Daily Archives: August 13, 2020

2020-08-13: News Headlines

Alan MacLeod (2020-08-13). US Military Presence: Special Forces Active in 22 African Countries. globalresearch.ca A

A Guest Author (2020-08-13). A voice from New Orleans schools: 'Are we gonna be alive?'. workers.org Big-E By Big E New Orleans This slightly edited talk was given at the Aug. 6 Workers World Party webinar, "War on the Working Class: the Socialist Response," which featured education workers. Big E is an activist with New Orleans Workers Group. Thank you, everybody out there, and much love . . . |

Margot Rathke (2020-08-13). The Stimulus Deal Should Include Free College. counterpunch.org The Covid-19 crisis bill currently under negotiation should both extend student loan relief and offer free college for young people facing limited job opportunities. Hayat Rahmeto is one recent college graduate who has decided to go back to school while the economy is in shambles. After graduating from college last year, she moved back in

Brett Wilkins (2020-08-13). Teaching Torture: The Death and Legacy of Dan Mitrione. counterpunch.org In the pre-dawn darkness of Monday, August 10, 1970, Dan Mitrione's bullet-ridden body was discovered in the back seat of a stolen Buick convertible in a quiet residential neighborhood of Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital. He had just turned 50, and he had recently started a new dream job, although it was thousands of miles from his home in Richmond, Indiana. Who was Dan Mitrione, and what work was he doing in Uruguay that led him to such an early and violent end? |

Peter Koenig (2020-08-13). Belarus — A Color Revolution of a Different Shade? globalresearch.ca Belarus in turmoil, after an election where the incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko — 25 years already in power (in office since 1994) — has won with 80% of the popular vote. That's what the official stats and media say. True …

Haitian Popular News Agency (2020-08-13). Haitian teachers protest school reopening. peoplesdispatch.org Several dozen teachers and activists organized a rally on Monday August 10 outside of the Haitian Ministry of National Education and Professional Training. They were protesting against the decision taken unilaterally by the Minister Pierre Josué Agénor Cadet to reopen schools, which was done without consulting other actors that are crucial to the proper functioning of the Haitian education system. They also demanded better working conditions for teachers in Haiti. | "We do not have a problem with reopening schools, it is normal that it happen, but it would be necessary for it to be planned in complete collaborati…

WSWS (2020-08-13). Growing wave of protests across the US against school openings. wsws.org Across the US, thousands of teachers, education workers, parents and students are mobilizing to oppose the unsafe reopening of schools amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Justin Baragona (2020-08-13). Trump: If I Lose to Biden, Get Ready to 'Have to Learn to Speak Chinese'. globalresearch.ca Ramping up

Johanna Ross (2020-08-13). Lukashenko Wins the Election, but His Biggest Fight May be Yet to Come. globalresearch.ca Belarus' Alexander Lukashenko may have won a solid victory with 80.23% of the vote, according to the election commission, but the ground on which he is standing is not as firm as it once was. The President of Belarus says …

Yanis Iqbal (2020-08-13). Extractivism and Exploitation in Peru. globalresearch.ca Martin Vizcarra, Peru's president, has

Dr. Binoy Kampmark (2020-08-13). Blight and Revelation: Coronavirus, Austerity and the UK. globalresearch.ca Epidemiologist Michael Marmot

Zayd Alisa (2020-08-13). Will Trump-MBS Shore Up Iraq's Corrupt Ruling Families in Return for Keeping US Troops? Iraq-Iran Relationship in Crisis? globalresearch.ca Iraq's new Prime Minister Mustafa al Khadimi's, decision to make Saudi Arabia rather than Iran his first destination abroad contradicted with what all his predecessors had done. It was designed to send a clear message indicating that he has …

Karsten Riise (2020-08-13). US Color Revolutions: From Eastern Europe to Egypt, Iran, Now Lebanon. globalresearch.ca It is necessary to study, how US color-techniques are applied for regime-change in Egypt (Tahrir) — Iran (Green Movement) and now Lebanon (Cedar Revolution + "Day of Rage"). | The US engineering of these all-but-spontaneous undercover "Color …

Abayomi Azikiwe (2020-08-13). Black People Confront Racist Violence. globalresearch.ca Since the May 25 police execution of George Floyd in Minneapolis, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest racist violence. | Cities across the United States were impacted by the blocking of streets and highways along …

Pepe Escobar (2020-08-13). Beirute, Arena de Guerra: colà¥nia ocidental ou retorno ao oriente? globalresearch.ca Assim como os 0,001% instrumentalizaram a Covid-19 para engendrar o Grande Recomeàßo ( O atual governo libanês liderado pelo Primeiro Ministro …

Johanna Ross (2020-08-13). Disbelief and Denial in the West as Russia Produces First COVID Vaccine. globalresearch.ca 'Startling and confusing' proclaimed Science magazine. 'Reckless and foolish' said US vaccine scientist Peter Hotez. 'Dangerously rushed' said the journal Nature. Western scientists are in denial. The first vaccine against the disease which has dominated all our lives for …

John C. A. Manley (2020-08-13). Protest against COVID Disinformation and Social Engineering. globalresearch.ca This month, the revolution against COVID-19(84) totalitarianism has been rising up with about a million

Bob Dreyfuss (2020-08-13). October Surprise: Will War with Iran be Trump's Election Eve Shocker? globalresearch.ca Was Donald Trump's January 3rd

Helen Buyniski (2020-08-13). VIDEO: The "Lock Step" Simulation Scenario: "A Coronavirus-like Pandemic that Becomes Trigger for Police State Controls" globalresearch.ca First published on February 5, 2020. In-depth analysis of the Simulation of a pandemic conducted in 2010 under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation. | By now, those following the novel coronavirus epidemic are familiar with Event 201, the pandemic

imperial.ac.uk (2020-08-13). Transition to Zero Pollution launches series to inform research and policy. imperial.ac.uk Imperial's Transition to Zero Pollution initiative has launched an online series to bring together experts from across College and industry.

imperial.ac.uk (2020-08-13). Self-test kits can monitor the spread of COVID-19 in communities. imperial.ac.uk Antibody home testing kits could be used to help monitor the rate of COVID-19 infections in communities, says an Imperial researcher.

Direct Action (2020-08-13). Fired UCSC Grad Students Win Their Jobs Back. indybay.org The COLA movement shows that when we fight we win! Our wildcat strike has made concrete gains for grad student-workers, including a $2,500 annual housing stipend and 5 years of guaranteed TAships or other funding. | Let this win motivate us in our fight for justice in higher education!

_____ (2020-08-13). Analysis: COVID-19 Deaths Likely Undercounted By Over 50,000. popularresistance.org More than 165,000 Americans have now died from the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The US passed the grim statistic of 5 million cases of COVID-19 earlier this month. As horrifying as these figures are, a new analysis shows that the number of deaths from the coronavirus likely has been significantly undercounted. | Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzed by the New York Times have revealed that 200,700 people died from March 15, when the pandemic took hold, to July 25. This is 54,000 higher than the confirmed death toll, averaged, for the same time period i…

RT (2020-08-13). 'The Great Senior Short Sale': Boomers' retirement plans to be scuppered as millennials can't (or won't) buy their homes. rt.com The dream of selling their home for a retirement nest egg will hatch into an albatross around the neck of many Americans, according to new research forecasting that millions of homes will become unsellable in the coming years. | A study from the University of Arizona predicts that baby boomers and Gen Xers will not be able to sell the home they've spent decades paying for because millennials and Gen Zers aren't interested in, or can't afford, the properties. | The research predicts that the shift in home-buying patterns will result in a glut of houses that could climb to as high as 15 million by 2040. This wil…

RT (2020-08-13). 'Americans must have their freedoms': Trump rejects Biden's call for MASK MANDATE, says states should decide. rt.com President Donald Trump rejected his rival Joe Biden's call for a nationwide face mask mandate, saying he trusted elected governors to make science-based decisions about the Covid-19 pandemic that best fit their states. | Biden's approach is "regressive, anti-scientific and very defeatist," Trump said on Thursday during a White House press briefing, accusing the Democrat presidential candidate of hiding in his Delaware basement and wanting the same fate inflicted on all Americans. | The Trump administration is strongly recommending people to wear face masks when social distancing is not practical, but "American…

The Canary (2020-08-13). Hundreds of thousands of A-level results downgraded in UK exam fiasco. thecanary.co Hundreds of thousands of pupils' results have been downgraded after this year's summer exams were cancelled because of coronavirus (Covid-19).The proportion of A-level entries awarded an A grade or higher has risen to an all-time high, with 27.9% securing the top grades this year, figures for England, Wales and Northern Ireland show.But exam boards downgraded nearly two in five (39.1%) pupils' grades in England, according to data from Ofqual — which amounts to around 280,000 entries being adjusted down after moderation.Teachers were told to submit the grades they thought each student would have received if t…

Stephen Lendman (2020-08-13). Is Joe Biden Cognitively Impaired? President Kamala Harris? globalresearch.ca If elected president in November, Joe Biden will be age-78 when entering office in January. | His political career since 1972 as US senator, vice president, and presidential aspirant elevated him to national prominence with high public name recognition. | He's only …

William Hogan (2020-08-13). The Ongoing Torture and Medical Neglect of Julian Assange. globalresearch.ca Published by The Lancet on June 25, 2020. | **** | On Feb 17, 2020, Doctors for Assange demanded an end to the torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange.1 Yet no responsible authority has acted. Nils Melzer, the UN …

South Front (2020-08-13). Video: Ukraine Is Hovering Between New War and Economic Collapse. globalresearch.ca On July 27, a next "complete and all-encompassing ceasefire" between Kiev troops and self-defense forces of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR) started in eastern Ukraine. This is the most recent in a series of attempts to …

South Front (2020-08-13). What if the Beirut Explosion Was an Attack? globalresearch.ca On August 11, 3 Israeli battle tanks crossed a technical fence on the Israeli-Lebanese contact line, the official Lebanese News Agency reported. | According to the Lebanese side, Israeli forces broke through the technical fence in the town of Mays al-Jabal …

_____ (2020-08-13). Youth Are Leading The Movement For Police-Free Schools. popularresistance.org In this moment of transformative possibility, amid activists' growing calls to defund and abolish the police, young people across the country are leading a movement to remove police officers from schools. They are demanding that city and school district leaders reallocate funding for police into services and resources for students, including counseling, social workers and restorative justice programming. | The movement for police-free schools has a long history of Black youth leading this fight as a key strategy to dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline, a process of funneling predominately Black and Latinx st…

_____ (2020-08-13). CIA-Sponsored Propaganda Has Been Around for 75 Years. strategic-culture.org The release a report by the U.S. Department of State's Global Engagement Center (GEC), billed as the Donald Trump administration's "dedicated center for countering foreign disinformation and propaganda, cites the Strategic Culture Foundation in Russia, Canada's Global Research Center, and other on-line publications as "proxy sites" for Russian intelligence and the Russian Foreign Ministry. The State Department's report is titled, "Pillars of Russia's Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem" and it is not much different than the series of reports issued by the State Department's "International Information Progr…

The Canary (2020-08-13). 'Incensed' school head accuses Gavin Williamson of ignoring teachers' judgment. thecanary.co Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has been angrily accused by a school head of ignoring the professional judgment of teachers over their students' A-level results. | Williamson was confronted by Christine Cunniffe, the principal of LVS Ascot, during an uncomfortable appearance on ITV's This Morning. | Cunniffe said she had seen some of her top students downgraded by two grades as a result of the system put in place by the government for moderating exam results in England. | She urged the education secretary to follow the example of Scotland and abandon the system, saying students had "been through enough". | H…

The Canary (2020-08-13). Turnover slides at majority of UK businesses, ONS survey finds. thecanary.co More than half of UK firms have reported a fall in turnover, with more than a tenth saying it has at least halved, according to new figures. | The latest Office for National Statistics survey of the impact of coronavirus (Covid-19) revealed that 54% of firms said they saw a decrease in turnover for the two weeks to 26 July. | Firms in the North East of England were the worst-affected, with 61% of companies in the region saying that turnover has decreased. | Companies in Scotland were also particularly affected, with the new figures revealing that 57% of surveyed firms in the country saw turnover fall. | Meanwhile…

Ali Harb (2020-08-13). Kamala Harris: Where Does Biden's Running Mate Stand on Middle East Issues? globalresearch.ca The American constitution does not grant the vice president much power. Other than the ability to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate, the VP's main responsibility is to assume the presidency in case of a sudden vacancy in the …

Elizabeth Woodworth (2020-08-13). Leaked: "Deadly" Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat Covid 19: How the World's Top Medical Journals, The Lancet and NEJM, Were Cynically Exploited by Big Pharma. globalresearch.ca Article first published by Gr on June 14, 2020 | Abstract and Background | A publishing scandal recently erupted around the use of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat Covid 19. It is also known as quinine and chloroquine, and is …

Jenny Gonzales (2020-08-12). The Deforestation of Brazil's Amazon. globalresearch.ca The latest INPE (National Institute for Space Research) deforestation data for the Brazilian Amazon, released last Friday, comes as the result of the policies of President Jair Bolsonaro, say critics.

Mary Filippo (2020-08-12). Review of My Mis-Education in 3 Graphics. mronline.org My Mis-Education in 3 Graphics is a document of the filmmaker's darkly humorous journey through the mind-boggling constructs of mainstream economics.

Mark Gruenberg (2020-08-12). March For Our Lives shifts to new strategy. peoplesworld.org WASHINGTON—March For Our Lives, the massive student-led anti-gun organization that poured youthful activists into the streets—and into voting booths—two years ago, is shifting strategy, but its platform stays the same, with one big new emphasis. That emphasis, said co-founder David Hogg and Executive Director Alexis Confer, both now college students, is to link up and …

Raouf Halaby (2020-08-12). Teaching Palestinian Children to Love Beethoven, Bizet, and Mozart is a Threat to a Depraved Israeli Society. counterpunch.org The subject box of a mid-March email from Jerusalemite Palestinian author and scholar read: "Simply Reflecting." Samia Khoury's 16/March/2020 message was a concise and tellingly prescient homily on the pathetically worsening universal condition of humanity as well as the depraved banality to which Israel's Jewish leaders have descended. The topics included the spread of Covid-19,

RT (2020-08-12). Wanna bet? US statisticians give Trump 'exact same odds' against Biden as the ones he beat in 2016. rt.com The major statistical analysis website FiveThirtyEight has US President Donald Trump's odds of winning the November election at 29 percent — exactly the same chances he was said to have had in 2016 before he went on to win. | Nate Silver's website, named for the total number of electors in the US electoral college, unveiled its forecast,

The Canary (2020-08-12). Exam results fiasco — what is happening across the nations? thecanary.co The question of what to do with A-level and GCSE students in a year when exams have been cancelled has been a tricky equation to solve.The government on Tuesday came up with an answer for England, but it still has not pleased everyone. Here is a closer look. | — What was the problem?The coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic forced sustained school closures across the UK during the back end of the spring term and the majority of the summer term.It has meant pupils have been unable to sit GCSE or A-level exams, crucial in deciding how best to continue their education, where to look for work or training, or which col…

The Canary (2020-08-12). Science and politics tied up in global race for a coronavirus vaccine. thecanary.co The announcement on Tuesday by Russian president Vladimir Putin that his country was the first to approve a coronavirus vaccine has been met by doubts about the science and safety.But it also underscored how the competition to have the first vaccine is about international rivalries as well as science.The first nation to develop a way to defeat the novel coronavirus will achieve a kind of moonshot victory and the global status that goes along with it.That is valuable to Putin, whose popularity at home has declined amid a stagnant economy and the ravages of the virus outbreak.Russian President Vladimir Putin announ…

Paul Antonopoulos (2020-08-12). Serbia's Intention to Buy Chinese Weapons. US Concerns. globalresearch.ca Belgrade's announcement that it may purchase the Chinese FK-3 anti-aircraft missile system was enough for the U.S. to express concern about Serbia's future, not only with Europe, but with the entire world. | The U.S. Embassy in Belgrade said that | "procuring …

Paul Antonopoulos (2020-08-12). Turkey Marks 100 Years Since Treaty of Sèvres. Renewed Hostilities with Greece. globalresearch.ca Yesterday marked the 100-year anniversary from when the Treaty of Sèvres was signed. The Treaty of Sèvres saw the Ottoman Empire dismembered, with Greece, Syria and Armenia gaining old lost lands, an independent Kurdistan established, and France, Britain and Italy …

Peter Koenig (2020-08-12). The Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic: The Real Danger is "Agenda ID2020" globalresearch.ca WHO has most likely received orders from "above", from those people who also manage Trump and the "leaders" (sic) of the EU, European Union. The final decision to go ahead NOW with COVID-19 pandemic, was taken in January 2020 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos – behind very much closed doors.

South Front (2020-08-12). Video: Crisis in Belarus as Sign of Global Division. globalresearch.ca Over the past days, Belarus, an eastern European state bordering with Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, has become a scene of a new regime change attempt on the territory of the former USSR. | On August 9, the country held presidential …

South Front (2020-08-12). Video: Lights, Camera, Action: Staging of Protests in Belarus. globalresearch.ca In Belarus presidential elections were held. According to the Central Election Committee, the turnout was quite high and amounted to about 84% of the population. The results of the exit poll confirm the victory of the current President of Belarus, …

Stephen Lendman (2020-08-12). Mass Looting in Chicago, My Neighborhood Under Siege. globalresearch.ca I awoke Monday morning to distressing news, alerted me by pre-dawn email from my residential building's management. | I and other building residents were told about overnight vandalism and mass looting of retail shops along Chicago's Magnificent Mile in our neighborhood …

Stephen Lendman (2020-08-12). Joe Biden Picks Kamala Harris as Running Mate. Biden-Harris vs. Trump-Pence. Who is Kamala Harris? globalresearch.ca Whenever US presidential and congressional elections are held, voters get to choose between two pro-war, pro-corporate empowerment, anti-progressive right wings of the one-party state. | Names and faces change, results always the same. Dirty business as usual wins every time — …