From Looming Election to Nuclear Disarmament

Donald Trump’s recent Twitter musings on delaying the November election induced a politically useful and dangerous reaction: stoking anger and fear in corporate media, with many outlets failing to educate the public on election regulations.

“Republicans win the presidency when they steal votes,” writes Black Agenda Report. Democrats need a huge turnout to mitigate “spoiled ballots” from voting machine theft and suppression of Democratic—i.e. Black—votes. But the president cannot shift the election date or remain in office if he is voted out.

Colorlines demonstrates a concrete instance of voter suppression in the U.S. Though 64.5% of Floridians voted in favor of the 2018 Voting Restoration Amendment to allow formerly incarcerated people to vote, tens of thousands of formerly incarcerated people remain disenfranchised due to Republicans’ imposition of fines and bureaucracy.

As the national news cycle has largely moved on from the coverage of Black Lives Matter protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder, Columbia Journalism Review collects views from protesters and citizen journalists still on the ground.

Besides unprecedented recent events such as the federal occupation of Portland, footage and updates of ongoing nationwide protests can primarily be found on social media, rather than on television. In one account, a 48-year-old man describes how his children use TikTok to spread awareness, while they inspired him to begin posting footage from protests in Facebook groups.

An instance in June of the Yonkers police force acquiring drones capable of recording footage illustrates the danger of local police entering surveillance data into massive unregulated cloud storage accessible by the police.

Bolstered surveillance for protests against police brutality leave demonstrators, especially people of color, vulnerable to intensified police and military vigilantism, writes  Truthout.

Reports like The Atlas of Surveillance reveal only the tip of the iceberg of drone surveillance, and that police agencies have dramatically increased their use since 2014. Journalists, activists, and citizens must demand transparency concerning police surveillance drones, acting locally to protect first amendment rights.

On Tuesday, a massive explosion tore through Beirut, killing more than 150 people and injuring thousands. Lebanon President Michel Aoun said it was fueled by an unsafely stored warehouse supply of an estimated 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate.

The compound is used as fertilizer across the U.S. and has been a key component of catastrophic industrial accidents and terrorism, including the 2013 blast at an agricultural-products retailer that killed 15 and injured 260 people in Texas.

A 2020 investigation by The Center for Public Integrity found continued uneven oversight of the chemical in the U.S., even after efforts to strengthen federal rules.

Thursday was the 75^th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Kazumi Matsui, the city’s mayor, likened the coronavirus pandemic to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed 50 million people worldwide because “nations fighting World War I were unable to meet the threat together.”

Matsui said an ensuing upsurge in nationalism resulted in World War II and the atomic bombings. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s comments promoting nuclear demilitarization invite stark contrast against Donald Trump’s actions during his term to withdraw the U.S. from several nuclear arms treaties, notes Common Dreams.

Helen Caldicott for The Progressive wrote a personal account of childhood disillusionment in Australia at the end of World War II, which expands into a historical account and commentary on the persisting threat of nuclear war. Caldicott is founder of the 1978 iteration of Physicians for Social Responsibility, which won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize as part of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.