Saturday, August 1, 2020
GDP SHRINKS BY RECORD AMOUNT IN SECOND QUARTER
By Sylvan Lane, The Hill.July 31, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/gdp-shrinks-by-record-amount-in-second-quarter/
The U.S. economy shrunk at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 32.9 percent during the second quarter of 2020 as the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic spurred an economic collapse of record-breaking speed and size, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.
Between April and June, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) shrunk at a pace that would have wiped out roughly a third of the value of the economy if extended over 12 months, according to the Commerce Department’s advance estimate of second-quarter growth. It is the largest one-quarter plunge in economic growth since the federal government began reporting quarterly GDP data.
“This was the steepest decline since the start of the global financial crisis in 2008, when output shrank by 8.4%,” wrote Agathe Demarais, global forecasting director at The Economist Intelligence Unit in a Wednesday preview of the report. “The scale of the fall in the first quarter will be dwarfed by that in the second.”
On a non-annualized basis, GDP shrunk roughly 9.5 percent between the first and second quarters of 2020.
The staggering decline in GDP growth was widely expected by economists after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic forced millions of Americans into quarantine and out of work. More than 20 million Americans lost their jobs in March and April as thousands of businesses were forced to close and lay off their workers.
The mass layoffs and business closures derailed consumer spending, sapping a crucial source of strength for the U.S. economy that drives roughly two-thirds of annual growth. Spending on goods and services plunged at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 34.6 percent in the second quarter, another record-breaking plunge.
“Consumption is the biggest component of GDP — almost 70% — so this drop alone will have subtracted some 24 percentage points from headline growth,” wrote Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics in a Thursday research note.
Investments in buildings, equipment and intellectual property — important drivers of U.S. economic production — fell at a yearly rate of 49 percent. Exports also plunged at a yearly rate of 64 percent.
While the economy has since regained roughly 8 million of the jobs lost during the pandemic, a second surge of cases has slowed the burgeoning recovery. Permanent job losses increased in each of the past two monthly jobs reports despite strong net totals and the number of unemployed Americans applying for weekly jobless benefits has remained above 1 million for four months.
The Labor Department reported on Thursday that initial unemployment claims rose for the second week in a row to a seasonally adjusted 1.43 million for the week ending July 25. Another 829,000 jobless workers applied for benefits through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program for contractors and gig workers not typically covered by traditional unemployment insurance.
The Trump administration, Senate Republicans and Democratic congressional leaders are struggling to strike a deal on another economic rescue package to guide the U.S. through the pandemic-driven recession. Lawmakers have already missed a window to come to an agreement before enhanced unemployment benefits effectively lapsed and a federal eviction and foreclosure moratorium expired on July 25.
Economists have warned that the steep decline in fiscal support from Congress and the impact of a second wave of coronavirus infections could cause deep long-term damage to the U.S. economy that could take years to reverse.
“While the initial rebound in monthly activity was stronger than expected, the recent flattening in high-frequency indicators suggests a more gradual pace of recovery from here,” wrote economists at Nomura in a Wednesday research note.
AS COVID-19 SURGES, FARMWORKERS ARE PAYING A HIGH PRICE
By Evelyn Nieves, Inside Climate News.July 31, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/as-covid-19-surges-farmworkers-are-paying-a-high-price/
A Survey Of Workers In 21 Counties Found The Coronavirus Is Devastating Them Directly And Indirectly, With Farm Hubs Having The Highest Infection Rates In The State.
Every day, California farmworkers worry that the pandemic plowing through agricultural hubs will catch them and kill them. They also worry that not working will kill them.
The collapse of food service demands when most businesses and institutions shut down has cut farm jobs statewide by 20 percent, or 100,000. Many farmworkers who are still working have had their hours or days reduced, sometimes without warning. Lockdowns have also cost workers second jobs they needed to make ends meet. They are juggling bills and going hungry.
These are some of the findings in a new survey of 900 farmworkers in 21 farm counties, released on Tuesday. The survey was coordinated by the California Institute for Rural Studies (CIRS), with a wide group of researchers, farmworker organizations and policy advocates. The Covid-19 Farmworker Study (COFS) reinforces the dire warnings that farmworker advocacy organizations made when the coronavirus lockdowns began: The least protected essential workers in the country, toiling under environmental conditions like excessive heat, pollution and dust, are being devastated by the coronavirus, directly and indirectly.
California has the largest agricultural industry in the country, a $54 billion economy that is the backbone of the fifth largest national economy on the planet. Farmworkers, without whom the industry would collapse, are proving especially vulnerable to contracting Covid-19. The survey coincides with new evidence that farmworkers are contracting the virus at much higher rates than people in any other other occupation. The CIRS has found that in Monterey County, farmworkers are three times more likely to contract the coronavirus than the general population. Farm hubs have the highest rates of Covid-19 in the state, and Latinx patients comprise the majority of cases in those hot spots.
Most counties do not track cases by occupation, a serious detriment to stemming the spread of the disease, said Don Villarejo, CIRS’ founder, who compiled the Monterey County data. “There is a lack of transparency,” he said in a press conference with several farmworker groups that helped conduct the survey, adding that the lack of information makes tracking and containing outbreaks more difficult.
Farmworker advocates say that despite the state’s efforts to help contain the coronavirus among agricultural workers, the attempts thus far have not been working. In Imperial County, the state’s coronavirus epicenter, efforts to inform the farmworker community and preventoutbreaks are failing, said Esther Bejarano of the Comite Civico del Valle (Civic Committee of the Valley).
“There’s no point spending more money on what’s not working,” she said, referring to a new plan by Gov. Gavin Newsom, announced on Monday, to spend $52 million in the center of California’s agricultural region. “We need structural change. We need systemic support.”
Farmworkers, she said, “are in a crisis.”
Recommended protections for farmworkers, like masks, hand sanitizer and social distancing, need to be made mandatory, advocates said, and longstanding conditions that farmworkers have endured, such as crowded buses to and from work, or overcrowded housing, need to be addressed.
Education campaigns to reinforce social distancing or hand-washing are moot at this point. Farmworkers, the survey found, know what they need to do to protect themselves from the disease. They follow the usual protocols at home.
On the job, however, workers lack control of their own safety. Fewer than half of those surveyed said they had received masks from their employers. Even among those who had, they had received them once or a couple of times. (Farmworkers generally wear face coverings to protect themselves from pesticide dust, dirt and the sun. More than 95 percent of those surveyed said they are masked in the fields.)
Social distancing is still an idea, not a reality, for many of those surveyed. In some cases, farmworkers who asked for better protections, such as more distancing in the fields, or hand sanitizer, have faced retaliation. Crew bosses have punished them by cutting their hours or days, advocates said.
Farmworkers would benefit from more testing, advocates said. At this point, few have been tested. For the undocumented (a majority of farmworkers), a lack of health care is not the only issue. Many worry that if they identify themselves to receive even free medical care, they will end up deported.
The farmworker study is ongoing. Ildi Carlisle-Cummins, executive director of the rural studies institute, said the research, which is still preliminary, was being released “because it needs to be out there.”
IT’S NOT ASSANGE WHO SHOULD BE FACING PROSECUTION
By Tom Coburg, The Canary.
July 31, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/its-not-assange-who-should-be-facing-prosecution/
On 27 July two court hearings took place – one in the UK, the other in Spain. Both concerned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. From their proceedings, it became clear that it’s not Assange who should be facing prosecution, but the current office holder of the US presidency and his associates.
Grounds For Dismissal Of Charges?
At the 27 July ‘administrative hearing’ at Westminster magistrates court, Judge Vanessa Baraitser stated that the prosecution had failed to present its latest ‘superseding indictment‘. That superseding indictment was first made public on 24 June, just prior to the last court hearing, though the prosecution failed to submit the document to that hearing too.
Defence lawyer Edward Fitzgerald made it clear to the court that he was concerned the prosecution might still try to present the superseding indictment later, so as to delay the extradition hearings. He argued:
We are concerned about a fresh request being made at this stage with the potential consequence of derailing proceedings and that the US attorney-general is doing this for political reasons.
Indeed, prosecution barrister Joel Smith refused to comply with any timeline to serve the superseding indictment. However, Baraitser told Smith that the deadline to submit the superseding indictment had passed.
Controversially, the superseding indictment provided testimony from known (but unnamed) FBI informants, both of whom have criminal convictions and were engaged in entrapment operations. So perhaps it’s not surprising that the prosecution did not formally present a copy of the superseding indictment to the court. What the judge did not address, however, is that by publishing the superseding indictment on the internet, the US department of justice may have prejudiced the case against Assange – and that could be grounds for dismissal of all charges.
“Illegal Operations”
Meanwhile in Spain, the prosecution of David Morales, who is charged with organising the surveillance of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, proceeds, with testimony from former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, who is representing Assange.
Morales, via his company UC Global, is also accused of providing that surveillance to US intelligence services. This video includes examples of the alleged surveillance in the embassy:
Assange lawyer Geoffrey Robertson commented that the surveillance constituted a “serious crime in European law”.
Also monitored were meetings between Assange and some of his other lawyers, including Melinda Taylor, Jennifer Robinson, and Garzón. Surveillance also included logging of visitors, such as Gareth Peirce, another of Assange’s lawyers, as well as a seven-hour session between Assange and his legal team on 19 June 2016.
Robinson subsequently commented that the surveillance was: “a huge and a serious breach of [Assange’s] right to a defence and a serious breach of [Assange’s] fair trial rights”. Indeed, client-lawyer confidentiality remains a cornerstone of the English legal system.
In this respect, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson commented:
The case should be thrown out immediately. Not only is it illegal on the face of the [extradition] treaty, the U.S. has conducted illegal operations against Assange and his lawyers, which are the subject of a major investigation in Spain.
Black Bag Ops
At the Monday hearing in Spain, the court noted allegations that the intelligence gathered by UC Global was provided to Zohar Lahav, described as a “security officer at Las Vegas Sands Corp”. A Grayzone article by Max Blumenthal reveals that witnesses alleged Morales had proposed kidnapping or poisoning Assange and breaking into the office of Garzón.
The Grayzone has seen court documents claiming that Lahav, who is described as Adelson’s bodyguard and vice president for executive protection at Las Vegas Sands, worked with Morales for three years.
Lahav reported to Sands’ director of global security Brian Nagel, of whom Blumenthal states:
During his lengthy career in the US Secret Service, Nagel worked at the nexus of federal law enforcement and US intelligence. In the 1990s, Nagel not only served on the personal protection detail of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; he was assigned to “work with two foreign protective services after the assassination and attempted assassination of their respective heads of state,” he said in sworn testimony in a US District Court in 2011. …
As the deputy director of the Secret Service, he [Nagel] appeared alongside then-US Attorney General John Ashcroft at a November 2003 press conference on combating cybercrime, and testified before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee in March 2007.
Nagel’s boss, Sheldon Adelson was a top donor to Donald Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign. It’s also understood that Adelson will contribute $100m to the 2020 election campaign for Trump and republicans.
Meanwhile, lawyers acting for Assange have requested that Adelson and Nagel be summoned as witnesses. But that request was denied.
Trump Centre Stage
At Monday’s court hearing in London, defence lawyer Fitzgerald commented that the delays relating to the superseding indictment may have something to do with the upcoming US presidential elections. He added: “I’m not sure if there’s been some manipulation there”. Moreover, it’s been shown how Trump is financially close to the head of the very corporation that’s allegedly implicated in the surveillance on Assange.
Indeed, at the heart of the Assange extradition process is Trump and perhaps it is he and his associates, not Assange, who should be placed under the spotlight.
The full extradition hearing is now scheduled for the Old Bailey for three weeks, commencing 7 September. And it would be most surprising if during the extradition hearings there aren’t plenty more revelations.
https://popularresistance.org/its-not-assange-who-should-be-facing-prosecution/
On 27 July two court hearings took place – one in the UK, the other in Spain. Both concerned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. From their proceedings, it became clear that it’s not Assange who should be facing prosecution, but the current office holder of the US presidency and his associates.
Grounds For Dismissal Of Charges?
At the 27 July ‘administrative hearing’ at Westminster magistrates court, Judge Vanessa Baraitser stated that the prosecution had failed to present its latest ‘superseding indictment‘. That superseding indictment was first made public on 24 June, just prior to the last court hearing, though the prosecution failed to submit the document to that hearing too.
Defence lawyer Edward Fitzgerald made it clear to the court that he was concerned the prosecution might still try to present the superseding indictment later, so as to delay the extradition hearings. He argued:
We are concerned about a fresh request being made at this stage with the potential consequence of derailing proceedings and that the US attorney-general is doing this for political reasons.
Indeed, prosecution barrister Joel Smith refused to comply with any timeline to serve the superseding indictment. However, Baraitser told Smith that the deadline to submit the superseding indictment had passed.
Controversially, the superseding indictment provided testimony from known (but unnamed) FBI informants, both of whom have criminal convictions and were engaged in entrapment operations. So perhaps it’s not surprising that the prosecution did not formally present a copy of the superseding indictment to the court. What the judge did not address, however, is that by publishing the superseding indictment on the internet, the US department of justice may have prejudiced the case against Assange – and that could be grounds for dismissal of all charges.
“Illegal Operations”
Meanwhile in Spain, the prosecution of David Morales, who is charged with organising the surveillance of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, proceeds, with testimony from former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, who is representing Assange.
Morales, via his company UC Global, is also accused of providing that surveillance to US intelligence services. This video includes examples of the alleged surveillance in the embassy:
Assange lawyer Geoffrey Robertson commented that the surveillance constituted a “serious crime in European law”.
Also monitored were meetings between Assange and some of his other lawyers, including Melinda Taylor, Jennifer Robinson, and Garzón. Surveillance also included logging of visitors, such as Gareth Peirce, another of Assange’s lawyers, as well as a seven-hour session between Assange and his legal team on 19 June 2016.
Robinson subsequently commented that the surveillance was: “a huge and a serious breach of [Assange’s] right to a defence and a serious breach of [Assange’s] fair trial rights”. Indeed, client-lawyer confidentiality remains a cornerstone of the English legal system.
In this respect, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson commented:
The case should be thrown out immediately. Not only is it illegal on the face of the [extradition] treaty, the U.S. has conducted illegal operations against Assange and his lawyers, which are the subject of a major investigation in Spain.
Black Bag Ops
At the Monday hearing in Spain, the court noted allegations that the intelligence gathered by UC Global was provided to Zohar Lahav, described as a “security officer at Las Vegas Sands Corp”. A Grayzone article by Max Blumenthal reveals that witnesses alleged Morales had proposed kidnapping or poisoning Assange and breaking into the office of Garzón.
The Grayzone has seen court documents claiming that Lahav, who is described as Adelson’s bodyguard and vice president for executive protection at Las Vegas Sands, worked with Morales for three years.
Lahav reported to Sands’ director of global security Brian Nagel, of whom Blumenthal states:
During his lengthy career in the US Secret Service, Nagel worked at the nexus of federal law enforcement and US intelligence. In the 1990s, Nagel not only served on the personal protection detail of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; he was assigned to “work with two foreign protective services after the assassination and attempted assassination of their respective heads of state,” he said in sworn testimony in a US District Court in 2011. …
As the deputy director of the Secret Service, he [Nagel] appeared alongside then-US Attorney General John Ashcroft at a November 2003 press conference on combating cybercrime, and testified before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee in March 2007.
Nagel’s boss, Sheldon Adelson was a top donor to Donald Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign. It’s also understood that Adelson will contribute $100m to the 2020 election campaign for Trump and republicans.
Meanwhile, lawyers acting for Assange have requested that Adelson and Nagel be summoned as witnesses. But that request was denied.
Trump Centre Stage
At Monday’s court hearing in London, defence lawyer Fitzgerald commented that the delays relating to the superseding indictment may have something to do with the upcoming US presidential elections. He added: “I’m not sure if there’s been some manipulation there”. Moreover, it’s been shown how Trump is financially close to the head of the very corporation that’s allegedly implicated in the surveillance on Assange.
Indeed, at the heart of the Assange extradition process is Trump and perhaps it is he and his associates, not Assange, who should be placed under the spotlight.
The full extradition hearing is now scheduled for the Old Bailey for three weeks, commencing 7 September. And it would be most surprising if during the extradition hearings there aren’t plenty more revelations.
‘WE WILL COUP WHOEVER WE WANT’
By Vijay Prashad and Alejandro Bejarano, Globetrotter.July 31, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/we-will-coup-whoever-we-want/
Elon Musk And The Overthrow Of Democracy In Bolivia.
On July 24, 2020, Tesla’s Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that a second U.S. “government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people.” Someone responded to Musk soon after, “You know what wasn’t in the best interest of people? The U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there.” Musk then wrote:
We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.
Musk refers here to the coup against President Evo Morales Ayma, who was removed illegally from his office in November 2019. Morales had just won an election for a term that was to have begun in January 2020. Even if there was a challenge against that election, Morales’ term should rightfully have continued through November and December of 2019. Instead, the Bolivian military, at the behest of Bolivia’s far-right and the United States government, threatened Morales; Morales went into exile in Mexico and is now in Argentina.
At that time, the “evidence” of fraud was offered by the far-right and by a “preliminary report” by the Organization of American States; only after Morales was removed from office was there grudging acknowledgment by the liberal media that there was, in fact, no evidence of fraud. It was too late for Bolivia, which has been condemned to a dangerous government that has suspended democracy in the country.
Lithium Coup
Over his 14 years in office, Morales fought to use the wealth of Bolivia for the Bolivian people, who saw—after centuries of oppression—remarkable advances in their basic needs. Literacy rates rose and hunger rates dropped. The use of Bolivia’s wealth to advance the interests of the people rather than North American multinational corporations was an abomination to the U.S. embassy in La Paz, which had egged on the worst elements of the military and the far right to overthrow the government. This is just what happened in November 2019.
Musk’s admission, however intemperate, is at least honest. His company Tesla has long wanted access at a low price to the large lithium deposits in Bolivia; lithium is a key ingredient for batteries. Earlier this year, Musk and his company revealed that they wanted to build a Tesla factory in Brazil, which would be supplied by lithium from Bolivia; when we wrote about that we called our report “Elon Musk Is Acting Like a Neo-Conquistador for South America’s Lithium.” Everything we wrote there is condensed in his new tweet: the arrogance toward the political life of other countries, and the greed toward resources that people like Musk think are their entitlement.
Musk went on to delete his tweet. He then said, “We get our lithium from Australia”; this will not settle the issue, since eyebrows are being raised in Australia regarding the environmental damage from lithium mining.
Suspension Of Democracy
After Morales was removed, an insignificant far-right politician named Jeanine Áñez set aside the constitutional process and seized power. She showed the character of her politics when she signed a presidential decree on November 15, 2019, that gave the military the right to do whatever it wanted; even her allies found this to be too far and repealed it on November 28.
Arrests and intimidation of activists from the Movement for Socialism (MAS)—the party of Morales—began in November 2019 and still continue. On July 7, 2020, seven U.S. senators published a statement that said, “We are increasingly concerned by the growing number of human rights violations and curtailments of civil liberties by the interim government of Bolivia.” “Without a change in course by the interim government,” the senators wrote,
we fear that basic civil rights in Bolivia will be further eroded and the legitimacy of the crucial upcoming elections will be put at risk.
There’s no need to worry about that, since the government of Áñez seems unwilling to hold an election. By all polls, Áñez looks likely to be defeated in the general elections. A recent poll by El Centro Estratégico Latinoamericano de Geopolítica (CELAG) says that Áñez will get a mere 13.3 percent, far behind the Movement for Socialism’s Luis Arce (41.9 percent) and the center right’s Carlos Mesa (26.8 percent). The election was supposed to have taken place in May, but it was rescheduled for September 6; it has now been postponed once more, this time to October 18. Bolivia would not have had an elected government for an entire year.
Luis Arce of MAS recently told Oliver Vargas, “We face persecution, we face surveillance… we are facing a very difficult campaign.” But, he said, “we are sure that we will win these elections.” If elections are permitted.
The CELAG study shows that 9 out of 10 Bolivians have seen their incomes decline due to the coronavirus recession. Because of this—and of the attack by this government on the MAS—65.2 percent of Bolivians have a negative appraisal of Áñez. It is important to note that due to the positive policies of Morales’ MAS, there is widespread support for a socialist orientation; 64.1 percent of Bolivians support taxes against the rich, and Bolivians in general support the resource socialism of the MAS and Morales.
Corona Shock And Bolivia
The government of Áñez has been utterly incompetent regarding the coronavirus. The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in this country of 11 million people is 66,456; since testing is low, the number is likely much higher.
Musk returns to our story. Earlier this year, on March 31, Bolivia’s Foreign Minister Karen Longaric wrote an obsequious letter to Musk asking him about the “offer of cooperation posted by you regarding ventilators ready to be dispatched to countries where they are needed the most.” Longaric said, “If it is not possible to send it to Bolivia, we can arrange its receipt in Miami, FL. and transport them from there as quickly as possible.” No such ventilators came.
Instead, the government bought ventilators from a Spanish supplier for $27,000 for each of the 170 devices; Bolivian producers had said they could supply ventilators for $1,000 per unit. The health minister in the Áñez government—Marcelo Navajas—was arrested for this scandal.
Morales
Evo Morales read Musk’s tweet about the coup in Bolivia and responded:
Elon Musk, the owner of the largest electric car company, says about the coup in Bolivia: ‘We will coup whoever we want.’ Another proof that the coup was about Bolivian lithium; at the cost of two massacres. We will always defend our resources!
The reference to the massacres is important. In November, from Mexico City, Morales watched as the government of Áñez let loose the dogs of war against the people of Bolivia from Cochabamba to El Alto. “They are killing my brothers and sisters,” Morales said at a press conference. “This is the kind of thing the old military dictatorships used to do.” It is the toxic character of the government of Áñez, backed fully by the U.S. government and Elon Musk.
Protests across Bolivia began on July 27 for the restoration of democracy.
Globetrotter is a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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