All lives, rich and poor, matter

By Carlton Joseph

As the world welcomes the New Year. I want to impress upon our readers that many of the problems of the last year are still with us and that the solutions we implement are loaded with their own problems.  I will discuss the issues that have serious implications for our Democracy, our Health and our First Amendment Rights.

COVID-19 is still with us and although we have a couple of emergency approved vaccines, people’s attitudes and the constant flow of lies (misinformation) is making it difficult to stop the infection and death rates. Also,  a new report finds as many as nine  out of ten people in dozens of poorer countries could miss out on the coronavirus vaccine until at least 2022, because wealthy countries, including the United States, are hoarding enough doses to vaccinate their entire populations between three and five times over. 

Finally, the British judge blocked the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States, saying he would not be safe in a U.S. prison due to his deteriorated mental state.  I welcome the decision because I believe that journalist’s first amendment rights should be protected and holding him criminally responsible for acts that journalists engage in daily, is wrong.  However, the judge’s decision largely endorses the U.S. prosecution theory, and leaves the door open for the prosecution of journalists globally.

Let’s discuss our democracy.  Because of the Democratic majority in the House and the lack of a majority to overturn the results in the Senate, the attempts to overturn the election has no chance of succeeding, but it challenges the integrity of the US political system, emboldens Trump and paves the way for a more sophisticated and intelligent narcissist, in the future, to seize power. 

The release of  a stunning telephone conversation between Trump and Georgia’s GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger escalated the constitutional crisis.Said Trump : “So look, all I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780

votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”  Fortunately, the secretary did not succumb to presidential power.

Yesterday, the attempt by Republicans to disrupt the certification of Biden’s win was disrupted when Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and stopped Congress from counting the Electoral College results. The mob breached security and successfully entered the building, and one person was shot.

My hope is that this act of treason by Trump and his supporters would inform Republican enablers that undermining America’s democracy is not something to be used to further their political interest. The proverb “When you play with fire you will get burned” is relevant to this chaos.

Republicans must decide if lawmakers crouching and cowering in the House gallery, protesters sitting at the desk of the Senate president and speaker of the House, hanging off balconies and milling about in tear-gas filled hallways, shattering glass, and looting and destroying offices is acceptable in the support of a potential dictator.

Amidst this insurrection, the Associated Press  rerported  that Democrats swept both seats in Georgia’s critical runoff election giving Democrats control of both houses and the presidency for the first time in 10 years, and its first senators in 40 yearsWarnock is set to become the first black senator for the state and Ossoff would be the Senate’s youngest member. 

The lesson Americans should have learned from last year is that, their health is their wealth.  Canada and the majority of countries in Europe offer universal health care, primarily administered through socialized medicine or a multi-payer

system.  This means that everyone has equal access to quality healthcare that improves the health of patients and that seeking such care would not cause financial harm to those receiving it.  This is not the case in America where the pandemic has exacerbated the challenges for all adults, and exposed the inequalities that place an outsized burden on women and people of color. 

Let’s look at the Judge’s decision.  The reason for the prosecution of Mr. Assange is to criminalize national security journalism, the goal is to make the activities of protecting confidential sources, communicating with them confidentially, cultivating sources and publishing classified secrets, illegal.  Press freedom advocates argue that the case sets a dangerous precedent for prosecuting journalists.  The blocked extradition, due to concern over prison safety rather than press freedom, indicates that this is not the end of the fight for freedom of the press. 

This is the state of affairs as we enter the new year.  Democracy, Our Health and Our Freedom is at stake.   With respect to our health, billions of tax payers’ dollars are funding Pharma companies.  Yet huge pharmaceutical companies are keeping the vaccine research a secret, they’re deciding how many vaccines get made, how much to charge for them, and who gets vaccinated.  We need a vaccine that everyone can have free of charge, no matter where you live or whether you are rich or you’re poor.  North Americans should support the efforts of “The Peoples Vaccine” to make vaccines available to all people at risk.

The current capitalists model is untenable and will leave billions of people behind.  The world’s economy will not grow if the rich countries vaccinate its population and the rest of the world isn’t vaccinated. One cannot trade with people who are sick, or people who have a high level of infections, or have no income.  This a global pandemic, governments must coordinate the global effort to produce more vaccines in India, South Africa, Brazil  and other countries capable of producing the vaccines.

For this effort to be successful, the World Trade Organization (WTO) needs to suspend the trade rule called TRIPS, which is an agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property, the super governance of intellectual property worldwide.  This move will  allow the sharing of technology,  remove the intellectual property barrier, and remove the patents on vaccines.  This will allow other companies to produce the vaccines faster and cheaper to many people around the world.

India and South Africa have suggested that all member countries of the WTO should be exempted from provisions of TRIPS so that everything that we require to survive the pandemic — the masks, the test kits, and especially the vaccines – can be produced.  There is overwhelming support from developing countries for this proposal, but the US, UK and a few other countries, including Brazil, have opposed this proposal. 

The WTO works on consensus, which means that five or six members could stop the process.  The stakes are too high for us to allow this to occur, “We the people” must demand that the WTO approve the proposal.  It is time that the rich countries of the world understand that:  Rich lives Matter, Black and Brown Lives Matter, and that All Lives, Rich and Poor, Matter.