Sunday, May 15, 2022

On Our "Virtual Route 66" Around Our World: On the Week That Was



It has been quite a week in our World.    Our hometown, Laguna Niguel, was subjected to a WildFire (directly attributable to climate change) and over 20 homes were destroyed.   We commend the brave firefighters as they fought valiantly to contain the fires.

It was quite a week as our team was on the prowl during our "Virtual Route 66" around the World.   Our World was as challenging as ever as the war in Ukraine raged on, Lebanon went to the polls, Israel marked 74 years as a Nation, Palestinians remembered it as the Day of the Catapshore, as an Al Jazeera correspondent was killed by Israeli troops covering protests in the occupied West Bank,   mass protests engulfed Iran and the threat of inflation and recession loomed large in large due to the raging war in Ukraine.     This is as Finland and Sweden are gearing up to join NATO and Ukraine has already submitted an application to join the European Union.    Brazilians are also getting ready to go to the polls as well.      

Our team pulled together a snapshot of the week that was courtesy  Al-Monitor, France 24, The Economist of London, Heather Cox Richardson, War on the Rocks, the Financial Times, and Other leading Media around the World: 

The geopolitics of tech

How America and Europe hope to stop China’s digital juggernaut

Bilateral boldness is essential. Harder still will be the necessary give and take

Recession watch

Global growth is slowing, but not stagnating—yet

The Chinese and Russian economies, though, are probably shrinking

Abortion and the left

Democrats are overreaching in their defence of abortion rights

They could blow a chance to enthuse mid-term voters


 

WATCH: Arabian horses are among the oldest bred horses in the world, tracing their history back 4,500 years to Arabian Bedouins and artwork from ancient Egypt. But this long lineage is now in danger in northern Syria.

Responding to major water shortages, an Egyptian scientist created a new type of rice that needs 30% less water to grow. They’ll need it, as Ethiopia’s huge new dam upstream is shrinking the vital Nile River even more.

The Turkish government has lifted almost all Covid restrictions, with one stark exception: the live music ban after midnight. Workers in the entertainment industry are furious.

An Israeli pharmaceutical company announced a new nasal spray featuring psychedelic mushrooms. It will be used to treat PTSD, anxiety, and other mental health issues.

Syrian rapper and producer Al Darwish is a pillar of the Arab hip-hop community, making music for almost two decades. He now wants to help his fellow artists use NFTs to gain more independence in the industry.

Putin on parade

Why the military parade on May 9th matters to Russia’s president

Under Vladimir Putin, marking the victory over Nazi Germany has become an annual ritual



A Closer Look at Looming Recession

Medora Lee, USA Today








What Different Countries Are Doing (Or Not) to Help Ukraine's Refugees

 

From waiving visa requirements to turning people back at the border, here’s everything you need to know about who is showing up amid the Ukraine refugee crisis.

Politics

What the CIA thinks: William Burns on the new world disorder




Heather Cox RichardsonCommentShare

Today the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol issued subpoenas for testimony to five members of Congress: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Representatives Scott Perry (R-PA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Mo Brooks (R-AL). The committee previously invited them to cooperate voluntarily, and they refused. The committee has evidence that these five, in particular, know crucial things about the events of January 6 and activities surrounding the attempt to overturn President Joe Biden’s election. 

McCarthy communicated with Trump before, during, and after the attack on January 6th. A recently released tape shows McCarthy claiming that Trump admitted some guilt over the attack.  

Perry tried to install Trump loyalist Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general to overturn the election. 

Jordan was part of meetings and discussions after the election to overturn its results. He also communicated with Trump on January 6th, including in the morning, before the attack took place.

Biggs was part of the planning for January 6, including the plan to bring protesters to Washington, D.C. He also worked to convince state officials that the election was stolen. Former White House officials say Biggs sought a presidential pardon in connection with the attempt to overturn the election results. 

Wearing body armor, Brooks spoke at the January 6 rally, where he told rioters to “start taking down names and kicking ass.” Since then, he has said Trump tried to get him to help “rescind the election of 2020” and put Trump back in the White House.

Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said: “We urge our colleagues to comply with the law, do their patriotic duty, and cooperate with our investigation as hundreds of other witnesses have done.”

This is an escalation of the committee’s investigation into the attempt to keep Trump in power, and today we learned more about what Trump’s presidency meant for national security.

The Department of Justice has opened a grand jury investigation into the handling of the classified documents that ended up at Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors have issued a subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to get the boxes of documents and have asked to interview people who worked in the White House in the last days of Trump’s presidency. A spokesperson for Trump said: “President Trump consistently handled all documents in accordance with applicable law and regulations. Belated attempts to second-guess that clear fact are politically motivated and misguided.”

We also learned more about the people Trump’s presidency empowered.

The House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis, chaired by Representative James Clyburn (D-SC) and charged with examining waste, fraud, and any other issues relating to the government response to the coronavirus pandemic, issued a report today laying out how meatpacking giants got around local and state health officials trying to protect workers. 

Working with Under Secretary of Food Safety Mindy Brashears at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), who industry lobbyists boasted “hasn’t lost a battle for us,” top executives of JBS, Smithfield, and Tyson asked Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to get Vice President Mike Pence to throw his weight behind keeping workers in the plant. Less than a week later, Pence said at a press conference that meatpacking workers “need…to show up and do your job.” Industry leaders wrote a proposed executive order for Trump to issue, declaring a meat shortage and invoking the Defense Production Act to ensure that the plants continued to operate. Less than a week later, Trump issued a similar executive order.

But there wasn’t actually a shortage. Even as John H. Tyson, chair of Tyson’s board, ran full-page ads in national newspapers warning that “[t]he food supply chain is breaking” and “[o]ur plants must remain operational so we can supply food to our families in America,” U.S. pork exports were at a three-year high.

At the same time, companies asked for federal liability protection against lawsuits if workers got Covid-19 on the job. And they did get sick. Taylor Telford of the Washington Post noted that research from the University of California at Davis showed that about 334,000 coronavirus cases have been tied to meatpacking plants across the country. They have caused more than $11 billion in economic damage. Not, apparently, to the meatpacking companies, however. According to a Reuters story from December 2021, meat packers’ profits jumped 300% during the pandemic.

This story points to a larger problem of the consolidation of food production, a problem we are seeing right now in the acute shortage of baby formula in the U.S., where supplies are 43% below normal. The problem stems primarily from a recall of formula produced by Abbott, the country’s largest producer of infant formula, in its Sturgis, Michigan, factory after Cronobacter bacteria, which can cause a potentially deadly infection in infants, was found in test samples.  

Abbott has had a good run lately: in October 2019 it announced a $3 billion share buyback program to make its stock more valuable. Two years later, last October, a whistleblower warned that the Michigan plant was in need of repair, and claimed that Abbott had falsified records and hidden information from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Four months later, in February 2022, the FDA warned consumers not to use products from that facility. It is now closed, and other companies are scrambling to make up the difference. Today the administration announced it would increase imports of baby formula until U.S. production comes back to normal levels. 

It sure feels like we are beginning the reckoning of forty years of decisions, decisions that have concentrated power in a small minority and that have finally led us to the place where a congressional committee wants to talk with five members of Congress to hear what they know about the attempt to overturn an election so a Democratic president could not take office.   

Notes:

https://january6th.house.gov/news/press-releases/select-committee-subpoenas-five-members-congress

https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/fda-investigation-cronobacter-infections-powdered-infant-formula-february-2022

https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-lawmaker-mo-brooks-wore-body-armor-to-jan-6-trump-rally-2021-7

https://coronavirus.house.gov/about

https://coronavirus.house.gov/news/press-releases/new-select-subcommittee-report-reveals-extensive-coordination-between-trump

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/us/politics/justice-department-trump-classified.html

https://coronavirus.house.gov/sites/democrats.coronavirus.house.gov/files/2022.5.12%20-%20SSCC%20report%20Meatpacking%20FINAL.pdf

https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/meatpacking-plants-increased-covid-19-cases-us-counties

Popular Information
The baby formula shortage and the twisted priorities of the American economy
Throughout the country, there is an acute shortage of baby formula that millions of families rely on to feed their children. According to research from Datasembly, "the national out-of-stock rate for baby formula reached 43 percent" l…
Read more
17 hours ago · 107 likes · 26 comments · Judd Legum, Tesnim Zekeria, and Rebecca Crosby

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/12/meatpackers-covid-deaths-trump-industry/

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/abbott-rewards-shareholders-shares-record-new-all-time-high

https://www.reuters.com/business/meat-packers-profit-margins-jumped-300-during-pandemic-white-house-economics-2021-12-10/

https://www.abbott.com/corpnewsroom/strategy-and-strength/abbott-announces-share-repurchase-program.html#:~:text=Abbott's%20board%20has%20authorized%20the,was%20announced%20in%20September%202014.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/12/us-to-boost-baby-formula-imports-to-ease-shortage-after-abbott-nutrition-recall.html


 



How to Get NATO Forces the Technology They Need, by Cynthia R. Cook and Anna M. Dowd

War on the Rocks: The U.S. Military Might Be More Like Russia's Military Than You Think, with Steve Blank and Ryan Evans

Net Assessment: Threats From Out of This World, with Zack Cooper, Melanie Marlow, and Christopher Preble

 

Read a written summary of Prof Wolff’s new Global Capitalism lecture on our Updates page on our website, complete with quotes and links to specific sections of the lecture for your interest.

Enjoy this lecture in full on our website, YouTube channel or on your favorite podcast player. Share with your friends, family and colleagues in order to spread the message of Democracy at Work.  

We close out with the following #RandomThoughts: 





 

 

 

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