Political cartoons: http://toons.thinkspeak.net
Books (search tom Ferguson) www.lulu.com
Artful Dealing
31 Sunday May 2020
Posted Uncategorized
in≈ Comments Off on Artful Dealing
31 Sunday May 2020
Posted Uncategorized
in≈ Comments Off on Artful Dealing
Political cartoons: http://toons.thinkspeak.net
Books (search tom Ferguson) www.lulu.com
31 Sunday May 2020
Posted Uncategorized
in≈ Comments Off on Volume XXVIII – Number 22
Since I Met Edward Snowden, I’ve Never Stopped Watching My Back
The Atlantic Magazine – May 24, 2020 – June 2020 issue – Barton Gellman
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/edward-snowden-operation-firstfruits/610573/
After receiving a trove of documents from the whistleblower, I found myself under surveillance and investigation by the U.S. government… [in depth story!] This article was adapted from Barton Gellman’s book Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State (Penguin Press). It appears in the June 2020 print edition with the headline “Operation FIRSTFRUITS.”
Congress Has No Idea How Much Web Browsing Data the FBI Collects
Vice – May 21, 2020 – Janus Rose
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ep4d97/congress-has-no-idea-how-much-web-browsing-data-the-fbi-collects
The Patriot Act is about to be reauthorized, but we still don’t know basic facts about how our web browsing habits are being collected… Over 50 organizations have signed a letter to Pelosi asking for the privacy amendment to be re-added. And next week, Fight For the Future is planning a virtual day of action calling on Congress to rescue the privacy measures.
Trump’s Plan: Break the Internet to Suppress the Vote
The Daily Beast – May 29, 2020 – Spencer Ackerman and Asawin Suebsaeng
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-plan-break-the-internet-to-suppress-the-vote
he internet, and Twitter in particular, is central to President Donald Trump’s power. His tweets move everything from Pentagon policy on Syria and transgender service to how Republican lawmakers vote on surveillance law. Their frequent falsity is beside the point. It’s the influence that matters. Now Trump is trying to push a lasting structural change upon the internet, one that internet-freedom advocates fear will entrench a disincentive for any social media company to block disinformation on their platform. And it comes after Twitter, an open sewer for disinformation, took a very meager step to stop Trump from suppressing the vote in November… “Mr. Trump wants to confront the power of these companies and how they operate, but instead of fighting for truth, he’s fighting for the right to lie, to inject poison into the body politic,” Zuboff said. “The tech companies and the government are in a larger existential battle right now, like two Death Stars battling each other. Both want to operate outside the rule of law and democratic norms.”
Trump Is No Accident
Reader Supported News – May 29, 2020 – Harvey Wasserman
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/63190-rsn-trump-is-no-accident
He is our Imperial Vulture come home to roost. Our Exceptional Karma. The ultimate incineration of a City on a Hill defined by arrogance, brutality, and greed. Trump’s willful negligence has killed more Americans in three months than did the Vietnam War in ten years. He’s saturated our lives with dictatorship, disease, dementia, depression. But we have no claim to self-pity… The butchery we’ve imposed on humankind and the planet has at last come home to roost. Trump is Earth’s retaliatory demon, here to ravage the remnants of a cruel, hypocritical, dying empire… We can’t get him gone until we fully face our nation’s stake in his epic evil… The Donald is no random event. He demands we confront where he really came from and all he embodies. Only then do we get truly woke.
What Will It Take to Cool the Planet?
The New Yorker – May 21, 2020 – Bill McKibben
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/what-will-it-take-to-cool-the-planet
Go into the submenus for coal, gas, and oil, and perform a little experiment: stop building any new infrastructure for these fossil fuels beginning in 2025 and, all of a sudden, you’re at a world that warms only 2.8 degrees Celsius by 2100. That’s why it is such good news, for instance, that New York State last week quashed plans for the Williams natural-gas pipeline across the New York City harbor: if you keep building stuff like this now, it locks in emissions for decades to come, busting our carbon budget. It’s why the climate movement has fought so hard against pipelines and fracking wells and L.N.G. terminals: with ever-cheaper renewable power, when you manage to stop such projects, sun and wind have a chance at filling the vacuum.
42 faith groups in 14 countries announce divestment from fossil fuels
EarthBeat – May 17, 2020 – Brian Roewe
https://www.ncronline.org/news/earthbeat/42-faith-groups-14-countries-announce-divestment-fossil-fuels
A total of 42 faith organizations from 14 countries pledged to divest from fossil fuel companies or avoid such investments in the future. Organizers said it represents the largest joint divestment announcement by faith communities to date. More than 40 faith institutions committed to divest their finances from fossil fuels while at the same time calling for the post-pandemic economic recovery to shift the world toward a low-carbon future. … The institutions are a mix of Methodist, Anglican, Quaker, Buddhist and Catholic, the latter accounting for 24 of the divesting groups. Seven are located in Ireland and five in South America. They include eight lay organizations, eight religious orders, and four dioceses: the Diocese of São José dos Campos, Brazil; the Archdiocese of Semarang, Indonesia; the Diocese of Ossory, Ireland; and the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, England.
As 38.6 Million File for Unemployment, Wealth of Billionaires surged $435 Bn
Informed Comment – May 25, 2020 – Omar Ocampo and Chuck Collins, Inequality.org
https://www.juancole.com/2020/05/million-unemployment-billionaires.html
Between March 18 and May 19, the total net worth of the 600-plus U.S. billionaires rose from $2.948 trillion to $3.382 trillion. In March, there were 614 billionaires on the Forbes list. There are 630 two months later, including newcomer Kanye West at $1.3 billion. Among other COVID-19 victims are the more than 16 million Americans who have likely lost employer-provided healthcare coverage. Low-wage workers, people of color and women have suffered disproportionately in the combined medical and economic crises. Billionaires are overwhelmingly white men.
Federal judge guts Florida law requiring felons to pay fines before they can vote
The Washington Post – May 24, 2020 – Amy Gardner
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal-judge-guts-florida-law-requiring-felons-to-pay-fines-before-they-can-vote/2020/05/24/a7f553ba-9c3a-11ea-a2b3-5c3f2d1586df_story.html
“This court decision adds another remarkable chapter in our fight as returning citizens to participate in our democracy,” said Desmond Meade, executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. “We will remain vigilant in our commitment to place people over politics, and ensure that all returning citizens, no matter how they may vote, have an opportunity to possess what we believe to be the most endearing sign of citizenship, the right to vote.”
On Memorial Day: How the US Lost Its “Battle of Aqaba” to the Coronavirus
Informed Comment – May 25, 2020 – Juan Cole
https://www.juancole.com/2020/05/memorial-battle-coronavirus.html
Had we spent trillions on coronavirus vaccines, on a single-payer health care system and on the network of country health departments across the country, we would not be in our present straits… On Memorial Day, we have nearly 100,000 dead in the coronavirus pandemic and 38 million abruptly unemployed, we have entire US industries hanging on by a thread. For the past 20 years Washington has been pointing its big guns out across the Atlantic toward the Middle East and Central Asia in the “Global War on Terror,” spending trillions of dollars and substantial blood countering a tiny network of seedy terrorists and glorying in the acquisition of new spheres of geopolitical interest. Those were our Aqaba artillery. The real threats lay inside the realm, threats of skyrocketing inequality, rising white supremacist extremism, and a Neoliberalism that dismantled public goods like health care for narrow private profit.
Coronavirus and Other US Health Threats? Fund Public Health Not Foreign Wars
Counterpunch – May 22, 2020 – Heather Gray and Jonathan King
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/22/coronavirus-and-other-us-health-threats-fund-public-health-not-foreign-wars/
How is it that in the richest nation on Earth we don’t have enough masks, gowns, virus tests, and ventilators to serve our front-line healthcare providers in this coronavirus pandemic? Part of the answer is that the nation’s wealth has been mis-allocated between military and civilian needs over the past four decades. [Heather Gray is a writer and radio producer in Atlanta, Georgia and is a board member of WRFG-FM in Atlanta and of the Pacifica National Board of Directors. Jonathan King is Prof. of Molecular Biology at MIT and Co-Chair of the Mass Peace Action Board of Directors.]
‘This invokes a history of terror’: Central Park incident between white woman and black man is part of a fraught legacy
The Washington Post – May 27, 2020 – Errin Haines
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/27/this-invokes-history-terror-central-park-incident-between-white-woman-black-man-is-part-fraught-legacy/
This weekend’s incident involving Cooper and Christian Cooper (no relation) — a Harvard graduate and birdwatching enthusiast who is a board member of the Audubon Society — was captured by Christian Cooper on cellphone video. Amy Cooper can be seen approaching Christian Cooper in an on-leash area of the park… “Birdwatching while black” became the latest potentially dangerous infraction, particularly for a black man, shocking thousands who viewed the exchange on social media and prompting outrage and action from many Americans. During the pandemic alone, “running while black” and “sleeping while black” became trending hashtags on social media in response to the recent deadly shootings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, respectively.
75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice
Medium – August 13, 2017 – Corinne Shutack
https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/what-white-people-can-do-for-racial-justice-f2d18b0e0234
[Here] is an excellent and much needed listing of ’75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice”. It was developed by Corinne Shutack in 2017. Included also in this posting are trailers to some of the recommended videos for white people to watch and to hopefully learn more about white supremacy in America and how to work against this plague. While there is always a need to address white supremacy and racism in America, the recent killings by US police of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and George Floyd in Minnesota stress this need all the more. There are groups, as with the Quakers in Atlanta, Georgia, that consistently focus on addressing white supremacy and we always need more of this model of whites and blacks coming together to explore ways to address this racism blight. – Heather Gray
The Love and Rage of Larry Kramer
The Cut – May 28, 2020 – Matthew Schneier
https://www.thecut.com/article/the-love-and-rage-of-larry-kramer.html#
“Faggots” [Larry Kramer’s 1978 novel] is a loud book. Kramer was a loud person. He delighted in public exhibitions, finger-pointing, naming-and-shaming — not of those who were gay, but those who wouldn’t help them, wouldn’t fight for them, and those who wouldn’t fight for themselves. He was still mostly known as a novelist, as the author of Faggots (which many in the gay community condemned as moralizing), when he focused the righteous rage of Faggots on a terrible and worthy cause… Dr. Anthony Fauci, who knew Kramer during his tenure at the National Institutes of Health — they were enemies and later became friends — long before he became America’s coronavirus czar, once said: “In American medicine, there are two eras: “before Larry and after Larry.’’
‘No Restraint’: Violent Chaos in Minneapolis Could Spark the Next Ferguson
The Daily Beast – May 28, 2020 – Solomon Gustavo and Kelly Weill
https://www.thedailybeast.com/violent-chaos-in-minneapolis-over-death-of-george-floyd-could-spark-the-next-ferguson
“What we’ve seen is the result of so much built up anger and sadness, anger and sadness that has been engrained in our black community—not just because of five minutes of horror but 400 years,” Frey said. “If you’re feeling that sadness, that anger, it’s not only understandable, it’s right.”… “I read somewhere that you’re never gonna care until it hits your front door. We are here now, knocking in the front door,” – demonstrator Becky Mathews.
Top 6 Reasons Authorities are Cracking down Hard on Black Protesters while Treating White Supremacist Reopeners with Kid Gloves
Informed Comment – May 28, 2020 – Juan Cole
https://www.juancole.com/2020/05/authorities-protesters-supremacist.html
My social media feeds have been full of comparisons between the treatment by police of Reopener mobs, some of whom invaded the Michigan state house while fully armed with assault weapons, and the treatment of protesters in Minneapolis regarding the killing of George Floyd by a policemen who kept his knee on his neck. Why does the Far Right all too often get a pass by American law enforcement?
Floyd’s Death Shows We Cannot Wait to End Racism
Time Magazine – May 29, 2020 – Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
https://time.com/5844645/george-floyds-shows-we-cannot-wait-end-racism/
How does one live in such a time? What happens in your bones, on your insides, when you’re ravaged by disease and hatred? For those African-Americans who have lost loved ones and their jobs, who find themselves in long lines at food banks, who have to deal with the ongoing stress of a virus that can strike at any moment, how do you manage the trauma of loss and the terror of seeing another Black person killed by the police? Even if you turn your head away, the images and the sounds continue to haunt. We play them over and over again. It’s part of a ritual practice, a way the nation manages its racist sins. People declare their outrage. They, mostly white people, wonder how could this happen in today’s America? They cry out for justice. Or, as in the past, the likes of Fox News decry it all as the victimizing screeds of people who refuse to take personal responsibility. They defend the police. They condemn the violence. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. And nothing changes.
It’s a Matter of Life and Death: Misconceptions about King’s Methods of Change
Justice Initiative – May 30, 2020 – Heather Gray
https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Non-violent-strategies-for-protestors.html?soid=1109359583686&aid=rK0u7bahr3E
Lessons from Tiananmen Square Massacre and what is happening now in response to the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd… As ever, the following questions remain: ‘what are the demands’ and/or ‘what are the solutions to this on-going police violence?’ A s Martin Luther King, Jr. has taught us all in his revolutionary activism, ultimately, demonstrations should be coupled with concrete demands… King once said that the “Arc of the moral universe is long and it bends toward justice.” The demonstrators today are definitely bending the arc but as King would say “Where do we go from here?” What do we want? If there was ever a time to shift that paradigm it is now!
Who Exactly Is Doing the Looting, and Who’s Being Looted?
Jacobin – May 29, 2020 – David Sirota
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/05/looting-minneapolis-police-george-floyd
We live in an Orwellian era, in which working-class people pilfering convenience store goods is called “looting.” Rich people stealing hundreds of billions of dollars, on the other hand, is just well-functioning “public policy.”… Working-class people pilfering convenience-store goods is deemed “looting.” By contrast, rich folk and corporations stealing billions of dollars during their class war is considered good and necessary “public policy” — aided and abetted by arsonist politicians in Washington lighting the crime scene on fire to try to cover everything up. To really understand the deep programming at work here, consider how the word “looting” is almost never used to describe the plundering that has become the routine policy of our government at a grand scale that is far larger than a vandalized Target store. Indeed, if looting is defined in the dictionary as “to rob especially on a large scale” using corruption, then these are ten examples of looting that we rarely ever call “looting”:…
African-Americans Are Highly Visible in the Military, but Almost Invisible at the Top
The New York Times – May 25, 2020 – Helene Cooper
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/us/politics/military-minorities-leadership.html
Seventy-five years after integration, the military’s upper echelons remain the domain of white men… It is systematic racism that allows the authorities to treat African-Americans like pariahs and to crack down hard on them if they protest… In fact, it is this systematic racism (which is very different from the occasional piece of prejudice that most whites imagine to be the problem), that has led African-Americans to suffer disproportionately from the coronavirus… In order to redress the injustices here, it isn’t enough to raise a hue and cry about individual instances of racism. The establishment, of systematic racism, in everything from school resegregation to residential segregation to employment discrimination, needs to be addressed through a second generation of civil rights legislation. 1964 and 1965 did not go nearly far enough.
Deforestation, Oil Spills, and Coronavirus: Crises Converge in the Amazon
The Grist – May 29, 2020 – Rachel Ramirez
https://grist.org/justice/deforestation-oil-spills-and-coronavirus-crises-converge-in-the-amazon/
“Environmental threats continue, and deforestation is increasing; cocoa production in parts of the Amazon is increasing,” said Suzanne Pelletier, executive director of Rainforest Foundation US, during a press call early this month. “It’s exacerbating the problem of the pandemic in indigenous communities — because not only are they facing a public health threat, but they are also facing increasing environmental threats at the same time.”
“Reconstruction Never Ended”: A Review of Eric Foner’s Second Founding
Portside – May 17, 2020 – Thomas Simpson
https://www.portside.org/2020-05-17/reconstruction-never-ended-review-eric-foners-second-founding
For historian Eric Foner, the Reconstruction Era was nothing less than a second founding of the U.S. marked by the greatest expansion of constitutional rights since the document’s ratification. But this second founding has also left a complicated legacy littered with devastating reversals of justice that demand our continued attention today.
It’s Time to Democratize the Crisis: Join A Global Community of Countries Mobilizing to Do Just That
Portside – May 30, 2020 – Jonathan Michael Feldman
https://www.portside.org/2020-05-30/its-time-democratize-crisis-join-global-community-countries-mobilizing-do-just
What would it mean to “democratize the crisis”? This was the theme of the “Global Teach-In 2020: Democratize the Crisis” held May 26th of this year in the U.S. and twenty countries in total over twenty five locations. How can we create democratic systems to address the massive health, economic, political and media challenges generated by the coronavirus crisis? At the Global Teach-In, David Graeber of the London School of Economics emphasized the need to expand our political imaginations to consider possible alternatives. This expanded imagination is of critical importance because the crisis has exposed the limits to the normal workings of the “economy,” a term whose standard usage Graeber suggested often promotes a limited understanding of actual problems and needs… We can try to petition politicians to do the right thing and expose them. But ultimately it is only by addressing their power to make bad and stupid decisions where we can find comprehensive solutions… The Green New Deal must be materialized by linking consumptive networks to actual networks of innovators and cooperatives… The coronavirus crisis has exposed the limits of incumbent networks and institutions. The time for building alternative institutions linking mutual aid to systemic power accumulation is now.
A Service Industry Where Every Worker Thrives
Yes! Magazine – May 27, 2020 – Saru Jayaraman
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2020/05/27/coronavirus-service-industry/
COVID-19 has revealed the deep structural inequities of the service sector, and has thus created a tremendous opportunity to organize both workers and employers for the change we’ve always needed. We can’t go back—we can only go forward together and reimagine an industry in which all thrive… The pandemic is both the gravest crisis in the service sector’s history in the United States and also the greatest moment for transformation—for building power among workers and change among employers toward a sustainable future of collective prosperity.
An Uprising Was Inevitable
Yes! Magazine – May 29, 2020 – Zenobia Jeffries Warfield
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2020/05/29/george-floyd-minneapolis-police-protest/
It’s understandable to me that as I write this that the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct building is on fire. I imagine there’s symbolism in the burning. Maybe it’ll burn to the ground, and out of the ashes the restorative justice movement that has been building in Minneapolis will grow stronger. Maybe it will grow strong enough to bring about true transformation, not just in Minneapolis but throughout this country, where other grassroots movements are pushing for divestment in our local state and federal militarized police institutions. Then maybe George Floyd’s death would not have been in vain. I have no choice but to imagine restoration now, amid chaos. My threshold for Black pain at the endless death of unarmed Black cis and trans men, women, and children maxed out killings ago… We gotta wrap our minds around making bolder leaps. We need to start putting our minds and actions toward developing innovative crisis response that’s not police. Where guns or violence are not required.”… “We have to tackle those embedded assumptions that we need a police force,” Ellison said. “They’re not working for us, they’re killing us.”
27 Wednesday May 2020
Posted Uncategorized
in≈ Comments Off on The Hierarchy looks down
Songs: http://thinkspeak.bandcamp.com
painting: http://www.thinkspeak.net
Political cartoons: http://toons.thinkspeak.net
Books (search tom Ferguson) www.lulu.com
27 Wednesday May 2020
Posted Uncategorized
in≈ Comments Off on Philosophy as Theology for Adults
This short article examines fundamentalist versus “higher” forms of thought
26 Tuesday May 2020
Posted Uncategorized
in≈ Comments Off on Money Honey
Songs: http://thinkspeak.bandcamp.com
painting: http://www.thinkspeak.net
Political cartoons: http://toons.thinkspeak.net
Books (search tom Ferguson) www.lulu.com
25 Monday May 2020
24 Sunday May 2020
Posted Uncategorized
in≈ Comments Off on Volume XXVIII – Number 21
The Ecology of Disease
The New York Times – July 14, 2012 – Jim Robbins
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/sunday-review/the-ecology-of-disease.html
If we fail to understand and take care of the natural world, it can cause a breakdown of these systems and come back to haunt us in ways we know little about. A critical example is a developing model of infectious disease that shows that most epidemics — AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, SARS, Lyme disease and hundreds more that have occurred over the last several decades — don’t just happen. They are a result of things people do to nature. Disease, it turns out, is largely an environmental issue. Sixty percent of emerging infectious diseases that affect humans are zoonotic — they originate in animals. And more than two-thirds of those originate in wildlife.
Is it time to nationalize hospitals?
Physicians for a National Health Program – May 11, 2020 – Daniel Skinner
https://pnhp.org/news/is-it-time-to-nationalize-hospitals/
The fragmented US hospital system, made up of private and community hospitals, has made it harder to fight coronavirus… Though a number of different proposals for overhauling the US healthcare have been put forward by liberals and progressives, it is curious that they fail to question our dependency on a fragmented collection of private hospitals that can hardly be said to be a system.
As 27 Million Lose Job-based Health Insurance, Imagine if there were No Obamacare
Informed Comment – May 17, 2020 – Simon F. Haeder
https://www.juancole.com/2020/05/million-insurance-obamacare.html
The situation for many Americans feels dramatic. Fortunately, the limited U.S. safety net will be able to cushion some of the fallout for almost 80% through programs like Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Affordable Care Act marketplaces. And, of course, all preexisting conditions are still required to be covered by all insurers. Yet millions will be left without coverage. As a professor of public policy, I believe there are four things you need to consider if you’ve been laid off, or if you didn’t have health insurance before the pandemic.
America Falls Behind the World Talking About Green Stimulus
Time Magazine – May 15, 2020 – Justin Worland
https://time.com/5835402/green-stimulus-climate-change-coronavirus/
Increasingly, it seems, many… leaders are pushing for a green future. The European Union has promised to make climate change the centerpiece of its post-pandemic development plans for decades in the future. The World Bank and the IMF, crucial lenders to the developing world, have stressed sustainability as they grow their lending in response to the pandemic, and many of their borrowers have followed suit. In China, the world’s largest emitter, national leaders have endorsed big spending on a slew of low-carbon infrastructure and development priorities. But in the U.S., the world’s largest economy and second-largest carbon emitter, any such consideration of a green recovery appears dead on arrival… Instead of leading this transition, if anything, we’re trying to impede the inevitable as others move quickly forward.
How Dangerous Coronavirus Conspiracies Spread
ProPublica – May 17, 2020 – Marshall Allen
https://www.propublica.org/article/immune-to-evidence-how-dangerous-coronavirus-conspiracies-spread
Conspiratorial videos and websites about COVID-19 are going viral. Here’s how one of the authors of “The Conspiracy Theory Handbook” says you can fight back. One big takeaway: Focus your efforts on people who can hear evidence and think rationally… Stephan Lewandowsky studies the way people think, and in particular, why they engage in conspiracy theories. So when the cognitive scientist from England’s University of Bristol observes wild speculation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, he sees how it fits into the historical pattern of misinformation and fake news.
The News from Manhattan: Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Garrison Keillor’s Website – May 13, 2020
http://www.garrisonkeillor.com/nfm-may-13-2020/
It’s a useful time when people learn what keeps them going in stressful times. Family, conversation, books, jigsaw puzzles, work — life is reduced to basics and you get a new view of your own life, uncluttered. Conservatives have been campaigning against a powerful federal government for decades, and now they’ve found the perfect way to prove their case: elect a world-class fool to the presidency. His comments yesterday were the stupidest of any president in my lifetime. The emperor is naked and the country will get through this by individual enterprise and ingenuity and leadership on the state level, which is what conservatives have been saying for years. The White House is a joke and the reporters in the briefing room may as well be writing about squirrels in the park.
How the Woodrow Wilson Influenza of 1918 and the TrumpVirus Pandemic of 2020 Brought Fascism to America
Reader Supported News – May 18, 2020 – Harvey Wasserman
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/62995-rsn-how-the-woodrow-wilson-influenza-of-1918-and-the-trumpvirus-pandemic-of-2020-brought-fascism-to-america
Along with mass death, both viruses have brought fascism to America. To avoid a full-on replay, we need to know how. Like today’s TrumpVirus catastrophe, the global pandemic of 102 years ago was almost entirely avoidable. It was not an innocent accident or Act of Nature. It spread from the fascist decisions of one man: Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was elected president in 1912 as a liberal democrat. He sold himself as a man of peace. But he was (like Donald Trump) a KKK-supporting White Supremacist. In 1915, for no good reason, he sent US troops crashing into Mexico City to “teach a lesson” to “our little brown brothers.”… Like Woodrow Wilson’s pandemic, today’s TrumpVirus nightmare shreds our health, kills our kin, destroys the heart of our legal infrastructure, the soul of our social fabric, and what’s left of our ravaged civilization. If this is Mark Twain’s historic rhyming, it demands nothing less than an epic transcendent response … without which our nation and our species might well perish.
Cuba Develops Effective Peptide for Treatment of COVID-19
teleSUR – May 18, 2020
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/cuba-develops-effective-peptide-against-covid19-20200518-0008.html
Cuba’s Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) developed the CIGB-258, a new protein effective in Covid-19 treatment. “It is an immunomodulatory peptide, derived from the cellular stress response protein, known as HSP60. This molecule was designed by bioinformatic tools and is obtained by chemical synthesis,” affirmed CIGB’s researcher Dr. Gillian Martinez Donato. According to Martinez, CIGB-258 operates in the regulation of the immune system. This protein increases its concentration during viral infections and inflammatory processes. The CIGB requested the use of CIGB-258 in COVID confirmed patients in the severe and critical stages. Since May 5, 31 patients had received therapy with this peptide. As Donato explained, 12 patients started CIGB-258 therapy intheir severe stages and 19 in the critical disease phase. In the first group, survival was 92 percent, while in the second group it was 73 percent.
Did Trump fire State Dept. Inspector to Protect Shady Arms Deal with Saudi Arabia?
Informed Comment – May 19, 2020 – Juan Cole
https://www.juancole.com/2020/05/inspector-protect-arabia.html
If Linick was fired because of the Saudi investigation, it may have been a further step taken by the Trump gang to protect Riyadh from the consequences of the Khashoggi murder. Ironically, it has been alleged that Khashoggi himself may have been killed because he was a vocal critic of Trump, and the Saudis were afraid his being a Saudi and playing that role would interfere with good relations with the White House. Linick’s removal may have been the mirror image of Khashoggi’s murder. Linick is only lucky that typically in Washington they don’t yet use bone saws for these purposes.
Another Bank Bailout Under Cover of a Virus
The Web of Debt Blog – May 18, 2020 – Ellen Brown
https://ellenbrown.com/2020/05/18/another-bank-bailout-under-cover-of-a-virus/
Insolvent Wall Street banks have been quietly bailed out again. Banks made risk-free by the government should be public utilities… “The justification of private profit,” said President Franklin Roosevelt in a 1938 address, “is private risk.” Banking has now been made virtually risk-free, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States and its people. The American people are therefore entitled to share in the benefits and the profits. Banking needs to be made a public utility… As Buckminster Fuller said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, create a new model that makes the old model obsolete.” Post-COVID-19, the world will need to explore new models; and publicly-owned banks should be high on the list.
Health Insurance Companies Are Pissing on You and Saying It’s Raining
Jacobin – May 18, 2020 – David Sirota
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/05/health-insurance-coronavirus-cobra-medicare-for-all
Even during a pandemic, health insurance companies are both raking in huge profits and cooking up new ways to justify denying their customers’ claims. Do we really want to keep using public resources to prop up a barbaric system like this instead of establishing Medicare for All?
Defense Workers, Deemed “Essential,” Protest Conditions as Overseas Weapons Sales Continue
The Intercept – May 18, 2020 – Akela Lacy
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/18/coronavirus-defense-workers-weapons-lockheed-boeing/
With most of the United States on lockdown in late April, the State Department approved billions of dollars in possible weapons sales. Workers at the manufacturing plants that would supply those sales, deemed “essential workers” toward the end of March thanks to the defense industry’s sprawling lobbying apparatus, have been forced to show up to work — even as a number of workers at those factories have tested positive for coronavirus.
Voter fraud claims and criminal task forces will undermine the democratic process in 2020 election
Our Prism (Prism is a nonprofit affiliate of Daily Kos) – May 1, 2020 – Anoa Changa
https://www.ourprism.org/1941643/
Driven by fear of losing power in November, some Republicans and conservative groups are using false allegations of voter fraud as a rallying point. In addition to conflating election fraud with voter fraud, the inflammatory rhetoric around voter fraud and vote-by-mail persists as both a political tool to turn out a base fearful of a diversifying electorate and as a way to undermine the validity of election outcomes… “[The] whole idea of voter fraud is predicated on this idea that greater participation is dangerous and not good for democracy,” Williamson said in an interview with Prism. Williamson pointed to “some of the conservative infrastructure that’s been built to foment this mythical claim of voter fraud and specifically [the] legal and policy organizations that essentially fabricate a problem that doesn’t exist.”
3 Principals for an Anti-Racist, Equitable State Response to COVID-19
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities – May 21, 2020 – Erica Williams and Cortney Sanders
https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/3-principles-for-an-anti-racist-equitable-state-response-to-covid-19
Three principles should guide state policymakers in these equity efforts: Target aid to those most in need due to the COVID-19 and consequent economic crises. Advance anti-racist and equitable policies — both short- and long-term — to dismantle persistent racial, gender, and economic inequities and other barriers that non-dominant groups and identities experience. Protect state finances to preserve the foundations of long-term economic growth and opportunity.
Our Plan to Prevent Future Pandemics, Curb Wildlife Trade
Center for Biological Diversity – May 21, 2020
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/publications/earthonline/endangered-earth-online-no1037.html
“If we’re going to avoid future pandemics, the United States and other nations need to do their part to stop the exploitation of wildlife,” said the Center’s Brett Hartl. “The loss of life and other devastating impacts of COVID-19 make it clear that the meager economic benefits of commodifying wildlife are simply not worth the risks.”
A Tale of Two Pandemics
Robert Reich’s Blog – May 22, 2020
https://robertreich.org/post/618684660557479936
The horrific truth is that Native Americans, Latinos, and African-Americans are dying at much higher rates than white people – and we don’t know the half of it because the CDC hasn’t released any racial data about the virus; we don’t know if they’re even collecting it. But the picture emerging from cities, states, and reservations is that of an atrocity… We are all weathering the same storm, but we are not all in the same boat. Systematic inequality in America has produced two very different pandemics: In one, billionaires are sheltering in place on their yachts in the Caribbean, and wealthy families are safely quarantining in multimillion-dollar mansions. In the other boats sit people risking their lives for their jobs and people without incomes going hungry, a disproportionate number of whom are people of color, and all of whom deserve better. This is a tale of two pandemics. There is nothing “equal” about it.
Trump Is Brazenly Interfering With the 2020 Election
The Atlantic – May 20, 2020 – David A. Graham
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/trump-out-open/611875/
Here we have two cases of Trump tweeting threats to states that have sought to expand access to voting by mail as a response to the pandemic sweeping the nation, which has already killed nearly 100,000 Americans (you know, the one Trump has repeatedly declared victory over)… This is one of the many things that makes Trump’s Twitter feed such a bizarre phenomenon. If he did this privately, it would—rightly—be a massive scandal. Yet when he does it as part of a few dozen wildly varied tweets over the course of a morning, it’s written off as just another wacky missive from the wacky president. Becoming numb to Trump’s tweets is easy, as I’ve written of myself, but these show just how dangerous that is.
20 Ways Vote by Mail Could Revolutionize Our Democracy and Save Our Nation – if Election Protection Activists Make It Happen
Reader Supported News – May 23, 2020 – Harvey Wasserman
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/63079-rsn-20-ways-vote-by-mail-could-revolutionize-our-democracy-and-save-our-nation-if-election-protection-activists-make-it-happen
VBM could turn us forever from hackable touch screens to paper ballots. To make that happen, election protection activists must overcome Vote by Mail’s many vulnerabilities to make mail-in paper ballots an instrument of real democracy. The odds are long, but the chances are real.
Covid-19 Profiteers Are Making a Killing
In These Times – May 21, 2020 – Amber Colón Núñez
https://inthesetimes.com/article/22539/covid-19-profiteers-are-making-a-killing
The WHO warns that the worst is yet to come. Yet President Donald Trump has signaled that he wants the economy to reopen as soon as possible, despite countless warnings from public health experts that opening too soon can cause a spike in deaths. Big corporations and their head honchos have joined the president in downplaying the dangers and gunning for a reopening… More than 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment since early March. The billionaires who own many of those businesses are panicking. As they push for the economy to reopen, they’ve made one thing very clear: They aren’t the ones making their own wealth, their workers are.
A Lasting Remedy for the Covid-19 Pandemic’s Economic Crisis
Portside – New York Review of Books – May 22, 2020 – Joseph E. Stiglitz
https://www.portside.org/2020-05-22/lasting-remedy-covid-19-pandemics-economic-crisis
As catastrophic as it is, the Covid-19 pandemic offers a moment of reflection. If we set our sights high and not throw money at big corporations, perhaps we can emerge from the crisis with an economy and society that are stronger than before. As catastrophic as it is, the Covid-19 pandemic offers a moment of reflection. In medicine, pathology provides insights into how the body usually works by showing what happens when something interferes with normal functioning. We’re gaining some keen insights into how both our politics and our economy have been working, or not working, and a picture is emerging of what needs to change. Some see this as another opportunity to throw money to big corporations. We should set our sights higher. If we do, perhaps we can emerge from the crisis with an economy and society that are stronger than before.
This Empire Has No Clothes: In the Classroom That Zoom Built
Tom Dispatch – May 10, 2020 – Belle Chesler
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176699/tomgram%3A_belle_chesler%2C_teaching_across_an_abyss_of_silence/#more
Today, all we’re left with is a deafening silence that muffles the sound of so much suffering. The unfolding public health, mental health, and economic crisis of Covid-19 has laid bare the fragility of what was. The institutions charged with caring for and guiding our most valuable assets — our children — were already gutted by half a century of chronic underfunding, misguided curricular policies that prioritized testing over real learning, and social policies that favored austerity over taking care of the most vulnerable members of our society. Now that so many teachers are sequestered and alone or locked away with family, our bonds of proximity broken, we’re forced to stare into that void, scrambling to find and care for our students across an abyss of silence. The system is broken. The empire has no clothes.
How Capitalist Economics Structures Inequality
Portside – May 21, 2020 – Gregory Heires
https://www.portside.org/2020-05-21/how-capitalist-economics-structures-inequality
The world economy, to the degree it still works at all, serves to benefit the few at the expense of the many. The author of the book under review does an economic deep dive into ways that can reverse that antidemocratic equation… Boushey’s work certainly carries an undercurrent of moral outrage about the vast inequality that has developed over the past four decades.But beyond its moral underpinning, the book’s refreshing contribution to this debate is its systematic debunking of the theory of mainstream economists whose work accounts for the public policies and economic practices at the root our scandalous inequality, now at Great Depression levels. The book shows how over the last half century, the free-market prescriptions of mainstream economists have failed to deliver the broad-based social benefits for our society… Boushey argues that years of economic inequality have stifled productivity by limiting the educational opportunities of workers, discouraging investment, fueling discrimination and starving the public sector. Today’s slow-growth economy and periodic financial crises are manifestations of the long-term failure of mainstream economics.
Grieving My Way Into Loving the Planet
Yes! Magazine – May 21, 2020 – Dahr Jamail
https://www.yesmagazine.org/health-happiness/2020/05/21/grief-climate-change/
During one of Joanna’s discussions, she said, “The most radical thing any of us can do at this time is to be fully present to what is happening in the world.” For me, the price of admission into that present was allowing my heart to break. But then I saw how, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, despair transforms into clarity of vision, then into constructive, collaborative action. “It brings a new way of seeing the world, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on earth,” Joanna said… No matter how difficult life on Earth becomes, we will only be able to withstand these times by sharing ourselves with one another. If nothing else, we can bear witness together and not suffer in isolation as the dominant culture prefers. In being a “we,” humans can live as the deeply interconnected consciousness of Earth that we already are, just as Joanna has taught all of her life.
COVID-19 Sparks a Rebirth of the Local Farm Movement
Yes! Magazine – May 21, 2020 – Stephanie Hiller
https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2020/05/21/coronavirus-food-local-farm-movement/
Subscribing to a CSA is a lifestyle change for consumers, to be sure. It means eating what’s in season and learning to cook unfamiliar vegetables. But it’s a change that many people are making now because of the stay-at-home orders. “People just have to learn to cook again instead of eating out,” says Judith Redmond, part-owner of Full Belly Farm near Sacramento. In light of this newfound commitment to CSAs, Perrotti, of Coyote Family Farm, says: “My hope is that this solidifies instead of going back to the way things were. I hope the importance of local farming stays at the forefront.”… Food is fundamental. While farmers have yet to face the full economic impact of this pandemic, their collaborative efforts, along with local grassroots networks, could mark the beginning of a new economy laboring to be born.
17 Sunday May 2020
Posted Uncategorized
in≈ Comments Off on drawink
songs: http://thinkspeak.bandcamp.com
paintings: http://www.thinkspeak.net
political cartoons: http://toons.thinkspeak.net
blog: http://tfthinkspeak.blogspot.com
books: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/thinkspeak
17 Sunday May 2020
Posted Uncategorized
in≈ Comments Off on Volume XXVIII – Number 20
I Wish There Really Were a Plot to Create a Global Government
OpEdNews – May 12, 2020 – David Swanson
https://www.opednews.com/articles/I-Wish-There-Really-Were-a-by-David-Swanson-Globalism-200512-488.html
Imagine if a world government which, in case you aren’t clear on this, really doesn’t have any other worlds to compete against and hate and slaughter were redesigned even half as well as some of the most representative national governments on earth. Imagine if the biggest weapons dealing and warmongering nations weren’t given veto powers to derail the thing. Imagine if a bit of military loot was redirected toward actual needs, pursued cooperatively, pooling all relevant knowledge and resources. Imagine if the people running the thing were made responsible to the people living on this planet, and not controlled by two disastrous political parties that promise never to impeach or remove each other’s criminal officials unless Russia can be blamed in the process.
Mutual Aid: Building Networks Of Solidarity Not Charity
Popular Resistance – May 11, 2020 – Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG
https://popularresistance.org/mutual-aid-building-networks-of-solidarity-not-charity/
This is done in the spirit of solidarity, not charity, a non-hierarchical empowering approach versus a hierarchical exploitative approach. We speak with Eleanor Goldfield, an activist in Washington, DC who is active in her local mutual aid network and has written about it, about how they are organizing, the response from the community and government and how this fits into the bigger picture of resistance and building alternative systems to meet human needs. Some resources that Eleanor suggests are MutualAidDisasterRelief.org, ItsGoingDown.org and her website, ArtKillingApathy.com.
The Deathly Tragedy of American Exceptionalism
Robert Reich’s Blog – May 11, 2020
https://robertreich.org/post/617847817412788224
In no other nation have experts in public health and emergency preparedness been pushed aside and replaced by political cronies like Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who in turn has been advised by Trump donors and Fox News celebrities… Why is America so different from other advanced nations facing the same coronavirus threat? Why has everything gone so tragically wrong? Some of it is due to Trump and his hapless and corrupt collection of grifters, buffoons, sycophants, lobbyists and relatives. But there are also deeper roots… The calamity is also due to America’s longer-term failure to provide its people the basic support they need.
Four Die-Hard Loyalists Are Enabling Trump’s Apocalyptic Coronavirus Response
The Intercept – May 8, 2020 – James Risen
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/08/coronavirus-trump-kushner-miller-pompeo-barr/
They are fulfilling Donald Trump’s darkest desires to twist the Covid-19 pandemic into a culture war, while also looking for ways to exploit the nation’s greatest public health crisis in a century to foment hoaxes and conspiracy theories and punish Trump’s enemies. Meanwhile, they are ignoring the actual pandemic. Trump and his lackeys have decided to let America burn.
The United States Is a Country to Be Pitied
The Washington Post – May 14, 2020 – Eugene Robinson
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-united-states-is-a-country-to-be-pitied/2020/05/14/d2d98e9c-961e-11ea-91d7-cf4423d47683_story.html
Only a handful of nations on Earth have arguably done a worse job of handling the coronavirus pandemic than the United States. What has happened to us? How did we become so dysfunctional? When did we become so incompetent?… No amount of patriotism or pride can change the appalling facts. The pandemic is acting as a stress test for societies around the world, and ours is in danger of failing… Thanks to Trump, we have no coherent national plan to survive the pandemic. But also thanks to the federal government — and I include Congress as well as the president — we lack the kind of sturdy economic safety net that protects unemployed workers and shut-down business owners in some of the hardest-hit European countries — nations that once looked up to the United States as a model. In the Netherlands, for example, the government is granting employers up to 90?percent of their payroll costs so they can keep paying their workers rather than resort to furloughs or layoffs. That kind of continuity ought to speed recovery when reopening becomes safe… The covid-19 pandemic has exposed the depth of America’s fall from greatness. Ridding ourselves of Trump and his cronies in November will be just the beginning of our work to restore it.
Trump dismantles environmental protections under cover of coronavirus
The Guardian – May 11, 2020 – Emily Holden
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/10/trump-environmental-blitzkrieg-coronavirus
“What Trump’s done is create a blitzkrieg against the environment … trying to dismantle not just Obama’s environmental achievements but turn back the clock to a pre-Richard Nixon day,” said Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University who is writing a book on the subject. “It’s just death by a thousand cuts. It’s not one issue, it’s just across the board.”
Linking The Coronavirus and Climate
News and Guts – May 9, 2020 – Dan Rather
https://www.newsandguts.com/dan-rather-on-linking-the-coronavirus-and-climate/
The totality of nature is much bigger and more resilient than the domain of homo sapiens. And this is ultimately one of the biggest lessons of these times. If we don’t approach the rest of our planet, and each other, with a lot more humility we increase the risk to our own health and happiness. The coronavirus is the most obvious threat, but even now the grinding mechanisms of our climate crisis are further eroding the safety of our collective future.
‘Manipulative, deceitful, user’: Tara Reade left a trail of aggrieved acquaintances
Politico – May 15, 2020 – Natasha Korecki
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/15/tara-reade-left-trail-of-aggrieved-acquaintances-260771
Over the past decade, Reade has left a trail of aggrieved acquaintances in California’s Central Coast region who say they remember two things about her — she spoke favorably about her time working for Biden, and she left them feeling duped… many of those who knew her well in recent years said she frequently lied or sought to manipulate them, in many instances taking advantage of their desire to help a person they felt was down on her luck. “You can use these words: manipulative, deceitful, user,” said Kelly Klett, an attorney who rented Reade a room in her home in 2018. “Looking back at it all now, that is exactly how I view her and how I feel about her.” “She has a problem,” said Lynn Hummer, who owns a horse sanctuary where Reade volunteered for two years, beginning in 2014. She described Reade as “very clever, manipulative. … I do think she’s a liar.”
He Didn’t File Charges in the Arbery Case. But He Spent Years Accusing a Black Grandma of Voter Fraud
Mother Jones – May 9, 2020 – Samantha Michaels
https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/05/ahmaud-arbery-georgia-jogger-george-barnhill-olivia-pearson-voter-fraud-charges/
Olivia Pearson knows what it’s like to be caught up in the criminal justice system in southern Georgia. In 2016, a local district attorney’s office indicted Pearson, a Black grandmother and civil rights activist, on felony voter fraud charges and threatened her with years in prison after she helped a first-time voter who didn’t know how to use an electronic voting machine. The district attorney who pursued her case was none other than George E. Barnhill—a guy in the news this week for having failed to prosecute the men who killed jogger Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old unarmed Black man.
Adopt a More Principled Foreign Policy
Common Dreams – May 11, 2020 – Yasmine Taeb, Demand Progress
https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/05/11/more-50-national-organizations-progressive-anti-war-and-faith-communities-urge
Today, more than 50 national organizations representing millions of Americans sent a letter to President Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, to adopt a more principled foreign policy, one that prioritizes diplomacy and multilateralism over militarism. The letter, organized by Demand Progress, states “U.S. foreign policy has been overly focused on confrontation with perceived adversaries and the global projection of U.S. military power. We believe that there is room to act aggressively to reform our foreign policy, with the support of the majority of the people of this country across the ideological spectrum.”
The Bailout Miscalculation That Could Crash the Economy
Matt Taibbi’s Substack – May 12, 2020
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-bailout-miscalculation-that-could
A plan to help homeowners avoid foreclosure was good, in principle. In practice, it’s pushed the mortgage business toward yet another potential nightmare.
Now Is the Time to Take Radical Steps Toward Housing Equity
Yes! Magazine – May 6, 2020 – Chris Tittle
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2020/05/06/coronavirus-affordable-housing-rent-relief/
It’s time to think big about housing. No more evictions and foreclosures. Rent and mortgage cancellation on a grand scale. Twelve million new green housing units in the next 10 years. A massive reinvestment in housing under public control, resident control, and community control. Rent freezes, rent control, tenant protections, and anti-displacement measures across the nation.
In a First, Renewable Energy Is Poised to Eclipse Coal in U.S.
The New York Times – Mat 13, 2020 – Brad Plumer
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/climate/coronavirus-coal-electricity-renewables.html
In just the first four and a half months of this year, America’s fleet of wind turbines, solar panels and hydroelectric dams have produced more electricity than coal on 90 separate days — shattering last year’s record of 38 days for the entire year. On May 1 in Texas, wind power alone supplied nearly three times as much electricity as coal did.
The Sickness in Our Food Supply
The New York Review of Books – June 11, 2020 issue – Michael Pollan
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/06/11/covid-19-sickness-food-supply/
“Only when the tide goes out,” Warren Buffett observed, “do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” For our society, the Covid-19 pandemic represents an ebb tide of historic proportions, one that is laying bare vulnerabilities and inequities that in normal times have gone undiscovered. Nowhere is this more evident than in the American food system. A series of shocks has exposed weak links in our food chain that threaten to leave grocery shelves as patchy and unpredictable as those in the former Soviet bloc. The very system that made possible the bounty of the American supermarket—its vaunted efficiency and ability to “pile it high and sell it cheap”—suddenly seems questionable, if not misguided. But the problems the novel coronavirus has revealed are not limited to the way we produce and distribute food. They also show up on our plates, since the diet on offer at the end of the industrial food chain is linked to precisely the types of chronic disease that render us more vulnerable to Covid-19.
The White House Pushes to Curb Food Stamps Amid Record Unemployment
Time Magazine – May 13, 2020 – Abby Vesoulis
https://time.com/5836504/usda-snap-appeal-rule-change/
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture quietly issued a notice that it was appealing a judge’s injunction that blocked the cabinet agency from proceeding with cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), colloquially known as food stamps. If the USDA wins its appeal, the new requirements would strip 688,000 Americans of their food benefits, according to Department’s own estimates. In March, Congress passed legislation that temporarily paused limits on how long most SNAP recipients could receive benefits without working for the duration of the COVID-19 public health emergency. Thus, if the USDA is victorious in its court challenge, the stricter work requirements would be temporarily delayed until the public health emergency was over—but that may be long before the economy rebounds.
Our Privacy Is on the Clock
The Hill – May 7, 2020 – Billy Easley and Neema Singh Guliani
https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/496582-our-privacy-is-on-the-clock
Among other things, protections are needed to ensure that First Amendment activity is not a basis for surveillance, that the government purges data that is not foreign intelligence, and that intelligence agencies comply with their constitutional obligation to fully notify individuals when information obtained as a result of intelligence surveillance is used against them. We all want to keep Americans safe. And we can ensure that safety while also making our government accountable to its citizens’ representatives. Undertaking these reforms will help give the American people the transparency and due process protections they are guaranteed under the Constitution.
Faced with an appalling US coronavirus death toll, the right denies the figures
The Guardian – May 15, 2020 – Adam Gabbatt
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/15/coronavirus-death-toll-right-denies-figures
As Donald Trump agitates for the US to reopen, the American right appears to have found a novel way to deal with the rising coronavirus death toll: deny it altogether.
The fight to save jobs
The New York Times – May 15, 2020 – David Leonhardt
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/briefing/coronavirus-jobs-richard-burr-your-friday-briefing.html
What’s striking is that the countries with the smallest increases in unemployment have something in common. Their governments have put in place sweeping programs that directly pay companies to retain their workers.
How States and Cities Can Protect Workers During the Pandemic
The American Prospect – May 15, 2020 – Terri Gerstein
https://prospect.org/coronavirus/how-states-cities-can-protect-workers-coronavirus/#
When there’s a crime wave, do the police merely offer a list of suggestions about following the law, if it’s feasible? That’s essentially the federal government’s current approach to worker safety. Rather than enforcing the law, issuing citations for violations of required safety standards, and passing pandemic-specific requirements, the Trump administration is offering employers Hints from Heloise: guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Even Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia’s recent letter to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, intended to defend his agency’s performance, offers little in terms of real enforcement. The word “guidance” and its variant “guidelines” appear nine times, as well as the observation that “employers are implementing measures to protect workers” (emphasis in original). Absent from the letter: the word “citation.” The word “penalty.”… We need enforcement, not just governmental advice, to protect public health from a deadly pandemic. State and local leaders can’t alone solve this problem, but they must rise to the moment. They should protect workers and, by so doing, protect all of us.
Replace Trump and bolster the CDC, a leading medical journal urges
PBS – WHYY – May 16, 2020 – Bill Chappell
https://whyy.org/npr_story_post/replace-trump-and-bolster-the-cdc-a-leading-medical-journal-urges/
Americans should oust President Trump from the White House and elect a leader who will support – rather than undermine – public health experts who are battling the COVID-19 pandemic, British medical journal The Lancet says in a newly published editorial. The unsigned editorial sharply criticizes the Trump administration, saying it has marginalized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to a degree that is dangerous for both the U.S. and the world.
In the Midst of a Pandemic, Can we Afford to spend Trillions on War Industries?
Informed Comment – May 16, 2020 – Conn M. Hallinan
https://www.juancole.com/2020/05/pandemic-trillions-industries.html
Camus’ novel of a lethal contagion in the North African city of Oran is filled with characters all too recognizable today: indifferent or incompetent officials, short sighted and selfish citizens, and lots of great courage. What not even Camus could imagine, however, is a society in the midst of a deadly epidemic pouring vast amounts of wealth into instruments of death… While the official military budget is $738 billion, if one pulls all U.S. defense related spending together, the actual cost for taxpayers is $1.25 trillion a year, according to William Hartung of the Center for International Policy. Half that amount would go a long way toward providing not only adequate medical support during the Covid-19 crisis — it would also pay jobless Americans a salary. Given that there are more than 31 million Americans now unemployed and the possibility that numerous small businesses — restaurants in particular — will never reopen, building and deploying a new generation of weapons is a luxury the U.S. and other countries cannot afford. In the very near future, countries are going to have to choose whether they make guns or vaccines.
Why Bombs Made in America Have Been Killing Civilians in Yemen
The New York Times – May 16, 2020 – Michael LaForgia and Walt Bogdanich
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/16/us/arms-deals-raytheon-yemen.html
Year after year, the bombs fell — on wedding tents, funeral halls, fishing boats and a school bus, killing thousands of civilians and helping turn Yemen into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Weapons supplied by American companies, approved by American officials, allowed Saudi Arabia to pursue the reckless campaign… In June 2017, an influential Republican senator decided to cut them off, by withholding approval for new sales. It was a moment that might have stopped the slaughter. Not under President Trump.
Connecting the Dots Between Environmental Injustice and the Coronavirus
Portside – Yale Environment 360 – May 16, 2020 – Katherine Bagley
https://www.portside.org/2020-05-16/connecting-dots-between-environmental-injustice-and-coronavirus
Sacoby Wilson, an environmental health scientist at the University of Maryland, believes the coronavirus has cast a spotlight on largely unnoticed segments of society, from low-income people in polluted neighborhoods, to residents of nursing homes and prisons, to workers in the nation’s meatpacking plants “One thing that COVID-19 has done, it has made a lot of populations we made invisible, visible,” Wilson says in an interview with Yale Environment 360.
Not Simply a ‘Natural Disaster’
Portside – May 16, 2020 – Alejandro Reuss
https://www.portside.org/2020-05-16/not-simply-natural-disaster
While this strain of coronavirus is new, the underlying social conditions that shape its impacts are not at all new. The crisis is transmitted like a shock wave through the political and economic structures of society: The lack of a universal guarantee to the most basic goods (like health care). The enormous power differential between employers and workers. The vulnerability to unemployment. These are everyday scourges of life in capitalist America. The current crisis has just illuminated these realities in an especially stark way.
10 Sunday May 2020
Posted Uncategorized
in≈ Comments Off on a tune about retirement
link to an iPhone recording of No Hook on My Line https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obqGrjmRx9Y
No Hook on My Line B 4/4 © 2018 tom ferguson
1.
layin by the river with no hook on my line
haven’t had a haircut since 19 69
just above my head a wren singin something sweet
be happy to do anything but stand up on my feet
lazy you might say but there’s nothin to do
had all my employment and had me all my school
now i’m just here… now i’m just here
2.
layin by the river with no list of to- dos
been there and done that and paid me on my dues
a cloud drifted by just a little while ago
took the shape of somethin I didn’t need to know
lazy you might say but there’s nothin to do
had all my employment and had me all my school
now i’m just here… now i’m just here
3.
layin by the river with the shade on my face
wouldn’t wanna have to get up and go some place
half a mile a way I here that dinner call
guess I’m gonna have to get up after all
lazy you might say but there’s nothin to do
had all my employment and had me all my school
now i’m just here… now i’m just here
4.
layin by the river waiting for the sun
to settle in the west phasing out another one
I’ll be back to morrow I might have to miss the race
cosying up on over here in my favorite space
lazy you might say but there’s nothin to do
had all my employment and had me all my school
now i’m just here… now i’m just here (repeat first 2 lines)