Thursday, October 08, 2020

KYRGYZSTAN

The first victim of the turmoil: one person killed; elections annulled PHOTO / VIDEO

Breaking news from Kyrgyzstan: After the protesters broke down the gate of the presidency and released the former leader, the elections were annulled.

SOURCE: B92 
Tanjug/AP Photo/Vladimir Voronin
Tanjug/AP Photo/Vladimir Voronin

The demonstrations in the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, started at the moment when the Election Commission announced the preliminary results of the elections held on Sunday. Protesters gathered at high speed and chaos could begin.

A truck destroyed the gate behind which are the presidency and the parliament, a building also called the "White House".

A fire was also set in the presidency building, which was quickly extinguished.

The police charged the protesters and used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons, but the citizens of Bishkek was "superior" and stormed the building. 590 people were injured, of which 150 were hospitalized. Also, 190 members of the security forces were injured.

The protesters first smashed the gate in front of the "White House", where the highest state institutions of Kyrgyzstan are located, with a truck, and then they broke into the building. According to reports from the field, just a few minutes before the intrusion into the parliament building, a convoy of cars was noticed leaving the building, so that when the protesters broke in, they did not find any officials.

Protesters then released former President Almazbek Atambayev and former Prime Minister Sapar Isakov, who led the government in 2017 and 2018, from prison.

Opposition groups have seized several other buildings, including the mayor's office in Bishkek, and appointed acting national security chief, state prosecutor and capital commander, Reuters reports.

According to local media reports, the governors of several provinces have resigned.















 

Tanjug/AP Photo/Azamat Imanaliyev
Tanjug/AP Photo/Azamat Imanaliyev

 

Athens under siege by the police, tear gas has already been thrown PHOTO / VIDEO

The Greek capital, Athens, "surrounded" by strong police forces from the early morning hours

SOURCE: B92 

Tanjug/AP Photo/Yorgos Karahalis
Tanjug/AP Photo/Yorgos Karahalis

The reason is the verdict against the popular political group, the extreme right-wing "Golden Dawn", which the Athens court declared criminal this morning. It should be reminded that "Golden Dawn" was the third strongest party in the Greek parliament during the Greek debt crisis.








From the early morning hours, the police were deployed on the streets around the Athens Court of Appeals, where a decision was made to find the leaders of that extreme-right organization guilty of leading a criminal group.

Today's verdict ended a five-year trial. The verdict found seven former lawmakers, including party leader Nikos Michaloliakos, guilty of running a criminal organization, while the others were guilty of participating in a criminal organization.

According to the AP, an anti-fascist rally was held in front of the court, which was attended by about 15.000 people. However, there were supporters of the "Golden Dawn" on the streets and there were minor clashes with the police, which a group of citizens threw stones at. AFP reported that tear gas was thrown and that water cannons were used.








 

 

"Russia-gate" vs "Ukraine-gate"

Trump's recent decision to remove the label of confidentiality from all documents related to the alleged interference of Russia in the elections, raised "dust".

SOURCE: SPUTNIK 
Pascal Le Segretain/Staff/Getty images
Pascal Le Segretain/Staff/Getty images

In Russia, they saw it as part of the American election campaign and the intention for Trump to counterattack before the elections and to put a part of the elite, which is against him, in an awkward position. The next blow to the Democrats, who are pushing the story about "Russia-gate", could give details from the "Ukraine-gate" affair.

Russian political scientist Vladimir Shapovalov estimates that we have entered a new epoch called the "epoch of new sincerity", and part of that "new sincerity" are all kinds of declassifications and leaks of information that were previously considered impossible to publish - telephone conversations between heads of states, secret intelligence and the like. According to him, Trump operates in that paradigm.

However, Shapovalov expects that this will be followed by a new wave of "disclosure" related to the political scandal, which was called "Ukraine-gate" in the American media, and concerns last year's telephone conversation between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, which was the reason for initiating the impeachment procedure.

Trump's political opponents then accused him of trying to persuade Zelensky to start an investigation and the activities of Hunter Biden, the son of Joseph Biden, in exchange for providing financial and military assistance to Kiev.

"I want to emphasize that America is entering the last phase of the election campaign. Trump, who rose like a phoenix from the ashes after his illness, is pulling out his last weapon and starting a new campaign against Biden. I think there will be another portion of 'Ukraine-gate' after that. "Trump expects to turn the situation in his favor in this way. And I think that Trump has a chance to win over a part of the electorate that is in doubt," Shapovalov believes.


"Unprecedented, we've never seen such a large turnout": US elections already decided?

The number of Americans voting preceding the November

 presidential election is unprecedented, according to early voting data.

SOURCE: TANJUG 
maxxyustas/depositphotos
maxxyustas/depositphotos

That could be a hint of a record turnout in the election, in which incumbent President Donald Trump and Democrat Joseph Biden are candidates.

Four weeks before the November 3 election, more than four million Americans have already voted, which is far more than about 75.000 preceding the 2016 presidential election, according to the American election project, which collects data on early voting, Reuters reports.

The greater turnout was prompted by the decision of many states to allow early voting and postal voting on a larger scale due to the coronavirus pandemic, but also by the desire to make a decision on Trump's political future, said Michael MacDonald from the University of Florida, who leads the project.

"We have never seen such a large number of people vote much earlier. People vote when they make a decision who to support and we know that a large number have already decided and already have an opinion on Trump," McDonald said.

Due to the sharp increase in the number of voters who vote earlier, MacDonald predicts a record turnout of about 150 million, which is 65% of Americans with the right to vote, and that would be the highest percentage since 1908, reports the Voice of America.


According to national polls, Biden has an advantage over Trump, although research in countries that could be decisive in the elections indicates a close race.

LEFT & RIGHT UNITE

'Big Tech Must Be Broken Up': House Report on Silicon Valley Monopolies Bolsters Call for Far-Reaching Antitrust Measures

"The totality of the evidence produced during this investigation demonstrates the pressing need for legislative action and reform," states congressional report following a 16-month probe.

House Democrats suggested breaking up Big Tech in a newly-released Judiciary Committee report published on October 6, 2020. (Photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

A 450-page House Judiciary Committee report on monopolistic tech company behavior recommends more stringent antitrust measures and breaking up Big Tech. (Photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

House Democrats on Tuesday released a major report calling on Congress to overhaul U.S. antitrust law and take action to curtail the power of tech titans Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. 

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust spent 16 months investigating Big Tech, resulting in a 450-page report (pdf) that found the four tech companies wield abusive monopoly power and suggesting that lawmakers take steps to break them up.

"A company like Amazon needs to be treated like Standard Oil and be split into many pieces."
—Vahid Razavi, Ethics In Tech

The report details a litany of anti-competitive practices that have become business as usual for "companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo" but which have now "become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons."

"Each platform now serves as a gatekeeper over a key channel of distribution," the investigation found. "By controlling access to markets, these giants can pick winners and losers throughout our economy."

According to the report, the "monopoly power" of the four tech giants has "diminished consumer choice, eroded innovation and entrepreneurship in the U.S. economy, weakened the vibrancy of the free and diverse press, and undermined Americans' privacy."

The committee found that the companies, whose operations span multiple industries, use their dominance in one area of their business to undercut the competition in other areas.

Google's Android operation system, for example, gives it and its parent company Alphabet "near-perfect intelligence" on competiting companies that develop apps for Android. This allows Google to easily create its own apps to unfairly undercut the competition. 

The committee concluded that Google fosters an "ecosystem of interlocking monopolies" perpetuated via two main anti-competitive practices. 

First, the company aggressively works to "undermine... vertical search providers"—search engines for particular topics, like Expedia for travel or Dreamstime for photo sharing—in order to "boost Google's own inferior vertical offerings, while imposing penalties" on competitors. 

Second, Google uses anti-competitive contracts, including ones that "required smartphone manufacturers to pre-install and give default status to Google's own apps."

The report found that Amazon—which accounts for nearly half of all U.S. e-commerce sales (that's more than seven times as much as second-place Walmart)—unfairly reaps data from its third-party sellers it then uses to boost its own business.

Amazon then uses this edge to favor its own brands over those of competitors, excludes competing products from its virtual shelves, and prioritizes its own products in online search results. 

The lawmakers accuse Apple of exercising monopoly power through its control of software downloaded to iPhones—which account for nearly half of all U.S. mobile phones in use. While iPhone users can only download apps from Apple's store, the report found that the company unfairly favors its own apps, while charging outside app developers "exorbitantly high" fees.

"Apple leverages its control of iOS and the App Store to create and enforce barriers to competition and discriminate against and exclude rivals while preferencing its own offerings," the report states. "Apple also uses its power to exploit app developers through misappropriation of competitively sensitive information and to charge app developers supra-competitive prices within the App Store."

The committe reported that Facebook enjoys monopoly power in both the online advertising and social networking markets, and that the company uses a "copy, acquire, kill" strategy to destroy competition.

For example, the investigators found that Facebook's 2012 acquisition of Instagram was a brazen attempt to "neutralize a nascent competitive threat" that was followed by an intentional effort to thwart the upstart's success so it couldn't compete with its new parent company.

"These firms have too much power, and that power must be reined in and subject to appropriate oversight and enforcement."
—House Judiciary Antitrust  Subcommittee 

The report cites an Instagram whistleblower who testified before Congress that there was "brutal infighting" between Facebook and Instagram, and that CEO Mark Zuckerberg's efforts to slow Instagram's growth amounted to "collusion... within an internal monopoly." It also discusses the infamous 2018 Cunningham Memo, a blueprint for such internal monopolistic collusion. 

The committee concludes that Congress should update antitrust laws to make it more difficut for companies to obtain approval for mergers and acquisitions. It also calls for the abolition of mandatory arbitration clauses in tech companies' terms of service agreements that prevent users from suing either individually or through class-action lawsuits.

"The totality of the evidence produced during this investigation demonstrates the pressing need for legislative action and reform," the report states. "These firms have too much power, and that power must be reined in and subject to appropriate oversight and enforcement."

While AmazonAppleFacebookGoogle, and some Republican lawmakers have criticized the report, Democrats and digital rights advocates hailed its call for stronger antitrust protection and to break up Big Tech.

"Our investigation leaves no doubt that there is a clear and compelling need for Congress and the antitrust enforcement agencies to take action that restores competition, improves innovation, and safeguards our democracy," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said in a joint statement.

"By reasserting the power of Congress, we now have a thoroughly researched and reasoned roadmap for the work ahead as we rein in anti-competitive behavior, help prevent monopolistic practices, and allow innovation to thrive again," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). "I'm looking forward to continuing this urgent work."

In a Tuesday blog post, the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation said that "many of the report's recommendations echo calls EFF has also made, proof of just how obviously effective, needed, and common-sense they are," adding that it is "pleased to see the report go beyond U.S. antitrust law's narrow focus on consumer prices."

"Overall, the Judiciary Committee report is a strong, evidence-based prescription for fixing antitrust law to help address the problems of Big Tech," said EFF. "We hope the conversation continues, with good changes to the law and increased enforcement yet to come."

Vahid Razavi, a former Amazon Web Services manager and founder of the nonprofit advocacy group Ethics In Tech, applauded the report and said it was nice to hear more lawmakers concur with his long-held assertion that the biggest tech companies are monopolies. 

"Big Tech must be broken up," Razavi told Common Dreams. "A company like Amazon needs to be treated like Standard Oil and be split into many pieces. Amazon Web Services is a monopoly by itself. AWS competes with many of its customers and partners today."

"Every partner that I previously managed on behalf of AWS is now facing competing product offerings by Jeff Bezos and his team at AWS," he added of the Amazon CEO. 

 

Beyond Borders: International map of Cuban medical cooperation

Beyond Borders: International map of Cuban medical cooperation

Publisher

MEMO Publishers

Published

September 2020

Language

English pages

ISBN

 978-1-907433-46-7

“The sun has spots. The ungrateful speak only of the spots. The grateful speak of light” José Martí

Before the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, on 1 January 1959, there were 6,250 doctors on the island; about half of them left the country after that date. In addition, more than 63.2% of those were located in Havana, where public hospitals, clinics and private health centres were accessible only to those who had the resources to access them and could pay for these services. Medical assistance hardly arrived in the countryside and more isolated parts. Public health from the first years of the Revolution became a priority for the Cuban State, who - from the beginning - understood it as a right of the people. The government works to create the infrastructure necessary to offer everyone the services free of charge.

They began to fight diseases, allocating a budget of 22,670,965 pesos to finance the health of the population. These figures have been increasing over time. In 2019, 10,662,200,000 pesos were allocated, and in 2020, 12,740,000,000 ($530 million). This represents 28% of the total budget and, together with that destined to education, makes up more than 50% of it. Both spheres complement each other in the Cuban health system (Portal, 2019). This year’s budget will allow the provision of more than 200 million medical consultations. It will also serve to guarantee the medical 10 THE CUBAN DOCTORS IN CUBA AND THE WORLD services provided in hospitals and institutes, as well as primary health care. This financial coverage will provide 1.4 million hospital admissions and the necessary medications (Portal, 2019). It is also important to take into account the expenses associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, a health emergency that has shaken the world and from which Cuba has been exempt, and has become a champion in its combat and in many other countries.