How Many Concussions from Capitalists Can Americans Take?

by Paul Haeder / June 27th, 2022

America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

— Hunter S. Thompson, “September,” Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, p. 413.

Imagine, just how programmed are we, and this is it for an excuse?

So, the electricity will be shaky here, there, and everywhere. The excuse is, of course, supply chain. Ports are cloggged. Container ship chaos. They will not admit to the real reason for economic and spiritual collapse:  CAPITALISM and PRICE gouging. It’s Putin’s fault.

Mass shootings, Roe v. Wade down the drain, empty shelves at hardware and food stores. It’s all Putin’s fault, including the price thieving for these electrical transformers, right? The $6 a gallon for gas in USA and $10 a gallon in Denmark, Putin’s fault. Mindless media midgets, and here we are: Western culture trapped in their own lies, inside their own self-fulfilling nightmares. Or continuous requiems for our dreams!

The lies and the shallow inquiries and the lack of curiosity, right up there with everyone is a used car salesman.

Journalism has always been dead in the mainstream:

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

Which is more or less true. For the most part, they are dirty little animals with huge brains and no pulse.

— Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80s,  November 6, 2003.

But back to other lies, and other lackeys lacking an inquiring mind. Local news from the local rag I publish my columns in, has stories about the local happenings. No pushback, just inverted triangle reporting. Referencing the local Public Utilities District here in Lincoln County:

Like utilities nationwide, Central Lincoln is being greatly challenged by supply chain delays, material shortages and massive cost increases for materials delivered. Demand for electrical supplies is robust, while transportation bottlenecks and raw material constraints are causing us significant concern over our ability to meet construction timelines. As we address these issues, Central Lincoln will strive to maintain supply levels to meet customer needs, while still maintaining emergency inventories.

We’ve all seen supply chain issues impact many aspects of life today. In some cases, lead times for Central Lincoln have increased six fold in the last two years when we’ve placed orders for materials. For example, new residential transformers typically took four months for delivery prior to the pandemic, and now they take between one year to 20 months to arrive. Costs for materials are also soaring — transformers that were $2,500 two years ago are now $15,000 each, and the cost is continuing to increase. This is not an exaggeration. (source)

Read that again: $2,500 for necessary transformers two years ago now SIX times more, at $15,000?

This is what defines USA, Biden, Trump, McConnell, Pelosi, Carson or Maddow, the entire shit show that is the American stupidity show. And how unprepared are we? This is the colonized mind, and this is the state of the American culture, as well as UK’s and Canada’s and EU’s. If all of this were true, and if we were guided (sic) by sane and humane folks, there’d be massive movements and masterful national plans to nationalize industries and rejigger the entire mess of capitalism for a world, a nation, that works for the people.

Now, shifting over to Scott Ritter, military lover, but still, smart.  He’s not on mainstream TV, in mainstream news. Again, the plastic hair and the Botox lips and the grappling girdles on these airhead TV presenters match their plastic brains. Here (below), he talks about how stupid Americans are (about world issues), and that includes what Yanquis do not know or want to know about the Nazi Ukrainians and this special military operation that Russia FINALLY had to unleash on that disgusting Ukraine and that perverted Zelensky and his crew.

But before Scott’s interview, how about  a little black robe insanity. Here we are now, with that un-Supreme Court, doing their shit show decision to get into the uterus of the female persuasion. Eichmanns, one and all.

Imagine that? Supreme (not) Court now determining the legality of obesity, the calories, the sorts of foods, the environmental effects on the male perusasion. Will the male be held criminally libel for what they ingest and what they do to their bodies, their sperm, the RNA?

Let’s be consistent here, perverts?

There is substantial evidence that paternal obesity is associated not only with an increased incidence of infertility, but also with an increased risk of metabolic disturbance in adult offspring. Apparently, several mechanisms may contribute to the sperm quality alterations associated with paternal obesity, such as physiological/hormonal alterations, oxidative stress, and epigenetic alterations. Along these lines, modifications of hormonal profiles namely reduced androgen levels and elevated estrogen levels, were found associated with lower sperm concentration and seminal volume. Additionally, oxidative stress in testis may induce an increase of the percentage of sperm with DNA fragmentation. The latter, relate to other peculiarities such as alteration of the embryonic development, increased risk of miscarriage, and development of chronic morbidity in the offspring, including childhood cancers. (source)

Preparing for American Roe v. Wade protests in DC. Imagine that, Plywood USA. DC Police Gauntlets. AmeriKKKa.

This all connects, really, these issues of local electrical power outages, and war. War against Russia, and, well, local costs soaring: War against the people. Supply chain excuses. Oh, where oh where are those Republican pukes and Democratic pukes serving us, the people? Electrical outages? Check that one failure of leadership for massive deaths and injuries in simple households?

Ritter talks about Nato using nuclear weapons, talks about the stupidity of Americans, and actors and the cultural cancelling.

Here you go, Gonzalo Lira: Israel Provokes Russia

Because I’ve lost access to all my accounts and channels to the SBU (Ukraine’s secret police), I don’t have any way to promote my content—so please be so kind as to share this video with anyone whom you think might learn something. GL

He talks about how Jews, not just Zionists and those in Occupied Palestine, seem to collectively hate Russians. It’s racism, of course, to hate an entire people: Russians? And, will this YouTube be taken down? For the opinion of Lira saying that Jews seem to hate Russians, or, for, another reason?

So, on the Scheer Post, we get all sorts of mixed bag aggregated articles on Russia and Ukraine. Many are like this: “China Will Decide the Outcome of Russia v. the West: Is Putin the Face of the Future or the Final Gasp of the Past?”

John Feffer wrote it, and he is bought and sold — co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is a fellow at the Open Society Foundation and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The original article came from Tom Dispatch. Feffer is self-described Jewish gay.

Look up George Soros and his Open Society Foundation. Look up DSA’s stance on pouring weapons and death into Ukraine. DSA is all for billions of weapons to Ukraine, and billions for ZioLensky to “operate” the Ukraine government, err, Mafia. This is how these pencil necks see their world:

In its attempt to swallow Ukraine whole, Russia has so far managed to bite off only the eastern Donbas region and a portion of its southern coast. The rest of the country remains independent, with its capital Kyiv intact.

No one knows how this meal will end. Ukraine is eager to force Russia to disgorge what it’s already devoured, while the still-peckish invader clearly has no interest in leaving the table.

Here some comments at Scheer Post, pushing back on this guy, and I won’t republish mine:

Robert Sinuhe:

This is what happens when you are seriously ignorant of facts. He seems to know what Mr. Putin is thinking which should prompt Mr. Putin to ask this fellow what he’s thinking. Complete nonsense!

Roger Hoffmann:

What a disappointing read from Scheerpost. As others have already noted the repeated falsehoods (Russiagate) and baseless claims (Russia wants to swallow Ukraine) and others, I won’t waste the time addressing them either.

I will only say that it is apparent that this writer, in stating a narrative that overlaps much with that of Washington and its mouthpieces, seems oblivious to (or else, dishonestly chooses to ignore) much of the actual history of this conflict- the context in which it emerged, the pleas and warnings not only by Russia but of many seasoned U.S. officers from military, Intel and Diplomatic corps alike, and that of Russia-expert western scholars; and the actions of the U.S. since 2014 at least.

My advice to the writer: please don’t write about things that you know so little about, especially if you want to persuade those who’ve taken the time to become informed.

Terrence Bennett:

Tom Dispatch is a now sadly Pro Nazi source for regressives.
I urge Robert Scheer to monitor and reject many former progressives who now appear on organs like the late great Tom Dispatch

So, taking it in the rear? The back alley abortions. The behind the box store automobile trunk deals for prescriptions and diapers. The people have a choice in what money goes here and there? No massive strike, rolling strikes, rebellion? Our lives are gutted more and more each day!

Rents? Is that on the Republicans’ and Democrats’ agenda?

Gerardo Vidal, who has lived in the same apartment in Queens, New York, with his family for 9 years, recently received a $900-a-month rent increase this year.

“It means having to uproot my entire family, given the fact we’re still having a difficult time earning money due to the pandemic and loss of jobs,” said Vidal. “It’s unfair that we are being basically forced out of places we lived in for nine years and that landlords can get away with this.” (source)

We’ll finish with Richard Wolff, on Capitalism and US Empire now that USA-Klanada-EU-UK are dumping their weapons on the world, and then a Brit who has been in Donbass reporting on the ground:

“The Economic, Political and Social Crisis of the United States.” One hour!

Here you go, the Nazi Zio-Zelensky using USA-French-German-Nato weapons to, well, bomb neighborhoods, bomb apartment blocks, bomb universities, bomb bomb bomb, and there are NO military targets in these volleys.

Graham Phillips: “20+ Minutes in Donetsk Under Shelling Just Now – Uncensored, Love Donbass, do what you can to help Donbass.”

Reality therapy. So, those transformers cost so much, uh? How many transformers in Donbass have been imploded by the USA-UK-France-Germany? Keep reading:

“National Security State Censoring of Anti-Imperialist Voices… the Latest Phase of its Long-Term Strategy to Divide and Control the Left” on Dissident Voice, by Stansfield Smith 

These secret US government and CIA operations have been detailed in The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World’s Best Writers, The Cultural Cold War, and AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage?

In 1977 Carl Bernstein revealed CIA interconnections with the big business media. More than 400 journalists collaborated with the CIA, with the consent of their media bosses. Working in a propaganda alliance with the CIA included: CBS, ABC, NBC, Time, Newsweek, New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, United Press International, Miami Herald, Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald Tribune. The New York Times still sends stories to US government for pre-publication approval, while CNN and others now employ national security state figures as “analysts.”

Reuters, BBC, and Bellingcat operate similarly, participating in covert British government funded disinformation programs to “weaken” Russia. This involves collaboration with the Counter Disinformation & Media Development section of the British Foreign Office.

The CIA pays journalists in Germany, France, Britain, Australia and New Zealand to plant fake news. Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the largest German newspapers, showed how the CIA controls German media in Presstitutes: Embedded in the Pay of the CIA. Ulfkotte said the CIA had him plant fake stories in his paper, such as Libyan President Gaddafi building poison gas factories in 2011.

The CIA was closely involved with the long defunct National Students Association and with the trade union leadership. The AFL-CIO’s American Institute of Free Labor Development, received funding from USAID, the State Department, and NED to undermine militant union movements overseas and help foment murderous coups, as against President Allende of Chile (1973) and Brazil (1964), as well as defended the rule of their masters at home. This continues with the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, which receives $30 million a year from NED.

The CIA created publishing houses, such as Praeger Press, and used other companies such as John Wiley Publishing Company, Scribner’s, Ballantine Books, and Putnam to publish its books. It set up several political and literary journals such as Partisan Review. This CIA publishing amounted to over one thousand books, mostly geared to a liberal-left audience, seeking to bolster a third camp left, and undermine solidarity with the once powerful world communist movement.

Ahh, those transformers:

No national movement to, well, nationalize the construction and deployment and installation of these valuable electrical units? Summer, heat, fridges, AC, fans, oxygen machines, well, you get how valuable electricity is and how dangerous disruption of it kill.

No Marshall Plan for that? For clinics in all neighborhoods? Social workers and counselors for millions of students? Aging in place adults, no help for them? All those with Complex PTSD?

Again, one little Oregon County, and, shit-show number 9,999,999, coming to a city-town-county-place near-by.

Footnote: So, I went to pick up some vital medications at the Walgreens in Newport. Lo and behold, that electrical outage a few days ago fried the Walgreens’ computer — here, in Newport, and then, in Lincoln City. So, there were  people lined up, freaked out since some of their meds are, well, life saving. That’s it for America, and it will only get worse as I wait in a line of 20 at the small USPS office in Waldport, where signs say, “Don’t leave junk mail here since we do not have a janitor . . .  We are short staffed so we have to cut Saturday pick up window services . . . Please be patient as we are understaffed.”

USPS, and Trump and Biden. Whew! Ben Franklin is turning in his grave. The light is out on his kite. Remember, USPS is a public service, and it is one foot in the grave:

What this report finds: The United States Postal Service is a beloved American institution that provides an essential public service to communities and good middle class jobs for workers. It is a model of efficiency and responsive to changing customer needs. But the conflicting demands made upon it by Congress and regulators put it in a precarious financial position even before the pandemic. Anti-government ideologues and special interests have long sought to privatize, shrink, or hobble the Postal Service. The Trump administration revived these efforts, spurred by the president’s opposition to mail voting and his animus toward Amazon, a major customer.

What needs to be done: The Biden administration and Congress must act to undo the damage and allow the Postal Service to adapt to meet unmet needs, including the revival of postal banking. (source)

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Paul Haeder's been a teacher, social worker, newspaperman, environmental activist, and marginalized muckraker, union organizer. Paul's book, Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber (2016), looks at 10 years (now going on 17 years) of his writing at Dissident Voice. Read his musings at LA Progressive. Read (purchase) his short story collection, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam now out, published by Cirque Journal. Here's his Amazon page with more published work Amazon. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul's website.

Troops on the Ground Prove Canada is at War with Russia

by Yves Engler / June 27th, 2022

Canada is at war with Russia. But the government doesn’t want to talk about it.

On Saturday the New York Times reported that Canadian special forces are part of a NATO network providing weapons and training to Ukrainian forces. The elite troops are also in the country gathering intelligence on Russian operations.

The Department of National Defence refused Ottawa Citizen military reporter David Pugliese’s request for comment on the US paper’s revelations. But in late January Global News and CTV reported that the usually highly secretive special forces were sent to Ukraine. (Canadian special forces have been dispatched secretly to many war zones.)

Alongside special forces, an unknown number of former Canadian troops have been fighting in Ukraine. There have been a bevy of stories about Canadians traveling to Ukraine to join the fight and organizers initially claimed over 500 individuals joined while the Russian government recently estimated that 600 Canadians were fighting there (Both the Canadian organizers and Moscow would have reasons to inflate the numbers). Early on, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly and Defence Minister Anita Anand both encouraged Canadians to join the fight, which may have violated Canada’s Foreign Enlistment Act.

Top commanders have also joined the war. After more than 30 years in the Canadian Forces lieutenant-general Trevor Cadieu retired on April 5 (amidst a rape investigation) and was in Ukraine days later. At one-point Cadieu was favoured to lead the Canadian Forces.

On Saturday a number of media outlets reported that former Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier is heading a strategic advisory group supporting and advising Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Force. The mandate of the Hillier led council is to equip Ukraine’s 100,000-member volunteer reserve force.

Over the past four months Ottawa has delivered or allocated over $600 million in weapons to Ukraine. They’ve sent 20,000 artillery shells, 4,500 M72 rocket launchers, 7,500 hand grenades, a hundred Carl-Gustaf M2 anti-tank weapons, thousands of rounds of ammunition, light armoured vehicles and other arms to fight Russia.

Canada has also adopted an unprecedented sanctions regime on Russia. According to Politico, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland led the international charge to freeze over $300 billion in Russian Central Bank assets. Ottawa is also leading the international campaign to seize Russian assets and give them to Ukraine.

Ottawa has offered more than two billion dollars in direct assistance to the Ukrainian government since the start of the year. Under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund Canada instigated the multi-donor Administered Account for Ukraine. A sizable share of Canada’s assistance has gone to prosecuting the war.

Ottawa has also put up millions of dollars for the International Criminal Court to investigate Russian officials and has labeled Russia’s war a “genocide”. Canadian officials have repeatedly described the conflict as a fight for freedom while openly spurning peace negotiations.

The past four months of fighting should be viewed — at least in part — as an escalation in a eight years US/UK/Canada proxy war with Russia. Canadians greatly assisted Ukrainian forces fighting in a conflict that saw 14,000 killed in the Donbas before Russia’s illegal invasion.

Canada played a significant role in arming and training the Ukrainian military long before Russia’s brutal February 24 invasion. The federal government spent $900 million to train Ukrainian forces following the Canadian-backed overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. Between April 2015 and February 2022 Canadian troops — rotated every six months — trained 33,346 Ukrainian soldiers as part of Operation UNIFIER. Canadian military trainers helped restore Ukraine’s “decrepit” army prompting former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to dub former Canadian defence minister Jason Kenney “the godfather of the modern Ukrainian army” due to his role in instigating Operation Unifier.

UNIFIER reinforced Ukrainian forces fighting in the east and enabled Kyiv to avoid its commitments under the Minsk II peace accord, which was overseen by France and Germany in February 2015. When UNIFIER was launched the Russian Embassy in Ottawa released a statement labeling the mission a “deplorable” move “to assist the military buildup playing into the hands of ‘party of war in Kiev’”, which was their pejorative description for Poroshenko’s government.

Prior to the February 24 Russian invasion, the US and UK had also spent billions of dollars training and arming the Ukrainian military. The CIA ran a secret training program in Ukraine and over the past four months the agency has helped direct Ukrainian war efforts. Over the past few months, the US, UK and other NATO states have plowed tens of billions of dollars of weaponry into the country.

While more details on the scope of Western involvement will likely emerge in the coming months and years, there is enough information in the public record to conclude that Canada’s indeed at war in Ukraine. Further escalation is likely, particularly with Lithuania’s recent blockade of the Russian territory of Kalingrad. The 700 Canadian troops leading a NATO mission in Latvia will be on the frontline if fighting spreads to the Baltic states.

Despite facts on the ground, there’s been no vote in Parliament about whether it’s a good idea for Canada to go to war with a nuclear armed state.

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Yves Engler is the author of 12 books. His latest is Stand on Guard For Whom? — A People’s History of the Canadian Military.  Read other articles by Yves.

Covid Deaths in the US (over 1 million) and China (about 5000)

“History Should Judge Us” – and it will

by John V. Walsh / June 27th, 2022

In May and June of 2022 two milestones were passed in the world’s battle with Covid and were widely noted in the press, one in the US and one in China. They invite a comparison between the two countries and their approach to combatting Covid-19.

The first milestone was passed on May 12 when the United States registered over 1 million total deaths (1,008,377 as of June 19, 2022, when this is written) due to Covid, the highest of any country in the world. Web MD expressed its sentiment in a piece headlined: “US Covid Deaths Hit 1 Million: ‘History Should Judge Us.’”

Second, on June 1, China emerged from its 60-day lockdown in Shanghai in response to an outbreak there, the most serious since the Wuhan outbreak at the onset of the pandemic. The total number of deaths in Mainland China since the beginning of the epidemic in January 2020 now stands at a total of 5226 as of June 19,2022.

To put that in perspective, that is 3042 deaths per million population in the US versus 3.7 deaths in China due to Covid. 3042 vs. 3.7! Had China followed the same course as the US, it would have experienced at least 4 million deaths. Had the US followed China’s course it would have had only 1306 deaths total!

The EU did not fare not much better than the US with 2434 deaths per million as of June 19.

When confronted with these numbers, the response of the Western media has all too often been denial that China’s numbers were valid. But China’s data have been backed by counts of excess deaths during the period of the pandemic as the New York Times illustrated in a recent article. Actually this is old news. The validity of China’s numbers, as shown by counts of excess deaths, was validated long ago in a February 2021 study by a by a group at Oxford University and the Chinese CDC. This was published in the prestigious BMJ (British Medical Journal) and discussed in detail here.

What about the economy?

Clearly China put the saving of lives above the advance of the economy with its “dynamic zero Covid policy.” But contrary to what was believed in the West at the time, saving lives also turned out to be better for the economy, as shown in the following data from the World Bank:

During the first year of the pandemic, 2020, China’s economy continued to grow albeit at a slower rate. In contrast the US economy contracted dramatically, dropping all the way back, not simply to 2019 levels, but to pre-2018 levels!

Interestingly the plot also shows the year that the Chinese PPP-GDP surpassed that of the United States, 2017, heralding a new era for the Global South.

The World Bank has not yet released data for 2021, but the IMF has PPP-GDP data for 2021 shown here. The U.S. economy grew at 5.97 percent and China’s at 8.02 percent. Unlike the World Bank data shown in the graph above for the years up to 2020, these data for 2021 are not corrected for inflation which for 2021 ran at 4.7% in the U.S. whereas China’s was 0.85%. So China’s growth would be even greater in comparison to the US, were inflation taken into account.

The bottom line is that for the first two years of the pandemic through 2021, China’s growth was always positive and greater than that of the US. China’s policy not only saved lives but protected the economy. Win-win, one might say.

Is China’s dynamic zero Covid policy “sustainable”in the face of the Omicron variant? The Shanghai Lockdown.

The period of the recent Shanghai lockdown which we can date from April 1, 2022, ended on June 1, and was the second largest outbreak in China since the original outbreak in January, 2020, in Wuhan. Each resulted in major lockdowns, the first in Wuhan lasted about 76 days and the second in Shanghai about 60 days. The first in Wuhan was due to the original variant and the second was due to the much more infectious Omicron.

During the recent lockdown in Shanghai, the Western press was awash with proclamations, all too many laced with an unseemly Schadenfreude, that China’s dynamic Zero Covid policy was not sustainable. This is all too reminiscent of decades of predictions that China’s extraordinary success in developing its economy to number one in the world in terms of PPP-GDP was a passing phase, a Ponzi Scheme that was – what else – “not sustainable. Recently the same press has gone silent, always a sign that China has met with success. So what are the results?

The Shanghai Lockdown ended on June 1 and from that day until today, June 19, there have been no deaths due to Covid on the Chinese Mainland. Cases nationwide are also way down to 183 per day from the peak of 26,000 on April 15. That was the largest number of cases in a single day for the entire period of the pandemic in China. For comparison, the peak in the US was 800,000 in a single day.

Both the Wuhan and Shanghai lockdowns demanded sacrifices and patience over the roughly two-month period for each. However, these difficulties are generally exaggerated In the West and based on anecdotes of the worst of the difficulties encountered. Such sordid journalism reached rock bottom in a NYT piece equating China’s hard working health care workers to Adolph Eichmann!

As an antidote to this kind of hit piece and to gain a feeling of life in the cities that were under lockdown during the Wuhan outbreak, Peter Hessler’s March, 2020, account in the New Yorker, “Life on Lockdown in China,” is enlightening and will dispel many misconceptions. Hessler was living and teaching in Chengdu, Sichuan, at the time.

For the moment China’s approach has succeeded although we cannot say what the future holds. But the public health measures that have worked so well in Mainland China should not be lightly dismissed let alone be the subject of mean-spirited attacks. Such measures may be a means of saving millions of lives when the next variant or the next pandemic strikes.

The US Needs a People’s Tribunal on the Handling of Covid-19.

Turning again to the US, what does it say when the US, one of the richest nations in the world, spending over $1 trillion a year on its “national security” budget, could not muster the means to deal with Covid-19 and ended up with more deaths than any other nation on earth? China’s handling of the pandemic certainly shows a completely different outcome is possible. The US death toll was not an inescapable act of nature.

That being so, should there not be a People’s Tribunal to investigate those in charge in the US government over the course of three administrations? That, and not an official white wash, is certainly needed? And should not punishment appropriate for a crime against humanity be meted out? The one million dead deserve no less.

ohn V. Walsh, until recently a Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, has written on issues of peace and health care for Dissident Voice, Asia Times, San Francisco Chronicle, EastBayTimes/San Jose Mercury News, LA Progressive, Antiwar.com, CounterPunch and others. Read other articles by John V..

ICYMI

Trump White House ‘Destroyed Any Cohesion’ During COVID-19 Response, Dr. Birx Says

By Maggie Valenti @maggievalenti0
06/24/22 

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator under former President Donald Trump, stated that her former boss and members of his administration “destroyed any cohesion” when it came to their pandemic response, in new testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis Thursday.

In the testimony, Birx clarified that the former President was not the only culprit, and indicated he had surrounded himself with people who fed into the idea that they could work to contain the virus.

"It wasn’t just the president, many of our leaders were using words like ‘we could contain’," Birx told the committee. "You cannot contain a virus that cannot be seen . . . and it wasn’t being seen because we weren’t testing."

Birx also pointed to a moment from Trump's press conference on April 23, 2020, when he suggested that people should inject themselves with disinfectant to treat COVID-19.

That "illustrates clearly that people were communicating with the President dangerous ideas," she said. "These were coming into the White House on a daily basis from different individuals and I wasn’t there for a majority of those discussions."

She spent much of her testimony focusing on Dr. Scott Atlas, who promoted the idea that letting COVID spread in the U.S. population would be a good thing. His presence undermined the U.S. pandemic response and jeopardized public health, Birx confirmed. Atlas also suggested slowing down or stopping testing efforts ahead of the 2020 election.

She said his actions, and the actions of others, "certainly destroyed any cohesion in the response in the White House itself," by promoting the idea that "anything could be right and nothing was absolutely right."

However, Birx pointed out that most of the science supports lockdowns, masks, and vaccination campaigns as effective responses to pandemics.

"When you no longer agree on what is actually happening in the country and what needs to be done, and there’s not consensus on that, then you lose the ability to execute in the maximum efficient and effective way," she added.

She estimated that if the Trump White House directed an optimal response to COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic, 2020-2021, it is possible that 130,000 more people would still be alive.

US President Donald Trump and government coordinator Dr Deborah Birx lay out the plan for reopening the economy 

Photo: AFP / MANDEL NGAN

Pennsylvania: Charter School Money Heist

by Shawgi Tell / June 25th, 2022

For some time now, public school superintendents in Pennsylvania, as well as the governor of that state and many others, have been striving to restrict the charter school money grab that has been allowed to run amok in that state for years.

Cyber charter schools in particular, notorious for consistently abysmal academic results and for being even more corrupt than brick-and-mortar charter schools, have come under fire because they receive large sums of public funds that are vastly disproportionate to their needs, functions, and claims. Overhead costs in cyber charter schools, it should be noted, are much lower than overhead costs in brick-and-mortar public schools and brick-and-mortar charter schools, but the flawed funding system essentially treats cyber charter schools like brick-and-mortar schools. Virtual charter schools also provide fewer services and resources than brick-and-mortar public schools, which can be especially problematic for students with special needs. All of this is beside the fact that charter schools have no legitimate claim to public money in the first place because they are not public entities in the proper sense of the word. Charter schools are privatized deregulated schools run by unelected private persons. Unlike public schools, charter schools are not agencies of the state and differ from public schools in profound ways. Charter school promoters, moreover, openly espouse “free market” ideology.

At a recent press conference addressing the siphoning of large sums of public funds from public schools to privately-operated charter schools, Christopher Dormer, superintendent of the Norristown school district, said that, “today is an attack on a law that is broken, with skewed formulas that have resulted in drastic overpayments to charters, with little or no oversight on how those tax dollars are being spent” (emphasis added). Dormer added:

I’ll tell you, it does not cost $14,000 per year to educate a child in a fully virtual environment’, referring to what Norristown pays per student attending cyber charters. In contrast, he said, it costs the district $5,500 to educate a student fully online.

In the Perkiomen Valley school district:

costs for sending students to charters have grown by more than 55% since 2015, said Superintendent Barbara Russell. ‘That takes money away from the students attending in our school district’, Russell said. While the district has its own virtual learning programs, the money it must pay for students to attend cyber charter schools where the accountability looks very different … raises lots of questions’. (emphasis added)

Virtual charter schools in Pennsylvania also exploit the public by self-servingly reclassifying many students as “special education” students just to seize more public funds from public schools that are chronically under-funded. For example:

Bill Harner, the Quakertown Community School District superintendent, said one-third of students in his district who enroll in cyber charters are classified by their new schools as having a disability. “Why are they being reclassified? Because it’s a cash cow,” Harner said. “It’s a terrible waste of taxpayer dollars.”

Larry Feinberg, a veteran school board member and director of the Keystone Center for Charter Change, points out that the existing charter school funding system means “fewer resources to pay for things like math coaches, reading coaches, nurses, counselors” in public schools. “The impact is palpable, and it’s real.”

Charter school funding arrangements (in Pennsylvania and elsewhere) are so dysfunctional that they also often force higher property taxes on communities where they exist. Equally worrisome, charter schools also impose huge “stranded costs” on public schools, which are “expenses that school districts can’t recoup when students leave for a charter, because they can’t evenly reduce teachers or building expenses, for instance.”

It thus comes as no surprise that:

More than 430 of Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts have passed a resolution calling for charter funding changes, according to the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.

Many other examples of antisocial funding arrangements can be given. The issue though is not to determine a “more fair” way to funnel public money to privately-operated charter schools, but rather to discuss and analyze in a serious manner why these outsourced deregulated schools exist in the first place and how to untether them from public funds, assets, facilities, and resources that legitimately belong only to public schools.

Within this, what also needs to be discussed is the neoliberal “starve it—test it—punish it—privatize it” (STPP) formula, whereby thousands of public schools in Pennsylvania and elsewhere have been deliberately set up by neoliberals to fail and close in an unconscionable manner so as to make way for thousands of poor-performing charter schools constantly mired in scandal and controversy.

Two other key points are worth considering. First, like private businesses, cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania collectively spend millions of public dollars every year on marketing and advertising instead of spending this public money directly in the classroom. Secondly, why do charter schools need to advertise at all if so many parents supposedly want to enroll their kids in them and there are said to be long waiting lists to get into them? The neoliberal narrative about school-choice has never computed.

Not surprisingly, while superintendents and public interest advocates in Pennsylvania are seeking broad reforms to the current defective school funding set-up, advocates of privately-operated charter schools are fighting tooth and nail for every single public cent they can seize. They have little sympathy for public schools and their students.

To be sure, major problems caused by funneling public funds to privately-operated nonprofit and for-profit charter schools is a national problem and not unique to Pennsylvania. For more than 30 years, public schools in America have been undermined by these crisis-prone contract schools run by unelected private persons.

“Free market” schools do not advance people, society, or the economy; they mainly enrich a handful of individuals and groups. The commodification of education in a modern society based on mass industrial production is profoundly counterproductive.

See here for a detailed article on the unbreakable connection between government and charter school millionaires and lobbyists. Preventing charter schools from privately expropriating public property is doable and necessary. No one has to settle for such theft of public wealth by narrow private interests.

There are 179 charter schools in Pennsylvania. Cyber charter schools serve the entire state.

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Shawgi Tell is author of the book Charter School Report Card. He can be reached at stell5@naz.edu.. Read other articles by Shawgi.

Kuwait affirms support to UNRWA: “Cornerstone of regional stability”
 

NEW YORK: Kuwait's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Mansour Al-Otaibi speaks during the Ad Hoc Committee meeting of the General Assembly for the Announcement of Voluntary Contributions to UNRWA. - KUNA

NEW YORK/AMMAN: Kuwait has affirmed its firm support to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and its objectives, as it is a cornerstone of stability in the region. This came in a speech delivered by Kuwait’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Mansour Al-Otaibi during a recent meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee of the General Assembly for the Announcement of Voluntary Contributions to UNRWA. Kuwait’s latest show of support was in October of 2021 as it pledged $21.5 million for the agency to support Palestinian refugees, as well as two million dollars designated for the agency’s regular budget.

Otaibi commented that Kuwait’s support to UNRWA’s work stems from its firm belief in the fairness of the Palestinian cause and the agency’s pivotal role in alleviating the suffering of Palestinian refugees. He added that Kuwait is following the agency’s unprecedented political and financial challenges with great concern, calling on the international community to take a solid stance in supporting work of agency.

‘Very essential’

Otaibi went on to say that the agency’s work is now more essential than ever as coronavirus pandemic took the world by storm, paralyzing all flanks of life and affecting people and countries involved in political and military conflicts, with Palestinians at the helm.

He reiterated Kuwait’s support to the reformative path the agency is taking, and its efforts in bolstering transparency, commending its priorities as it works on updating its internal affairs, including digitalization, governance, decentralizing decision-making and abiding by principles of objectivities.

Otaibi also hailed UNRWA’s commitment to insuring a stable, sustained and diverse financing base via working with international institutions, global funds, and private sector. Moreover, Otaibi stated that clear political support to the agency is not a matter of dispute but is essential to helping it carry on its humanitarian activities.

Donors pledge $160 million

Donor countries have pledged $160 million for UNRWA to finance essential services provided to Palestinian refugees in West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. “The amounts pledged today will go straight to fund education, health and social protection services to Palestine refugees,” said UNRWA Commissioner-General Phillippe Lazzarini in a press release on Friday. “They will also be used to purchase food and deliver cash assistance to the most vulnerable Palestine refugees.”

The pledges were made at a Pledging Conference held at the United Nations General Assembly in the presence of the Secretary-General. The conference brought together dozens of nations to address the Agency’s funding gap, which remains substantial despite the pledges announced. The UN Agency unveiled that with the confirmed contributions and those that are forecast over the summer, it expects a shortfall of over $100 million on its core budget.

But even with today’s contributions, it will be very challenging to reconcile the requirements of the mandate, the immense hardships of Palestine refugees and the funding shortage that remains,” Lazzarini added. The Agency pointed out that it will continue its immense efforts to mobilize the funds it needs to keep essential services running until the end of the year. “I truly hope that today’s pledges will encourage other partners to step up and provide additional crucial assistance,” Lazzarini said.

Refugees’ aid

In other news, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Jordan and Kuwait’s Sheikh Abdullah Al-Nouri Charity Society renewed their partnership deal, which provides relief for nearly 2,100 Syrian refugee families worth $500,000.

The UN refugee agency honored the visiting delegation from the registered Kuwaiti charity, headed by Board Chairman Jamal Abdulkhaleq Al-Nouri, for their efforts targeting displaced Syrians at several refugee camps in Jordan. The event saw UNHCR Deputy Representative Carolyn Ennis praise the support provided by the charity to the agency’s endeavors, reiterating pride in their partnership, which aims to support efforts to alleviate the suffering of the refugees. – KUNA