Wednesday, June 09, 2021

Health Campaigners Rage Against EU Effort to Undermine WTO Patent Waiver on Covid Vaccines

"The E.U. 'plan' is to urge current vaccine makers to produce more, an approach that already has failed spectacularly and now imperils the world."

JAKE JOHNSON, STAFF WRITER
June 8, 2021

Global public health campaigners are lashing out at the leadership of the European Union for attempting to undercut a temporary patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines by pushing an alternative proposal that critics say would fail to address supply shortages or stark inequities in vaccine distribution.

"The E.U. and other nations opposing this waiver need to stop blocking other countries' efforts to protect their populations in a public health emergency."
—Dimitri Eynikel, Doctors Without Borders

On Friday, the E.U. submitted to the World Trade Organization a plan that touts "voluntary solutions and public-private cooperation" as the best way to ramp up vaccine production, not a temporary suspension of intellectual property rights that have given pharmaceutical companies monopoly control over manufacturing.

"Many such partnerships are already under way, including with many producers in the developing world. We need more of these," reads the proposal, which mentions compulsory licensing as "an important and perfectly legitimate fallback" should voluntary agreements fail.

Doctors Without Borders, U.S.-based consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, and other organizations were outraged by the E.U.'s counterproposal, warning Monday that it would rely heavily on the same strategy that has yet to produce a sufficient supply of vaccine doses and distribute them equitably. According to the World Health Organization, low-income countries have administered just 0.4% of the world's coronavirus vaccine doses while rich nations have administered 44%.

A recent analysis by a coalition of humanitarian groups estimates that at the current vaccination rate, it would take low-income countries 57 years to fully vaccinate their populations against Covid-19.

"The E.U. 'plan' is to urge current vaccine makers to produce more, an approach that already has failed spectacularly and now imperils the world," Public Citizen said in a statement Monday. "The E.U.'s latest WTO submissions closely hew to the Big Pharma talking points leaked last month. They include the colonialist insinuations that developing countries do not understand what is in their own interest and cannot act for themselves. They assume that the press and public do not understand that the supply chain 'bottlenecks' that the EU claims are the issue are in no small part caused by IP barriers that limit production of Covid-19 vaccine inputs as well as finished vaccines, not by 'trade barriers,' as the EU claims."

"The EU touting compulsory licensing as the way forward is even more cynical," Public Citizen added, "given decades of developing countries' attempts to use compulsory licensing being viciously attacked with trade threats and more by rich countries, including the E.U. and its member nations."

Backed by more than 100 nations and recently endorsed by the United States, the proposed waiver of the WTO's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement was first introduced last October by India and South Africa.

After months of negotiations that have made little headway thanks to continued opposition from Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and other wealthy nations, the WTO's TRIPS Council is set to meet again on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the patent waiver and proposed alternatives.

Ahead of the meetings, E.U. member nations faced growing grassroots pressure to end their opposition to the patent waiver as the pharmaceutical industry—looking to maintain its profitable stranglehold on vaccine production—lobbies aggressively to uphold the status quo.



In a statement on Tuesday, Doctors Without Borders slammed the E.U.'s counteroffer as "weak and an attempt to derail the will of more than 100 countries."

"The EU's continued insistence on the use of compulsory licensing in its counterproposal as an excuse for opposing the original TRIPS waiver is disingenuous and endangers public health globally," said Dimitri Eynikel, E.U. policy adviser for Doctors Without Borders' Access Campaign. "In this raging pandemic, countries need to have all options at their disposal to encourage the manufacturing of Covid-19 medical tools across the world. The E.U. and other nations opposing this waiver need to stop blocking other countries' efforts to protect their populations in a public health emergency."

Fresh calls for the E.U. to end its stonewalling of the patent waiver came as coronavirus cases are rising sharply in South America, Africa, and other regions that have struggled to achieve widespread vaccination as rich countries continue to hoard doses and key technology. The U.K., one of the most prominent opponents of the patent waiver, is also experiencing an uptick in cases.

"Increasingly, we see a two-track pandemic," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at a press conference in Geneva on Monday, lamenting that vast inequities in vaccine distribution haven't "changed in months."



According to the People's Vaccine Alliance, more than a million people have died of Covid-19 since the leaders of G7 nations pledged in February to bolster vaccination campaigns in low-income nations—a vow that did not include support for a temporary patent waiver.

"Eight people have died from Covid every minute since G7 leaders last met," Fatima Hassan, founder and director of the Health Justice Initiative in South Africa, said in a statement. "That's more than a million lives lost, while just a few countries, including the U.K. and Germany, continue to block proposals to waive patents on Covid-19 vaccines and treatments which would enable every qualified manufacturer in the world to produce vaccines instead of a handful of U.S. and European pharma corporations."

"Whatever pledges and promises the G7 make," Hassan added, "they are still leaving pharmaceutical corporations to decide who lives and who dies, unless they back the ending of these Covid vaccine monopolies."

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Biggest Tax Story of the Year, If Not the Decade': Analysis Shows Just How Little Richest .001% Pay in Taxes


Bill Gates and Warren Buffett speak at an event organized by Columbia Business School on January 27, 2017 in New York City. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

'Biggest Tax Story of the Year, If Not the Decade': Analysis Shows Just How Little Richest .001% Pay in Taxes

"The personal federal tax bill for the top 25 in 2018: $1.9 billion. The bill for the wage earners: $143 billion."
June 8, 2021

A first-of-its-kind analysis of newly disclosed Internal Revenue Service data shows that the richest 25 billionaires in the United States paid a true federal tax rate of just 3.4% between 2014 and 2018—even as they added a staggering $401 billion to their collective wealth.

"Many will ask about the ethics of publishing such private data. We are doing so—quite selectively and carefully—because we believe it serves the public interest in fundamental ways, allowing readers to see patterns that were until now hidden."
—Richard Tofel & Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica

Published Tuesday by the investigative nonprofit ProPublica—which obtained a sprawling cache of IRS data on thousands of the nation's wealthiest people dating back 15 years—the analysis takes aim at "the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most."

"Our analysis of tax data for the 25 richest Americans quantifies just how unfair the system has become. By the end of 2018, the 25 were worth $1.1 trillion," ProPublica notes. "For comparison, it would take 14.3 million ordinary American wage earners put together to equal that same amount of wealth. The personal federal tax bill for the top 25 in 2018: $1.9 billion. The bill for the wage earners: $143 billion."

"Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, amassing little wealth and paying the federal government a percentage of their income that rises if they earn more," the outlet adds. "In recent years, the median American household earned about $70,000 annually and paid 14% in federal taxes."

The new analysis juxtaposes the recent wealth gains of U.S. billionaires—as estimated by Forbes—with the information in the newly obtained IRS data to derive the "true tax rate" paid by the mega-rich.

The results show that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos—the world's richest man—and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett paid a true tax rate of 0.98% and 0.10%, respectively, between 2014 and 2018. In 2007, ProPublica notes, Bezos paid nothing in federal taxes even as his wealth grew by $3.8 billion.

Economist Gabriel Zucman, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the ProPublica reporting is "full of incredible findings."

"Looks like the biggest tax story of the year, if not the decade," Zucman added.

ProPublica makes clear that, far from being the beneficiaries of a sprawling, illegal tax dodging scheme, "it turns out billionaires don't have to evade taxes exotically and illicitly—they can avoid them routinely and legally," a point that spotlights the systemic inequities of the U.S. tax system.

As the outlet explains:

Most Americans have to work to live. When they do, they get paid—and they get taxed. The federal government considers almost every dollar workers earn to be "income," and employers take taxes directly out of their paychecks.

The Bezoses of the world have no need to be paid a salary. Bezos' Amazon wages have long been set at the middle-class level of around $80,000 a year.

For years, there's been something of a competition among elite founder-CEOs to go even lower. Steve Jobs took $1 in salary when he returned to Apple in the 1990s. Facebook’s Zuckerberg, Oracle's Larry Ellison, and Google's Larry Page have all done the same.

Yet this is not the self-effacing gesture it appears to be: Wages are taxed at a high rate. The top 25 wealthiest Americans reported $158 million in wages in 2018, according to the IRS data. That's a mere 1.1% of what they listed on their tax forms as their total reported income. The rest mostly came from dividends and the sale of stock, bonds, or other investments, which are taxed at lower rates than wages.

To illustrate the consequences of a system that doesn't tax unrealized capital gains, ProPublica cites the example of Bezos' $127 billion explosion in wealth between 2006 and 2018. The Amazon CEO "reported a total of $6.5 billion in income" during that period and paid just $1.4 billion in personal federal taxes despite the $127 billion wealth jump—a 1.1% true tax rate.

"America's billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people," ProPublica notes. "Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by U.S. laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell."

Richard Tofel, ProPublica's founding general manager and outgoing president, said Tuesday that he considers the tax analysis "the most important story we have ever published."

"In the coming months, we plan to use this material to explore how the nation's wealthiest people—roughly the .001%—exploit the structure of our tax code to avoid the tax burdens borne by ordinary citizens," Tofel and ProPublica editor-in-chief Stephen Engelberg wrote in a separate article Tuesday. "Many will ask about the ethics of publishing such private data. We are doing so—quite selectively and carefully—because we believe it serves the public interest in fundamental ways, allowing readers to see patterns that were until now hidden."

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No Evidence Whatsoever': Left Refutes Right-Wing Candidate's Election Fraud Claims in Peru

Peruvian right-wing presidential candidate for Fuerza Popular, Keiko Fujimori (L), offers a press conference at her party headquarters in Lima on June 7, 2021. Peru's right-wing presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori on Monday raised allegations of "irregularities" and "signs of fraud" in Sunday's election as her rival, far-left trade unionist Pedro Castillo, took a razor-thin lead in the vote count. (Photo: Luka Gonzales/AFP via Getty Images)

'No Evidence Whatsoever': Left Refutes Right-Wing Candidate's Election Fraud Claims in Peru
The allegations of fraud from a former dictator's daughter came as voting results showed her leftist rival with a narrow lead.

ANDREA GERMANOS, STAFF WRITER
June 8, 2021

Progressives pushed back forcefully on Tuesday against right-wing Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori's allegations of fraud in Sunday's election, saying there has been no evidence so support such claims.

"There is a clear intention to boycott the popular will," Fujimori asserted at a press conference Monday at which she pointed without evidence to "irregularities" and "signs of fraud."

"Through a tragic pandemic, a dizzying media campaign, and a severe economic crisis, the Peruvian people have mobilized to exercise their right to popular sovereignty. Our obligation now is to defend it." —Progressive International

The allegations of fraud from Keiko Fujimori, a former dictator's daughter, came as voting results showed leftist rival Pedro Castillo with a narrow lead.

A tally of about 95% of the votes showed Castillo with 50.3% of the vote compared to Fujimori's 49.7%.

Fujimori, whom Bloomberg described as a "market favorite," is the daughter of the nation's former dictator, ex-President Alberto Fujimori, currently serving a 25-year sentence in prison for his role in civilian massacres and graft. Keiko Fujimori has said she would pardon her father if elected.

According to The Associated Press:


Voters across Peru, where voting is mandatory, headed to the polls throughout Sunday under a set schedule meant to minimize long lines. No disturbances were reported at voting sites, which even opened in San Miguel del Ene, a remote village in a cocaine-producing area where two weeks ago a massacre ended with 16 people dead.

Pre-election polls indicated the candidates were virtually tied heading into the runoff. In the first round of voting, featuring 18 candidates, neither received more than 20% support and both were strongly opposed by sectors of Peruvian society.

Regional election observers did not report any voting irregularities, as the Guardian noted.

In a statement Tuesday, the Progressive International strongly rejected Fujimori's fraud accusations and urged "patience and vigilance as the final results are counted—especially in the face of fresh attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the democratic process."

"The delegation of the Progressive International has seen no evidence of systemic fraud in the course of the 2021 Peruvian presidential elections. Neither statistical models analyzing results in real time nor our time physical monitoring of this process have revealed any evidence of fraud," the group said.

The impacts of false accusations of election fraud are clear and dangerous, the Progressive International added. The group pointed to examples including U.S. President Donald Trump catalyzing the "revanchist attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to 'stop the steal'" and the 2019 U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia that ousted the democratically elected government of Evo Morales following unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud.

"Through a tragic pandemic, a dizzying media campaign, and a severe economic crisis, the Peruvian people have mobilized to exercise their right to popular sovereignty. Our obligation now is to defend it," the Progressive International said.

David Adler, General Coordinator of the Progressive International, added in a tweet Tuesday that as "Castillo's lead has grown, this grim prediction has come to pass: Keiko Fujimori is now making accusations of 'systematic fraud'—and bringing large parts of the mainstream press with her."

"Our team is clear," Adler wrote. "There is no evidence *whatsoever* to support Keiko's claim."

And, should Castillo emerge victorious, it would be historic, write CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin and Latin American policy expert Leonardo Flores.

His win would "be remarkable not only because he is a leftist teacher who is the son of illiterate peasants and his campaign was grossly outspent by Fujimori, but there was a relentless propaganda attack against him that touched on historical fears of Peru's middle class and elites," Benjamin and Flores wrote.

A Castillo victory would also "represent a huge blow to U.S. interests in the region and an important step towards reactivating Latin American integration. He has promised to withdraw Peru from the Lima Group, an ad hoc committee of countries dedicated to regime change in Venezuela," the pair wrote.

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Rural Teacher Pedro Castillo Poised to Write a New Chapter in Peru's History

Peruvian presidential candidate Pedro Castillo gestures at supporters from a balcony of his party's headquarters in Lima on June 7, 2021, after taking a razor-thin lead as the final votes are tallied in a neck-and-neck battle with populist Keiko Fujimori following the runoff election of June 6. (Photo: LUKA GONZALES/AFP via Getty Images)

Rural Teacher Pedro Castillo Poised to Write a New Chapter in Peru's History

On the foreign policy front, Castillo's victory will represent a huge blow to U.S. interests in the region and an important step towards reactivating Latin American integration.



MEDEA BENJAMIN, LEONARDO FLORES
June 8, 2021

With his wide-brimmed peasant hat and oversized teacher's pencil held high, Peru's Pedro Castillo has been traveling the country exhorting voters to get behind a call that has been particularly urgent during this devastating pandemic: "No más pobres en un país rico"—No more poor people in a rich country. In a cliffhanger of an election with a huge urban-rural and class divide, it appears that the rural teacher, farmer and union leader is about to make history by defeating—by less than one percent—powerful far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori, scion of the country's political "Fujimori dynasty."

Castillo's victory will be remarkable not only because he is a leftist teacher who is the son of illiterate peasants and his campaign was grossly outspent by Fujimori, but there was a relentless propaganda attack against him that touched on historical fears of Peru's middle class and elites.

Fujimori is challenging the election's results, alleging widespread fraud. Her campaign has only presented evidence of isolated irregularities, and so far there is nothing to suggest a tainted vote. However, she can challenge some of the votes to delay the final results, and much like in the U.S., even an allegation of fraud by the losing candidate will cause uncertainty and raise tensions in the country.

Castillo's victory will be remarkable not only because he is a leftist teacher who is the son of illiterate peasants and his campaign was grossly outspent by Fujimori, but there was a relentless propaganda attack against him that touched on historical fears of Peru's middle class and elites. It was similar to what happened recently to progressive candidate Andrés Arauz who narrowly lost Ecuador's elections, but even more intense. Grupo El Comercio, a media conglomerate that controls 80% of Peru's newspapers, led the charge against Castillo. They accused him of being a terrorist with links to the Shining Path, a guerrilla group whose conflict with the state between 1980 and 2002 led to tens of thousands of deaths and left the population traumatized. Castillo's link to the Shining Path link is flimsy: While a leader with Sutep, an education worker's union, Castillo is said to have been friendly with Movadef, the Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights, a group alleged to have been the political wing of the Shining Path. In reality, Castillo himself was a rondero when the insurgency was most active. Ronderos were peasant self-defense groups that protected their communities from the guerrillas and continue to provide security against crime and violence.

Two weeks before the elections, on May 23, 18 people were massacred in the rural Peruvian town of San Miguel del Ene. The government immediately attributed the attack to the remnants of the Shining Path involved in drug trafficking, although no group has taken responsibility yet. The media linked the attack to Castillo and his campaign, whipping up fear of more violence should he win the presidency. Castillo denounced the attack and reminded Peruvians that similar massacres had occurred in the run-up to the 2011 and 2016 elections. For her part, Fujimori suggested Castillo was linked to the killing.

On the economic front, Castillo has been accused of being a communist who wants to nationalize key industries, and would turn Peru into a "cruel dictatorship" like Venezuela. Billboards along Lima's main highway asked the population: "Would you like to live in Cuba or Venezuela?" referring to a Castillo win. As seen in the photos above, newspapers linked Castillo's campaign to the devaluation of the Peruvian currency and warned that a Castillo victory would hurt low-income Peruvians the most because businesses would shutter or move overseas. Time and time again, the Castillo campaign has clarified that he is not a communist and that his aim is not to nationalize industries but to renegotiate contracts with multinationals so that more of the profits stay with the local communities.

Meanwhile, Fujimori was treated with kid gloves by the media during the campaign, with one of the newspapers in the above pictures claiming that "Keiko guarantees work, food, health and an immediate reactivation of the economy." Her past as a first lady during her father Alberto Fujimori's brutal rule is largely ignored by corporate media. She is able to claim that "fujimorismo defeated terrorism" without being challenged on the horrors that fujimorismo inflicted on the country, including the forced sterilization of over 270,000 women and 22,000 men for which her father is on trial. He is currently in jail over other human rights abuses and corruption, though Keiko promised to free him if she won. Also ignored was the fact that Keiko herself is out on bail as of last year, pending a money-laundering investigation, and without presidential immunity, she will probably end up in prison.

The international media was no different in its unbalanced coverage of Castillo and Fujimori, with Bloomberg warning that "elites tremble" at the thought of Castillo as president and The Financial Times headline screaming "Peru's elite in panic at prospect of hard-left victory in presidential election."

Peru's economy has grown impressively over the past 20 years, but that growth did not raise all boats. Millions of Peruvians in the countryside have been left abandoned by the state. On top of that, like many of its neighbors (including Colombia, Chile and Ecuador), Peru has underinvested in health care, education, and other social programs. Such choices so decimated the health care system that Peru now has the shameful distinction of leading the entire world in per capita Covid-19 deaths.

In addition to the public health disaster, Peruvians have been living through political turmoil marked by an extraordinary number of high-profile cases of corruption and four presidents in three years. Five of its last seven presidents faced corruption accusations. In 2020, President Martín Vizcarra (himself accused of corruption) was impeached, unseated and replaced by Manuel Merino. The maneuver was denounced as a parliamentary coup, leading to several days of massive street protests. Just five days into his tenure, Merino resigned and was replaced by current President Francisco Sagasti.

One of Castillo's key campaign platforms is to convoke a constitutional referendum to let the people decide whether they want a new constitution or wish to keep the current one written in 1993 under the regime of Alberto Fujimori, which entrenched neoliberalism into its framework.

"The current constitution prioritizes private interests over public interests, profit over life and dignity," reads his plan of government. Castillo proposes that a new constitution include the following: recognition and guarantees for the rights to health, education, food, housing and internet access; recognition for indigenous peoples and Peru's cultural diversity; recognition of the rights of nature; redesign of the State to focus on transparency and citizens' participation; and a key role for the state in strategic planning to ensure that the public interest takes precedence.

On the foreign policy front, Castillo's victory will represent a huge blow to U.S. interests in the region and an important step towards reactivating Latin American integration. He has promised to withdraw Peru from the Lima Group, an ad hoc committee of countries dedicated to regime change in Venezuela.

In addition, the Peru Libre party has called for expelling USAID and for the closure of U.S. military bases in the country. Castillo has also expressed support for countering the OAS and strengthening both the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). The victory is also a good omen for the left in Chile, Colombia and Brazil, each of which will have presidential elections over the next year and a half.

Castillo will face a daunting task, with a hostile congress, a hostile business class, a hostile press and most likely, a hostile Biden administration. The support of millions of angry and mobilized Peruvians demanding change, along with international solidarity, will be key to fulfilling his campaign promise of addressing the needs of the most poor and abandoned sectors of Peruvian society.

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PERU
Pedro Castillo Keeps Lead With 98,1 of Ballots Processed


As a victory of Peru Libre´s party approaches, Castillo turned to social media to urge people to protect the votes following accusations by Fujimori of irregularities during Sunday´elections.  Photo: Twitter/@PedroCastillo

Published 8 June 2021 
by Ignacio Ramonet
Newsletter

The report indicates that Castillo amounts 8, 657,705 valid votes while his opponent Keiko Fujimori has reached 8, 565,321.


Candidate Pedro Castillo continues to lead the race in Peru´s elections with 50.2 percent and 98,1 percent of processed ballots, according to the latest report by the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE).

RELATED:
Peru Elections: Castillo Widens His Lead as Final Results Near

The report indicates that Castillo amounts 8 657,705 valid votes while his opponent Keiko Fujimori has reached 8 565,321.

"ONPEinforma [RESULTS UPDATE] Minutes tallied for president and vice-president formula at 5:41 p.m. on June 8."

As a victory of Peru Libre´s party approaches, Castillo turned to social media to urge people to protect the votes following accusations by Fujimori of irregularities during Sunday´elections.

"We must be vigilant to defend the democracy that is expressed in every vote, inside and outside our beloved Peru. We cannot rest. May this historic vigil allow the rebirth of a new country," Castillo said.
The one scandal that should be on every Albertan's mind

Progress Report #269
Your weekly report on Alberta politics for June 8, 2021
on the web at theprogressreport.ca/progress_report_269

There is one scandal in Alberta right now that demands all of our attention. It doesn’t have anything to do with sky palaces. Brian Jean isn’t in it. There won’t be a referendum on it. And while the columnists and pundits seem to have all the time in the world for those gaffes and stunts, this issue is getting pushed to the back burner.

I would describe it as Alberta’s most pressing and severe crisis. I would say that every day that passes with things the way they are currently is a cruel, brutal injustice. And outrageously, that opinion probably puts me in the minority.

You might think it would have been cause for alarm when three men were found dead in a park in Edmonton a few weeks ago, but by today they seem to have already been forgotten. There has been a terrible inflection point in our already grim struggle with the opioid overdose crisis. All across western Canada, there are reports of a surge in the toxicity of the street drug supply—fentanyl and carfentanil are showing up in everything. And that everything includes the stats. In BC and Alberta overdoses and deaths have been spiking far above historical rates since late April, and those historical rates were pretty horrible to begin with. Big spikes, 50% or more in some regions, adding up to hundreds of deaths.

The UCP government is making this terrible situation even worse by obstructing and defunding supervised consumption sites. The conservative movement has been viciously opposed to harm reduction services for people with addictions for a long time, now. Back when the modern harm reduction model was first being worked out in InSite, in Vancouver, Harper and the federal conservatives adopted a sort of Southern Strategy in regards to the issue, pandering to the cruel and the prejudiced with spiteful policies that blocked access to care and in many cases left people dead. And here is our Premier, former Harper cabinet minister Jason Kenney, keeping up the tradition by obstructing and defunding Alberta’s overdose prevention sites.

More Albertans were killed by opioid overdoses last year than by COVID-19 and it’s are only getting worse. “The fentanyl problem isn’t going away,” warns professor Andrew Greenshaw from the University of Alberta, citing a staggering 118% increase in deaths since the UCP started closing down overdose prevention services. It’s time that we demanded the UCP stop their insane crusade against health care for people who have addictions. Jason Kenney’s rants may be offensive, and his gaffes may get on our nerves, but this project of his is killing Albertans. It’s killing us every day. And that’s the real story right now.
Sundries
The Alberta NDP held their annual convention this year and I haven’t heard anything from it that surprises me. Rachel Notley won an absurd 98.2% approval vote in their leadership review. As you might expect from a weekend that cheerlead-y, most of the things that made it into the policy book were either things the NDP caucus was already talking about. The two big policy pitches of the weekend: a pledge to make Alberta’s electricity grid net-zero by 2035, and a pledge to re-introduce public daycare (presumably not just as a tiny pilot project this time.)


Survivors of Alberta’s residential schools are calling for investigations into the graves at those schools, and it is almost certain that there are terrible things to find at many of them. 25 of the institutions, whose vile goal was to wipe the Indigenous culture out of Indigenous children, operated here in Alberta.


Jason Kenney continues to struggle with the fallout of his unwise party at the ‘sky palace’ last week: several backbenchers and now even cabinet members are criticizing him publicly. Just a few days ago he was still insisting that no rules had been broken, but he gave that lie up to apologize yesterday. His former rival for the UCP leadership, Brian Jean, publicly urged him to resign, though we still haven’t seen whether or not that’s had any impact.


The UCP have announced the details for their upcoming referendum on the equalization program, and already constitutional law experts are pointing out that the referendum is fundamentally broken and useless. The equalization program, which distributes federal tax funds in order to ensure that every province can keep up certain minimum standards of public services, is not the province’s to change. What a referendum will do, however, is drive a lot of conservative voters to the polls for municipal elections in the province that will be happening on the same day. As if just to underscore how corrupt this whole sham is, the UCP are bringing in a new law, presently Bill 68, which will let them use government resources to run a whole campaign on the referendum too.


That's all for this week. Please share our newsletter with any friends or family who you think would like political news and commentary from a progressive point of view. If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, you can sign up for it here. 


Senate: Multi-agency failure aided US Capitol attack

The Senate report is the first – and could be the last – bipartisan review of how hundreds of Trump supporters were able to push violently past security lines and break into Capitol on January 6.

In this Wednesday, January 6, 2021 file photo, supporters of then-president Donald Trump scale the west wall of the the US Capitol in Washington. (Jose Luis Magana / AP)

A Senate investigation of the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol found a broad intelligence breakdown across multiple agencies, along with widespread law enforcement and military failures that led to the violent attack.

There were clear warnings and tips that supporters of former president Donald Trump, including right-wing extremist groups, were planning to “storm the Capitol” with weapons and possibly infiltrate the tunnel system underneath the building. But that intelligence never made it up to top leadership.

The result was chaos.

A Senate report released Tuesday details how officers on the front lines suffered chemical burns, brain injuries and broken bones, among other injuries, after fighting the attackers, who quickly overwhelmed them and broke into the building.

Officers told the Senate investigators they were left with no leadership or direction when command systems broke down.

The Senate report is the first – and could be the last – bipartisan review of how hundreds of Trump supporters were able to push violently past security lines and break into the Capitol that day, interrupting the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory. The failures detailed in the report highlighted how, almost 20 years after the September 11 attacks, US intelligence agencies are still beset by a fundamental issue: a failure of imagination.

Details of the report below:


READ MORE: Violence, chaos in Capitol Hill as Trump-backed mob storms building

The report recommends immediate changes to give the Capitol Police chief more authority, to provide better planning and equipment for law enforcement and to streamline intelligence gathering among federal agencies.

But as a bipartisan effort, the report does not delve into the root causes of the attack, including Trump's role as he called for his supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat that day.

It does not call the attack an insurrection, even though it was.

And it comes two weeks after Republicans blocked a bipartisan, independent commission that would investigate the insurrection more broadly.

“This report is important in the fact that it allows us to make some immediate improvements to the security situation here in the Capitol,” said Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which conducted the probe along with the Senate Rules Committee. “But it does not answer some of the bigger questions that we need to face, quite frankly, as a country and as a democracy.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that the findings show an even greater need for a bipartisan commission to investigate the root causes of the attack, referring to Trump’s unfounded claims about the 2020 election.

“As the ‘big lie’ continues to spread, as faith in our elections continues to decline, it is crucial — crucial — that we establish a trusted, independent record of what transpired,” said Schumer.

READ MORE: Democrats say Capitol attackers acted on Trump's 'orders'

Bipartisan commission under threat


But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who led the blockade against such a commission, said he’s confident the ongoing reviews by lawmakers and law enforcement will be sufficient.

The House in May passed legislation to create a commission that would be modeled after a panel that investigated the September 11 attacks.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told colleagues in a letter on Tuesday that if the Senate fails to approve the commission, her chamber will launch its own investigations.

The top Republican on the rules panel, Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, has opposed the commission, arguing that investigation would take too long. He said the recommendations made in the Senate can be implemented faster, such as legislation that he and Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the rules committee chair, intend to introduce soon that would give the chief of Capitol Police more authority to request assistance from the National Guard.

Bureaucracy trips up Guards

The Senate report recounts how the Guard was delayed for hours January 6 as officials in multiple agencies took bureaucratic steps to release the troops. It details hours of calls between officials in the Capitol and the Pentagon and as the then-chief of the Capitol Police, Steven Sund, begged for help.

It finds that the Pentagon spent hours “mission planning” and seeking multiple layers of approvals as Capitol Police were being overwhelmed and brutally beaten by the attackers.

It also says the Defense Department’s hesitant response was influenced by criticism of its heavy-handed response to protests in the summer of 2020 after the killing of George Floyd in police custody.

The senators are heavily critical of the Capitol Police Board, a three-member panel made up of the heads of security for the House and Senate and the Architect of the Capitol.

The board now is required to approve requests by the police chief, even in urgent situations.

The report recommends that its members “regularly review the policies and procedures” after senators found that the three board members on January 6 did not understand their own authority and could not detail the statutory requirements for requesting National Guard assistance.

Two of the three board members, the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms, were pushed out in the days after the attack. Sund, the Capitol Police chief, resigned under pressure.

READ MORE: How a security lapse allowed pro-Trump protesters to invade US Capitol

Capitol police failure to communicate


The report recommends a consolidated intelligence unit within the Capitol Police after widespread failures from multiple agencies that did not predict the attack even though insurrectionists were planning it openly on the internet.

The police intelligence unit “knew about social media posts calling for violence at the Capitol on January 6, including a plot to breach the Capitol, the online sharing of maps of the Capitol Complex’s tunnel systems, and other specific threats of violence,“ the report says, but agents did not properly inform leaders of everything they had found.

On December 28, for example, the report notes that someone emailed a public Capitol Police account and warned about “countless tweets from Trump supporters saying they will be armed on January 6th” and “tweets from people organizing to ‘storm the Capitol.'"

There were also internal warnings of an uptick in posts on various websites that showed maps of the Capitol, including its underground tunnels. But those specifics were never disseminated widely.

In a response to the report, the Capitol Police acknowledged the need for improvements and said some are already being made.

“Law enforcement agencies across the country rely on intelligence, and the quality of that intelligence can mean the difference between life and death,” the statement said.

During the attack, the report says, Capitol Police were compromised by bad intelligence, poor planning, faulty equipment and a lack of leadership. The force’s incident command system “broke down during the attack,” leaving officers on the front lines without orders. There were no functional incident commanders, and some senior officers were fighting instead of giving orders.

Capitol Police "leadership never took control of the radio system to communicate orders to front-line officers,” the investigation found.

Front line officers left alone

“I was horrified that NO deputy chief or above was on the radio or helping us,” one officer told the committee in an anonymous statement. “For hours the screams on the radio were horrific(,) the sights were unimaginable and there was a complete loss of control. ... For hours NO Chief or above took command and control. Officers were begging and pleading for help for medical triage.”

The acting chief, Yogananda Pittman, who replaced Sund after his resignation, told the committees that the lack of communication resulted from “incident commanders being overwhelmed and engaging with rioters, rather than issuing orders over the radio.”

The committee’s interviews with police officers detail “absolutely brutal” abuse from Trump’s supporters as they ran over them and broke into the building. The officers described hearing racial slurs and seeing Nazi salutes. One officer trying to evacuate the Senate said he had stopped several men in full tactical gear, one of whom said, “You better get out of our way, boy, or we’ll go through you to get (the senators).’”

The insurrectionists told police officers they would kill them, then members of Congress.

At the same time, the senators acknowledge the officers’ bravery, noting that one officer told them, “The officers inside all behaved admirably and heroically and, even outnumbered, went on the offensive and took the Capitol back.”

Source: AP

Canada: Catholic Church Guilty Of Cultural Genocide -Poll

    • Indigenous communities demonstrate in Canada against the residential school system.

      Indigenous communities demonstrate in Canada against the residential school system. | Photo: Twitter/ @ChalecosAmarill

    Published 8 June 2021

    The poll comes amid widespread outrage over the finding of the remains of 215 children at the Kamploos residential school in British Columbia. The 120 years old system has been declared a cultural genocide by the Canadian authorities. 

    Two out of three Canadians think the Catholic Church is responsible for the abuse residential schools system, according to the latest poll by Leger.

    RELATED:

    UN Special Rapporteurs Urge Probe on Canada Residential Schools

    "66 percent of Canadians think the Church should bear the responsibility for the tragedies committed at residential schools, while 34 percent think the Government of Canada should be held responsible," the poll revealed.

    The poll comes amid widespread outrage over the finding of the remains of 215 children at the Kamploos residential school in British Columbia. The 120 years old system has been declared a cultural genocide by the Canadian authorities. According to the poll 80 percent o Canadians the Kamploops event is the "tip of the iceberg" and more research has to be conducted in other areas of the country. 

    Following the findings, the Canadian authorities have renewed calls for a papal apology and a group of United Nations human rights experts called for a full investigation into the events and the prosecution of any responsible who might still be alive.


    by teleSUR/esf-MS
    Brazilians bang pots in protest as another 2,500 die of COVID-19
    By Metro US


    COVID-19 pandemic in Rio de Janeiro statekTwitter

    RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) -Pot-banging protests erupted across several cities in Brazil on Wednesday evening as President Jair Bolsonaro addressed the nation, just days after protestors took to the streets across the country over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has so far killed almost half a million people here.

    The last few days have been rocky for the government of the right-wing leader, whose popularity had already been flagging amid persistently high daily COVID-19 deaths and cases.

    On Wednesday alone, almost 100,000 Brazilians came down with the coronavirus and 2,507 died, according to government data. Earlier in the day, the nation’s Supreme Court authorized a criminal investigation into Bolsonaro’s environment minister for allegedly interfering with a police probe into illegal logging.

    In the televised speech, Bolsonaro briefly summarized some of his government’s recent accomplishments and pledged strong economic growth going forward, but presented no new information.

    On Saturday, thousands participated in protests in at least 16 cities across the country, which were organized by leftist political parties, unions and student associations.

    In Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, thousands of mask-wearing people blocked one the largest city’s avenues, while a large balloon depicted Bolsonaro as a vampire.

    Some protests, like the one in Rio de Janeiro, included images of former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has emerged as Bolsonaro’s main challenger in the nation’s 2022 election, wearing the presidential sash.

    In the brief Wednesday evening speech, Bolsonaro, who has ridiculed masks and vaccines in the past, said all Brazilians who wanted a vaccine would be able to get one by the end of the year.

    Also in the evening, the nation’s Health Ministry revised down the number of COVID-19 vaccines it will receive in June by about 4 million doses.

    (Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter and Gram Slattery; Editing by Michael Perry)