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This evening's music features country blues musicians Martin, Bogan & Armstrong. Enjoy!

“We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity.”

-- Fred Hampton

News and Opinion

‘State-sanctioned violence’: US police fail to meet basic human rights standards

Police in America’s biggest cities are failing to meet even the most basic international human rights standards governing the use of lethal force, a new study from the University of Chicago has found. Researchers in the university’s law school put the lethal use-of-force policies of police in the 20 largest US cities under the microscope. They found not a single police department was operating under guidelines that are compliant with the minimum standards laid out under international human rights laws.

Among the failings identified by the law scholars, some police forces violate the requirement that lethal force should only be wielded when facing an immediate threat and as a last resort. Some departments allow deadly responses in cases of “escaping suspects”, “fugitives”, or “prevention of crime” – all scenarios that would be deemed to fall well outside the boundaries set by international law. In other cities, police guidelines failed to constrain officers to use only as much force as is proportionate to the threat confronting them.

Remarkably, the researchers from the law school’s international human rights clinic discovered that none of the 20 police departments were operating under state laws that were in accord with human rights standards. America’s biggest police forces lack legality, the study finds, because they are not answerable to human rights compliant laws authorizing the use of lethal force. ...

The Chicago researchers conclude too much deadly discretion is given to police officers in the US. The use of force, they say, is a form of “state-sanctioned violence” that society only grants police officers as part of their responsibility “to protect public safety and enforce the law when necessary”. ...

The need for restrictions on police power has been recognized in international law for 40 years. Two basic human rights are involved: the right to life and personal security, and the right of freedom from discrimination. Those rights have also been enshrined in core United Nations standards. All 193 member nations of the UN, including the US, have signed up to a code of conduct for law enforcement officials adopted in 1979.

Brandon Saenz: Dallas Protester Lost an Eye After Police Shot Him with "Less Lethal" Projectile

The NYPD Cop in a Viral Chokehold Video Has Been Suspended Without Pay

The New York City cop who appeared to use a banned chokehold while detaining a Black man in a viral video Sunday, as onlookers shouted in protest, has been suspended without pay. The officer, who was identified by the New York Daily News and other local media outlets as David Afanador, was one of several seen in the video attempting to detain 35-year-old Ricky Bellevue, who has a history of mental illness, according to family members. ...

The New York City Council just passed a law last week making it a criminal misdemeanor for an officer to use a chokehold during an arrest, regardless of the level of injury that chokehold may have inflicted. And a new state law named for Eric Garner — a man who died after a New York City cop put him in a chokehold in 2014 — deemed the technique a felony offense if the officer gravely injured or killed a person in the course of using it. While chokeholds have long been banned in the city, the new measures add layers of potential punishment for rule-breaking cops.

Additionally, anti-racist protests against police brutality and calls to defund departments continue in New York City and elsewhere; demonstrations against Bellevue’s arrest cropped up in Queens Sunday night. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd — who died after an officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes, sparking nationwide demonstrations — other cities have also banned chokeholds, including Minneapolis, where Floyd died. The bans are already having an impact. Two Indiana police officers were recently placed on administrative leave for using a chokehold during the course of an arrest just days after their city banned neck restraints.

Krystal Ball: Biden backs Venezuelan coup, showing how Neocons ALWAYS win

Biden And His Ventriloquists Keep Out-Hawking Trump

Joe Biden keeps trying to out-warmonger Donald Trump, and by Joe Biden I of course mean the team of handlers who are animating the dementia-ravaged corpse of the Biden campaign like a ventriloquist operating a wooden dummy.

In response to Trump suggesting an openness to scaling back his administration’s murderous Venezuela policy and meeting with President Nicolás Maduro, whoever runs Biden’s Twitter account for him seized upon the moment to assert that the former vice president will be doing no such thing if elected commander-in-chief.

“Trump talks tough on Venezuela, but admires thugs and dictators like Nicolas Maduro,” tweeted Biden Incorporated. “As President, I will stand with the Venezuelan people and for democracy.”

“Translation: if Trump retreats from his current policy of trying to sanction and suffocate Venezuelan into submission, Biden will make sure to revive it,” journalist Aaron Maté said in response.

“To be clear, Joe Biden is now attacking Donald Trump from the right on Venezuela,” said journalist Walker Bragman.

As FAIR.org’s Alan MacLeod accurately observed last year, this phrase “the Venezuelan people” is only ever invoked by the political/media class of the US-centralized empire for sloganeering purposes in support of US-led regime change interventionism in that nation, despite an overwhelming majority of Venezuelans opposing all US interventionism including sanctions.

This tactic of attacking Donald Trump for being insufficiently warlike is nothing new for Biden Inc, nor is it limited to Venezuela.

During the primary debates Biden attacked Trump for being insufficiently hawkish toward North Korea, claiming the president was wrong to meet with Kim Jong Un because it gives the leader “legitimacy”, whatever that means.

An April Biden campaign ad accused the president of being too soft on China by failing to force Beijing to allow US government officials into Wuhan to monitor the governing of a sovereign nation during a pandemic outbreak.

“Trump praised the Chinese 15 times in January and February as the coronavirus spread across the world,” says the ad’s narrator in an ominous voice. “Trump never got a CDC team on the ground in China. And the travel ban he brags about? Trump let in 40,000 travelers from China into America after he signed it. Not exactly airtight.”

Biden has attacked Trump’s partial troop withdrawal from Syria, using talking points from the so-called war on terror to absurdly claim during a primary debate that the president is putting America at risk of a terrorist strike from ISIS.

“We have ISIS that’s going to come here,” Biden said. “They are going to damage the United States of America. That’s why we got involved in the first place.”

And of course Biden & Co have been attacking Trump for being too soft on Russia, despite this administration’s many, many dangerously hawkish new cold war escalations against Moscow.

“We need a President who will stand up to the Kremlin, push back against Putin, and take immediate steps to ensure the security of our elections,” Biden’s Twitter account said last year.

This line of attack is so ubiquitous in the Biden campaign that it sometimes just takes the form of a vague, general swipe at Trump’s unwillingness to be more warlike, with an April tweet reading simply “Donald Trump says he’s a wartime president — it’s time for him to act like one.”

Again, this is Donald Trump these people are talking about. The same president who imprisoned Julian Assange for exposing US war crimes, killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans with starvation sanctions, vetoed attempts to save Yemen from US-backed genocide, is working to foment civil war in Iran using starvation sanctions and CIA ops with the stated goal of effecting regime change, nearly started a full-scale war with Iran by assassinating its top general, occupied Syrian oil fields and implemented devastating sanctions with the goal of preventing Syria’s reconstruction, greatly increased the number of troops in the Middle East and elsewhere, greatly increased the number of bombs dropped per day from the previous administration, killing record numbers of civilians, and reduced military accountability for those airstrikes.

The second-to-last thing the world needs is political pressure placed on Donald fucking Trump to be more warlike. The very last thing the world needs is a US president who ends up being even more warlike than Trump.

America is a war machine on top of a police state on top of a mass media psyop. Only people who are willing to keep these psychopathic mechanisms in place are permitted to ascend to presidential candidacy. While all the news cameras focus on the relatively minor differences between presidents and presidential candidates, you can learn a lot more about America and what drives it by looking at their similarities.

Interesting, worth a full read:

How Bolton, Netanyahu and Pompeo sabotaged Trump’s dream of talks with Iran

Benjamin Netanyahu is mentioned over 30 times in John Bolton’s new book, “The Room Where it Happened,” which details his tumultuous 18 months working as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. Most of the references to the Israeli prime minister are short descriptions of conversations between Netanyahu and Bolton regarding Iran, containing very little new or significant information.

One story Bolton tells in more detail, however, reveals how Netanyahu – together with Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – reportedly sabotaged Trump’s attempts to open diplomatic channels with Tehran last summer. Bolton recounts this story with pride, and hints that the efforts by himself and Pompeo, with Netanyahu’s backing, stopped Trump from going for a broader U.S.-Iran deal, which was being pushed at the time by French President Emmanuel Macron. The events Bolton describes happened in the lead-up to his own ouster from the White House. First, in June 2019, Trump surprised and disappointed Bolton and the other Iran hawks in his administration by canceling, at the last moment, a military strike against Iranian targets in retaliation for an Iranian attack on a U.S. military drone. Bolton describes that event as one of the most unprofessional decisions he had ever witnessed in his career in national security.

Later that summer, as tensions with Iran continued to rise, Macron began to offer Trump his help as a mediator between the two countries. His grand plan, according to Bolton, was for Trump to meet with a senior Iranian official in late August in the French coastal town of Biarritz, as France was hosting a meeting of the G-7 countries with the American president in attendance. Bolton writes how he and Pompeo, the administration’s two most prominent Iran hawks, both worked during the summer to scuttle Macron’s diplomatic efforts and convince Trump to reject any proposal. But Macron, he explains, surprised them by inviting Mohammad Javad Zarif to the G-7 gathering, opening the door for a potential meeting between Iran’s foreign minister and Trump. ...

Bolton writes that when Trump arrived in Biarritz in August, he had an unscheduled one-on-one meeting with Macron, during which Iran was the sole topic under discussion. According to Bolton, Trump later described that conversation as “the best hour and a half he’d ever spent.” The next day, rumors about Zarif’s imminent arrival in southern France began to surface. ... After [a] call with Pompeo, Bolton heard from Trump’s personal staff that Macron had invited the president to meet with Zarif, and he was “eager” to take the meeting. Bolton’s reaction was to ask his own staff to prepare a flight for him to return to the United States: if the meeting were to go ahead, he would resign immediately from the White House. ... Bolton told Pompeo of his intention to resign, and the secretary of state replied that if the meeting went through, he would do the same, according to Bolton. ...

Bolton was convinced the meeting with Zarif would happen before the end of the G-7 summit, but he provides no clear explanation as to why it eventually didn’t. At the time, most analysts wrote that the meeting never took place mostly because of the Iranians, who demanded a concrete easing of sanctions before giving Trump the photo opportunity he was craving.

Finkelstein: Israel will pretend that illegal annexation is a compromise

Australia's ’60 Minutes’ Gives Assange Fair Shake

Australia’s 60 Minutes newsmagazine Sunday night aired an extensive interview with Stella Morris, Julian Assange’s partner, and featured the two boys the couple have had together.  While the promos for the segment during the week indicated it would focus on salacious questions such as, “How does one get pregnant in an embassy?” and “Did Pamela Anderson give your relationship cover?,” the 24-minute spot ditched the usual smears against the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher and instead humanized him to a large national audience. 

The segment made clear Assange was never charged with rape in Sweden, was only wanted for questioning, and that that inquiry has been closed. It reports that the CIA surveilled Assange 24/7 in the embassy, including on privileged conversations with his lawyers; that the CIA plotted to kidnap Assange, poison him and steal one of his boy’s diapers for DNA to prove it was his child. The interview with Australian MP Andrew Wilkie makes clear why the U.S. espionage charges against Assange are really an assault on journalism.

The program ends with an appeal from Morris to Australian prime minister Scott Morrison to apply pressure on the British government to release Assange from high-security Belmarsh prison where he is isolated 23-hours a day on remand waiting a decision on a U.S. extradition request.

'Poverty Is a Policy Choice': Studies Detail How Poorest Saved by Covid-19 Stimulus—and Why More Is Needed

Two separate studies released Sunday show that U.S. government economic stimulus efforts aimed at offsetting the financial pain of the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns helped alleviate poverty in the country, sparking calls for further federal rescue programs to continue the relief.

"Poverty is a policy choice," tweeted progressive advocacy group People for Bernie.

Pandemic was so dire it got the U.S. to finally provide ppl a real safety net (spending as exceptional bonuses what should be routine), & that made poverty *FALL* significantly in the country.

A surprise in a sense. Also what many countries could predict.https://t.co/fLaCyjeGQO

— Taniel (@Taniel) June 22, 2020

The studies—one from Columbia University researchers and the other from the University of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame—both specifically citing the one time $1,200 payments sent out to most Americans and the federally provided $600 weekly bonus to unemployment benefits for those out of work due to the pandemic.

While the two groups used different methodologies and had slightly different findings—the Columbia study found that poverty rose, but only slightly, while the Chicago group saw a reduction in poverty—the overall result that federal stimulus led to better outcomes for the country's poor was not in question.

Keiser Report | More Money Printing = More Unrest

As Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Face Criminal Probes, Barr Fires Top Prosecutor; Tries to Replace Him with Banks’ Former Lawyer, Jay Clayton

Shortly after 9 p.m. last evening, the U.S. Attorney General, William Barr, stunned prosecutors in the Southern District of New York with the announcement that their boss, Geoffrey Berman, was stepping down as U.S. Attorney in that District and would be replaced with the sitting Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, who lacks even a shred of criminal prosecution experience. What Clayton does have is a lot of experience representing Wall Street’s largest banks, like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, both of whom are currently under intense criminal investigations by the Justice Department. Clayton was a former partner at Wall Street’s go-to law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, which is currently representing Goldman in the criminal case and representing JPMorgan in various matters.

The breaking news last night went downhill from there. Several hours after Barr’s announcement, Berman announced that he had not resigned from his job and had no intention of leaving his post until his replacement had been confirmed by the U.S. Senate – which could take months. There is also no assurance that Clayton would actually be confirmed, since some Republicans and Democrats believe that Clayton has been a lapdog for Wall Street in his current post. ...

The timing of the attempted ouster of Berman is suspicious on multiple fronts. Goldman Sachs is under criminal investigation over a multi-billion-dollar money laundering and embezzlement scheme involving the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund known as 1MDB. Goldman Sachs has been fighting the Justice Department’s demand that it plead guilty in order to settle the case, according to media reports. ...

JPMorgan Chase had multiple traders from its precious metals desk indicted by the Justice Department on RICO charges last year for allegedly running a racketeering enterprise out of the precious metals desk at JPMorgan. The firm itself is now under criminal investigation according to a February report at Bloomberg News. Another felony count at JPMorgan Chase could be the death knell for the career of JPMorgan Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon. ...

Mainstream media has made much out of the fact that this U.S. Attorney’s office is actively investigating Trump ally, Rudy Giuliani, and Deutsche Bank, a major financial lender to Trump’s companies. But the fact that Barr, and assumedly Trump, want to replace Berman with Clayton – a man with no criminal prosecution experience but chummy ties to Wall Street – suggests this is really about Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase.

Okinawa Residents Warned of Chlorine Gas Exposure After Fire Erupts at US Military Hazmat Facility

Residents of Okinawa learned Monday morning that they should seek treatment if they experience signs of chlorine gas or smoke exposure after a fire broke out inside a hazardous materials facility at the U.S, air base located on the Japanese island.

Emergency workers eventually put out the fire, which burned for several hours in the morning at the 18th Wing Hazardous Materials Pharmacy. The base was evacuated and 45 workers were treated for "mild symptoms" of exposure to smoke and gas, which can cause eye irritation, vision problems, a runny nose, throat irritation, and trouble breathing.

"Bioenvironmental personnel and emergency responders remain on the scene to monitor the situation and ensure there’s no safety risk to the community," air base officials said in a press release.

More than 13,000 people live in the town of Kadena, which hosts the Kadena Air Base, the largest U.S. military base in Japan where more than half of the 50,000 U.S. troops in the country are stationed.

Residents of Okinawa have long protested the U.S. military presence there, demanding an end to environmental hazards and noise pollution at the base as well as crimes linked to U.S. personnel. In April, more than 140 tons of toxic fire-fighting foam leaked out of Marine Air Station Futenma, also located in Okinawa in the city of Ginowan.

Half of US states see coronavirus surge as officials warn first wave far from over

More than half of all US states have reported a rise in new coronavirus cases, with some breaking daily records. Amid fears of a second wave of Covid-19 infections and deaths, public health officials have warned that the first is far from over.

“I think that wherever there’s wood to burn, this fire’s going to burn – and right now we have a lot of susceptible people,” Michael Osterholm, head of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, told NBC on Sunday.

“I don’t think we’re going to see one, two and three waves. I think we’re going to just see one very, very difficult forest fire of cases.”

In Tulsa on Saturday, Donald Trump said he had asked officials to limit testing, in order to reduce numbers of new cases. On Sunday the White House dismissed the remark as a joke, but on Monday the president again said increased testing was a problem. “It makes us look like we have more cases, especially proportionally, than other countries,” Trump tweeted.

According to tracking data from John Hopkins University, 29 states have reported an increase in their seven-day average of new cases. Most new outbreaks are in states such as Georgia, Florida and Texas, which were among the first to launch reopening measures. Young people are especially at risk, with Florida governor Ron DeSantis warning cases have shifted in “a radical direction” toward people under 30.

New Research Suggests Racial Justice Protests Have Not Led to Covid-19 Transmission Spike

New research released Monday indicated that the nationwide anti-police brutality demonstrations which erupted in the U.S. after the killing of George Floyd have not led to widespread transmission of the coronavirus, as some public experts feared they would.

The National Bureau of Economic Research used anonymous cell phone data and local CDC information about Covid-19 infection rates since the protests began in late May, to examine the growth in cases in 315 cities.

"We find no evidence that urban protests reignited COVID-19 case growth during the more than two and a half weeks following protest onset," the report said.

Protests are still continuing four weeks after Floyd's killing, as Americans demand justice for Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless other black people who have been killed by police in recent years.

Public health experts have consistently cautioned that protesters should wear protective face masks while at demonstrations and should try to stay six feet away from others as much as possible to avoid spreading Covid-19.

Earlier this month, the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned that rally-goers are "taking a risk."

However, public health experts have expressed support for the demonstrations, with more than 1,000 doctors, nurses, and epidemiologists saying in an open letter earlier this month that protesting racial injustice is "vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States."

The study released Monday follows local reports that have also suggested the protests are not responsible for widespread transmission of the coronavirus.

At testing sites set up for protesters in Minneapolis in recent weeks, only 1.8% of people have tested positive so far.

Supporters of the demonstrations pointed to the new study as evidence that diligent mask-wearing has worked in the favor of protesters and of public health.

Trump executive order extends a ban on employment-based visas through 2020

The Trump administration is temporarily suspending the entry of certain foreign workers to the United States in a move painted as freeing up jobs while the economy reels from the coronavirus pandemic, despite strong opposition from many businesses.

The presidential proclamation, issued on Monday, will extend a ban on green cards issued outside the US until the end of the year and adds many temporary work visas to the freeze, including the H-1B visas, which permit employers to hire foreign workers with specialized knowledge and are used heavily by technology companies and multinational corporations.

The administration cast the effort as a way to preserve US jobs amid the economic downturn. A senior official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity estimated the restrictions will free up to 525,000 jobs for Americans. ...

Business groups pressed hard to limit the changes, but got little of what they wanted, marking a victory for immigration hardliners as Trump seeks to further solidify their support ahead of the November election.

Global report: China suspends US poultry imports from Covid-19-affected business

China has suspended imports of poultry products from a plant owned by an Arkansas-based meat processor, Tyson Inc, that has been hit by coronavirus, as authorities struggle to bring an outbreak in Beijing under control. China’s general administration of customs said on its website it had decided on the suspension after the company confirmed a cluster of Covid-19 cases at the plant, which is located in the town of Springdale.

Tyson’s spokesman Gary Mickelson said the company was looking into the issue, adding that the company works closely with US authorities to ensure its food complies with government safety requirements.

“It is important to note that the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USDA and the US Food and Drug Administration agree that there is no evidence to support transmission of Covid-19 associated with food,” he said in an email. China also suspended pork products from German pork processor Toennies last week following a coronavirus outbreak among hundreds of its workers.

The move came as the WHO reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Sunday, with the total rising by 183,020 in a 24-hour period. The biggest increase was from North and South America with more than 116,000 new cases, according to its daily report. Total global cases are over 8.7 million with more than 461,000 deaths, according to the WHO. The previous record for new cases was 181,232 on 18 June. Most - more than 50,000 - came from Brazil, followed by the US and India.

Protesters and police clash outside White House, Seattle moves to dismantle CHAZ

Seattle will move to wind down 'Chaz' occupied protest zone, mayor says

The mayor of Seattle said Monday that the city will move to wind down an occupied protest zone known as as the “Chaz” or the “Chop” amid increasing pressure to crack down on the area in the wake of two weekend shootings.

Mayor Jenny Durkan said at a news conference that the violence was distracting from changes sought by thousands of peaceful protesters seeking to address racial inequity and police brutality. She said the city is working with the community to bring the area to an end, which has been known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (Chaz) or the “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest” (Chop).

“The cumulative impacts of the gatherings and protests and the nighttime atmosphere and violence has led to increasingly difficult circumstances for our businesses and residents,” Durkan said. “The impacts have increased and the safety has decreased.”

Peacefulness has prevailed during the day. On Monday, people lounged on the turf at a park, while volunteers handed out food, water and toiletries. At night, however, the atmosphere becomes more charged, with demonstrators marching and openly armed volunteer guards keeping watch.

Durkan said she planned to announce a plan Monday for addressing public safety in the area.

Biden REFUSES to debate Trump more than 3 times

A New Voting Crisis: Kentucky Closes 95% of Polling Places, Leaving Louisville with Just One

Corporate Interests Nervous as Progressive Democrats Surge Ahead of NY and Kentucky Primaries

Three progressive Democrats are poised for big, establishment shaking wins in Tuesday's primary elections in New York and Kentucky, leading corporate interests and big money donors to pour millions into stopping a new wave of left-wing lawmakers from taking office.

Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones in New York and Charles Booker in Kentucky are each given good chances to win their primaries according to recent polling, potential victories that seemed out of the realm of possibility just months ago.

"If you see all three of them win, it'll be like lightning struck a house on fire in the middle of an earthquake," Neil Sroka, communications director for progressive political action committee Democracy for America, told The Hill.

Bowman, a former middle school principal, is is now favored by some analysts to unseat longtime incumbent Rep. Eliot Engel in New York's 16th District. But while Bowman has raised $2 million during his race—mostly from small donors and with $1 million of that total coming in June alone—Engel and outside groups like the Democratic Majority for Israel have invested $5 million into protecting the seat and keeping the centrist hawk in power.

"They were always going to have more money on their side," Bowman campaign manager Luke Hayes said in a statement Friday. "But we have the better candidate, with better ideas, and a better campaign."

To the north, Mondaire Jones is facing seven opponents in the open primary for the 17th District seat left open by retiring incumbent Democrat Rep. Nita Lowey. While he's raised the third highest amount of money, Jones' war chest is dwarfed by that of former federal prosecutor Adam Schleifer, whose father is a founder of biotechnology giant Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

Schleifer has spent $4.1 million to date. As Jones told Lohud, that number is an example of the factors which make it hard for working-class progressives to compete against the party's more corporate-friendly or wealthy candidates.

"It has been really unfair to candidates like myself who don't come from money to have to compete with the son of a billionaire who's pumping millions of dollars of Big Pharma in this race," said Jones. "There is a real risk if you don't raise the kind of money I'm raising in this race that your message will be drowned out by a candidate who has been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on television alone."

In Kentucky, state representative Charles Booker is surging as establishment darling and former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath increasingly flounders despite having vast resources.

As the New York Times reported, Booker's rise coincides with the rising civil rights movement for black lives and against police violence that holds added weight in Kentucky, where Louisville police officers killed Breonna Taylor during a no-knock warrantless raid in early March.

Eliot Engel bragged, ‘I sit down with AIPAC on every piece of legislation’ coming out of Foreign Affairs Committee

Embattled congressman Eliot Engel, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has bragged that he sits down with the rightwing pro-Israel organization AIPAC on “every piece of legislation coming out of the Foreign Affairs Committee.”

In a 2018 speech to an AIPAC gathering in his NY district, Engel noted that he and Rep. Nita Lowey had both been in the House 30 years and were soon to assume chair positions that they could use to help Israel.

We are at the cusp of being in a position as chairs of the Foreign Affairs Committee and Appropriations Committee to make sure that Israel continue to receive support, and the United States and Israel stand as one. There’s a bunch of legislation coming out of the Foreign Affairs Committee. I want to tell you that I sit down with AIPAC on every piece of legislation that comes out. I think it’s very, very important. In the past 30 years I have attended 31 consecutive AIPAC conferences in March, I haven’t missed one. [Applause].

Engel personifies a tradition in the Democratic Party of being “PEP” — or progressive except Palestine.

In his campaign to hold his seat representing the Bronx and Westchester in next week’s Democratic primary, Engel has repeatedly hailed the demonstrations over racial injustice and bragged of marching with Black Lives Matter, “to protest the systemic forces of racism, police brutality, and abuse of power.” He has endorsed much of the progressive program of his challenger Jamaal Bowman. He says he is for a Green New Deal, immigrants’ rights, a higher minimum wage, and universal health care as a “human right.”

Engel and Bowman differ most sharply on Israel. Bowman is for conditioning aid to Israel over its unending settlement project. While Engel has said that is out of the question, and has refused to criticize settlements.

Green party candidate Howie Hawkins: Why I'm running against Joe Biden, Donald Trump

Covering a Pandemic, Election-Style

For months now, public health experts have been hammering home a crucial strategy for managing the Covid-19 pandemic: testing, tracing and isolating. Without widespread testing, you don’t know where the virus is or how quickly it is spreading, and you certainly can’t limit its spread except with the bluntest of tools—like complete shutdown.

But to Donald Trump, testing is “a double-edged sword.” In his recent campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma—an indoor gathering of thousands of mostly unmasked people in a state experiencing a rapid spike in cases—Trump commented:

When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, “Slow the testing down, please.” They test and they test.

Trump has questioned the value of testing before, calling it “overrated” (Wall Street Journal, 6/19/20) because increased testing leads to a rise in confirmed cases, which “makes us look bad.” But his rally remarks were a remarkably brazen admission that he would rather cover up the growing pandemic than actually work to address it, at the cost of an untold number of lives.

They’re remarks well worth highlighting in the media—and immediately debunking via public health experts. But to some major media outlets still apparently operating on campaign coverage auto-pilot, the story was just a “he said, she said” election story, with Trump and his aides facing off against the Biden campaign.

At CBS (6/22/20), headline writers told us that “Trump Draws Criticism” for his comments. By whom? If you read the lead, it’s just Democrats, who “quickly denounced” Trump’s suggestion, whereas Trump aides “defended his remarks.” One line in the piece perfunctorily noted that Trump’s “argument that the recent surge in cases in some parts of the country can be fully explained by an increase in the availability of testing has been refuted by public health experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci”—but no such experts were actually quoted.

NBCNews.com (6/21/20) headlined a top White House aide’s claim that Trump didn’t really mean what he said, with a subhead reading:

“Come on now. Come on now. That was tongue-in-cheek. Please,” Peter Navarro said. “I know it was tongue-in-cheek. That’s news for you, tongue-in-cheek.”

In addition to Navarro, a White House trade advisor, the piece also cited “a senior White House official” who said Trump “was clearly speaking in jest to call out the media’s absurd coverage,” as well as acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf who said Trump was speaking out of “frustration” with the media’s focus on “an increasing case count.” Smith himself described the president as “joking” when he contended that so many tests are being conducted “that people don’t even know what’s going on.”

As at CBS, the only quotes from critics were from Joe Biden and other leading Democrats.

CBS and NBC might have looked to the Washington Post for a more appropriate journalistic response (6/21/20), where reporters put “experts” offering “harsh rebukes” in the lead (rather than Democrats), and quoted three of them in its report.

At the Associated Press (6/21/20), after leading with Trump’s comments, reporter Kevin Freking turned to Biden’s rejoinder. After quoting zero public health experts, the article concluded, with remarkable credulity:

Rising case numbers can partially be explained by the wider availability of testing. Mild cases, previously undetected because of limits on who could be tested, are now showing up in the numbers.

Sure, rising positive cases could be deceptive, if you previously weren’t testing nearly enough people to capture what was really going on. In that case, if infections are dropping but you are testing far more people, you’ll turn up more positives—but a much smaller percentage of your tests will be positive. On the other hand, if you increase testing and the percentage positive stays the same or increases, you clearly are witnessing an increase in cases. And if hospitalizations are likewise increasing—as they are in many of the states with rising positive cases—that certainly can’t be explained away by testing numbers. It’s extremely irresponsible for journalists to lend support to Trump’s false claims with incomplete explanations.

'Godzilla dust cloud' from Sahara blankets Caribbean on its way to US

A vast cloud of Sahara dust is blanketing the Caribbean as it heads to the US with a size and concentration that experts say hasn’t been seen in half a century. Air quality across most of the region reached record “hazardous” levels and experts who nicknamed the event the “Godzilla dust cloud” warned people to stay indoors and use air filters if they had them.

“This is the most significant event in the past 50 years,” said Pablo Méndez Lázaro, an environmental health specialist at the University of Puerto Rico. “Conditions are dangerous in many Caribbean islands.”

Many health specialists were concerned about those battling respiratory symptoms tied to the coronavirus pandemic. Lázaro, who is working with Nasa to develop an alert system for the arrival of Sahara dust, said the concentration was so high in recent days that it could even have adverse effects on healthy people. ...

José Alamo, a meteorologist with the US National Weather Service in San Juan, Puerto Rico, said the worst days for the US territory would be Monday and Tuesday as the plume heads toward the US south-east coast. The main international airport in San Juan was reporting only 8km (5 miles) of visibility.

US demand for clean energy destroying Canada's environment, indigenous peoples say

In a subarctic fjard estuary just a few miles from frozen tundra, Inuit hunter Karl Michelin says he owes his life to the thousands of barking ringed seals that congregate year-round in local waters. The seals’ jet-black, heavily fatted meat is a staple for Michelin, his wife, and their toddler. With food insecurity rampant among the region’s Inuit, neighbors are similarly dependent on seals and other wild-caught food. The town’s isolation makes regular employment opportunities scarce, and food prohibitively expensive to import. But Michelin says his ability to harvest seals is facing a threat from an unexpected quarter: America’s hunger for cheap and renewable electricity.

“In order for you to get that kind of power,” he said, “we have to sacrifice our way of life in a lot of ways.” Canada’s indigenous leaders say an unprecedented push for clean energy in the United States is inadvertently causing long-term environmental damage to the traditional hunting grounds on their public lands.

Rigolet lies downstream of Muskrat Falls, a $12.7bn dam on the Churchill River, a key drainage point for Labrador’s biggest watershed. Nalcor, the state-owned company that completed Muskrat Falls last year, is already planning Gull Island, another Churchill dam that would produce three times as much electricity, mostly for export to the US. The Nunatsiavut government, which governs 2,700 Inuit in the area, says those dams will disrupt the hydrologic cycle underpinning the ecosystem, and increase exposure to a toxin associated with dam reservoirs.

When land is flooded, naturally occurring mercury is unlocked from the soil and vegetation and released into the water column, where it is taken up by bacteria and transformed into methylmercury, a neurotoxin that makes its way up the food chain and bioaccumulates in fish, waterbirds and seals. Those species are critical to the sustainable lifestyle practiced by the Inuit. “When they poison the water, they poison us,” said conservation officer, David Wolfrey, who ensures that Rigolet’s 310 residents observe hunting and fishing limits on fish, caribou, moose and polar bear.

The Nunatsiavut’s issues are common among Canada’s First Nations – a 2016 survey of 22 planned future hydropower projects in Canada found that all 22 were within 60 miles of at least one indigenous community. The Inuit of Labrador already have higher concentrations of methylmercury in their bodies than non-indigenous Canadians, but there is sharp disagreement over the extent to which large dams are further elevating those levels, with each side citing conflicting research.

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