Dr. Paul Farmer: Centuries of Inequality in the U.S. Laid Groundwork for Pandemic Devastation

STORYJANUARY 01, 2021

GUESTS
Paul Farmer
infectious diseases doctor and medical anthropologist. He is a professor of medicine at Harvard University, chair of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, co-founder and chief strategist of Partners in Health.


As the United States sets records for COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations, we speak with one of the world’s leading experts on infectious diseases, Dr. Paul Farmer, who says the devastating death toll in the U.S. reflects decades of underinvestment in public health and centuries of social inequality. “All the social pathologies of our nation come to the fore during epidemics,” says Dr. Farmer, a professor of medicine at Harvard University, chair of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder and chief strategist of Partners in Health.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

As we continue our coverage of the COVID-19 crisis, we turn now to the world-renowned infectious disease doctor and medical anthropologist, Dr. Paul Farmer. He’s chair of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Partners in Health, an international nonprofit that provides direct healthcare services to those who are sick and living in poverty around the world. Dr. Farmer co-founded the group in 1987 to deliver healthcare to people in Haiti. In 2014, Partners in Health was one of the first organizations to respond to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. Dr. Farmer’s new book is titled Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History. I spoke to him in early December and asked him how it’s possible for the United States to have nearly 20% of the world’s infections and deaths while having less than 5% of the world’s population.


DR. PAUL FARMER: Well, I mean, we are facing the consequences of decades and decades of underinvestment in public health and of centuries of misallocation of funds away from those who need that help most. And, you know, all the social pathologies of our nation come to the fore during epidemics. And during a pandemic like this one, we’re going to be showing the rest of the world, warts and all, how — we have shown the rest of the world how badly we can do. And now we have to rally, use new tools that are coming online, but address some of the older pathologies of our care delivery system and of our country. I think that’s where we are right now.


AMY GOODMAN: What needs to happen right now in the United States?


DR. PAUL FARMER: Well, first of all, you know, I think that it’s a great tragedy that such matters as masking or social distancing or even shutting down parts of the economy, that contribute to risk but are — it’s just a shame that that’s been politicized. These are not political or partisan actions. They are public health strategies. Right now they’re all we’ve got.


But even when the vaccine is online or begins to come online, we have no history of seeing a vaccine taken up so rapidly that it would alter the fundamental dynamics of a respiratory illness like this. So, we’re facing, as President-elect Biden said, a long, dark winter. And if we can make a difference that could spare tens of thousands and perhaps more than 150,000 lives, then we should do that.


And whether or not these are called mask mandates or pleading from the president, we need state and local authorities to come together and underline the nonpartisan and life-saving nature of some of these basic protective measures. We need to invest very heavily in making sure the vaccine goes to those who need it most and those who have been shut out of previous developments like this or shut out for too long.


So we have a lot of work ahead of us this winter, but no small amount of it is going to rely on individual families and communities to take up some of these measures rapidly to make sure that the dark winter does not lead to a blighted spring.


AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Farmer, can you comment quickly on these vaccines, for people to understand, the first what’s called mRNA, messenger RNA, vaccines, what they actually do in the human body? Do they make you immune, or you can get sick and be a carrier, but you, yourself — I mean, you can be infected and be a carrier, but you, yourself, will not get very sick? Explain the choice of who gets the vaccine, also the fact that this has not been studied in children, people under 14, and so what this means for kids.


DR. PAUL FARMER: Well, in general terms, let me just say that in the 30-plus years I’ve been involved in this work, I’ve never seen such a rapid development of a novel preventive for a novel vaccine. So there’s a lot to celebrate in terms of the global effort to come together to develop new vaccines.


Again in general terms, the idea is that instead of having a natural infection — in this case, breathing in the novel coronavirus and getting sick, which leads to the outcomes that we know: death or recovery with sequelae — it also leads probably to immunity. That’s what it’s like with other viral infections in humans, or almost all of them. So, what the vaccine does is introduce something that will trick the body into believing that it’s being invaded by the virus — in this case, it’s focused on a particular protein on the outer surface of the virus — and generate that immune response, which is often robust and enduring, at least with other viruses. Now, in the case of any novel pathogen, we don’t know for sure how long that immunity lasts, right? I mean, how could you? It hasn’t been studied for long. But we know about other viruses and can take some lessons from those.


And in the case of this new vaccine or this new type of vaccines, the mRNA vaccine, we’re also dealing with that unknown. This is a new kind of vaccination. This is a new approach. It’s very exciting, in part because it seems to confer that immunity without significant adverse effects. So, I think, again, on the side of development of a novel technology, these vaccines, whether mRNA vaccines or others, are great news, right? And maybe they will influence a new generation of vaccines for other pathogens, particularly viral pathogens, which tend to be the worst ones among humans. So, that’s where we are with the development of new technology.


Unfortunately, as I said and as you’ve underlined many times, Amy, the old pathologies of our society make it unlikely that the rollout will be smooth and evenly taken up across various communities, some of them with well-founded fears and mistrust of any kind of public health campaign. So, we’re in a bit of a pickle. I’m optimistic about what will happen in this country, but as you pointed out in opening up the hour, a lot of us are concerned with what’s going to happen in the Global South and among those who might as well be considered living in the Global South in wealthy and egalitarian countries like the United States and parts of Europe.


So, it’s going to be a rocky winter, with some highs and lows. And I hope there are more highs than lows. I hope there’s more reason for celebration than for grief. But I think it’s going to be a very, very difficult winter.


AMY GOODMAN: Just before we go to this remarkable book about dealing with Ebola and what it meant, I wanted to ask you about property rights, about patents and about countries like South Africa and India pushing for a temporary suspension of intellectual property rights and patents so that COVID-19 vaccines and medications become more accessible, particularly in the Global South.


DR. PAUL FARMER: Well, I’d just like to say something we’ve had a chance to discuss before in previous years. You know, when you look at what happened around HIV, which by 1995, '96, those of us in the infectious disease world understood that this would be a life-saving suppressive therapy — like as with diabetes requiring insulin, you'd have to keep taking it, but this would save millions of lives, and maybe even more, and prevent transmission of mother to child — the same debates about intellectual property of course came up then.


The average wholesale price for a three-drug regimen in the years immediately after the discovery of these new agents was $15,000, sometimes $20,000, per person per year. So, if you split your time between Harvard and Haiti, as I had and do, you would imagine, if you couldn’t have an imagination beyond conventional property rights discussion, that the majority of the world would be shut out of access to this therapy. And, of course, that made the most difference, on a continent level, in Africa, where the majority of people living with HIV and dying with HIV were at the time.


And what happened later was the production of generic versions of these drugs, often in India or China or even South Africa — right? — so that a much lower cost could be tied to the same agents. And when I say “much lower,” I mean a reduction, really even within those early years, from $15,000 to $20,000, to about $300 per person per year. And with groups like the Clinton Foundation getting involved, those prices dropped even further. And right now you can get a really good three-drug regimen, even with some pediatric formulations for children, for about $60 per patient per year.


So, you could say that took a long time, but it didn’t take a long time in terms of the impact that it could have. Millions and millions of lives, maybe even 16 to 20 million lives, are being saved by these drugs. But in some places, like Rwanda, where I’ve spent 10 years, you saw the virtual eradication of AIDS among children, because if mom is on therapy, the transmission to babies in utero, or through breastfeeding probably, really does not occur. And this is not a hypothetical development. This has already happened in Rwanda, which is a very poor country with a very robust public health and care delivery system.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Paul Farmer. We’ll return to our interview in a moment and talk about his new book, Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History.

The Freedom Struggle in 2020: Angela Davis on Protests, Defunding Police & Toppling Racist Statues

STORYDECEMBER 31, 2020

GUESTS
Angela Davis
world-renowned abolitionist, author, activist and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Image Credit: Yalonda James / The SF Chronicle via Getty Images

In a Democracy Now! special, we revisit our June 2020 interview with the legendary activist and scholar Angela Davis about the uprising against police brutality and racism launched in May after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The protests have helped dramatically shift public opinion on policing and systemic racism, as “defund the police” became a rallying cry of the movement. Davis is professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. For half a century, she has been one of the most influential activists and intellectuals in the United States and an icon of the Black liberation movement.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.


AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s special looking back at the uprising against police brutality and racism following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25th. The protests helped shift public opinion on policing and systemic racism, with “defund the police” becoming a rallying cry of the movement.

Well, for more on the historic protests, we turn to the legendary activist and scholar Angela Davis, professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. For half a century, Angela Davis has been one of the most influential activists and intellectuals in the United States and an icon of the Black liberation movement. I interviewed her in early June and asked her if she thought this moment is truly a turning point.


ANGELA DAVIS: This is an extraordinary moment. I have never experienced anything like the conditions we are currently experiencing, the conjuncture created by the COVID-19 pandemic and the recognition of the systemic racism that has been rendered visible under these conditions because of the disproportionate deaths in Black and Latinx communities. And this is a moment I don’t know whether I ever expected to experience.


When the protests began, of course, around the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and Tony McDade and many others who have lost their lives to racist state violence and vigilante violence — when these protests erupted, I remembered something that I’ve said many times to encourage activists, who often feel that the work that they do is not leading to tangible results. I often ask them to consider the very long trajectory of Black struggles. And what has been most important is the forging of legacies, the new arenas of struggle that can be handed down to younger generations.


But I’ve often said one never knows when conditions may give rise to a conjuncture such as the current one that rapidly shifts popular consciousness and suddenly allows us to move in the direction of radical change. If one does not engage in the ongoing work when such a moment arises, we cannot take advantage of the opportunities to change. And, of course, this moment will pass. The intensity of the current demonstrations cannot be sustained over time, but we will have to be ready to shift gears and address these issues in different arenas, including, of course, the electoral arena.


AMY GOODMAN: Angela Davis, you have long been a leader of the critical resistance movement, the abolition movement. And I’m wondering if you can explain the demand, as you see it, what you feel needs to be done, around defunding the police, and then around prison abolition.


ANGELA DAVIS: Well, the call to defund the police is, I think, an abolitionist demand, but it reflects only one aspect of the process represented by the demand. Defunding the police is not simply about withdrawing funding for law enforcement and doing nothing else. And it appears as if this is the rather superficial understanding that has caused Biden to move in the direction he’s moving in.


It’s about shifting public funds to new services and new institutions — mental health counselors, who can respond to people who are in crisis without arms. It’s about shifting funding to education, to housing, to recreation. All of these things help to create security and safety. It’s about learning that safety, safeguarded by violence, is not really safety.


And I would say that abolition is not primarily a negative strategy. It’s not primarily about dismantling, getting rid of, but it’s about reenvisioning. It’s about building anew. And I would argue that abolition is a feminist strategy. And one sees in these abolitionist demands that are emerging the pivotal influence of feminist theories and practices.


AMY GOODMAN: Explain that further.


ANGELA DAVIS: I want us to see feminism not only as addressing issues of gender, but rather as a methodological approach of understanding the intersectionality of struggles and issues. Abolition feminism counters carceral feminism, which has unfortunately assumed that issues such as violence against women can be effectively addressed by using police force, by using imprisonment as a solution. And of course we know that Joseph Biden, in 1994, who claims that the Violence Against Women Act was such an important moment in his career — the Violence Against Women Act was couched within the 1994 Crime Act, the Clinton Crime Act.


And what we’re calling for is a process of decriminalization, not — recognizing that threats to safety, threats to security, come not primarily from what is defined as crime, but rather from the failure of institutions in our country to address issues of health, issues of violence, education, etc. So, abolition is really about rethinking the kind of future we want, the social future, the economic future, the political future. It’s about revolution, I would argue.


AMY GOODMAN: You write in Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, “Neoliberal ideology drives us to focus on individuals, ourselves, individual victims, individual perpetrators. But how is it possible to solve the massive problem of racist state violence by calling upon individual police officers to bear the burden of that history and to assume that by prosecuting them, by exacting our revenge on them, we would have somehow made progress in eradicating racism?” So, explain what exactly you’re demanding.


ANGELA DAVIS: Well, neoliberal logic assumes that the fundamental unit of society is the individual, and I would say the abstract individual. According to that logic, Black people can combat racism by pulling themselves up by their own individual bootstraps. That logic recognizes — or fails, rather, to recognize that there are institutional barriers that cannot be brought down by individual determination. If a Black person is materially unable to attend the university, the solution is not affirmative action, they argue, but rather the person simply needs to work harder, get good grades and do what is necessary in order to acquire the funds to pay for tuition. Neoliberal logic deters us from thinking about the simpler solution, which is free education.


I’m thinking about the fact that we have been aware of the need for these institutional strategies at least since 1935 — but of course before, but I’m choosing 1935 because that was the year when W.E.B. Du Bois published his germinal Black Reconstruction in America. And the question was not what should individual Black people do, but rather how to reorganize and restructure post-slavery society in order to guarantee the incorporation of those who had been formerly enslaved. The society could not remain the same — or should not have remained the same. Neoliberalism resists change at the individual level. It asks the individual to adapt to conditions of capitalism, to conditions of racism.


AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Angela Davis, about the monuments to racists, colonizers, Confederates, that are continuing to fall across the United States and around the world. Did you think you would ever see this? You think about Bree Newsome after the horror at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, who shimmied up that flagpole on the grounds of the South Carolina Legislature and took down the Confederate flag, and they put it right on back up. What about what we’re seeing today?


ANGELA DAVIS: Well, of course, Bree Newsome was a wonderful pioneer. And I think it’s important to link this trend to the campaign in South Africa, Rhodes Must Fall. And, of course, I think this reflects the extent to which we are being called upon to deeply reflect on the role of historical racisms that have brought us to the point where we are today.


You know, racism should have been immediately confronted in the aftermath of the end of slavery. This is what Dr. Du Bois’s analysis was all about, not so much in terms of, “Well, what we were going to do about these poor people who have been enslaved so many generations?” but, rather, “How can we reorganize our society in order to guarantee the incorporation of previously enslaved people?”


Now attention is being turned towards the symbols of slavery, the symbols of colonialism. And, of course, any campaigns against racism in this country have to address, in the very first place, the conditions of Indigenous people. I think it’s important that we’re seeing these demonstrations, but I think at the same time we have to recognize that we cannot simply get rid of the history. We have to recognize the devastatingly negative role that that history has played in charting the trajectory of the United States of America. And so, I think that these assaults on statues represent an attempt to begin to think through what we have to do to bring down institutions and reenvision them, reorganize them, create new institutions that can attend to the needs of all people.


AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about racism and capitalism? You often write and speak about how they are intimately connected. And talk about a world that you envision.


ANGELA DAVIS: Yeah, racism is integrally linked to capitalism. And I think it’s a mistake to assume that we can combat racism by leaving capitalism in place. As Cedric Robinson pointed out in his book Black Marxism, capitalism is racial capitalism. And, of course, to just say for a moment, that Marx pointed out that what he called primitive accumulation, capital doesn’t just appear from nowhere. The original capital was provided by the labor of slaves. The Industrial Revolution, which pivoted around the production of capital, was enabled by slave labor in the U.S. So, I am convinced that the ultimate eradication of racism is going to require us to move toward a more socialist organization of our economies, of our other institutions. I think we have a long way to go before we can begin to talk about an economic system that is not based on exploitation and on the super-exploitation of Black people, Latinx people and other racialized populations.

But I do think that we now have the conceptual means to engage in discussions, popular discussions, about capitalism. Occupy gave us new language. The notion of the prison-industrial complex requires us to understand the globalization of capitalism. Anti-capitalist consciousness helps us to understand the predicament of immigrants, who are barred from the U.S. by the wall that has been created by the current occupant. These conditions have been created by global capitalism. And I think this is a period during which we need to begin that process of popular education, which will allow people to understand the interconnections of racism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism.

Covid-distancing and social solidarity needed against new virus variant

Author: Martin Thomas WORKERS LIBERTY

National Education Union joint general secretary Kevin Courtney has called for the start of the second school term to be delayed to 18 January to give time and space for the government's proposal for mass testing in schools to be organised.

Lisa Nandy, for the Labour Party leadership, has opposed the proposal to delay to 18 January. But even for people sceptical about the idea of closing schools in October-November (Wales did that, and its lockdown was much less effective than others that kept schools open), the spread of the new virus variant gives good reason to support the NEU call. In fact, to support longer closures and a full lockdown comparable to spring 2020's.

On 30 December, the "Independent SAGE" group of scientists called for a new lockdown and for schools to close for at least a month. "We are no longer in the same pandemic we were in up to December. The very rapid rise of cases in London, the South East and East of England under restrictions that previously kept growth much slower, highlights the need for a radical rethink... "

The Independent SAGE also implies calls for:

• Full isolation pay for all
• Publicly-provided quarantine accommodation

That is good. Activists will press the labour movement to redouble efforts for those measures of social solidarity, and for:

• Bring social care into the public sector
• A public-health test-trace operation, in place of the Serco-Deloitte contracted-out mess
• Emergency public ownership of private hospitals and of NHS supplies and logistics
• Workers' control of workplace virus curbs

But Independent SAGE's stated criteria for ending (or, apparently, even easing) a new lockdown are unworkable; that "all those with the disease and in contact with them are isolated, with support where necessary" and there is "managed isolation" for a quarantine period of all arrivals from abroad. In a foreseeable future of months, the UK's public health system lacks the means even to know how many infected, contacted, and arriving people are self-isolating fully. (As far as we do know, fewer than 20% of those testing positive, let alone contacts and arrivals, are self-isolating properly).

A more workable criterion would be to start easing the lockdown once the infection curve turns down again (and do it step by step, as many European countries did successfully in mid-2020 until the foolish July reopening of bars, cafés, and tourist industries). Schools, especially primary schools, should be priorities for reopening, as they were for example in Denmark back in April.

But Independent SAGE are right that rapid and drastic action is called for, and that we have no comprehensive option other than the old one of lockdown. This time it must be accompanied by full isolation pay, requisitioning of PPE supplies and private hospitals, and bringing social care into the public sector.

Infections are rising fast across the UK. Viruses mutate all the time, and no union or government can control that. The new variant VUI-202012/01 spreads faster. The government says, maybe 70% faster.

Even the strict lockdowns of March-April brought only a slow decrease (average 22% decrease in reported infections per week in the "best" period, 22 April to 2 July; it was about 10% decrease per week in the November lockdown).

Add a 70% more transmission to such slow decrease, and you get a rising rate of infection, if a big majority of the cases are the new variant.

And being more transmissible also makes new variants outpace old variants, and come to be dominant even when they start with only one case. According to the WHO on 31 December, this has already happened once, though less dramatically. "A variant of SARS-Cov-2 with a D614G substitution in the gene encoding the spike protein emerged in late January or early February 2020. Over a period of several months [this] replaced the initial SARS-Cov-2 strain identified in China and... became... dominant... The strain with the D614G substitution has increased infectivity and transmission".

The new variant may not be as much as 70% faster to transmit. More people will have some immunity now, through having Covid already with or without symptoms, and that will slow transmission. As vaccinations spread, over 2021, and especially as they spread into younger sections of the population, that should slow transmission further. We don't know how much, because we don't know how much the vaccine inhibits transmission as well as inhibiting symptoms, but the vaccinations could slow transmissions too.

It's certain that infection rates will be high for some weeks yet. It is probable that they will be rising for a good few weeks or even months. It is possible that they will be rising for even longer than that. We still have no reliable general method to depress transmission other than the clumsy and costly age-old one of covid-distancing.

Certainly universities should go online, or almost all online, as they did in spring. Probably lockdown-level measures of covid-distancing will be needed for months yet.

Schools are an essential service. School closures (especially of primary and lower secondary schools) are a last resort - because such closures have great social costs; because school-aged children suffer less from Covid than adults and especially older adults; because where schools have been open adult school workers, unlike health workers, care workers, bus workers, etc. have not had above-average Covid rates. On the balance of the evidence since early 2020, school closures add relatively little to the transmission-reducing effect of a package of distancing policies.

But probably by now we are in "last resort" territory. We are scrabbling for even marginal additions to transmission-reduction.

GCSE and A Level exams scheduled for summer 2021 should be cancelled now. GCSEs require no replacements (16 year olds should simply be allowed to enter whatever apprenticeships or further study they want). A levels do need temporary makeshift replacement pending a (needed) drastic revision of the university system. That makeshift should be worked out now, in consultation with teachers, to get something that minimises the disadvantage for students from worse-off backgrounds who mostly will have lost more school time already and are often short of the technology, resources, quiet space (and confidence) needed to study online from home.

Frequent and quick-response mass testing, where everyone in a workplace or campus is tested twice a week and has to show a negative test result to enter, does seem to be effective. It has worked relatively well, for example, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in the USA, producing much lower rates of infection on its campus than in the surrounding area. It may help schools to reopen earlier than otherwise.

But the NEU - and head teachers' associations too - are right to say that it needs to be well-organised, with adequate trained staff to administer and process the tests, and the Tory government is nowhere near giving schools the resources to do that by early January.

For the months ahead, when they reopen, schools also need extra funding for the virus-precaution measures which should have been installed already: running rotas and conscripting extra accommodation to reduce class sizes, fixing ventilation, hiring extra regular staff to cover staff absences and avoid bringing new people into the school. They need extra funding now to distribute laptops and hire extra staff for online teaching.

Botched mass testing may even be counterproductive. Many scientists have argued that the government's one-off mass population testing in Liverpool was a useless publicity stunt. There have been claims that the one-off population mass testing in Slovakia in early November was effective, but the statistics since then su

 

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UN Experts: Trump Violated International Law in Pardoning Blackwater Mercenaries

The choice to pardon the military contractors convicted of murder and manslaughter may violate the Geneva Conventions.  JARED RODRIGUEZ / TRUTHOUT

BY Chris Walker, Truthout PUBLISHEDDecember 30, 2020

The youngest victim in that shooting, Ali Kinani, was just 9 years old when he was killed by the four Blackwater contractors. His father, Mohammed Kinani, recounted the scene he witnessed when the massacre happened.

“When one man tried to run, they shot him,” Kinani said in a Democracy Now! interview from 2010. “He dropped dead on the spot. He was on the ground bleeding, and they were shooting nonstop. They shot like they were trying to kill everyone they could see.”

Due to how vicious and criminal these men’s actions were, members of the UN condemned Trump’s decision to pardon them, describing his actions as criminal while doing so.

“Pardoning the Blackwater contractors is an affront to justice and to the victims of the Nisour Square massacre and their families,” Jelena Aparac, chair of a UN working group on the use of mercenaries, said on Wednesday of Trump’s pardoning of the four Blackwater contractors.

The president of the United States has tremendous leeway when it comes to whom they may pardon. However, many scholars believe there are still limits to the pardon power, particularly when it comes to consideration for other laws — including international agreements and treaties, which are treated as “the supreme law of the land” according to the U.S. Constitution.

In that respect, it’s possible that Trump violated the Geneva Conventions when he pardoned these four individuals, as member states to that agreement are responsible for holding war criminals in their own country accountable for their actions.

Private contractors or mercenaries are included in those Geneva Conventions agreements.

There are grave consequences, according to those agreements, for not adhering to this rule — ignoring or curtailing punishments for war criminals will likely encourage other nations, for instance, to hire private contractors in order to break the spirit of the international agreement.

With that in mind, the pardons are in violation of “U.S. obligations under international law,” and will “undermine humanitarian law and human rights at a global level,” Aparac said.

“Ensuring accountability for such crimes is fundamental to humanity and to the community of nations,” Aparac elaborated, adding that “pardons, amnesties, or any other forms of exculpation for war crimes open doors to future abuses when States contract private military and security companies for inherent state functions.”

Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, expressed similar sentiments. Cohn, speaking directly to Truthout about the matter, also said that Trump should have pardoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for his role in revealing other atrocious actions of the U.S. military in years’ past.

“The Geneva Conventions require that States hold war criminals accountable,” Cohn said. “Yet Trump pardoned four war criminals but indicted Julian Assange for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq.”

Cohn continued:

Assange published the ‘Collateral Murder’ video, which depicts U.S. soldiers killing 18 civilians, in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Trump should dismiss the indictment against Assange and grant him a full pardon.


Chris Walker is Truthout’s News Writer, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people.

2020 Was a Record Year for Far Right Violence in the US

Members of the Proud Boys yell in front of a hotel during 

a protest on December 12, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

STEPHANIE KEITH / GETTY IMAGES

This year was quite active for the far right in the United States, especially after its relative downturn in 2019 as a violent street movement compared to the recent past. Although the far right may not have committed as many high-profile massacres as previous years, 2020 saw more murders and car attacks at demonstrations than any year in recent memory.

While the openly fascist wing of the “alt-right” continued to implode over the past year, some on the far right picked up steam: the Boogaloo movement — a new grouping of younger activists with militia-style politics, but the look and feel of the alt-right; Gropyers — white nationalists and their allies who are trying to influence the Trumpist movement from inside; and followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, who believe Trump is always about to arrest a cabal of liberal, deep state, satanic pedophiles. Moreover, aggressive street demonstrations led by the Proud Boys reached a fever pitch, inspired by comments from Donald Trump, and renewed opposition to the revived Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to new ground for the far right. Cities started implementing shutdowns in March, but even beforehand, conspiracy theories circulated that the virus was a hoax, a Chinese bioweapon or a plot to enslave Americans. By April, the “reopen” demonstrations were in full swing. These protests were driven by “alt-lite” members (the more moderate wing of the alt-right, which allows people of color, Jews and gay men to join), militias and Trumpists, but white nationalists also participated. One of the most aggressive actions was on April 30, when armed protesters pushed their way into the Michigan legislature.

This movement was soon overtaken by another starting on May 25, when a Minneapolis cop murdered George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, launching a new wave of the BLM movement. It took on an almost revolutionary furor; a police precinct was burned and militant demonstrations broke out across the country. Eventually, they spread even to small towns, and by July, up to 26 million had joined protests in support of this multiracial movement for Black liberation. The far right responded with increasingly aggressive counter-protests, especially as BLM rallies lost their initial intensity.

These counter-protests were driven in part by Trump’s accusation that anti-fascists (also known as antifa) and anarchists were responsible for the protests’ militancy, a rehash of 1950s accusations that Communists controlled the civil rights movement. These conspiracies reached their height on May 31 when Trump tweeted: “The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.” (Antifa is neither a single organization, nor does such a designation exist domestically.) When wildfires swept Western states in September, a bizarre rumor, sometimes spread by law enforcement, claimed that members of antifa were intentionally setting them. Armed vigilantes set up roadblocks intended to function as “checkpoints” to identify “antifa arsonists.”

Things turned deadly in the spring. There were a large number of murders and car attacks at BLM demonstrations. The most infamous of these was in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where, during an August 26 demonstration, 17-year-old militia member Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two people.

Days later, far right activist Aaron Danielson was killed after he allegedly attacked random people in the aftermath of a violent far right protest in Portland, Oregon. He was shot by self-identified anti-fascist Michael Forest Reinoehl, who in turn was killed by law enforcement on September 3 — without any warning, witnesses said. Trump even gloated that law enforcement gunned him down because “they didn’t want to arrest him.” In October, far right activist Lee Keltner was killed by a security guard as he threatened a TV crew in Denver.

The killings of Danielson, Reinoehl and Keltner were all connected to very aggressive demonstrations, mostly led by the Proud Boys. These had morphed into joint anti-antifa/anti-BLM- themed events, the two movements now joined in the far right’s feverish imagination. Although found in various cities, until the election they continued to be largely centered in Portland.

The Proud Boys became the undisputed far right street force of the year, and were even mentioned in the presidential debate, with Trump telling them to “stand back and stand by.” In Portland — where BLM demonstrations have gone on for over 200 days — the Proud Boys held a series of violent demonstrations. On August 22, Proud Boy Alan Swinney pointed a handgun in the middle of a melee while police stood by. The next week, a vehicle caravan attacked bystanders with paintballs and mace, and the day ended with Danielson’s death. On September 26, the Proud Boys held an aggressive, drunken demonstration at a North Portland park while the counter-demonstration was held elsewhere. Post-election rallies included the November 14 “Million MAGA March” in Washington, D.C., where — for the first time since Charlottesville — well-known white nationalists openly mixed with other Trumpists. A follow-up December 12 rally was marked by more clashes with anti-fascists and vandalism at two Black churches, plus four stabbings and a shooting. The Proud Boys’ leader called for his members to violently disrupt Joe Biden’s inauguration. And on December 21, members of a protest, which included armed members of groups like the Proud Boys, attempted to break into the statehouse in Salem, Oregon.

However, the decline of U.S. fascists, which began in 2018, continued in 2020. The largest “alt-right” fascist group, Patriot Front, held three pop-up marches, each of which showed a decline in attendance from previous years. The American Identity Movement (formerly Identity Evropa) disbanded, as did the Atomwaffen Division, although some observers say it just rebranded as the National Socialist Order. The fascist National Justice Party also formed this year, and Kyle Chapman (aka “Based Stickman”) left the Proud Boys to form the openly white nationalist and anti-Semitic Proud Goys. But the most important movement that fascists took part in was the Groypers, whose goal is to turn Trump’s base further right by working inside that movement. This strategy is opposed to those explicit white nationalist groups who either work separately from the larger Trumpist movement or, in the case of Patriot Front, reject Trump altogether.

Numerous members of Atomwaffen Division, including former leader John Denton, were arrested on weapons charges, threatening journalists, or “swatting” (attempting to get SWAT teams to raid a residence under false pretenses). Seven members of The Base, a similar fascist group that also promotes terrorism, were arrested for crimes including planning to murder anti-fascists and attack a gun rights rally. The group’s leader, Rinaldo Nazzaro, was revealed to be living in Moscow; his past as a Pentagon contractor led New York Magazine to muse that he could be either an FBI agent creating a neo-Nazi honeypot, or a Russian asset.

Just as the coronavirus situation was escalating in March, NSM (National Socialist Movement) member Timothy Wilson was killed by police as he was heading to bomb a hospital. Jeremy Christian, who murdered two people in Portland in 2017 for intervening against his Islamophobic harassment of two women, was sentenced to life in prison. An army private in the pro-Nazi Satanist group, the Order of Nine Angles, was arrested for plotting to ambush his own unit. And Christopher Cantwell, who in 2017 was slated to speak at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, was convicted in late September of extortion for making a rape threat.

There were high-profile arrests of other far right militants as well. In October, 13 militia members were busted, including six who were plotting to kidnap the Michigan governor. Numerous Boogaloo movement members were also arrested after they sought to inflame the early George Floyd protests for their own ends: Steven Carrillo was arrested for murdering both a federal security guard during the Oakland protests in May, and in June when he ambushed a police officer outside his home in Ben Lomond, California. An associate was arrested for firing a weapon during the initial Minneapolis protests, while three others received terrorism charges for plotting attacks in Las Vegas.

Social media platforms also cracked down on the far right, although belatedly. Twitter started labeling many of Trump’s posts as “disputed.” Numerous far right accounts were removed from different platforms, though sometimes for coronavirus denial — not fascism or violence. Twitter suspended both former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon (who had been arrested earlier in 2020) and former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, who had spent over a decade on the platform. Different platforms suspended conspiracy theorist David Icke, Ammon Bundy and the Oath Keepers, as well as the Proud Boys plus their allies, American Guard. In August, a large Facebook purge was focused on QAnon and militias, but also included some anti-fascists and anarchists. This deplatforming spurred a far right migration to the politically sympathetic platform Parler.

The election brought on more far right action. The right-wing conspiracy theory surrounding QAnon became very influential in the fall, and the president embraced it. Trump also declared that antifa was “virtually part of” Biden’s campaign, who he called a “Servant of the Globalists.” (Accusations of “globalism” are a long-time anti-Semitic dog whistle.) After losing the election, Trump has continuously claimed it was rigged and that he won, fueling aggressive protests by his followers. He even turned on his beloved Fox News, instead promoting the more extreme OANN (One American News Network) and disposing of his sycophant Attorney General William Barr.

Trump brought the far right to a new level of popularity, and it remains to be seen what will happen after his departure. Undoubtedly, some groups will immediately shift to opposing incoming president Joe Biden, and others will continue to maintain that the election was stolen. It’s uncertain if Trump will continue to be involved in stoking this movement, however, or if he’ll retire from politics. It’s possible that after a year or so, without a president to inspire them, the far right will fade to pre-Trump levels (although even those levels were more substantial than many people realize). Some watchers, however, think such a cooling off might take years.

TRUTH OUT 

U.K. abolishes tax on menstrual products

Jacob Knutson



Photo: Jack Taylor/Getty Images


The United Kingdom's abolishment of a tax on menstrual products goes in effect today, according to a release from the government.

Why it matters: The repeal is among the first acts the U.K. is taking as part of its formal separation from the European Union because EU law prevents member nations from reducing the value-added tax on menstrual products below 5% because they are considered "luxury items."

What they're saying: “Sanitary products are essential, so it’s right that we do not charge VAT,” Chief Secretary to the Treasury Rishi Sunak said.
“We have already rolled out free sanitary products in schools, colleges and hospitals and this commitment takes us another step closer to making them available and affordable for all women.”

The big picture: Other countries, including Australia, Canada and India, have also repealed their taxes on such products.

Scotland became the first country to make menstrual products completely free in November.

In the United States, ten states have succeeded in passing legislation that exempts tampons, pads, and in some states, menstrual cups in recent years, Axios' Ursula Perano reports.

Of note: Ireland is the only EU nation that does not tax menstrual products because it. did not have a tax in place when the EU set its tax rate floor, according to AP

Andre Hill's loved ones mourn loss of

 'a chess-playing mind'

By FARNOUSH AMIRI and ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS, 

Associated Press Jan. 1, 2021 

Andre Hill, fatally shot by Columbus police on Dec. 22, is memorialized on a shirt worn by his daughter, Karissa Hill, on Thursday, Dec. 31, 2020, in Columbus, Ohio. Karissa Hill said she considered her father an “everything man” because he did so many things.

Photo: Andrew Welsh-Huggins, AP

Attorney Benjamin Crump, left, discusses the police shooting of Andre Hill at a news conference attended by Hill's daughter, Karissa, center, and sister Shawna Barnett, on Thursday, Dec. 31, 2020, in Columbus, Ohio. Karissa Hill said she considered her father an "everything man" because he did so many things.

Photo: Andrew Welsh-Huggins, AP

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — In late May, Andre Hill and his roommate Donyell Bryant watched in shock, along with the nation, the video of a Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee on George Floyd’s neck for minutes, even as Floyd pleaded that he couldn’t breathe.

Nearly six months later, Bryant, 42, sat alone on the same couch in his home in Dublin in suburban Columbus watching body camera footage of police shooting and killing his friend of 22 years.

And the Rev. Al Sharpton will deliver his friend's eulogy at a public memorial service Tuesday, Hill's family said Friday.

“I mean, it just still doesn’t even feel real,” Bryant said. “It just seems kind of crazy.”

Columbus Officer Adam Coy, who is white, fatally shot Hill, who was Black, early Dec. 22 as Hill emerged from a garage holding a cellphone in his left hand and his right hand obscured. He was visiting a family friend at the time.

Police had responded to a neighbor's nonemergency complaint about someone stopping and starting a car outside.

“He was bringing me Christmas money. He didn’t do anything,” a woman inside the house shouted at police afterward.

Coy, who had a long history of complaints from citizens, was fired Dec. 28 for failing to activate his body camera before the confrontation and for not providing medical aid to Hill.

Beyond an internal police investigation, the Ohio attorney general, the U.S. attorney for central Ohio and the FBI have begun their own probes into the shooting.

At the memorial service Tuesday morning at the First Church of God in Columbus, civil rights attorney Ben Crump is expected to issue a “call to action," according to the Hill family's news release.

Family and friends are remembering Hill — a father and grandfather — as a man devoted to his family, an always-smiling optimist and a skilled tradesman who dreamed after years of work as a chef and restaurant manager of one day owning his own restaurant.

“I consider him an everything man,” his 27-year-old daughter, Karissa Hill, said Thursday. She added: “It’s hard to say what he did, because he did everything.”

Hill, 47, grew up in the Eastmoor neighborhood of Columbus, a racially mixed area on the city's east side. He graduated in the early 1990s and earned certification in business management and culinary arts at Hocking College in southeastern Ohio.

Hill — "Dre" to friends and “Big Daddy” to his three grandchildren — worked at many restaurants around Columbus over the years either as a chef or manager, including Buffalo Wild Wings and Popeyes, and franchises of two smaller chains, Cooker Restaurant and the Old Bag of Nails.

He was a skilled soul food chef but enjoyed trying all styles of cooking.

“You name it, he makes it,” said Michael Henry, 49, who attended high school with Hill and later shared an apartment. He added: “That was his passion right there, cooking.”

Later, Hill joined Henry at Airnet Systems in Columbus, a transportation company that shipped packages and mail, including overnighting checks to banks. There, he met Bryant, bonding over a game of chess. The two hit it off, eventually moving in together and becoming more like brothers than roommates, said Bryant, who met his girlfriend of four years through Hill.

Victor Carmichael met Hill and Bryant when he also started work at Airnet Systems in the late 1990s. Carmichael, 44, was new to Columbus at the time and didn’t know anyone. Hill helped him find a community in Ohio, he said, typical of the kind of friend he was.

Hill's fondness for chess epitomized the way he conducted himself, said his younger brother, Alvon Williams, calling him an overachiever.

“He had a chess-playing mind with life," Williams said. “Chess is a move before your initial move, even two moves ahead. And that’s what he did every day with anything that he tried to achieve.”

Hill was insistent that his family — including his daughter and grandchildren and his two sisters and brother — stay in touch, especially after any prolonged separation.

“He's the one to make that call — 'You get over here right now. I'm cooking dinner. Let's go,'" said sister Michelle Hairston, 45.

In the last year, the coronavirus pandemic forced Hill to press pause on his dream of owning a restaurant, and he took on work in construction and house remodeling to help provide for his family instead. He worked across Ohio as a subcontractor, said sister Shawna Barnett.

The day he died, Hill had put together his own crew to do independent contracting, a goal he had working toward since March, Bryant said.

On that Tuesday, Hill was borrowing a co-worker’s truck he had plans to purchase and parked it outside his friend’s house.

Underneath the sweater he wore as he emerged from the garage and walked slowly toward police, he was wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt calling for justice for George Floyd.

___


Farnoush Amiri is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

BioNTech founders warn of vaccine supply gaps -Spiegel





By Douglas Busvine

BERLIN (Reuters) – BioNTech is working flat out with partner Pfizer to boost production of their COVID-19 vaccine, its founders said, warning there would be gaps in supply until other vaccines were rolled out.

The German biotech startup has led the vaccine race but its shot has been slow to arrive in the European Union because of relatively late approval from the bloc’s health regulator and the small size of the order placed by Brussels.

The delays in rolling out the home-grown vaccine have caused consternation in Germany, where some regions had to halt vaccinations within days of starting an inoculation drive.

“At the moment it doesn’t look good – a hole is appearing because there’s a lack of other approved vaccines and we have to fill the gap with our own vaccine,” BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin told news weekly Spiegel.

Sahin founded BioNTech with his wife, Oezlem Tuereci, who is the company’s chief medical officer. Both faulted the EU’s decision to spread orders in the expectation that more vaccines would be approved quickly.

The United States ordered 600 million doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer shot in July, while the EU waited until November to place an order half that size.

“At some point it became clear that it would not be possible to deliver so quickly,” Tuereci told Spiegel. “By then it was already too late to place follow-on orders.”

After publication of the interview, BioNTech said it was in talks with Brussels on boosting output

“We are in productive discussions with the European Commission on how to make more of our vaccine in Europe, for Europe,” a spokeswoman said.

NEW PRODUCTION

BioNTech hopes to launch a new production line in Marburg, Germany, ahead of schedule in February, with the potential to produce 250 million doses in the first half of 2021, said Sahin.

Talks are also under way with contract manufacturers and there should be greater clarity by the end of January, he added.

Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Twitter that German authorities would do everything possible to enable a swift start in Marburg.

The federal government, which has backed BioNTech with 375 million euros ($458 million) in funding, has resisted calls from opposition leaders to speed production of its vaccine by issuing compulsory licences to other drugmakers.

Another vaccine from Moderna is expected to be cleared by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Jan. 6.

Spahn has also urged the EMA to quickly approve the Oxford University-AstraZeneca shot cleared by Britain. The EU timeline for that treatment remains uncertain.

That vaccine was approved by India’s drug regulator on Friday for emergency use, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

VIRAL VARIANT

Sahin said the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, which uses messenger RNA to instruct the human immune system to fight the coronavirus, should be able to cope with a new, more contagious variant first detected in Britain.

“We are testing whether our vaccine can also neutralise this variant and will soon know more,” he said.

Asked about coping with a strong mutation, he said it would be possible to tweak the vaccine as required within six weeks – though such new treatments might require additional regulatory approvals.

Sahin also said BioNTech would make its vaccine, which requires storage at about minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 Fahrenheit), easier to handle, adding that a next-generation vaccine could be ready by late summer.