British army to cut armored vehicles acquired for war in Afghanistan
PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY WAR IS WASTE

Heavily armored vehicles like the Mastiff, pictured, were useful in the Afghanistan war but offering no current advantage and are the next elements on Britain's list of equipment to be sold, British defense officials have said. Photo courtesy of British Ministry of Defense

July 13 (UPI) -- The British army intends to cull massive armored trucks using during the war in Afghanistan because, officials say, they have no practical purpose now, a plan revealed this month indicates.

The blast-proof trucks, designed to withstand roadside explosives, will be removed from service under the new Land Environment Fleet Optimization Plan, Defense Ministry Procurement Minister Jeremy said.

About 733 vehicles will be removed from service and likely sold to defense agencies of other countries, officials say.

Britain purchased thousands of armored vehicles to improve protection for patrol and logistics operations, but by ending its involvement in Afghanistan in 2014, it has little use for them, officials say.

With names like Mastiff, Ridgeback and Wolfhound, the U.S.-made vehicles stand out by their size and armament.

The Defense Ministry notes that the Mastiff is "a heavily armored, six by six-wheel-drive patrol vehicle which carries eight troops, plus two crew. It is suitable for road patrols and convoys and is the newest in a range of protected patrol vehicles being used for operations.

Mastiff has a maximum speed of 90kph [56mph], is armed with the latest weapon systems, including a 7.62mm general purpose machine gun, 12.7mm heavy machine gun or 40mm automatic grenade launcher."

The British Army has already removed over 2,800 vehicles from service as Britain reduces its catalog of military equipment. The next phase of cuts involves the armored vehicles, Quin said on July 2.

Britain's Conservative government, working with a gross domestic product reduced by 20 percent because of the COVID-19 pandemic, continues to shrink the military, which is roughly half the size it was when the Soviet Union fell in 1991.

Since 2010, two light aircraft carriers, two amphibious ships, four frigates, maritime patrol planes and carrier-compatible Harrier jump jets have been eliminated, and the number of service members dropped by 30,000.The army now has 89 fewer 316 Challenger 2 tanks and only about one-third of about 130 self-propelled howitzers available to it in 2010.

Ridgecrest temblors increase chance of San Andreas earthquake


The greater Los Angeles area lies near the San Andreas Fault, which researchers said Monday is at greater risk for an earthquake following two tremblors last year. Photo courtesy of Temblo

July 13 (UPI) -- The Ridgecrest temblors that hit California last year could make a San Andreas earthquake more likely, a new study found.

The likelihood is higher because the 2019 temblors in Ridgecrest, Calif., "stressed the Garlock Fault," and the Garlock Fault links the Ridgecrest faults with the San Andreas fault, researchers said in the study, published Monday in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

The 6.4-magnitude and 7.1-magnitude Ridgecrest earthquakes caused no deaths and modest damage because they were in a remote desert area of Southern California, but they "could have far-reaching effects," according to researchers.

If another big earthquake ruptures the Garlock, it could cause a chain reaction that triggers a San Andreas earthquake north of Los Angeles, researchers said. The probability of such a rupture in the next year remains low at a 2.3 percent chance, but that's still 100 times higher than previous models have found.

"So, the sky is not falling, co-author Ross Stein, CEO of Temblor, which assesses the risks of earthquakes, told National Geographic. "But it is significantly higher, in our judgment, than what it would have been had the Ridgecrest earthquake not occurred."

FDA fast tracks possible COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, BioNTech

BIG PHARMA RACE FOR $$$$$ PROFITS 

AND MONOPOLY

Pfizer and BioNTech are evaluating at least four experimental vaccines in its BNT162 program, all based on an mRNA, or "messenger RNA," technique. File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo

July 13 (UPI) -- U.S. pharma giant Pfizer and BioNTech announced Monday that they have received "fast track" designation from U.S. health officials for two COVID-19 vaccine candidates.

The companies said the designation from the Food and Drug Administration -- a process used by reguators to speed the development and review of potential drugs and vaccines -- means a large-scale human trial of their BNT162b1 and BNT162b2 candidates could begin as soon as this month.

"The FDA's decision to grant these two COVID-19 vaccine candidates Fast Track designation signifies an important milestone in the efforts to develop a safe and effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 [the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19]," Pzizer Senior Vice President Peter Honig said in a statement.

The FDA granted fast-track status based on preliminary data from ongoing studies in the United States and Germany, as well as earlier animal studies.

ANOTHER WALL ST. PITCH 

Regeneron to launch Phase 3 trials of antibody 'cocktail' for COVID-19

Pfizer and BioNTech are evaluating at least four experimental vaccines in its BNT162 program, all based on an mRNA, or "messenger RNA," technique -- which, unlike traditional vaccines, does not use an inactivated virus but rather a portion of the coronavirus' own genetic code to trigger production of antibodies.

The initial results of the Phase 1 and 2 studies, published earlier this month, showed that all 24 participants who received lower dose levels of the BNT162b1 candidate generated antibodies against COVID-19.

Some of the antibodies were found to be "neutralizing," or sufficiently powerful to halt the virus. Pfizer called the results encouraging because the vaccine succeeded in activating antibody responses at least as robust as convalescent sera -- the antibody collected from patients who have recovered from COVID-19.

YES BUT NO Health officials: Quick work for COVID-19 vaccine a 'risk we have to take'

The companies said last month they're preparing to produce millions of vaccine doses this year and hundreds of millions in 2021.

Other vaccine candidates have also shown early promise in fighting COVID-19, including potential drugs from Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Moderna and China's CanSino Biologics.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/07/postmodern-monopoly-imperialism-as-u.html

SCHADENFREUDE  

Conspiracy theorist died of coronavirus after trying to catch it at Covid party to prove it was a hoax

KARMA IS PITILESS 

 Jimmy McCloskey Saturday 11 Jul 2020 

 Doctors work on a coronavirus patient, after Methodist Health Services in San Antonio revealed one of its patients died of coronavirus after attempting to get it to prove it was a hoax (Pictures: AP/Google)

 A young conspiracy theorist has died of coronavirus after trying to catch the disease at a ‘Covid party’ to prove it was a hoax. The unidentified victim, who was in their 30s and from San Antonio in Texas, spoke of their regret to a nurse after testing positive for Covid-19 and being rushed to hospital, where they later died. 

Dr Jane Appleby, from Methodist Healthcare said: ‘Just before the patient died, they looked at their nurse and said “I think I made a mistake, I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not.”‘ 

Dr Appleby also spoke of her horror at hearing how the Covid-19 victim had attended a party with someone who tested positive for the disease in a bid to disprove experts’ warnings about the danger coronavirus poses. 

She told News4SA: ‘This is a party held by somebody diagnosed by the Covid virus and the thought is to see if the virus is real and to see if anyone gets infe

‘It doesn’t discriminate and none of us are invincible. I don’t want to be an alarmist and we’re just trying to share some real-world examples to help our community realize that this virus is very serious and can spread easily.’ 

Texas has seen a massive surge in coronavirus cases since mid-June, and has now recorded more than 250,000 diagnoses, and over 3,100 deaths. Governor Greg Abbott has ordered his citizens to wear a mask in public, after being criticized for reopening the Lone Star state too early.

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/11/young-man-died-coronavirus-trying-catch-covid-party-prove-was-hoax-12976195/?ito=cbshare

ALBERTA 
Charter schools: What you need to know about their anticipated growth in Alberta

Beginning in September in Alberta, an individual can apply directly to the provincial government when seeking to establish a new charter school. 

July 7, 2020 

In Alberta, the once-radical idea of charter schools, placed largely on the back burner for the past two decades, has been brought back to the fore under Premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party (UCP). The party’s Choice in Education Act will come into force Sept. 1, after the government passed it June 24.

Under the new act, individuals will be able to bypass the local school board and apply directly to the provincial government to seek to establish a charter school. This follows a move last fall by the newly elected UCP to remove the cap (previously 15) on the number of charter schools in the province.

In Alberta, there are now 13 charter school authorities operating more than 20 schools or campuses — for instance, the province lists seven Calgary schools run by the Foundations for the Future Charter Academy.

These recent developments provide the opportunity to better understand what charter schools are, how they’ve been taken up by advocates of educational reform and how their re-emergence and promotion under the UCP reflects the influence of neoconservative and neoliberal ideologies in education.

Roots of charter schools

Charter schools emerged largely from the Chicago School of Economics, inspired by the ideas of prominent thinkers like Milton Friedman. Friedman argued state “monopoly” over public education was problematic, and thus education should be instead subject to consumer choices and the dynamics of the free market.

While differing based on country and context, charter schools can be understood as a hybrid type of school — both public and private. Individuals or groups may seek to establish a school under a particular educational philosophy or approach. This charter then guides the administration and organization of the school.

To date, Alberta’s charter schools include a schools for children who are “academically gifted,” an Indigenous school and a school for children learning English.

As public institutions, however, charter schools must still abide by the policies, rules and regulations set out by the government. In this way, these schools can be seen as offering students and parents choice different from the local public school.

With funding is typically determined on a per-pupil basis, if parents decide not to choose a particular charter school, it may then close. Charter schools are also subject to competitive market pressures and often have to raise capital funding for expenses such as the school building or transportation themselves. That means charter schools may turn to fundraising from community-based or corporate sources. In the U.S., for instance, some charter schools can be run as for-profit entities.
Entry into Alberta

Charter schools, once hailed as a solution to the numerous apparent failures of the public education system, arrived in Alberta with the first school opening in 1994, just two years after the first charter school opened in the United States.

Up until recently, discussion around their future or promise in Alberta has been somewhat ambiguous. But since the UCP was elected last year, the provincial government has sought to revive charter schools as part of broader educational and public sector reforms.

Read more: Why Jason Kenney’s 'common sense' education platform gets it wrong
‘School choice’

As the UCP government’s throne speech outlined, the party stresses expanding school choice. For instance, new legislation makes it easier for parents to home-school since they will no longer need Alberta school board supervision to do so.


Last fall, the UCP also removed the word “public” from Alberta’s public schools boards, a move that can be critically viewed as an attempt to obfuscate the demarcation between public and private schools.

Kenney, himself a product of elite private schooling, appears focused on the expansion of more privatized forms of education.

Charter advocates contend that as schools of choice, they offer students more specialized and meaningful educational experiences.

Critics often respond that choice is already available in public school systems and that charters don’t demonstrate any significant improvements in performance, and may in fact further segregate students, leading to greater educational inequalities.

Educational labour unions remain unsupportive as well, as charters often seek to hire non-unionized teachers.

Nevertheless, the evidence remains mixed as to whether charters provide any significant improvements to student achievement. The research and policy landscape is often contentious and heavily influenced by competing interest groups.
Privatization

In Canada, charter schools only exist in Alberta — a province with a history of school choice policies. As I discussed in my research into the development of Alberta’s charter schools, their existence can be largely attributed to political ideas rather than educational developments in the province.

Charter schools were first introduced in Alberta under former premier Ralph Klein’s Progressive Conservative Party in 1994. Here, Klein in front of a campaign poster in February 2001. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

In 1994, when charters were first introduced in Alberta, it was under a provincial government focused largely on values of individualism, consumerism, privatization, commercialization and deficit reduction. Charter schools emerged as they fit in under this particular political and economic ideology.

Search Results

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Assaulting Public Education in Canada: Privatization Plague ...

https://solidarity-us.org › atc

Eugene Plawiuk. “I have no intention of increasing funds to schools, they should be looking for corporate partnerships.” &#8212Gary Mar, ...

Today we see many of the same values once again on the rise in Alberta at the same time as charters and “school choice” ideas are being amplified.

Neoconservative and neoliberal advocates of educational reform in particular continue to push them forward — as witnessed in the United States under President Donald Trump and U.S. Education Secretary Betsy Devos.

Read more: What cyber charter schools are and why their growth should worry us
Educational reforms and democracy

While educational reforms can and must occur in response to a changing world, public schools are meant to be resistant to political changes because they represent our core democratic values and are meant to develop to serve the needs of a diverse society.

Perhaps most importantly then, the debate over charter schools points to the fundamental political nature of public education.

Recent pre-pandemic educational reforms proposed in Ontario for mandatory online courses were seen by many educators, parents and students not as learning improvements, but rather as reforms motivated by a Conservative government with similar neoliberal politics, ideas and value systems.

Ontario also touted its “enhanced” (mandatory) online learning as offering “more choice.” Those advocating school vouchers and the expansion of charter schools in Ontario have used the same rhetoric.

Education as industry?

With Alberta’s charter schools set now to expand, as I asserted in 2015, it is worth noting that to date, the rest of Canada has continued to largely — though not entirely — resist calls for “school choice” that imply forms of privatization.

Nevertheless, across Canada, chronic public underfunding of education has forced school boards to seek tuition revenue and promote for-profit curriculums.

The presence of privatization looms large and when education is defined as an industry, there will always be those who seek to profit from it.

As Canadians, the rejection of charter schools demonstrates our collective commitment to the some of the most important core principles of public education, including access, quality and equity. The idea of charter schools allows us to think deeply about our core values surrounding public education and the many promises which it’s asked to uphold.

Author

Michael Mindzak
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, Brock University

Alberta govt. picks costly privatization schemes for new schools

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POSTMODERN MONOPOLY IMPERIALISM
As U.S. buys up remdesivir, ‘vaccine nationalism’ threatens access to COVID-19 treatments

July 5, 2020 

t the end of June, the United States government announced that it had secured the entire supply of remdesivir, an antiviral drug that shortens hospital stays for COVID-19 patients, until September.

In March, there were reports that Donald Trump’s administration tried to buy a German company working on a COVID-19 vaccine in order to secure the entire supply for the U.S. A group formed by France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands struck a deal in the past few weeks to secure 400 million doses of AstraZeneca’s potential vaccine, although other countries are also encouraged to join the group on the same terms. Whether poor countries could afford the terms is another question.

It certainly doesn’t seem that “we’re all in this together” — it’s looking more and more like a dog-eat-dog world. The group that’s most likely to be eaten are those living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Gilead, the maker of remdesivir, has licence agreements with manufacturers to supply remdesivir in 127 LMICs, but those agreements exclude large middle-income countries such as Brazil, China and Mexico.
Vaccine nationalism

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is creating a facility that will enter into advance purchase agreements with pharmaceutical companies guaranteeing the purchase of any eventual vaccines. But this proposal has generated significant global concerns about its impact on equitable access for populations, especially in developing countries. Under the agreement, rich countries will get the first crack at enough vaccine to cover 20 per cent of their population, and only then will poorer countries be guaranteed the vaccine — and only for their highest priority populations. 

A resident from the Alexandra township gets tested for COVID-19 in Johannesburg, South Africa last April. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)

The Serum Institute of India has entered a licensing agreement with AstraZeneca to acquire one billion doses of AstraZeneca’s potential COVID-19 vaccine for LMICs, with a commitment to provide 400 million doses before the end of 2020. But the terms and conditions of the agreement are unknown, including the price and the number of countries eligible for supply.

South Africa has started a trial of the vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford in partnership with AstraZeneca to try to avoid being left behind in the race to secure a supply. Helen Rees, chairwoman of the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority, said in a briefing: “That debate about vaccine nationalism now is very critical…There has to be an equitable distribution of vaccines. It cannot be all for some and none for many others.”
Costs, supply and control

The cost of remdesivir in the U.S. is going to be US$390 per vial, which would amount to US$2,340 per five-day treatment course. It’s estimated that remdesivir could be made for under US$1 a dose, less than a quarter of one per cent of what Gilead will be charging. At Gilead’s price, the company could earn well over US$2 billion in the first year the drug is on sale. The cost will hopefully be much lower in countries that are the recipients of Gilead’s licences, but what about the excluded countries? At this point, no one knows. That includes Canada.

 

Headquarters of Gilead Sciences, makers of the antiviral drug remdesivir, are seen in April 2020, in Foster City, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Gilead is in the process of submitting an application for approval of remdesivir to Health Canada and, according to Health Canada, the review will be conducted under expedited timelines due to the seriousness of COVID-19. Of course, under the new deal between the U.S. and Gilead, there won’t be any remdesivir for Canada to buy until the end of September. Canada could issue a compulsory licence to allow generic companies to make remdesivir, but currently that authority expires at the end of September so we may be stuck with Gilead as the only supplier.

Read more: Canada's coronavirus aid package guards against drug shortages with compulsory licensing

Gilead controls the supply of remdesivir because it holds the patent on the drug. When Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine, was asked if he was going to patent it, his famous response was: “There is no patent, could you patent the sun?” In other words, the vaccine was a public good meant to be used by everyone.

Gilead obviously doesn’t hold the same view about remdesivir, despite the fact that U.S. taxpayers contributed at least $70.5 million to developing the drug.

Canada’s role

What should Canada be doing about all of this? How is the federal government going to ensure that Canadians have access to COVID-19 treatments and vaccines?

Right now, we don’t have the capability to manufacture a vaccine in the country. Connaught Laboratories, which was instrumental in helping to develop the polio vaccine, used to be able to make vaccines, but it was sold off by the federal government back in 1989 to a French firm.

The group that’s most at risk for being unable to access new COVID-19 treatments are those living in low- and middle-income countries. (Pixabay)

The federal government should be looking at setting up a Crown corporation to ensure a domestic supply of critical drugs and vaccines at reasonable prices. Until that can be done, the government should extend the compulsory licensing provision in its emergency legislation so that generic companies can be allowed to make future patented therapies at lower costs.

But Canada needs to do much more. When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was first elected back in 2015, he proclaimed that “Canada is back” in international relations. Despite this promise, Canada has yet to commit to ensuring that any COVID-19 research that is done with Canadian money has to guarantee that products will be available at affordable prices in low- and middle-income countries.

Canada has not signed on to the recently established COVID-19 technology access pool being sponsored by the World Health Organization that is designed to help ensure that COVID-19 health technology-related knowledge, intellectual property and data is voluntarily shared.

Canada is not back; it’s missing in action both domestically and internationally.

Author
 

Joel Lexchin
Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Management, York University, Emergency Physician at University Health Network, Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto
Disclosure statement
In 2017-2020, Joel Lexchin received payments for being on a panel at the American Diabetes Association, for talks at the Toronto Reference Library, for writing a brief in an action for side effects of a drug for Michael F. Smith, Lawyer and a second brief on the role of promotion in generating prescriptions for Goodmans LLP and from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for presenting at a workshop on conflict-of-interest in clinical practice guidelines. He is currently a member of research groups that are receiving money from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council. He is a member of the Foundation Board of Health Action International and the Board of Canadian Doctors for Medicare. He receives royalties from University of Toronto Press and James Lorimer & Co. Ltd. for books he has written.
Partners




SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/07/fda-fast-tracks-possible-covid-19.html

Mulvaney calls U.S. coronavirus testing abilities 'inexcusable,' breaking from Trump

'I know it isn’t popular to talk about in some Republican circles,' Trump's former chief of staff says.


Mick Mulvaney. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO
07/13/2020

Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Monday criticized the U.S. coronavirus testing process, calling his family’s difficulties in obtaining tests and delays in the results “inexcusable” in the seventh month of the pandemic, splitting from his former boss’ repeated boasts about testing.

“I know it isn’t popular to talk about in some Republican circles, but we still have a testing problem in this country,” Mulvaney wrote in an op-ed for CNBC.

Mulvaney, who served in Congress before leading the White House budget office and becoming chief of staff, said that his son had recently been tested for the virus and had to wait up to a week for the results, and that his daughter was turned away from getting a test before she went to visit her grandparents.

“That is simply inexcusable at this point in the pandemic,” Mulvaney said.

Mulvaney’s anecdote comes as the Trump administration — and especially President Donald Trump -- have touted the ramped-up testing capacity in the country since serious missteps early on hamstrung testing operations.

In an interview Friday with Telemundo’s José Díaz-Balart, the president declared that “our testing is far superior to anybody,” and just days earlier, he had proclaimed that “the U.S. is, by far, number one in testing” in the world.

And the White House initially tried to dismiss a new surge in cases throughout the South and West over the last month by attributing the new crush of cases to increased testing availability. But local leaders in areas where the new outbreaks are cropping up have raised concerns about the need for better testing, and the White House was forced to reverse course on a plan to wind down federal support for testing sites in Texas.

The editorial from Mulvaney, who now serves as the administration’s special envoy for Northern Ireland, was centered on his suggestions for lawmakers as Congress works to pass a fourth stimulus package later this month.

“Any stimulus should be directed at the root cause of our recession: dealing with Covid,” he wrote, focusing on money for research, temporary hospital beds or therapeutics rather than a stimulus check for families or travel incentives — though tens of millions of Americans remain out of work.

The statement from Mulvaney that the health crisis is still raging comes as the White House seeks to push forward with its plans to reopen the economy, taking the form in recent weeks of an aggressive push for schools to reopen in the fall, despite parts of the country reporting record numbers of infections.

Most of the president’s allies have adopted that line of thinking, arguing that Americans must learn to live with the virus before a vaccine can be developed, and Trump has even begun to wage a public campaign questioning his health officials offering dire evaluations of the pandemic.

Mulvaney wasn’t always so alarmist about the health crisis — at the CPAC conference at the end of February, the then-chief of staff accused the media of over-hyping the virus because “they think this is going to be what brings down” the president. Though he conceded the virus might be dangerous enough to shutter schools and public transportation, he sought to reassure attendees that the White House was equipped to handle the issue.