https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVjUMcizPjY&ab_channel=TheJimmyDoreShow
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Economic Update: U.S. Labor Battles Covid 19 & Politics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3UQ2YYywqE&ab_channel=DemocracyAtWork
Dr. Death
Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria
Nov 17
In 64 days, the Trump administration will be over. But that is still a lot of time to inflict damage on the American people — particularly during a raging pandemic. This week, Dr. Scott Atlas, the Stanford radiologist who became Trump's top COVID-19 adviser, is using menacing language to undermine efforts in Michigan to slow the spread of the virus.
Michigan, like many areas of the country, has seen an exponential increase in COVID-19 cases in recent days. Over the last two weeks, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all up over 100%.
On Sunday, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) announced some new common-sense restrictions for a three-week period to save lives. Under Whitmer's order, colleges and high schools will shift to remote learning, casinos and bowling alleys will close, and indoor gatherings will be limited to 10 people. But retail stores, Pre-K through eighth-grade classrooms, and hair salons will stay open.
The announcement was quickly attacked by Atlas on Twitter, who encouraged residents to "rise up" and oppose Whitmer's order.
Scott W. Atlas @ScottWAtlasThe only way this stops is if people rise up. You get what you accept. #FreedomMatters #StepUp philip lewis @Phil_Lewis_Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has announced an epidemic order for 3 weeks, starting this Wednesday. In-person learning for high schools and colleges are halted. Indoor dining, theaters, stadiums, organized sports (except pros) are no longer open. https://t.co/kLOPFJXHbD
November 15th 20205,841 Retweets14,309 Likes
Atlas' rhetoric is especially disturbing because Whitmer has faced serious threats from right-wing extremists. Last month, "federal and state officials arrested 14 men in connection with an alleged plot to kidnap Whitmer and put her on trial for 'treason.'" Authorities say the men "were connected with armed anti-government groups and saw Whitmer as 'a tyrant' because of emergency orders she had issued to control the coronavirus." A few hours after his initial tweet, Atlas claimed he would never "endorse or incite violence."
Whitmer said Atlas' tweet was "incredibly reckless," but she would not be deterred. "We know that the White House likes to single us out here in Michigan, me out in particular. I’m not going to be bullied into not following reputable scientists and medical professionals,” she said.
Atlas doles out opinions as if he is an infectious disease expert — but he is not. As Popular Information reported in September, Atlas' 159-page CV contains no references to "epidemiology," "epidemic," "virus," or "viral." He became the most influential White House voice on the virus not because of his training or knowledge but because he told Trump what Trump wanted to hear.
Atlas' tweet encouraging Michiganders to ignore a modest government order — like much of his advice — may kill people.
Atlas' atrocious advice
The simplest and most effective step people can take to stop the spread of COVID-19 is wearing a mask in public settings. The CDC recently summarized the scientific evidence that masks can not only prevent people from spreading COVID-19 but also protect people from contracting it. Multi-layer cloth masks "block release of exhaled respiratory particles into the environment, along with the microorganisms these particles carry" and "can also reduce wearers’ exposure to infectious droplets through filtration, including filtration of fine droplets and particles less than 10 microns."
In August, however, Atlas tweeted, "Masks work? NO." He included a link to a rambling article published by the libertarian think tank American Institute for Economic Research, a frequent source of COVID misinformation. The tweet was removed by Twitter for violating its health misinformation policies.
Atlas has also argued against testing asymptomatic people who have been exposed — a key step in stopping the spread of the virus — because he wants asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 to keep working. He successfully convinced Florida to substantially reduce the number of people tested in the state.
His opposition to testing potential asymptomatic carriers may be part of a broader push by Atlas to let the virus spread as widely as possible. The Washington Post reported that Atlas advocated "allowing infections to spread naturally among most of the population while protecting the most vulnerable and those in nursing homes until the United States reaches herd immunity." Atlas denies that he supports a "herd immunity" strategy but endorsed "the 'Great Barrington Declaration,' which effectively promotes a herd immunity strategy." Adopting such a strategy would likely result in "hundreds of thousands of excess deaths."
Appearing on Fox News on Monday night, Atlas encouraged large family gatherings for Thanksgiving. “For many people, this is their last Thanksgiving," Atlas said.
An issue of medical ethics
Atlas' conduct is so egregious that he may be violating the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Principles of Medical Ethics. Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, a professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, told Popular Information that Atlas is “violating the guidelines for ethical physician conduct in the media.”
First and foremost, Dr. Atlas is a neuroradiologist with no experience or training in infectious diseases or epidemiology... He is practicing beyond the scope of expertise which violates the AMA guidance which states that information they provide should be "commensurate with their medical expertise" and should be confined to their "area(s) of expertise." Additionally, he has repeatedly promoted misinformation stating masks are ineffective… Finally, he has most recently promoted violence against the governor of Michigan, advising people to "rise up" due to new public health guidelines to help control the surging pandemic. This does not uphold the values, norms, and integrity of the medical profession.
Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University, told Popular Information that Atlas has "has an ethical obligation to provide accurate information based on science."
How Stanford became the epicenter for COVID misinformation
Atlas is not the only person affiliated with Stanford University that is contributing to misinformation about the pandemic.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a former fellow at the Hoover Institution and a current Stanford professor, has been an outspoken opponent of mitigation measures since the beginning of the pandemic. In April, Bhattacharya, along with other Stanford colleagues, published a non-peer-reviewed study suggesting that COVID-19 infections were actually 85 times higher in Silicon Valley than previously reported and therefore was no more dangerous than the flu. Dr. John Ioannidis, a Stanford professor and co-author of the study, suggested in April that the results indicate that the coronavirus is “not the apocalyptic problem we thought.”
The study went viral but received harsh criticism from experts who questioned the researchers’ methodologies. A month later, BuzzFeed News’ Stephanie Lee revealed that Bhattacharya and Ionannidis’s study was funded in part by JetBlue founder David Neeleman – an outspoken opponent of travel restrictions. In October, it was Bhattacharya who spearheaded the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocates a herd immunity strategy.
Richard Epstein, a senior fellow at Hoover and right-wing law professor, predicted in March that only 500 Americans would die from the virus. The piece was circulated among Trump administration officials, according to the Washington Post. Epstein would go on to revise this projection a week later, projecting the total number of COVID-19 deaths at 5,000 and then 50,000. In April, Epstein wrote that “the response of the state governors to the coronavirus outbreak has become far more dangerous than the disease itself.” He argued that the death count was exaggerated and that lockdowns were not really needed.
Stanford faculty speak out against Atlas
In September, a group of Stanford faculty members publicly criticized Atlas in an open letter for spreading “falsehoods” regarding the coronavirus. The letter was signed by 98 Stanford researchers and physicians. (Atlas threatened to sue the signatories for defamation.)
To prevent harm to the public’s health, we also have both a moral and an ethical responsibility to call attention to the falsehoods and misrepresentations of science recently fostered by Dr. Scott Atlas, a former Stanford Medical School colleague and current senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. Many of his opinions and statements run counter to established science and, by doing so, undermine public-health authorities and the credible science that guides effective public health policy.
Meanwhile, other Stanford faculty members are calling on the university to re-examine its relationship with the Hoover Institution. “These statements [from fellows at the Hoover Institution] dangerously downplay the deadly nature of the disease and recommend policies that seem more aligned with driving a particular policy position than with science or fact,” wrote faculty in a letter.
One professor, David Spiegel, asked “why the university had not sanctioned Atlas or publicly disputed his statements about COVID-19.” According to Stanford News:
He said, “Atlas’ conduct is not merely a matter of expressing an opinion – it is a violation of the American Medical Association’s Code of Ethics.” Spiegel also believes Atlas’ actions may violate the Stanford Code of Conduct, which holds each member responsible for “sustaining the high ethical standards of the institution.” Further, he has charged that Atlas has inappropriately leveraged his relationship to Stanford to assert a health care expertise he does not have.
Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne responded by citing the university’s Statement on Academic Freedom. In a new statement released Monday, Stanford said that Atlas "has expressed views that are inconsistent with the university’s approach in response to the pandemic," and "Atlas’s statements reflect his personal views, not those of the Hoover Institution or the university."
Sunday, November 15, 2020
Another 709,000 file for unemployment in the US as evictions resume, food lines grow and job cuts continue
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/14/unem-n14.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
Jacob Crosse
13 November 2020
For the 34th straight week, over 700,000 people filed for unemployment in the US according to the Department of Labor’s latest report. The 709,000 state claims coupled with an additional 298,154 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance brings the weekly total once again to over 1 million new claims.
Nearly 67 million claims have been filed since mid-March as the worst economic crisis to befall the working class in the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s leaves millions on the brink of destitution. While the 709,000 marks a slight reduction from the previous week’s nearly 755,000 claims, the staggering figure is still three times higher than the pre-pandemic average, exemplifying the ongoing job apocalypse that has decimated workers, particularly in entertainment, hospitality, education and transportation sectors.
Telecommunications giant AT&T, which posted over $42.3 billion in revenue in the third quarter of this year, announced possibly “thousands” of layoffs in North America as part of a “restructure” of its WarnerMedia division this week. A company spokesman declined to state the exact number to the Wall Street Journal, but indicated that over 1,000, and up to 2,000, out of the company’s 25,000 workers will be fired. News of the mass layoffs sent shares of AT&T up nearly 2 percent as the financial oligarchy continues to enrich itself off desperation and death.
Even as layoffs continue, unemployment benefits are expiring for millions. For the week ending Oct. 24, a total of 21,157,111 people were receiving some form of assistance, a drop of roughly 375,000 people from the previous week. While a small number of those dropped off due to finding work, for the majority it is simply a matter of running out of state unemployment benefits which for most is capped at 26 weeks, although several states such as Florida and North Carolina limit the number of regular unemployment payments to a mere 12 weeks.
While the official national unemployment rate is now 6.9 percent—a gross underestimation of the true extent of joblessness—several states are much higher with Hawaii leading the country at 9.9 percent. This is followed by California at 8.9 percent; New Mexico, 8.5 percent; Nevada, 8.2 percent, while Massachusetts is at 7.0 percent. In Los Angeles and Las Vegas, cities heavily reliant on entertainment, travel and dining, the unemployment rate is at 15.1 and 14.8 percent, respectively.
However the job losses in Nevada are not just due to the lack of tourism. Previewing the austerity measures teachers and students can expect under a Biden administration, massive cuts in education funding were rammed through a Democratic-controlled legislature and signed by Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak in a special session in July. The $160 million in cuts led to a nearly 20 percent reduction in public education jobs compared to 2019, representing roughly 10,900 fewer teachers and support staff, according to the Pew Research Center.
While Nevada has the highest percentage reduction in education jobs out of all US states, nearly every state, except for North Dakota and Utah, recorded year-to-year reductions in public education workers. Pew estimates that overall state and local education employment in the US is down 8.8 percent compared to October the previous year. Florida, West Virginia, New York, Maine and California have all posted double digit percentage reductions in education jobs, with California shedding over 100,000 public education workers compared to the year before.
Officially 25.7 million people are considered “temporarily” laid off, unemployed or have seen a reduction in hours or pay since the pandemic has begun. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that due to job losses and reductions in hours, over 12 million people have lost their employee-based health insurance.
The historic job losses are compounded by the current out-of-control spread of the coronavirus in the US, which is mirrored internationally as capitalist governments have embraced a genocidal policy of “herd immunity.” Eschewing lockdowns and financial assistance to workers, small businesses and their families, the “back to work” and “back to school” policies championed by Democratic and Republican governors alike have led to over 248,000 deaths in the US while millions of jobs have been lost and will never return.
It has been 15 weeks since unemployed workers last received the $600 enhanced federal unemployment benefit, included as part of the misnamed $2.2 trillion CARES Act Wall Street bailout passed at the end of March. By December 26, two federal programs, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, will expire, leaving some 13.6 million workers, an overwhelming majority of whom have already used up their state benefits, with nothing. The end of the year will also see the expiration of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s limited eviction moratorium, although this hasn’t prevented some mayors, like Miami-Dade’s Carlos Gimenez, from resuming evictions, which he announced would begin again today.
In what has become commonplace in the richest country on the planet, food lines continue to snake around blocks in large cities and rural communities alike. The latest Household Pulse survey data collected by the US Census Bureau from October 14 to October 26 found that nearly 11 percent of US adults, 24 million people, reported that their household sometimes or often did not have enough food to eat within the last week, a more than 7 percent increase from the same period last year.
Despite the disastrous situation facing millions of workers and families, through no fault of their own, the US government and the two parties of capital have no plans to pass much needed relief.
“Hopefully we can get past the impasse we’ve had now for four or five months and get serious,” Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday. McConnell has been appointed by the Trump White House to lead coronavirus relief negotiations during the lame-duck session in November and December.
On Friday, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in between hosting a dinner party for new members of Congress, gave another half-hearted call for “negotiations” with Republicans on a stimulus bill using the $2.2 trillion Heroes Act as the baseline for negotiations. The massive bill was shot down by McConnell months ago and has no chance of being passed, even in a Biden administration.
Their opposition to passing meaningful relief is contrasted with the speed the two parties exhibited in passing funding for the US Postal Service prior to the election, revealing the charade of the so-called “negotiation” process. This same duplicity is echoed in Biden’s declarations to “follow the science” in regards to the pandemic, while refusing to support the closure of non-essential factories and schools to control the spread of the coronavirus. In both cases the response of the Democratic Party is guided by the financial concerns of the ruling class, not the health and safety of the population.
The decisive factor in ending the pandemic and reorganizing society on human need, not private profit, remains the independent intervention of the working class fighting for socialism.
Re-release of Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder (2003): A picture of South Korean society
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/14/memo-n14.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
David Walsh
13 November 2020
The success of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, which won four major awards at the Academy Awards in February 2020 (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film), has prompted distributors to release the director’s earlier film, Memories of Murder (2003).
The digitally remastered movie has been shown in Italy, Russia, Greece, Taiwan, Canada and Finland over the past year. Bong’s work was screened for two nights in theaters nationwide in the US October 19–20, and is now available on the various streaming services. Memories of Murder is well worth watching.
The film, as explained below, concerns a real-life serial murder case that occurred in South Korea in the late 1980s and early 1990s—a series of crimes that was finally solved only in 2019. Bong—director of Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), The Host (2006), Mother (2009), Snowpiercer (2013), and Okja (2017)—issued a statement in September in advance of the release of the older film in the US.
Bong noted in his comment that the murder case “was severely traumatic to the Korean public … The victims and their families, innocent suspects who were hauled [in] and tormented, failed detectives who found themselves in despair, people of those times who trembled with fear … This case occurred in the dark era of military dictatorship in the 80s, and truly created a further and darker abyss.”
The director added that Memories of Murder “is an uncanny, yet natural, mixture of horror and comedy because we were truly living in such times. The actual case and this film have passed through a long tunnel of time … and now my eyes are on how this film will plow through the long tunnel of time as it greets a new chapter in the fall of 2020 in the US.”
We originally viewed Bong’s film at the 2004 San Francisco International Film Festival, and commented on it in an article headlined, “For greater complexity, more uncovering.” The piece argued that modern society was “extremely complex and it demands an artistic response of equal or comparable complexity. It is one of the difficulties of our time that many artists with their ‘hearts in the right place’ either feel the need to simplify reality, in the name of a misplaced populist accessibility, or genuinely see the world in rather primitive terms.”
In search of such complexity, we explained, we seized upon Memories of Murder as one of the more commendable efforts along these lines. The review continued:
The film bases itself on a real case, of South Korea’s first serial killer, who raped and murdered 10 women in a small town outside Seoul over the course of six years (1986–1991).
According to the film’s production notes, “Other than the victims, the killer left not a single shred of evidence. Over 3,000 suspects were interrogated. At least 300,000 police took part in the massive investigation. There was no profiling mechanism, nor any idea of preserving the crime scene for forensic investigation. Not a single person was indicted for the crimes.”
The director acknowledges his attraction to crime films, but adds, “I found that the actualities of a murder case don’t conform to the conventions of the crime genre. Only something like Silence of the Lambs could have produced an intellectual thriller pitting the detective against the criminal. Reality is nothing like this. I wanted to show reality.”
A worthy ambition.
In a rural area in Gyeonggi province the body of a young woman is found, murdered and sexually assaulted. Two months later, a series of rape-murders begins. A special task force is established. Local police detective Park Doo-man (Song Kang-ho), who believes in his intuition (“I can read people”) and in terrorizing the usual (and obvious) suspects to gain results, is joined by Seoul detective Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung), a more cerebral and sophisticated type.
They are beset by difficulties from the outset: crime scenes that are inevitably compromised (by crowds, children and, in one case, a tractor that drives over footprints) and a relatively primitive technology. But more than that, by the stupidity and brutality of a police force used to beating up prisoners under decades of military dictatorship. (We witness in passing the police thrashing demonstrators protesting the appearance of the country’s president.) They have no problem extracting confessions from a number of suspects, but none of these “admissions of guilt” have any value.
Indeed, the cops have no difficulty in finding suspects, people melancholy or vulnerable enough to commit any number of strange and unhappy acts. One man goes mad in interrogation; another admits to masturbating at a crime scene; a third, chronically lonely individual admits to requesting a certain song, which has appeared on the radio every night a murder has been committed. But he’s no more guilty of the horrible crimes than the others. Even after the police brutalize him, he tells them to their faces, “People know you torture innocent people … You’ll never victimize me.”
In the end, the killer is never caught. A potential eyewitness is hit by a train, trying to avoid what he thinks will be another beating from the police. The series of rape-murders eventually ends. Years later, one of the investigators goes to the scene of the initial crime and encounters a young school-girl, who tells him that someone else had recently visited the spot—presumably the killer. What did he look like? he eagerly asks. “Ordinary,” she says.
The picture drawn is of a society so dysfunctional, so dominated by violence and the “memory” of previous violence and repression—decades of ruthless and cruel military dictatorship—that a mere serial killer disappears in its midst. The savage methods of interrogation, the backwardness in every regard, the use of the police primarily to control and oppress the population—all of these make “solving the crime” an impossibility. Which crime would that be? And which criminal? Too much damage has already been done to the population and its psyche. The 10 rape-murders inevitably get lost in the shuffle.
Song Kang-ho is remarkable as the local detective, Kim Sang-kyung equally fine as his Seoul counterpart. In the former’s overwhelmed, confused state and the latter’s sadness and even despair, something more than the mentality of two police detectives is captured. The film suggests that if any hope is to be found, it must lie in expunging from the entire society the stench of its crimes.
Nothing Else Matters (Metallica) : MOZART HEROES (Official Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxoW-00Zyho&ab_channel=MOZARTHEROES%5BOfficial%5D
Overwhelming police presence used to intimidate Northwestern University protest
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/14/ineq-n14.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
Andy Thompson
13 November 2020
On Monday night a large police force was deployed to downtown Evanston, Illinois, to intimidate and suppress a demonstration by a small group of students from nearby Northwestern University (NU).
The students were calling for the abolition of Northwestern’s police department.
The protest was organized by a group of students known as NU Community Not Cops, which has been leading calls for the abolition of the university’s police department since the summer. The group planned to march from the campus to the downtown area to read statements speaking out against police violence.
As they made their way to their destination, students were surrounded and corralled by armed police in riot gear and shields. The Daily Northwestern reported that protesters were threatened with arrest if any of them stepped off the sidewalk into the street.
In addition to the Evanston Police Department, additional officers from the Northern Illinois Police Alarm System (NIPAS) were deployed to bolster the police presence and create a larger show of force. NIPAS is a system that local police chiefs in the area use to call in detachments from neighboring departments.
Reportedly, 70 or more police officers followed and surrounded the students. In comparison, the protest never exceeded 60 people. Estimates from Twitter suggested the protest consisted of 30-45 students most of the time.
David Rosen, a local resident who passed by the protest, told the Daily Northwestern: “It doesn’t look very dangerous to me. … [The police] look more dangerous than [the protesters] do.”
The deployment of such an overwhelming force for a relatively small student protest is an attempt to intimidate students into ending their protests and discourage similar demonstrations. It also reflects the fear that protests taking place during broader social unrest over the Trump administration, the election and more, could grow into a broader movement.
At least two police officers were photographed hiding their names and badge numbers with tape, a common tactic before a police riot to protect officers who employ unlawful violence. No students were arrested at the protest.
Less than two weeks earlier, on Halloween, NU Community Not Cops held a protest in the same downtown Evanston area during which a sit-in was held.
When police surrounded a student to arrest her for having moved onto the sidewalk, students and police clashed, with police using pepper spray being on the crowd of protesters. Students were shoved back with batons. A PhD student told the Daily Northwestern: “My friend got hit in the face, so she starts crying and freaking out. … So I’m holding on to her, trying to move back, shouting for a medic … and then [the pepper spray] got in my contacts and I had to rip them out.”
Police justified the violence with the claim that students were destroying property. The only reported damage was a broken window at a Whole Foods and a handful of plants that had been pulled from their pots.
After the incident on October 31, Evanston Police Chief Demitrous Cook told reporters that the police response to the students was to “send a message that we’re not going to let people just come in here and tear up the City of Evanston.”
Student protests calling for the removal of Northwestern’s campus police began this summer in the wake of the protests against the murder of George Floyd. NU Community Not Cops and other organizations circulated a petition calling for the abolition of the school’s police department and the funds to be redistributed to student resources. The petition has gained over 8,000 signatures.
Since then the group has staged regular demonstrations looking to gain a hearing from the university. Many protests have taken place outside the home of Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro calling for him to resign. On October 19, Schapiro issued a statement condemning the protests.
“The University has every intention to continue improving NUPD, we have absolutely no intention to abolish it.” Schapiro said student protests have “moved well past legitimate forms of free speech” and that he was “disgusted” by the demonstrations. As president of Northwestern, an important Big 10 school, Schapiro is paid $1,590,081 per year.
The increase in police presence and brutality, on campus and off campus, against students and workers is a marked escalation of the authoritarian actions being taken by governments as class tensions reach a fever pitch.
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