Rev Left Radio - UNLOCKED: Afghanistan, The Chauvin Trial, and the Indian Covid Crisis

Episode Date: May 1, 2021

*recorded on April 28th* In this unlocked Red Menace patreon episode, Alyson and Breht discuss the Biden administrations ostensible withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Chauvin Trial and what it represents, and the ongoing Covid crisis ravaging India and how its connected to vaccine imperialism and capitalism's prioritizing of profits over the health and life of human beings.  Support Red Menace: https://www.patreon.com/TheRedMenace

Hey there, patrons. This is Allison. I'm here with Brett, and we are recording our episode for Patreon for this month. Obviously, as you all know, different months, we do different things. Q&As have been one of our big ones. But a lot has happened this month in terms of the news. And this is one of those months where we are doing a theory episode. So we figured a discussion of current events would be really, really necessary for patrons because some big things are happening right now that are definitely worth talking about. And we hope that we can start a bit of a conversation with. view all about this. So as always, thank you so much for your continued support of our project. It really means the world to us, and it really does help us be able to devote the amount of time to Red Minus that it takes because the amount of research and prep that go into our episodes, especially the theory ones, is very intense. Being able to have that time because of your support is really, really valuable to us. So thank you so much for that. And yeah, with that, we're going to go ahead and just hop right into some of the things that we're talking about today. So kind of the first thing that I wanted to talk about, which is probably not a surprise to anyone because it's one of the biggest things in the news is the trial and conviction of Derek Chobin on three counts, all of the counts that were brought in the prosecution.

And so this has generated a lot of news. There's been a lot of buzz about whether or not this is justice, whether or not this is something else, and what conditions brought about finally convicting a cop who murdered someone in this case. so we can go ahead and dive into that a little bit i have some thoughts about it but brett do you want to kind of start us out with some of your thoughts sure yeah so i'm of like i kind of have two minds on this there's a there's like strong feelings in both directions but at the you know at the like the core of my sort of back and forth on this is like you don't want to erase the progress made as tiny and insignificant as it is so is charge charging one cop for a crime that everybody saw on video camera, justice, no.

Because justice is systematic. It is institutional. It is a whole way of life, a context that is much different than the context we actually exist in. And I think, you know, the main point of throwing the book at him, at least with charges, we don't know what the sentencing is going to look like. It could get off fairly easy for the crimes in a way that we routinely see particularly poor black people not get huge sentences for crimes that are infinitely less substantial than what Chauvin did. So it remains to be seen what the sentencing will bear out. But there is this sense that we can put all the bad things that policing does onto Chauvin and throw the book at him. And so create a scapegoat and show that the institutions are being reset.

to the people's demands for some sense of justice. And by doing that, you can obscure the systematic institutional nature of the problem. And in fact, ever since that those charges came through, what have we seen? Killing after killing after killing of multiple black people, but specifically black children. And so the death machine doesn't stop even in the face of that. So, you know, there's plenty of reason to be cynical to stand against anybody who wants to over-romanticize this as some sort of justice or even really accountability because again accountability is a systematic institutional accountability not the scapegoating of one particularly

rotten individual on the other hand this is where i think we should pay you know do where it credit where it's due this would not have happened even this little itty-bitty gain um in the right direction would not have happened if it was not for the historical protests over last summer and really over the last decade of of the black you know lives matter black power um you know anti-police sort of grassroots movement happening all across the the country initially and then actually leaked out to the rest of the world um and so you know if my my fear is if we're too cynical all the time if every little thing that can even have somewhat of a silver lining gets dismissed as insufficient it can sort of be disheartening um the fact is even this little gain would

never have happened without the massive amounts of grassroots pressure put on the entire society and those that pressure needs to continue to be put on to take the ball further but even a few years ago charging somebody like chauvin guilty on all three counts was unthinkable um it just never happened uh and you know i mean timier rices and brianna taylor's murderers got off scot free i mean this is something different it's not enough nothing close to what i want nothing close to justice or accountability, but there is something to be said for the pressure put on society and this resulting a set of charges. I don't know. Those are my sort of thoughts on it. I know people are very fiery one way or the other on this, but Allison, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, I feel similarly in a lot of ways. You know, like on a personal level, I've known multiple people now who've been killed by police in which no accountability happened in terms of those police officers. In both cases, no charges even happened. And in one of the cases, the civil charges that were attempted ended up not happening for a wrongful death lawsuit. So, you know, personally, when I was watching that verdict and heard guilty in all three charges, I teared up at it. Like, I'm not going to lie. Someone who's had people lost to police violence, you know, it means something personally, at least, finally see one of them is going to go to prison over it. So there is that. And I think that a lot of people I've talked to had similar experiences,

had a fairly emotional response in the same way. So I think we should acknowledge, right, that there's a level of relief, perhaps, emotionally, that comes from that, and that that can't be dismissed, right? You know, there's a reason people were celebrating in the street, and I don't think it's fair to brush those people off as, like, a bunch of liberals who think the problem is solved, right? That's, I think, clearly not what's happening there.

So there is that aspect to it. And then at the same time, right, there's the question that looms over it for me is what did it take to convict him? And it took really clear damning evidence, right? But we've had that before, and that hasn't led to a conviction. And what it really took that was different this time was other police testifying against him, right? We finally had an instance where police came out and supported the prosecution. And I think this is interesting kind of for two reasons. The first is, I think, that these police and also the prosecution were trying to make the case that there was something

exceptional about Derek Chauvin, right? That what he did was exceptionally bad. It was a violation of training. No good officer would behave that way. And that's an obvious lie, right? Because we know that this is how the police behave all the time. But this is sort of what the police witnesses were there to do and how the prosecution framed it so that what was on trial wasn't policing. What was on trial was Derek Chauvin as a supposed bad apple among the police. So that's one thing that it took in order to get the conviction. And in a sense, you know, it's good that we got the conviction, but the fact that it took that framing is what's so frustrating because it's a defense of policing, which it took to convict him. And, you know, the second thing that I think we can understand as a part of what led to this conviction and to police being willing to testify for once is that last summer, the fucking third precinct got burned down. You know, and the U.S. has not, in recent history, seen the kind of uprisings that we saw as a result of this.

And I think every single cop knew that if there was an acquittal here, we were going to see what we saw last May, right? And so I think a lot of that choice to testify is directly a response, like you said, to those uprisings, right? To a movement that emerged to fight back. And so in a sense, you know, I think it's very important to say, like, let's put this in perspective. This is one cop. And, you know, we have had already more slaughters than I can keep track of since this conviction. But also, let's say this is a small win, not for the prosecution, not for the police who testified, not for the politicians, but for the masses who rose up and burnt down a police precinct. That's kind of how I look at it, at least.

If anyone gets the credit here, that's who gets that credit, because it was the fear of that happening again that made that conviction happen. So, you know, it's tough, right? Like, this isn't justice. You know, the kind of thing that even the liberals are saying is it's not justice. That seems to be fairly recognized. But at the same time, it is a concrete demand, functionally, that was won by a spontaneous uprising. And, you know, we've read linen, we all know spontaneous actions are not going to get us where we need to get. But, God damn, are they better than nothing?

You know, and it's nice to see a demand one. And the question is, how do we take that spontaneous power of the masses that won this and harness that into something organized, concrete, and long term rather than spontaneous? And I honestly think that, unfortunately, this is the tragedy, is that this is the issue that will keep producing that possibility. Because these killings aren't slowing down. They're not letting up whatsoever. We're just seeing more and more of them happening. And, you know, Chauvin's going to prison,

but that doesn't mean more cops are. And I don't think more cops are going to testify in these other cases unless the pressure is there. So that's kind of how I'm approaching. Again, a lot of conflicting kind of emotions involved in it. But I don't think it's unfair to say that there is a small victory for the masses here exactly yeah and you know that that grassroots uprising was necessary to produce a result like this and it's infinitely more efficacious than liberal hand-ringing or waiting

for politicians to come to their senses and do something about it or all the machinations that liberals tell us are the correct way to solve these problems none of those were sufficient they were tried forever before that and it's really only when shit starts burning down people take to the streets disrupts society, put huge pressure on every element of society to face these issues, that anything at all happens. And that's going to become a lesson that we're going to have to continue to learn and realize is much more efficacious than a mere liberal, gradualist, incremental reformism. If we left it in the hands of bourgeois politicians, nothing would happen. And imagine also that there was no video to this particular crime. As Allison said, it doesn't

often matter. We've seen horrific murders by police be filmed completely and still no charges were even filed, let alone, you know, were they acquitted for those charges. And in the very early days of George Floyd's death, the police framing of it in the newspapers was a person dies due to a medical event while being arrested. So if this, and again, this was filmed by, I think, a 17-year-old black woman, this entire thing that set off these protests and then these charges but if there was no video um chauvin would never have been charged with anything the police would never have turned on them and so it's interesting to think about that and also as alison said police turning on him covers their own ass in this sense that you know oh this is representative

of chauvin being a bad having a bad character not doing the right thing that we're all trained to do the right thing he didn't do it right it's like we put it all on him so that policing as an institution can get a little heat taken off of it so it's just in those individual police officers and those department's interest to treat Chauvin as a scapegoat and to turn on him in this situation. But yeah, the emotional response, it took me by surprise as well. You know, just the emotionality of what happened last summer. You know, we kind of have moved on and there's so much happening that we forget.

But it was an intensely society-wide traumatic event to watch these uprisings, to participate in them, to see every night videos. of extreme brutality, destroying, you know, people, fucking them up with rubber bullets, police beating up people indiscriminately. I mean, every night it was a new set of videos that we were being hit with. And I remember all throughout, just like this ocean of tears coming out at spontaneous moments, sort of indicating this deep human trauma that we're all going through, living in this society. So when these charges came through and he was found guilty, you know, the,

emotional release of the black community specifically and the freedom fighters in Minneapolis that have been the leading charge of this grassroots movement, I mean, if you don't have an emotional reaction to that, you don't have a pulse. So, you know, I share your experience of sort of unexpected because I mean, it's one cop going to jail. Like that's not nothing. It's nothing to me. But because of what it represents, I found myself tearing up as well. so that emotional element should not be discarded for just this endless cynicism that says that nothing is ever getting better and all of those protests last summer were for nothing etc i don't i don't like that approach yeah i totally agree with that and i think you know if nothing else like it's a moment of catharsis and if you want a movement right if you want to win you need that sometimes right you can't just have constantly getting beaten constantly loss after loss and getting trampled even small catharsis, I think, is a crucial part of sustaining a movement long term.

So if that's all it is, that is still something that matters in my mind. Totally. Awesome. So kind of the other topic shifting to more of an international perspective that I wanted us to look at a little bit is the question of Afghanistan and U.S. presence in Afghanistan. So to kind of set that up a little bit, right? One of the sort of things that Trump had talked about at various points was getting us out of Afghanistan and then had kept delaying and delaying and delaying and never actually doing.

Then there was a date to get us out in May, and Biden pushed us back. But now, supposedly, we are finally going to be getting our troops out of Afghanistan by the end of this year. And this is after 20 years of American military occupation in Afghanistan that occurred as a response to the 9-11 attacks and to a justification of we need to go hunt down al-Qaeda. and the people responsible for this and also then became about a long complex we need to combat the Taliban and protect Afghan civilians and build infrastructure, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And now 20 years later, we are finally getting some people out. You know, we are talking about getting our troops out of there. There will still be private military contractors. So, you know, this is not a complete reversal or change in the foreign policy. We're still going to have people there representing U.S. and NATO interests

and we'll see what sorts of destabilization and that continues to bring. But as Biden has talked about sort of pulling us out, we've seen different responses. Many liberals are hand-wringing about the negative effects of moving America out now and how that is going to destabilize Afghanistan further and trying to justify, you know, continued occupation. And this poses some interesting questions, I think, for the left, right, because we don't want to see countries get more destabilized, but we also have to be steadfastly opposed to American imperialism. And so we're left, kind of wrestling with a crisis in imperialism to a certain degree as the U.S. is finally moving

some troops out of the area. So that's kind of where we stand with things. What are some of your thoughts on the current situation, Brett? Yeah, I share your thoughts. There's the private contractors that are going to remain in. There's this new era of drone warfare that is going to take place. It's like we see in other places like Syria, Yemen, etc. There's this technological advancements in warfare that allows the U.S. to pull out boots on the ground without really even bringing down the amount of violence and warfare and conflict going on. There's many more things to say. In fact, there's this wonderful article that just came out actually from Counterpunch by Sonali Cole Hartcar called Almost Everything Biden said about ending the Afghanistan war was a lie. Would you mind if I read it this about three or four minutes? Yeah, go for it. Okay, because I think this really, it's really well written and it summarizes like all of my thoughts, really succinct.

So the article goes, President Joe Biden in announcing an ostensible end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan is continuing his streak of paying eloquent lip service to progressive causes while maintaining the implied status quo. In a televised address from the White House on April 14th, Biden said, quote, it's time to end America's longest war. It's time for American troops to come home. But just a day later, the New York Times reported, without a hint of irony, that, quote, the Pentagon, American spy agencies, and Western allies are refining plans. to deploy a less visible but still potent force in the region, end quote.

This means that we are ending the war, but not really. U.S. military leaders and generals gave a much more accurate assessment of the war's future in the days following Biden's speech. Former CIA officer and counterterrorism expert Mark Polymeropolis explained to the times, quote, what we are really talking about are how to collect intelligence and then act against terrorist targets without any infrastructure or personnel in the country other than essentially at the embassy and cabal. In other words, the U.S. wants to wage a remotely run war against Afghanistan,

as it has done in other nations like Yemen, Syria, and Somalia. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin added his two cents, underscoring the U.S.'s ability to wage war without troops on the ground, saying, quote, there's probably not a space on the globe that the United States and its allies can't reach. Marine Corps General Kenneth McKenzie Jr. echoed the sentiment in ominous terms on April 20th at a House Armed Service Committee hearing, quote, if we're going to strike something in Afghanistan, we're going to strike it in

concert with the law of armed conflict in the American way of war. One may suppose that this American way of war is unlike a traditional war where troops occupy a country, a type of war that is generally deeply unpopular with the U.S. public. By publicly promising a withdrawal of troops while quietly continuing airstrikes, Biden ensures that U.S. violence against Afghanistan remains invisible to the American people. Biden also failed to mention in his speech that there are tens of thousands of private military contractors employed in Afghanistan. According to the Times, quote, more than 16,000 civilian contractors, including over 6,000 Americans, now provide security, logistics, and other support in Afghanistan, end quote. The Times did not see fit to ask how the war can be declared over if mercenaries remain on the ground, nor how Biden can declare the war as ending if airstrikes will continue.

Dr. Hakim Naim is an Afghan-American lecturer in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He was raised in Afghanistan and has lived in multiple countries as a refugee and immigrant before moving to the U.S. In an interview, he explained what Biden refused to mention, that, quote, the U.S. created chaos by supporting the most corrupt elite groups and created a mafia system of economy run by the drug lords, warlords, and contractors. And worst of all, the Taliban is back in power, he said. implying that Afghanistan is essentially back to where it started in 2001. Fahim Agahis, the director of the Afghan Women's Fund, concurred with Naim, saying that, quote,

the U.S. made a bigger mess in Afghanistan and lost too many opportunities to help Afghans to fix the problems that the U.S. itself created 40 years ago. She was referring to the CIA arming of the Afghan Mujahuddin, warlords against the Soviet Union, which invaded and occupied Afghanistan in the late 19, In other words, our destructive involvement in Afghanistan predates by decades the post-9-11 invasion and occupation that continues to this day. Instead of owning up to the havoc we wreaked in Afghanistan, Biden wants credit for withdrawing U.S. troops from a war we have been involved in since the 1970s, not 2001, and that will most certainly not end by September 11, 2021. Today, according to Dr. Naim, quote, the CIA has thousands of militias operating in. Afghanistan, and there are still thousands of contractors whose objective Afghans don't even

know. He summarized, quote, it's going to be very naive and simplistic to think that the war will simply end. Gahis, who has traveled to Afghanistan numerous times to oversee humanitarian aid projects, has seen firsthand what the private contractors represent. She said, quote, they have CIA clearance and weapons, and they can be used as a partial military force. In fact, the private military contractors outnumber U.S. troops by so much that more contractors than soldiers have died. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a watchdog agency, warned that the pullout of contractors could have worse consequences than the withdrawal of troops. The most disingenuous aspect of Biden's speech was his insistence that the U.S. had a simple

goal in Afghanistan and met it. He said, quote, we went to Afghanistan in 2001 to root out al-Qaeda, to prevent future terrorist attacks against the United States planned from Afghanistan, and that our objective was clear. But the U.S. did far more than that. It cobbled together a puppet government, foisted its ideas of democracy onto a people struggling with U.S.-backed armed warlords, and thus ensured that secular democratic movements remained weak. It poured billions into fighting a drug war,

only to end up encouraging drug production. It defeated the Taliban only to choose the rebel group as a partner for peace. Along the way, it killed more than 40,000 Afghan civilians, most likely an underestimate. Today, although there is an Afghan government in power headed by President Ashraf Ghani, it is entirely dependent on the U.S. for legitimacy and runs at the mercy of Taliban-led violence as well as armed fundamentalist warlords that successive American administrations and the government itself have legitimized. But none of that was important enough for Biden to mention. Instead, the president claimed that in 2001, the cause was just, and I supported that military action.

Then, encompassing the disastrous war into a single simplistic sentence, Biden claimed, quote, we delivered justice to Bin Laden a decade ago, and we've stayed in Afghanistan for a decade since. With these words, the president offered a tantalizing characterization of the Afghan war, that the U.S. intended to root out terrorism, that the task was achieved, and that we should have left soon after. It is a comforting thought to reimagine the Afghanistan war through such a benevolent lens, as if our only gaffe was that we stayed a little too long. Biden also made absolutely no mention of the fact that Biden was captured and killed in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.

Missing, this is almost over here, missing from the political dialogue over the war is just how obscenely we have paid to fight this futile 20-year battle that will leave Afghanistan in the hands of a corrupt and ineffectual government and a newly empowered Taliban force and other warlords and militias. According to the Costs of War Project run by Brown University, American taxpayers forked over more than $2.2 trillion for a war in Afghanistan that Biden wants us to believe achieved its objective by assassinating Bin Laden a decade ago in a different country.

At a time when inequality continues to rise in the U.S., and politicians claim there is no money to fund infrastructure projects or a Green New Deal or Medicare for all, the costs of the Afghan war will continue to rise in both economic and human terms. Taxpayers will continue to foot the bill for airstrikes and private contractors with no end in sight, Afghans will continue to suffer and die. Seen through such a lens, Dr. Naim gave an accurate impression of Biden's speech as simply, quote, a colonialist and orientalist justification of an intervention. End of that article.

Alison, do you have any thoughts on any of that? Yeah, I mean, that hits on pretty much every thought on the topic, I think. You know, I think very importantly, it points out that the U.S. failed at its tactical goals, right? Which is something that it doesn't want to talk about. But where is Afghanistan compared to where it was 20 years ago in pretty much the same situation? And I think the other thing that the article hits on that's really important is how far back this shit goes, right? Because, you know, a thing that has frustrated me in watching liberals respond to even this minor drawdown is like, oh, well, by leaving, we're going to like spread chaos to Afghanistan and like, then that'll be on us. But it's already fucking on us.

There's chaos in Afghanistan. And it has been since, again, the army of the Mujahideen to fight against the Soviets, right? Like, this is the history of American interaction with Afghanistan that is intimately tied to the Cold War and anti-communism. and to the current moment. So I think I really like what that article gets at, really tying how far back this goes and the extent to which, you know, this is part of a legacy

and even this minor drawdown already has Warhawks angry, right? Which is kind of wild to think about. So we'll see, obviously, where this all goes. You know, things are not stable in Afghanistan, as the article points out. We'll see the long-term effects of it. But it is important, I think,

to contextualize how long this history goes back and how much this is a systemic part of U.S. foreign policy. Yeah, absolutely. And again, shout out to Sonali call Hotcar from the Counterpunch April 27, 2021. It's a really good article. So having covered the Chauvin trial, having covered Afghanistan, are you ready to move into India in the situation going on there? Yeah, do you want to lead us into that one?

Maybe we'll work from there. Yeah, I mean, right now, I think as many people might know, India is being hit hard by what is considered a second wave. and this comes after months of more or less feeling like India handled the crisis pretty well with the first wave the restrictions started being loosened they got on top of it early and i think last fall it was actually looking pretty good and so this second wave has really taken india and the world by complete surprise showing once again the sort of intractable nature of a pandemic and and how just when you think you have it sort of contained it so easily can burst the seams and take over a country once again. Right now, India is seeing

350,000 daily COVID tests coming up positive. That is a huge amount of people, and that's just what is recorded officially. As we know from our own experience here in the U.S., many of those go uncounted. People with mild or asymptomatic cases might not even go get tested. And so that number is certainly even low. And so what we have here is a crisis, one country in particular need of international assistance, and that leads into the other side of this issue, which is what can be called vaccine imperialism, America hoarding resources that are essential to save lives, and the patent protection of huge pharmaceutical corporations, literally centering and,

valuing their profit margins over the life of millions of human beings in India and around the world, particularly in the global South. So that's an introduction to what's going on. Alison, do you have any opening thoughts or points you want to make about it? Yeah. I mean, so, you know, first is just recognizing the absolute scope and horrificness of what's going on. Those numbers of 350,000 cases a day are completely staggering and I think should be shocking to everyone. And I think looking at those numbers in comparison to how many people the United States has vaccinated already is a tale that really gets at a difference here between these two countries and the kind of privilege that fucking imperialism gives you, right?

The United States, by funding the vaccines, by having this operation warp speed and by positioning itself to be in control of this vaccine technology, has been able to vaccinate huge swaths of its population while depriving the rest of the world of it. It is not only India who is suffering, even though it has the most severe crisis on the basis of lack of access to the vaccine due to patents, but also much of the global South is going to be far, far behind in terms of accessing the vaccine over the long term, because these patents ensure that Western countries and companies hold on to the knowledge of how to produce it and the right to distribute and sell it. And that puts us in a really utterly horrifying situation, even if things stabilize in India, which hopefully they will, finally we are seeing some humanitarian aid just giving vaccines to India, which is not a long-term solution because it still doesn't resolve the patent question. But even if things do stabilize in India, there's good reason to believe we will continue to see outbreaks like this in the global south for quite some time to come. You know, Bloomberg did a pretty comprehensive analysis of how long they expect the COVID crisis to last. And they were saying because of vaccine discrepancies, we'll probably see flare up outbreaks outside of the imperial core for seven more years before we might finally have this thing under control.

So it's really important to talk about what's happening in India, but it's important to understand that that's part of a broader problem that can stretch out. Even liberals are saying up to almost a decade, right, in terms of this playing out. And I think it's very important to think about the way that imperialism is an impediment to global health. It's not just an impediment in the context of, you know, externalizing violence through wars, but it gets in the way of every single little bit of global cooperation that could be needed to respond to crises which occur at a global level. And what we've seen time and time again with COVID is how much the hegemony of America of Europe and its imperialist powers has hurt the rest of the world. And ultimately, as a result of that, undermined the. ability for the Imperial Corps to deal with the virus as well, because this is a fucking global

problem, not a national one. And so I think that context is really important for wrestling with what's going on here in India and this tragedy that's unfolding right now. Absolutely. And, you know, the pandemic and climate change, all of it is, as I've said many times, pointing toward the desperate need for humanity to get beyond not only capitalism, but the myopia of national self-interest and cooperate globally. We don't need the globalization of markets. We need the globalization of cooperation and the realization that our safety, our futures are inexorably tied to the safety and futures of human beings living around the globe.

But again, this comes down to national self-interest on America's part, where you have a situation in which we have not only the 300, 60 million vaccines necessary to meet our population demand. That's assuming every single human wants to get a vaccine, which I'll get to in a second. But America has contracts for 550 million extra doses above and beyond what it would take to vaccinate every single American. So this is pure and simple hoarding. Now, after global pressure on the U.S. has been, you know, gaining steam in the last week or so, Biden did say that he will be open to donate getting 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, not just to India, but to other countries as well.

Astrosenica is not even approved for use in the U.S. right now, and 60 million distributed over multiple countries doesn't come close to putting a dent into India's needs right now. In India, the black market, people are desperately trying to find vaccines for their elderly parents and grandparents. And, you know, last I heard, there's like, you could get, like, a vaccine on the black market for up to $1,000. So, you know, that's horrific for people, especially in deeply impoverished parts of India. So that's another thing. And then, you know, here at home, there's this sort of macabreality where 45% based on recent polling of Republicans are just straight up saying they don't want the vaccine. Places like Mississippi have an abundance of vaccines that are not being used because of the conspiracies and sometimes justified vaccine. hesitancy surrounding it. Often that hesitancy is based on a poor and under-informed understanding of

science and vaccines, but still in some situations I understand it. I sympathize with it. When it's so heavily shifted toward Republicans, it's clearly a political issue, an anti-science, reactionary, conspiracy-minded approach to the situation. But we have a situation in which on American shelves, and overabundance of vaccine are just sitting there being unused while people by the millions are gasping for air in India and there's no attempt to reach out and give the life-saving vaccines to people in other parts of the world. And it's a grotesque prelude to what's going to come with climate change in the coming decades unless systematic deep, profound changes are made. And the last thing I want to say is just on the sort of economics of vaccines, of vaccines. means vaccine development is funded on, especially on the basic level, that research is funded by the government. Taxpayers disproportionately provide the fundamental scientific research

that goes in to the making of these vaccines. And on top of that, every new vaccine that is created is created on the shoulders of decades of global scientific research from multiple different countries, right? So you have a situation in which this life-saving, vaccination medical science is largely funded and produced by public institutions undergirded by taxpayer money but the profits that are gained from it are privatized so you have like you know we've said in the angles and marks a text socialism utopian and scientific social production of not just a commodity what should not be a commodity right it should be a human right to have access to these things. Social production, but private appropriation of the profits generated.

And even between Moderna and Pfizer, I forget which one, I think Moderna, both of them have to be cold storage, but modernist technology allows it to be stored at a higher temperature, right, which is easier to achieve and therefore easier to distribute. They could just tell Pfizer how to do it. Pfizer, I think, has to maintain a negative 70 degrees Celsius. cold storage and I think Moderna is like negative 25 right so there's a disparity there that makes it easier Moderna could just tell Pfizer

hey this is how you do it you can you can store it at this temperature instead of that one make it a little bit easier and get the vaccine out to more people but they don't want to they protect their formulas their little vaccine recipes they patent them and they don't let the rest of the world let alone one another have access to them

even though having access to those patents would allow more people to live they are private they are prioritizing their own profits and then the U.S. government, as we know, a mechanism of class rule sides with its own bourgeoisie over the humanitarian need and protects those profits as well. And so on every single level, this is a disgusting display of everything wrong with capitalism, with imperialism, and with the global order. Yeah, I mean, I think that final sentence really does cover it, you know, and it's so

frustrating for me. I think one of the things is, again, just that juxtaposition between here and in India, whereas you were talking about there are huge chunks of the U.S. who are not going to get this vaccine. And we are actually seeing that. The vaccination rate is slowing down nationally, which indicates that the people who want it are mostly getting it at this point and we're starting hit that. And again, in some instances, I'm sympathetic to some of the causes that caused that hesitancy. But then to look at countries that have been hit by this pandemic in a way that just is not even close to how we've been hit by it. It's been so much more devastating there. And then to see people choose not to get it, you know, is just so kind of wild to see to a certain extent.

Yeah, I don't know. Just the human aspect of this is very difficult, I think, to deal with. And we'll see going forward, I mean, the other component of this that's really difficult is, you know, like you said, there's those 60 million vaccines that are going out. But the problem is we're all going to need boosters on these vaccines, right? As far as we know the more optimistic data that we have about how long the immunity lasts for is around six months, which means there's going to be a time again where more vaccines are necessary and will there be the political will to give even that small amount of aid that time? Unfortunately, I really doubt it.

So, you know, we're just in a difficult situation. I don't mean to be too depressing about it, but there are so many structural factors at play here that come from capitalism and imperialism, and it's really just tragic to have to see play out. Yeah. And as for those booster shots, it's always important to remember, the more that this disease is allowed to spread in different countries without this global humanitarian response to put an end to it, the more variants develop.

And right now in India, we're seeing the development of a new Indian variant on top of the South African and British variants, et cetera. And so it actually prolongs the pandemic and prevents us from getting a control on it globally. And then it also weakens the vaccine. because if new variants emerge, the vaccines that are created now become less and less utilizable going forward, which for Pfizer and Moderna and other vaccine companies is fine because they can engineer new vaccines and profit off of those, right? Like there's actually a profit incentive for some of these huge corporations to, I mean,

I don't know if they consciously think of this way in their head, but probably at some level, to not end this thing once and for all, to not open up their patents and, make sure that everybody is vaccinated as soon as possible all over the globe precisely because more complications, more variants, more tweaks needed to the vaccines, more boosters required means more profit for them ultimately. And that's another horrific capitalist calculus that is going into this. And so letting new variants emerge does nothing except bolster their profit margins, but it causes immense suffering. And it prevents us from getting a control on it so that we can move forward as a global

civilization and as individual countries as well. So as always profit over people. Yeah. Well, it's about all that I have on these, I think. Do you have any other thoughts before we go ahead and wrap up? I'm good. I think we covered all the main points for those three topics. Perfect. Yeah.

So, you know, we're dealing with some heavy stuff today. But, you know, I think that this month, since we're doing a theory text, which I'm excited about. I hope you all will enjoy that episode. We just recorded that together. I feel like it's important for us to touch on these really big things, though, because obviously there's so much going on and so much emotionally wrapped up in all of this. I wanted to make sure that we do some mention

of it at least. So again, as always, thank you all so much for your support. I've said this at the beginning of this little episode, but really it enables us to be able to do the show in a way that we wouldn't be enabled to otherwise, and it's deeply appreciated. And we will see you next month when our main episode will be a current events episode. And for that, maybe we'll do a Q&A or something else. As always, if you have some ideas, let us know. And we will see you next month.