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TODAY'S HEADLINES:
Armed militants allied with Donald Trump have begun showing up at Black Lives Matter uprisings around the country. It’s not right to call them counter-protests, when their goal is to intimidate!
Meanwhile, soldiers for two nuclear-armed states are going at each other with clubs and fists in one of the most remote parts of the world. We give you the best information we have on the Himalayan border conflict between India and China.
And lastly: Oxford University researchers report a breakthrough COVID-19 treatment. Better still, it involves a cheap steroid drug that’s widely available across the world.
THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:
Trumpist Militants Swarm BLM
Peaceful protesters in at least ninety-eight cities across the US suffered chemical attack by police departments in recent weeks, according to the New York Times. Such indiscriminate use of tear gas has not been seen stateside since the 1960s and ’70s, when police used it to disperse civil rights and anti-war marches. But these crowd-control weapons are even more dangerous now, on account of the coronavirus.
In Buffalo, New York, the seventy-five-year-old white man attacked by police last week remains in rehab. Martin Gugino’s lawyer told CNN the police left him with a skull fracture, and he can no longer walk. In a statement through his lawyer, Gugino said QUOTE there are plenty of other things to think about besides me ENDQUOTE. All the same, best wishes.
Nearly sixty Buffalo cops resigned from their department emergency-response unit after the attack on Gugino. CNN also reported that officers in South Florida, Atlanta, and Minneapolis were resigning from crowd-control assignments – or from policework entirely. In Richmond, Virginia, the chief resigned after a police SUV drove through a crowd of protesters.
Donald Trump met privately with the family of Ahmaud Arbery, the young man murdered by white suburbanites while jogging in Georgia. Trump also signed an executive order yesterday
banning police chokeholds – unless the officer fears for his life. As critics noted, Trump’s order has loopholes big enough to drive an armored vehicle through.
Reactionary forces appear to be escalating their violence ahead of Trump’s rally in Oklahoma on Saturday. Some press are calling these counter-protests, but it’s more accurate to say they are shows of force by pro-Trump militants -- who are, to varying degrees, in league with police. In Missoula, Montana, hundreds of people rallied to protest the recent appearance of such militants at pro-BLM events. In the small town of Bethel, Ohio, seven hundred right-wing militants – some armed with guns or baseball bats, and belonging to motorcycle gangs -- showed up to intimidate a group of eighty BLM demonstrators. Police joined a Back the Blue event in South Philadelphia to defend a Columbus statue, and to support a police captain who accused journalists of inciting a riot. In Seattle, known members of violent rightwing groups showed up to make trouble at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. In Troy, New York, several men were arrested after bringing body armor and assault rifles to a BLM event. Police said they also carried a tactical manual from the rightwing New England Militia.
And in Albuquerque, New Mexico, rightwing militia claimed they had no knowledge of a man who was arrested after firing shots into a crowd of protesters. The shooter, Steven Ray Baca, sought to protect a statue of a sixteenth-century conquistador who slaughtered indigenous people. Police radio reportedly described the rightwingers as QUOTE armed friendlies ENDQUOTE. Despite such threats, uprisings continue around the globe. Our best count has more than thirty-five hundred protests since May 25, most of them in the US.
India-China Conflict Kills 20
Border skirmishes between India and China have escalated, and this is very bad news for the whole world. Both countries have nuclear weapons. At least twenty Indian Army soldiers died in fighting along the contested border with China in the Himalayas on Monday. They were the first soldiers to die along that border in forty-five years. Indian sources claimed the Chinese also suffered casualties, but China did not confirm this. China may have captured dozens of Indian soldiers, according to the New York Times.
Good information from the remote border region is hard to come by. Neither side claims shots were fired. Reports say the opposing soldiers went after one another with rocks, clubs, and fists. Some of the clubs may have been studded with nails or wrapped with barbed wire. That
this could take place in 2020 shows you how much sense it makes for any country to maintain nuclear weapons. The whole thing may have begun after an Indian officer fell into a gorge, leading to a call for reinforcements, according to the Guardian.
This is not the first recent skirmish in the border area, as listeners know, but it is the most deadly. China sees an ulterior motive in India’s expansion of road infrastructure. And the suspicion goes both ways. China has also fortified its position. Everybody, keep it cool. Please?
Breakthrough Coronavirus Treatment Reported
Scientists reported a major breakthrough in coronavirus treatment. For the first time, a randomized clinical trial showed that a cheap, commonly available drug can increase the chance of survival in COVID-19 patients. The drug, dexamethasone (DEXUH-METHO- ZONE), is used to treat the inflammation that goes with many conditions, including arthritis and asthma. The clinical trial was carried out by researchers at Oxford University. The results have not been peer reviewed. But doctors and scientists expressed strong optimism about what their British counterparts reported. Per the BBC, the trial found patients on ventilators who received the steroid drug were one-third less likely to die. And the drug may also prevent some of the organ damage caused by people’s own immune systems that can happen with COVID-19.
The lead researcher, Martin Landray, said the benefits are clear, and the drug is globally available. Essentially, he said, it costs thirty-five pounds -- or forty-four dollars -- to save a life. But what will the insurance companies say?
A breakthrough couldn’t come at a better time: yesterday Florida, Texas and Arizona all reported record one-day increases in coronavirus cases.
AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:
Pacific Gas and Electric pleaded guilty to eighty-four counts of manslaughter for its role in the 2018 Camp Fire. That fire claimed as many lives as there were manslaughter charges – plus one death, ruled a suicide. Yesterday the California utility’s CEO, Bill Johnson, stood in
Butte County court and answered guilty to every criminal charge. That certainly hurt more than the modest three-point-five million dollar fine agreed to in the plea deal with prosecutors.
A new book by Donald Trump’s only known niece describes the family as QUOTE a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse ENDQUOTE. The author, Mary L. Trump, is a trained clinical psychologist. Her book is titled Too Much and Never Enough. The publisher, Simon and Schuster, is also putting out former Trump adviser John Bolton’s book, which the White House is attempting to suppress.
The German public broadcaster reported yesterday that for three decades before reunification, officials in West Berlin knowingly placed homeless children with foster parents who were pedophiles. Researchers at Hildesheim University interviewed victims and pored over records to make the shocking determination. They found the so-called experiment was effectively sanctioned at the highest levels, and included prominent academics.
An internal Central Intelligence Agency report -- released yesterday to the public in redacted form -- found the largest data theft in Agency history took place because the people involved were too focused on building new weapons. The data theft took place in 2016 and was revealed in 2017 by Wikileaks, in the release the website called Vault Seven. No doubt everyone at the CIA has learned a lot of valuable lessons since then.
That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report.
June 17, 2020 - AM Quickie
HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner
WRITER - Corey Pein
PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn