Capitalism
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COVID vaccines: calling the shots
Before the COVID-19 pandemic engulfed the world, the big pharmaceutical companies did little investment in vaccines for global diseases and viruses. It was just not profitable. Of the 18 largest US pharmaceutical companies, 15 had totally abandoned the field. Heart medicines, addictive tranquilizers and treatments for male impotence were profit leaders, not defences against hospital… Continue reading
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Facing the Anthropocene: An Update
Recent scientific work strengthens and extends the arguments in Ian Angus’s pathbreaking book on fossil capitalism and the crisis of the Earth System Continue reading
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Revealed: Boris Johnson’s controversial policy chief leading secretive NHS task force
Freedom of Information disclosures to openDemocracy show the new “No.10 Health and Social Care Taskforce” reports to a Steering Group chaired by Munira Mirza, the influential head of Boris Johnson’s policy unit, and that it “met weekly” from July to September with a further meeting in October. Continue reading
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Crony Capitalism: This case will reshape society
Kate Bingham heads up Britain’s vaccine task force. She’s a venture capitalist with no public health experience, married to a Conservative minister. Dido Harding leads the Test and Trace system. She has no public health experience and is the wife of a Conservative MP. Mike Coupe, is head of COVID-19 testing, and has – you… Continue reading
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Conspiracy and Class Power: A Talk by Michael Parenti
“Those larger institutional forces are directed by conscious human agency, and those agencies use conspiracy or non-conspiracy, they use conspiratorial forces or non-conspiratorial forces, and that the conspiratorial forces are important, they’re not rare exceptions, and that they are systemic in their nature and in their output.” – Michael Parenti (from this week’s lecture.) Continue reading
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The myth of a food crisis – new paper
The idea that the world might soon be unable to feed its human population is an old and powerful narrative that has recently been extensively exploited by agribusiness. In its modern form the idea rests on the surprisingly narrow foundations of a small number of mathematical food system models. These in turn rest on specific… Continue reading
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Glyphosate: Hypocrisy and Public Health in the UK
The government is extremely worried about a substance that could be contributing to a spiralling public health crisis that has been decades in the making. It has been detected in food and in urine. The government has therefore decided to carry out mass urine testing. It has found millions of ‘cases’. The more it tests,… Continue reading
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Calls for a public enquiry into awards of Covid-related contracts
The original brief of this website, set up ten years ago, was to raise awareness of the ‘revolving door’, rewards for failure, widespread behind-the-scene lobbying and party funding which corrupts the decision-making process here and abroad. There is currently a resurgence of such concerns, expressed here by Professor Prem Sikka and later by Sophie Hill,… Continue reading
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Exiting the false “jobs versus environment” dilemma
Amidst the renewed rise of obscene inequalities, a wave of protests is sweeping through Italy, from south to north. On the one hand, the pandemic has engendered an upsurge in workplace disputes to defend health and in mobilizations to protect the income of workers affected by COVID-19-related restrictions. On the other hand, however, we have… Continue reading
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Capitalism’s Coronavirus Catastrophe
Wall Street’s war machine includes 11 aircraft carriers and 5,800 nuclear weapons. Yet the capitalist government in the United States is helpless to combat the latest coronavirus surge. Continue reading
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Silvia Federici: The exploitation of women and the development of capitalism
Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch is a classic work of anti-capitalist feminism. The book examines capitalism’s investment in sexism and racism, showing how the consolidation of the capitalist system depended on the subjugation of women, the enslavement of black and indigenous people, and the exploitation of the colonies. Federici demonstrates that unpaid labor–especially that… Continue reading
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Corporate Watch: New book coming soon!
For as long as Corporate Watch has been around we have worked on technology related issues. Back in the ’90s we supported the anti-Genetic Modification movement which had huge successes in opposing corporate controlled genetically modified organisms (GMOs) being forced on an uninformed and unwilling public. Continue reading
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Viral Optimism: The Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine
The announcement that Pfizer Inc., along with its collaborative partner BioNTech SE, had come up with a successful vaccine candidate to combat the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 sent the markets soaring. In New York, Pfizer’s shares rose by 15 percent in pre-market trading; those of BioNTech, Nasdaq-listed, rose 25 percent. “Today is a great day for… Continue reading
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America 2020: First Comes a Rolling Civil War…
The massive psyops is ongoing. Everyone familiar with the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) knew how this would imperatively play out. I chose to frame it as a think tank gaming exercise in my Banana Follies column. This is a live exercise. Yet no one knows exactly how it will end. Continue reading
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EU: Democracy is more than elections
The image of Donald Trump on a golf course refusing to concede election defeat got me thinking. It served as a blunt reminder of just how much power certain leaders hold on to. Admittedly the US is not the only place where abuse of power has gotten out of control in recent times. When I… Continue reading
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Gates Foundation pours another $70mn into pushing Covid-19 vaccines on 3rd world countries as safety & efficacy questions remain
Billionaire vaccine evangelists Bill and Melinda Gates have topped off the global effort to roll out a shot against the novel coronavirus as some question the vague clinical trial results of the Gates-funded Pfizer jab. Continue reading
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Against “Capitalist Realism” and the “Neoliberal State”
Capitalist realism is the official ideology of the neoliberal state, and is an insidious form of propaganda that seeks to eliminate resistance to regressive corporate tyranny. “Capitalist Realism,” the seminal text by Mark Fisher, forensically dissects the dynamics by which late capitalism ensures world domination, enforcing its mantra of “there is no alternative,” which discourages… Continue reading
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What now for the US-UK trade deal?
Over the last 4 years we’ve taken the secretive US-UK trade talks and built a movement of opposition. This movement has seen campaign actions by farmers and foodies, doctors and nurses, climate campaigners and activists working to protect our rights online. Continue reading
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An Old Fable Retold
In the days before man had completely established his domination over the animal world, the poultry of a certain country, unnamed in my record, met in solemn conference in the largest hall they could hire for their money: the period was serious, for it was drawing near Christmas, and the question in debate partook of… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 