NGOs urge Biden to push for changes to WTO's COVID waiver text


By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Oxfam America, Partners in Health and other civil society groups urged U.S. President Joe Biden to press for changes in a draft agreement on waiving intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines, underscoring divisions over the current text.

In a letter sent to Biden on Monday, and viewed by Reuters, the groups said an "outcome document" reached after months of discussions between the main parties - the United States, the European Union, India and South Africa - fell short of his "righteous goal" of removing IP barriers for COVID vaccines.

Trade ministers attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, are expected to discuss the issue at an informal meeting on Wednesday after an initial meeting on the draft by the World Trade Organization's 164 members in early May.

WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is pushing for a deal to be agreed ahead of a ministerial meeting beginning June 12.

The groups petitioning Biden said the text "does not waive even the patent barriers necessary to deliver the increased vaccine production that you rightly identified as necessary to save lives from the extraordinary threat of the pandemic."

And they warned that it "adds new obstacles and conditions" limiting countries’ use of existing flexibilities in WTO rules.

A majority of WTO members support the waiver idea, first proposed by India and South Africa in October 2020, but some members worry that the current proposal is too narrowly focused on vaccines, leaving aside treatments and diagnostic tests.

The deal must pass by consensus and any member of the organization has the right to a veto.

The groups, which also include ReThink Trade, Citizens Trade Campaign, and NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, sent Biden a detailed chart mapping out changes needed to ensure the draft achieved the goals that he first laid out in May 2021.

They urged Biden to push for changes despite EU resistance, and to expand the waiver to include test and treatments.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

In Memphis, Poor People’s Campaign demands ‘resurrection’ of MLK’s vision

May 24, 2022  BY MARK GRUENBERG

PEOPLES  WORLD

Poor People's Campaign on the march in Memphis. | @unitethepoor via Twitter

MEMPHIS, Tenn.—Wending its way towards its March on Washington on June 18, the new Poor People’s Campaign stopped May 22 in Memphis to demand “resurrection” of causes the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., fought for—including workers’ rights.

Speaking literally in front of the site where King was assassinated in April 1968—the Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum—campaign co-chair the Rev. Dr. William Barber II said King’s causes of equality on the job, civil rights, voting rights, and the right to organize are endangered once again.

“We don’t need nostalgia” for Dr. King, “we need a resurrection” of his causes, Barber said. That’s the point of June 18.

One big cause is the right to organize.

Fifty-four years ago, King was aiding the “I Am A Man” sanitation workers who were trying to unionize with AFSCME Local 1733. Now, Kylie Throckmorton, one of seven Memphis Starbucks workers trying to organize a union there, told the crowd of that struggle. The seven are part of a national Starbucks organizing drive aided by Workers United, a Service Employees sector.

“Because I was trying to build a union, my co-workers and I were fired,” said Throckmorton, the second of a group of poor and low-wealth people to speak.

“They would rather have us living on the streets” than recognize the union and pay decent wages, Throckmorton said of Starbucks’s bosses. “You deserve to be safe on the job. You deserve to live comfortably. You deserve to have health care.”

All of that is lacking at Starbucks, workers from coast to coast tell organizers.

The National Labor Relations Board went to federal court in Memphis on May 10 seeking an injunction ordering Starbucks to immediately stop its labor law-breaking and take the seven back.

Barber took up her theme during his remarks, linking it to employer exploitation of “essential” workers during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. “How many of you know some of them?” he asked the crowd of more than 1,000 people gathered in front of the podium in the hotel-turned-museum’s parking lot. People raised their hands.

“How many of you are some of them?” just like the sanitation workers whose cause Dr. King espoused 54 years ago, he asked. More hands went up.

“During COVID, poor people are dying at a rate of two to five times that of others,” he explained. “We need to show America people still have to wait” for social, civil and economic justice “because we haven’t yet done” as a country “what we should do.”

Dr. King, Barber noted, was getting more outspoken about those causes, though he—like the Poor People’s Campaign now—emphasizes non-violence, including non-violent civil disobedience, to raise the profile of its goals and to push leaders to act.

Quoting from the speech Dr. King planned to give but never did, Barber said the U.S. “was on a path to go to hell” until it addresses the underlying problems of systemic racism, poverty, overspending on the U.S. military, poor education, shortage of decent affordable housing and lack of health care for all.

King spoke out for those same causes. For those views, especially his opposition to the Indochina War, Barber noted, King faced ostracism from leaders of his own denomination and even disagreements with colleagues at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Like other Poor People’s Campaign events, most Memphis speakers were poor and low-wealth people, exploited and/or unemployed, and a mix of races. That reflects the bottom-up mass movement of the PPC and its success at getting people to recognize their causes and complaints against an exploitative system are intertwined.

Memphis resident Scottie Fitzgerald described a long-running local campaign against a pipeline whose construction would rip through a working-class, mostly Black neighborhood, all to enrich a private corporation.

“A business group connived with the government to take your land” through eminent domain “for a pipeline that could poison your water?” Barber asked Fitzgerald. “That’s right,” she replied of yet another example of corporate environmental racism.

Shirley Smith, a lifelong resident of Mason, Tenn., a majority-Black town whose prior white leaders took it into bankruptcy, told how the lack of jobs there forced her to take weekend work industrial cleaning in a Nabisco factory—in Chicago, a two-and-a-half-hour one-way drive away.

Then Ford came to Mason to build a plant in Tennessee, which happens to be a Republican-run, and gerrymandered, right-to-work state whose voters will be asked in November to enshrine that anti-union tenet in its constitution. “They (Ford) want to buy up all our land” for their 4,100-acre facility “and people didn’t really have a choice.”

Of the economic elite, Smith added: “They want to take you out of prosperity.”

“In this city, if you are not fighting for change still, you are distorting the legacy” of Dr. King and the civil rights movement, Barber said—a statement that could apply not just to Memphis, but nationwide.

Nearly 1 in 5 Amazon delivery drivers get hurt on the job each year, new report says

2022/5/24 17:36 (EDT)
© The Seattle Times

Labor and Industries cited Amazon’ s DuPont, Washington, fulfillment center in May for violating workplace safety laws. - Ellen M. Banner/Seattle Times/TNS

One in five delivery drivers working for Amazon was injured on the job in 2021, a new report says.

The same report, released Tuesday by a coalition of labor unions, found 1 in 7 was injured so severely they had to either change their job or take time off following an injury.

"Amazon's delivery quotas and production pressure are contributing to an escalating injury crisis among workers in every segment of Amazon's delivery system," the Strategic Organizing Center's report read.

"Amazon claims to have taken several steps to promote safety," it continued. "Amazon has refused, however, to address the core issue that fuels injuries in its delivery system: abusive delivery production demands."

Injuries for workers in Amazon's delivery system — including delivery drivers as well as employees at delivery stations and sortation centers — jumped by 38% in the past year, according to the organizing center, which has pushed Amazon to changes workplace policies previously. The same group released a report in April that found injuries at Amazon warehouses increased about 20% from 2020 to 2021.

The rate of serious injuries for drivers jumped 47% in the past year, according to the most recent report.

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said the report used a small sample of workers and drivers to "intentionally misrepresent the facts."

"Safety is a priority across our network, which is why we've rolled out technology like innovative camera systems that have helped lead to an overall reduction in accident rates of nearly 50%," Nantel said in an emailed statement. "We'll keep investing in new safety tools to try and get better every day."

On the heels of a successful union drive at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, the company is facing pressure from employees, state and federal regulators, and some shareholders to improve working conditions for its blue-collar workforce. Federal lawmakers have called for an investigation into Amazon's practices after six people died while working at an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois. Washington regulators have issued four citations, alleging the company's pace of work is leading to unsafe working conditions at Amazon facilities.

During some shifts, a delivery driver working with Amazon in Sacramento, California, is expected to make a delivery every minute or two, the Strategic Organizing Center report found.

Injury rates at Amazon's sortation centers, where employees sort orders by final destination, increased 20%, while rates at its delivery stations, where workers prep packages for the delivery to customers doorsteps, went up 15%.

The SOC analyzed data that Amazon and its delivery service partners — independent delivery companies who staff and operate Amazon-branded vans to bring packages from distribution centers to customers' doorsteps — submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It analyzed data from 201 of Amazon's roughly 2,500 U.S.-based delivery service partners.

Amazon says injury rates at the company are actually going down, citing a $300 million investment in new technologies and new protocols to improve working conditions. Amazon's own analysis found the lost-time incident rate, a measure of the number of injuries that resulted in missed work, improved 43% from 2019 to 2020, according to a report the company released this year. The report did not include an analysis of 2021.

Researchers at the Strategic Organizing Center don't agree. Amazon is relying on outdated numbers, the report said, and is leaving out a large chunk of its workforce by not including contracted delivery service partners who account for about half of all Amazon delivery system workers.

Amazon "cherry picked" the data they chose for their own analysis, said Eric Frumin, the health and safety director with the Strategic Organizing Center. In addition to leaving out contractors, Amazon compared itself only to industry competitors with at least 250 workers, he said, despite the fact that many of Amazon's delivery stations and sortation centers don't fall into that category.

In a letter to shareholders in April, CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon's injury rate was "misunderstood," explaining that Amazon actually split its workforce into two categories when comparing itself to others in the same industries: warehouse workers, and courier and delivery service workers.

By that logic, Amazon's injury rate was higher than its warehouse peers — 6.4 versus 5.5 — but lower than its delivery peers — 7.6 versus 9.1. Amazon is "about average relative to peers," Jassy wrote in his letter. "But we don't seek to be average. We want to be best in class."

Amazon has come under fire for its expected pace of delivery in the past, most notably when some drivers said publicly they had to resort to urinating in bottles, bushes and coffee cups because the number of deliveries expected each shift didn't leave time for a bathroom break.

In April, a delivery company in Wyoming sued Amazon on behalf of the 2,500 delivery service partners working with the company in the U.S., alleging Amazon set unrealistic and unsafe expectations for drivers. Owner Max Whitfield said in the lawsuit he often had to send out a "rescue" driver to help an "overburdened" worker already on the road.

In Colorado, an insurance company found Amazon delivery drivers had a higher rate of animal-related injuries or slip-and-fall incidents than drivers for other companies, the SOC report said.

Drivers "make it crystal clear the source of the problem — it's the production pressure," Frumin said. "These are conditions that the company imposes and the company can take away."

Is Trumpism this generation's version of the Confederacy?
Thom Hartmann
May 24, 2022

Donald Trump speaking with attendees at the "Rally to Protect Our Elections" 

hosted by Turning Point Action. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

Donald Trump promoted a modern Civil War in America this week on his social media platform. Civil War?

Further confounding things, Republican candidates like Pennsylvania’s Kathy Barnette are openly running as ultra-MAGA candidates, having hijacked Trumpism without Trump himself. It’s causing the media and political elites to have a “Huh? What?” moment.

Trumpism without Trump? Could it even be a thing?

Apparently so: candidates Trump has openly disavowed are claiming Trumpism as their standard, the flag they’ll carry into the election and into office if they win.

Trumpism, they proclaim, is a coherent political philosophy of its own that has replaced conservativism as the dominant system of political theory in the “new” Republican Party.

But is Trumpism really new?

Consider its main principles:*Assert white supremacy
*Fetishize rule by a wealthy elite
*Brand the movement with its own flag and slogans separate from the country’s
*Put the “rights” of business above those of workers
*Marginalize and destroy trust in the media
*Maintain a strict racial and gender hierarchy
*Arm the movement’s foot soldiers
*Regulate school curriculum to promote a racist worldview
*Embrace authoritarian preachers to claim the appearance of Christianity
*Make alliances with foreign authoritarians
*Rig elections and prevent minorities from voting
*Embrace a police state for all but the richest
*Accuse political opponents of demonic or perverse behavior
*Criminalize abortion
*Heavily criminalize minor behaviors like drug use
*Normalize violence as a political tool
*Oppose worker organizing efforts
*Claim the mantle of “the average man” fighting against the tyranny of the “deep state”
*Make it hard for all but the wealthy to get a college education
*Minimize government regulation of working conditions and products
*Establish a mythology of victimhood and fear of “replacement”

This is not Barry Goldwater’s, Ronald Reagan’s, or even George W. Bush’s Republican Party.

Sure, those guys were happy to suck up to the wealthy and pass legislation favored by big business, but they didn’t go so far as to separate themselves from the mainstream of American governance.

They didn’t accuse Democrats of drinking the blood of tortured children, openly proclaim their racism, or encourage violence. Before Trumpism, Republicans had for generations opposed nations that suppressed democracy and called out murderous dictators like Hitler, Putin, and Kim.

This is something new.

Or is it? Is it possible Trumpism is simply a very old American invention making its return to the US political stage?

In the early 1800s the invention of the Cotton Gin, which could with one very expensive machine do the work of 50 enslaved people, transformed the American South. It was a technological revolution that made possible the traitorous Confederacy.

For the previous thirty or so years, the slave-holding South had been a democracy, albeit one where only white men had a say in things. But even poor white men could vote, and the region identified as “America” with the American flag and American songs and textbooks.

Wealth disparities weren’t as severe as some northern regions, particularly New York City whose bankers and traders had been made rich by the cotton export trade. (When the South seceded in 1861 the Mayor of New York City argued that the city should secede along with them, but back in 1820 there wasn’t even a whisper of what would tear the nation apart in a mere forty years.)

The Cotton Gin, invented in 1794 by Eli Whitney and widely sold in the South in the 1810s and 1820s, changed all that. Only the wealthiest plantation owners could afford to buy a Gin, and it enabled them to out-compete the hundreds of thousands of small cotton farms that dotted the South.

Large plantations, after driving smaller local farmers out of business, bought up their land and hired their former owners to work the land as sharecroppers.

Wealth inequality exploded across the South as a new, powerful aristocracy rose up and seized control of Jefferson’s Democratic Party. By the end of the 1830s, most of the land and nearly all the wealth and political power in the South was in the hands of a few thousand families.

But that wasn’t enough for the Lords of the New Plantations in the New South of the 1840s and 1850s. They wanted total control of the entire country and were chafing under the restrictions of the American brand and its two-party system of government.

As I wrote in detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, by the late 1830s, with the rise of John C. Calhoun and the Nullification Crisis, the South was firmly in the economic, political, and social hands of a small number of morbidly rich plantation-based oligarchs.

It was no longer a democracy or a republic: the South had turned into a neofeudal state, what today we’d call a fascist state.

History Professor Forrest A. Nabors notes in his book From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction, by the 1860s:

“A new generation of rulers reshaped the south around their new ruling principle…

“The development of Southern oligarchy portended the rupture of the union, regardless of the ties that bound them together, because no ties, physical, legal, or otherwise, can overcome the difference between fundamentally opposed types of political regimes.”

Nabors cites a speech to Congress by Senator Timothy Howe of Wisconsin, who argued that the oligarchy in the South had become so strong that they weren’t just trying to be left alone; they wanted to seize control of the North and end democracy in America altogether:

“Such, then, I find to be the cause and the purpose of the rebellion. It was not to secure the independence of slaveholders, but to subject you to abject dependence upon slaveholders. It was not to build a new capitol for a new government, but to place a new government in possession of your Capitol.

“It was not to frame a new constitution for a new republic, but it was to impose a new constitution upon the Republic of the United States. It was not to secure toleration for slavery within the seceding Slates, but to compel the adoption of slavery by the nation.”

Congressman John Farnsworth, representing the Chicago area of Illinois, laid it out clearly on Wednesday, June 15th, 1864 in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives:

“The slave-owner is cutting at the heart of the nation; yes, sir, he is cutting at the throats of your sons and brothers, of your neighbors and friends; he is with mad desperation seeking to destroy the beautiful fabric of this nation, and to quench in our blood the fires of republican liberty which have burned so long, a beacon of light to other nations, and the hope of the world. All this [he] is trying to do that he may erect a slave empire instead…”

By the time of the Civil War, the oligarchs of the South had rejected all pretense of belief in democracy, a republican form of government, or even the core idea of the peaceful transition of power in the United States of America.

Instead, they:*Asserted white supremacy
*Seized total control of the political systems of the South
*Branded their movement with its own flag and slogans separate from the country’s
*Passed laws putting the “rights” of plantation owners above those of workers, including poor whites
*First marginalized and, by 1861, completely destroyed any opposition media (often lynching or imprisoning publishers and editors)
*Established a strict racial and gender hierarchy, both in society and in law
*Armed the Confederacy’s foot soldiers
*Carefully regulated school curriculum to promote a racist worldview
*Incorporated authoritarian preachers into the political Confederacy to claim Christianity
*Tried unsuccessfully to make alliance with French emperor Napoleon
*Rigged elections to prevent all minorities from voting
*Embraced a police state for all but the richest plantation owners who could never be prosecuted
*Accused their political opponents in both the North and South of demonic or perverse behavior, particularly interracial or gay sex
*Enforced anti-abortion laws when white women became pregnant
*Heavily criminalized minor behaviors like loitering
*Normalized violence as a political tool
*Crushed a generation of Southern worker organizing efforts
*Claimed the mantle of “the average man” fighting against the “tyranny” of the North
*Made it impossible for all but the wealthy to get a college education
*Ended what few government regulations existed for working conditions and products
*Established a mythology of victimhood and fear of “replacement” later known as “The Lost Cause”

In other words, Trumpism is simply the politics of the American Confederacy reinvented for the 21st century. And even now Trumpists — whether affiliated with Donald or not — are openly talking about starting a second civil war.

They’re lionizing killers for the cause like Kyle Rittenhouse.

They’re embracing foreign authoritarians like Putin and Orbán.

They’re building and funding their own media empires while destroying American’s faith in mainstream media.

And they’re successfully using the filibuster to block the passage of any legislation that may strengthen democratic principles in our republic.

Today’s Republican Party, under the control of Trumpism, is every bit as real a threat to the survival of our republic as was the Confederacy in the 1860s.

It’s emerged from similar conditions and reflects a nearly identical worldview grounded in the fear of losing white supremacy. It’s based in the American South, as was the Confederacy.

The media needs to wake the hell up. The American government, the American people, and the Democratic Party must see the Trumpist Republican Party for the threat it is.

The FBI and intelligence agencies need to bring the seditionists within it to ground. Democrats must loudly call out its naked embrace of racism and fascism and make clear where this will lead if unchecked.

Every day that goes by without action brings us closer to the new Republican Party’s goal: tearing apart democracy in America and transforming this country into this generation’s version of the Confederacy, complete with its own Lost Cause mythology.

Trump to address NRA convention in Texas — only days after school shooting massacre: report
Bob Brigham
May 24, 2022

Official White House photo by Tia Dufour.

Donald Trump is scheduled to address the National Rifle Association (NRA) national meeting in Houston only days after a school shooting massacre in Uvalde, Texas.

On Tuesday, a gunman killed 14 children and a teacher in Robb Elementary School. Police reportedly killed the suspect, an 18-year-old man.

The shooting occurred only ten days after the mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

On Friday, Trump is scheduled to address the NRA's annual meeting for the 6th time, posting a video of Trump discussing his "love" for the organization.



The group says the exhibit hall "will showcase over 14 acres of the latest guns and gear from the most popular companies in the industry."

"From entertainment to special events, it’s all happening in Houston over Memorial Day weekend. Make plans now to join fellow Second Amendment patriots for a freedom-filled weekend for the entire family as we celebrate Freedom, Firearms, and the Second Amendment!" the NRA says.

In a video hyping the event, NRA chief Wayne LaPierre says Lee Greenwood and Don McLean will provide musical entertainment.

Watch below or at this link.

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre: Join Me at the NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits in Houston, TX

www.youtube.com

Canadian national security task force is preparing for the collapse of the United States

Sarah K. Burris

RAW STORY
May 24, 2022

While the United States appears to hold true to the ideals of democracy, Freedom House, an international group that promotes global democracy, has warned that the country is backsliding.

"Its democratic institutions have suffered erosion, as reflected in partisan pressure on the electoral process, bias and dysfunction in the criminal justice system, harmful policies on immigration and asylum seekers, and growing disparities in wealth, economic opportunity, and political influence," the site said.

The watchdog group said that the U.S. slipped 11 points in the past ten years. The U.S. is now ranked below Argentina and Mongolia.

According to the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC), the government to the north is fearful of what that might mean for them. Former national security advisers and directors at the Center for Strategic and International Studies warned Canada that the U.S. could become a "source of threat and instability" in the coming years.

Writing for CBC, Catharine Tunney cited those experts pondering a reconsideration of the alliance with the U.S.

Citing things like Fox News' Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump's attempt to overthrow the government, and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, they have a growing list of anti-democratic warnings. Their data gathering comes from top-secret information and a briefed cabinet on emerging threats. It warns that Canada has been complacent and warned it's time to tackle things like Russia and Chinese espionage.

"The United States is and will remain our closest ally, but it could also become a source of threat and instability," the report says.

"The 'democratic backsliding' in the United States, a rise in cyberattacks and climate change," are cited as examples in the report.

"We believe that the threats are quite serious at the moment, that they do impact Canada," said former Canadian national security adviser Vincent Rigby, a co-author of the report. "We don't want it to take a crisis for [the] government of Canada to wake up."

The main point for Canada to pivot has to do with the U.S. While Canada has its own extremist groups, according to intelligence reports, they are coordinating with the United States.

"There are growing transnational ties between right-wing extremists here and in the U.S., the movement of funds, the movement of people, the movement of ideas, the encouragement, the support by media," Rigby said.

The trucker convoy was a big wake-up call, he said. The small minority of angry truckers furious over the Canadian vaccine mandate resulted in a stand-off on the streets of Ottawa. Approximately 90 percent of truckers were vaccinated, but those under 10 percent were infuriated by the mandate. They sat in the streets blocking residents from work and home. They honked until all hours of the night. American anti-vaccine activists have adopted a similar protest, but their endeavors have been less successful.

"When we think about threats to Canada, we think about the Soviet military threat, we think about al-Qaeda, we think about the rise of China, we think about the war in Ukraine. All of these are true. But so is the rising threat to Canada that the U.S. poses," said Thomas Juneau, co-director of the task force.

"It certainly would not be couched in a way of, 'You're the source of our problems.' That would not be the conversation. The conversation would be, 'How can we help each other?'" he said. "We had those conversations during President Trump's tenure and business continues. Does it become a little bit more challenging when you have a president like Mr. Trump? Absolutely, without a doubt. But we are still close, close allies."

Rigby and Juneau are hopeful that the report will launch a new strategy moving forward.

"I know there's a certain cynicism around producing these strategies ... another bulky report that's going to end up on a shelf and gather dust," said Rigby. "But if they're done properly, they're done fast and they're done efficiently and effectively — and our allies have done them — they can work and they're important."

Read the full report at CBC and watch below:

INSIDE THE GRUESOME EUROPEAN SPORT THAT INVOLVED THROWING FOXES

Wikimedia Commons

BY MATT REIGLE/MAY 24, 2022 1:12 PM EDT

There was a time when the choice of leisure activities was slim pickings. Leisure wasn't at the forefront of peoples' minds during times when getting a splinter meant the likelihood of a tetanus infection that could lead to your ultimate demise. Even if people wanted to blow off steam, it's not like they could kick back and play some Xbox on your 50-inch TV screen.

However, as times started to change and medical treatments advanced beyond bloodletting, there was time to have some fun. Some sports we play today were in their earliest stages hundreds of years ago and evolved into the version we know today. Of course, there were other ideas that didn't catch on long enough to be enjoyed by 21st-century audiences. One of these was the sport of fox tossing, although, it's tough to imagine how any audience — 21st century or otherwise — could enjoy this, but according to Listverse, they did.

FOX TOSSING WAS ESSENTIALLY WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE


Wikimedia Commons

Fox tossing is, as the name implies, a sport in which live foxes were thrown skyward, but foxes weren't the only animals used in this cruel game, they just got top billing. According to WBUR, author Edward Brooke-Hitching penned a book about the lost sports called "Fox Tossing: And Other Forgotten and Dangerous Sports, Pastimes, and Games." Brooke-Hitchings said that he learned about the sport in an old German hunting manual that dates back to 1720, which featured an image of 18th-century aristocrats playing the bizarre game.

Fox tossing was played on a grassy field, with players partnered up, generally in mixed couple teams comprised of a man and a woman. Members of each team held opposite ends of a long sling (roughly 20 feet apart) that Brooke-Hitchings described as "a cloth a bit like a badminton net." The sling was held loosely between the two participants so that the middle of it sagged and laid on the ground. When the game was ready to start, foxes (or, on occasions where fox tossing organizers wanted to shake things up, badgers and wildcats) were set loose and started running around the playing area. If any of the animals stepped on one of the slings, the players gave their ends a quick tug, which tightened the cloth and launched the helpless animal into the air. The winner was whichever team launched an animal the highest, with the all-time top score being a toss that was measured at 7.5 meters, or 24.6 feet, into the air (via Topend Sports).

FOX TOSSING ENDED BY KILLING ALL THE FOXES

Wikimedia Commons

Obviously, fox tossing was wildly inhumane, and the animals that were getting thrown into the atmosphere were facing serious injury risks, especially when you consider that none of them volunteered to be part of an 18th-century German aristocrat's field day. According to Listverse, the terrified animals sometimes caused injuries to the human participants while trying to escape from the game. Sadly, any animals that weren't killed during the game were euthanized afterward (not humanely either).

Additionally, foxes are known to carry an array of parasites and diseases. According to The Fox Project, many animals — foxes included — can carry a parasite called toxoplasmosis that can affect various parts of the human body. Fox tossing was one of the few sports of the era that women played alongside men, however, modern doctors often warn pregnant women about the dangers of contracting toxoplasmosis.

Another concern — albeit a rarity in modern times, per The Humane Society — is that a fox could be carrying rabies. However, in the era of fox tossing, the frequency of foxes carrying rabies was much higher (via Fox Rabies Blueprint).

US Federal Reserve says its goal is ‘to get wages down’

US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said his goal is “to get wages down,” complaining workers have too much power in the labor market. Economist Michael Hudson says this is “junk economics,” and corporate monopolies are driving inflation, not wages.

ByBenjamin Norton

Construction workers in Houston, Texas in 2021

The chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said his goal is “to get wages down.”

In a press conference on May 4, Powell announced that the Fed would be raising interest rates by half a percentage and implementing policies aimed at reducing inflation in the United States, which is at its highest level in 40 years.

According to a transcript of the presser published by the Wall Street Journal, Powell blamed this inflation crisis, which is global, not on the proxy war in Ukraine and Western sanctions on Russia, but rather on US workers supposedly making too much money.

“Employers are having difficulties filling job openings, and wages are rising at the fastest pace in many years,” Powell complained.

The Fed’s proposed solution: bring down wages.

There are more job vacancies than there are unemployed people in the United States, as the economy recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Powell claimed this discrepancy between job vacancies and unemployment is due to high wages, which discourage workers from taking bad, low-paying jobs with few benefits, and therefore give them too much power.

“Wages are running high, the highest they’ve run in quite some time,” the Fed chairman lamented.

Workers need to be disciplined by the labor market, he insisted.

Powell argued, “There’s a path by which we would be able to have demand moderate in the labor market and have—therefore have vacancies come down without unemployment going up, because vacancies are at such an extraordinarily high level. There are 1.9 vacancies for every unemployed person; 11½ million vacancies, 6 million unemployed people.”

Powell aims to do this by reducing wages.

“By moderating demand, we could see vacancies come down, and as a result—and they could come down fairly significantly and I think put supply and demand at least closer together than they are, and that that would give us a chance to have lower—to get inflation—to get wages down and then get inflation down without having to slow the economy and have a recession and have unemployment rise materially. So there’s a path to that,” he said.

The Federal Reserve chairman did concede that “these wages are to some extent being eaten up by inflation.” But Powell blamed that rising inflation on increasing wages, which economist Michael Hudson says is an example of ridiculous “junk economics.”

Powell was first appointed Fed chair by Donald Trump in 2018. On May 23, 2022, he started his second four-year term, after being re-nominated by President Joe Biden and confirmed in a landslide bipartisan Senate vote of 80-19.
Inflation is rising faster than US wages

The US federal minimum wage is just $7.25 per hour, and has remained at that level since 2009, despite significant increases in inflation.

In 1968, the US federal minimum wage was $1.60, which would be equivalent to $13.29 in 2022 dollars.

It is true that the minimum wage has increased in recent years in numerous US states, especially ones that have significantly higher costs of living like New York and California. But real wages have not kept up with inflation.

Even the Washington-based think tank the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which is infamous for its avid promotion of neoliberal policies, acknowledged in a January 2022 study, “US wages grew at fastest pace in decades in 2021, but prices grew even more.”

The report explained:
Since December of 2020, nominal wages and salaries were up 4.5 percent, the fastest increase since 1983. These increases bring nominal wages and salaries to 1.2 percent above their pre-pandemic trend.

Prices, however, have also risen rapidly, and so inflation-adjusted wages fell by 4.3 percent at an annual rate over the last three months, 2.4 percent over the last year and 1.2 percent lower than they were in December 2019.

Inflation-adjusted wages should have grown 2.1 percent over this period if pre-pandemic trends had continued, leaving real wages well below their pre-pandemic trend.

While nominal wages have still grown faster in some sectors relative to its pre-pandemic trend, all sectors have seen below-trend real wage growth.
Michael Hudson: Inflation is caused by corporate monopolies, not labor

Economist Michael Hudson responded to these remarks by the Fed, analyzing the inflation crisis in a May 13 panel organized by the International Manifesto Group.

“Inflation is basically the excuse that right-wing governments have for trying to lower wage levels by blaming the inflation on rising wages,” he said.

“What economists like to blame it [inflation] on is labor, on rising wages, on government social spending, and of course on Russia trying to break away from America’s unipolar international order,” Hudson explained.

He recalled his time working at Chase Manhattan Bank in the 1960s. Hudson’s boss was Paul Volcker, who would go on to serve as Federal Reserve chairman under US presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

He noted that Volcker had “always said that the big concern of finance is wage gains will mean that the purchasing power of all of our investors, who have bank accounts, and stocks, and bonds, will have less power over wages. And our class interest is in increasing our power over wages, so we’ve got to keep wages down, even if it causes a recession. That’s basically the Federal Reserve’s policy.”

“The present Federal Reserve chairman, Jay Powell, came right out and announced that the Biden administration, Democratic Party policy is quote, ‘to get wages down and then get inflation down without having to slow the economy and have a recession and have unemployment rise materially’,” Hudson continued.

“In other words, you want to keep the finance, insurance, and the stock market, real estate sector going; you just want to squeeze down wages somehow.”

“So the objective of all this is that, if labor wants to get a job, and the health insurance that goes with it, then labor will have to lower its wage levels. That’s the current US government policy.”

“Well it’s junk economics, of course,” Hudson continued. “Today’s inflation throughout the world, not only in the United States but now in Europe, is led by pure monopoly powers, headed … by energy and food prices.”

“The United States and NATO are trying to blame inflation on Putin and Russia not exporting oil and gas to Europe, as a result of the NATO sanctions against it, but gas hasn’t stopped yet, and … the US oil companies have said that, looking forward, they see a supply problem, and they’re raising prices now even though the supply of oil hasn’t really changed at all.”

“So you have supply being fairly constant, but prices going way up, because the oil companies say, ‘We anticipate they’ll go up, therefore we’re raising oil prices, because we can.’ Well, the same thing is happening in agriculture.”

“You’re also having rent rising as a result of the plunge in home ownership rates, that started with President Obama’s mass evictions of the victims of junk mortgage lending.”

“And the private capital investors that are taking over all of the houses, the owner-occupied houses that have defaulted, they’re being sold off, and you’ve had home ownership rates falling by about 10 percent in the United States since 2008.”

“Well now you have companies like Blackstone very sharply rising rents. In New York they’ve been jumping by about one-third in the last year. So again, with the same amount of real estate, prices are going way up.”

“So none of this can be blamed on labor,” Hudson stressed.

New Colorado law removes barriers for LGBTQ+, others adopting their own children

HB22-1153, signed into law Monday by Gov. Jared Polis in Pueblo, overhauls process for many LGBTQ+ couples in particular.

BOULDER, CO – MARCH 20: Lisa Dacey, left, and her partner Jen Snook, right, play with their kids Wyatt, 23 months and Tess, 4, at their home on March 20, 2022 in Boulder, Colorado. The family used assisted reproductive therapy to conceive their children. Through a quirk of law, Jen was denied her petition to adopt Wyatt because it would first require relinquishing “presumed” parenthood – and thus disqualify her from adopting her child. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)

By ALEX BURNESS | The Denver Post
PUBLISHED: May 23, 2022 

A new Colorado law clears existing hurdles for couples who become parents through assisted reproduction.

HB22-1153, signed into law Monday by Gov. Jared Polis in Pueblo, overhauls what had been a burdensome process for many LGBTQ+ couples in particular.

Across the country, including in Colorado, one must adopt their own child if and when their partner has given birth using assisted reproduction. For these couples, that has meant home visits from government officials, court appearances and all kinds of paperwork, plus legal fees.

The new law removes the baseline requirement for home visits, fingerprinting or criminal record searches, and in-person court hearings. Among other changes, the law requires simply that affected parents file a petition containing basic information, including a child’s birth certificate, and that the court certify proper petitions within 30 days.

“Nobody should face barriers when it comes to being recognized as the parent of their own child, but before today, that’s what too many Colorado families were confronted with,” said Senate Majority Leader Dominick Moreno, a Commerce City Democrat who sponsored the policy.

HB22-1153 was overwhelmingly supported by the legislature, passing unanimously in the Senate and by a vote of 53 to 11 in the House.

House sponsor Daneya Esgar, the chamber’s majority leader, was personally touched by the policies this new law will undo.

“Prior to this law, my wife would have needed to go through the expensive and ill-fitting step-parent adoption process just to be recognized as the legal mother of our child,” said Esgar, a Pueblo Democrat.

The bill was formally titled Affirm Parentage Adoption In Assisted Reproduction, but lawmakers later voted to name it Marlo’s Law, in honor of Esgar’s daughter.

Esgar and Moreno were joined in sponsorship by Democratic state Rep. Kerry Tipper of Lakewood and Democratic state Sen. Jeff Bridges of Greenwood Village. The law goes into effect in August.

Imran Khan’s Political Discourse: Dangerous For Democracy – OpEd


Pakistan's Imran Khan. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency.


May 24, 2022 

  Eurasia Review 
By Asad Ali

Pakistan’s political environment has rapidly become aggressive since the ouster of former Prime Minister Imran Khan through a constitutionally tabled vote of no-confidence. The former Premier has launched an aggressive political campaign in order to press the incumbent government of Shehbaz Sharif to hold free and fair early elections. As per the constitution and democratic norms, political rallies and gatherings are his fundamental right and indeed he is enjoying that. However, one shouldn’t put the security and foreign policy of the state at risk just to accomplish political objectives. Since his ouster, Imran Khan has been accusing state institutions including the Army of supporting the opposition’s bid to overthrow his government. In addition, he has also been accusing US administration of playing a major role in de-seating him. All of his claims are mere accusations, having no solid evidence and grounds. He has failed to even justify US conspiracy and horse-trading in Pakistan.
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In democratic countries, one shouldn’t malign his own country’s institution for the ouster of the government. The fact is that Imran Khan had failed to provide uplift the economy of the country. He has even worsened economic indicators. During his time, inflation increased significantly. Poor people suffered terribly under his regime. His party came to the government with the narrative to eradicate corruption but failed miserably. He put the foreign policy of the country at stake by targeting the Biden administration. He must understand that Pakistan cannot afford any kind of hostility with US in given circumstances. The US is a major strategic and economic partner of Pakistan. It has been providing Pakistan huge amount of aid to uplift its economic sector and modernize its armed forces. Likewise, the US is Pakistan’s largest export partner.

As per former Trade Advisor of Pakistan Abdul Razak Dawood, Pakistan’s exports during July-February of FY 2022 were recorded at 20.552 billion US dollars as compared to 16.324 billion dollars during the corresponding period of last fiscal year. Pakistan is getting a major chunk of its foreign exchange from US. How we can afford animosity with them for merely the political objectives of a single party and politician? The is insane. Imran Khan’s political discourse has been creating negative optics for Pakistan at international political, economic and strategic fronts. This must be changed. Economic experts in Pakistan has repeatedly warned government regarding any hostile ties with US and other Western states and its outcomes for our economic discourse.

Similarly, Pakistan has also fruitful and strong strategic ties with West and Russia as well. Unfortunately, Imran Khan’s rhetoric has created severe challenges for Pakistan at diplomatic fronts especially in US and Western states, who are leading trade partner of Pakistan. In sovereign states, one must establish strong strategic, political and economic ties with other states. However, Imran Khan tried to put Pakistan in camp politics which triggered negative optics for Islamabad. The new government under Shahbaz Sharif will have to work hard at diplomatic fronts to repair its ties with West and US, who are major trading partner of Islamabad. The government must also have to maintain balance in its ties with Russia and Western states, which is likely to be difficult task for Pakistani diplomats.

Likewise, Imran Khan’s planned political rally in Islamabad is also being viewed as threat to entire system. To satisfy his egoistic political approach, he is putting the country once again in chaos by spreading anarchic environment. If he comes in Islamabad and tries to block road and other major installations, the country will face severe economic blockage which will further put our already dwindling economy in jeopardy. Sadly, there seems no sane voices within PTI who can convince former Prime Minister to postpone his political oriented movement for economic prosperity of the country. His must reconsider his decision regarding resignations for assemblies. In batter interests of the country, Mr. Khan should sit in the parliament, talk to treasury benches, work for election reforms for free and fair general elections and become part of the parliamentary business of the country. With mass resignations from National Assembly, Mr. Khan is betraying mandate of millions Pakistanis who voted for him. He must not blame state institutions for his ouster.

Due to Imran’s divisive politics, Pakistan today has echoes of the post-January 6 moment in US, a polarization so deep that each faction sees no validity in the other’s arguments. Khan’s supporters in particular distrust anything the new government or the military says, which is dangerous for future of our political system. In recent weeks, politicians from PTI has also resorted to using religion to attack the other side.

In the end, what Pakistan’s soaring political tension amounts to is an opportunistic struggle for power, which Imran Khan is trying to grab in any case. It has left the country a political tinderbox. And in all of it, little regard is displayed on either side for the ongoing suffering of ordinary Pakistanis, who continue to pay the price for the country’s long history of political instability. Pakistan’s economy is a shambles, and the political chaos, even after the ouster of former PM Imran Khan, is far from over. So, PTI and its leader Imran Khan must act in a sensible way.

It has a core interest in internal stability. This means that extended political turmoil is problematic, especially if it has the risk of descending into violence. And given just how highly charged and hyper polarized the current political environment is, violence certainly can’t be ruled out. In a nutshell, the security situation for the country, and changing regional and global geopolitical dynamics, are disturbing for Pakistan economically and politically.

The writer is Islamabad regular contributor.