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NIH-Afrigen Agreement Will Help WHO's Fight Against Pandemics
The National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health today announced a collaborative research agreement with South African manufacturer Afrigen. The agreement will support the World Health Organization's (WHO) mRNA Hub Technology Transfer Program. NIAID pioneered the use of mRNA and co-invented the world's most effective COVID vaccine, NIH-Moderna. Peter Maybarduk, Access to Medicines director for Public Citizen, issued the following statement:
WASHINGTON
The National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health today announced a collaborative research agreement with South African manufacturer Afrigen. The agreement will support the World Health Organization's (WHO) mRNA Hub Technology Transfer Program. NIAID pioneered the use of mRNA and co-invented the world's most effective COVID vaccine, NIH-Moderna. Peter Maybarduk, Access to Medicines director for Public Citizen, issued the following statement:
"These are partnerships the world needs to sustain sharing of the latest science and technology, and to help give countries equitable access to the best medical tools. Failure to share technology contributed to extreme shortages of COVID vaccines, tests, and treatments, and imposed a deadly injustice that much of the world will remember for generations.
"NIAID's expertise and global reputation can help hub partners solve scientific challenges and draw further support from leading governments - and perhaps, eventually, from pharmaceutical corporations. NIAID scientists will join vaccine scientists of global reputation - inspired by and contributing to the hub program and learning from COVID mistakes to build a more equitable future.
"Pharmaceutical corporations must provide deep technology transfer. Leading governments must provide funding and logistical support to help establish a distributed network of global manufacturers. Scientists are leading the way. Perhaps political leaders will follow."
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Global Fury After State Dept Claims Israel Not Violating US Law by Blocking Gaza Aid
"This will be the Biden administration's legacy: unconditional support for war crimes and complicity in genocide," said one group.
Nov 12, 2024
Human rights advocates around the world reacted angrily to Tuesday's U.S. State Department determination that Israel is not violating humanitarian law—even as its forces annihilate Gaza and block aid from entering the embattled Palestinian enclave.
Last month, the Biden administration—which has approved tens of billions of dollars in military aid for Israel and provided nearly unconditional diplomatic support since October 2023—sent a letter to the Israeli government threatening to cut off U.S. arms transfers if it failed to take "urgent and sustained actions" to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza within 30 days.
Asked during a Tuesday press conference if the Israeli government has met the letter's demands, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said that "we have not made an assessment that they are in violation of U.S. law."
"The overall humanitarian situation in Gaza continues to be unsatisfactory," Patel continued. "But in the context of the letter, it's not about whether we find something satisfactory or not; it's what are the actions that we're seeing."
"These actions that we have seen, we think that these are steps in the right direction," he added, citing the limited reopening of the Erez border crossing between Gaza and Israel. "We want to see more steps. We want to see these steps sustained over a significant period of time, and ultimately, we want to see these steps have a result on the situation."
Patel insisted that the Biden administration is "not giving Israel a pass."
However, humanitarian aid groups accuse Israel of causing " apocalyptic" conditions in northern Gaza, where thousands of civilians including many women and children have been killed or wounded while others face imminent famine under a plan to starve out the population in order to ethnically cleanse the area.
On Tuesday, a coalition of eight international humanitarian groups including Oxfam International, CARE, Norwegian Refugee Council, Save the Children, and others published a report titled The Gaza Scorecard: Israel Fails to Comply With U.S. Humanitarian Access Demands in Gaza, which found that Israel has failed to fully comply with any of the 19 specific demands in the Biden administration's letter.
The scorecard noted:
The principals of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee now assess that "the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and violence." The findings of this scorecard underscore Israel's failure to comply with U.S. demands and international obligations. Israel should be held accountable for the end result of failing to ensure the adequate provision of food, medical, and other supplies to reach people in need.
"While Israel manipulates the U.S. by allowing some aid trucks into other parts of Gaza in the days leading up to the deadline, the performative act did not bring any humanitarian aid to the besieged northern neighborhoods of Gaza," said Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). "Even more concerning, no forcibly displaced Palestinian from the northern neighborhoods of Gaza has been allowed to return home."
Indeed, the IDF said it has "no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes."
At the same time, relief workers describe deadly dangers faced by Palestinians who try to flee besieged areas including the Jabalia refugee camp, site of some of the war's worst massacres, including indiscriminate Israeli targeting of refugees without regard for age or gender.
The International Court of Justice in The Hague is in the lengthy process of determining if Israel's atrocities amount to violations of the Genocide Convention. While it is weighing the evidence in the South Africa-led case, the ICJ has issued a series of provisional orders directing Israel to prevent genocidal acts, halt its assault on Rafah, and stop blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Critics accuse Israel of flouting all three orders.
"As a signatory to the Genocide Convention, the U.S. is obligated to prevent acts of genocide and to avoid complicity in them," DAWN stressed on Tuesday. "The U.S. should halt its military support for Israel to comply with its convention obligations and uphold international legal norms."
This is not the first time that the Biden administration has officially denied that Israel has violated humanitarian law during the Gaza war. In March, the State Department accepted Israel's assertion that the country is using U.S.-supplied arms in compliance with international law, even as more than 100,000 Palestinians had been killed or wounded in Gaza up to that date. The casualty figure has since increased by about 50%.
Congressional progressives and human rights groups pushed back on the Biden administration's claim. In April, a leaked memo revealed that officials at the United States Agency for International Development warned Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel was indeed breaking the law by blocking aid from entering Gaza. Another leaked State Department memo raised "serious concern" over Israeli noncompliance with humanitarian law and slammed Israel's claims of legal U.S. weapons use as "neither credible nor reliable."
Palestine advocates fear the Biden administration's refusal to suspend arms shipments to Israel—as experts argue is required under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and Leahy Laws—will open the door for Republican President-elect Donald Trump to back Israeli crimes such as the annexation of Palestinian territories including the West Bank.
"By spending over a year ignoring U.S. law on supplying arms, the Biden administration has handed Trump an excuse to ignore any law he wants," Center for International Policy executive vice president Matt Duss said Tuesday on social media. "And they will have nothing to say about it."
Duss called the Biden administration's new determination "predictable, pathetic, and blatantly illegal."
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'Let's See If I Get Banned Again!' Journalist Releases Team Trump Rubio Dossier
Trump's reported pick for secretary of state previously suggested the president-elect "could not be trusted with America's nuclear codes" and criticized him for "using language in seeming praise of Putin."
Nov 12, 2024
With U.S. President-elect Donald Trump reportedly set to pick Sen. Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, journalist Ken Klippenstein on Tuesday published a 551-page dossier that the campaign previously compiled on the Florida Republican.
Like the dossier on Vice President-elect JD Vance that Klippenstein released on KLIPNEWS in September, the Rubio file "was offered to major media outlets this summer," the independent journalist noted. "All refused to publish it, not over questions about its authenticity, but because the media thinks it is an arm of the national security state, complying with U.S. government's warnings that because the document came from Iran, the American people shouldn't see it."
"Let's see if I get banned again!" Klippenstein said Tuesday on X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter and now owned by billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk. Klippenstein was "permanently" suspended over the Vance dossier, but after The New York Timesreported last month that the Trump campaign coordinated with X to suppress the document, Musk had Klippenstein reinstated in the name of "free speech principles," according to correspondence obtained by the journalist.
The latest dossier, Klippenstein noted, "is authentic and there are no signs it was altered, something spokespersons for both the Trump campaign and Rubio did not deny when I contacted them for comment and provided them with copies of the dossier."
The journalist highlighted sections of the document detailing Rubio's past remarks about Trump related to Russian collusion in 2016, the 2020 election, Trump's control over nuclear weapons, the September 11 terrorist attacks, Russian President Vladimir Putin, NATO, North Korea's Kim Jong Un, free trade, China, immigration, Iran, the Iraq war, and the U.S. withdrawal from Syria.
For example, the dossier notes that "in 2016, Rubio contended that Trump was dangerous and could not be trusted with America's nuclear codes," and "in 2022, Rubio said it was 'unfortunate' Trump was using language in seeming praise of Putin."
In addition to detailing Rubio's critiques of Trump and "undermining of the 'America First' agenda," the document—last updated April 1, 2024—lays out some of his "questionable" policy positions as well as "ethics issues" and "controversial associations."
So far, Trump's other reported or confirmed foreign policy picks are: Congressman Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) for national security adviser, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) for ambassador to the United Nations, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for ambassador to Israel, Steven C. Witkoff for special envoy to the Middle East, and Brian Hook to lead the U.S. State Department transition team.
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Economists, Advocates Call On G20 Ministers to 'Make History' and Tax Superrich
"There are 16 people in the world who—if 99% of their wealth vanished overnight—would still be billionaires," said one campaigner. "We must tax the rich."
Nov 12, 2024
Ahead of the G20 Leader's Summit, scheduled to take place over two days next week in Rio de Janeiro, international economists on Tuesday were calling on economic ministers to take an historic step toward reducing global inequality by approving a tax on extreme wealth.
"Tax the rich" has been a rallying cry among economic justice advocates for years, but with the richest 1% of people now owning more wealth than the bottom 95%, some of the world's top economists and finance ministers in recent months have joined the call for a fair taxation system that demands the wealthiest households pay their fair share.
Jenny Ricks, general secretary of the Fight Equality Alliance (FIA), pointed out that taxing the richest people in the world would barely dent their fortunes—but for millions of people across the Global South, it could mean the difference between whether healthcare and public services are provided to them or not.
"There are 16 people in the world who—if 99% of their wealth vanished overnight—would still be billionaires," said Ricks. "We must tax the rich, end austerity, and cancel debt to ensure healthcare, education, and other essential public services for billions in the Global South. A growing movement of millions across the world is tired of the G20 upholding a broken system. A first step forward would be supporting an ambitious global deal to tax the superrich."
The five richest men in the world have doubled their wealth since 2020, while 60% of people have become poorer. The richest 1.5% of people in the world now control nearly half the world's wealth.
FIA warned that with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump scheduled to take office in January, global finance ministers must take action to rein in the "era of the billionaire" before leaders like Trump lavish their billionaire donors with more tax breaks, decimating public services.
"Countries are on track to lose $4.8 trillion in tax to tax havens over the next 10 years," said Nathalie Beghin, co-director of the Instituto de Estudos Socioeconômicos in Brazil. "Such unchecked tax evasion perpetuates inequality and undermines the foundation of sustainable economic development. At this historic moment, G20 leaders must demand the changes needed to transform an outdated, unfair system that's no longer fit for purpose—if it ever was."
Beghin, an economist, called on G20 leaders to support the United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UNFCITC), which would "tackle illicit financial flows, rediscuss inefficient tax expenditures, [and] tax transnationals and high net worth individuals."
"If Brazil could tax its superrich, as a consequence of a global commitment, the country could stop austerity measures and implement social, environmental and adaptation policies to fight hunger, poverty, and climate change," said Beghin. "Making big companies and very wealthy individuals pay their fair share is also fundamental to tackle inequality."
At a meeting in Rio de Janeiro in July, global finance ministers agreed on the need to develop a global tax system in which the richest people in the world pay a higher tax rate—despite the protests of the United States delegation.
Zinnia Quirós Chacón, a campaigner with Oxfam International, called the upcoming G20 meeting "a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make history."
"For the first time ever, world leaders are close to agreeing on a global plan to tax the superrich," she said.
Oxfam and other groups participating in the Say It With Me Now campaign—an initiative aimed at showing the widespread support for a global wealth tax—posted a video on social media showing supporters around the world asking the G20 ministers to take decisive action.
"Tax the superrich and make the world a better place for everyone," said the supporters in the video. "They won't even notice anyway."
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