The Fourth of July- Quashing The Independence of Other Countries Day!- What We Now Celebrate: Enough Said?

 

Attaining A New Level of Global Nuclear Weapons Security, Weapons Will Be Purchased For Transfer Away From Belligerent Countries To New Private Peace Keeping Consortium

The Four Bien Guys Peace Project: Bezos, Zukerberg, Gates and Musk

“Blessed are the peacemakers” is what the Bible’s New Testament tells us Jesus told his assembled flock in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:9): “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”  Blessed once were also the “Peacekeepers,” missiles made by Martin Marietta, the LGM-118 being the most modern ICBM in the United States Air Force  inventory (designed primarily for nuclear weapons delivery- one or more thermonuclear warheads, third-generation) for almost 20 years before it was retired in 2005 as a result of arms reduction treaties.

Once we had nuclear weapons called “Peacekeepers”; Now its time for all the nuclear weapons on our earth to all to be called the “Peacemakers,” because that’s what their new owners have decided they will all be renamed upon transfer of title.  And this will signify the purpose of a new plan being executed to attain a new maximum level of procured global nuclear weapons security.  Heretofore, nuclear weapons have all been very undependably held by various belligerent countries, holding those devices out of fear and hostility towards one another.  But this is an inherently dangerous situation and, as recent years have made clear, few things are as unstable as the governments of all the countries across the world, basically each and every one of them: Any madman can be elected to head almost any one of them.  (Let’s leave out the word “almost.”)

Moreover, there is another problem: Nuclear weapons like ICBMs fly through outer space.  As everyone knows, the space race and space exploration has been taken over by the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and their private companies who, for their purposes of being in outer space in the first place, want serenity and order in our starry skies.  Who wants a belligerent nation’s ICBM whizzing past their telecommunications satellite?  Or zooming within impact zones of their lower altitude hovering (LEO- “Low Earth Orbit”) “internet of all things” 5G tracking monitors?  

And things have gotten dangerously worse: The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 set outer space aside for peaceful purposes. For decades, it precluded any nation from deploying weapons in space or waging war there.  But, much to the consternation of other nations, including China and Russia, the United States walked away from the treaty even as Trump launched Space Force, a new branch of the U.S. military specifically to fight in outer space.

To people like Bezos and Musk, and to their friends who think like them, Bill Gates and Mark Zukerberg most specifically, the answer for the world was simple, basically more of the same that came with privatizing space flight: “Why share?”  If the heavens are to be privately theirs for all other purposes of regular space frontier dominance, why share any last lick of the heavens for the potential destructive interference of weapons flying through the stratosphere and beyond, maybe catastrophically even leaving behind the clutter of exploded debris that would be impossible to deal with?  “If the orbit of our planet is filled with a debris field,” says Musk, “it will be impenetrable and we will never be able to leave earth to go elsewhere as should be humanity’s destiny.”

The answer was not to put the nuclear arms industry out of business (potentially unending the world’s economies), but to expand and bring the weapons under private ownership.  For this purpose a new peace keeping or peace making consortium has been formed by a small group of four Big tech colossuses, Musk, Bezos, Gates and Zuckerberg. Into this private consortium will be conveyed all the world’s nuclear weapons.  These four men are four of the ten wealthiest men who just doubled their wealth during Covids’ two years.  As these four are taking the lead for the public’s benefit here, they are naming the consortium the Four-Bien Guys Project.  (“Bien” is French, a not too foreign word for “good.”)

“It’s a natural next step for private ownership,” says Bill Gates who has been privatizing the worldwide health delivery schema along with worldwide thought patterns about it, while buying up farmland to become the biggest owner of it in the United States.  Gates amplified:

Since governments are  increasingly less dependable, corporations are increasingly taking things into their own hands in other areas, privatization of intelligence agency work, private military forces, schools, etc.

    Nuclear weapons are just another subset of science, which, as you see with medicine, pharma, the private ownership of the internet and most of the electronic technology that serves us, plus all the patent joint-venturing investments of our universities, has all been privatized already.– The arc of history is long, but it bends toward privatization.  It bends toward neoliberalism.  It bends toward `liberalism’ actually-- I don’t know why we have to put that “neo” in before the word, except to assure conservatives that what we are talking about is actually compatible with, and essentially what they also believe in.  

The four guys said that they will be calling in their chits with other oligarches around the world to make sure the plan happens with the necessary responsiveness from– not naming any names-  all their respective countries.  

Bezos and Zukerberg both say that they feel at ease with their assumption, via the consortium, of responsibilities that, before transfer, once had a military flavor.  Bezos pointed out that he built up the gigantism of his entire Amazon empire based on skillful and knowledgeable use of the internet and that his maternal grandfather and mentor, Lawrence Preston Gise was one of those who, at DARPA launched and set the internet in motion, plus, he said, he was now doing a lot of work with the CIA and also acquired and owns a newspaper that is one of the most important in the country for telling American what to think about USA’s military conflicts. Zukerberg noted that the nuclear weapons sharing under NATO was certainly a foremost means by which such weapons were deployed throughout the world and that he had a lot of experience and was very comfortable working with NATO’s Atlantic Council think tank to regulate Facebook sharing and news popularity and permissions on the platform.

The weapons will be paid for.  Title to the weapons will transfer to the consortium at the very outset, whereupon their renaming as “Peacemakers” will take place, but payments will be made over an extended period, which may or may not be keyed to the time frame during which the weapon’s incorporated isotopes are expected to remain radioactive.  A loan will be provided to the Four-Bien Project Consortium by the Fed.

The U.S. Space Force and all its employees will also be simultaneously transferred to the consortium.  Gates said, “we need them to feel secure in space and these days we can only depend on ourselves to make sure they get paid.”  Commanding the Space Force after transfer will be Comdr. Newt Rippley who has expressed assurance that experiences resulting from the privatizations will be good.

The various governments of the world have agreed to pay (or as the case may be, will be required to pay) to the consortium a caretaking fee. But, while the agreed upon and the to-be-specified amounts are more than enough to pay the loan, Gates is not sure that payments can always be expected to come in on time: “If governments were that dependable, we wouldn’t have to step into so many situations continually to take over.”  He says that taking care of nuclear materials is also very expensive and could take thousands of years.

Because humans lack longevity and are not exactly so perfect for the job, keeping the weapons will be turned over to robots and there is fanfare about this as an opportunity to unroll the most start-of-the-art AI, that will also apply to clear algorithms about how and when and what would apply if there is ever a question of whether any weapons needed to be used.  This is one reason Gates was solicited as a principal to participated in the consortium.  “This is really most desirable” says Bezos of the robots, “because, after all, who would want just a few oligarchs deciding what is best when it comes to matters that concern the fate of the entire world.– No, says Gates, we will be keeping ourselves out of these decisions.”

So “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are the divine children of our gods.”  A memorandum of understanding to effect the plan is being signed today, April 1st, with a consummation date for full transfer specified as one year from today, also April 1st.

Government Covid Policies Are Doing A Great Job of Dividing The “Progressive” Left, Making It The “Anti-vaxers” vs. The “Faithful Pfizerite Fauci Followers.”

Maybe you’ve been noticing this too?: How vaccination mandates and government Covid policy, accompanied by barbs all over the place about “misinformation,” is doing a great job of dividing what we’ve considered the progressive left.  Now what we get is the so-called “Anti-vaxers” vs. the “Faithful Pfizerite Fauci Followers,” even though most who are “anti-mandate” or even who have questions about these particular (EUA- “Emergency Use Authorization”) vaccines aren’t exactly always 100% “anti-vax,” and even though the “Fauci Followers” of the left, however faithful they are at the moment, usually distrust Big Pharma and official government information.  Whew!

Why is the left always so good at getting divided and conquered?  Or maybe it’s just that there are people out there who are more intent on seeing that kind of division get done to the left than to any other group!  Basically, if you’re paying attention, dividing and conquering the public is a long-standing tradition in this country.  Those who have an interest in doing so can best be described as the power elite.  Oh yes, and if you want to know where the power is, money is pretty measure of where it resides.

The potent presence of this new fracturing force (is there no end to Covid’s ills?) really hit home for me when I heard about how government policy over mandates is probably going to break up New York State’s Green Party this year, perhaps pretty much wipe it out of existence- We’ll see. Will that “third” party fade so entirely in New York so as to become just a ghostly relic of an alternative to the corporate duopoly that people once held significant hope for?  

But then, after thinking about the Green Party, I realized that we are seeing this fracturing in various ways all over what has been traditionally been considered the progressive left.  Did you think that the way that people were holing up and sequestering during Covid was anti-social enough?; well now people are walking away from age-old relationships over this.  In some cases, it’s like they don’t even recognize the very basic principles that once steadfastly connected them.

What, no possibility for a united middle ground here if the two sides were dialoguing?

Maybe not.  If not, the issues of government handling of Covid and the corporate media blasting those polices non-stop into the culture are doing a truly superb job of weakening and annihilating coalitions that were already comparatively weak, poorly populated, and ineffective in trying to deal with the pervasive corporatism dominating society.

I could observe that between these two sides, one side might be a little more open minded and have a better, more tolerant understanding of the other’s point of view and its origins, while saying, conversely, that other side may be more prone to shutting down dialogue and information exchange, and it may be a side much more prone to argue for or to demand censorship and to advocate for a totalitarian treatment of others.  One side in this debate is anti-authoritarian, the other is not. . .  With the split, both sides are going to try to claim the mantel of “true left,” “true progressive” thinking.–

– One of the sides in this split will claim that mantel by saying that it is anti-social for those on the other side to “downplay” the menace of Covid by questioning whether the public’s fear is proportional to the illness's actual threat, and anti-social if those on the other side “gullibly” wonder if, in fact, there might be measures and treatments going unadvertised and unpromoted that could ward off illness, fortify healthy resistance and that could treat Covid in ways that diminish the terribleness of what we've been worrying about 24/7 non-stop– (Shouldn't we rest assured that the health industry has always acted in the best interests of the public?)  That side will think that those who make arguments for personal freedoms or who venture to explore ideas that might diminish the perceived peril of Covid and the prescribed vigilance it certainly requires are selfish violators of the Star Trek principle of needed self-sacrifice we heard enunciated in that once climactic exchange between Kirk and Spock: “It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, . . . or the one.”

While the left further fractures into the splintered shards of increasingly small, self-contained, self- referential bubbles (as is the problem with the country in general). . .  (Sorry that’s not an internally consistent metaphor) . . . . Something else interesting is happening. . .

Anti-authoritarian sentiment and a belief in personal freedoms is uniting one side of this split left with people on the right, with libertarians, with independents, definitely with lots of varieties of anti-corporatists, even with people across the spectrum who may consider themselves to have no basic political philosophy, only perhaps to have pragmatic instincts about things they feel are askew.  Maybe, like Occupy Wall Street and The Tea Party, who concurred on this, they are against what they view as the corruption and crony capitalism that occurs when corporations capture the government.

Is the broad spectrum uniting of all these elements in what may be termed the “Medical Freedom Movement” frightening to those in power?  It’s suggested that it is and that an example of the growth of these new alliances that could be troubling to them was the recent anti-mandate rally in January in Washington D.C..  The anti-mandate event in D.C. was just days after another rally by the D.C. mall’s monuments.  The earlier event was a “March for Life” anti-abortion rally, greatly diminished in attendance from prior years.  That rally from several days before, made the front page of the New York Times above the fold.  The anti-mandate event at the Lincoln Memorial did not get such conspicuous coverage by the Times.

Time Magazine, not downplaying or disparaging the anti-mandate rally the same way the Times did, choose to admonish and forebodingly scold that this coming together of folk of different political stripes under an anti-mandate banner represented something in the nature of Svengali-like hypnotism.  Their January 26 headline was: “How the Anti-Vax Movement Is Taking Over the Right.”  I don’t know what the photo they used to underscore their headline was actually intended to illustrate: Right-wingers being taken over, or the “anti-vaxxers” who are taking over the right. . .

.. .  I feel that it is usually destructive to pigeonhole people, but, for the sake of de-pigeonholing those featured in the photo Time chose, I can assure you that the group depicted, including the woman putting her hands together in a prayer clasp, were a group of non-corporatist, left-of-democratic-party-mainstream Democrats (or at least recent Democrats), including, if you look, one who wore a big “Black Lives Matters” button.  If you know what I look like, you’ll know why I can speak with authority on that subject.

This coming together of people from different walks of political life could have long-range significance; not just on this single issue, but only multiple issues of utmost concern.  As I have written about before, there is a long list issues of foremost concern to Americans that supermajorities merging both left and right agree on, more than a score.  While those are things the vast majority of Americans want and that we, as a country, could easily have, the political establishment is not willing to provide them. Collusively, the corporate media downplays them all and does its best to instead divide us with Red Team/Blue Team squabbles about things that are generally far less important.

I’ve also written about how we have to get away from the “Red Team/Blue Team” divisions, since both the Republican and the Democrat parties are controlled by corporatist money and interests; viewed with the slightest bit of perspective, the two parties can be seen to work more like a tag team pursuing the same goals than anything else. 

I wrote about how we need a new political “color.”  Unfortunately, “purple” has already been grabbed by the “Purple Project,” which while purporting to be a populist styled erasure of Red/Blue differences, is actually just more top-down corporatism for those realizing that the “Red Team/Blue Team” stuff is total mishegoss.  I wrote then that “green” with its connotations of environmentalism wasn’t the best choice because it was already taken by the Green Party. Now if the Green Party is one more of those groups going to further fracture its pursuit of principles in the face of the Covid policies coming from government and Big Pharma, that just confirms the need for a new color for new emerging alliances.

PS: Here is the Monday, December 13, 2021 statement of the National Black Caucus of the Green Party, “We Say No To Mandates,” that explains the political stance and direction they are taking.  I am unaware that the Greens in New York State on the other side of this split have articulated their position or the ways in which they disagree and can’t go along with what the Black Caucus expressed here.

Upward Transfer of Wealth Alert! Upward Transfer of Power Alert! Look What Just Doubled! Enough To Make Everyone Sick!

Stories from The Guardian and Grayzone

There are different variations to the story, but almost everyone has heard one version of it or another.  A king or raja offers a reward to someone who has done him a favor, or won a bet, or game of chess.  Maybe the king offers anything that they might ask, even up to half his realm.  The offer is declined, seemingly modestly, with a request for just a grain of rice (or a grain of wheat) placed on the square of a chess board, two grains on the next, four on the next, etc.  Or the doubling of the amount is to occur daily for 30 days.  The point is the same: With a simple doubling the promise of the doubled grains far exceeds everything the king of raja has to give.

Look what just doubled!– The wealth of the world’s richest 10 men doubled since the start of the 2-year pandemic (as 160 million more people were pushed into poverty). That’s according to Oxfam in a just released report “Inequality Kills.”

The ten wealthiest men in the world have collectively singed a letter of thanks to the Corona Covid-19 virus— Just kidding, but I leave it to others to figure out exactly how the response to the pandemic around the world has helped bulk up the wealth of the wealthiest. One of the men, heavily invested in pharmaceuticals, is a poster boy for recommended virus response: Bill Gates.  It’s also obvious why Jeff Bezos made money on the pandemic.  And Mark Zuckerberg’s role in what information flows about our tactics responding to the virus is obvious.

The ten wealthiest men in the world are:

    1.    Elon Musk
    2.    Jeff Bezos
    3.    Bernard Arnault & family
    4.    Bill Gates
    5.    Larry Ellison
    6.    Larry Page
    7.    Sergey Brin
    8.    Mark Zuckerberg
    9.    Steve Ballmer
    10.    Warren Buffett

Use the link if you want to get specifics about their windfalls.

Important to recognize that, along with that upward transfer of wealth goes a more or less equivalent upward transfer of power.  Wealth is power.  The question is often asked, beyond a certain point where wealth takes care of your every need, why want or pursue more?  What good does it do you?  One answer is that what is being pursued is really just more power.

It’s a lot of power.  Remember that doubling the grains of rice exercise?

Reuters and AP, Associated Press, Issue Simultaneous Fact Checks: “Mass Formation Psychosis” or “Mass Psychosis” Does Not Exist As a Legitimate, Academically Recognized Theory

Two of these three above caused Reuters and AP to issue fact check articles that there is no such thing as "Mass Formation Psychosis"

More or less simultaneously, a day apart, Reuters and AP, the Associated Press, issued fact check articles announcing that “Mass Formation Psychosis” or “Mass Psychosis” is an “unfounded,” “discredited” theory; that the “concept has no academic credibility,” is “not officially recognized” “is not supported by evidence, and is similar to theories that have long been discredited” and that the term does not appear as a classification in medical reference dictionaries.  See: Fact Check-No evidence of pandemic ‘mass formation psychosis’, say experts speaking to Reuters, By Reuters Fact Check January 7, 2022, and (AP) FACT FOCUS: Unfounded theory used to dismiss COVID measures
By Angelo Fichera and Josh Kelety, January 8, 2022.

According to professor John Drury quoted by both articles the theory is a “notion” that “has been discredited by decades of research.” He says that “no respectable psychologist” now “agrees with these ideas.”

Reporting this delivery of the verdict of “psychology experts,” Reuters and AP both say that they talked with “numerous psychologists” and “multiple experts.”

Both Reuters and AP quote some of those experts, between them a total of six.  Both Reuters and AP quote:

    •    John Drury, Professor of Social Psychology and Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange at the University of Sussex
    •    Jay Van Bavel, Associate Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University, who says “I’ve been studying group identity and collective behavior for nearly two decades
    •    Steven Reicher, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of St Andrews, who has studied crowd psychology for more than 40 years. (and important update 2/14/'22)

In addition, Reuters quotes:

    •    Chris Cocking, Principal Lecturer at the School of Humanities and Applied Social Sciences at the University of Brighton

And AP additionally quotes two other experts:

    •    Steven Jay Lynn, a psychology professor at Binghamton University in New York
    •    Richard McNally, a professor of clinical psychology at Harvard University- He is not quoted as saying the theory does not exist, only as offering the opinion that the way that public is responding to Covid is a rational response “to the arguments and evidence adduced by the relevant scientific experts.”

As one can tell from the above, there are theories of “crowd psychology,” “group identity and collective behavior” that these experts, who were tapped to offer these opinions, believe exist.  But as Professor Drury explains, he distinguishes and dismisses concepts, such as “mob mentality” and “group mind,” where “when people form part of a psychological crowd they lose their identities and their self-control” and where “they become suggestible, and primitive instinctive impulses predominate.”

The fact checks were, of course, picked up and republished elsewhere.   ABC affiliate- FACT FOCUS: Unfounded theory used to dismiss COVID measures, NBC affiliate-  Fact Check: Doctor uses unfounded theory to dismiss COVID measures on Rogan podcast, by Angelo Fichera and Josh Kelety Associated Press, Tuesday, January 11th 2022, CBS affiliate-  FACT FOCUS: Unfounded theory used to dismiss COVID measures, Jan 8, 2022, Yahoo News- ‘No academic credibility’: Experts debunk mass psychosis Covid theory floated by doctor on Joe Rogan podcast, Gino Spocchia, January 9, 2022.

All the other publications don’t matter so much since Google’s algorithms ensure that these fact check articles, and/or the points they make, Google high.

The fact check articles both identify themselves as being a quick response to Dr. Robert Malone speaking about the theory on the Joe Rogan Show about a week before:

AP:

The term gained attention after it was floated by Dr. Robert Malone on “The Joe Rogan Experience” Dec. 31 podcast. Malone is a scientist who once researched mRNA technology but is now a vocal skeptic of the COVID-19 vaccines that use it.

Reuters:

Dr Robert Malone . .  told The Joe Rogan Experience that “mass formation psychosis” is a phenomenon that occurred in 1920s and 30s Germany when a highly educated population “went barking mad”.

“And that is what’s happened here,” he said, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic (here).

According to Malone, the condition occurs when a society “becomes decoupled from each other and has a free-floating anxiety in a sense that things don’t make sense… And then their attention gets focused by a leader or series of events on one small point, just like hypnosis.”

. . . . . They will follow that person – it doesn’t matter whether they lie to them or whatever, the data are irrelevant.”

Aside from the fact checks saying that the theory does not exist, Big Tech media responded to Malone’s speaking about this notion by immediately taking down the Joe Rogan YouTube clip of Malone talking to Rogan about this idea.  See:  NY Post- YouTube scraps Joe Rogan podcast episode over Nazi Germany comparison By Ben Cost, January 4, 2022   and NY Daily News-  Joe Rogan video taken down by YouTube for anti-vax content, By Brian Niemietz, January 03, 2022.

The same week Twitter cancelled Dr. Malone’s account banning him from Twitter’s platform, the reasons for which are analyzed here.  Likewise, LinkedIn cancelled Dr. Malone’s LinkedIn account.

Meanwhile, somebody mustered a group that includes professors, some health professionals, some scientists, some doctors, etc. to sign a letter demanding that the top-rated Joe Rogan Show be cancelled from Spotify because Joe Rogan interviewed vaccine expert Dr. Malone about Covid.

The unfounded “Mass Formation Psychosis” theory is more or less a variation, with the overlay of certain extra manifestations that take it in a more extreme direction, of what has been described as “Groupthink.”  “Groupthink” hales back to a seminal article written by William H. (Holly) Whyte published in Fortune magazine in 1952.  The “Groupthink” theory was built upon and further developed, by Irving Janis, a research psychologist from Yale University in ensuing years.  Features of the Groupthink theory involve a dysfunctional deterioration of critical, independent, and quality thinking and decision making as people within an “ingroup” are pressured to think similar things.  There is an intolerance of other ideas and the “ingroup” is likely to get an inflated sense of the correctness of their own decisions that goes along with “illusions of invulnerability.”  This is likely to go along with denigration of anyone in an “outgroup” and that can often cause members of the “outgroup” to be treated in a dehumanized way.  The theory includes the observation that “groupthink” often arises or is more likely in situations where there is a high level of stress or anxiety from external threats.

As for the “Mass Formation Psychosis” theory itself, one good expression of what it is Reuters and AP were able to fact check as being unfounded is this cartoon illustrated After Skool/Academy of Ideas presentation: Mass Psychosis - How an Entire Population Becomes Mentally Ill, August 3, 2021.  Cartooning ideas can be extremely influential: it could easily be argued that Whyte’s Fortune Groupthink article would never have been as influential without the accompanying illustrations by Robert Osborn.  This After Skool/Academy of Ideas presentation is incredibly similar in approach to the recent “Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset,” a cancel debt with a jubilee advocacy video up at the Intercept (December 9 2021) by Kim Boekbinder, Jim Batt, illustrations by Molly Crabapple, except that the illustrator is somebody different from Molly Crabapple.

If you want something more talky and academic, less streamlined, to review this (talking, for instance, about breaking down human bonds), there is an interview available here with Professor Matthias Desmet, Professor of Clinical Psychology Ghent University, Belgium, a psychoanalyst and who also has a degree in statistics: Why Do So Many Still Buy into the Narrative?  Professor Matthias Desmet, September 21st, 2021.

Human brains and human thinking are strange.  For instance, there is the famous story of Tolstoy’s challenge (originally from his older brother?) to stand facing a corner and not think of a white bear.  It’s almost impossible.

Looking For Clarity On The Situation In Lebanon? You Won’t Get It From Democracy Now Where Its Question Is: “Can you respond to the World Bank saying Lebanon is in one of the worst economic collapses in the last 150 years?”

Democracy Now pitches the question: "respond to the World Bank saying Lebanon is in one of the worst economic collapses in the last 150 years"

Want to get clarity about what might possibly be happening now in Lebanon?  You are not going to get it from the reporting of Democracy Now, or as we might better call it these days, Democracy Not Now What It Once Was (“DNNWIOW” or #DNNWIOW).  What you’ll get from DNNWIOW is that the situation in Lebanon is confused, awful, pretty much impossible to explain and just about anything that happens next will probably be alright, maybe perhaps better, or at least acceptable.  Like it might be acceptable if Lebanon was one more country subjected to the kind of externally provoked regime operations we conduct?  OK if its government is  replaced by a puppet subservient to our interests?  Or maybe, not really so bad if, like Lybia or a number of other countries where were we have meddled, Lebanon was just kept in perpetual chaos?

In other words, DNNWIOW’s `there is terribly confusing awfulness in Lebanon you’ll never understand’ reporting is very much the same thing that you get from mainstream corporately owned media all the time about Israel and Palestine; it’s the kind of befuddlement building that then allows Israel, without significant protest from the American populace, to continue carrying out its persecution and removal of Palestinians from what was their country.

In other words, I make the case that DNNWIOW’s reporting on Lebanon, similar to the New York Times reporting on Lebanon, is just a useful conduit of the narrative that the United States Government wants put out there.  Or to cut through the crap: It’s pure propaganda.

We are talking right now about DNNWIOW’s first segment, its opening segment, on Thursday, October 14, 2021, an interview of more than 20 minutes of Lara Bitar, the editor-in-chief of The Public Source, what DNNWIOW described as “a Beirut-based independent media organization.”

Probably the interview question that most quintessentially captures the flavor and content of the interview is when DNNWIOW host Amy Goodman asks Bitar: “Can you respond to the World Bank saying Lebanon is in one of the worst economic collapses in the last 150 years, a bit further explain?”  (Much of the interview was conducted by co-host Nermeen Shaikh, but Amy Goodman chose to step in to ask this question herself.)

Gee, Lebanon is suffering `an economic crisis’?  That’s what’s going on?  The World Bank says so?  The World Bank’s assessments and characterizations of what are going on are referred to a half a dozen times in the interview and any offered understanding of Lebanon’s plight basically stops there.  

To read or watch the interview:  Snipers Fatally Attack Protesters in Beirut as Lebanon Reels from Devastating Economic Collapse, October 14, 2021.

Amy Goodman on left, Lara Bitar on right

The DNNWIOW propaganda is basically the subtle kind of propaganda that relies on misdirection and what is tactfully, or, as a matter of tactics, left out of the picture rather than being an attempt mounted to sell unadulterated and obviously false misinformation.  The best way to recognize what DNNWIOW was providing as the propaganda, is to hold it up against some actually good, context-setting reporting that will give you a very clear view of the situation in Lebanon.  I recommend that, for that contrast, you go to another interview about what is happening now in Lebanon– Again it is two women. Again it’s a female show host doing the interview, and again, the interviewee is a woman residing in Lebanon.  I’ll make the case, that in this instance, the dialogue between these two women and their ability to analytically present relevant facts does a much better job to qualify each of them as competent and sincere journalists.

The interview is conducted by Mnar Muhawesh, founder and editor-in-chief of MintPress News, interviewing Rania Khalek an American journalist living in Lebanon.  Ms. Khalek, writing under her Breakthrough News brand, was on my National Notice list of the many alternative media female journalists well worth paying attention to these days.  Ms. Muhawesh should have been on my list also; sorry I missed her.

Mnar Muhawesh on left, Rania Khalek on right

Here is the interview via Twitter, MintPress News' Facebook post, and via PSCP TV: Lebanon economic crisis, US Sanctions wars & Israeli resource exploitation in the Middle East region with @mnarMuh & RaniaKhalek

What do we learn from this interview that explains and puts Lebanon’s crisis into perspective?- We learn the following:

    •    Lebanon, a small country of about six million people, is mostly bordered by Syria a country that’s now war-torn nation in the throws of a regime change violence and destruction largely set in motion by the U.S. government.  Syria is naturally an important trading partner for Lebanon (Syria supplied about 10-15% of all of Lebanon’s power- now lack of power is another critical shortage Lebanon deals with), and because of US sanctions against Syria, Lebanon, locked in, cannot now trade across this crucial border.
    •    The other country bordering Lebanon is Israel on Lebanon’s southern border.  But Lebanon is on a continuing war footing with Israel so it cannot trade across that other border either, and instead must deal with continued threats by Israel, a country which previously invaded it.
    •    The only other access to Lebanon is the Mediterranean Sea, but a year ago last August there was a huge destruction in the port of Lebanon from a truly extraordinarily massive explosion.  Khalek does not assert she exactly knows the explanation for the explosion that involved stored fertilizer, but can give important background about it and she can expertly recite what she refers as the many politicized theories offered to explain what actually happened.
    •    The structure of the Lebanon government (set up in compromise when its civil war ended in 1991 and with the intention that the government be “intentionally weak”) carefully divides and shares power between different factions, different sects.  A substantial portion of the government, part of its majority coalition, is allied with Hezbollah and for that reason that portion of the government is the subject of US sanctions. The sanctions have the effect of hamstringing the entire country in its dealings with the rest of the world.  Plus the US backed and Saudi financed sect has worked in an adversarial fashion to make the harmful US sanctions apply more and cause more harm than they have to.
    •    Lebanon desperately needs fuel and power, it affects just about everything. Iran was willing to supply oil to Lebanon, but that help was blocked by other US sanctions, the US sanctions against Iran.
    •    The US also got involved to block help to Lebanon from China, Russia, and from Qatar.    At the same time the West is generally pulling back and refusing to help.  One excuse is that they want Lebanon to change the structure of its government, which is not about to happen. 
    •    The US and its banks and financial institutions are allied with Lebanese elites and with the International Monetary Fund and they, through this alliance, set up the Lebanese financial systems institutions that are now failing.
    •    The US and Western powers are also interfering with local Lebanese politics by providing support for both fascist and failing parties and factions in Lebanon. The many factions in the country provide ripe opportunities for co-optation, which the US takes advantage of and tries to weaponize.
    •    The US, and Israel along with it, wants, dominance and hegemonic power in the region.  The US, and Israel along with it, is therefore directing much of its energy toward trying to quash Hezbollah in Lebanon, but Hezbollah is immensely popular particularly in certain parts of the Lebanon because, ‘as a force of protection’ for the country, Hezbollah defeated and evicted Israel when Israel invaded, plus Hezbollah was critical in repelling ISIS and Al-Qaeda when they came into the country, with Hezbollah then pushing ISIS back even into Syria because of its threat.
    •    Continued chaos is probably what the US and its allies want in Lebanon, because the probably emerging alternative would be Hezbollah running the country.
    •    The formerly praised structure of the now collapsing Lebanese financial system that was set up with US banks involved was always something of a Ponzi scheme. Hezbollah was shut out of participation in and creation of that now collapsing defective financial system.    
    •    Not that it is high on the list of causes for the current crises and power shortage, but Israel repeatedly bombed Lebanon’s power stations in the past decade.
    •    Lebanon is also dealing with climate change and wild fires.
    •    Toward the end of the discussion, all this was related to how have an overall strategy of promoting sectarianism, balkanization and division in the entire region to the extent the US and Israel actually promote and fund right-wing religious fundamentalism.  (Reminder: Israel was the first sectarian state in the region.) Without this regional debilitation, Lebanon might, through its relationships with its neighbors might have a much stronger and resilient economy.

Much of what is important above is pure fact.  Some of it ventures into characterizations with a point of view.  It is not necessary to agree with all of the characterizations above- some might choose to dispute a few (but everything said seems pretty on target to me)-- Still these points all go a long way in explaining a lot and to provide much needed clarity.

By contrast, the 20-minute Democracy Now report (pardon, that's the "DNNWIOW report") mentions absolutely none of the facts set forth above.  Its only allusion to Lebanon’s long border with war-torn Syria is to note passingly that for some reason there is a bad situation with destitute Syrian refugees (as well as Palestinian and "other" refugees) who for some reason now live in Lebanon.  Nowhere is Israel mentioned nor the threat posed by it at the southern boarder.  There is no mention of any of the sanctions imposed by the US or their effect, not the sanctions against trade involving neighboring Syria, not the sanctions blocking aid from Iran, not the sanctions against Hezbollah nor their effect on the rest of the country.  Hezbollah does get mentioned, but only to describe the political party that's part of the government as trouble making and a source of problems being faced.

When it comes to trouble making in Lebanon, there is no mention of any covert involvement of the US to manipulate things or how, when there is mysterious trouble making, it is hard to know whom to pin the blame on.

Simply put, coming to it with some understanding, the DNNWIOW report is so inadequate it’s virtually the most laughable of jokes.  Unfortunately, this is not a laughing matter.  The people at whatever this new Democracy Now is cannot be unaware of the deceptive nature of their Lebanon reporting.  This certainly includes chief show host, executive producer, and long term figurehead for the program, Amy Goodman herself.  They must obviously be aware of the deceptive nature of their reporting because Democracy Now for decades, since its early origins out of WBAI 99.5 FM New York, has a long and distinguished history of covering Israel and its occupation of Palestine in a way that was a meaningful counter on that subject to exactly that kind of reporting about that situation emanating from the US corporate media.

What is the thinking of those working at DNNWIOW when they work to put out this kind of misleading reporting?  Is the thought that by acquiescently conduiting mainstream US State Department narrative one day, they'll get an improved chance at doing something good in the world the next? Is the thought that they will please their big money foundation funders by going along to promulgate these narratives so that they can later go on later, with good, glitzy production values, to accurately cover other more important controversial, undercovered, stories they want to deliver to a big audience on later occasions?  . . Maybe?

Maybe, but if that is the case, DNNWIOW is getting to be an insidiously dangerous program to watch.  That’s because you’ll never know when you are getting reliable reporting on an important story and when you are getting a spiel of establishment propaganda.  Moreover, as DNNWIOW keeps promoting itself as “independent global news” and “the war and peace report,” and has a fabled and reputable history, and as DNNWIOW wears its social justice “heart” on its sleeve, unsuspecting members of the public are all the more likely to be confused when these ruses in reporting are subtle enough.

Confused?. . .  Here, as just that sort of example-  the next story DNNWIOW was reporting that day on October 14, 2021 (about our withdrawal from a senseless 20-year war) was this- see if you find any of its slant identifiable and suspicious:

Afghan Interpreter Who Rescued Biden in 2008 Is Evacuated from Afghanistan with His Family- After weeks of pleading for help, an Afghan interpreter, who helped rescue then-Senator Joe Biden when he was stranded 13 years ago in Afghanistan, has finally escaped Afghanistan. Aman Khalili describes his journey out of the country, and we speak with the reporter who broke the story. “I was in the safehouse for 15 days,” Khalili tells Democracy Now! Khalili is “representative of a group of people that are still appealing for help from America.

A Week of Reporting Important Conspiracy Theories Respecting The Pharmaceutical Industry, Including Participation of One of The Major Covid Shot Manufacturers in One of Those Conspiracies

Two stories in the New York Times the same day published across from each other on a double page spread both about the pharmaceutical industry conspiring with government officials and deceiving the public, one about a bogus "Alzheimer's" drug, the other about selling the public addicting heroine pills, the ingredients supplied by Johnson & Johnson.

It’s been an interesting week in terms of seeing two conspiracy stories published about the pharmaceutical industry and its collusion with government regulatory agencies to put out dangerous and harmful drugs whose supposedly beneficial effects were misrepresented in order to foist them onto an unsuspecting public.  Yes, there are two of these stories out this week, at least two of them where the outlines of the conspiring seem to be endorsed by outlets like that paper of record, the New York Times.  One of the stories prominently features as a wrong-doer, Johnson & Johnson, a company elsewhere very much in the news these days as a top tier manufacturer of Covid vaccine shots.        

The alleged suspicious collusion with government in these stories also involves the way that pharmaceutical industry wrong doers are getting off practically scot-free for their misdeeds, and are being allowed to ultimately profit by keeping their ill-gotten gains.  That may be ascribed to state attorneys general not being sufficiently aggressive (or just being feckless stage props?) while courts friendly to the pharmaceutical corporations and the wealthy opiod-manufacturing Sackler family steer things in the direction of ensuring the wrong doers are protected from paying any real price.  Fiendish collusion? Amounting to conspiratorial behavior?

Here is what is being reported.

In the smaller scale, less notorious of the two stories, a very expensive ($56K per annum) multi-year drug, aducanumab, that Biogen wanted to market for Alzheimer’s even though there was insufficient evident that it worked and might instead have harmful side effects (brain swelling or brain bleeding) was approved by the FDA., with the FDA involving itself to work and closely collaborate with Biogen to help the company deal with the fact that they were asking for approval of a drug that shouldn’t be approved given that the evidence wasn’t there that it worked.  (That FDA assistance reportedly included at least one secret off-the-record meeting.)  Oh well, whatever the medical side effects, what’s more important to everyone, bad actors included, is that Biogen would be soaking Medicare and, via expensive co-pays, families desperate to treat their Alzheimer’s suffering family members . .  . The what-the-heck approach to someone with Alzheimer’s apparently being `what they don’t know can’t hurt them’?

I recommend the coverage that comes from FAIR in its second segment of their weekly half-hour Counterspin program:  Chris Bernadel on Haitian Assassination, Michael Carome on FDA Alzheimer’s Investigation, July 16, 2021.
 
Here is the program segment summary:

Cronyism between pharmaceutical companies and their ostensible government regulators is an infuriating fact of US life, along with the unsurprisingly obscene cost of drugs. Yet somehow the story of aducanumab takes it to a new level. We talk about what pharma and the FDA call a breakthrough Alzheimer’s drug, and what public advocates call an example of all that’s wrong with the FDA, with Michael Carome, M.D., director of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen.

In that interview Dr. Michael Carome ends by laying blame squarely at the feet of Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting head of the FDA.  He calls for her resignation as commissioner.  He says, that for three decades she was director of the center of the FDA that reviews and approves new drugs and asserts that over her three decades she has:

fostered an ever cosier relationship between her agency and pharmaceutical companies and that has resulted in regulatory capture of the agency by the pharmaceutical industry. She regularly refers to the agency as being a partner with industry, a partner– that they work with, you know, collaboratively– and she actually defended the collaborations that occurred between her agency and companies like Biogen.

Dr. Carome says she needs to be replaced by someone who is more aligned with protecting public health instead of the interests of the pharmaceutical industry.

The more notorious of the two stories during the week is about the pharmaceutical industry and the Sackler family’s responsibility, again working with the FDA (yes, recently and within that last three decades), for drug approvals that have led to an estimated 500,000 opiod addiction deaths in this country.  Most recently, in just the 12-month period ending in November, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures show that drug overdoses were soaring during Covid (egged up by Covid despair?) causing deaths just shy of another hundred thousand (92,000) ascribed to the “increasing availability of synthetic opioids” like fentanyl.  Now for the last year of 2020 the figure is stated to be up to 93,000. Compare that to the figures offered the national toll offered for Covid since it was first announced.  They are actually in the same neighborhood.

Among others covering this story during the week was Democracy Now, giving time to documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney who has a new documentary out about the collaborative and highly coordinated misconduct generating all that opiod addiction sickness and death. According to Gibney there were all sorts of “terrible incentives, where the incentive is not to cure the patient.”  See: “Crime of the Century”: How Big Pharma Fueled the Opioid Crisis That Killed 500,000 and Counting, July 19, 2021

According to Democracy Now’s story “overall, drug overdoses accounted for more deaths in 2020 than car crashes, gun violence and HIV/AIDS combined.”

In the Democracy Now segment it is described how with the Sackler family’s oxycodone marketed by their Perdue Pharma involved selling “drugs that are essentially heroin pills.”   Gibney says that “Purdue didn’t have any evidence that the drug was safe,” so the company obtained help from a medical officer at the FDA to deal with that.  Is this, perhaps, beginning to sound familiar?  Gibney says that, working with an FDA officer, Perdue took actions that “really coalesce around the idea of fraud” and “launched that fraud with a drug called OxyContin” working with the FDA official to “write the review of their own application.”   They got “inserted into the package insert, the paper that comes along with a prescription,” what Gibney observes were two very consequential falsehoods: “one, that it [the drug] wasn’t terribly addictive, and, two, because of the time-release mechanism, the Contin system, it wasn’t prone to abuse.”

According to the Democracy Now story, when Purdue was pursued by the authorities, the company lied under oath.  Moreover, when there were efforts to hold the pharmaceutical companies “accountable,” the companies “decided to change the statute,” changing the rules rather than their behavior.  It’s not just regulatory capture of federal agencies, it’s also insanely cooperative law making legislators.

Beyond the pharmaceutical companies and the Sackler family playing its part, the unfolding of the opiod addiction crisis permeated many aspects of the industry, a legion of doctors complicit in prescribing pills, pharmacies or “pill mills” filling the prescriptions.  The Democracy Now interview goes into financial incentives that drove this permeating complicity, vacation jaunts, payments (including for “speaking” fees) and, for instance, job promotions that made it clear that Purdue knew what it was doing.  Not everyone in the industry was directly involved, of course, but with something so widespread and effects that must have been widely evident, one wonders where the whistleblowers were.  Was everyone else just a passive bystander?  Of course, we know that whistleblowers pay prices.  And with all the interlocking ownership and interconnected interests, you never know whose toes you might be stepping on, so you have to be careful before taking any risks.

Running a big scale heroine selling racket sounds a lot like what we tend to classify as the work of organized crime.  If fact, Amy Goodman, the Democracy Now host, noted that Gibney’s documentary “describes the Sackler family, Purdue Pharma, as a kind of crime syndicate” and Gibney says it’s a “blurry line between licit pharmaceutical sales and, essentially, cartel sales,” that “they’re not so very different.”    

But there is more to this conspiracy tale of collusive bad behavior; the final part of it is the kind of intricate coordination that got the Sacklers and other wrong doers off essentially scot-free.  This is part of exchange between Goodman and Gibney on that about the Sacklers using political “muscle” from those high up the government ladder to escape liability and keep their misdeeds secret:

    AMY GOODMAN: So, Alex Gibney, in fact, while you talk about Insys, people there were jailed. The Sackler family — and this goes to the recently settled lawsuit, and I’m wondering if you could comment on this — 15 states recently abandoning their fight to block the bankruptcy plan of Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin; in exchange, Purdue releasing tens of millions of documents, paying a settlement expected to reach $4.5 billion, but the Sackler family agreeing to cede ownership of Purdue but will not have to admit responsibility.

    ALEX GIBNEY: Yeah, it’s really — that settlement was designed to sound good, like, “Oh my gosh, $4.5 billion, that’s a lot of money.” It is a lot of money. But the Sacklers have about $11 billion. And that $4.5 billion gets paid over nine years. So, if you’re taking in at least 5% on your money, it’s really not affecting the principal at all.

    But I think the larger thing here goes to a failure of accountability. You know, Purdue was investigated by the federal government back in 2006, and indeed found guilty. But that investigation, which was a very robust investigation, really laid out the roadmap for how Purdue did what it did. And the attorneys were arguing for very extensive felony convictions. Ultimately, Purdue used its muscle to go above those attorneys and have the charges knocked way back to misdemeanors and a fine. And most importantly — and this gets to the current episode — they were able to seal all the records relating to the prosecution. So the most important evidence was buried, which meant that all of us, the public, couldn’t see what had really happened, in order to be able to stop it.

If you want to hear essentially this same assessment of the Sacklers’ escape act repeated you can read it in an New York Times opinion piece of the week by Patrick Radden Keefe, who says “it is difficult to overstate the fiendish brilliance” of how the Sacklers manipulated the court system to come out still ultra-wealthy and essentially unscathed: See: How Did the Sacklers Pull This Off? July 14, 2021.

He notes:

American corporations can pick the jurisdiction where they file for bankruptcy and, thus, often the judge who determines their fate. Even though Purdue has never had any real business presence in White Plains, N.Y., that is where it filed its bankruptcy case. Purdue has maintained that this choice was driven by proximity to the company’s headquarters in Stamford, Conn. But it may also have been relevant that only one federal bankruptcy judge presides in White Plains: Robert Drain. In the past, he indicated a willingness to shield from litigation certain parties who had not even filed for bankruptcy in his court. He promptly granted the request, temporarily protecting the Sacklers from those suits.

    * * * *

    . .  Their offer: $4.5 billion, with no admission of wrongdoing by the family and permanent immunity from any future civil liability related to the opioid crisis.

That may seem like a lot of money, but billionaire math can be deceptive. The Sacklers proposed to pay the $4.5 billion out over nine years. Their current fortune is estimated to be at least $11 billion. Conservatively, with interest and investments, this means they can expect a 5 percent annualized rate of return on that fortune. If that’s the case, they’ll be able to pay the fine without even touching their principal. When they’re done paying in 2030, they will probably be richer than they are today.

It’s not just about the Sacklers.  Especially, now, today, we should notice that, along with others in the industry it is also about a top-tier Covid vaccine manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson who got a similar settlement.  Here is Gibney, again on Democracy Now:

one thing I would like to point out, as much as we talk about the Sacklers — and it’s very important to talk about them and Purdue — we shouldn’t be naive and think that that was the only company that was making extraordinary profits out of the opioid crisis and indeed didn’t know better. I mean, you know, [the huge companies distributing the drugs] knew very well that their pills, their opioid pills, were being diverted in ways that were causing massive addiction, but they didn’t do anything about it. And indeed, they ended up influencing Congress to pass a law which made them even less accountable, because they used the power of the revolving door to rig the rules. Johnson & Johnson, you know, famous for baby shampoo, was one of the biggest manufacturers of a potent kind of opioid, produced in Tasmania, that actually supplied Purdue Pharma with all the oxycodone that they needed in order to be able to market their drug. They wouldn’t have been able to do it without Johnson & Johnson. . . .

The amount of the settlement, Johnson & Johnson paid for their role working with Purdue in fueling the opioid crisis?: A paltry $230 million to New York State announced the end of June, and, bore broadly, in a settlement announced this week affecting other of the big pharmaceutical companies alongside of which it acted badly, $5 billion over nine years.  In other words, it wasn’t it wasn’t meaningful.

Maybe there will be those who say that this could have been all for the best if  Johnson & Johnson, after paying dividends to its shareholders, managed to squirrel away extra cash from the profits it made from selling opiods to  Purdue Pharma* on the theory that the extra cash might have helped the company come out with their Covid vaccine.  That’s the same sort of the thinking behind the idea of what makes it OK for the CIA to self-finance off the books through its engagement over the years with the illicit drug trade.

(* Johnson & Johnson also famously made money knowingly selling asbestos laced baby talcum powder.)

What a week! Two conspiracy theories at the same time about Big Pharma being engaged with government officials to cause harm to the public by marketing drugs that are misrepresented and shouldn’t have been approved– And one of those conspiracy theories extends to secrecy and coverups aided by more government officials outside the FDA and the politically very high up?  And that conspiracy theory involves one of the most prominent of the Covid vaccine manufacturers?  Are we allowed to believe in such conspiracy theories?  Well the New York Times in subdued, grey lady, respectful-of-power fashion is endorsing both of them.

For an official answer on the question of what we are allowed to believe, we could consult Cass Sunstein, an expert on conspiracy theories, an expert on what should, and should not, be censored by the media and a man who is also in charge of World Heath Organization group charged with steering what the public should think about Covid.  See: Samantha Power, “Humanitarian Hawk,” Is Married To Cass Sunstein, “Libertarian Paternalist”: They Both Advocate Censorship– Should That Advocacy Be On WBAI “Free Speech” Radio 99.5 FM?

(Note: Both FAIR's Counterspin and Democracy Now are programs who reporting is cited here air on WBAI radio 99.5 FM in New York City.  I am currently a member of the WBAI Local Station Board and urge people to donate to the station.)

Postscript: After this article was posted July 25, 2021, Democracy Now ran another story July 28, 2021 about how the pharmaceutical industry is corruptly and incestuously connected to government to make decisions that shortchange and fleece the public, decisions that are definitely contrary to the public’s interest and decisions that put Big Pharma profit and payoffs to the government officials they work with ahead of actually attending to the public’s healthcare needs.  See: Workers Beg Joe Manchin to Save West Virginia Pharma Plant as His Daughter Walks Away with $31M, July 28, 2021.

The story probably ran getting the prominence it did, because it is comfortably in the current vein of other let’s make Joe Manchin the villain (calling him “the most powerful man in Washington”) stories, so we have a someone to blame and a distraction from the rest of lawmakers as a whole should be held accountable as they deliver, both the Republican and the Democrats doing it, the spoils that the corporatist interests that placed them in office expect.  Nonetheless, this story is valuable as another window into how brazenly connections can be in place between the pharmaceutical companies and government officials that conflict with the public interest, allowing what are pretty clearly payoffs so that government officials don’t protect the public’s health.

In this story we learn that Joe Mansion’s daughter Heather Bresch, heads a pharma company in his state of West Virginia, Viatris, and formerly Mylan.  Pfizer is involved because Viatris, which Ms. Bresch heads and was thereby able to recently pocket $31 million, was created through a merger involving Pfizer in December 2020.  Ms. Bresch is likely mainly qualified for the job and to pocket such sums (in 2014 as head of Mylan she pocketed $25 million) via her relationship with her father.  There was a scandal concerning how her MBA had to be revoked by West Virginia University.  She had been given the now revoked degree right after Manchin became governor, (before he became senator) without doing the course work on the basis of doctored transcripts.

As Mylan’s chief executive, Senator Manchin’s daughter was famous for her company’s raising by 400% the price of its life-saving EpiPen, used by millions who are vulnerable to reverse fatal allergic reactions.   And more in the family: Mansion’s wife, Gayle Conelly Manchin was on a school commission that was trying to get the U.S. government to mandate that schools purchase the EpiPen at the insanely inflated price.

The Democracy Now story reports about how Viatris is, with government, Biden and Mansion all doing nothing about it, shutting down its West Virginia plant (that should be designated “vital infrastructure”) and moving manufacturing operations abroad although according to Katherine Eban, author of the book Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom and Dangerous Doses: A True Story of Cops, Counterfeiters, and the Contamination of America’s Drug Supply:

We have seen five years of congressional reports, policy reports and bipartisan agreement that we need to make as many of our own pharmaceuticals as possible. We know from data, from reporting, that the drugs that are made overseas can be full of carcinogens and toxic impurities. There is all kinds of data fraud and other quality questions that the plants overseas are riddled with, including Viatris’s own plants, which are operating in India under an official action indicated warning from the FDA. So, why, in the middle of a pandemic, are we going through this exercise that every single report has told us is absolutely counterindicated to public health and our national interest?   

Ms. Eban says there is a:

sort of cone of silence that has come down over this shuttering of this critical manufacturing plant in West Virginia. It seems like it is both pharmaceutical and national security suicide to close this plant.

PS #2- Democracy Now October 22, 2021- Remember the TPP?  The Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty?  It was a proposal to use a “treaty” between countries to override national laws and invert the relationship between government and corporations; government would become subservient to and accountable to corporations rather than the traditional vice versa; corporate contracts would tell governments what laws could be passed.  Democracy Now did a story about how, during Covid, Pfizer has used contracts with countries worldwide to exactly that. . . Contracts that put Pfizer in charge so that the Pfizer corporation tells the countries what they can do when conducting what would normally be the province of government.  See: Public Citizen Blasts Pfizer for Putting Corporate Profit Over Increasing Access to COVID Vaccines, October 22, 2021.  That leaves us with a peculiar situation when it comes to these medical matters- Is it government or Big Pharma that we are dealing with? You'll never know which is which.