Category: Uncategorized

Canadian politicians are destroying Canada’s greatest accomplishment — its health care system. The country is sliding toward health care privatization due to weak federal leadership and sustained assaults on Medicare by conservative provinces.

Room in a hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on April 30, 2023. (Creative Touch Imaging Ltd. / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Despite the frequent portrayal of Canada’s health care system as something Americans should aspire to, the country’s political leadership sure appears to be keen on dismantling it. Nearly forty years after the passage of the Canada Health Act, Canadian health care is on life support.

In early February of this year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the leaders of Canada’s provinces agreed to a Can$46.2 billion funding package to help shore up the shaky finances of Canada’s public health care system. Speaking on behalf of the Council of the Federation — a group representing Canada’s provinces — Manitoba premier Heather Stefanson said that while she and her provincial colleagues agreed to the funding agreement, it was nonetheless “not a long-term solution to the health-care funding that is needed within our country.”

Canada’s premiers want far more federal government funding for health care, and they want far fewer strings attached. Given that several provinces are already experimenting with increased private sector involvement, there’s considerable concern across Canada that these additional funds will be used to subsidize the privatization of health care. There’s ample evidence that this is already occurring. The archconservative government of Ontario premier Doug Ford has already begun outsourcing certain surgeries to what are colloquially referred to as “Independent Health Facilities” — a euphemism for private, for-profit clinics. This practice has been widely criticized, both by Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons (which notes that private clinics fall short on patient safety), as well as the province’s auditor general, which reports widespread abuses of patients, including aggressive upselling and deceptive sales pitches.

Privatization is also a growing problem in Quebec, where billions in public funds are winding up in private, for-profit health care companies. This, in turn, is driving an exodus of nurses from the public sector to private alternatives, exacerbating the province’s problem retaining qualified health care professionals.

Despite the consistent denials from Canada’s conservative provincial premiers regarding the claims of “creeping privatization,” their actions, ideologies, and previous statements all suggest that privatization is on its way. Aside from some campaign-style rhetoric when pressed to account for his inaction, Justin Trudeau is doing little to allay legitimate fears about this development. Considering that vehemently opposing this health care privatization would present Trudeau with a clear opportunity to score points with the electorate, it is perplexing that he remains reluctant to address the issue. His reticence might be a consequence of his party’s deep connections to Big Pharma — a cozy relationship that only became closer during the pandemic. It could also be ideological sympathy for the arguments of free marketeers. Whatever the reason, the Trudeau Liberals have a poor track record when it comes to advocating for public health care in Canada.

The Peculiarities of Canadian Health Care

Medicare — the colloquial term Canadians use to refer to the entirety of Canada’s public health care system — is supposedly one of Canada’s defining features. Canadian celebrities are frequently asked about it on American talk shows, and it’s routinely discussed in any conversation concerning efforts to introduce a universal public health care system in the United States. What most Americans don’t know is that Canada doesn’t actually have a universal health care system. What Canada does have is a broad federal framework to guide the provision of public health care, plus thirteen provincial and territorial health ministries and departments governing multiple independent public health insurance systems.

The federal health ministry is responsible for national health policy. It ensures that the provinces comply with federal laws governing health care and the health care of indigenous people, and oversees dependent agencies responsible for food inspection, public health policy, and the regulation of pharmaceuticals. In its ideal form this setup safeguards the federal government’s close watch on the provinces, ensuring that federal standards are met, while provinces are given the autonomy to figure out the best way to individually achieve those objectives.

It’s byzantine, but this is a good demonstration of how Canadian political machinery is supposed to work. Canadian health care was as much a product of cooperation between provincial governments and the federal government as between social democrats and progressive conservatives. In sharp contrast to the privatization advocated by contemporary Canadian conservatives, the federal conservatives of the 1950s — including a supreme court justice and a prime minister — were as instrumental in implementing Canada’s Medicare system as the godfather of Canadian social democracy, Tommy Douglas (a man once crowned the Greatest Canadian specifically for his role in establishing Medicare).

Health Care’s Free Marketeers

Ironically, provincial-level public health care in Canada was introduced in two provinces — Saskatchewan in 1947 and Alberta in 1950 — that are today bastions of reactionary conservatism. They are now leading in health care privatization efforts. Ideologically motivated efforts to undermine public health care in Alberta have resulted in rural emergency room closures, overcrowded hospitals, and ambulance shortages. At the same time, the province’s conservative provincial leadership has expanded private health care services that charge patients out of pocket, in some cases by reducing what the province deems medically necessary care.

This in turn creates new opportunities for private health care in Alberta by allowing private providers to handle services that the province deems nonessential. Because these private providers can also charge patients directly for medically necessary care, their presence in the architecture of the health care system ultimately results in a dollar-for-dollar clawback of federal government health care transfer funds to the province. This doesn’t make sense from a health care policy perspective — why charge an individual to pay out of pocket for a medically necessary service whose cost would otherwise be covered by taxpayer-funded public health care? But it makes plenty of sense to people who are ideologically opposed to any form of public health care, such as Alberta’s premier, who has publicly advocated for dismantling the system.

For those ideologically opposed to public health care, this a win-win-win. New business opportunities are created, and provincial taxes are lowered (a consequence of cutting services wholesale, even if it results in major service gaps). As an added bonus, the federal government, which has a standing policy of clawing back health care transfer funds in cases where provinces allow private providers to charge patients directly, can then be blamed by populist premiers for cutbacks when privatization schemes inevitably fail.

A consistent voice leading the charge toward dismantling health care in Canada has come from the Fraser Institute. It is one of the dozen or so free-market libertarian think tanks that have steered Canada’s once “progressive” conservative party further and further to the right over the last forty or so years. The Fraser Institute, along with organizations such as the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and the Montreal Economic Institute, are partners in the Atlas Network, which has received funding from the Koch brothers.

They have spearheaded the opposition to socialized medicine in Canada in recent decades, often with pseudo-academic reports and studies that point almost without exception to privatization as the only potential remedy for the problems facing Canadian health care. Press releases announcing the findings of these reports are often published as if they were news stories in their own right by the Postmedia chain of newspapers, which serves as the primary propagandist of Canada’s federal Conservative Party as well as Canada’s conservative movement more broadly. Many of Canada’s leading conservative voices have either worked for the aforementioned think tanks or the papers of the Postmedia chain. Alberta’s current and unabashedly anti-Medicare premier, Danielle Smith, has done both.

Cutting off Health Care’s Nose to Spite Its Face

Similar to the numerous remarkable initiatives undertaken by the American federal government in the wake of the Great Depression, Canada’s drive for socialized health care emerged from the lessons learned in the same era. The effort to create a taxpayer-funded public health care system in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan in the mid-1940s came out of the realization that health care was a basic right, and that the private system that had existed up until that point simply wasn’t working. The initiative was a cornerstone of the progressive and practical “Prairie Populism” typified by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (predecessor of today’s New Democratic Party, Canada’s generally progressive left federal political party).

The effort to create a taxpayer-funded public health care system in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan in the mid-1940s came out of the realization that health care was a basic right.

Similar efforts developed in various provinces until Medicare was formally adopted and became federal law in 1968. A subsequent federal regulation — the Canada Health Act of 1984 — was the last major accomplishment of the “nation-building” government of Pierre Trudeau. Pierre, Justin’s father, served as prime minister for a nearly uninterrupted sixteen-year stretch from 1968 to 1984. The Canada Health Act formalized public health care in Canada, establishing guiding principles for its administration and delivery as well as the conditions for federal funding to provincial health systems.

Within a decade Canada’s provinces had already begun severe cutbacks to their provincial health care systems. During the 1990s, Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan, notably, implemented a series of hospital closures and consolidations. These measures aimed to reduce public expenditures amid a period of economic sluggishness and widespread acceptance of neoliberal economic policies, which targeted various components of the social safety net — Medicare first and foremost among them.

Provincial cuts, already bad enough, were then met with additional reductions to federal health care transfers, beginning in 1995. Health care spending in Canada then dropped below 10 percent of GDP. Between 1986 and 1995, the number of the country’s hospitals decreased by 14 percent, while the number of approved beds dropped by 11 percent. The number of staffed beds per one thousand people dropped from 6.6 to 4.1 during the same time.

At the start of the pandemic, the number of hospital beds had fallen further, to 2.55 beds per one thousand Canadians. While some provinces moved forward on expanding certain aspects of Medicare — such as Quebec’s introduction of a mandatory pharmacare program in 1997 — most Canadian provinces were busy moving in the opposite direction. Alberta started the trend by allowing private hospitals in 2000. Just a couple years later the seminal Romanow Report was released. A cross-country public inquiry into the future of health care in Canada, the report reflected the desires of the Canadian public, putting it at odds with the privatization endeavors pursued by both the medical profession and the provincial governments.

Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire

The Romanow Report recommended a federal Health Council of Canada to “facilitate collaborative leadership in health” and “new approaches to primary health care.” It also recommended stable and predictable long-term funding, a national drug agency to lower the cost of prescription drugs, a home care and rural health care strategy, among other suggestions.

The first ministers of the country signed a health accord in 2003 that addressed the funding issues highlighted in the Romanow Report, but it failed to bring about any accountability measures to ensure health care funding transfers would be used to improve provincial health care services. Ten years later, after a decade of consistent legal challenges to Medicare, the Conservative federal government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper terminated funding for the Health Council of Canada. This step was taken in spite of the council’s successes at reducing patient wait times and its efforts at developing systems to improve the accountability, oversight, planning, and national coordination of Canada’s health care systems. The Health Accord expired in 2014, ending government oversight on provincial health care spending.

Research from the Canadian Health Coalition in 2016 indicated a possible health care budget shortfall of as much as $43.5 billion by 2024. The health care funding agreement signed by Justin Trudeau and the provinces earlier this year was more than $46 billion. While the shortfall may have been resolved, the issue of overseeing the allocation of provincial funding is very much alive.

Though it was clear that Canada’s health care system was in trouble for many years before 2020, decades of government cutbacks left the system severely weakened, such that the COVID-19 pandemic pushed much of Canada’s health care system over the edge. It resulted in arguably the worst crisis since Medicare was signed into law in the late 1960s.

According to a recent report by the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the amount of overtime worked by Canadian health care professionals in 2021 was equivalent to over nine thousand full-time jobs.

Hospital emergency rooms are perennially overcrowded, an increasing number of Canadians have no access to a family physician, and burnout is endemic across the health professions. During the early stages of the pandemic, 50 percent of nurses and 20 percent of physicians working for the McGill University Health Centre (one of Montreal’s two primary hospital networks) indicated that they were ready to quit their profession. The situation has not improved despite generally lower COVID caseloads: according to a recent report by the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the amount of overtime worked by Canadian health care professionals in 2021 was equivalent to over nine thousand full-time jobs.

With Friends Like These

Despite health care consistently receiving favorable ratings in polls and being a source of pride and identification for Canadians, concerns persist regarding both the current state and future of health care in the country. Creeping privatization is also a concern. Nearly 30 percent of Canadians think that the health care system is in crisis, yet place the blame for the crisis on inadequate federal funding rather than provincial mismanagement of funds. This misapprehension is gainsaid by research indicating that Canada’s provinces are flush with cash and could be fully funding health care themselves but are instead using no-strings-attached federal funds to finance tax breaks.

The conservative premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous and wealthiest province, has been deliberately underfunding the province’s health care system. Creating a crisis is nothing new for Canadian conservatives either. Former Ontario education minister John Snobelen was caught on film arguing that, in order to ram through reforms meant to undermine Ontario’s teacher unions and assist in the privatization of the province’s schools, public education needed to be bankrupted. The ensuing situation, Snobelen maintained, would create a “useful crisis” favorable to advancing the party’s agenda.

Ontario isn’t alone in deliberate, ideologically driven underfunding of health care. Though some headlines praised the United Conservative government of Alberta for increasing health funding in the province to “record levels,” subsequent analysis revealed that the province’s additional funding isn’t on track to meet public demand, or increases in inflation or population.

Several conservative-led provinces dealt with the pandemic by deliberating underfunding their health care systems. Canada’s conservative premiers were the least likely to introduce public health measures meant to stop the spread of infection, most likely to try to get back to normal too quickly, and quickest to blame the federal government for problems that were entirely within provincial area of jurisdiction.

Ontario premier Doug Ford was arguably the worst offender. Polls indicated that the citizens of Ontario and Alberta were the most likely to view their governments’ handling of the pandemic poorly — with disapproval ranging from 65 to 75 percent, respectively — and that more than 60 percent of respondents wanted their provincial governments to enforce stricter public health measures.

It’s Not Paranoia If It’s True

The negative effects of privatization were made crystal clear during the pandemic, as the largely privatized, for-profit long-term care (LTC) facilities of Ontario and Quebec failed under horrifying circumstances, with employees walking off the job, and residents found dead, starved, and sitting in their own feces. Canada found itself without sufficient domestic personal protective equipment production capacity and further lacking in a domestic vaccine production facility (the latter of which was privatized back in the 1980s). Subsequent federal efforts to develop a domestic vaccine capacity have largely failed, with billions of dollars of public funds sent to private companies that largely failed to deliver any vaccines.

Despite this, the Trudeau administration has so far failed to address widespread provincial health care incompetence and stand up for a health care system most Canadians still believe in. Though the Trudeau administration was able to secure the funding arrangement with the provinces earlier this year in an attempt to avoid a complete breakdown, the “no strings attached” aspect of the deal has frustrated public health care advocates. The deal fails to do anything about the ideologically motivated underfunding that laid the foundation for the crisis in the first place.

The federal government has substantial grounds to argue for exclusive responsibility in administering health care in Canada, which could garner strong support from a majority of Canadians given the ample evidence of provincial health care sabotage. Trudeau has so far failed to capitalize on the open-net goal of making his administration a champion for Medicare in Canada. Trudeau’s Liberal Party is currently supported by Canada’s New Democratic Party in an agreement that’s not quite a formal alliance or coalition but will prevent a federal election for the foreseeable future. Partially because of New Democratic Party pressure, the Liberals have managed to introduce a very modest dental care program, administrated by the federal government, that provides dental care to about nine million low-income Canadians. This deal was worked out without any provincial involvement whatsoever because a federal government agent has been tasked with its administration.

Trudeau has so far failed to capitalize on the open-net goal of making his administration a champion for Medicare in Canada.

Provincial and territorial premiers have largely been silent on the issue of the dental plan, despite the federal intervention on matters of public health policy the plan entails — a jurisdictional prerogative that is typically the reserved right of the provinces. This achievement has garnered enthusiastic support from a Canadian public evidently longing for leadership on health care matters. Nevertheless, Trudeau continues to maintain a predominantly hands-off approach toward the arguably more substantial concerns of persistent provincial health care underfunding and privatization.

It’s a peculiar situation. Even with the widespread desire among Canadians for an enhanced public health care system, provincial politicians steadfastly reject considering any alternative apart from privatization. In the face of recent modest success in expanding federal health care to millions of Canadians, the federal government — an informal union of its centrist-liberal and progressive-left parties — has done almost nothing to change course from decades of deliberate defunding and creeping privatization. Canadians might be forgiven for drawing the conclusion that their political classes want health care to fail.

The family of the late Jefferson Machado, the famous soap opera star from the religious telenovela, “Reis”, has confirmed the discovery of his body in a trunk buried in the backyard of a home in Rio de Janeiro. 

Machado had gone missing on January 26th in the Campo Grande neighborhood, with the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro State issuing an alert to the public on February 9th. It is believed

The family of the renowned soap opera star from the religious telenovela “Reis”, Jefferson Machado, who disappeared on January 26th in Rio de Janeiro’s Campo Grande neighborhood, has confirmed the discovery of his body in a trunk buried in a backyard. His mother reported him missing after finding his eight dogs alone, and because of peculiar text messages sent to her at the end of January.

The lawyer of the family released a public statement, saying that the preliminary information showed signs of strangulation, and added, “This tragic event has deeply saddened us and has caused indignation for the suffering Jeff had to face. As his lawyer, I must make sure that all those responsible for this crime are held accountable and duly punished and that the family of Jeff gets the support they need in this difficult time.”

The Instagram account of the actor, now managed by a family friend, posted a tribute to him and declared, “Jefferson was cruelly killed by envious, wicked and of course, unscrupulous people.” A memorial service for Machado was held last Saturday, but no arrests have been reported by the police.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version). 

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

first published by Global …

The post “Pushing the Reset Button” In the Wake of the Covid Crisis: “Coming to the Rescue of Humanity”, Implanting Chips in Human Beings appeared first on Global Research.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Visit …

The post Stillbirths are skyrocketing in the Post-Covid Vaccination Era, leaked Hospital Email reveals appeared first on Global Research.

A pro-Israel crowd interrupted antisemitic musician Roger Waters’ concert in Frankfurt on Sunday, waving Israeli flags and shouting “Am Yisrael Chai” – a popular Hebrew slogan meaning “the Jewish People lives [forever].” One of them even managed to bypass security and climb onstage.

The Festhalle, now a popular concert hall, was where about 3,000 Jews were gathered for deportation to Nazi concentration camps on Kristallnacht, Nov. 9, 1938.

#HERO! This brave man rushes the stage where antisemite Roger Waters was just playing in Frankfurt and waves Israeli flag. Meantime, you hear supporters chant “Am Yisrael Chai” (People of Israel live). pic.twitter.com/xWfBGMNvMR

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) May 28, 2023

The post WATCH: Audience mocks Roger Waters; protester climbs onstage, waving Israeli flag appeared first on World Israel News.

Front organization for the PFLP – the terrorist group which murdered Rina Shnerb – is working with schools in the UK and France as part of a student exchange program, watchdog group reveals.

By World Israel News Staff

A Palestinian-Arab terrorist group is using a front organization to participate in student exchange programs with academic institutions in Britain and France, an exposé by a watchdog group revealed on Monday.

According to a report by the Intelligence Division of the Regavim Movement, which monitors the activities of the Palestinian Authority and foreign organizations in Area C of Judea and Samaria, a front organization for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group is running a “student exchange program for Palestinian students” in cooperation with schools in France and the UK.

Notably, the PFLP’s front organization, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, has also been designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, under the instructions of then-Defense Minister Benny Gantz (National Unity) in 2021.

Israel declared the UAWC a terrorist organization over its close ties with the PFLP following the deadly PFLP bombing attack in the summer of 2019, in which an Israeli teenager, Rina Shnerb, was killed and her father and brother injured.

In its decision to blacklist the UAWC, the Israeli Defense Ministry highlighted the PFLP’s use of the UAWC to direct the flow of millions of Euros, donated by European governments and NGOs.

The international student exchange program run by UAWC in conjunction with schools in France and Britain claims to “strengthen young people in relation to agricultural and environmental activities.”

As part of the upcoming summer program, participants will be taken to Marseille, Berlin and Hebron.

Organizers emphasized in the terms of admission that priority will be given to Arab residents of Area C – the portion of Judea and Samaria under full Israeli control, and heavily targeted by groups like the UAWC.

Last week, the Regavim Movement lobbied Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (Likud) and the Israeli military to shut down the student exchange program, and to take greater action against the UAWC.

MK Sharren Haskel (National Unity) penned a letter to Defense Minister Gallant inquiring why as a recognized terrorist group, the UAWC is still permitted to operate freely.

“The designation of a terrorist organization must not remain merely a declaration,” said Avraham Binyamin, director of Regavim’s Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Division.

“We were surprised to discover, in the course of ongoing intelligence research, that the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, a designated terrorist organization, continues its operations openly among Palestinian students and in cooperation with foreign countries.”

“The Israeli government’s failure to act against the activities of this terrorist organization constitutes abandonment of territory under Israeli jurisdiction. Israel must act immediately to block the UAWC’s ability to operate on the local and international stage to spread its terrorist agenda, and to cut off the UAWC’s ability to maintain international contacts that funnel European money to the PFLP.

“We demand that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs summon the ambassadors of France and Germany and condemn their cooperation with the UAWC in particular and their involvement in illegal activity in areas C in general.”

The post Palestinian terrorist group running international student exchange program appeared first on World Israel News.

The project would link Haifa to the Saudi Gulf port of Damman, the UAE and Bahrain.

By Etgar Lefkovits, JNS

A proposal for a rail link connecting Israel and the Gulf states has undergone a preliminary feasibility study and could gather steam alongside a major international train infrastructure project as part of a push for normalization with Saudi Arabia.

The “Tracks for Regional Peace” plan and a newer U.S.-backed proposal to connect Gulf and Arab countries with India come as talks intensify between Israel and Saudi Arabia to reach a normalization agreement by the end of the year.

The watershed proposals, which would boost economic growth and stability in the region, stem from the 2020 Abraham Accords that saw Israel reach peace with four Arab countries under the Trump administration.

The “Tracks for Regional Peace” plan, which was first proposed six years ago by then-Transportation (and current Energy) Minister Israel Katz and then gathered force in the wake of the peace accords, would link the Arabian Peninsula to Haifa Port with a railway running through Jordan.

As talks with Riyadh gathered pace, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought up the proposed rail link in an address to American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem earlier this year, as part of his vision for a regional peace which he said would be a “quantum leap” in ending the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Under the proposal, goods could travel by rail from Haifa through Jordan to Saudi Arabia’s Gulf port of Dammam and then onwards to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, connecting the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf.

The Prime Minister’s Office declined comment on the details and status of the plan, as did the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem.

The Transportation Ministry said that a preliminary feasibility study of the project has been carried out with Israel Railways and Deutsche Bahn, the national railway company of Germany, to determine the project’s potential.

“The regional track project, which got off the ground in the wake of the Abraham Accords, is intended to transport freight and create an alternative option to transportation by sea,” the ministry said. “In addition to the economic and transportation benefits, the project has the potential to create regional normalization and spur additional peace accords.”

The ministry noted that parts of the needed track , such as between Haifa and the eastern town of Beit She’an near the border with Jordan, were already in place, while other stretches need to be developed.

“Due to the fact that the costs of such a project are high, one should continue to examine its feasibility, complete or in parts, the potential demand, the engineering needs, the total costs and methods of budget before starting the planning operational stage,” the Transportation Ministry said in a written response.

Saudi buy-in vital

“This is an exciting project which could significantly help Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and others,” Jason Greenblatt, senior director of Arab-Israel diplomacy at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and former White House envoy to the Middle East, told JNS.

“The challenge is to get buy-in from Saudi Arabia and Jordan and also the funds needed to realize the project. I hope the countries involved take another look at this project because it has great potential for all these counties and of course Europe, which would benefit from another supply chain route,” Greenblatt said.

Rail link to India

At the same time, U.S., Saudi, Emirati and Indian security officials have been discussing a possible joint project to link Gulf and Arab countries with a network of railways that would also be connected to India via shipping from ports in the region, according to a recent report in Axios.

The initiative, which came up in discussions by the I2U2 Group forum of India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United States, comes at a time when China has been making inroads in the region.

“The story of the Abraham Accords is the story of the future,” Tel Aviv University Professor Uzi Rabi told JNS.  “Everyone who has any sense knows that this is the direction of the future,” he said of the proposed rail links.

Rabi, who serves as director of the university’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, said that Saudi Arabia wants to reach normalization with Israel and that such a move was both “the reality” and “inevitable.”

“Israel is no longer the enemy even if it is not everybody’s cup of tea.  That is the point of departure in the region,” he said.

“Countries have to get used to this and sell it to their own people, Rabi said. “This is a dream that can be realized.”

The post Israel-Gulf train awaits Saudi normalization appeared first on World Israel News.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version). Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

Ongoing processor vaccine related …

The post Ophthalmologists Now Ethically Obligated to Denounce COVID-19 Vaccines, as 20,000 New Eye Disorders Are Reported appeared first on Global Research.

The writers of your favorite movies and shows are workers just like you. They deserve your solidarity.

Writers Guild of America (WGA) East members participate in a “Rally at the Rock” strike event outside of the NBCUniversal offices on May 23, 2023 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)

If TV seems bad lately, wait until you see what next year has to offer. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) took to the picket lines on May 2 and has been out for three weeks. With studios standing firm and firing off inflammatory and possibly illegal provocations, the strike — the first by screenwriters in fifteen years, when the WGA walked out for over a month — shows no sign of ending soon. And while writing jobs are often denigrated as soft and frivolous by reactionaries (echoing the rhetoric of bosses), the current strike serves as a reminder that Hollywood has always been part of the broader push and pull between labor and capital.

Many issues are at play in the strike, most of them concerning automation. Almost all of the guild’s twenty thousand members are facing severe reductions in their income as studios reclassify streaming media as a sort of protected category, resulting in writers receiving a tiny percentage of what they once made from residuals. Additionally, buying the tech hype of the moment, some studios — very likely being sold a bill of goods by equally profit-hungry bosses in a different industry — believe that they can cut writers out of the equation by replacing them with artificial intelligence.

If the ownership class in Hollywood thinks that it can crush the writers’ strike and go on with business as usual, pausing only to teach ChatGPT how to write a convincing episode of prestige television, it’s likely in for a rude awakening. The Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), the union that represents film and television actors, is already picketing in solidarity with the WGA, and its national executive director has urged members to vote to authorize a strike. Meanwhile, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) is itself engaged in contract negotiations with the studios, and the revenue-stripping from streaming is a common thread between all three unions. If directors, writers, and actors all struck together — a big if, to be fair — executives might have to start tap dancing on street corners to pay their mortgages.

Hollywood: A Hotbed of Class Struggle

While the entertainment industry is often derided by both the Right (as effete, snobbish elites) and the Left (as frivolous creators of propaganda and distraction), it’s a vital part of the US economy. The film and television industries alone are worth more than $2 trillion, and business is booming, growing at a rate of nearly 9 percent a year.

The entertainment sector employs nearly five million people, and is one of the most heavily unionized in the country; its loci in New York and Los Angeles, two of the country’s most expensive cities, encourage active participation by members who need good wages just to remain living where they work. What’s more, entertainment industry workers have been unionized longer than many industrial and service unions. Hollywood saw a huge union push in the 1930s, and the oldest union in the business — the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which started out representing vaudeville workers — has been around for almost 150 years. The WGA emerged in the 1950s out of a merger of five different unions, one dating back to 1921, giving bargaining power to workers who had previously been treated by studios as disposable.

The entertainment industry has also been a boon for other unions. Teamsters Local 399, representing Hollywood, is one of the biggest and most influential chapters in the country. It is likely to put its full weight behind the WGA, especially as Teamsters face a likely strike of their own later this year at UPS. Peripheral unions, from those representing trades and crafts to newer ones focused on service, are all impacted by entertainment-sector strikes. And even studios’ attempts to sidestep fair labor practices by dumping work on the burgeoning tech industry are finding that easier said than done — this industry, too, is pushing to unionize. Bad news for the CGI-driven superhero movies that have so far been cash cows for studio bosses.

Still, anyone who knows the history of labor knows that the moneyed class doesn’t put down its weapons, no matter how organized labor is. Hollywood bosses have a long history of going after workers, most prominently through anti-communist witch hunts and other moral panics. The Hollywood blacklist of the 1940s and 1950s put thousands of people out of work and ruined careers. It censored and suppressed movies about unions, even when they weren’t about unions in the industry (a good lesson that bosses may hate class solidarity when it’s carried out by workers, but are never shy about engaging in it themselves). The red-baiting reverberations echoed for decades.

More recently, strikes in the late 1980s by the DGA and WGA (whose 1988 strike lasted almost six weeks, the longest in its history, and cost the industry half a billion dollars) revolved around production credits, which not only help set pay rates and other compensation, but are also critical tools for workers to secure future jobs. Much as the current strike springs from uncertainty about how AI will impact the writer’s job, the last WGA strike, which ended in February 2008, dealt with the impact of new technologies as more and more entertainment product was created for the internet. It’s a recurring story: technological developments generate great promise and excitement, but the bosses are keen to make sure that none of the benefits flow to people who do the work.

What’s at Stake

Among the most insidious tactics of bosses in the creative fields is to tell workers that they’re “special” and “unique,” that they use their brains and hearts and not their hands to create value. Management knows that most artists are passionate about what they do, and studios reinforce that sentiment, knowing many will settle for less because they feel lucky to be “doing what they love.” But it’s the same old story since Karl Marx (himself a professional writer) laid things out: workers, in the arts or elsewhere, create the value but don’t get to decide what to do with the profits. Artists deserve a dignified existence, not a demotion to personal assistants for a computer program.

It can be hard to know how to help with the strike, as it’s unclear how long it will last or how many other unions will join in solidarity strikes. The WGA isn’t yet calling for boycotts, and SAG workers are required by law to show up for filming as long as they’re under contract. But there are still plenty of things you can do, from pushing your unions to engage in solidarity actions with the WGA to donating to strike support funds. Many chapters of Democratic Socialists of America are planning support activities, and if you’re located in New York or Los Angeles, you can join the picket lines yourself. It also helps to name and shame prominent entertainment industry figures who cross the pickets.

Most of all, it’s incumbent upon all of us to keep alert to the copious propaganda the studios will release as the strike drags on, including the absurd claim that the guild wants to establish a “hiring quota.” Molding public sentiment is a big part of what the entertainment industry does, and union busting is disgusting even when it’s done by the people who pump out your favorite movies and television. Remember that a dream factory is still a factory, and while some of the writers on strike have been greatly enriched by their work, many others are struggling to get by in an industry that values their labor less and less every year. Dividing the sympathies of the working class is the oldest trick in the bosses’ book, and the solution to worker exploitation is that you should make more, not that you should make less.

Hollywood has always been addicted to self-promotion and mythologizing, as might be expected from a town built on shaping the stories we tell. But behind all the hype is the concrete, often unglamorous struggle between owners and the workers. At times, the bosses think they’ve finally found the solution to breaking the power of organized labor once and for all. But the studios are in an unenviable position. With foreign markets more valuable than ever, and huge blockbusters costing so much to produce that they can’t afford to fail, the studios have become risk-shy and penny-wise. If they try to freeze out the writers, and actors and directors join the strike, we may have an answer to the question: What if we made a movie and nobody came?

Kiev continues to maintain its strategy of targeting Russian non-military areas. According to information recently admitted by spokespeople for the Ministry of Defense of Germany, the Ukrainian regime have requested from Berlin long-range missiles capable of striking Moscow. The news…

The post Kiev asks for German Missiles to Strike Moscow appeared first on Global Research.