Ted Cruz said his Nike boycott was exerting free speech — but says people boycotting Goya are silencing speech

Published on July 11, 2020 By Texas Tribune


The Texas Republican is criticizing calls for a boycott because the Hispanic food company’s CEO praised President Donald Trump.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz on Friday said calls for a boycott of Goya Foods because its CEO praised President Donald Trump were an attempt to “silence free speech.” But one year ago, the Texas Republican encouraged people to boycott Nike after the company halted plans to sell shoes featuring the Betsy Ross flag that some say glorifies slavery and racism, according to NPR.

On Thursday, Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue praised president Donald Trump in a ceremony at The White House. Goya bills itself as America’s largest Hispanic-owned food company.
“We’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump who is a builder, and that’s what my grandfather did,” said Unanue. “He came to this country to build, to grow, to prosper. And so we have an incredible builder, and we pray for our leadership, our president, and we pray for our country that we will continue to prosper and to grow.”

That sparked an immediate reaction on Twitter, where hashtags like #BoycottGoya, #GoyaFoods and #Goyaway began trending. Hispanic leaders, including former Texas congressman and presidential hopeful Julián Castro, responded with anger, noting that the president has villainized and attacked Latinos “for political gain.”

“Free speech works both ways. @Goyafoods CEO is free to support a bigoted president who said an American judge can’t do his job because he’s ‘Mexican’, who treats Puerto Rico like trash, and who tries to deport Dreamers,” Castro tweeted on Friday. “We’re free to leave his products on the shelves. #Goyaway.”

The League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation’s oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization, also defended the boycott.

“GOYA is turning its back on our community to appease a President who attacks and demonizes Latinos daily,” said Domingo Garcia, National President of the League of United Latin American Citizens on a statement on Friday. “I will recommend adoption of a national boycott against GOYA Foods unless Mr. Unanue issues a public apology and formal retraction by 5PM EST Saturday.”
But Cruz criticized the backlash.

“Goya is a staple of Cuban food. My grandparents ate Goya black beans twice a day for nearly 90 years. And now the Left is trying to cancel Hispanic culture and silence free speech,” Cruz tweeted on Friday.

Yet Cruz last year said that he wouldn’t buy any more Nike products, after the brand decided to pull the sneaker designed with the the 13-star Betsy Ross flag. This decision came after former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick “expressed the concern to the company that the Betsy Ross flag had been co-opted by groups espousing racist ideologies,” according to The New York Times.

“I love America. I stand for the anthem, respect the flag & honor the men & women who fought to defend our Nation,” Senator Cruz tweeted in July 2019. “I respect Free Speech & I’m exerting mine: until @Nike ends its contempt for those values, I WILL NO LONGER PURCHASE NIKE PRODUCTS. #WalkAwayFromNike RT if you agree.”

Cruz’s office did not respond to a request for comment late Friday.

In an interview with Fox News on Friday, Unanue said he visited The White House as part as the unveiling of president Trump’s Hispanic Prosperity Initiative, a public-private initiative to promote education and entrepreneurship within the Hispanic community. He called the boycott a “suppression of speech.”

Ex-Acting DHS Secretary: Trump Wanted To Sell Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria

Elaine Duke, the former Acting Director of Homeland Security said President Trump wanted to sell Puerto Rico.

Elaine Duke, the former Acting Director of Homeland Security said President Trump wanted to sell Puerto Rico, according to the New York Times.

New York Times:

Among her most searing moments during the response to the hurricanes came when she heard Mr. Trump raise the possibility of “divesting” or “selling” Puerto Rico as the island struggled to recover.

“The president’s initial ideas were more of as a businessman, you know,” she recalled. “Can we outsource the electricity? Can we can we sell the island? You know, or divest of that asset?”

She said the idea was never seriously considered or discussed after that meeting.

Trump considered selling Puerto Rico: Ex-DHS chief says the president asked ‘can we sell the island?’

#STATEHOOD OR #INDEPENDENCE

July 11, 2020 By Bob Brigham



President Donald Trump’s former acting Secretary of Homeland Security says the leader of the free world considered selling Puerto Rico.

Elaine Duke, who describes herself as a lifelong Republican, spoke with The New York Times in a “wide-ranging interview” about her 14 months working for Trump.

“Among her most searing moments during the response to the hurricanes came when she heard Mr. Trump raise the possibility of ‘divesting’ or ‘selling’ Puerto Rico as the island struggled to recover,” the newspaper reported.

“Can we outsource the electricity? Can we can we sell the island? You know, or divest of that asset?” Trump reportedly asked.

Puerto Rico is an American territory, the island’s three million people are American citizens. The territory’s government estimates that 2,975 Americans were killed by the hurricane.


Duke also said she was not ready to support Trump’s re-election.

“That’s a really hard question,” she said. “But given the choices, I don’t know yet.”

Read the full report.

NYT IS BEHIND PAYWALL

USA
Hate group that took as much as $1 million in pandemic relief appears to have no income or employees

Published July 11, 2020 By Roger Sollenberger, Salon


Organizations listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) received millions of dollars in government-backed Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, according to data from the Small Business Administration.

The Center for Media and Democracy was the first to report on the loans, which went to six nonprofits for a total of somewhere between $2,350,000 and $5,700,000. (The SBA has only disclosed loan amounts in ranges — not exact sums.) The groups will not need to repay the government if they put the money towards payroll and other operational expenses. (Disclosure: Salon received a PPP loan to keep our staff and independent journalism at 100%.)

The loans, which came through in early to mid April, predate the recent nationwide social justice upwelling by several weeks. Since receiving the funds, a number of the organizations have advanced their policy and ideological interests, lobbying the federal government and writing and publishing articles.

The organizations include the anti-Muslim hate group Center for Security Policy; two anti-immigrant hate groups, the Center for Immigration Studies and the Federation for American Immigration Reform; and three organizations designated as anti-LGBTQ hate groups, the American Family Association (AFA), Liberty Counsel and the Pacific Justice Institute.

The largest loan went to the American Family Association, which was allotted between $1 million and $2 million to support 124 jobs.

In an April 27 interview with Fox News’ Ed Henry, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said PPP funds were intended to support companies with 10 employees or fewer.

“The vast majority — as I noted, 1 million of the 1.6 million loans that went out — were companies with 10 or fewer employees,” she said. “That is what this program is designed to do. That is who it is helping.”

In its 2017 tax filing, which is the latest available, the AFA reported revenues exceeding $18.4 million, net assets of about $30 million and compensation expenses of about $8 million. Between 2013 and 2017, the group reported combined revenues in excess of $105 million.

“Many of these groups that traffic in hate are already well-resourced, with a constant injection of funding from far-right mega-donors and dark money foundations,” Imraan Siddiqi, executive director of the Arizona branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told the Center for Media and Democracy. “This just highlights more cases of vital funding getting into the hands of those who didn’t need it, while many small businesses in our communities came up empty and are having to fold.”

The SPLC listed AFA as a hate group in 2010 after former top official Bryan Fischer blamed gay men for the Holocaust. In 2015, two days before Republican National Committee members went on an AFA-sponsored trip to Israel, the group sent SPLC a letter disavowing Fischer’s remarks. However, the organization did not fire Fischer from his radio broadcast.

Right-wing activist David Lane posted an article Tuesday on the AFA website calling antifa and Black Lives Matter an “alliance between the two devils of Nazism and communism.” Lane blamed this on their acceptance of “transgenderism, homosexuality, abortion.”

In another post, Lane claimed that the “duplicity and subterfuge” of antifa and Black Lives Matter could “come close to or may even top the heinous terror outfit ISIS, which ransacked northern Iraq’s historic Christian and Muslim shrines.”

The two other anti-LGBTQ nonprofits which received taxpayer-backed relief are the Liberty Counsel (between $350,000 and $1 million, reportedly retaining no jobs) and the Pacific Justice Institute (between $150,000 and $350,000 to support 17 jobs).

The Liberty Counsel’s 2018 tax filing, the latest available, appears to indicate zero income or expenses, and it also does not list any employees. The group had apparently been operating at a loss for years, and claimed a small deduction. Its affiliate, Liberty Counsel Action, filed the same year for less than $50,000 in receipts.

It is unclear what Liberty Counsel was planning to do with its hundreds of thousands in government loans. A group spokesperson did not answer Salon’s request for comment.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) was founded by white nationalist John Tanton and has ties to senior White House adviser and noted white nationalist Stephen Miller. CIS received a loan worth somewhere between $350,000 and $1 million in support of 15 jobs.

CIS has spent the spring blaming undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Latin America for spreading the coronavirus. The group claimed “border crossers” were responsible for the recent surge in cases — not the state’s botched reopening strategy under the leadership of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

Another Tanton anti-immigrant hate group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), was approved for a loan of up to $1 million, reportedly for 35 jobs.

FAIR’s most recently available IRS filing shows that the group pulled in $12 million in 2018 and more than double that the year before. It spent $3.7 million on salaries and other employee benefits in 2018, with $33.8 million in total net assets.

Per the SPLC, FAIR is “America’s most influential anti-immigrant organization.” This spring, FAIR lobbied the Trump administration on immigration issues. On June 22, President Donald Trump signed an executive order postponing most new work visas for the rest of the year.

The Washington-based Center for Security Policy locked in between $150,000 and $350,000 to put towards 13 employees. The group, which in 2018 reported revenues of $4.2 million and compensation expenses half of that amount, promotes such abominable conspiracy theories about Muslims that it got banned by the right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Most recently, the Center for Security Policy has labeled COVID-19 as “China’s propaganda pandemic,” claiming that Chinese President Xi Jinping “weaponized” the virus in an effort “to attack the United States and divide its leaders.”

China is said to have imprisoned around one million of its Uyghur Muslim population in concentration camps, and has reportedly put about three million Uyghurs through “deprogramming.” Former National Security Adviser John Bolton writes in his White House tell-all that Trump told President Xi to “go ahead with building the camps.”

Undercover in Trumplandia: How I found the limits of patriotism when I infiltrated the Tulsa MAGA rally
Published on July 11, 2020 By Danny Sjursen, Tom Dispatch - Commentary


It was June 20th and we antiwar vets had traveled all the way to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the midst of a pandemic to protest President Trump’s latest folly, an election 2020 rally where he was to parade his goods and pretend all was well with this country.

We never planned to go inside the cavernous arena where that rally was to be held. I was part of our impromptu reconnaissance team that called an audible at the last moment. We suddenly decided to infiltrate not just the perimeter of that Tulsa rally, but the BOK Center itself. That meant I got a long, close look at the MAGA crowd there in what turned out to be a more than half-empty arena.

Our boots-on-the-ground coalition of two national antiwar veteran organizations — About Face and Veterans for Peace (VFP) — had thrown together a rather risky direct action event in coordination with the local activists who invited us.

We planned to climb the three main flagpoles around that center and replace an Old Glory, an Oklahoma state flag, and a Tulsa one with Black Lives-themed banners. Only on arrival, we found ourselves stymied by an eleventh-hour change in the security picture: new gates and unexpected police deployments. Hopping metal barriers and penetrating a sizable line of cops and National Guardsmen seemed to ensure a fruitless trip to jail, so into the under-attended indoor rally we went, to — successfully it turned out — find a backdoor route to those flagpoles.

Once inside, we had time to kill. While others in the group infiltrated and the flagpole climbers donned their gear, five of us — three white male ex-foot soldiers in America’s forever wars and two Native American women (one a vet herself) — took a breather in the largely empty upper deck of the rally. Nervous joking then ensued about the absurdity of wearing the Trump “camouflage” that had eased our entrance. My favorite disguise: a Hispanic ex-Marine buddy’s red-white-and-blue “BBQ, Beer, Freedom” tank top.

The music irked me instantly. Much to the concern of the rest of the team, I’d brought a notebook along and was already furtively scribbling. At one point, we listened sequentially to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” The Beatles’ “Let It Be,” and Queen’s “We Are The Champions” over the arena’s loudspeakers. I couldn’t help but wonder how that black man of, let’s say, complicated sexual orientation, four outspoken British hippies, and a gay AIDs victim (Freddie Mercury) would feel about the way the Trump campaign had co-oped their songs. We can guess though, since the late Tom Petty’s family quickly denounced the use of his rock song “I Won’t Back Down” at the rally.

I watched an older white woman in a “Joe Biden Sucks, Nancy Pelosi Swallows” T-shirt gleefully dancing to Michael Jackson’s falsetto (“But the kid is not my son!”). Given that “Billie Jean” blatantly describes an out-of-wedlock paternity battle and that odds were this woman was a pro-life proponent of “family values,” there was something obscene about her carefree shimmy.

A Contrast in Patriotism

And then, of course, there was the version of patriotism on display in the arena. I’ve never seen so many representations of the Stars and Stripes in my life, classic flags everywhere and flag designs plastered on all manner of attire. Remember, I went to West Point. No one showed the slightest concern that many of the red-white-and-blue adaptations worn or waved strictly violated the statutes colloquially known as the U.S. Flag Code (United States Code, Title 4, Chapter 1).

That said, going undercover in Trumplandia means entering a universe in which it’s exceedingly clear that one political faction holds the flag hostage. They see it as theirs — and only theirs. They define its meaning, its symbolism, and its proper use, not to speak of whom it represents. The crowd, after all, was vanilla. (There were more people of color serving beers than cheering the president.)By a rough estimate, half of the attendees had some version of the flag on their clothing, Trump banners, or other accessories, signaling more than mere national pride. Frequently sharing space with Old Glory were images of (often military-grade) weaponry, skulls (one wearing an orange toupee), and anti-liberal slogans. Notable shirts included: the old Texas War of Independence challenge “Come And Take It!” above the sort of AK-47 assault rifle long favored by America’s enemies; a riff on a classic Nixonian line, “The Silent Majority Is Coming”; and the slanderous “Go To Your Safe Space, Snowflake!”; not to mention a sprinkling of the purely conspiratorial like “Alex Jones Did Nothing Wrong” (with a small flag design on it, too).

The banners were even more aggressive. “Trump 2020: Fuck Your Feelings” was a fan favorite. Another popular one photo-shopped The Donald’s puffy face onto Sylvester Stallone’s muscle-bound physique, a machine gun at his hip. That image, of course, had been lifted from the Reagan-era, pro-Vietnam War film Rambo: First Blood Part II, a fitting accompaniment to Trump’s classically plagiarized Reaganesque rallying cry “Make America Great Again.” Finally, a black banner with pink lettering read “L G B T.” Above the letters, also in pink, were logos depicting, respectively, the Statue of Liberty, a Gun (an M16 assault rifle), a Beer mug, and a profile bust of Donald Trump. Get it?

For our small group of multi-war/multi-tour combat veterans, it was hard not to wonder whether many of these flag-and-weaponry enthusiasts had ever seen a shot fired in anger or sported Old Glory on a right-shoulder uniform sleeve. Though we were all wearing standard black veteran ball-caps and overtly Trump-friendly shirts, several of us interlopers feared the crowd might somehow guess what we actually were. Yet tellingly, the closest we came to outing ourselves — before later pulling off our disguises to expose black “About Face: Veterans Against The War” shirts — was during the national anthem.

Nothing better exemplified the contrast between what I’ve come to think of as the “pageantry patriotism” of the crowd and the more complex “participatory patriotism” of the dissenting vets than that moment. At its first notes — we were still waiting in the arena’s encircling lobby — our whole team reflexively stood at attention, removed our hats, faced the nearest draped flags, and placed our hands upon our hearts. We were the only ones who did so — until, at mid-anthem, a few embarrassed passersby followed our example. Most of the folks, however, just continued to scamper along, often chomping on soft pretzels, and sometimes casting quizzical glances at us. Trumpian patriotism only goes so far.

Our crew was, in fact, rather diverse, but mostly such vets groups remain disproportionately white and male. In fact, one reason local black and native communities undoubtedly requested our attendance was a vague (and not unreasonable) assumption that maleness, whiteness, and veteran’s status might offer their protests some semblance of protection. Nevertheless, my old boss on West Point’s faculty, retired Colonel Gregory Daddis, summed up the limits of such protection in this phrase: “Patriotic” Veterans Only, Please. And just how accurate that was became violently apparent the moment we “unmasked” at the base of those flagpoles.

Approximately three-dozen combat tours braved between us surely didn’t save our nonviolent team from the instant, distinctly physical rancor of the police — or four members of our group from arrest as the climbers shimmied those flagpoles. Nor did deliberately visible veteran’s gear offer any salvation from the instantly jeering crowd, as the rest of us were being escorted to the nearest exit and tossed out. “Antifa!” one man yelled directly into a Marine vet’s face. Truthfully, America’s “thanks for your service” hyper-adulation culture has never been more than the thinnest of veneers. However much we veterans reputedly fought for “our freedom,” that freedom and the respect for the First Amendment rights of antiwar, anti-Trump vets that should go with it evaporates with remarkable speed in such situations.

Three Strands of Veteran or Military Dissent

Still, the intensity of the MAGA crowd’s vitriol — as suggested by the recent hate mail both About Face and I have received — is partly driven by a suspicion that Team Trump is losing the military’s loyalty. In fact, there’s evidence that something is indeed astir in both the soldier and veteran communities the likes of which this country hasn’t seen since the tail end of the Vietnam War, almost half a century ago. Today’s rising doubt and opposition has three main components: retired senior officers, younger combat veterans, and — most disturbingly for national-security elites — rank-and-file serving soldiers and National Guardsmen.

The first crew, those senior officers, have received just about the only media attention, even though they may, in the end, prove the least important of the three. Many of the 89 former defense officials who expressed “alarm” in a Washington Post op-ed over the president’s response to the nationwide George Floyd protests, as well as other retired senior military officers who decried President Trump’s martial threats at the time, had widespread name recognition. They included former Secretary of Defense and retired Marine Corps General Jim (“Mad Dog”) Mattis and that perennial latecomer, former Secretary of State and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell. And yes, it’s remarkable that such a who’s-who of former military leaders has spoken as if with one voice against Trump’s abhorrent and inflammatory recent behavior.

Still, a little caution is in order before canonizing a crew that, lest we forget, has neither won nor opposed a generation’s worth of unethical wars that shouldn’t have been fought. Recall, for example, that Saint Mattis resigned his post not over his department’s complicity in the borderline genocide underway in Yemen or pointlessly escalatory drone strikes in Somalia, but in response to a mere presidential suggestion of pulling U.S. troops out of the quicksand of the Syrian conflict.

In fact, for all their chatter about the Constitution, oaths betrayed, and citizen rights violated, anti-Trumpism ultimately glues this star-studded crew together. If Joe Biden ever takes the helm, expect these former flag officers to go mute on this country’s forever wars waged in Baghdad and Baltimore alike.

More significant and unique is the recent wave of defiance from normally conservative low- to mid-level combat veterans, most, though not all, a generation junior to the attention-grabbing ex-Pentagon brass and suits. There were early signs of a shift among those post-9/11 boots-on-the-ground types. In the last year, credible polls showed that two-thirds of veterans believed the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria “were not worth fighting,” and 73% supported full withdrawal from the Afghan War in particular. Notably, such rates of antiwar sentiment exceed those of civilians, something for which there may be no precedent.

Furthermore, just before the president’s controversial West Point graduation speech, more than 1,000 military academy alumni signed an open letter addressed to the matriculating class and blatantly critical of Trump’s urge to militarily crack down on the Black Lives Matter protests. Mainly ex-captains and colonels who spanned graduating classes from 1948 to 2019, they briefly grabbed mainstream headlines with their missive. Robin Wright of the New Yorker even interviewed and quoted a few outspoken signatories (myself included). Then there was the powerful visual statement of Marine Corps veteran Todd Winn, twice wounded in Iraq, who stood for hours outside the Utah state capitol in the sweltering heat in full dress uniform with the message “I Can’t Breathe” taped over his mouth.

At the left end of the veterans’ community, the traditional heart of antiwar military dissent, the ranks of the organizations I belong to and with whom I “deployed” to Tulsa have also swelled. Both in that joint operation and in the recent joint Veterans for Peace (largely Vietnam alumni)and About Face decision to launch a “Stand Down for Black Lives” campaign — encouraging and supporting serving soldiers and guardsmen to refuse mobilization orders — the two groups have taken real steps toward encouraging multi-generational opposition to systemic militarism. In fact, more than 700 vets publicly signed their names (as I did) to About Face’s provocative open letter urging just such a refusal. There were even ex-service members among the far greater mass of unaffiliated veterans who joined protesters in the streets of this country’s cities and towns in significant numbers during that month or more of demonstrations.

Which brings us to the final (most fear-inducing) strand of such dissent: those in the serving military itself. Their numbers are, of course, impossible to measure, since such resistance can range from the passive to the overt and the Pentagon is loathe to publicize the slightest hint of its existence. However, About Face quickly received scores of calls from concerned soldiers and Guardsmen, while VFP reported the first mobilization refusals almost immediately. At a minimum, 10 service members are known to have taken “concrete steps” to avoid deployment to the protests and, according to a New York magazine investigation, some troops were “reconsidering their service,” or “ready to quit.”

Finally, there’s my own correspondence. Over the years, I’ve received notes from distraught service members with some regularity. However, in the month-plus since George Floyd’s death, I’ve gotten nearly 100 such messages from serving strangers — as well as from several former West Point students turned lieutenants — more, that is, than in the preceding four years. Last month, one of those former cadets of mine became the first West Point graduate in the last 15 years to be granted conscientious objector status. He will complete his service obligation as a noncombatant in the Medical Service Corps. Within 36 hours of that news spreading, a handful of other former students expressed interest in his case and wondered if I could put them in touch with him.

Intersectional Vets

In a moment of crankiness this January, using a bullhorn pointed at the University of Kansas campus, I decried the pathetic student turnout at a post-Qasem Soleimani assassination rally against a possible war with Iran. And it still remains an open question whether the array of activist groups that About Face and Veterans for Peace have so recently stood in solidarity with will show up for our future antiwar endeavors.

Still, the growth across generations of today’s antiwar veterans’ movement has, I suspect, value in itself — and part of that value lies in our recognition that the problem of American militarism isn’t restricted to the combat zones of this country’s forever wars. By standing up for Black lives, pitching tents at Standing Rock Reservation to fight a community-threatening pipeline, and similar solidarity actions, this generation of antiwar veterans is beginning to set itself apart in its opposition to America’s wars abroad and at home.

As both the Covid-19 crisis and the militarization of the police in the streets of American cities have made clear, the imperial power that we veterans fought for abroad is the same one some of us are now struggling against at home and the two couldn’t be more intimately linked. Our struggle is, at least in part, over who gets to define patriotism.

Should the sudden wave of military and veteran dissent keep rising, it will invariably crash against the pageantry patriots of Chickenhawk America who attended that Tulsa rally and we’ll all face a new and critical theater in this nation’s culture wars. I don’t pretend to know whether such protests will last or military dissent will augur real change of any sort. What I do know is what my favorite rock star, Bruce Springsteen, used to repeat before live renditions of his song “Born to Run”: Remember, in the end nobody wins, unless everybody wins.

Danny Sjursen, a TomDispatch regular, is a retired U.S. Army major and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now lives in Lawrence, Kansas. He has written a memoir of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. His latest book, Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War, will be published in September. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet and check out his podcast “Fortress on a Hill.”

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.Copyright 2020 Danny Sjursen

The GOP is a suicide cult
A REALLY DUMB ONE

Published July 11, 2020 By Joshua Holland - Commentary


Welcome to another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other sundry embarrassments coming out of the current White House.

Back in March, we argued that Donald Trump had become the charismatic leader of the dumbest suicide cult ever. 

There were fewer than 500 confirmed cases of Covid-19 at the time, but it wasn’t difficult to see the trajectory we were on at even that early date. At the time, we were commenting on the President’s* repeated claims that the whole thing was a big hoax and polls showing that Democrats were twice as likely as Republicans to say they were taking steps to avoid becoming infected.

As of this writing, after another record-setting day of 66,000 cases being confirmed on Friday, we’re at 3.25 million and there’s no end in sight. While the pandemic initially hit Democratic-leaning areas, that trend has reversed since Trump’s push to re-open on Memorial Day. The Associated Press published a handy chart at the end of June:

The Los Angeles Times reported last week that, “with the COVID-19 pandemic bearing down on red states that had previously been spared, officials in these hot zones are finding their efforts to combat the outbreak undermined by the leader of their own party.”


Many GOP politicians followed the president’s lead in the early months of the crisis by embracing a swift reopening of their economies. Now, as infection rates are surging in several states, these same leaders are ratcheting up their efforts to curb the contagion. But doing so while not contradicting Trump, who continues to forgo wearing a mask in public and broadly downplays the threats of the virus, has proven difficult.

The story goes on to describe how Republican officials are facing an onslaught of harassment and even death threats in response to any effort to require people to wear masks in public or take other measures to contain the outbreak.

Meanwhile, we have other Republican officials urging people to stop getting tested.

Twenty-six state legislators in Mississippi have contracted the disease after weeks of “flout[ing] mask recommendations inside the state Capitol,” where according to CNN, “desks are packed tightly together, and members gather closely to communicate with their colleagues.”

And from The Instant Karma File, a county commissioner in Florida is in critical condition with the disease just days “after voting against a motion to mandate masks for county employees last week.”


The @wisgop‘s doing a bang up job at their #CovidConvention
1. No masks
2. No social distancing
3. Risking other people’s lives
4. Flippantly using the word “holocaust’

We’re only 20 minutes into this.#RPW2020

— Philip Shulman (@PhilipShulman) July 11, 2020

Again, this is all coming from the top. Politico reported this week that in Trump’s Virginia campaign headquarters, staffers are packed tightly together and told that they are only required to wear masks outside the office in case they’re spotted by reporters. “You get made fun of, if you wear a mask,” said one person. “There’s social pressure not to do it.”

And, after Trump’s consistent resistance to using the Defense Production Act to compel companies to produce more PPE, we’re now facing a second shortage. And in the midst of all of this chaos, Trump, having claimed that his own regime’s guidelines for re-opening schools are too onerous, is attempting to coerce state and local governments into packing kids into classrooms for in-person instruction this fall with no plan to do so safely. It’s a total clusterfuck.

And the worst is likely yet to come. On Friday, Dr. William Haseltine, a former professor at Harvard Medical School, told CNN, “all people who study these viruses think that the summer is the quiet time. Think about that. This is the quiet time for coronavirus. If this is the quiet time, I hate to think what winter is going to be like this year.”

*****

In related news, a regime that has made xenophobia its guiding light has turned Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “into a domestic and global spreader of the virus,” according to an investigation by The Marshall Project and The New York Times. Despite “limited testing,” the agency has detained at least 3,000 people who tested positive for the disease, and they’ve refused to quarantine them, flown them around the US and to other parts of the world and under “pressure from the Trump administration” has pushed “countries to take in sick deportees.”

*****

The New York Times reports that when Trump came to power, the Department of Homeland Security relentlessly targeted immigrants, but it has since expanded its focus to become a full-service shop for wingnuttery.


As his re-election campaign turned to a “law and order” theme, the department’s border agents, immigration officers and drones were sent to surveil cities crowded with anti-racism protesters.

Then, in the past few weeks, with the commander in chief striking up a divisive defense of statues and monuments, the department redeployed some of its officers again, this time to guard granite and steel sculptures and property in Seattle; Portland, Ore.; and Washington, D.C.

And on each move, the president has found the warm embrace of Chad F. Wolf, his acting homeland security secretary.

*****

The cruelty is the point.

NPR:

Dozens of foreign nationals working as journalists in the U.S. for Voice of America, the federal government’s international broadcaster, will not have their visas extended once they expire, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.

Those people — each with current or past ties to the agency — said the new CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Michael Pack, signaled he will not approve the visa extensions…

The foreign journalists affected by the visa decision are particularly valued for their language skills, which are crucial to VOA’s mission as an international broadcaster covering news in many countries that do not have a free or robust press.

Over 100 staffers could face deportation, some of them to countries with hostile governments that might retaliate against them for their work.

*****

For years, we’ve documented Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s relentless efforts to deny students who have been ripped off by private colleges relief authorized by Congress.

The New York Times reports that she is now “denying huge batches of relief requests from students whose schools defrauded them. Even those who aren’t denied are getting very little — or sometimes nothing.”

Years of delays and attempts to cut the relief borrowers can receive have prompted dozens of lawsuits against the department. Now, under pressure from federal courts to deal with hundreds of thousands of unresolved claims, the Education Department is processing them — and saying no. More than 45,000 rejection notices have been sent in recent months, according to agency data.

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Trump’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is considering rolling back or eliminating a rule that prevents employers from attempting to decertify a union for three years after a contract is signed. The New Deal-era law barrs deep-pocketed companies from holding election after election until their workers eventually kill their union. [Reuters]

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“Forty lobbyists with ties to President Donald Trump helped clients secure more than $10 billion in federal coronavirus aid, among them five former administration officials whose work potentially violates Trump’s own ethics policy,” according to the AP.

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Nota bene: “Trump calls mail-in ballots ‘dishonest’ but says absentee ballots are ‘fine.’ They’re the same thing.”

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In 2017, an NSC staffer named Rich Higgins was removed from his post after writing a “xenophobic screed alleging that opposition to the Trump administration and its policies was part of a plan to implement ‘cultural Marxism’ by a cabal of ‘deep state’ actors, globalists, bankers, lslamists, and establishment Republicans’ using ‘attack narratives’ which ‘operate in social media, television, the 24-hour news cycle in all media, and are entrenched at the upper levels of the bureaucracies and within the foreign policy establishment.'” according to The Independent. Now, he’s being brought back into the fold–this time in a senior position at the Department of Defense.

The push to install loyal Trumpists and Flynn acolytes in top Pentagon roles… has alarmed current and former NSC and Defense Department officials, who say the situation is emblematic of an administration that encourages unhinged conspiracy theorists at the expense of those loyal to the Constitution….

Another former NSC official who served under the Trump administration said Higgins’ memo was “consistent with the ideology” of the administration and the composition of NSC leadership under Flynn, but added that it was still surprising how “straight-up appalling and bizarre” it was when they actually read it.

“It’s like these individuals are living in a complete alternate reality,” they said, adding that the idea of such people still serving in government was “terrifying” and the fact that Higgins’ ideas made it into a formal memo that reached Trump’s desk “shows how dangerous somebody like that can be”….

The NSC official — who overlapped with Higgins at the NSC — said the threat posed by people like Higgins could turn into a physical threat to the nation’s security.

“His racist views, delusions, and conspiracies, coupled with the fact that he could have the country’s defense forces and military capabilities at his fingertips, is a serious national security threat,” they said. “In my perspective, it’s the same cocktail that results in violent, racist groups like the KKK, and it’s really worrisome that Trump is trying to push someone like him.”

That’s who’s making policy in our powerful military.

Now you can virtually visit Alhamra Art Museum onlineThere are 326 artworks by 118 masters and internationally renowned artists besides the pieces of contemporary art.


The Lahore Arts Council (LHC) has put on its website the visual art collection on display at the Alhamra Art Museum located at Alhamra Cultural Complex Qaddafi Stadium.

There are 326 artworks, including paintings, sculptures, prints and photographs, by 118 masters and internationally renowned artists besides the pieces of contemporary art.

LAC Executive Director Saman Rai says that visual art lovers now have the facility to admire and adore the artworks online.

“This step has been taken owing to the Covid-19 pandemic so that art lovers can enjoy these artworks while sitting at home,” she adds.

The Alhamra Art Museum, which earlier used to be called Permanent Art Gallery founded in 1996, has the artworks of my many leading visual artists such as Abdur Rahman Chughtai, Ustad Allah Bux, Sadequain, Shakir Ali, S Safdar, Hanif Ramay, Collin David, Aslam Kamal, Anna Molka Ahmed and Anwar Jalal Shemza.

The Alhamra museum is the only place in Punjab to exhibit artworks of masters and contemporary artists for students, scholars, researchers and tourists.

Ms Rai says the museum offers a virtual tour for the public, especially the students as its mission is to educate, inspire, empower, and shape the future artists.

“In the view of Covid-19, the LAC’s mission is to deliver education through well-curated virtual tours of the Alhamra Art Museum. The collection of the art museum is for those students who are looking for ways to stay on top of their studies while the schools are closed,” she says, adding that the world’s top museums are also sharing the virtual tours of their collections on social media for the students staying home.

Originally published in Dawn, July 11th, 2020

SCHOOL OPENING CARTOON, DAWN, PAKISTAN

Biden as president will raise Kashmir issue with India, says his adviser

Anwar Iqbal Updated Jul 11 2020 

#KASHMIR IS #INDIA'S #GAZA   #FREEKASHMIR

Democrat president nominee Joe Biden's foreign policy adviser declares that concerns on recent Indian law that discriminates against Muslims will be conveyed to Delhi. — AFP/File

WASHINGTON: The Biden administration, if elected, will raise the issue of Kashmir with India and would also convey its concerns on a recent Indian law that discriminates against Muslims, says the Biden campaign’s foreign policy adviser, Antony Blinken.

In a Thursday afternoon dialogue on American foreign policy at the Hudson Institute, Washington, Blinken also said that the Trump administration’s Iran strategy had “backfired in a massive way”.

Blinken, who is a former deputy national security adviser and deputy secretary of state, has been tasked with drafting the foreign policy of the Biden campaign. As moderator Walter Russel Mead noted, Blinken’s views have become increasingly important because former vice president Joe Biden’s victory in the November election has moved from “a possibility to a likelihood”.

It was Mead who raised the issue of Kashmir in the conversation, pointing out that India had some serious human rights and democracy issues, particularly with Muslims, in Kashmir and elsewhere.

“We obviously have challenges now and real concerns, for example, about some of the actions the Indian government has taken, particularly in cracking down on freedom of movement and freedom of speech in Kashmir, and about some of the laws on citizenship,” said Blinken while responding to the moderator.

Blinken declares that concerns on recent Indian law that discriminates against Muslims will be conveyed to Delhi

“You are always better in engaging with a partner, and with a vitally important one like India, when you can speak frankly and directly about areas where you have differences, even as you are working to build a greater cooperation,” he added.

Blinken said that this would be the Biden administration’s approach while discussing Kashmir and other issues with India because “we have seen evidence that it works”.

Mead noted that while India was a democracy, “it has somewhat a different view of what that might mean than we do”.

Blinken pointed out that while tearing up the US-Iran nuclear agreement in May 2018, the Trump administration claimed that it would negotiate a better deal and the abrogation would make the Middle East a safer place, but it failed to achieve both objectives.

“In fact, the opposite has happened,” said Blinken, adding that the action isolated the US from the partners who helped negotiate the agreement.

“And much more importantly, Iran is restarting dangerous components of its nuclear programme, putting itself in a position where it has a greater capacity to develop a nuclear weapon now than it did when it signed the agreement,” he said.

The Biden administration, he said, would avoid “schizophrenic see-saw” of the Trump administration on Iran, which has brought the world to the brink of a conflict.

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2020

Emirates airline to cut up to 9,000 jobs: report

AFP Jul 11 2020

Emirates plans to fly to 58 cities by mid-August, down from about 157 before the crisis. — Photo: Dubai airport Facebook

Emirates airline has cut a tenth of its workforce during the novel coronavirus pandemic in layoffs that could rise to 15 per cent, or 9,000 jobs, its president said, according to a report on Saturday.

The Middle East's largest carrier, which operates a fleet of 270 wide-bodied aircraft, halted operations in late March as part of global shutdowns to stem the spread of the virus.

It resumed two weeks later on a limited network and plans to fly to 58 cities by mid-August, down from about 157 before the crisis.

However, its president Tim Clark has said previously that it could take up to four years for operations to return to “some degree of normality”, and the airline has been staging rounds of layoffs, as recently as last week, without disclosing numbers.

Before the crisis hit, Emirates employed some 60,000 staff, including 4,300 pilots and nearly 22,000 cabin crew, according to its annual report.

Clark said in an interview with the BBC that the airline had already cut a tenth of its staff and that Emirates “will probably have to let go of a few more, probably up to 15pc”.

A company spokeswoman told AFP the airline had nothing to add to the report.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has said that airlines are in line to make a combined net loss of more than $84 billion this year in the wake of the pandemic crisis, the biggest in the industry's history.

Clark said in the interview that Emirates was “not as badly off as others” but that the crisis hit just as it was “heading for one of our best years ever”.

The Dubai-based airline had reported a bumper 21pc rise in annual profits in March.

THE IMPACT OF COVID-19: HOW PAKISTANI WORKERS ARE LIVING WITH THE NEW REALITY 

Those Pakistanis who have suffered the most from the economic impact of the outbreak are primarily the country's daily wage workers and urban slum dwellers.

SAIYNA BASHIRUPDATED JUN 12 2020

Pakistan is estimated to have faced an economic loss of up to Rs2.5 trillion because of the Covid-19 pandemic in the current fiscal year and government figures project that around three million jobs are expected to be lost in the "initial round" of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Those Pakistanis who have suffered the most from the economic impact of the outbreak on lives and livelihoods are primarily the country's daily wage workers and urban slum dwellers.

This photo essay looks at how workers and their families are struggling through the restrictions and how some of them are finding ways and means to cope with the new reality.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1560876/the-impact-of-covid-19-how-pakistani-workers-are-living-with-the-new-reality