2020-07-14: News Headlines

Marco Vinceti, Tommaso Filippini, Kenneth J. Rothman, Fabrizio Ferrari, Alessia Goffi, Giuseppe Maffeis, Nicola Orsini (2020-07-13). [Research Paper] Lockdown timing and efficacy in controlling COVID-19 using mobile phone tracking. thelancet.com It appears that the less rigid lockdown led to an insufficient decrease in mobility to reverse an outbreak such as COVID-19. With a tighter lockdown, mobility decreased enough to bring down transmission promptly below the level needed to sustain the epidemic.

Gerald Sussman (2020-07-13). The Russiagate Spectacle: Season 2? counterpunch.org If it's an election year, there must be a Russiagate story. The Clintons and their neoliberal progeny, including the current standard bearer for corporate liberalism, have turned the Democratic Party into a branch office of the Deep State Inc., whose propaganda drones, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC act like hired guns for the Office of War Information.

Peoples Dispatch (2020-07-13). Why has coronavirus exploded in Brazil and seems controlled in Argentina? peoplesdispatch.org While in Bolsonaro's Brazil, the death toll is counted in the thousands, in Argentina Fernández's administration took drastic, timely measures and seems to have controlled the cases. Prioritizing economy or health, two political approaches that lead to very different outcomes.

_____ (2020-07-13). How The Pentagon Failed To Sell Afghan Government's Bunk 'Bountygate' Story. popularresistance.org The New York Times dropped another Russiagate bombshell on June 26 with a sensational front-page story headlined, "Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says." A predictable media and political frenzy followed, reviving the anti-Russian hysteria that has excited the Beltway establishment for the past four years. | But a closer look at the reporting by the Times and other mainstream outlets vying to confirm its coverage reveals another scandal, not unlike Russiagate itself: the core elements of the story appear to have been fabricated by Afghan government intelligence…

_____ (2020-07-13). One Of The Wealthiest States Might Pass An Opportunity To Tackle Housing Segregation. popularresistance.org Despite its liberal reputation — and Democrats controlling the legislature for the last 23 years and the governor's mansion for nine — Connecticut is one of the most segregated places in the country. And with thousands of residents pouring into the streets this month to racism, housing advocates and progressive Democrats saw an opportunity to change that, calling for an overhaul of the state's exclusionary housing laws. | That opportunity, however, appears to be fading. | At the state Capitol, Gov. Ned Lamont and legislative leaders have shelved a raft of proposals that could spur more afforda…

Staff (2020-07-13). Trump Regulator Shelved Discrimination Probes Into Big Banks and Other Lenders. truthout.org This story was co-published with The Capitol Forum. | In the spring of 2018, bank regulators trained to spot discriminatory lending detected something alarming at Bank of America. | The bank was offering fewer loans to minority homebuyers in Philadelphia than to white people in a way that troubled examiners from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), according to two people directly involved in the probe and internal documents reviewed by ProPublica and The Capitol Forum. | Th…

Julie Hollar (2020-07-12). Corporate Media Team With Trump to Disparage Public Health Experts. commondreams.org As public health experts tirelessly work to unravel the mysteries of the Covid pandemic (and are increasingly burning out), the president of our country has constantly attacked and undermined them—and, lately, so have corporate media.

Caitlin Johnstone (2020-07-12). Propaganda Brainwashing, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix. thealtworld.com ~ | The focus shouldn't just be on bad things done by individual plutocrats — Gates did X, Bezos did Y etc. The primary focus should be on how we shouldn't have a system which allows any individual to have that much power over our world. No individual should have that much power to do that much harm. | ~ | You couldn't create a more perfect profit-generating scheme than war. Entire civilizations can be streamlined into the task of cranking out top-of-the-line, name-brand killing machines at the drop of a false flag. War will continue as long as human behavior is driven by profit. | ~ | If you want more of s…

Unicorn Riot (2020-07-12). MN Freedom Fighters Form A Community Safety Net. unicornriot.ninja Minneapolis, MN — An armed security force, the MN Freedom Fighters, are now a regular sight providing security at s and patrolling Broadway Avenue. | It started via a call out for a community patrol group for the Northside from Minneapolis NAACP's President, Leslie Redmond, a…

Stephan Kaufmann and Susanne Hahn (2020-07-12). Financial Markets and National Socialism. indybay.org Joseph Goebbels was appointed "Reich Minister for National Enlightenment and Propaganda " on March 15, 1933. "The people should begin to think and react in a unified way […]" He wanted them to stand behind the actions of the government with full sympathy and support.

David Rosmarin, Amit G Pandya, Mark Lebwohl, Pearl Grimes, Iltefat Hamzavi, Alice B Gottlieb, Kathleen Butler, Fiona Kuo, Kang Sun, Tao Ji, Michael D Howell, John E Harris (2020-07-11). [Articles] Ruxolitinib cream for treatment of vitiligo: a randomised, controlled, phase 2 trial. thelancet.com Treatment with ruxolitinib cream was associated with substantial repigmentation of vitiligo lesions up to 52 weeks of treatment, and all doses were well tolerated. These data suggest that ruxolitinib cream might be an effective treatment option for patients with vitiligo.

RT (2020-07-11). 'Anti-science saga'? NBC contributor who documented harrowing battle with Covid-19 NEVER had the virus. rt.com The dramatic televised saga of a doctor's struggle to overcome coronavirus has ended in embarrassment after the NBC News contributor quietly admitted that there's no evidence he ever had the virus. Is this the zenith of fake news? | Dr Joseph Fair appeared at least 10 times on NBC and MSNBC over the last two months to share his fight against Covid-19 with the networks' viewers. His television appearances — including an interview from his hospital bed — fueled panic about the illness. Describing himself as a fit and healthy 42-year-old, Fair claimed in May that he had absorbed the virus through his ey…

_____ (2020-07-11). As Long as Mass Media Propaganda Exists, Democracy Is a Sham. strategic-culture.org Caitlin JOHNSTONE | "A majority of Americans believe that Russia paid the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan last year amid negotiations to end the war, and more than half want to respond with new economic sanctions against Moscow, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday," "Overall, 60% of Americans said they found reports of Russian bounties on American soldiers to be 'very' or 'somewhat' believable, while 21% said they were not credible and the rest were unsure,"

Caitlin Johnstone (2020-07-11). Liberals Are Crazy Idiots. thealtworld.com Whenever John McCain is trending on Twitter I like to try and float a reminder of what a disgusting warmonger he was on top of the trend to disrupt the worshipful hagiography within the mainstream liberal echo chamber. | John McCain was a bloodthirsty warmongering psychopath and the world is better off without him. Death is nature's cancel culture. | — Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) It's a provocation. I freely admit this. But it's a provocation with a fuse that should not exist (nobody should object to som…

_____ (2020-07-11). Unwrapping the Riddle of Srebrenica. strategic-culture.org Churchill's famous dictum about the Soviet Union, that it was "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma," is arguably just as applicable to Srebrenica. July 11 this year will be the twenty-fifth anniversary of that landmark event of the Yugoslav wars which the late Prof. Edward Hermann, speaking somewhat less poetically than Churchill, had called "the greatest triumph of propaganda at the close of the twentieth century." | Whether we choose to view Srebrenica as a criminal investigation to sort out who and at whose direction executed prisoners of war, or as a political provocation to lay the groundwork fo…

RT (2020-07-10). Trump threatens to defund universities for 'Radical Left Indoctrination'. rt.com President Donald Trump has announced that the Treasury Department will examine the tax-exempt status of the US' universities and schools, accusing them of indoctrinating children with "Radical Left" ideology. | "Too many Universities and School Systems are about Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education," Trump tweeted on Friday. "Therefore, I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status and/or funding, which will be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy continues." … and/or Funding, which will be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy c…

Dean Baker (2020-07-10). Propaganda on Government Action and Inequality from David Leonhardt. cepr.net It really gets annoying how all discussions in the media of inequality in the media take the White Savior route, where we need the government to act to reduce inequality created by the natural workings of the market. David Leonhardt gave us another dose of this one today when he speculated about the state of …