Monday, December 21, 2020

SINGAPORE
Food bank vending machines 
for needy 
in Zhenghua

Mr Jacky Tham (left) redeemed coffee and cooked food from an automated food bank vending machine yesterday. 
PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO

Liew Ai Xin
PUBLISHED 5 HOURS AGO

Mr Jacky Tham, 73, and his wife, Madam Mary Ng, 71, got more than their usual round of exercise and activities at the Fei Yue Senior Activity Centre near their home in Senja Road yesterday morning.

With the help of volunteers, they also redeemed coffee and packets of cooked food from an automated food bank vending machine.

The vending machines are part of a new initiative launched by local organisations to supplement current ones seeking to ease food insecurity for households and seniors who live in rental blocks or one-to two-room studio apartments around Senja Road and the Zhenghua district.

Eligible residents will get a card giving them $50 in credits per month from non-profit group The Food Bank Singapore, which they can use to redeem dried or cooked food from three vending machines located in Senja Road.

Founded in 2012, The Food Bank Singapore serves 300,000 people through their network of 370 non-governmental organisations which seek to alleviate food insecurity in Singapore.

The cooked food packets, valued at three credits, are prepared by an external caterer and flash-frozen for hygiene purposes. Residents can either heat the food packets in a microwave oven near the machines or take them home to thaw later.

The dried foodstuff, valued at two credits a portion, is collected by The Food Bank Singapore from its donors, which include supermarkets and schools.


The vending machines are part of a new initiative to help those who live in rental blocks or one-to two-room studio apartments around Senja Road and the Zhenghua district. PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO


Mr Edward Chia, MP for Holland-Bukit Timah GRC's Zhenghua ward, said he heard through the grapevine that The Food Bank Singapore was going to roll out more automated vending machines following a pilot last year.

But, according to the non-profit group's co-founder Nichol Ng, 42, it faced challenges in finding appropriate locations "within view of people and... (with) wiring and power points".

Mr Chia reached out to Ms Ng to ask if the machines could be placed in Zhenghua. They then spoke to Fei Yue Senior Activity Centre, which agreed to house the machines near the centre and provide volunteers to restock the supply of dried goods and assist seniors in using the machines.

Zhenghua Citizens' Consultative Committee also pitched in to help coordinate with other organisations in setting up the machines.

Zhenghua Constituency Office has sent more than 500 letters to eligible households so far.

This pilot will run until Dec 31 next year, with a review by the organisations after that.

Mr Chia said the review will look at the redemption rate of the monthly $50 credits. "It is a lot of effort by different organisations. Our whole objective is to serve our resource-low families... and we want this to be fully utilised by our residents," he added.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on December 22, 2020, with the headline 'Food bank vending machines for needy in Zhenghua'. 


 “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

   
















Taiwanese 'trashion' designer turns waste into clothes
Taiwanese designer Wang Li-ling (far left) thanking guests for coming to her fashion show in Taipei last Friday. The clothes she designed, which are made from upcycling old wires and bolts from the power industry, drew a warm reception at the show. PHOTO: REUTERS

PUBLISHED5 HOURS AGO

TAIPEI • Inspiration for high fashion can come from strange places.

For one Taiwanese designer, it comes from upcycling old wires and bolts from the power industry.

Ms Wang Li-ling, 36, scours dumps, picking up old bits of metal and wires from Taiwan's main electricity supplier to add flair to her clothes.


"For example, there's quite a lot of material from Taipower that they have phased out," Ms Wang said.

"These materials have been used for more than 20 or 30 years. At least more than 10 years. So their colour or the mottled feeling they give you is different from new material."

The wires and other materials are stitched to dresses and other items of clothing, giving them a futuristic feeling. They drew a warm reception at a fashion show in Taipei last Friday.

"(This) is my first time seeing a Taiwan fashion designer turning recycled things into new ideas," said Taiwanese lifestyle influencer Andrew Chen, who was at the show.

"Everyone knows the fashion industry is about fast fashion. And it is wasteful. It expanded my horizons today that I saw how to use old materials to create something new, and then present it with creativity."

Taiwan has an up-and-coming fashion scene, and its designers are starting to make an impact on the world stage.

Though many global events were shuttered or moved online owing to the pandemic, Taiwan's Taipei Fashion Week in October featured live shows - a testament to the island's success in controlling the virus' spread.


Ms Wang inspecting a dress at her studio in Taipei earlier this month. The designer stitches wires and other materials to dresses, giving them a futuristic feeling. PHOTO: REUTERS


REUTERS

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on December 22, 2020, with the headline 'Taiwanese 'trashion' designer turns waste into clothes'. 





The vaccine news is great, but Big Pharma is still fooling us

Heroic work went into the development of the coronavirus vaccines. But that does not mean this industry deserves your affection.

Stephen Buranyi

A Kenyan schoolgirl walking along a railway line in a Nairobi slum after schools partially reopened in October. Pharmaceutical corporations are largely monopolising access to vaccines, which means that millions in the global south may not get the life-saving shot for months. PHOTO: REUTERS

PUBLISHED5 HOURS AGO

It's about as near as science gets to a miracle: A coronavirus vaccine has arrived - and the main reason is that mRNA vaccines, a previously untested technology, appear to work better than almost anyone had hoped.

As recently as this summer, many analysts were pushing their predictions for a vaccine into the autumn of 2021, in line with the timeline of traditional treatments. If these new vaccines perform as well in the wild as they have in clinical trials, the world will remember it as a victory perhaps greater than Salk and Sabin against polio. If this new type of vaccine also goes on to work against other viruses, it will mark an epochal advance in vaccinology, closer to the discoveries of Louis Pasteur and Edward Jenner.

But a strange thing has happened in our celebration of this scientific triumph. While we remember those historic advances as the work of individual scientists or laboratories, the vaccines against Covid-19 are being written instead as a victory for pharmaceutical companies.

The rule in press coverage seems to be that the biggest brand involved gets top credit. And so, every day now there are stories about the Pfizer vaccine (a collaboration between Pfizer and the German biotech company BioNTech); the Moderna vaccine (a partnership between the US National Institutes of Health and Moderna); and the AstraZeneca vaccine (a front-running non-mRNA candidate, in fact created by scientists at the University of Oxford and developed and distributed by AstraZeneca).

It's an incredible public relations coup for an industry desperate to rescue its image. Just last month, Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty and agreed to penalties of more than US$8 billion (S$10.7 billion) after being prosecuted for its role in America's horrific opioid crisis. Pfizer set an earlier record for a drug industry fraud settlement in 2009 at US$2.3 billion, in a case over its fraudulent marketing of a painkiller, an antipsychotic and other drugs for conditions for which it hadn't received approval.

The turpitude of the pharmaceutical industry is so commonplace that it has become part of the cultural wallpaper. The screenwriters of the 1993 movie The Fugitive knew they could find a perfectly plausible villain to menace Harrison Ford in a faceless drug company out to cover up its malfeasance. (The film was a hit.)


In John le Carre's 2001 novel The Constant Gardener, a British diplomat uncovering a pharma giant testing dangerous drugs on poor Africans is similarly easy to swallow: Its plotline echoes a real case involving Pfizer in Nigeria. (The company has denied any wrongdoing and settled out of court the suit brought by the families of children who died during the testing.)


And yet, since the pharmaceutical industry stepped in with the vaccines, generations worth of ill will appear to be melting away. Last year, Gallup polling had the pharmaceutical industry ranked the most disliked in America, below both big oil and big government. By this September - even before the vaccines arrived - the industry's approval rating was already improving.


This isn't lost on the industry itself. A financial analyst recently told this paper that Pfizer's involvement in the coronavirus pandemic was about "as much public relations as it is a financial return". In April, the chief executive of Eli Lilly, the company that put out an antibody therapy for Covid-19, told investors that the pandemic offered "a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset the reputation of the industry".

We've all been hoping for a vaccine for so long, the moment the medicine is finally being delivered, it seems almost perverse to question the name on the vial. But the industry isn't our saviour. Each of these vaccine candidates is a complex scientific project with many collaborators - and a substantial level of state support. Giving the industry not just plaudits but also control over the vaccines themselves would be a mistake.

Even amid this public relations coup, pharmaceutical corporations can't help but revert to type. They will profit handsomely from these vaccines, even when they claim to be acting selflessly. And they largely are monopolising access, which means that millions in the global south may not get the life-saving vaccines for months.

We've all been hoping for a vaccine for so long, the moment the medicine is finally being delivered, it seems almost perverse to question the name on the vial. But the industry isn't our saviour. Each of these vaccine candidates is a complex scientific project with many collaborators - and a substantial level of state support. Giving the industry not just plaudits but also control over the vaccines themselves would be a mistake.


The mRNA vaccines in which people are now staking so much hope wouldn't exist without public support through every step of their development.

Moderna is not a pharma giant. In fact, it is, in a way, a home-grown success story. The company, founded in 2010 after a group of American university professors acquired support from a venture capitalist, has been working on this technology for years. But Moderna's original work rests on earlier discoveries by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania who have received funding for their research from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Once the race for a vaccine began, governments supercharged their efforts. Moderna has received about US$2.5 billion in federal research and supply funding over the past year from the government's Operation Warp Speed programme, as well as shared technology the NIH had developed for previous coronavirus vaccines. The NIH also provided extensive logistical support, overseeing clinical trials for tens of thousands of patients.

Pfizer, meanwhile, likes to say that it eschews federal money to maintain independence. But it is co-producing and distributing a vaccine from BioNTech, a company that received more than US$440 million in funding from the German federal government. The vaccine is based on BioNTech's technology, with Pfizer stepping in to speed up development and manufacturing.

Pfizer had never produced an mRNA vaccine, but it retrofitted several factories to do so. In effect, it traded its immense capital and logistics network for branding rights. Moreover, the US government claims that by placing a nearly US$2 billion order before the vaccine's final clinical trials started, it removed significant financial risks for Pfizer.

The development of these vaccines involves a patchwork of academic research, biotech firms, public institutions, public money and Big Pharma. This has always been the case, but in the past, governments and academic scientists were able to have far more control over their contributions. Both Salk and Sabin made their polio vaccine discoveries patent-free. At the time, Pfizer was among the main manufacturers and distributors of the Sabin vaccine - making a tidy profit for providing this service, but rightly acknowledged as a small part of a larger whole.

What do these kinds of partnership get us today? The US government negotiated bulk pricing for both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, US$15.25 to US$19.50 per dose over several different contracts. This is significantly less than the US$25 to US$37 Moderna says it will charge governments in the rest of the world, but analysts suggest that even US$19.50 could yield Pfizer a 60 per cent to 80 per cent profit margin. Moderna has announced it won't enforce its patents, but the company hasn't forgotten about the profit opportunities.

Whenever it looks as if we're getting a good deal, it turns out to be an even better one for the drug companies. Even ostensibly selfless actions might very well turn out to work to the industry's benefit.

True, Oxford's deal with AstraZeneca included a commitment to at-cost pricing for developing countries for now. But the Financial Times has reported that an agreement the company has signed with at least one manufacturer indicated that this particular deal could end as soon as July. (The company has said it will seek expert guidance as to when it can declare an end to the pandemic.) And AstraZeneca's deal with Oxford, according to the Financial Times, still allows for a healthy profit margin of up to 20 per cent.

This isn't surprising. The ship has long sailed on the idea that the giants of American capitalism would help anyone without extracting a fee. Even in this disaster, even after the untold sacrifices that millions of ordinary people have made. The real issue is not the price - we'll pay, obviously - it is about access.

With control over the production of these vaccines, these companies will largely provide them on their own schedule, using their own factories or licensed producers - while other facilities around the world sit idle. Governments will almost certainly order more of the approved vaccines in the weeks and months to come, but the production capacity for each company is limited. Companies should pledge not only to waive their patents but also to share all their technical knowledge so that other manufacturers can help produce the much-needed vaccines.

As it stands, most people outside high-risk categories likely won't get vaccinated until "later in 2021", according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Many countries in the global south are expected to be able to vaccinate at most 20 per cent of their populations by the end of next year. Project the current daily death toll onto that timeline and despair.

It doesn't have to be this way. The especially galling thing is that mRNA vaccines were supposed to be a disruptive, liberatory technology. They can be produced faster and more simply, in smaller and cheaper facilities - basic laboratories, even - compared with traditional vaccines. Scientists envisioned a world where vaccines could be produced quickly, anywhere, for a small fraction of the traditional vaccines' cost.

That was before the industry stepped in.

Nations across the global south are demanding a suspension of patent rights for coronavirus vaccines, and last month, American academics and activists - including Ms Chelsea Clinton on behalf of the Clinton Foundation, hardly a revolutionary outfit - called for a similar plan, including sharing patents on vaccines and allowing worldwide manufacturing to begin. This would probably mean not just poorer nations but you - the person reading this - would get vaccinated faster because more vaccine doses would be produced. None of this is likely to happen.

I recall feeling, at the start of this pandemic, both horror at the unfolding calamity, and also a small sense of hope that as in other times of hardship, people would find ways to change the world for the better. There was talk of community support, mutual aid and the rediscovery of the positive powers of the state to protect its citizens. Much of that has dimmed now, and it often seems that we simply want relief - to go back to the way the world was before, and as soon as possible.

We have to get back to that place. Yet this may be the best chance in our lifetimes to break the hold of an industry that, until recently, was rightly vilified. The public is following these developments closely, and the state support that underwrites pharmaceutical profits couldn't be more obvious: Operation Warp Speed alone has dispensed over US$10 billion to the industry.

Pay it to make the vaccine, sure. That's a service. But we shouldn't be afraid to demand more: Public support should mean a public vaccine, one that reaches people as quickly as possible - profitable or not. The pharmaceutical industry wouldn't be able to rake in its profits and restore its reputation without funding that comes from our tax dollars. We shouldn't let Big Pharma forget it.

NYTIMES

• Stephen Buranyi is a science journalist in London and a visiting lecturer at the European Business School.


Everyday War Crimes: Israeli PM Netanyahu Gets Covid Vaccine, Squatters Get Vaccine, But Not Occupied Palestinians

Vaccines will be supplied to the hundreds of thousands of government-backed illegal Israeli squatters on Palestinian land in the West Bank, but not to the indigenous Palestinian population.


 Published on Sunday, December 20, 2020

"There are roughly 3 million Palestinians in the Palestinian West Bank, so their 25 deaths are the equivalent of 2,750 American deaths daily, one of the worst rates in the world," Cole writes. (Photo: AFP/YouTube Screengrab)

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu received a coronavirus shot on Saturday. He has pledged that the 9 million Israelis will be vaccinated in a matter of months.

Inside Israel, Netanyahu was widely thought to have mishandled the pandemic, and it hurt his popularity as the country goes yet again to the ballot box. He is no doubt hoping that the vaccine will save him. If he loses the next election, he could well go to prison on current corruption charges for which he is being tried.

Vaccines will be supplied to the hundreds of thousands of government-backed illegal Israeli squatters on Palestinian land in the West Bank, but not to the indigenous Palestinian population.

Netanyahu’s government militarily occupies 5 million stateless Palestinians. He has worked with the Mad President Trump to kneecap all international aid to the Palestinians.

Under the Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute, the Occupying power is responsible for the health and well-being of the Occupied peoples, and failing to look after it is a war crime.

Middle East Eye reports:

Israel’s Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch told Kan Radio that Israel was working to attain a surplus of vaccines for Israelis and that “should we see that Israel’s demands have been met and we have additional capability, we will certainly consider helping the Palestinian Authority.

Just consider that it is 1941 and Mussolini is occupying the city of Nice in France. And there is a big pneumonia outbreak. (Pneumonia used to be the third leading cause of death). And Mussolini says, after we take care of all the Aryan Italians, we might think about giving sulfapyridine to the occupied population in Nice, way down the road. In the meantime, the French will just have to die.

What would that sound like to you? That’s the equivalent of what Kisch just said.

The policy enunciated by Kisch is a war crime. The 1949 Geneva Convention on the treatment of occupied populations, which was intended to stop people from acting as the Axis leaders did, has this to say (Article 56):

To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the cooperation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties.

Meanwhile, the spokesman for Palestine’s health ministry, Kamal Shakhri, is warning of a health care “catastrophe” this winter as coronavirus cases skyrocket toward 2,000 or possibly even 3,000 a day (the US equivalent of 220,000 to 330,000 a day– one of the worst rates in the world).

On Saturday, in the West Bank, the health department in Ramallah reported 1,750 new cases of the coronavirus and 25 deaths.

The office added, “The rate of recovery from the Corona virus in Palestine reached 80.07%, while the rate of active infections reached 18.7%, and the death rate was 0.9% of all infections.”

128 patients are in intensive care units. The bad news is that under Israeli military occupation, the West Bank has been unable to develop economically, suffering billions losses in opportunity costs. There are not that many intensive care units in Palestinian hospitals. I wrote earlier this year:

AFP reports that the two million Palestinians in Gaza only have 60 ICU or intensive care beds, and not all of them are functional. The israeli blockade, which disallows importation of many key goods, has devastated the health care system in the Strip. In Palestine over all, there are only 1.2 hospital beds per 1,000 people. Compare to Germany with 8.3 beds per thousand people.

I suspect a lot of old people are just dying undiagnosed at home.

UNICEF rushed last spring to equip 25 ICUs in the West Bank and Gaza. It isn’t enough.

There are roughly 3 million Palestinians in the Palestinian West Bank, so their 25 deaths are the equivalent of 2,750 American deaths daily, one of the worst rates in the world. If 0.9% of all infections die, and they have over half a million active cases in the territory, we can expect 5,490 to die out of the current situation. But, the situation will get worse, and apparently Israel isn’t planning to bother to get the vaccine into the West Bank for many months.

Israel continues to keep the little Gaza Strip, with a population of 2 million — half of them children — under blockade during the pandemic. California let a lot of its inmates go to avoid a penitentiary mass outbreak, but Palestinians are treated worse than California inmates. Occasionally the Israeli government has even blocked diesel for electricity. Who knows when its people will get the vaccine, or will be permitted to by its Israeli prison guards?

Juan Cole

Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His newest book, "Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires" was published in 2020. He is also the author of  "The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East" (2015) and "Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East" (2008).  He has appeared widely on television, radio, and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. 


With Perdue and Loeffler Under Fire for Shady Transactions, Warren Intros Bill to Ban Lawmakers From Trading Stock

"With U.S. senators brazenly trading stocks to profit off a raging pandemic, the Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act is more urgent than ever."


 Published on Saturday, December 19, 2020

Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) attends a rally on December 04, 2020 in Savannah, Georgia. 

(Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Friday reintroduced legislation that would bar members of Congress from owning or trading individual stock as two of her Republican colleagues—Georgia Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler—continue to face criticism from their Democratic runoff opponents over suspiciously well-timed transactions earlier this year.

"This legislation would dramatically improve some of the greatest systemic weaknesses in our laws and enforcement structures that allow corruption—both illegal and legal—to pervert the powers of government against the people."
—Liz Hempowicz, Project on Government Oversight

Warren and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the lead sponsor of companion legislation in the House, alluded to the controversy surrounding Perdue and Loeffler's trades, some of which came around the time senators were receiving briefings from the White House as the coronavirus first began spreading in the United States. Faced with accusations of insider trading, Perdue and Loeffler have both denied wrongdoing.

"After nearly four years of the most corrupt president in American history and with U.S. senators brazenly trading stocks to profit off a raging pandemic, the Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act is more urgent than ever in order to rein in corruption, strengthen ethics, end lobbying as we know it, improve the integrity of our judiciary, reform campaign finance laws and finally ensure that we put people over profits and communities over corporations," Warren and Jayapal said in a joint statement Friday.

As the New York Times reported earlier this month, Perdue—who made an estimated 2,596 trades in a single Senate term—"purchased up to $260,000 worth of Pfizer stock between February 26 and February 28, in the early days of a market downturn. On the 28th, he issued a news release reporting that he had regularly attended briefings led by the coronavirus task force; records subsequently showed that he had bought the third tranche of Pfizer shares that same day."

Jon Ossoff, Perdue's Democratic challenger, has repeatedly called attention to the Georgia senator's prolific trading and labeled him a "crook."

"His blatant abuse of his power and privilege to enrich himself is disgraceful," Ossoff said of Perdue during a "debate" earlier this month that the Georgia senator refused to attend.

Loeffler, one of the richest members of Congress, has also come under fire for her stock trades. As Mother Jones reported last month, "On January 24, just three weeks into her Senate career, Loeffler attended a private Senate briefing by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control, about the coronavirus threat."

"Afterward, Loeffler continued to publicly downplay the risk from the virus and its economic impact," Mother Jones noted. "But in the three weeks following the meeting, Loeffler and [her husband Jeff] Sprecher made more than 20 stock sales amounting to between $1.25 million and $3.1 million. Loeffler also bought stock in two companies that produce teleworking software."

During a debate earlier this month with Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock, Loeffler was asked directly whether she believes members of Congress should be barred from trading stock while in office.

Loeffler dodged the question, saying, "What's at stake here in this election is the American dream. That's what's under attack."

In addition to prohibiting members of Congress from owning and trading stock, Warren and Jayapal's legislation would also ban lawmakers, cabinet secretaries, federal judges, and other top government officials from serving on corporate boards; impose a lifetime ban on lobbying by former members of Congress; and overhaul the nation's campaign finance system.

"This legislation would dramatically improve some of the greatest systemic weaknesses in our laws and enforcement structures that allow corruption—both illegal and legal—to pervert the powers of government against the people," Liz Hempowicz, director of Public Policy at Project on Government Oversight, said in a statement.


'This Is Atrocious': Congress Crams Language to Criminalize Online Streaming, Meme-Sharing Into 5,500-Page Omnibus Bill


"These types of decisions should never be made in closed-door negotiations between politicians and industry or rushed through as part of some must-pass spending package."


 Published on Monday, December 21, 2020

"When a big bill like this comes together, your job as a lawmaker is to try to get as many of your legislative and funding priorities into the text as possible," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). (Photo: Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

"When a big bill like this comes together, your job as a lawmaker is to try to get as many of your legislative and funding priorities into the text as possible," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). (Photo: Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Lawmakers in Congress are under fire from digital rights campaigners for embedding three controversial changes to online copyright and trademark laws into the must-pass $2.3 trillion legislative package—which includes a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill and a $900 billion Covid-19 relief bill—that could receive floor votes in the House and Senate as early as Monday evening

The punitive provisions crammed into the enormous bill (pdf), warned Evan Greer of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, "threaten ordinary Internet users with up to $30,000 in fines for engaging in everyday activity such as downloading an image and re-uploading it... [or] sharing memes."

While the citizenry had almost no time to process the actual contents of the 5,593 page legislative text, Greer said Monday afternoon that the CASE Act, Felony Streaming Act, and Trademark Modernization Act "are in fact included in the must-pass omnibus spending bill."

As Mike Masnick explained in a piece at TechDirt on Monday:

The CASE Act will supercharge copyright trolling exactly at a time when we need to fix the law to have less trolling. And the felony streaming bill (which was only just revealed last week with no debate or discussion) includes provisions that are so confusing and vague no one is sure if it makes sites like Twitch into felons.

"The fact that these are getting added to the must-pass government funding bill is just bad government," Masnick added. "And congressional leadership should hear about this."

According to Fight for the Future, "More than 20,000 people had called on House and Senate leadership to remove these dangerous and unnecessary provisions from the must-pass bill," yet Congress chose to include them anyway.

"This is atrocious," Greer said in her statement. "We're facing a massive eviction crisis and millions are unemployed due to the pandemic, but congressional leaders could only muster $600 stimulus checks for Covid relief."

And yet, lawmakers "managed to cram in handouts for content companies like Disney?" Greer continued. "The CASE Act is a terribly written law that will threaten ordinary Internet users with huge fines for everyday online activity. It's absurd that lawmakers included these provisions in a must-pass spending bill."

Explaining why the inclusion of these provisions is dangerous, Masnick said "there's a reason [why] copyright is generally controversial." Even "small changes" threaten a "massive impact on... the public's ability to express themselves," he wrote.

As The Verge's Makena Kelly reported:

The CASE Act would create a quasi-judicial tribunal of "Copyright Claims Officers" who would work to resolve infringement claims. As outlined in the bill, copyright holders could be awarded up to $30,000 if they find their creative work being shared online.

Proponents of the CASE Act, like the Copyright Alliance, argue that the bill would make it easier for independent artists to bring about copyright claims without having to endure the lengthy and expensive federal courts process. Still, critics of the bill, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Fight for the Future, argue that the CASE Act could fine ordinary internet users for engaging in everyday online behavior like sharing memes.

Greer echoed Masnick, saying that "we've seen time and time again that changes to copyright law have profound implications for online freedom of expression and human rights."

"Frivolous copyright takedowns are already a huge problem for the next generation of artists and creators, streamers, gamers, and activists," Greer noted, advocating instead for what she called "a fair system that protects human rights and ensures artists are fairly compensated."

Considering how artists and musicians "are suffering immensely during the pandemic," Greer added, "Congress should be working quickly to provide immediate relief, not cramming controversial, poison-pill legislation into budget bills to appease special interests."

The way Congress jammed through these changes "is a total and complete travesty," said Masnick. "People should be mad about this and should hold the congressional leadership of both parties responsible."

Calling on "House and Senate leadership to remove the copyright provisions from the continuing resolution and move them through regular order so we can have transparent and open debate about the right balance," Greer said that "these types of decisions should never be made in closed-door negotiations between politicians and industry or rushed through as part of some must-pass spending package."

'Slap in the Face for People Suffering Across the Country': Critics Slam Watered-Down Covid Relief Deal

"Congress must pass this bill to address the immediate need, but let's be clear: this should be considered a down payment at best."
Published on Monday, December 21, 2020
by Common Dreams

People wait in line to receive donations from the food pantry at the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen on December 15, 2020 in New York City.
 (Photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

In the wake of Sunday night's agreement on a roughly $900 billion Covid-19 relief package that is far smaller than economists say is necessary, progressives argued that the "slap-in-the-face" bill must be passed to help stem the suffering of working-class Americans but that much more will be needed to address the crisis that has claimed more than 300,000 lives and 20 million jobs in the United States so far.

"To say this relief package is a day late and a dollar short is an understatement to say the least," said People's Action director George Goehl in a statement released Sunday night.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his fellow congressional Republicans "prioritized the profits of the 1% over the well-being of everyone else since this pandemic began," Goehl said. "The result is a diluted bill that's barely a Band-Aid, but definitely a slap in the face for people suffering across the country."

"When the history books are written about this pandemic," Goehl added, McConnell and the GOP "will be remembered as heartless souls who played politics with people's lives by blocking life-saving relief for months."

The legislation includes $600 direct cash payments to Americans who earned $75,000 or less in 2019, though that hard-fought-for sum is meager compared to what other OECD countries have allocated to workers, including several nations that subsidized wages by 75% to 100% and didn't have gaps of more than 260 days between relief packages.

In addition, the bill extends paid sick leave benefits and augments jobless benefits by $300 per week for 11 weeks, averting a catastrophic post-Christmas Day scenario in which 12 million people would lose unemployment insurance. It also provides much-needed funding—$10 billion for childcare, $13 billion for nutrition aid, $25 billion in rental assistance, and $82 billion for schools, as Common Dreams reported Sunday.

Progressives defeated the corporate immunity provision McConnell has spent months pushing for, but urgently needed fiscal aid for state and local governments was also cut from the bill.

Although specific details of the agreement are still emerging, the package will reportedly leave out hazard pay for frontline workers while the Washington Post reported Sunday that Republicans extracted tax deductions for "three-martini lunch" expenses "in exchange for... tax credits for low-income families." And, according to Matt Bruenig of the People's Policy Project, the legislation excludes 13.5 million adult dependents.

The bill is "not nothing, but it's obviously inadequate...during an economic meltdown that has been punctuated by mass starvation and intensifying poverty," the Daily Poster's David Sirota wrote Sunday night. "For comparison, only three years ago, Republicans passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut that enriched the wealthiest 1% of households."

Do not let them tell you we don't have enough money for unemployment, robust survival checks, or guaranteed health care.

We do.

We spend it on the military, tax breaks for the rich and three-martini-lunch tax deductions.— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) December 18, 2020

AFSCME president Lee Saunders in a statement released Sunday night called the new Covid-19 relief package "a slap in the face to frontline public services workers—including nurses, first responders, sanitation workers, corrections officers, and others—who have risked their lives and livelihoods during this pandemic."

While the pandemic-driven economic slowdown has led to sharp declines in tax revenue, states and localities do not share the federal government's ability to run deficits. Citing the devastating impact of the crisis on municipal budgets across the country, Saunders pointed out that "already, 1.3 million frontline public service workers have been thanked for their heroism with pink slips, with more than a million more on the chopping block."

"Congress has turned its back on out frontline heroes and the communities they serve," Saunders said, adding that neighborhoods across the country will "pay the price with further job losses and cutbacks in essential services."

The legislation could have been even worse, Goehl pointed out, had it not been for the advocacy of progressive elected officials like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and the Congressional Progressive Caucus as well as "grassroots organizations turning up the heat."

"We fought tooth and nail to get people direct cash payments, even though we know a one-time, $600-per-person check isn't nearly enough to survive," Goehl noted. "We also pushed hard to make sure both extended and enhanced unemployment insurance and direct cash assistance were included instead of pitted against each other. By standing up for workers, we kept corporations accountable by rejecting the corporate liability shield."

Goehl said that "Congress must pass this bill to address the immediate need, but let's be clear: this should be considered a down payment at best."

While the bill extends the CDC eviction moratorium through January 31 and provides $25 billion in emergency rental assistance, "Congress should have done much more to address the housing crisis faced by tens of millions of people," he said. "We need a complete moratorium on evictions, rent and mortgage cancellation, and erasure of pandemic-related housing debts. Rental assistance just means the landlord gets paid with no strings attached, not even a commitment not to evict the tenant next month if they take the money."

In addition, the People's Action director emphasized the need for "funding for state and local governments to prevent deep cuts to essential local programs, services, and the workforce."

Alluding to the significance of the January 5 runoff contests in Georgia that will determine which party controls the Senate, Goehl said progressives should be "ready to fight for robust relief and economic recovery under President-elect Biden."

Sirota cautioned that "if Democrats don't win the Georgia Senate races and gain control of the upper chamber... it will almost certainly become far harder to pass emergency relief bills through Congress."

With Biden in the White House, Sirota said, the GOP will have "an even bigger incentive to try to starve the country for their own political gain."
Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.