Trump’s suggestion of a pardon for Edward Snowden meets US intelligence community backlash

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/19/snow-a19.html



By Kevin Reed
19 August 2020

Several recent comments by President Donald Trump that he is interested in taking a “good look at” pardoning the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden have prompted vociferous denunciations from the US intelligence community, leading Democrats and Republicans and the corporate media.

Democrats and Republicans with close ties to the intelligence agencies have launched a campaign of opposition after the president said he would look into the case of the former NSA contractor who exposed illegal mass surveillance.

During a news conference on Saturday from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, the President told reporters, “There are many, many people—it seems to be a split decision—many people think that he [Snowden] should be somehow be treated differently and other people think he did very bad things. I’m going to take a very good look at it.”

These statements on the weekend were a follow up to comments Trump made to the New York Post in an interview published on Thursday. In that interview, Trump said, “There are a lot of people that think that [Snowden] is not being treated fairly. I mean, I hear that.” The President went on to tell the Post, “I guess the DOJ is looking to extradite him right now? … It’s certainly something I could look at. Many people are on his side, I will say that. I don’t know him, never met him. But many people are on his side.”

In 2013, Snowden—at great personal risk—exposed to the entire world that the CIA and NSA were conducting a massive electronic spying operation on the US and world population. With extensive documentary proof, Snowden showed that these agencies were systematically violating basic constitutional rights by sifting through data streams transmitted over telecom trunklines and secretly eavesdropping on the personal computer activity of individuals in real time, among many other criminal activities.
Within a week of the publication of his revelations, Snowden was charged with violations of the Espionage Act of 1917. After publicly identifying himself as the whistleblower who smuggled 1.7 million documents out of an NSA facility on a flash drive, Snowden fled for his safety, eventually obtaining asylum in Russia where he has been living in forced exile in Moscow ever since.

Among those denouncing the suggestion of a pardon for Edward Snowden were Congresswoman Liz Cheney (Republican, Wyoming), daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who tweeted, “Edward Snowden is a traitor. He is responsible for the largest and most damaging release of classified info in US history. He handed over US secrets to Russian and Chinese intelligence putting our troops and our nation at risk. Pardoning him would be unconscionable.”

Cheney’s unsubstantiated claim that Snowden put the lives of American troops and agents at risk with his revelations—which were shared with journalists from the Guardian and the Washington Post who reviewed and published them—has been repeated by those who are closest to the US intelligence agencies. Other than undermining the illegal spying operations of US imperialism, no proof has ever been provided that anyone has lost their life from Snowden’s revelations.

Replying to Cheney’s tweet, Snowden posted on his own Twitter account, “twitter: the museum of the confidently incorrect.” Hundreds of people responded positively to Snowden’s comment, referring to him as a “hero,” thanking him for his revelations and denouncing Cheney.

The top two Congressmen on the House Armed Services Committee said a pardon of Snowden would “mock our national security workforce.” A statement from Chairman Adam Smith (Democrat, Washington) and Representative Mac Thornberry (Republican, Texas) said, “It would be a serious mistake to pardon anyone who is charged under the Espionage Act, who admits to leaking sensitive information, and who has spent years since then as a guest of the Putin regime.”

In another bipartisan statement, former congressman Mike Rogers (Republican, Michigan) and Representative Dutch Ruppersberger (Democrat, Maryland), who served on the House Select Permanent Committee on Intelligence, wrote in a Washington Post Op Ed, “the only way Snowden should return to the United States is to face prosecution for his actions.”

Rogers and Ruppersberger go on to make the absurd claim that Snowden should have “come to us” if he had been “truly alarmed by anything he witnessed as a CIA employee or as an NSA contractor.” As everyone knows, if Snowden had brought to Congress his concerns about the massive violation of the US Constitution by the NSA, carried out with the endorsement of political figures such as Rogers and Ruppersberger, no one would ever have heard of him or the illegal spying operation.

The former House intelligence leaders also regurgitate the smears that have been leveled against Snowden’s character since he first went public with his revelations, writing, “Snowden’s actions were not born out of principles, morals or a commitment to civil liberties. They were illegal, opportunistic and self-serving.”

Making it clear that the whistleblower could not get a fair trial if he were to return to the US to face the charges against him, they write, “Snowden is entitled, as all Americans are, to a free and fair trial. But such a trial would expose actions that profoundly betrayed his country and led to the criminal espionage case against him.”

Fox News Live published an article on Monday highlighting the fact that a lawsuit filed by the US government against Snowden has revealed the whistleblower earned $1.2 million in speaking fees since 2015. The judge in the case—which is aimed at seizing money earned by Snowden from his memoir Permanent Record—made the information publicly available on Saturday. Clearly written in opposition to a pardon of Snowden, the Fox News Live article also quotes the tweet from Liz Cheney.

At the time of Snowden’s revelations in 2013, the real estate swindler and TV personality Donald Trump repeatedly labelled him a “spy” and “traitor” who should be executed. According to the New York Post, before taking office, Trump tweeted at least 45 times that Snowden should be put to death.

In the exclusive interview with the President last Thursday from the Oval Office, the Post wrote, “Trump commented on Snowden for the first time as president after accusing former President Barack Obama of spying on his 2016 campaign. ‘When you look at Comey and McCabe, and Brennan—and, excuse me, the man that sat at this desk, President Obama, got caught spying on my campaign with Biden. Biden and Obama, and they got caught spying on the campaign,’ Trump said.”

An opinion in Bloomberg by Eli Lake, columnist covering national security and foreign policy, argues that the President’s suggestion of pardoning Snowden is “a reckless idea” that will “backfire on Trump.” Lake makes the absurd claim that pardoning Snowden would undermine efforts by Attorney General William Barr to reform the FBI’s use of the secret surveillance courts and correct the abuses of the intelligence community.

Lake goes on to write, “one can see why Trump and some of his advisers would be keen on rewarding Snowden seven years after his great heist of state secrets. Trump sincerely believes that the national security state that Snowden exposed unfairly spied on his campaign in 2016 and stoked a meritless investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia for the first two and a half years of his presidency. Pardoning Snowden would be a way of settling scores.”

COVID-19 overtakes accidents as third leading cause of death in the US as testing continues to decline

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/19/covi-a19.html



By Benjamin Mateus
19 August 2020

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a press brief Monday noting that the number of fatalities currently attributed to COVID-19 make it the third leading cause of death in the United States this year, behind heart disease and cancer.

The Worldometer’s COVID-19 tracker places the number of confirmed cases in the United States over 5.6 million, with 175,000 deaths as of this writing and the toll continues to rise by more than 1,000 every day. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington currently forecasts that over 251,000 Americans will have lost their lives to COVID-19 by November 1 if current projections hold.

According to the CDC, the ten leading causes of death for the non-pandemic year 2018 in descending order were heart disease (647,457), cancer (599,108), accidents/unintentional injuries, (169,936), chronic lower respiratory disease (160,201), stroke (146,383) Alzheimer disease (121,404), diabetes (83,564), Influenza and pneumonia (55,672), kidney disease (50,633) and suicide (47,173).

The first official COVID-19 death occurred on February 28 in Seattle, Washington, a man in his 50s who had underlying health conditions. However, postmortem testing on deaths from Santa Clara County suggests the first deaths took place earlier in the month.
The sole fact that COVID-19 deaths have become the third leading (preventable) cause of death in the US speaks to the utter negligence and criminality on the part of the Trump administration and the ruling class. Had lockdown been initiated earnestly two weeks earlier than was the case in March, epidemiologists estimate 54,000 fewer people would have died by early May when the official death toll surpassed 70,000.

Ali Mokdad, a professor of Global Health at the IHME, speaking to Healthline about the US death toll fast approaching a quarter million people, said, “Unfortunately, that is the track we’re on. We have pretty much totally relaxed some of our social distancing mandates because there is a big concern about the economy…These are not just numbers. These are loved ones, family members, essential workers who sustain our economy.”

The latest predictions have not taken into account excess mortality figures, which the New York Times found show that at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to COVID-19.

To place the toll of the current pandemic into its proper historical context, it would be worthy to briefly review a recent study that compared its impact so far to the devastating Spanish flu which stuck the globe a little over 100 years ago.
The 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic killed 675,000 people in the United States. In a comparative study recently published in JAMA Network, during the peak of the 1918 pandemic in New York City (NYC), 31,589 all-cause deaths occurred among 5,500,000 residents. This yielded a mortality incidence rate of 287 deaths per 100,000 persons-months. This was 2.8 times higher than the preceding four years, which averaged around 100 deaths per 100,000 persons-month.

During the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in NYC in April, 33,465 all-cause deaths occurred among a population of 8,280,000, placing the incidence rate at 202 deaths per 100,000 persons-months. The scale of incident deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic is very much comparable to the health crisis that affected the city a century ago.

However, given the advances in medicine, public health, and safety, the incidence of all-cause mortality in the preceding years was 50 per 100,000 persons-month. In other words, the all-cause mortality compared to the previous years, from 2017 to 2019, is 4.15 times higher. In this light, to equate the present coronavirus pandemic to the seasonal flu is simply malicious.

The opening of the economy in late spring coincided with the ramping up of COVID-19 testing and apparent plateau in infections. What many commentators did not take an adequate measure of was that the number of cases across the country appeared stable because New York state was seeing dramatic declines in their new cases after implementing a massive shutdown of the city. What was happening in the rest of the country was a rapid increase in numbers hidden in the static created by New York’s massive amount of cases.
Once New York State’s numbers had plummeted sufficiently, it became evident that the half-hearted measures in the rest of the country had done little to contain the pandemic.

Testing was now clearly revealing that the epidemic had become deeply entrenched along a broad geographic region leading Trump to make his infamous complaint that, with more testing, you get more cases. As cases rose to record heights, death followed with the gruesome scenes witnessed in New York replayed in Florida, Texas, Arizona and elsewhere throughout the country.

As hospitals in these states filled up and morgues pushed to over-capacity, mandates were reinstituted for social distancing and mask wearing. Bars and restaurants were ordered closed by governors who had been utterly resistant to imposing any restrictions as the virus spread into their communities.

However, as schools were preparing to reopen for face-to-face classes in a few weeks, the scope of “more” testing became a point of contention for the White House. In mid-July, in conjunction with the transfer of responsibility on hospitalization reporting from the CDC to the Department of Health and Human Services there was a sudden decline in the number of daily testing across the country, predominately in the hardest-hit states. Not surprisingly, the decrease in the number of new cases quickly followed as reports were appearing that the virus was spreading in states like Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, and Iowa.

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that there had been only 40,022 new cases confirmed on Monday, with only 542 deaths. The weekly average had dropped 16 percent from two weeks before to 50,543 cases per day. Over the same intervening period, the seven-day average for tests per day had fallen 10 percent to 736,000.

Sadiya Khan, assistant professor of cardiology and preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, told U . S . News & World Report, “I want to be enthusiastic about the numbers going down, but it’s really hard to convince me that it’s not because we’re just doing fewer tests. The dramatic drop is very concerning while we see schools reopening, businesses reopening, and we’re trying to move our economy forward, and yet we’re not prepared.” On Tuesday, the US conducted 642,814 tests, according to the Covid Tracking Project, well below the already falling average.

The blame has been cast on a lack of capacity for such a large number of testing caused by a shortage of supplies, trained personnel, and machines that can perform mass throughput analysis, which has led to delays in reporting numbers. The nature of decentralized private labs without a coordinated national supply chain has been cited as the main factor. Several media outlets have noted that the number of people going to testing sites has been declining out of apathy and frustrations with long delays in reporting. A survey conducted by CNBC found almost 40 percent of Americans had to wait more than three days for their results, which makes the results useless as the window for contact tracing is 48 hours or less.

According to TIME, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is supposedly working with states in an attempt to resolve these bottlenecks. National stockpiles are empty, and so FEMA competes with labs for the same supplies. They write, “FEMA sends supplies it receives to the states, which then send them to the labs. But health policy experts and lab directors interviewed by TIME say it’s unclear how many supplies FEMA is procuring and how the states are distributing them.”

Adding to the confusion, major case reporting errors have further exacerbated accurate counting. The Associated Press reported that in Iowa, “potentially thousands of coronavirus infections from recent weeks and months have instead been erroneously recorded as having happened in March, April, May, and June.” Last week the California Department of Health and Human Services Secretary reported that a server outage led to delays in reporting results from a backlog of 250,000 to 300,000 tests.

With declining testing, there is a correlation with rising test positivity. Johns Hopkins coronavirus resource center has noted percent positivity rate for recently hard-hit states—Nevada 17.1, Idaho 16.6, Florida 16.4, Mississippi 15.9, Texas, 13.0, Kansas, 12.5, Georgia 12.0, Iowa 11.2, Missouri 9.8, Indiana 9.6, Nebraska 9.5 and Arizona 9.2—have been climbing. Only 19 states have positivity rates under 5 percent, the lax criteria set by the World Health Organization for reopening schools. The CDC also noted that percent positive tests for ages 0 to 4 and 5 to 17 years old exceed ten percent and are climbing.

The ruling class, for its purposes, has learned it is best to fly blind through the pandemic.

Disastrous US school openings lead to 3,000 infections across 44 states

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/19/scho-a19.html



By Evan Blake
19 August 2020

Within weeks, the reopening of schools across the United States has already become a complete catastrophe. Outside of the mobilization of educators, parents and the broader working class to halt this homicidal policy, there will be rapid acceleration of the spread of the deadly COVID-19 disease throughout every region of the country.

Because no government agency at the local, state or federal level is systematically tracking work-related COVID-19 cases and deaths, Kansas teacher Alisha Morris took it upon herself to begin compiling this data in a spreadsheet. The list, which is now curated by roughly 35 people, has been shared in the dozens of Facebook groups that have been set up to oppose the unsafe reopening of schools and has been viewed tens of thousands of times by educators, parents and students.

The spreadsheet, which the WSWS utilized to produce a map that has also gone viral, paints a chilling picture of the spread of the pandemic in schools across the US.

According to this data and an official account from Mississippi released Monday, since schools began reopening during the week of July 27, roughly 3,000 teachers, students and staff have tested positive for COVID-19 from hundreds of schools across the country. All but six states—Alaska, Washington, Delaware, Vermont, North Dakota, and New Hampshire—have at least one school that has already experienced an outbreak of COVID-19.
As of Tuesday, there are over 900 entries on the spreadsheet, with each one representing a separate school that has had at least one positive or suspected case since the start of the pandemic. Most entries are based on local news reports since the beginning of August.

The devastation has been most extreme in the South, which for weeks has been a major epicenter of the pandemic in the US. Largely controlled by the Republican Party, these states most closely followed the “herd immunity” strategy of letting the virus rip through the population, as advanced by the Trump administration. These officials were the most aggressive and earliest to reopen their economies and have now been the most strident in demanding full in-person instruction, often with the bare minimum of personal protective equipment (PPE) provided to teachers and staff.

The heaviest-hit Republican-led states include:
Mississippi, where 71 of the state’s 82 counties have reported outbreaks of COVID-19 in schools. As of Tuesday, 199 students and 245 teachers have tested positive statewide, while 2,035 students and 589 teachers have been forced into two-week quarantines.


Florida, where at least 331 students and staff have tested positive for COVID-19 and at least 11 have died, many from earlier in the summer.


In Georgia, there are now at least 296 known cases and 481 suspected cases at 67 different schools.


In Texas, at least 140 different schools have reported a combined 380 cases.


Indiana now has over 100 confirmed cases from at least 75 different schools.


Tennessee now has at least 99 confirmed cases from 44 different schools.

In total, at least 406,109 children have now tested positive for COVID-19 in the US, representing 9.1 percent of all cases. One of the chief lies used by state officials to justify reopening schools, that children are less susceptible to the virus, stands thoroughly exposed.

While the Trump administration and his state and local backers have been most aggressive, the back-to-school and back-to-work policy also has the fulsome support of the Democratic Party at every level.

With the Democratic National Convention (DNC) taking place this week, the party is fully geared towards covering up their record of facilitating the homicidal policies demanded by the ruling class. On Monday, New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo absurdly claimed that his response to the pandemic was spotless, covering up the fact that nearly 33,000 people have died in the state under his watch. Cuomo has sanctioned the reopening of schools across the state, including in New York City, the largest school district in the country. Schools are also opening up in Michigan, led by Governor Gretchen Whitmer who also spoke at the Democratic National Convention Monday.

The Biden-Harris campaign website states, “Everyone wants schools to fully reopen for in-person instruction. Creating the conditions to make it happen should be a top national priority.”

The statement goes on to place the blame for the crisis solely on Trump, while proposing that schools can be reopened “safely” simply with some more funding for testing, contact tracing and PPE for educators. There are no specifics whatsoever on the level of community spread Biden thinks is “safe,” leaving the door open for districts to resume in-person learning whenever they choose, which is the exact same policy pursued by Trump.

If there is any tactical difference between Trump and the Republicans on the one side and the Democrats on school openings it is the latter’s use of the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and other unions to dissipate anger through temporary delays, hybrid online/in-person learning and other maneuvers to buy time for the full reopening of the schools. Above all, the unions are doing everything they can to prevent a nationwide strike increasingly being demanded by educators because this would lead to a direct confrontation not only with Trump but Biden and the Democratic Party.

The campaign to open schools over the next few weeks in New York City and Los Angeles—both overseen by the Democrats—will set a major precedent for districts across the US. On Tuesday, Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative at Columbia University, warned of the immense dangers posed by opening schools in New York City, telling WNYC, “Schools are going to become hotbeds for the infections to take hold again and spread through the community.” He added, “It’s almost inevitable if we are in fact going to even hold some classes in real time in real classrooms,” exploding the myth that the “hybrid” model is in any way safe.

Significant outbreaks of COVID-19 have already happened in multiple Democrat-led states where at least some districts have fully reopened, including the following:
Illinois already has at least 67 cases from 20 different schools.


In Michigan, 16 different schools report a combined 27 confirmed cases, mostly student athletes at summer training camps.


In California, there are at least 22 known cases from at least six schools, including 13 cases at the El Centro Elementary School District in the Central Valley.


Pennsylvania reports at least 25 confirmed cases from 19 different schools.


Hawaii now has at least 11 known cases at 12 different schools.


Massachusetts has at least 17 confirmed cases at 12 different schools.

The explosion of cases at schools nationwide has provoked a huge backlash by educators, parents and students, who have already organized well over 100 protests over the past month and have assembled by the tens of thousands in dozens of Facebook groups in nearly every state.

There are growing calls for mass sickouts and nationwide strike action to halt the drive to reopen schools. In Arizona, 109 out of roughly 250 teachers and support staff in the suburban Phoenix JO Combs Unified School District called in sick Monday, canceling all classes that day. The shutdown of schools was extended through Wednesday, and teachers remain defiant and unwilling to sacrifice themselves.

Facing concerted pressure from educators and parents, the Newark Public School District in New Jersey was forced to reverse course Monday and start the school year online, after having pushed for in-person instruction for weeks. Significantly, the Newark Teachers Association had been promoting the equally unsafe “hybrid” model and, sensing huge opposition among rank-and-file educators, made an about-face on Monday.

On Wednesday in Detroit, teachers are expected to overwhelmingly support a “safety strike” in a vote organized by the Detroit Federation of Teachers, which is fearful of a revolt by the city’s 4,000 teachers.

Facing a similar groundswell of opposition, the Little Rock Education Association in Little Rock, Arkansas is now posturing as a defender of teachers’ and students’ safety. However, the union is simply demanding that in-person learning resume once the positivity rate in the county remains below 5 percent for 14 consecutive days. This elevated figure represents a high degree of community spread, and under conditions in which testing is being deliberately curtailed would be specious and wholly unsafe.

The central question facing teachers, education workers, parents and students is the need to build new forms of organization, independent of the unions, to coordinate a unified opposition to the nationwide campaign to reopen schools. It is for this reason that the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee was founded, in order to unite the immense opposition to the homicidal policies of the ruling class.

This national body is serving as a central organization to coordinate the building of a network of independent, rank-and-file committees in every school and neighborhood. The committees must fight to link up with broader sections of the working class facing the same deadly working conditions, in preparation for a nationwide general strike to halt the reopening of schools and the broader return-to-work campaign.

All educators, school workers, parents and students who support this initiative should join our Facebook page and contact us today to establish local rank-and-file committees in your school and neighborhood. Send us any pertinent information, including significant developments in your district or state, and we will share this widely with a global audience. We will be hosting a national call-in meeting at 3:00 p.m. EDT (12:00 p.m. PDT) on Saturday, August 22, to discuss developments and the way forward. We urge you to make plans today to attend this vital meeting.

Colin Powell at the Democratic National Convention: Democrats prepare administration of militarism and war

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/19/pers-a19.html

19 August 2020

In the second day of its national convention, the Democratic Party officially nominated Joe Biden as its candidate for president in the 2020 election. Overall, the four-day event has been a highly scripted act of political theater, full of trite clichés and empty rhetoric.

The most notable element of yesterday’s proceedings was the decision to feature remarks from former general Colin Powell and a video highlighting the “unlikely friendship” between Biden and former Republican presidential candidate and Senator John McCain.

A Biden/Harris administration, the Democrats emphasized, would be prepared to wage war.

In his remarks, Powell, who served as Secretary of State under the administration of George W. Bush, declared that Biden, as “commander-in-chief,” will “trust our intelligence agencies” and “stand up to our adversaries with strength and experience. They will know we mean business.”

Powell will forever be associated with the lies manufactured by the Bush administration to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. On February 5, 2003, Powell appeared before the United Nations to claim that the Iraqi government was stockpiling “weapons of mass destruction”—a claim that was false and he knew was false. It was the climax of the Bush administration’s campaign to justify an unprovoked invasion of Iraq, a horrific war crime that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed one of the most advanced societies in the Middle East.

The war in Iraq is associated with some of the most horrific atrocities, including the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallujah and the massacre of civilians at Haditha in 2005. American society itself suffered terrible consequences, including the death of nearly 4,500 soldiers and the maiming of tens of thousands more.

Powell’s remarks were preceded by a speech from John Kerry, Secretary of State under Obama, who helped oversee the 2014 regime-change operation in Ukraine, spearheaded by fascistic groups, and the US-backed civil war in Syria. Kerry denounced Trump’s foreign policy, particularly focusing on what is seen within the military-intelligence agencies as the administration’s insufficiently aggressive attitude to Russia. “Our interests,” Kerry said, “can’t afford four more years of Donald Trump.”

Kerry referred to the strength of Biden’s “moral compass,” citing his support for war in Yugoslavia in the late 1990s, though avoiding reference to his vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq.

Kerry was followed with a video segment featuring Republican Chuck Hagel, along with career diplomats under both Republicans and Democrats, including Brett McGurk (the longest-serving civilian adviser overseeing the war in Iraq and Syria, going back to the Bush administration); Marie Yovanovitch (US ambassador to Ukraine under Trump and witness in last year’s impeachment trial); Jack Weinstein (US Air Force general and high-ranking nuclear weapons officer); and Rose Goetemoeller (former deputy secretary general of NATO until 2018).

In the ad, the officials insisted that Biden had “made the tough calls” (Yovanovitch, referring to the Obama administration’s operation in Ukraine) and there was “no one more qualified … to be sitting at the head of the table in the Situation Room” (Hagel). They criticized Trump for having “a love fest with dictators” (Goetemoeller, referring to Russia) and being “a danger to national security” (McGurk).

After Powell spoke, the Democrats aired the ad on the “unlikely friendship” with McCain, one of the most ferocious warmongers in the US Senate, who consistently advocated for aggression against Iran, Russia and China, before his death in 2018. Even though they were members of different parties, McCain’s daughter Cindy explained, the two enjoyed backyard dinner parties together.

One has the distinct impression that if the Democrats could get George W. Bush or John Bolton to speak at the convention, they would jump at the chance. Perhaps this is still to come.

Yesterday’s events underscore the character of the Democratic Party campaign and the entire framework of its opposition to Trump. In all of the calls at the convention for “unity” against Trump, the real appeal is to the military, Wall Street, and sections of the Republican Party to support the Democrats on the basis that Trump has proven to be a poor defender of the interests of the ruling class abroad.

As the WSWS has repeatedly stressed, the conflict within the state is a conflict within the ruling class, centered on issues of foreign policy. Over the past nearly four years, the Democrats have worked to suppress all popular opposition to the Trump administration and direct it behind the reactionary campaign for a more aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East and against Russia.

At every point, the Democrats ceded all opposition to Trump to the military and the generals, including when Trump staged his coup attempt on June 1, threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act and branding protests over police violence as “terrorist.” This is their most important constituency, along with Wall Street and the intelligence agencies.

When it came to basic elements of class policy—the expansion of military spending, tax cuts for the rich, attacks on immigrants—the Democrats facilitated and collaborated with Trump every step of the way. In the process, they continually downplayed and covered up the far-reaching danger that the Trump administration posed to the working class.

The concerns within the ruling class are expressed in the most recent edition of Foreign Affairs, a leading publication of US geopolitics, which worries that historians will not judge Trump’s handling of foreign policy “kindly.” It writes: “After nearly four years of turbulence, the country’s enemies are stronger, its friends are weaker, and the United States is increasingly isolated and prostrate.”

The Democrats’ effort to divert opposition to Trump behind the military and intelligence agencies is entirely compatible with the other element that will dominate the campaign and has been the focus of the convention: the politics of racial and gender identity. The “historic” character of the Democratic Party ticket is premised entirely on the background of Harris, an ex-prosecutor who had the enthusiastic support of Wall Street, who, if she were to become president, could become the first African American woman to be “commander-in-chief.”

In the 2020 elections, the contest between Trump and the Democrats is a contest between two reactionary factions of the ruling class.

In its election campaign, the Socialist Equality Party is oriented to the development of the class struggle. The pandemic is already producing an immense growth of social anger—among workers who have been forced to return to work, teachers who are being sent back to schools, tens of millions who are unemployed, thrown into poverty and facing eviction.

The coming weeks and months must be dedicated not to the election of Biden and Harris, but to the organization and unification of these struggles into a mass social and political movement against the entire ruling class and the capitalist system.

Joseph Kishore—SEP candidate for US president

U.S., FASCISTS SET SCOPES ON SOCIALIST-LEANING BELARUS

By Otis Grotewohl, Workers World.August 18, 2020

https://popularresistance.org/u-s-fascists-set-scopes-on-socialist-leaning-belarus/

Chinese President Xi Jingping And Russian President Vladimir Putin Congratulated Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko On His Reelection Aug. 9.

U.S. imperialism and the Western bourgeois media, however, wasted no time in denouncing Lukashenko’s victory as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used saber-rattling language against Belarus by claiming the election was not “free and fair.” (Reuters, Aug. 10)

Since the mid-1990s, U.S. imperialism has targeted the Belarus government, which has had cordial relations with other anti-imperialist governments, such as Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Lukashenko’s main electoral opponent, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who polled around 10% of the vote compared to Lukashenko’s 80%, refused to accept the election outcome. Her supporters and other opponents of the government from various centrist and right-wing parties, poured into the streets to denounce Lukashenko.

Shortly after protests started, demonstrators violently clashed with the police. Internet images have shown many of the demonstrators waving the anti-Communist red and white flag used by the Byelorussian Central Council, which collaborated with German Nazi occupiers from 1943 until 1944. The same flag was also flown by Belarusian counterrevolutionaries during the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
A ‘Maidan Movement’?

In 2014 a NATO-sponsored coup succeeded in overthrowing Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych. Pro-Western, anti-Semitic Ukrainian nationalists, including pro-fascist elements inside the “Maidan movement,” carried out this coup. At the time, Lukashenko warned the people of Belarus about such a movement developing there.

Today, Ukrainian fascists are openly lending their support to the Belarusian opposition movement.

Tikhanovskaya’s spouse, Sergei Tikhanovsky, initially intended to run against Lukashenko, but he was disqualified and arrested for participating in illegal, anti-government activities. Tikanovskaya became the main opposition candidate after his arrest. Corporate media reports that Tikhanovskaya fled to Lithuania on Aug 11.
Reason For Lukashenko’s Popular Support

Lukashenko’s reelection was the sixth one since 1994, when he also won 80% of the popular vote. In the book “The Last Soviet Republic: Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus,” author Stewart Parker argues that Lukashenko’s mass popularity and electoral success derive from his tight connection with the former Soviet Union. Unlike the other former Soviet Republics, Belarus displays symbolism of the former Soviet Union (USSR).

The only political party that Lukashenko ever belonged to was the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. According to Parker, “Lukashenko’s positive opinion of the USSR, as well as the preservation of Soviet national holidays and a rejection of nationalism, have all found favor with the older generation.”

Despite the capitalist counterrevolution in 1991, Belarus was able to restore some of the socialist programs of the Soviet era. Parker points out that the first thing Lukashenko did upon election was double the minimum wage. All education is free, including higher education.

Parker adds, “Communist and socialist governments the world over have always had literacy and education programs as core principles. Belarus has continued in this tradition. This is in stark contrast to the decline in public service spending in the other former Soviet republics.

“Maternity leave in Belarus is also extended to those who adopt babies. … Few Belarusian pensioners will have luxury cars or the latest computers, but they will be able to afford food, fuel, and the essentials that allow them to enjoy a peaceful retirement. Belarusian life expectancy is higher than in all former Soviet states with the exception of Georgia.”
Imperialist Threats To Sovereignty And Stability

Belarus’s government has its contradictions. While Belarus still maintains features from its socialist history as part of the Soviet Union, it lost other socialist features during and after the USSR’s collapse. The people have some legitimate grievances against Lukashenko, especially regarding his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Taking advantage of these grievances, Washington and the Belarus opposition use problems caused by the pandemic as a pretext against Belarus’s sovereignty — despite the U.S. government’s own mishandling of the pandemic crisis.

As of this writing, the opposition’s future is still hazy. What is clear, however, is that Lukashenko’s opposition welcomes support from the pro-fascist Maidan movement in Ukraine and from U.S. imperialism. This makes the Belarus opposition similar to the pro-capitalist protesters in Hong Kong, which U.S. imperialist politicians and Western white supremacists embrace.

Anti-imperialists and revolutionaries inside the U.S. must oppose any U.S. involvement in other countries’ affairs. Washington’s policies aim at instability in Belarus. Ukraine’s Maidan movement encourages a pro-fascist coup. These are both a threat to Belarus’s workers.

U.S. imperialist and fascist hands off Belarus!

MAKE CORPORATE LANDLORDS PAY FOR HOUSING CRISIS

By Sofia Lopez and Sara Myklebust, Inequality.August 18, 2020

https://popularresistance.org/make-corporate-landlords-pay-for-housing-crisis/

The Covid-19 crisis has both exposed and exacerbated racial and wealth inequality in the United States. As unemployment skyrockets and tens of millions of Americans struggle with a sudden loss of income, many are unable to pay rents or mortgages and are facing eviction, foreclosure, and possible homelessness.

We’ve seen this eviction crisis brewing for months, and despite platitudes about racial justice, our elected officials and corporate landlords haven’t taken any meaningful action to prevent it from hitting poor people of color hardest.

Latinx and Black workers have been hit hardest by job losses and are more likely to suffer evictions. In July 2020, Latinx unemployment was 12.9 percent, and Black unemployment was 14.6 percent, compared to 9.2 percent for white Americans. Given this, it’s not surprising that an Urban Institute analysis of U.S. Census survey data indicates about 44 percent and 41 percent of adult Latinx and Black renters, respectively, had little to no confidence they could pay next month’s rent, compared with about 21 percent of white renters who felt the same.

These job losses and higher eviction risk in addition to historic housing segregation and environmental racism, have contributed to greater risk of contracting Covid-19 for communities of color.

While so many of us struggle to survive, some of the richest billionaires in the world dominate the residential real estate industry in the United States. These corporate landlords are companies owned by extremely wealthy individuals, Wall Street entities like private equity firms and hedge funds, and institutional investors. At least six leading residential property owners — Essex Property Trust, Brookfield Property Partners, Equity Residential, Related Companies, Irvine Company, and Blackstone — have top executives on the Forbes billionaires list.


Other prominent corporate landlords include Kushner Companies, Mosser Capital, Starwood Capital, and CBRE. Across the country, these companies own large apartment complexes, office buildings, hotels, single-family homes, and a significant chunk of our mortgage debt. Corporate landlords do not pay their fair share in taxes at the local, state or federal level. Here’s why: for decades, they have successfully lobbied City Halls, state legislatures, and Congress to put their needs first, to create loopholes, special statuses, corporate welfare programs and other schemes to avoid taxes and regulation and boost their profits.

Amid the current crisis, some of these obscenely wealthy companies and individuals, many of which profited immensely during the Great Recession, are lobbying aggressively for taxpayer-funded assistance programs and making plans to exploit the pain of so many to grow even wealthier.
It’s Time To Make Them Pay

With millions of tenants, homeowners, and small property owners struggling to survive during the Covid-19 pandemic, hundreds of thousands of tenants, organized by low-income people of color, are taking action across the country to demand that Congress and state governments act immediately to require corporate landlords to pay for the cancellation of rent, mortgages, and utilities, and to provide financial relief to small property owners facing foreclosure.

These corporations are sitting on billions of dollars and will keep getting richer through tax breaks and giveaways, including in the federal stimulus packages. They can easily afford to cancel monthly housing-related expenses and debts for millions of Americans whose jobs and incomes have been destroyed by Covid-19. Making them pay will help stabilize the housing market, the national economy, and communities across the country. Relief can’t come soon enough.

This is the fairest and most pragmatic way to address the financial crisis that so many households face right now. It’s likely that many Americans will have no ability to pay rent, mortgages, and utilities for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic. Those who can’t afford housing-related costs today won’t be able to afford them for the foreseeable future.

Well before the Covid-19 crisis hit, many American households, especially households of color, were spending huge proportions of their income on housing, leaving little left over for other necessities, and nothing for savings. For example, one in four Black households spent more than half their income on housing (compared to one in ten white households). Many cities were already experiencing housing affordability crises, with renters and owners struggling to pay rents and mortgages and homelessness skyrocketing, while corporate landlords and lenders prospered. The pandemic is turning the housing affordability crisis into a national catastrophe.

That’s why the full cancellation of housing-related expenses and debt is so important. Low-income Americans can’t afford to stay home from work, even if they’re feeling sick, unless their rent, mortgages, and utilities are canceled. And if low-income and unemployed people lose their homes to eviction or foreclosure, they will not be able to “stay home” at all.
Corporate Landlords Must Provide The Relief Millions Need

With Congress deadlocked on a new stimulus package, President Trump attempted to give the impression that he’d taken executive action to extend the current eviction moratorium. In reality, his memorandum merely directs federal agencies to “consider” measures to prevent evictions.

But even extending the moratorium wouldn’t be enough. Moratoriums do not alleviate the growing financial burden of unpaid rent, mortgage, utility, and other housing-related bills that will come due in the near future.

Tenants are demanding that Congress and state governments instead make corporate landlords pay for the cancellation of all housing-related expenses incurred during this pandemic, so households — and the economy more generally — can begin to recover financially. That’s the real policy response and solution to the current crisis. Anything short of full cancellation will continue to trigger mass evictions and an explosion in predatory debt, both of which hit communities of color hardest before Covid-19, and will only be compounded. And wealthy corporate landlords can afford it.
Federal Handouts And Giveaways To Corporate Landlords

The largest corporate landlords have siphoned money out of public budgets at all levels of government and are using Covid-19 as an opportunity to expand their riches even further.

The stimulus package Congress passed in March gives $170 billion in immediate tax benefits to real estate and millionaires. The CARES Act permits all businesses’ losses to be carried back — which allows immediate tax refunds — for five years from 2018, 2019, and 2020. Losses carried back to years before 2018 will generate refunds of already paid income taxes at the older, higher rates — previously 35 percent maximum for corporations (compared to current 21 percent) and 39.6 percent maximum for individuals (37 percent today).

The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimates that owners of pass-through businesses will receive $170 billion in tax benefits over the next 10 years. For 2020, the JCT estimates that roughly 43,000 taxpayers with at least $1 million in annual income will reap 82 percent of the benefits, with an average tax cut of more than $1.6 million. Which millionaires will come out on top? According to the Tax Policy Center, the key groups include real estate professionals and hedge fund investors, including developers — in other words, corporate landlords.

Real estate companies had already received nearly $50 billion from President Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). The TCJA allowed real estate investors to deduct 20 percent of pass-through business income to lower the effective tax rate on income if they have sufficient real estate assets. This benefits real estate companies as well as those investing in Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). Experts estimate this is worth $29 billion over the next 10 years.

The TCJA also created “opportunity zones” — zip codes where one can invest capital gains in real estate and businesses through designated opportunity funds and receive huge tax breaks. The tax cut was purportedly aimed at fostering economic rejuvenation of lower income areas but was so poorly designed and implemented that it provides tax breaks for developments that were already underway or in rapidly gentrifying areas, including corporate landlords like Related Companies and Stephen Ross. Real estate firms and developers are raising up to $5 billion for each opportunity fund and the JCT estimates opportunity zones will cost $3.5 billion a year from 2019 through 2022, for a total of $14 billion over those 4 years.

The TCJA also allowed real estate investors to deduct all of their interest payments on buildings from their income while other large businesses could only deduct 30 percent of their interest payments. Experts estimate this tax break is worth $16 billion over the next 10 years.

Even before the corporate tax giveaway of 2017, the federal tax code included real estate industry tax benefits that are worth nearly $250 billion over the next 10 years. For example, real estate investors have a special loophole, “like-kind exchanges,” to avoid paying capital gains taxes on profits from the sale of assets as long as these profits were reinvested in comparable assets. Essentially, profits from the sale of a building can be used to buy another building without paying any taxes. Experts believe this tax break is worth almost $134 billion over the next 10 years.

In 1986, tax reform prohibited businesses from investing in other business which generated losses in order to reduce their income for tax purposes. But in 1993, the real estate industry lobbied to exempt rental income from these passive loss rules, creating a tax benefit for these “money-losing” real estate investments. The Treasury estimates this tax break is worth $79 billion over 10 years.

Businesses can depreciate assets that lose value over time as the assets age, reflecting the declining value of things like machinery or vehicles. Real estate investors can depreciate their assets and reduce their taxes even though real estate values often rise over time, especially in more expensive or rising markets. This depreciation is counted against the value of the property when it is sold, reducing the capital gains taxes. The JCT estimates rental and other real estate at $21 billion over 5 years.

With a standard corporate structure, the government levies taxes twice—on the corporation’s profits and on employees’ incomes. But nearly all real estate operations are run through limited liability corporations (LLCs), which are allowed to pass profits to the owners who then pay income taxes on the money, while the corporation does not pay any taxes on the money at all.

Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), created in the 1980s to encourage investment in real estate, are also treated as pass-through entities for tax purposes, which means they pay no corporate taxes in exchange for paying 90 percent of their taxable income to shareholders as dividends. As described above, the TCJA also allowed those that do have to pay tax on this “income” to deduct 20 percent.
State And Local Giveaways To Corporate Landlords

Many federal tax breaks for real estate firms have already been or will be enacted at the state level as well. For example, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) describes how, because nearly all states piggyback on the federal tax code’s definition of “gross income,” the opportunity zone tax breaks outlined above will automatically flow through to state individual and corporate income taxes unless states proactively “decouple” their law from these provisions. Corporate landlords and real estate investors are likely to see billions more at the state level from the giveaways described above, as well as others they have lobbied to create in each state.

Corporate landlords frequently also benefit from Tax Increment Financing (TIF), Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT), bonding, and other schemes at the municipal and local level connected both to single projects and broader development work. One example of this is Related Companies’ Hudson Yards in New York City. Research shows that Related’s project cost the city $2.2 billion, through a combination of subsidies, including over $350 million in property tax breaks for residential developers.

The tax breaks and schemes described above are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the myriad ways that corporate landlords, real estate investors, private equity and financial actors are and will continue to profit off the rental housing market in the U.S. Debt and mortgages are other key areas the industry exploits, including through government-financed agencies and programs, to maximize profit margins. These schemes are all the more galling in a moment when people don’t have enough money just to make ends meet and are being forced from their homes as a result.
Using Covid-19 As An Opportunity To Seek Billions More In Tax Breaks And Giveaways For Corporate Landlords

On top of these many handouts, industry lobbyists are using Covid-19 to ask for even more support. The National Multifamily Housing Council and National Apartment Association, which corporate landlords dominate, are pushing their wish-list of measures, including taxpayer-funded rental assistance, narrowing the already limited eviction moratorium criteria, expanding Payment Protection Program eligibility to all multifamily businesses, including the largest corporate landlords, and increasing tax relief for all multifamily residential businesses, which could go to corporate landlords that clearly don’t need it.

Their pitch also calls for expanding low-income housing tax credits, creating middle-income housing tax credits, increasing the breadth of opportunity zones, and enacting legislation to clear regulatory barriers for construction of more multi-family housing irrespective of cost. All of these would be immensely lucrative for the industry overall and corporate landlords in particular. They are examples of the broken “trickle-down” housing models that enrich those dominating residential real estate while exploiting our racialized housing system, hurting workers and families, and putting communities at risk across the country.
How Corporate Landlords Are Planning To Capitalize On Covid-19

Corporate landlords amassed enormous fortunes during the Great Recession and are now expressing excitement about the potential for profiteering post-pandemic. The president of a division of Fortress Investment Group said of the coming pain, “It’s kind of exciting times. I mean, this is what you live for.” These landlords certainly have the resources to exploit this new crisis—according to the Wall Street Journal, at the end of December 2019, real estate investment funds had $142 billion ready to spend on distressed and opportunistic real estate investments.

The Blackstone Group, Inc., Brookfield Asset Management, and Starwood Capital Group are “sitting on billions of dollars in cash and capital commitments they have raised from pensions, sovereign wealth funds and other big institutions” as the industry eyes hotels, retail properties, mortgage backed securities, and defaulting borrowers. On a 2020 Q1 Earnings call, Starwood Capital CEO Barry Stenlicht said, “when it’s really ugly, it’s a good time to invest.” Blackstone raised the largest commercial real estate fund ever in September with $20.5 billion, and as of December 2019 Brookfield held $15 billion.

People within the industry are saying “many [real estate investors] have been waiting for this for a decade.” The Kushner family has announced they are putting together a fund through Cadre, their real estate investment vehicle, to take advantage of “opportunities” during the pandemic. While Jared Kushner himself formally divested from the fund in February of 2020, it’s clear that a prominent corporate landlord with very close ties to the White House is gearing up to profit from the crisis and its effect on the real estate market.

The U.S. real estate industry is led by some of the richest, most powerful people in the world. They have profited handsomely from the last foreclosure crisis, the commodification of housing, and decades of racist housing policy, all while actively lobbying to avoid paying their fair share in taxes. The Covid-19 pandemic has magnified what we already knew: Corporate landlords’ bill is long past due. It’s time to make them pay for the cancellation of rent, mortgages, and utilities for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic. Making them pay will help millions of tenants, homeowners, and struggling property owners who are struggling to survive.

BOLIVIA: THE SCREAM OF ÁÑEZ OUT!

By Ángel Guerra Cabrera, La Jornada.

August 18, 2020

https://popularresistance.org/bolivia-the-scream-of-anez-out/




Áñez Out is the main demand of the current popular protest mobilization in Bolivia. Barely a week ago the demand was: Elections, now! That was calling for September 6, agreed date by the political organizations and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), for the elections to be held. That was at the time against the new postponement of the elections for October 18 adopted by the TSE, which was the third one, with the excuse of protecting the population against the coronavirus, without having carried out any consultation with the political forces and the popular movement.

Since I wrote in La Jornada on July 30 against the postponement of the election act, a mobilization and open town hall was called in the city of El Alto by the Bolivian Workers’ Central (COB) and the Unity Pact (which brings together the peasant and indigenous social movements), which gave the TSE 72 hours to reopen the election on September 6 or else a general strike and road blockades would be declared until their request was granted.

On July 3, the measures announced by the COB and the social movements were implemented, and despite having met for hours with the electoral body, they have not managed to get the latter to advance the date of the elections. The president of the TSE has so far obeyed Áñez’s orders. The bases of the COB, the Unity Pact and other social forces feel ignored by the Áñez government, which is infuriating them because of the evident intention of the self-proclaimed to perpetuate herself in power, having dismantled and plundered the public companies, arbitrarily closing the school year and for its disastrous handling of the pandemic by disregarding the advice of the Medical Association, including a shortage of basic medicines and scandalous corruption in health purchases, such as 500 ventilators that no one seems to know where they are.

It should be recalled that Áñez proclaimed herself “interim” president, in violation of constitutional law, on November 12, 2019, but later agreed to pursue a peace agenda and call for elections on May 5, 2020. Let’s remember since then there have been three postponements on the pretext of the pandemic.

How was the coup d’état that enthroned Áñez forged? The United States and the local right-wing carried out a series of actions, before and after the October 2019 elections, to make a part of the urban population believe, through a delirious national and international media campaign, that the elections would be fraudulent and to encourage anti-indigenous racism in the urban middle classes and, consequently, demonize the leadership of Evo Morales.

Later on, they allowed Luis Almagro, OAS Secretary General, to throw a veil of doubt over the transparency of the electoral process and to demand that new elections be held. Accepted by Evo, despite knowing that it was an action of the empire to bring down his process of change, but in an attempt to cut the spiral of savage violence that the right had launched against officials of his government and their families. But the coup d’état was already unstoppable, organized by powerful local economic and geopolitical interests and the empire of the north eager to end an independent, prosperous and socially just Bolivia and to take over its natural resources, including its coveted lithium. They had the support of the police and especially the army, whose chiefs literally bought them with a million dollars. This ensured violent repression by the military of the indigenous and peasant opposition to the coup and led to the bloody massacres in Senkata and Sacaba.

The current situation is very explosive as the Áñez regime is extremely weakened by all that has already been said. So much so, that the lady has not yet signed the decree that the commander of the armed forces is demanding in order to act against the protests. On Wednesday it was announced that the political forces, including the majority MAS of Evo Morales, had agreed to approve a law in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies fixing the elections until October 18, at the latest, as the only and definitive date, with the participation of observers from the UN, the European Union, the Ombudsman’s Office and other national organizations. If this were to be approved, it would be necessary to know the opinion of the COB and of the forces that are in the blockades, with which this solution would have to be negotiated, since up to now many people are still demanding Áñez’s resignation.

Isolated and delegitimized, she does not control the situation. The problem for Washington and the Bolivian right is that, according to the polls, Luis Arce, the MAS candidate, would win the election in the first round, unless he is invalidated to compete. A waiting period has begun where the possibility of a civil-military self-coup is not excluded, as Evo Morales has warned.