Tuesday, September 01, 2020

It must be free

This is from Brian Cleary and Nathan Foster (JACOBIN):


As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage around the globe, killing thousands daily and pushing as many as 176 million people into extreme poverty, governments and companies are scrambling to develop a safe and effective vaccine. While roughly 165 vaccines are in development globally, only ten have advanced past early stage safety trials to phase three clinical trials.

Among the front-runners in the United States is Moderna’s mRNA-based vaccine, which was initially developed by scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), University of Texas at Austin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Vanderbilt University. Working with Moderna scientists, researchers identified a vaccine candidate based on the structure of the viral spike protein and were able to show that the potential antidote protects against viral infection in animal models. In a highly accelerated timeline, Moderna began NIH-sponsored human trials to establish safety in small cohorts, and on July 27 launched phase three trials that will enroll thirty thousand people across the United States.

It’s still unclear how effective the Moderna vaccine will be. But one thing is already apparent: the company’s executives intend to profit handsomely.

Moderna is currently charging up to $74 a treatment (two doses, priced at $32 to $37 each), well above the target prices announced by several other companies with potential vaccines, including AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, who have told Congress they will not seek to make a profit from vaccine sales.

The US government managed to secure a discount earlier this month, signing a $1.5 billion contract with Moderna for one hundred million doses with the option of purchasing another four hundred million. Other countries, and Americans who don’t get the vaccine through the government, will have to negotiate separately.


It's a pandemic.  If a vaccine is developed, it needs to be available to everyone.  It needs to be free.  Otherwise why was time wasted on a vaccine to begin with?

We need to move beyond profits because this is an issue of the public welfare and public safety.

"Iraq snaphot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

 Tuesday, September 1, 2020.  Violence continues in Iraq, whoring continues in the US, the American people want US forces out of Iraq (and Afghanistan) but all 'independent' media (Panhandle Media) can offer is whoring and nonsense.


XINHAU reports a northern Iraq car bombing has left 1 woman dead and three members of Iraq's security forces injured.  The war continues.  Margaret Griffis (ANTIWAR.COM) reports on the death toll for the previous month:


During August, 102 people were killed, and 134 more were wounded. The number of deaths dramatically decreased compared to July, in which 230 people were killed. However, the number of wounded was nearly equal to July’s 138 wounded.


The never-ending war continues to claim victims.  Rebecca Kheel (THE HILL) notes a new poll:


About three-quarters of U.S. adults say they support bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan in a new poll commissioned by the libertarian Charles Koch Institute obtained exclusively by The Hill.

In the poll, which surveyed 2,000 U.S. adults, 44 percent said they strongly support bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq and 30 percent said they somewhat support doing so.

For Afghanistan, 46 percent said they strongly support bringing troops home and 30 percent said they somewhat support it.

[. . .]

In Iraq, U.S. officials are negotiating future troops levels with the Iraqi government after Iraqi lawmakers called for a withdrawal. Iraqi opposition to the U.S. presence in their country grew at the beginning of the year after the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani on Iraqi soil.

There are about 5,200 U.S. troops in Iraq helping local forces fight the remnants of ISIS.



Meanwhile, there is the sewer that is the American media.  You honestly shouldn't visit those crap sites until after the election.  All they're doing is whoring right now.  Every day, instead of telling you what's going on, they tell you what to think and how to vote.  They call themselves independent media and alternative media but all they're trying to do is manipulate opinion and, yes, manufacture consent.


Look at COUNTERPUNCH where it's all whore all the time.  Today's crew includes David Lindorff who wants seniors to think before they vote.  Because?  Apparently, without Lindorff telling them to, they wouldn't think?  The smugness is appalling.


By the way, David, do you regret your ridiculous claim that Barack Obama would deliver a better country because, your words, he was a Black man who had done drugs?


Do you remember when you wrote that idiotic statement?  We do.  You wrote to our own community member Martha (who, with Shirley, does our year-end look at books each year).  And we wrote about it at THIRD and quoted you.  And you looked like an idiot in 2008 and you don't look any better today.


You used to write about topics that actually mattered.  Then IN THESE TIMES ran the retraction on your work.  We supported you and defended you here.  But your work since has been the equivalent of a Sunday chat & chew appearance -- surface and superficial.


I scanned his idiotic article which went on and on, looking for something about Joe and Social Security.  I found nothing.  But Joe's got a long and public record of favoring cuts to Social Security.  Somehow Dave missed all that.


This is from Ryan Grim's "Fact Check: Joe Biden Has Advocated Cutting Social Security for 40 Years" (THE INTERCEPT):


As early as 1984 and as recently as 2018, former Vice President Joe Biden called for cuts to Social Security in the name of saving the program and balancing the federal budget. Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders highlighted Biden’s record on Social Security in prosecuting the case that Biden isn’t the most electable candidate. The issue could be raised again in Tuesday night’s debate.

After a Sanders campaign newsletter continued the attack on Biden’s Social Security record, the Biden campaign complained to fact-checkers at Politifact that his comments were being taken out of context. Placed in context, however, Biden’s record on Social Security is far worse than one offhand remark. Indeed, Biden has been advocating for cuts to Social Security for roughly 40 years.

And after a Republican wave swept Congress in 1994, Biden’s support for cutting Social Security, and his general advocacy for budget austerity, made him a leading combatant in the centrist-wing battle against the party’s retreating liberals in the 1980s and ’90s.

“When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well,” he told the Senate in 1995. “I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans’ benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the government. And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice, I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time.” (A freeze would have reduced the amount that would be paid out, cutting the program’s benefit.)



As early as 1984 and as recently as 2018?  Dave, I don't think it's senior that aren't thinking before they vote, I think it's you that's not thinking before you type.  Oh well, maybe you can market Kamala Harris as v.p.?  Insisting that as a 'Black' woman who has done drugs she will transform the country?  


Sadly, Dave's the brightest light at COUNTERPUNCH today.


Let's note Jimmy Dore.




That's Jimmy speaking truths.  He spoke them at a fake-ass convention.

Sorry, that's what it was.  When Cornel West promotes it by telling people, as he did on RISING last week, that they need to vote for Joe Biden?  That's defeating it before it starts.

And let's get honest about Cornel because I'm really at my breaking point here.

I like Tavis Smiley.  I may be the only person in the country who still thinks he may be innocent.  I don't buy claims just because PBS asserts them.  If women have been harmed, I would assume they would have stepped forward with their stories.  

Tavis may well be innocent.

It bothers me that he's assumed guilty.  But if that's the position you're going to take, why aren't you demanding comments from Cornel?  There's not a week that goes by that he's not giving at least two interviews.

Cornel and Tavis were tight.  They hosted joint-events, they gave joint-interviews, they traveled together on and on and on.  This wasn't for one week or one month or one year.  This was for years and years.

Maybe people don't know that because of their own racism that allows them to ignore the work of African-Americans?  

Tavis is not perfect and I have never claimed he is.  But I do like Tavis and I've not seen anything to alter that opinion -- again PBS whispers don't make a case for me even if the media is happy to run with it.  

But, again, that's where I stand.

If you're standing somewhere else, good for you.  But why are you not asking that Cornel respond in some way?  

Instead, he's put up at a convention about where the country needs to go.  

If you think Tavis is guilty, I don't know why you put his roll dog onstage to speak.

I don't think Cornel needs to speak for any organization urging voters to make demands for their vote if he's going to use his fame to go around telling people to vote for Biden.  That's opposed to everything Jimmy Dore was saying.  It's also idiotic because no one's going to work for your vote once you tell them they have it.

Once you tell them that they have your vote, they're going to move to the demographic that they are shaky with and work to get their vote.

That goes a long ways towards explaining why the DNC and Joe Biden are working overtime to court Republicans.  (See Luke Savage's piece at JACOBIN for more on that topic.)

Cornel's very good at creating word gumbo.  But in terms of strategy and analysis, I'm just not seeing it and it was his actions and words, more than anyone else, that resulted in our ignoring that 'convention' over the weekend.  Why promote a Biden rally?

That's all it was.  Yes, Jimmy Dore said some good things and I'm sure Marianne Williamson did as well.  But when others involved saw their role as sheep dogs to herd people over to Joe?  That's not only sad, it's also deceitful.


We need a better world.  I don't see Cornel working for that when he undermines the so-called people's convention before it even starts.  

We need a better world and, to envision that, we need to know what's possible.  


At a time when so much 'alternative' media wastes their time and our time trying to tell us who to vote for, some people deal with actual issues.



That's an important conversation.  Richard D. Wolff's opening about Norway, all by itself, is an important conversation.  When we can talk about how efforts are made in Norway to twist the will and needs of the people, we can grasp how we are connected and we can see that things don't just happen.  

While corporations ensure that the American people do not have their needs met, the 'alternative' media focuses on electing personalities instead of educating the public.

It wasn't independent media in the US that got the word out on Medicare for All, it was nurses.  They worked tirelessly for years on this effort.  

If our 'independent,' 'alternative' and useless beggar media (THE NATION, IN THESE TIMES, COUNTERPUNCH, THE PROGRESSIVE, etc) would do their job, the people would be aware of what was possible, what was at stake and what we could have.

Instead, they turn themselves over to political parties and whore for them.  





The following sites updated:





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