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The Critical Hour
The mainstream news outlets play it safe by parroting the perspectives of their corporate benefactors. The Critical Hour uses clear, cutting edge insight and analysis to examine national and international issues impacting the global village in which we live.

US Reports Highest One-Day COVID-19 Death Toll Since May; Vaccine Will Require Public's Trust

US Reports Highest One-Day COVID-19 Death Toll Since May; Vaccine Will Require Public's Trust
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On this edition of The Critical Hour, co-hosts Dr. Wilmer Leon and Garland Nixon talk to Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick, who wrote in an August 1 piece in Forbes that "an effective vaccine response requires cooperation and trust from every corner of the country."

"On Wednesday, the country reported its highest number of deaths in a single day since mid-May, at nearly 1,500," the Washington Post reported Wednesday about how the US is handling the COVID-19 pandemic. "The country has now seen its seven-day average of newly reported deaths remain above 1,000 for 17 consecutive days." 

"A new attempt to restart economic relief negotiations between the White House and Democrats ended just minutes after it began on Wednesday, with President Trump appearing to cast doubt on the whole process by announcing a deal is 'not going to happen,'" the Washington Post reported Wednesday. Is this a negotiating tactic, or is it increasing the likelihood that there won't be a deal until September at the earliest?

A Wednesday headline in Common Dreams read, in part, "Top Democrat Says IG Report on Saudi Arms Deal is 'Deeply Damning' for Pompeo." The article noted, "Rep. Eliot Engel, Democratic chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Tuesday that an inspector general report revealed the State Department's claim last year of an 'emergency' to sell billions of dollars in arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates 'was a sham' and accused the department of deploying 'scare tactics to try to keep a lid on the report.'" Is this really as big of a problem as it is being made out to be?

"China poses a threat to the West that is in some ways 'worse' than that posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a speech to the Czech senate Wednesday," Politico reported that same day. Is this hyperbolic rhetoric backed by revisionist history?

The headline of a Tuesday piece by Raul Diego in MintPress News reads: "US, Israeli Media Scramble to Blame Hezbollah for Deadly Beirut Explosion." He writes, "The narrative that puts Hezbollah in the hot seat for the devastating explosion of ammonium nitrate, allegedly stored by the thousands of tons in one of the busiest ports in the eastern Mediterranean and which killed over 200 people has some holes in it, to say the least." What are we to make of this?

"Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday pledged the US would deliver freedom to Belarus, which is being roiled by days of unrest following the disputed re-election of its authoritarian president, and other countries like Russia, China and Iran that pose threats to democracy," the New York Post reported Wednesday. How are we to interpret all of this?

Is US President Donald Trump waging "war on arms control and disarmament," as Melvin Goodman argues in a Wednesday piece in CounterPunch? The article says, "Trump’s hostile and counterproductive acts have undermined the arms control regime that US presidents have developed over the past seven decades."

There's an interesting article in Consortium News by Marjorie Cohn, originally published in July 2019 and entitled "Kamala Harris’s Distinguished Career of Serving Injustice." The subhead says, "The vice presidential hopeful’s record in California undermines her claim to progressive credentials."  Cohn is our next guest and elaborates further.

Guests:

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick - US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-trained medical epidemiologist and board-certified infectious diseases physician with both domestic and global experience in public health

Dr. Linwood Tauheed - Associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City

Daniel Lazare - Investigative journalist and author of "The Velvet Coup"

Caleb Maupin - Journalist and political analyst

James Carey - Editor and co-owner at Geopolitics Alert

Mark Sleboda - Moscow-based international relations and security analyst

Scott Ritter - Former UN weapons inspector in Iraq 

We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.com

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