviet Cities
Shane Quinn | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
The number of Japanese cities destroyed was the exact figure that the Pentagon compiled when finalizing plans, in mid-September 1945, to eviscerate the Soviet Union. Indeed, 66 Soviet cities were earmarked to be wiped out — with 204 atomic bombs — less than 2 weeks after Japan’s surrender.
globalresearch.ca/us-military-destroyed-…

Can Israelis Broaden Their Protests Beyond Netanyahu?
Jonathan Cook | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-04
Israel is roiling with angry street protests that local observers have warned could erupt into open civil strife — a development Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be encouraging. | For weeks, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have been the scene of …
globalresearch.ca/can-israelis-broaden-t…

Drive to reopen US schools continues despite mounting evidence of deadly consequences
wsws.org | 2020-08-03
More scientific research shows the immense dangers to the health and lives of teachers, students and parents by reopening schools while the pandemic continues out of control.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/03/scho…

Brute Force Approach to Economic Reopening by GOP Benefits Reckless CEOs But Endangers Workers
Sarah Anderson | commondreams.org | 2020-08-03
A man rides through as grocery store workers and others stage a protest rally outside the Whole Foods Market, in the South End of Boston, to demand personal protective equipment, added benefits if needed and hazard pay, during the coronavirus pandemic on Apr. 7, 2020. (Photo: Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files…
commondreams.org/views/2020/08/03/brute-…

We’re Talking About Human Life Here. Unsafely Reopening Schools Is No Solution at All
Steven Singer | commondreams.org | 2020-08-03
Schoolchildren wearing protective mouth masks and face shields attend a course in a classroom at Claude Debussy college in Angers, western France, on May 18, 2020 after the country eased Covid-19 lockdown measures. (Photo: Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Images) | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files…
commondreams.org/views/2020/08/03/were-t…

Poll Reveals Surge of Fears Over In-Person Learning as Expert Warns School Reopenings in US ‘Guaranteed’ To Fail
Lisa Newcomb, staff writer | commondreams.org | 2020-08-03
Widespread concern comes as data predicts inevitable Covid-19 spread in schools and communities that do open for in-person instruction and amid outbreaks in schools that have already re-opened. | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files…
commondreams.org/news/2020/08/03/poll-re…

At least 20 percent of US meatpackers may have contracted coronavirus
wsws.org | 2020-08-03
Over 50,000 food and agricultural workers have contracted COVID-19 in the United States, according to numbers compiled by the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN).
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/03/meat…

US Border Patrol raids “No More Deaths” humanitarian aid camp in southern Arizona
wsws.org | 2020-08-03
Last week’s operation is presumed to be in retaliation for the organization’s recent exposure of the involvement of the paramilitary BORTAC force in a 2017 raid.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/03/bord…

Congress of millionaires robs the unemployed
wsws.org | 2020-08-03
Allowing federal supplemental benefits to expire for 30 million jobless workers shows the class character of both the Democratic and Republican parties.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/03/pers…

The July days of the COVID-19 pandemic wreak havoc on the US
wsws.org | 2020-08-03
The month of July saw over 2 million cases of COVID-19 and rising fatality rates in the Sun Belt states, and the pandemic is shifting to the Midwest.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/03/pand…

Trade and tensions between the U.S. and China
Vijay Prashad | mronline.org | 2020-08-03
The Donald Trump administration uses every mechanism to cut China out of the global supply chain, but nothing seems to be working as a resolute China is unwilling to back down and dismantle its technological gains.
mronline.org/2020/08/03/trade-and-tensio…

With Microsoft Purchase of TikTok, US Tightens Grip Over International Media
Alan Macleod | mintpressnews.com | 2020-08-03
Even as the government attempts to frame the debate over the banning of Chinese companies like TikTok and Huawei over privacy concerns, it continues to try to ban the encryption of data and communications at home.
mintpressnews.com/microsoft-purchase-tik…

Report: “Woke” Corporations Supporting Black Lives Matter Quietly Funding Police
Alan Macleod | mintpressnews.com | 2020-08-03
Corporations like JPMorgan Chase, Chevron and Marathon claim to support the movement for black lives, but their donations to police help “tyrannize the very communities” they claim to stand with.
mintpressnews.com/corporations-supportin…

Brazilian Amazon Drained of Millions of Wild Animals by Criminal Networks: Report
Sharon Guynup | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
The Brazilian Amazon is hemorrhaging illegally traded wildlife according to a new report released Monday. Each year, thousands of silver-voiced saffron finches and other songbirds, along with rare macaws and parrots, are captured, trafficked and sold as pets. Some are …
globalresearch.ca/brazilian-amazon-drain…

Fires Are Raging in the Amazon–Again
Diego Gonzaga | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
One year has passed since the world was shocked by the images of the fires blazing across the Amazon in Brazil. But since then, the forest hasn’t stopped burning –and 2020 could be even more devastating for the rainforest and …
globalresearch.ca/fires-raging-amazon-ag…

Take on the Tech Mob Now or Perish
Laura Flanders | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-03
Six months into a global pandemic, the US economy just took its most grievous hit on record, while Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook only added wealth. In just three months, April through June, so many workers were furloughed, laid off or forced to work and school from home, that the economy shriveled by 32.9% or…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/03/take-on-the-…

Shut It Down! Workers Shut Amazon DSF4 For Health/Safety & Living Wages
Labor Video Project | indybay.org | 2020-08-03
Amazonians and workers shutdown the Amazon DSF4 warehouse on August 1, 2020 to protest the lack of health and safety and slave labor wages…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/02/1883557…

Honestly, Americans couldn’t care less about Hong Kong
Andre Vltchek | dissidentvoice.org | 2020-08-03
Hong Kong skyline taken from Kowloon site (Andre Vltchek) I just spent two weeks in the United States, investigating, analyzing the situation there. I worked in Washington D.C., Minneapolis, where Mr. George Floyd was murdered by deranged cops, in New York City and Boston. COVID-19 was at my tail, as the states kept opening and …
dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/honestly-amer…

‘Worst Possible Person’: 300+ Groups Demand Senate Reject Trump’s Pick to Manage US Public Lands
Andrea Germanos, staff writer | commondreams.org | 2020-08-03
“When a nominee is clearly unfit for a position, it is the Senate’s constitutional and moral duty to reject the nomination.” | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files…
commondreams.org/news/2020/08/03/worst-p…

Poland’s “Lublin Triangle” Will Create Lots of Trouble for Russia-Belarus Relations
Andrew Korybko | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
Poland’s ambitions to restore its long-lost Great Power status in Europe received a fresh impetus following the establishment of the so-called “Lublin Triangle” between itself, Lithuania, and Ukraine that de-facto aims to revive the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as the core of …
globalresearch.ca/poland-lublin-triangle…

Accusations of TikTok meddling in U.S. elections reflect Trump’s fear of losing
Andrew Korybko | thealtworld.com | 2020-08-03
The entertainment app TikTok has been increasingly in the spotlight in recent weeks. Trump announced on Friday night that it would be banned from operating in the U.S. And on July 28 several Republican Senators demanded that the Trump administration investigate TikTok in order to assess the possibility of it meddling in the upcoming elections. | It’s totally crazy to imagine that this video-sharing app could determine the next president of the United States, but the very fact that it’s even being seriously discussed among leading legislators speaks to just how paranoid America has become after several years of…
thealtworld.com/andrew_korybko/accusatio…

UK Government Refuses To Release Information About Assange Judge Who Has 96% Extradition Record
_____ | popularresistance.org | 2020-08-03
Declassified has also discovered that the judge, Vanessa Baraitser, has ordered extradition in 96% of the cases she has presided over for which information is publicly available. | Baraitser was appointed a district judge in October 2011 based at the Chief Magistrate’s Office in London, after being admitted as a solicitor in 1994. Next to no other information is available about her in the public domain. A request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was sent by Declassified to the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) on 28 February 2020 requesting a list of all the cases on which Baraitser has ruled since she was app…
popularresistance.org/uk-government-refu…

Former Reuters bureau chief speaks at free Julian Assange rally
pip.hinman | greenleft.org.au | 2020-08-03
Democracy Carrie-Ann SmithIssue 1275 Australia Wikileaks Collateral Murder HobartAugust 3, 2020Reuter’s former bureau chief in Bagdad…
greenleft.org.au/content/former-reuters-…

Secret Meeting on the Privatization of Nuclear War Held on Hiroshima Day 2003
Prof Michel Chossudovsky | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable. All the safeguards of the Cold War era have been scrapped. “Offensive” military actions using nuclear warheads are now described as acts of “self-defense”
globalresearch.ca/hiroshima-day-2003-sec…

US Cold War China Policy Will Isolate the US, Not China
Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J.S. Davies | commondreams.org | 2020-08-03
“The sad truth is that 30 years after the supposed end of the Cold War,” write Benjamin and Davies, ” the U.S. military-industrial complex has failed to reimagine itself in anything but Cold War terms, and its ‘New’ Cold War is just a revival of the old Cold War that it spent the last three decades telling us it already won.” (Image: CodePink) | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files…
commondreams.org/views/2020/08/03/us-col…

“They Have No Evidence”: Moroccan Journalist Omar Radi Jailed, Surveilled After Criticizing Gov’t
Staff | democracynow.org | 2020-08-03
Award-winning journalist and human rights activist Omar Radi spoke to us from Casablanca on July 16. Two weeks later, on July 29, last Wednesday, Moroccan authorities arrested him on what press freedom advocates call “retaliatory charges.” Now a court has charged Radi with undermining state security by receiving foreign funding and collaborating with foreign intelligence, and also charged him with rape. He is reportedly being held in a prison that is a COVID hot spot, and has not been allowed to have visits from his lawyer or his parents. We feature our interview with Radi, which focuses in part on an Amnesty Int…
www.democracynow.org/2020/8/3/omar_radi_…

What If Trump Refuses to Accept a Biden Victory? A Look at How Electoral Chaos Could Divide Nation
Staff | democracynow.org | 2020-08-03
As President Trump floats the idea of delaying the election, we speak with Nils Gilman, historian and co-founder of Transition Integrity Project, which organized a bipartisan group of experts to game out what a contested November election might look like. “In every scenario except for the one where Biden won in a landslide, we ended up with severe electoral contestation, protests in the streets, crazy stories happening on social media, and the challenges went down to Inauguration Day,” Gilman says.
www.democracynow.org/2020/8/3/nils_gilma…

Voting Rights Activist LaTosha Brown: Trump Is Hellbent on Undermining Democracy to Win Reelection
Staff | democracynow.org | 2020-08-03
With President Trump trailing in most polls, he tweeted recently that he was floating the idea of delaying the November election — something he cannot legally do — and continued his attacks on mail-in voting. “We have a president who is probably the most fascist president that we’ve ever had in this country,” responds LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund and the BVM Capacity Building Institute. “He is hellbent on pushing the boundaries, whatever he needs to do, to undermine and undercut democracy.”
www.democracynow.org/2020/8/3/latosha_br…

Israeli Army Fires Missiles Into Khan Younis
Ali Salam | imemc.org | 2020-08-03
The Israeli Air Force fired, on Monday at dawn, several missiles into areas in Khan Younis and Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, causing damage. The Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA) has reported that an Israeli drone fired at least two missiles into an area, west …
imemc.org/article/bombing-in-gaza-shehab…

While Bolivia’s coup regime lets its citizens die, Cuba has nearly defeated Covid-19
Ollie Vargas | thegrayzone.com | 2020-08-03
A dispatch from Bolivia shows the staggering human toll of the military coup, as an incompetent US-backed regime leaves impoverished…
thegrayzone.com/2020/08/02/while-bolivia…

New Report Reveals Israel Demolishes Over 2,000 Palestinian Bedouin Homes per Year
Miko Peled | mintpressnews.com | 2020-08-03
Today Israel only allows indigenous Palestinian Bedouins to live on 12% of their ancestral homeland in the Naqab, transferring them to camps and crowded villages reminiscent of Native American reservations.
mintpressnews.com/report-israel-demolish…

Scandalous #MeToo activist accused of creating FAKE Twitter account of bisexual Native American professor who ‘died’ of Covid-19
rt.com | 2020-08-03
A controversial #MeToo activist has been accused of operating a Twitter account belonging to a non-existent bisexual Native American professor. Suspicions were raised after she announced that her ‘friend’ had died from Covid-19. | BethAnn McLaughlin, a neuroscientist who founded the nonprofit group MeTooSTEM, allegedly created a fictional professor at Arizona State University (ASU), and tweeted as the imaginary anthropologist under the handle @Sciencing_Bi. | In an emotional eulogy for her purportedly made-up comrade, McLaughlin waxed poetic about how her friend worked tirelessly to help indigenous women overc…
rt.com/usa/496931-professor-coronavirus-…

Another Hiroshima is coming — unless we stop it now
John Pilger | zcomm.org | 2020-08-03
Modern 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 willfully unknown or misunderstood in the West. This alone is a commentary on the lamentable state of Western journalism and the abandonment of honest reporting…
zcomm.org/znetarticle/another-hiroshima-…

Another Hiroshima Is Coming — Unless We Stop It Now
John Pilger | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat …
globalresearch.ca/another-hiroshima-comi…

Iran’s Khamenei: Not going to help Trump get Reelected by Negotiating
Juan Cole | zcomm.org | 2020-08-03
Khamenei said that even if Iran met all of Washington’s demands, that would just encourage the insatiable American elite to start making new demands…
zcomm.org/znetarticle/irans-khamenei-not…

COVID-19 Crisis Failure, People Must Save Themselves and the Economy
Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers | dissidentvoice.org | 2020-08-03
Positive COVID-19 Test (Shutterstock) The US is at a moment of truth. This week, Congress has to face up to a pandemic that is out of control and an economy that is collapsing. The Republican’s and Democrat’s proposals show they will fail this test. The people will need to protect themselves and lead from below. …
dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/covid-19-cris…

Saturday 8/8: Shut Down CA’s Concentration Camps: Statewide Day of Action for Immigrant Justice (SF)
Free Them All Coalition- Bay Area | indybay.org | 2020-08-03
There will be an initial meeting/rally at Justin Herman Plaza and then we will march to the ICE building for another rally. | Please stay tuned for details on a supporting car caravan, led by the SF LowRider Council, which will likely start in the mission and meet up with the march at the ICE building. | Please also stay tuned for actions you can take from home in the days before the action. | Thank you for taking action! #FreeThemAll…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/01/1883556…

Former president Medvedev warns Russia set to make it harder for migrants to get work permits as Saudi-style system on cards
rt.com | 2020-08-03
In a surprise move, Russia may tighten visa rules for foreign workers. Former President Dmitry Medvedev says the measure is being considered in response to law and order issues exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. | He told a meeting in Moscow that the possibility of moving to the system favored in Saudi Arabia, where the employer is fully responsible for labor migrants, is being discussed. | “[The expert community] proposes changing the order of entry for migrant workers to Russia,” Medvedev explained, the TASS news agency reported. “This means giving such permission to a foreign citizen only in the case of an u…
rt.com/russia/496988-medvedev-warns-hard…

American Troops to Leave Germany: Is It Goodbye or Just Auf Wiedersehen?
Philip Giraldi | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
The continued presence of tens of thousands of American military personnel in Europe seventy-five years after the end of the Second World War is rarely questioned either by politicians or the mainstream media. Currently there is little recollection of how, …
globalresearch.ca/american-troops-leave-…

Speaker Nancy Pelosi Writes to Me!
Ralph Nader | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-03
Years ago, Elizabeth Brennan Moynihan told me about her disgust with the Democratic Party’s outside consultants. These consultants were not competent. They were arrogant, costly, and looking out first for their interests, not the candidates they were supposed to advance. She threw them out and personally took over her husband, Senator Daniel P. Moynihan’s successful…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/03/speaker-nanc…

Human Rights Defenders: Palestinian Eyewitness Testimony of the Execution of Abdul Fattah al-Sharif by Israeli Soldier, Elor Azaria
Ramzy Baroud | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-03
As illegal Jewish settlers increase their attacks on Palestinian civilians in the occupied city of Al Khalil (Hebron), the people of the Palestinian city continue to mount a campaign of popular resistance. One of the channels of resistance is Human Rights Defenders,…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/03/human-rights…

Vital: Will a ‘President Biden’ become America’s ‘Putin?’
Gordon Duff | thealtworld.com | 2020-08-03
American elections are demonstrations to the world of how democracy can go bad. It is clear and simple. They are ruled by cash, run by ‘cons’ and exist inside a political system that is the most corrupt on earth. | American politics matter to the world because, quite simply, when America catches a cold, the world goes on life support. | We are going to be looking at a number of policy and leadership issues and the possibility of regime change in Washington and the potential impact, but, at the outset one issue has typified the US under Trump and that is the abandonment of all concepts outlined under the United Na…
thealtworld.com/gordon_duff/vital-will-a…

Cornel West and Richard Wolff talk about Capitalism and White Supremacy
CP Editor | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-03
counterpunch.org/2020/08/03/cornel-west-…

International Olympic Committee promotes Olympics with Nazi propaganda
wsws.org | 2020-08-03
The inclusion of clips from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia film makes clear that attempts to sanitise the crimes of the National Socialists is not limited to the spheres of politics and academia.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/03/rief…

Socialist Gloria La Riva Nominated by Peace and Freedom Party Convention
Maureen Smith | indybay.org | 2020-08-03
On August 1st, the Peace and Freedom Party State Central Committee nominated Socialist/Labor Activist Gloria La Riva to be on the California ballot in November as their candidate for U.S. President…
indybay.org/newsitems/2020/08/02/1883561…

Vote for SEP candidates in the Sri Lankan national elections! Fight for a workers’ and peasants’ government and socialist internationalism!
wsws.org | 2020-08-03
The SEP is the only party in the elections advancing an international socialist program to fight the crisis created by COVID-19, defend democratic rights and oppose imperialist war.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/03/slst…

Escalating Trump Regime Cold War on China
Stephen Lendman | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
Until unparalleled US economic collapse occurred this year, Trump’s reelection campaign likely planned to focus on the twin pillars of economic growth and rising equity market valuations. | Since January, the latter disconnected from collapse of the former. | Since early 2020, …
globalresearch.ca/escalating-trump-regim…

Exempting Big Pharma from COVID-19 Vaccines Liability
Stephen Lendman | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
House and Senate leaders are discussing whether to include this exemption for COVID-19 vaccines under development in new legislation likely to be passed and signed into law in the coming days. | Most likely, tort liability protection for Big Pharma will …
globalresearch.ca/exempting-big-pharma-c…

Poland’s top court confirms Duda as president, declares complaints insufficient to void election results
rt.com | 2020-08-03
The Supreme Court of Poland on Monday upheld the re-election of President Andrzej Duda. The court decided that complaints about the validity of the presidential election did not necessitate a rerun. | The ruling paves the way for Duda to take the oath of office before both chambers of parliament on Thursday, AP reports. The court evaluated some 6,000 election complaints from voters as well as from the team of the candidate that Duda faced in a runoff, the liberal Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski. | Duda won 51.03 percent of the vote and Trzaskowski 48.97 percent in the July 12 election. | Ninety-two alleged viol…
rt.com/newsline/496963-poland-confirms-d…

Blacklisted Iranian Consortium Defies US to Open Caracas Superstore
Paul Dobson | venezuelanalysis.com | 2020-08-03
Venezuelan and Iranian officials claim the commercial deal is part of a “win-win” relationship between the sanctioned countries.
venezuelanalysis.com/news/14958

How Joeseph Goebbel’s Nazi Propaganda Gave Birth to Today’s Western Media
Julian Cola | mintpressnews.com | 2020-08-03
Western mass media continues to be atomized in its coverage. It thrives on soundbites. Sensationalism. Cacophony. A malnutrition of context with roots in the Nazi propaganda construct of Joseph Goebbels.
mintpressnews.com/propaganda-how-joseph-…

Red Flags Soar as Big Pharma Will be Exempt from COVID-19 Vaccine Liability Claims
Zero Hedge | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
Last week we warned readers to be cautious about new COVID-19 vaccines, highlighting how key parts of the clinical trials are being skipped as big pharma will not be held accountable for adverse side effects for administering the experimental drugs….
globalresearch.ca/red-flags-soar-big-pha…

Families fight for justice for five workers killed by wall collapse at UK Hawkeswood Metal recycling plant
wsws.org | 2020-08-03
Tonnes of scrap metal had been stored in the adjacent bay, piled at double the recommended height against a wall of interlocking concrete blocks with no foundation.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/03/shre…

Free Joy Powell! America’s Political Prisoner for Fighting Police Brutality
Linda G. Ford | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-03
If you protest against police brutality in America, you are definitely going to get brutalized by the police. And lately, federal marshals, homeland security, ICE officers, and assorted militarized federal goons and thugs will pile on. If you led a movement against police brutality in Rochester, NY in 2006, like Rev. Joy Powell did, you…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/03/free-joy-pow…

US Blasts Venezuela-Iran ‘Alliance of Pariah States’
Ilya Tsukanov | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
The new grocery store, which features over 2,000 products from Iran, was made possible after the Islamic Republic sent half a dozen cargo ships carrying fuel, food, medical supplies and spare parts for Venezuela’s oil industry to the South American …
globalresearch.ca/us-blasts-venezuelan-i…

Vietnam struggles to contain rapid resurgence of COVID-19
wsws.org | 2020-08-03
After three months of no confirmed cases, Vietnam is witnessing a nationwide spread of the virus due to a new outbreak in the city of Da Nang.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/03/viet…

The Resistible Rise of Nuclear Gangsters…and Their Downfall
Linda Pentz Gunter | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-03
It would be tempting to describe last week’s nuclear scandals — in three states — as something out of the Wild West. But Al Capone’s Chicago would be a more accurate analogy. While no actual shots were fired, some pretty powerful metaphorical ones were, warnings that engaging in criminal racketeering and fraud to fleece ratepayers…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/03/the-resistib…

The Coronavirus May be Novel, but It’s the Same Old Foreign Policy
Ted Snider | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
U.S. foreign policy suffers from such tunnel vision that it is unable to change course even with the appearance of something as colossal as the COVID-19 pandemic. The American foreign policy response to the pandemic has ranged from the negative …
globalresearch.ca/coronavirus-may-novel-…

Their Heroes and Ours: California’s Health Care Crisis
Cal Winslow | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-03
Patients and visitors to Sutter Health’s shiny new hospital in Santa Rosa, Calif., are greeted with large banners, “Heroes Work Here.” This no doubt is true. At Kaiser Permanente’s hospitals we learn much the same, the giant HMO has awarded itself Five Stars for service. And this of course is all about Covid-19. California’s new spike in Covid cases is centered in Los Angeles, but it has moved throughout the state, including into the sprawl that follows US 101 through Sonoma County’s wine country.
counterpunch.org/2020/08/03/their-heroes…

Do Not Let Them Train You
Caitlin Johnstone | thealtworld.com | 2020-08-03
Do not let the pundit train you how to feel. | Do not let the teacher train you how to think. | Do not let the preacher train you how to love. | Do not let the banker train you how to value. | Do not let Hollywood train you how to be. | Don’t let them train you. | They were appointed by the powerful to teach you how to live | in a world that is small, too small for wild humans. | Too small for humans who haven’t been house trained, | groomed, spayed and neutered, | and taught parlor tricks | like how to ignore life’s intrinsic breathtaking majesty. | Too small for humans who perceive their own boundlessness, | th…
thealtworld.com/caitlin_johnston/do-not-…

Record-breaking heat waves: Urgent alert to need for socialism — a WW commentary
Quell Nessuno | workers.org | 2020-08-03
As Muslim worshippers prepared for the holiday of Eid al-Adha during the last days of July, the Middle East was rocked by record-breaking heat waves. In Baghdad, the mercury rose to over 125‚Å∞F, the highest temperature ever measured in the Iraqi capital. These heat waves are not an extreme, unpredictable . . . | Continue reading Record-breaking heat waves: Urgent alert to need for socialism — a WW commentary at Workers.org
workers.org/2020/08/50413/?utm_source=rs…

The Plunge in Consumption of Services Leads to a Record 32.9 Percent Drop in GDP
Dean Baker | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-03
The saving rate hit a record 25.7 percent level in the first quarter, indicating that few of the pandemic checks were spent. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) shrank at a record 32.9 percent annual rate in the second quarter. While almost all the major categories of GDP fell sharply, a 43.5 percent drop in consumption…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/03/the-plunge-i…

Honda orders office workers at Marysville, Ohio plant to man assembly lines as COVID-19 spreads
wsws.org | 2020-08-03
As the pandemic ravages the workforce, management has pressed some office staff to work inside the plant.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/03/hond…

A clear message from West Bank mosque burning: Palestinians must disappear
Amira Hass | zcomm.org | 2020-08-03
The arsonists’ indirect message is: Look at us, we do whatever we like and will continue to do it, because the police won’t bother to search for us and the army won’t turn us in. And if they do catch us, they won’t prosecute us, and if they do prosecute, the judges will find an excuse to acquit us.
zcomm.org/znetarticle/a-clear-message-fr…

The Use and Abuse of President Donald Trump
Todd Smith | dissidentvoice.org | 2020-08-03
In all of the bizarre and ridiculous iconography of our first cartoon President, Donald J. Trump, the photo-op of Trump holding an upside-down Bible in front of St John’s (of Patmos?) Episcopal Church, near the White House, really takes the cake — and, perhaps, eats it, too. Of course, the whole scene was a fiasco …
dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/the-use-and-a…

Yes, we need to talk about Romanticism
T.P. Wilkinson | dissidentvoice.org | 2020-08-03
We need a robust discussion about Romanticism as has been properly introduced, though not for the first time in these pages. Some very important observations have been made with the proposal that Romanticism is something we “need to talk about”. In fact, there is a serious need for placing much of the political and economic …
dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/yes-we-need-t…

In Zimbabwe, no one can breathe
Panashe Chigumadzi | zcomm.org | 2020-08-03
Unless the Zimbabwean state stops its looting, intimidation and suppression of dissent and finally responds to the needs of its people, it will soon face its greatest threat yet…
zcomm.org/znetarticle/in-zimbabwe-no-one…

The Dollar Standard Slipping Out of Control?
Alastair Crooke | thealtworld.com | 2020-08-03
The stark fact is that Gulf stability rests on selling enough energy to buy-off internal discontents, and to pay for supersized surveillance and security set-ups. | As commentators focus on the hospitalisations of two Gulf monarchs, and permutate likely succession issues, they may miss the wood for the succession trees: Of course, the death of either the Emir of Kuwait (91 years old) or King Salman of Saudi Arabia (84 years old) is a serious political matter. King Salman’s particularly has the potential to upturn the region (or not). Yet Gulf stability today rests less on who succeeds, but rather on tectonic shif…
thealtworld.com/alastair_crooke/the-doll…

50 years of struggle from Black August to Black Lives Matter Movement — a WW commentary
Judy Greenspan | workers.org | 2020-08-03
This Aug. 7 marks the 50th anniversary of the heroic attempt by Jonathan Jackson, younger brother of George Jackson, to free three Black revolutionaries from the clutches of the California state prison system. The fact that this bold attempt failed has no bearing on its historical and revolutionary significance to . . . | Continue reading 50 years of struggle from Black August to Black Lives Matter Movement — a WW commentary at Workers.org
workers.org/2020/08/50432/?utm_source=rs…

Renouncing White Privilege: A Left Critique of Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility”
David Barber | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-03
White supremacy is not only white over black, it is also the small number of rich whites over the much larger number of poor and working class whites. In return for a guarantee that the latter group of whites will suffer the many calamities of life afflicting working people in a capitalist society less intensely and less frequently than do black people and people of color, the poor and working class whites will not challenge the rule of the rich.
counterpunch.org/2020/08/03/renouncing-w…

Urban planning as a tool of white supremacy
Julian Agyeman | zcomm.org | 2020-08-03
Segregation in Minneapolis, like elsewhere in the U.S., is the result of historic practices such as the issuing of racialized real estate covenants that kept nonwhite people from buying or occupying land…
zcomm.org/znetarticle/urban-planning-as-…

Reviving Soviet-era Confrontation with the United States, Russia Exposes Its Weakness in Africa
Kester Kenn Klomegah | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
In her weekly media briefing July 23, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized United States support for educational programs, media and NGOs in Africa. In addition, Zakharova said | “the allocation of grants fits into the White House’s efforts to promote | …
globalresearch.ca/reviving-soviet-era-co…

Missing in Action: Accountability Is Gone in America
Karen J. Greenberg | zcomm.org | 2020-08-03
All told, Trump has been a perfect model in deflecting all responsibility, even as the death toll soared over 150,000 with more than four million cases reported nationwide and no end in sight…
zcomm.org/znetarticle/missing-in-action-…

Hong Kong delays legislative elections amid crackdown on democratic rights
wsws.org | 2020-08-03
Beijing is driven above all by fears that renewed protests in Hong Kong could spread to the mainland.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/03/hong…

‘Hero pay, not zero pay!’
Thomas Answeeney | workers.org | 2020-08-03
Essential workers protested July 30 in a flash-mob protest in front of a newly remodeled Tops Market, a supermarket chain based in Western New York. The event was organized by the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Division 1342 and the Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1. July 30 protest Demands . . . | Continue reading ‘Hero pay, not zero pay!’ at Workers.org
workers.org/2020/08/50418/?utm_source=rs…

Accountability is Gone in America
Karen J. Greenberg | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-03
Whether you consider the appalling death toll or the equally unacceptable rising numbers of Covid-19 cases, the United States has one of the worst records worldwide when it comes to the pandemic. Nevertheless, the president has continued to behave just as he promised he would in March when there had been only 40 deaths from…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/03/accountabili…

Crisis and Virus: COVID-19 in context
Carlo Fanelli | mronline.org | 2020-08-03
“Now this liberal virus, which pollutes contemporary social thought and eliminates the capacity to understand the world, let alone to transform it, has profoundly penetrated the whole of the ‘historical left’ formed in the aftermath of the Second World War” (Samir Amin, 2003, 41)…
mronline.org/2020/08/03/crisis-and-virus…

The Unemployment Crisis Is a True National Emergency
Jon Schwarz | zcomm.org | 2020-08-03
The incompetent criminals ruling the U.S. are about to push millions of Americans off a terrifying financial cliff…
zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-unemployment-c…

White House engineering a takeover of TikTok by Microsoft
wsws.org | 2020-08-03
Under the White House’s direction, Microsoft is preparing to acquire the video-sharing app TikTok in a forced-divestiture from its China-based company ByteDance.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/03/tikt…

Disability movement is ‘part of the global working class’
| workers.org | 2020-08-03
by Kristen Turgeon The following slightly edited remarks were made by Kristen Turgeon from the Boston branch of Workers World Party on a July 30 webinar sponsored by WWP’s Disability Rights Caucus and titled “Smash Ableism, Racism, All Bigotry & Oppression!” Kristen Turgeon. WW PHOTO: Stevan Kirschbaum It has been . . . | Continue reading Disability movement is ‘part of the global working class’ at Workers.org
workers.org/2020/08/50427/?utm_source=rs…

Scottish government prepares to reopen schools as new COVID-19 spikes emerge
wsws.org | 2020-08-03
The government intends to re-open all primary and secondary schools by August 18, despite COVID-19 outbreaks in call centres, distribution centres, pubs and care homes.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/03/scot…

A fractured empire, within and without
John Bellamy Foster | mronline.org | 2020-08-03
Two things seem certain at this point: (1) The Trump administration will continue to extend its heavy handed neofascist tactics in the next three months, seeking to expand its political base by these means, and (2) the White House and the Republican Party will try to engineer another set of stimulus payments/tax cuts in early …
mronline.org/2020/08/03/a-fractured-empi…

The Spirit of Apollo-Soyuz Is Alive… With the Russia/China Space Alliance
Matthew Ehret-Kump | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
Forty five years ago, Cold Warriors in the Pentagon and CIA shook their fists angrily at the stars- and for good reason. | On July 17, 1975 the first international handshake was occurring in space between Russian Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov and …
globalresearch.ca/sprit-apollo-soyuz-ali…

A Wrong Message for the Pandemic
Cesar Chelala | counterpunch.org | 2020-08-03
Public health messages addressed to the general population should be clear and unambiguous. This is particularly important in times of a pandemic like that caused by the coronavirus. Millions of lives are at stake. One of the messages, “social distancing,” widely used by public health authorities during the present pandemic, exemplifies this shortcoming. It should…
counterpunch.org/2020/08/03/a-wrong-mess…

The Invisible Man: A woman struck by an “unseen hand”
wsws.org | 2020-08-03
The Invisible Man feeds on the #MeToo mood, becoming the latest entry in what one critic calls “boom times for feminist revenge narratives.”
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/03/invi…

COVID-19 and the Reification of the US-China “Cold War”
Dr. Giulio Pugliese | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
Abstract | The implications of the pandemic for US-China relations are relevant for global peace and prosperity, well beyond the Asia-Pacific. Rather than joining forces against the pandemic, COVID-19 is among the factors that have widened the rift between the United …
globalresearch.ca/covid-19-reification-u…

What We Are Told and Not Told About the South China Sea
James ONeill | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
If war breaks out between China and the United States, there is a high probability that the precipitating factor will be the South China Sea. The United States is currently running another of its so-called “freedom of navigation” exercises in …
globalresearch.ca/what-we-told-not-told-…

Nicaragua Targeted for US Overthrow in 2020-21
S. Brian Willson | globalresearch.ca | 2020-08-03
The USA failed State continues to seek destruction of Nicaragua (among other nations such as Venezuela, Cuba, Syria and Iran, who refuse to obey US demands for neoliberal privatization that enrich the already rich. | Introduction | George Washington, who waged …
globalresearch.ca/nicaragua-targeted-us-…