Jesús Santrich Explored the Utopian Origins of Marxist and Bolivarian Ideologies

BY W. T. WHITNEY

 AUGUST 27, 2021

COUNTERPUNCH
Facebook

TwitterRedditEmail

Colombian Army commandos on May 17, 2021 killed Jesús Santrich, a 30 -year veteran of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The ambush took place in Zulia Province, in northeastern Venezuela; six others died. Santrich was a spokesperson for the FARC negotiating team in the talks in Havana with Colombia’s government that resulted in a peace agreement in 2016.

Santrich went into hiding in 2019 for two reasons. The killing of FARC combatants was continuing after the Agreement and he was at risk of being extradited to the United States on false drug charges. He joined the “Second Marquetalia,” an offshoot of the original FARC insurgency that was returning to armed conflict.

Santrich’s  22 -page essay, written in 2009 in honor of legendary FARC commander Manuel Marulanda, carries the title:  “Bolivarianism and Marxism – a Commitment to the Impossible” (Bolivarismo y marxismo,un compromiso con lo imposible.) There, Santrich examines the utopian underpinnings of the Marxist movement and the liberation struggles of Simón Bolívar.

He offers a long-term, visionary perspective that, in our era, is often lacking in anti-imperialist and socialist theorizing. The blunted response of progressives and radicals to recent developments in U.S. hybrid wars involving Colombia, Haiti, and Cuba is a case in point. Looking far afield, Santrich calls for political leadership and a mode of struggle that attend to the future, embrace larger purposes, and rest on commitment.

His words

In his essay, Santrich writes about Simon Bolivar, the continental fight for independence from Spain, the FARC’s early years, leadership qualities of Manuel Marulanda, pioneer socialists of the French Revolution; Bolivar’s teacher Simón Rodríguez, and more. Along the way, Santrich offers ideas that, taken seriously, would strengthen revolutionary endeavors now. What follows are excerpts taken from his essay.

For example: “Marxists must keep utopia foremost in their consciousness. It drives mass actions. They must assume that a revolutionary movement, whatever its origins, doesn’t qualify as such if it lacks that component manifesting as irrepressible effort towards change categorized as ‘impossible.’ But utopia must always take off from a basis in realty. We humans have the duty to regard the world we want as another world that’s possible. Paraphrasing Bolívar, we are looking for the “impossible,” while leaving the possible up to everyone else, every day …

He continues: “To declare oneself Bolivarian and, as such, declare oneself a revolutionary on the Marxist path implies lifelong motivation derived from the hope of transforming society and finding justice. This is a constant and is strong enough with its broad vision as to point to utopia as a characteristic of political consciousness and the natural result of rational belief.”

He adds: “Utopia is a higher goal of commitment. That’s so because even at the beginning, the matter of possibility or impossibility is already uncertain due to extreme difficulties ahead, or uncertain survival of purpose as historical implementation evolves. But like history itself, utopia does not end.”

Moreover, “In the hopeful quest for realization of the “impossible,” the process calls upon a mixture of illusions, realism, magic, and love for people as a reason for life … The essential interest of the utopian is preservation of man and nature in absolute equilibrium, thus displaying the potentials of historical memory, faith, dignity, and our identity as vital factors for existence.

“Confronting oppression and marching on the path of utopia, the revolutionary no longer is resigned. He or she is unconditionally, permanently, and creatively committed to the poor people of the world … Let’s say then that the Marxist-Bolivarian idea of a revolutionary is of someone who fixes on an ideology that, while encompassing reality, is not yet solidified and is perhaps uncertain. The goal is set of becoming absolutely convinced that this reality will be fulfilled, “impossible” though it may seem….

“The author of the Communist Manifesto, appealing to selfless purpose, was calling for struggle offering the possibility of risks. … Marx was calling for action needing to pass a test of fire in the face of historical commitment prompted by circumstances, even at the risk of death. He was clarifying a concept of living, whose own ethics intermeshed with the dialectics of reality that was moving, but always toward the future. …”

Santrich speculates further: “This kind of thinking envisions Marxists and Bolivarians alike as rising up, in our world, to the level of magical realism. And why not? Magical realism goes beyond mere rationalism. We have symbols, imagination, and creativity – all based on rich traditions rooted in indigenous experience in the Americas. It’s founded also on the syncretism of our mixed and oppressed mestizo peoples. Playing out, this proposition looks toward installing social justice, that is to say, accomplishes what’s ideal for the benefit of humankind.”

The stakes are high: “Perhaps one of the most fateful legacies for revolutionaries is apprehension on facing the danger that imperialism poses for the very existence of the planet with its catastrophic kind of developmentalism. In the face of great challenges, great resolve is necessary, really a triple boldness: action that overcomes determinism; recovery of the role of subjectivity, passion, audacity, and recklessness; and faith in the initiative of the masses, as they face the immediate prospect of “defeat.” In such circumstances, uncertainty and silence are worth nothing. …

“What’s in play is the very survival of the human species, of life, of nature in general, all put at risk through the destructive power of capitalism. But we will not idle around patiently waiting for an automatic end to capitalism and for a communist alternative automatically to flourish. Humanity’s conscious intervention is necessary. It’s our immediate duty. Revolutionaries must connect utopia with liberation practice, at whatever cost …”

Meanwhile, on the ground

The response of anti-imperialists to recent developments in Haiti, Colombia, and Cuba would have gained force, it seems, if they had nurtured far-reaching aspirations, in the manner of Santrich. Statements have been scarce and without focus. Action plans are missing. One looks in vain for an expanded frame of reference – in these instances, just as with larger problems like exploitation, plunder and militarization.

President Jovenal Moïse of Haiti was assassinated on July 7, presumably the result of rivalry among Haitian oligarchs, which apparently suits U.S. needs for a weak Haitian state. All but two of the 28 perpetrators were former Colombian army regulars, now employed as mercenary soldiers. Several had received U.S. training. Colombia mercenaries have engaged militarily in the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Afghanistan and Dubai,Honduras, Venezuela and elsewhere. Two of the assailants were Haitians living in Florida.

CTU Security, a Florida company owned by right-wing Venezuelan émigre Antonio Intriago arranged for the assassination.  Miami – based Intriago has ties to regressive Colombian President Ivan Duque; to Juan Guaidó, the U. S. puppet  president of Venezuela; and to Christian Sanon, a Haitian physician living in Florida and seeking to be president of Haiti. Intriago’s company in 2018 carried out a drone attack against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The Cessna four-passenger plane owned by Helidosa company in the Dominican Republic is emblematic of imperialism’s convoluted presence in the region.  Intriago, Sanon, and two others traveled to Haiti on that plane to be on hand at the assassination. After surgical care in Florida for wounds suffered during the attack,Martine Moïse, the assassinated president’s widow, returned to Haiti on the same airplane. In 2019, that plane transported right-wing Venezuelans to Barbados for negotiations with President Nicolas Maduro’s representatives, and did so again the following year with Juan Guaidó aboard.

The U.S. blockade of Cuba comes into view. Campaigning in 2020, President Biden assured voters he would ease the blockade restrictions on Cuba imposed by Donald Trump. Biden has added new sanctions. For 60 years, the U.S. government has blockaded Cuba in order to cause suffering there. Suffering is mounting now due to sanctions and adverse health and economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic

On July 27 Biden met with Cuban-American elected officials in his office. He stated that, “I want Cuban Americans to know that we … hear the cries of freedom coming from the island … We’ve brought to bear the strength of our diplomacy, rallying nations to speak out and increase pressure on the regime.”

Correlations

The narrative of these recent events contributes little to an indictment against power structures that might have been meaningful enough to fuel a sustained political counterattack. Such an outcome would have required mobilization already in place of a sizable anti-imperialist movement. The necessary ingredient for that is collective motivation based on the hopes, aspirations, and ideals of victims and their allies. It’s missing.

Instead, U.S. progressives are reduced to criticizing the opportunism of President Biden as he unabashedly seeks electoral advantage in Florida. Or, in the case of Haiti, many apparently are blind to the association of ungovernability there with the priorities of U.S. capitalism. They are prey to reports of political corruption, profiteering, and street protests as characterizing Haiti’s situation. In dealing with Cuba and Haiti, it seems, far too many are distracted, pessimistic, and oblivious to the future.

It could have been otherwise. Jesús Santrich defined characteristics of political leadership and permanent mobilization that enable unified struggle and revolutionary optimism. He conceived of a political movement answering to the subjective needs of oppressed peoples. Doing so, he offered them license to come together in fulfillment of aspirations – against all odds. The current situations of Cuba and Haiti could have been folded into that context.

Santrich draws upon a world off limits to multitudes of suffering people, to their great disadvantage. His perspective, that of attending to longings that seem impossible, is uncommon in our time. It represents an essential dimension of struggle. Santrich was in good company. We remember:

Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, 1871 – “The Commune, they explain, intends to abolish property, the basis of all civilization! [Marx replies:] Yes, gentlemen, the Commune [aims] at the expropriation of the expropriators. [They reply:] But this is communism, “impossible communism! [Says Marx:] “If cooperative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the capitalist system …what else, gentlemen, would it be but communism, “possible” communism.”

José Mariátegui, founder of the Peruvian Communist Party, 1928 – “We certainly don’t want socialism in America to be a copy or tracing. It must be a heroic creation. We have to give life to Indian-American socialism with our own reality, in our own language.”

Ernesto Che Guevara, Socialism and Man in Cuba, 1965 – “[I]n moments of great peril it is easy to muster a powerful response with moral incentives. Retaining their effectiveness, however, requires the development of a consciousness in which there is a new scale of values. Society as a whole must be converted into a gigantic school.”

Fidel Castro (as recalled by Raul Castro) – “in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra, on Dec. 18, [1956], with seven rifles and a fist full of combatants, [he] stated, ’Now we have won the war!’”

The author translated the excerpts appearing here. Santrich’s entire essay may be read, in Spanish, at https://rebelion.org/bolivarismo-y-marxismo-un-compromiso-con-lo-imposible/

 

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.

Roaming Charges: Hour of the Goat

BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

COUNTERPUNCH

AUGUST 27, 2021

Facebook

TwitterRedditEmai

Baphomet drawing by Éliphas Lévi. From Dogme et Ritual de la Haute Magie by Éliphas Lévi (G. Baillière, Paris, 1861)

+ Televangelist Jim Bakker: “How can you go to church and pray when you’re wearing a mask? Do you think God can hear your prayers through a mask?” Is this the beginning of a doctrinal schism with Franklin Graham, who said yesterday that Jesus would oppose government background checks for guns because Almighty and All-Seeing God knows what’s in everyone’s heart and was doing the background checks himself?

+ So Nietzsche was wrong. God isn’t dead. He’s just deaf.

+ Woman at the Trump rally in Alabama (which has the lowest vaccination rate in the country), after Trump recommended getting the vaccine…”I think it is time where God is separating the sheep from the goats. I’m a goat. Because I am not a sheep. I’m not doing what they tell me to do. I’m fighting against it (the vaccine).”

+ There’s been a remarkable transformation in Christian cosmology. Lambs used to be the flock of Jesus, the good shepherd, and goats were the Satanic symbol of yielding to lustful temptation.

+ The relevant passage is in Matthew, where Jesus sets the sheep on the Right and the goats on the Left and orders the goats to “depart into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes & you did not clothe me, I was sick & in prison and you did not look after me.”

+ Those antinomian goats expelled by Jesus sound like they provided the template for Stephen Miller’s political program.

+ Here’s a list of the prohibited items at the Trump rally in Alabama last weekend. In other words, you can wear a mask, but you can’t bring your sidearm? You can bring your gun everywhere, even Church, except to a Trump rally? Is there a constitutional footnote, awaiting discovery in a dicta by that beer-swilling brat Brett Kavanaugh, that sanctions this intrusion into our Jesus-anointed right to carry? As for the prohibition on balls, they wouldn’t want to embarrass Trump.

+ I’m no fan of Patton, who was overrated as a general and underrated as a sadist, but it would have taken him about 5 seconds to slap the shit out of Don Jr.

READ ON  Roaming Charges: Hour of the Goat - CounterPunch.org

Afghanistan Redux: Malala Yousafzai, White Feminism and Saving Afghan Women

BY FAWZIA AFZAL-KHAN

 AUGUST 27, 2021

COUNTERPUNCH
Facebook

TwitterRedditEmail

Photograph Source: Afghanistan Matters – CC BY 2.0

So the usual “experts” are out and about on airwaves, in newsprint and social media, offering their punditry regarding the what where how who now what's of the situation unfolding in Afghanistan even as the US-backed government crumpled like a house of cards with the advance of the Taliban, once the US troops started their announced pullback in earnest after 20 years of occupation a few weeks ago.  The shock-and-awe tactics of the Bush doctrine that dragged the world into a post 9/11 horror picture show euphemistically known as the War on Terror (in truth, it was intended– and has been experienced by its globally-dispersed victims, as a war OF terror)—seemed appropriately reverse-engineered as the world was treated to images of ordinary Afghans, a 17 year old aspiring soccer star amongst them—plunging to spectacularly shocking deaths as they fell from the tail of a US Air Force plane they had clung to as it took off, carrying a few hundred of their “luckier” countryfolk to the putative “safety” of the West.

Whilst I refuse to wear the mantle of expertise here— well cognizant —as Rafia Zakaria has put it well in a recent book[1]–of how, in the West,  “the emphasis on expertise becomes a kind of gatekeeping of power that locks out [certain, though not all] people of color, as well as working-class people, migrants” and others (p. 8), I remain equally skeptical of the ways in which the category of “experience” (too often a stand-in for “third world/global south authenticity”)–is mobilized as a counter to expertise. I am not convinced (as Zakariya seems to argue) that claiming your “voice”—in the case of brown and black women for example, even when that process of “voicing” genuinely seeks to interrupt the hegemony of white feminism and its epistemological influence on our world—necessarily and always proffers a more transparent working through, and hence redistribution of, power politics. For this latter progressive political vision to take hold, one needs a clearer understanding of what’s at stake, of who or what the levers of control and domination are, and a willingness to embrace the politics of affiliation over the tribal politics of identity. Only then might a blueprint evolve for challenging structural barriers to a better and more equal world.

The case at hand that prevents me from an unqualified rooting for the category of “experience,” is the exemplary case of Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, who has traversed the distance from female “experience” to feminist “expertise”, and who, like others before (and since) that have made that journey from the “margins” to the “center” of imperial power, has now switched from being a “voice of the oppressed” to becoming an “expert” who can speak to us and teach us about those authentic “other” women in the global south—in this case, Afghan women– to whom her prior proximity (“experience”)– renders her an “expert” on today. From experience to expertise then, is a pretty straightforward line, following the predictable path forged also by white feminism in thrall and service to imperial designs past and present. This is the path that was announced with great fanfare shortly after 9/11 by First Lady Laura Bush and enthusiastically supported by the Feminist Majority Foundation, that would “save brown women from brown men” by going in to the “backward” country of Afghanistan overrun by crazy “Moslem” men, in the process unleashing a 20-year war on the population that had had nothing to do with 9/11. The initial military intervention was then followed up over the next two decades with countless “development” schemes that enriched a few at the expense of the many, and when the cost of this unending war became unpopular with the citizenry “back home” in the USA over time—we left the hapless “natives” that included those very women we had been so concerned with “saving,” at the mercy of anarchy and chaos.

It is against this backdrop of “expertise” (represented back then by policy feminists such as those at the helm of the Feminist Majority Foundation who supported the war in Afghanistan ostensibly to “save” those poor brown Muslim women from the Taliban)–that the “voice” of Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan who was shot at by the Pakistani branch of the Taliban for wanting to attend school—needs to be understood and assessed when she speaks today in the aftermath of that war. Obviously, the spill-over effects of the 20-year war into neighboring Pakistan negatively affected Malala herself (she almost died because of the Taliban attack upon her), but those same circumstances also helped her ascend to worldwide fame, leading her to being read/seen as the “voice of experience” (by western feminists and policy makers), whose “voice” could then be mobilized in service of several of the goals of the continuing War on Terror.  Because she was “rescued” by the British govt after being shot, one could say she crossed over into the realm of “expertise”—a brown Muslim woman today ostensibly speaking for/on behalf of the Afghan women facing another reign of terror with the Taliban, when she tells her readers (without a hint of irony) in the NYT op-ed essay entitled “I Fear for My Afghan Sisters,” (NYT Aug 22, p 5),  that she “cannot help but be grateful for my life now.”

Please don’t misunderstand me: I am not saying anyone should begrudge this brave young woman a second chance at life, for brave she was in defying the Taliban fanatics who would then (and now we presume)—deny women and girls a chance at education and autonomy in leading their lives. What does, however, bear scrutiny is the degree to which the “escape” route permitted to young brown women like Malala can ever enact a politics of feminist solidarity that bypasses the kind of “empowerment” feminism that remains allied to white liberal imperialist formations; that is, can brown women whose experience allows them a leg up into the realm of expertise usually reserved for white women, ever translate into a feminism for the 99%? Or is their “experience” simply another nail to hammer into our heads the state-sponsored feminism celebrating the individualist ethos of success, of “empowerment” which is aimed at further advancing the interests of the top 1%? Do these “voices of the (formerly) oppressed” now just become fodder for advancing the same old stories about breaking glass ceilings and joining old (white) boy networks in the pursuit of “equality”? Thus, when Malala says

After graduating from college last year and starting to carve out my own career path I cannot imagine losing it all—going back to a life defined for me by men with guns.

one has to shake one’s head with a different type of desperation. Whereas her Afghan “sisters” have indeed much to fear at the hands of gun-toting Taliban leaders if the past is any indication, Malala seems to have entirely missed the irony that her “freedom” is now in the hands of another set of gun-toting men: white imperialist invaders/drone attackers of lands like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and so on. Further, her “cure” for the world’s women is to give them access to education in order to enable them—like herself—to lead independent lives whose definition of “freedom” and “success” is measured in carving out individuated “career paths.” Malala Yousafzai, in this instance, becomes the avatar of all those “It” girls of consumer-oriented white western feminism, that Angela Mcrobbie has written about in her  book on the Aftermath of Feminism, in which she theorizes the loss of feminist subjectivity in Britain, a feminist sensibility arising out of a socialist ideology that could have served as the basis of solidarity across race, class and cultures, but which, as one reviewer points out is  “now entrenched in a post-feminist neo-liberal capitalist global economy.” Unfortunately, Malala’s “voice”– her “experiential” advantage– has been turned into its opposite in this capitalist neocolonial economic model that extracts what is of use to it and puts it to a different purpose to serve its own agendas. In short—she is now serving at the behest of her “handlers”—the white feminists who once again are poised to “save brown women from brown men.” [2]

Notes.

[1] Rafia Zakariya, Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption. WW. Norton and Co., 2021.

[2] I have elsewhere argued that the “Malala effect” enables a “politics of pity.” By this I mean– as Wendy Hesford in Spectacular Rhetorics has explained about the role of the kind of rhetoric celebrating Malala’s spectacular “escape” from the clutches of the Taliban in 2012– that this type of “recognition”  “activates certain cultural and national narratives and social and political relations” that produce differential power relations. Such a “recognition of the pitiable/different other” then leads to an argument for the governance of those visibilized through such rhetorical codes as“human rights subjects,” who need “our” help. “Spectacular rhetorics” as theorized by Wendy Hesford (as well as Lillie Chouliarki), thus produces and circulates images of “suffering others” (in this case, Afghan women as victims)—leading western audiences of these images to feel “pity” for these victimized women and hence to allying with the “white savior/rescue” narrative.

Fawzia Afzal-Khan is University Distinguished Scholar at Montclair State University in NJ. Her latest book is Siren Song:Understanding Pakistan Though it’s Women Singers. She can be reached at:  fak0912@yahoo.com

Facebook posts stated on August 23, 2021 in a Facebook post:

“FDA approval means nothing when you realize the FDA also approves pesticides in our food!"

In this Aug. 4, 2009, file photo, a crop duster sprays a field of crops just outside Headland, Ala. (AP)


By Jason Asenso

August 27, 2021

Fact-checking a claim about the FDA’s role in approving pesticides in food

The EPA sets limits on pesticide residue in food, while the FDA monitors the food supply and enforces the limits.

The Pfizer vaccine was approved after meeting the FDA’s standards for vaccine safety.
See the sources for this fact-check

After the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave final approval to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, a health and wellness Facebook group shared a post that seeks to discredit the agency.

"FDA approval means nothing when you realize the FDA also approves pesticides in our food!" the Aug. 23 post said.

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

The post implies that since the FDA allows pesticides in food, people shouldn’t trust the agency’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine. But that misrepresents the role of the FDA in regulating pesticides, and ignores the scientific processes that go into vaccine approval decisions.
How the FDA approves vaccines

The post uses a misleading claim about pesticide regulation to argue that FDA approval means nothing. That’s not the case. Full approval by the FDA means that the agency has high confidence in the safety, effectiveness and quality of a drug.

On Aug. 23, the FDA approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for people 16 and older. The vaccine was previously used under emergency use authorization, a designation that still applies for people between 12 and 15.

"While this and other vaccines have met the FDA’s rigorous, scientific standards for emergency use authorization, as the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine, the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product," acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a press release.

Although the COVID-19 vaccines were already deemed safe and effective with the emergency use authorization, full approval means that businesses and schools may have more leeway to require the Pfizer vaccine, and the shot can stay on the market beyond the health emergency.

The FDA says the approval process includes an analysis of the condition and available treatments, assessment of benefits and risks through manufacturer-provided data, and strategies for managing risks associated with the drug.

The road to FDA approval starts with a vaccine undergoing three different phases of clinical trials, according to University of Chicago Medicine. Each phase of the trial increases the number of participants and the scope of what researchers look for.

Vaccine manufacturers then have to submit a Biologics License Application to the FDA, which includes data from clinical and non-clinical trials, technical information, labeling information, and more. In Pfizer’s case, this application built upon the extensive data submitted to support its emergency use authorization.

Pfizer submitted its application for full FDA approval in May 2021, and it was the fastest FDA approval of a vaccine ever.

FEATURED FACT-CHECK

Viral image
stated on August 2, 2021 in a viral image
It’s safer to be unvaccinated than vaccinated against COVID-19.

By Tom Kertscher • August 4, 2021

"The public and medical community can be confident that although we approved this vaccine expeditiously, it was fully in keeping with our existing high standards for vaccines in the U.S.," said Peter Marks, the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
The FDA and pesticides

Regulation of pesticides in the food supply is shared between the Environmental Protection Agency and the FDA. The regulations concern the safety of the pesticides used in growing food, and how much pesticide residue can remain on food without causing harm. This residue is often measured in parts per million.

Simply put, the EPA sets the allowable limits on pesticide residue that would be safe for human consumption, and the FDA is responsible for enforcing these limits. The limits apply to food that’s imported or grown in the U.S.

In setting the limits, the EPA examines factors such as the pesticide’s toxicity, how much growers apply and how it breaks down.

One way the FDA enforces these limits is through its Pesticide Residue Monitoring Program, which tests a variety of food samples every year to see whether they meet federal guidelines for over 800 pesticides and chemicals.

"Very small amounts of pesticides that may remain in or on fruits, vegetables, grains, and other foods decrease considerably as crops are harvested, transported, exposed to light, washed, prepared and cooked," EPA spokesperson Tim Carroll said. "The EPA agrees with experts who recommend consuming a varied diet that includes many fruits and vegetables, and washing them first with plain water to remove dirt, bacteria and pesticide residues."

Under law, the EPA is also required to reevaluate the safety of existing pesticides, although that doesn’t mean the agency isn’t subject to political and industry pressures.

In 2017, then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt rejected the agency’s recommendation to ban using chlorpyrifos on food, a pesticide linked to neurological damage in children.

This year, the EPA reversed the decision and announced that it would ban the pesticide, but it will take time to phase out its use on food completely.
Our ruling

A Facebook post claimed that "FDA approval means nothing when you realize the FDA also approves pesticides in our food!"

The FDA does not approve pesticides in food. The EPA sets limits for safe levels of pesticide residue on food, and the FDA monitors the food supply to enforce the limits.

The FDA’s approval process for vaccines begins with three phases of clinical trials to establish their safety and efficacy, and a review of data from clinical and non-clinical trials along with other supporting documentation.

We rate this claim Mostly False.

Covid Strikes Back

BY EVE OTTENBERG

AUGUST 27, 2021

COUNTERPUNCH
Facebook

TwitterRedditEmail

Anybody with a brain knows Trump loused up the U.S. covid response, causing hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. But lots of thinking people don’t want to admit that Biden made some mistakes too. This is natural, given his astonishing success in vaccinating roughly 200 million people in a matter of months. But when confronted with the life-and-death decision to suspend covid vaccine patents, Biden failed to press presidential muscle into the struggle. True, he publicly supported breaking the patents. But then German Prime Minister Angela Merkel so conveniently said no, and he caved. He didn’t have to. Moderna took plenty of taxpayer cash. Had Biden abrogated the patent and allowed India, China and other countries access to mRNA technology, they would have produced cheap generics, and billions of people in poor countries would have received the vaccine. That, in turn, would have constricted the viral pool in which the disease mutates. But Biden didn’t, and now we’ve got kids on ventilators thanks to the delta variant.

To be fair, Biden lacked the time to stop delta, which first surfaced in India in December 2020. But he could have slowed it. If billions, instead of hundreds of millions of people got the vaccine – which Biden could have ensured – that would have spared the world much misery. And who’s to say covid is done? Multitudes, nearly whole countries in the Global South aren’t vaccinated, as the virus entrenches itself, becoming endemic. It could be mutating as you read these words. In fact, it probably is. The next variant could be worse. It could be a killer, whether you’re vaccinated or not. All we can do is tip the odds in our favor by inoculating the world. But our leaders refuse. Because that involves transgressing the neoliberal shibboleth that no matter what, government never interferes with corporate profits.

Before new, vaccine-resistant mutations clobber us, it’s worth noting that the delta variant is bad enough. It severely sickens young people. Its incubation period is shorter – three or four days. It smashes through the vaccine and infects people who thought they couldn’t get sick. And it’s a killer. A killer of unvaccinated people in their 20s and 30s. Hospitals in Florida, Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas are overrun. It’s only a matter of time before deaths of the unvaccinated mushroom.

So not breaching the patents was a venal, deadly error. That wasn’t the only mistake. Telling vaccinated Americans they could go maskless back in May, as the CDC did, was catastrophically stupid, because, as it turned out, everybody, whether vaccinated or not, can spread the disease. Not granting full FDA approval for many months after the vaccine’s emergency use authorization was a gargantuan blunder, enabling the anti-vax excuse for not getting the shot that mRNA technology was too new, too experimental – when in fact it’s been around for 20 years – to sink deep roots in red-states. Declaring U.S. independence from covid on July 4, as Biden did, so that millions of Americans gathered for cookouts, in groups, without masks, catapulted the virus’ infection rate into the stratosphere.

And remember, we’re not talking about old covid anymore – we’re talking about delta, which busts through vaccines to slam folks in the hospital, a variant which kills 20-year-olds, a mutation so contagious that in Arkansas since April, cases of pediatric covid skyrocketed by 650 percent. Who in their right mind wants to send their child to school with this threat? Especially in districts where idiotically doctrinaire right-wing politicos ban mask mandates? I sure wouldn’t. If I still had a five-year-old at home, I’d keep that kid out of school until he or she could get vaccinated.

In the U.S. since July, the infection rate soared by 700 percent, by far most of that rise among the unvaccinated. That ballooning infection rate – covid’s almost as contagious as chicken pox – is thanks mostly to states like Texas, Florida and North Dakota, led by blind, free-market ideologues, incapable of grasping their governmental responsibility to protect public health. But thanks to delta, things grimly spiraled down elsewhere too, even in highly vaccinated locales. Remember the mass Provincetown outbreak in July? Hundreds of vaccinated partiers got sick.

The CDC reports 8000 breakthrough cases “resulting in severe disease or death,” CNN said on August 19. Roughly 35,000 vaccinated people per week in the U.S. “are having symptomatic breakthrough infections,” the Washington Post announced on July 30, but still managed to sound upbeat: “Turning covid-19 into a nuisance cold instead of a potentially fatal pneumonia was the main goal of the shots.” Main goal? What about eradicating a killer virus before it mutates into a mega-killer virus? Well, our fearless leaders cowered before big pharma, swore fealty to its profits and didn’t dare break the patents. So herd immunity ain’t happening.

My guess is the Biden team, desperate for a win on covid, thought they had it with the vaccine and plowed ahead, prematurely ditching mitigations, in order to scoop up votes from fanatically anti-mask Amuricans. This was a fool’s errand. Those anti-mask imbeciles consider a centrist like Biden a socialist and a leftish senator like Bernie Sanders a wild-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth communist. The Dems will never corral those votes and should abandon the effort. Better to cement the loyalty of the progressive base – rather than high-handedly assuming they have nowhere else to go and so can be safely ignored, a recipe that ensures left-leaning Dems stay home on election day.

The real question, raised in an August 15 Information Clearing House article by Finnian Cunningham is, will covid doom the U.S. empire? More specifically, yours truly would add, will covid fatally ravage American capitalism, a system of organized economic savagery uniquely incapable of dealing with a plague?

The answer is not reassuring, even for those of us who would be happy to see an end to our brutal plutocracy. Because even if the leopard changed its spots, and the titans of American finance went all in on public health and controlling covid, it would be too late. American capitalist mind-control already hypnotized tens of millions of anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers and the vaccine-hesitant, who believe drivel about personal choice in the face of a killer virus. These dimwits cannot be persuaded to abandon their lethal hobbyhorse. So they will continue to get sick, spread the virus and die. They will infect the vaccinated, and then the virus will mutate into more potent strains. The plague-infested dystopia, along with the agonizing social collapse pestilence causes, envisioned in Jim Crace’s The Pesthouse – that’s what may await us.

China adapted far better to this emergency, as Cunningham comments. That’s because central planning more easily accommodates the demands of public health. Chinese leaders made decisions about covid without one eye on the whims of financial tycoons and slaughterhouse moguls. They locked down sanely – when necessary. And, most critically of all, during lockdowns, they supported their idled workers with money. Thus people rationally trust that their government has their back.

Here in the U.S., covid threw lots of people out of work and straight into poverty, while Trump locked down ambivalently, in fits and starts. My guess is that if we need a lockdown again, Biden won’t even consider it. Under Trump there was little financial support from government for the abruptly unemployed and when later Biden did try to provide federal benefits, dogmatic right-wing republican governors sabotaged the effort by refusing the cash.

So lots of Americans soured on public health restrictions, associating them with penury. But, as Cunningham observes, “the problem is not the practice of public health policy per se, it is the practice of public health policy in a capitalist society where there is little support for furloughed workers.” So workers in the U.S. faced a lousy choice at the height of the pandemic – starve or get sick and possibly die. Workers in China would rightly consider this barbaric. And so would their leaders.

This is not to say China doesn’t have its problems, it does. But when it comes to surviving covid, China excels, with only a few thousand deaths in a population of 1.4 billion. Meanwhile, the U.S. has 630,000 deaths and counting among its 330 million people. So the answer to the question posed by Cunningham is a qualified yes: the global empire will probably slowly crumble, and most of the world’s people will be the better for it. Far grimmer is the fate that awaits those of us who dwell in the imperial core, specifically those who inhabit regions hostile to inoculation. There, we’re looking at years of plague, as it burns, uncontrolled, through the population – IF large numbers of people remain unvaccinated. Social disintegration will follow, at times languidly, at times in a deadly rush.

If new, resistant strains mutate, then it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame, and we could very well strike out. But even just with delta, big pieces of the country crumble and circle the drain. This is inevitable if covid is not brought to heel. It can be done. China did it. South Korea did it. Vietnam and New Zealand did it. But first the neoliberal ideologues who rule this country have to be sent packing.

Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest book is Birdbrain. She can be reached at her website.

• Record Plastic Prices May Go ‘Stratospheric’ on Gulf Coast Storm

Kevin Crowley, Bloomberg News

BC-Record-Plastic-Prices-May-Go-‘Stratospheric’-on-Gulf-Coast-Storm , Kevin Crowley

(Bloomberg) -- Record plastic prices are poised to push even higher as a storm that’s forecast to evolve into a major hurricane bears down on the U.S. Gulf Coast region that manufactures almost 20% of the world’s ethylene.

Tropical Storm Ida is strengthening and by the time it slams into Louisiana on Sunday afternoon is expected to be packing winds of 115 miles per hour (185 kph). That puts chemical plants owned by Exxon Mobil Corp., Dow Inc. and others squarely in the bull’s-eye, threatening supplies of polymers used in everything from shampoo bottles to water pipes.   

Gulf Coast contracts for polypropylene, high-density polyethylene and PVC already are trading at all-time highs in the aftermath of a deadly February freeze amid brisk demand for consumer goods. 

Polypropylene, which is used in furniture, cleaning products and carpet, could jump almost 45% to $4,000 a metric ton if a significant amount of supply is taken offline for more than three weeks, according Jeremy Pafford, head of North America market development at data provider ICIS. 

“Long-term outages induced by tropical weather could fuel stratospheric price rises that downstream supply chains and consumers cannot easily afford,” Pafford said. “With the majority of U.S. commodity plastic resin capacity stationed on the Texas and Louisiana coasts, one devastating hit could bring months’ worth of polyethylene, polypropylene and/or polystyrene shortages.”

Further reading:

• Gulf Coast Natural Gas Production Falls Ahead of Hurricane Ida
• U.S. Gas Extends Rally as Storm Threatens Gulf of Mexico Supply
• U.S. Gulf of Mexico Oil Producers Shut Assets as Ida Nears
• Ida Aims Hurricane Strike at Louisiana on Katrina’s Anniversary

America’s petrochemical hub has spent much of this year trying to recover from extended shutdowns stemming from the February storm. The supply crunch was compounded by surging demand for manufactured goods and packaging. Global shipping constraints also hampered chemical supply chains, boosting prices. 

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

James Webb Space Telescope is ready to ship to its launch site

Shane McGlaun - Aug 27, 2021, 5:32am CD

NASA has confirmed the James Webb Space Telescope has successfully completed all of its testing. With the final tests complete, the telescope is being prepared to be shipped to its launch site. Engineers at Northrop Grumman completed the extensive test regime on the telescope designed to ensure Webb is completely operational once it reaches orbit.

Webb is the most complicated space-based observatory in the world and is expected to be a significant upgrade to current orbiting telescopes such as the Hubble. Now that testing is complete, shipping operations are underway to get the telescope safely to its launch location in Kourou, French Guiana.

Its path to the launch site will include traveling through the Panama Canal. NASA expects shipping preparations to be completed in September. Webb program manager Gregory L Robinson says the team behind the telescope has been “tremendously dedicated,” and they’re excited to see the telescope be on its way to begin its science mission.

As shipping operations are underway, testing on other supporting aspects for the telescope mission are currently being conducted. For example, teams at the Mission Operations Center for the telescope in Baltimore are currently checking the communications network the telescope will use in space. The network recently demonstrated the capability to send commands to the spacecraft.



The team is also conducting live launch rehearsals in preparation for launch day. When the telescope arrives at its launch site, it will be configured for flight. The configuration involves various checks to ensure there was no damage during transportation. Webb will also have its propellant tanks fueled to power its thrusters to help maintain orbit. Once Webb is in orbit, it will proceed through a six-month commissioning process. After commissioning is over and assuming everything is functioning as expected, the telescope will be ready to begin its science mission.