AMERICAN STUDIES

MoA—Reading the details of the 11,000 (!) words story one finds that it is largely a bummer for the ‘resistance’, not so much for Trump. It essentially says: Trump is a quite rich international real estate investor. U.S. tax laws allow investors to minimize their reported income by claiming various kinds of depreciations and other gimmicks. Tax regulations that allows investors to carry forward leftover losses to reduce taxes in future years is especially helpful. Trump has good accountants and tax lawyers and has used the laws to their full extent to minimized his tax payments. Is any of the above something we did not already knew?

GEORGE WUERTHNER—Much of what is burning in the large California fires as well as elsewhere in the West is not forest at all, but chaparral, grasslands, sagebrush, and non-forested habitat. So “active forest management” would have no influence upon much of the acreage currently in flames.

MoA—The infection fatality rate for New York City can be easily calculated. Some 26% of the 8.3 million inhabitants of New York City now carry antibodies against the virus. Those 2.1 million who are seropositive must have had a SARS-CoV-2 infection. The officially reported Covid-19 caused death toll for New York City is some 23,000. However the more accurate total excess death toll beyond normal levels was 27,000.

PHILIP A. FARRUGGIO—Amazon is doing lots of business, and does present a needed service, especially during this pandemic. Yet, they were recently ‘ Outed’ for charging outrageous prices for essential Covid fighting products, like alcohol, disposable gloves, disinfectant wipes to name a few. On top of that Amazon has a history of getting customers to pay for shipping, when all one need do is carefully scroll down the ‘ Order bar’ and check off  ‘ Free Shipping’ . So what if the order takes 3 to 5 days longer? Saving money is saving money… just ask Jeff Bezos. Of course, as with Fed Ex and Wal-Mart and countless corporations, Amazon is NON UNION. Take it from a guy whose grandfather literally fought in the streets of NYC for better conditions in his trade.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—And now the complex cold war escalations he kept urgently warning us about have become even more complex with the addition of nuclear-armed China to the multiple fronts the US-centralized empire has been plate-spinning its brinkmanship upon, and it is clear from the ramping up of anti-China propaganda since last year that we are being prepped for those aggressions to continue to increase. We should heed the dire warnings that Cohen spent his last breaths issuing. We should demand a walk-back of these insane imperialist aggressions which benefit nobody and call for détente with Russia and China. We should begin creating an opposition to this world-threatening flirtation with armageddon before it is too late. Every life on this planet may well depend on our doing so. Stephen Cohen is dead, and we are marching toward the death of everything. God help us all.