31 March 2020

Coronavirus Daily Information Update: 28-31 March 2020

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(To view a far more visually attractive version of this report -- with essays dating back to 2009, and portfolios of relevant photographs -- all without the obvious, vexing, impossible-to-solve-in-less-than-two-hours formatting conflicts between Typepad and Blogger -- please go here.)
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HERE WE ARE: today's links1  to what seem the most usefully informative (and thus most likely to be censored) Internet reports on the skyrocketing Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Scroll down, read what's relevant to you and yours, skip the rest:

Vitally informative reports:
  General news:
Feds revoking reservation status for tribe's 300 acres
Another of the innumerable ways the Regime is ecogenocidally weaponizing the virus against First Nations folk, people of color, trouble-making "surplus workers" like myself (plus every other retired worker or disabled person) -- and of course the more-than-50-percent of us now imprisoned in inescapable poverty.   
Doctor loses job after criticizing hospital's virus response
AP; a critical indication as to the form and magnitude of our Masters' morally imbecilic embrace of Evil.
Trump Bashed Immigrants, but Nearly 1/3 of US Doctors Are Foreign-Born, on Pandemic Front Lines
Another such indication from the nation's most malevolently xenophobic liar ever. 
Ohio, Texas and Mississippi ban abortion under guise of fighting coronavirus
Self-explanatory -- and utterly predictable as our Masters seize upon the crisis to move us ever closer to overt ChristoNazi theocracy. (Remember I dwelt involuntarily in the theocratic South  during most of my boyhood and civilian early adulthood -- with mandatory public-high-school attendance at fanatical Christian "revivals" and mere possession of Ginsberg's Howl a felony  -- hence I know entirely too well what is coming.)
Coronavirus roils every segment of US child welfare system
AP: from the weekend but still Page-One-relevant.
Understanding the Outbreak
AP's constantly updated global summary, from the easily scrollable website that is probably our single best source for 24-hour breaking national and international news.
  On the pandemic's most obviously dire consequences:  
The end of the global supply chain
History tells us the collapsing food-supply chain could prove as deadly -- or even deadlier -- than the virus itself. Likewise for the worsening (but effectively censored) shortages of life-sustaining prescription drugs -- with every resultant death a murder inflicted on us by the Evil Masters who outsourced all our manufacturing merely to multiply their already obscenely deadly profits.
Kroger warehouse workers walk out in Memphis over coronavirus concerns
A weekend story that remains relevant because most U.S. Mainstream Media Propaganda Machine outlets are -- of course -- suppressing it. (Scroll through this website for many more vital, always reliable, often scoop-the-world  reports.)
Amazon Workers to Walk Out Over Lack of Protective Gear Amid Coronavirus
Anyone who didn't see this coming doesn't realize how murderously Neoliberal -- that is, fascist -- Bezos truly is.
    My Family Owns a Grocery Store. The Supply Chain Is a Real Problem.
FROM THE TEXT: "Our stores haven’t gotten a frozen load in two stores in two and a half weeks. If I could get some frozen in, I would be super happy. And I haven’t seen toilet paper in a while."  
  Indications of the pandemic's true magnitude:
Thousands of burial urns shipped to Wuhan, where the virus is supposedly under control
Rational skepticism: are the Chinese (also) lying about the severity of the crisis? (With thanks to R.D. for spotting the link and sending it to me.)
Congressional commission recommends expanding US draft registration to women
Last time I saw this sort of prelude to military expansion was during the height of the Vietnam War, when our Masters' purpose was our psychological preparation for the imperial war machine's call up of the reserves and the National Guard. Now of course our Masters are also demanding the involuntary servitude of all draft-age women -- in a draft which this time around could be manipulated to enable the Regime's indefinite retention -- i.e., de facto permanent enslavement -- of all soldiers ordered to active duty for "the duration."
  Vindictively vectoring the virus:
Escape From New York
See also AP report on anti-New-Yorker response by Rhode Island's National Guard and police, here.
A Far-Right Rallying Cry: Older Americans Should Volunteer to Work
This is a terrifyingly Nazi-like call that's obviously a prelude to extermination of "surplus workers" and "surplus humans" in general.
Michigan Governor Claims Federal Government Told Medical Vendors 'Not to Send Stuff Here'
The Regime demonstrates what by now is obviously its standing operating procedure (SOP) against states with significant non-White populations.
Hundreds at Louisiana church flout COVID-19 gatherings ban
Christianity embraces the Apocalypse (I).
From layoffs to COVID DANCE-OFFs, richest US universities drag their heels on virus responseThe sneering, "Boomer-Remover" cheering students of which will soon learn their flaunted aristocracy is no defense against COVID-19 -- unless of course our Masters' have already secretly inoculated them against it.
Megachurch pastor who promised to cure the US of coronavirus arrested for service flouting social distancing
A vindictive, apocalypse-embracing  virus-vector who also peddles Prosperity-Gospel snake-oil  gets what he deserves.
  Forcible disarmament and the foiling thereof:
700 New Jersey Police Test Positive
When the necessity of the Second Amendment -- and the relevance of the Second Amendment Foundation -- becomes obvious.

Also Relevant:
  From today and this weekend:
The Coronavirus Spurs a Movement of People Reclaiming Vacant HomesThis -- particularly the desperately life-saving need for homeless people to find healthy shelter -- will either spark a nonviolent revolution or vex our Masters into inflicting a monstrous bloodbath.
Limited Protections Leave Tenants Vulnerable to Evictions
Especially relevant in the context of the preceding report. 
Pushing Out Black Students With Disabilities Under COVID-19
More ChristoNazi weaponization of the virus.
Putin Says 'the Rich Must Pay' for the Coronavirus
Whatever else Putin might be, he is a notably skillful statesman who was raised a Marxian and now in this apocalyptic crisis responds accordingly; contrast that to the manifest Evil of today's USian politicians, most of whom -- reduced to moral imbecility by Ayn Rand's fictionalizations of Mein Kampf  -- respond with naught but congratulatory self-obsession and gleefully ecogenocidal greed.
Coronavirus Updates from The Washington Post
Propagandamaster Bezos' daily briefing.
National Geographic
How does a community flatten the curve -- and keep it flat?
Whales Are Dying, but Numbers Are Unknown. Coronavirus Has Stalled Scientific Fieldwork
Another way the pandemic facilitates the environmental apocalypse.
  Specificially for Washington state readers:
Financial Support in the Age of Coronavirus
Washington state situation report.
Tacoma Mayor Woodards on Governor's March 30 Briefing
Self-explanatory but very much worth reading, not the least because Woodards' instinctive humanitarianism is far greater than USian Neoliberal governance will ever allow. 
Tell Governor Inslee: Suspend Rent, Mortgage, Utility Payments During Coronavirus Pandemic! Rent Freeze for 2020!PETITION: Demanding what Washington state should be doing for us -- and what every other state in this ever-more-disunited United States should be doing for all its Working Families.
  More vital news we might otherwise have missed:
Are the Nevada Governor and President of France in the Pay of Big-Pharma?
Or are they and the governor of Michigan merely compelled by their Neoliberal ideology to maximize the COVID-19 death rate?
Trump Suggests He Can Gag Inspector General for Stimulus Bailout Program
Predictable defiance by the chief perpe-traitor of a genuinely gangster regime.
White Supremacists Plotted to Blow Up Hospital During PandemicWelcome to the ChristoNazi United States.
NYC subway driver killed in fire being investigated as crime
Terrorists -- most likely ChristoNazis manking war on people of color -- attacking while the City is sick in bed?
Letter From Truthdig's Editor-In-Chief, Robert ScheerIn solidarity: more on the escalating campaign to destroy Truthdig.
Joe Biden Faces Sexual Assault Allegations From a Former Staffer
Yes, dear readers, Biden is every bit as much a pathological liar as Trump.
Media Silent as Poll Workers Contract Covid-19 at Primaries That DNC, Biden Campaign Claimed Were Safe
And here's another example of Biden's -- and the Democratic (sic) Party's -- potentially fatal lies.
Democratic Socialists of America, Haymarket Books hold online event to boost Democratic Party amid coronavirus crisis
The pseudo-socialists scurry to embrace Donald Trump's Democratic (sic) fifth-column twin.
Relief package billions can't buy hospitals out of shortages
AP: self-explanatory (as indeed most AP heads are).
Students provide sanitizers to daily workers to fight virus
Some of our children and grandchildren managed to escape the Ayn Rand conditioning that turned the white majority to moral imbeciles. Kudos to these few students for acting upon the courageous humanitarianism they undoubtedly had to fight all Moron Nation to retain.
  A vindictive squabble -- with little hope we'll ever learn the truth:
Netherlands Recalls Defective Masks From China as Spain and Turkey Return Defective Testing Kits
True or false? I do not know, but given our Masters' bipartisan intent to provoke World War III with China and Russia, I am certainly skeptical.
  Relevant and  provocative:
The Pathogenic Profits System: Beyond Begging, Praying, And Capital
How Capitalism itself (knowingly) vectors pandemics.
Coronavirus response highlights deepening partisan divide
But never forget the truth -- that despite the bipartisan tsunami of mind-rotting lies and disinformation, we are nevertheless and in terrible truth ruled by one viciously Neoliberal, Wall-Street-owned  party that conceals its Evil behind two names, Republican (i.e., ChristoNazi) and Democratic (sic) (i.e., the ChristoNazis' fifth-column facilitators). 
Public Health Crisis: Washington Uses Pandemic to Create a $2 Trillion Slush Fund for Its Cronies
With an especially damning image -- whether photoshopped or not I cannot say -- of fifth-columnist Pelosi congratulating Mitch the Malignant on whatever evil they may have jointly perpetrated beforehand. 
FOCUS: What a Plague Reveals
Neoliberalism as the (insurmountable) barrier to any widespread assertion of whatever residual U.S. humanitarianism remains after decades of methodical conditioning in Ayn Rand moral imbecility.
The End of the Parasite Paradigm
REPUGNANTLY NON-INFORMATIVE HEAD obviously written by someone too afraid (or too illiterate) to say what the text makes clear:  "This (the deliberately deadly USian non-response to the pandemic) is the clearest indication that our present-day system is nothing but a false social construct in place simply to ensure a modern- day feudalism."
Held over:(Archived for historical context.)
The Truth About the United States' "Continuity of Government" Plans & The Coronavirus Perfect StormScroll down to the 12th graf to learn how at least eight million U.S. citizens are on our Masters' enemies lists and will be disappeared.
Military, Trump administration ready plans for domestic crackdown as virus spreads across US
From the report: "'a senior military planner working on coronavirus but not authorized to speak on sensitive planning matters [...] says that deployment of federal troops in support roles is being prepared,' including to conduct traffic stops, home searches3 and seizures and arrests."

Useful references:(No snake-oil sales or medicine-show huckstering allowed.)

COVID-19 Relief by industry
New. A vital list of some of  the few places our Neoliberal Masters have left us to turn for help.
Handling mail amid coronavirus: Low risk but wash your hands(My practice is to assume everything from outside is potentially contaminated, hence I wash my hands thoroughly after handling any incoming packages and sanitize any surface upon which they might have rested or been unwrapped.)
_________________1I select these stories on the basis of my news judgment as it evolved during my 64 years as a writer, photographer and editor, three decades of which were in the working press. (Despite an on-and-off involvement with the alternative press that began in 1963, all but about three of those first 30 earning-years were primarily in the Mainstream Media Propaganda Machine, at least half in decide-what's-news jobs ranging from sports editor and associate editor to city editor, news-and-picture editor and editor-in-chief. (Though as my colleagues moved stealthily Rightward, so did I move ever-more-openly Leftward, until eventually I was Left...outside.) Beyond that -- and in keeping with today's (unequivocally apocalyptic) context -- it is a matter of relevance plus probability of censorship.  I ask myself three  questions: firstly, is a given story useful – a term in this context I use as synonymous with relevant. If the answer is yes, I than ask, secondly, how likely is it to be suppressed by the MMPM, our Masters’ first ever privately owned, for-maximum-profit copy of Josef Goebbels’ infamous Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. And here my rule is one of inverse returns: the less likely I think I am to see the story disseminated via the National Daily Wipe and Audiovisual Psychodemonic Zombification Monopoly, (NDWAAZPM, with apology to Henry Miller for the Psychodemonics),  the more likely I am to include it in these summaries. Reports that pass the first two tests are each then subjected to the third and final test: do they include indications from which we might evolve estimates of our situations accurate enough to facilitate effective response? If the answer here is also affirmative, the report in question will always be included in the daily update. Meanwhile the first two criteria generate a lengthy list of possibles I winnow down to probables and thence to musts, a process that takes approximately seven or eight hours each day.
2As to what prompts my sudden skepticism of virus coverage by The Washington Post, note how quickly Bezos or one of his zero-tolerance subordinates imposed paywall censorship on this pivotally important 20 March story (scroll down to "U.S. intelligence reports"), which for only a very few short minutes appeared as part of WaPo's  non-paywalled daily virus report.  Pretending to be real journalists rather than  the Regime's scribes -- a mental downgrading inflicted as much by the clerical drudgery necessitated by computers as by the chief Josef-Goebbels-wannabee Bezos himself -- is a form of moral imbecility I cannot abide.
3Be aware that "home searches and seizures" could include not only confiscation of all real or potential weapons but -- given the ChristoNazi Regime's anti-marijuana fanaticism  -- confiscation of, and arrest for possession of, all the (still federally illegal) medical marijuana upon which such a huge number of opiate-denied chronic-pain victims are now forced to depend. Too -- given the Regime's even more fanatical hatred of women and female sexuality -- such raids might also be used to confiscate all birth-control devices and criminalize all unwed women who possess them, thereby fulfilling still more of our Masters' ChristoNazis objectives. Thus -- by such mass arrests -- could the Regime give its plutocratic owners the ultimate "gift" of permanently enslaving millions of U.S. citizens for brutally hard, typically deadly labor, thereby granting our Masters' wish of exterminating "surplus workers" while following the German Nazis' model of amassing unlimited profits from mass murder. 
(As always, headlines are reproduced in their original up-style and down-style formats.)
*****
Eleven hours and 10 minutes to put this together: four hour of research and writing, seven hours and 10 minutes of the mind-numbing drudgery of fighting with this damn computer to format the material. Sorry, folks; I'm doing the very best I can with a technology that is nearly as alien to me as spherical trigonometry would be to a dog or a wolf.  
May all of you -- all of us -- stay healthy and remain alive, which -- or so it seems -- is fast becoming what I know from experience survival in homelessness or terminal poverty has always been: a courageous albeit often involuntarily isolated act of revolutionary defiance.  
LB/28-31March 2020 01:12 PDT
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