Bad TRIPS

I talked about this a little bit yesterday, but after some research and you know, thankfully uh tweets from from Kyle, thank you so much for sending me um clips and information about trips which I'm going to be talking to

you all about today. And no, I'm not talking about trips that we would all like to take in terms of vacation, but I'm talking about trade related aspects of intellectual property rights trips and why that is important and why we all need to be paying attention not to the world's reaction to omnicron in terms of their bullshit politically motivated bands that they are doing on several globally South nations African nations in particular, even given the fact

that we know that travel bands don't fucking work. They don't actually stop coronavirus from happening from spreading that. In fact, what we know that actually does work is masks and quarantine and oh yes, that thing called that nations, which I will get to in a moment, But yesterday was the day that the United States had said, had made their announcement late last week that on Monday they were going to be issuing their travel ban for seven African nations,

including South Africa, where the omnicron variant was discovered. And many of these nations, if not all of them, are absolutely taken aback by the economic punishment now that their countries are going to be receiving for doing nothing other than complying with the world and being transparent and having this open level of sharing with the world's doctors and scientists right to understand how these new variants come to be, how they are working, and why and if they are

a threat. And then you have the World Health Organization that comes out and decides is this a variant of concern? Is it one of interest? And they have determined, right with the little information that we've had since its discovery on November twenty second, that omnicron is in fact a variant of concern. Now why is that, well, because it

has over thirty different mutations. Right now, we will not know for several weeks most like it probably more on the lines of a month or a couple of months exactly how people in the real world are reacting to omnicron. From initial anecdotal studies that are being tested on some that have contracted that variant, they are saying that symptoms are mild, that it is tiredness, it is headaches, and that hospitalizations to this point in South Africa has not skyrocketed.

It has stayed pretty level. However, around the United States as well as around the globe, what we are seeing as we are approaching the holiday season is in fact the opposite, that hospital rates are increasing, that the spread is increasing, back to numbers that we hadn't seen since before the summer. Now, I want to get to trips now and why this is something that I realize once again,

all of the world's problems. This is what I am beginning to understand and really, and when I say beginning to understand, I'm not saying that I was at once naive that decisions were made by nation states because of goodness, right, because of morality, because of a shared sense of values, no,

that is actually never the reason whatsoever. However, I did think and clearly wrongfully so that when we were faced with a global health pandemic, which now we have been in for roughly nineteen months, right, give or take, depends on if you want to say two years from when Donald Trump found out, which would be you know, mid December, would give us two years because he was alerted to

COVID nineteen in December of twenty nineteen. We the public were not made aware of the coronavirus until roughly February of twenty nineteen, and then we had our first initial shutdown right in March of twenty twenty. And so if you look at around that time, it has been nineteen months that the world has been grappling on a variety of ways. Right. You have seen in intensive shutdowns, you have seen now once again Austria is in a shutdown.

Japan has just recently closed its borders to all international travelers, and you're going to see what I believe will be a domino effect of that happening around the world. But again, you know what we have known and what we are learning as we continue to learn this virus as it

continues to mutate is why is it mutating? Because there is enough virus that is continuing to float around our air, and because there is so much virus that there is going to be mutations and it's going to figure out its way around our tactics that where you're using to keep people safe. But there's another reason why these variants are popping up and why particularly they're popping up in lower income countries, and it's because of trips trade related

aspects of intellectual property rights. Now, I want to read this to you. In October of twenty twenty, India and South Africa, with support at that time of sixty two World Trade Organization members, proposed a TRIPS Agreement waiver that would allow them to be able to develop right their

own vaccines. Because what has happened is that we are developing vaccines to COVID nineteen based on new technology right, innovative technology like the mRNA vaccine right and other technology that was used with fisser and maderna, and then you have other technology that was used with the J and J one dose. The reality is is that the companies, the pharmaceutical companies right, those that I just named that created the initial round of vaccines, and now boosters have

made billions upon billions of dollars. Who are their biggest clients right now, well, high wealth nations who have money like the United States, like the UK, like Switzerland, like other folks, to be able to do what to buy up a certain amount of vaccine because they have the resources to do that. On top of which we also remember in the initial rounds you needed to have special refrigerators you needed to have which meant what access to energy sources in order to be able to store the

medication for it to them be used. Well, a waiver of trips would allow for these pharmaceutical companies or require them rather to share their intellectual property right all of the machinations around these vaccines with lower income countries, who could then, with the tools and infrastructure that they have, be able to manufacture their own vaccines. Because here's the thing. In order to eradicate COVID, which we are now all understanding, is never going to go away, right, It's never going

to happen. And here's the reason why. Because you would need nine billion shots, nine billion shots right to happen around the world in order for that to happen. So none of these companies that I mentioned, the Madernas, the fisers, right, Johnson and Johnson have the ability to manufacture that much right that many doses. And so you would think that in the height of a global health pandemic when we now have a second variant, one that is being said

to be a lot more contagious right than delta. And remember it only took but a handful of weeks for Delta to become the dominant strain the original og COVID nineteen.

So given all of what we have learned right the hard way, with four million deaths or more I'm sorry, there are more than four million deaths worldwide that have happened through COVID nineteen, you would think that protecting the intellectual property rights of said companies that have already made fucking billions off of a pandemic would be in a space where you would have their headquartered countries the UK, Switzerland, Germany, Japan and others that would say we need to have

a waiver four trips so that these lower income nations can actually be able to vaccinate their people. Put one shot in the arms of the people that need to get it. Because here's the thing. While the Biden administration wants to come out and get patted on the back for helping right and providing more vaccines internationally than any other country. The other countries are not being admonished right

for dragging their fucking feet. Because here's the thing, and this is what I tweeted yesterday in a series of tweets that I put out because I'm just so fucking disgusted.

I'm disgusted with capitalism, I'm fucking disgusted with inequality, because it is going to be the death of us all right, so that a few can buy their jets and can take their fucking vacation trips to outer space, right, it will be the death of us all because it is greed and the desire for shareholders and CEOs to be able to make an obscene amount of fucking money that they will never be able to spend in their goddamn lifetimes, to protect, to protect the intellectual property of these vaccines

at whose expense the expense of millions of people around the globe who do not have access, who are waiting for the benevolence of these wealthier nations to do the right thing when they're not being coerced into doing the right thing. And what do we know to be true is that no one does anything because they actually want to or because it's morally just. They only do so when they are compelled to or when they are shamed

into doing so. So here we have, right now, as the G seven sat down and decided what it was that they were going to do as an international community in order to eradicate COVID nineteen, and they have done none of those things except give us a bunch of

bullshit lip service and do a bunch of photo ops. Right, the omnoicron variant happened because high wealth nations who were too busy colonizing and fucking extracting from the global south, right, they rush to do that shit right and leave them politically stranded, economically stranded after they get what's good for them, and then don't turn around and actually, for the betterment of the fucking globe, make sure that we have vaccine equity.

Make sure that all of these nations, every single one of them that needs access to vaccines, can begin to develop their own with their own manufacturers, their own scientists, because they have all of the credible information right that they need in order to move forward on their own. But you see that would take billions and billions of dollars away from the Madernas and the visors. Right, So this is what I want to read to you. That

was stated by the global the Council of Global Union. Right, this was reported on the pr Newswire yesterday and this is what it's said. The Council of the Council of Global Union CGU, representing over two hundred million workers, has urged the UK, Switzerland, Germany and the EU Commission to stop blocking efforts to waive vaccine patents. The largest council of global Unions believe action must and can be taken this week to urgently enable vaccine production in the Global South.

I'll go on the demand from unions for a World Trade Organization waiver on intellectual property rights for COVID vaccines comes as the new omnicron variant emerges from countries which have been denied the right to produce their own vaccines.

So again we are banning economically crippling nations in the Global South as punishment, as if they have created this new variant and are just spreading it around the world, when it is fact In fact, the high wealth nations who allowed this to fucking happen because of their fucking greed right and the fact that they do not want to provide the intellectual property and the patents necessary right for these countries to be able to have a fighting

fucking chance. They would rather wipe out millions more so long as they can continue making money, So let me go on. It also comes amidst renewed momentum and urgency from world leaders, with President Biden and European Parliament the only EU institution elected by citizens reiterating their calls for intellect actually property waivers of vaccines. But I want to tell you this that while President Biden has come out in support of this waiver, he has not put the

full force of the United States behind it. He has not offered any type of fucking threats. He has not offered any type of oh, you know what we're going to start doing. We're going to impose more tariffs, We're going to do X, Y and Z. Because until the rest of the world fucking stands up and recognizes that until we are all safe, none of us is safe from multiple variants variant mutating on top of themselves, that

we need to get this fucking done. But he hasn't done that right because much in the same way that the United States always wants to do. They want to be able to fucking have their cake and eat it too. Look at us, Oh, we're for equality, We're for a justice, but only in fucking name only, because we will put

no action and no teeth behind anything. Sound fucking familiar, because that's the same way that this administration is going about dealing with the insurrection, dealing with protecting our voting rights, dealing with protecting women's rights, right, the same fucking tepid bullshit, except in this case. In this case, it isn't just the United States and Americans that are going to suffer.

It is the entire fucking globe. We love to believe that what happens right across the pond, what happens in the Global South, isn't going to come to the United States. That's the way that we've always dealt with the world, except COVID changed everything. Right. Except during COVID and since right the discovery of it, what we've realized is that the world's borders are bullshit. They were made on paper, and they exist only on paper. Because you cannot ban

a fucking virus. You can't bullshit your way out of dealing with it. Either you either face it head on and follow the goddamn science to do so, or you continue to fuck the world. And in this particular instance, this week, what we are seeing is a choice to continue to fuck the world and tell us, tell us with a straight face that you're doing the best that you can, when you know, good goddamn well you are doing anything. But I am so tired of coddling this administration.

I'm so tired of hearing how hard their job is. Then don't fucking sign up for it if you can't hack it. The reality is we are doing the bare fucking minimum and have been doing the bare fucking minimum because we would rather write in one in one respect right in the United States, but around the world, every wealthy nation is basically in no small words, And I'm not a person to mince them. Just a bunch of

hookers for corporations. Right, they throw you some money, you pretend to kurt tail how much they make, or to give them little slaps on the risks. It's all a performative show for the public, so that the public doesn't get outraged realizing that they're the ones that are truly the pawns. Right, But it's corporations that are really running the globe, not just this country, that it's capitalism that

is the absolute driver. We want to point fingers at other nations and say, oh, well, they're authoritarian or they're dictators, right when it's really corporations that are running the shots. Biden this week, right yesterday, having a meeting with all of the top CEOs to do what exactly another fucking photo op, another way for them to tell us that, oh, we have supply chain issues, when there isn't a supply

chain issue. There's actually a fucking you know, good job issue, which is that people would rather sit the fuck home than continue continue to receive indentured servitude wages and no fucking health benefits and no security. But they want to talk to us about the hundreds of thousands of people that they hired for this holiday season. But they're not going to talk to you about the fact that those people will be out of a job by the end

of the second quarter, by the end of the first quarter. Right. They don't want to talk to you about that. Everything, everything that is being done is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors, and it is exhausting to follow because at the end of the day, what does it come

back to? Fucking greed. Let me continue with this statement that was made by the Chair of the Council of Global Unions and the General Secretary of Public Services International, Stephen Cotton, said this, I speak directly to the heads of the state for the UK, Germany and Switzerland when I say this, your decisions are putting millions of lives

and livelihoods at risk. The world is watching you as panic and anxiety spread at the rise of a new variant that may have been prevented if you had acted sooner. The waiver can be agreed this week. You must act now or forever, hold the preventable deaths of millions more on your conscience. But once again we are appealing assuming that these people have a conscience. They don't. They don't. It's why I continually bring up the Wu Tang song.

Cash rules everything around me because they don't. And I'm going to get into a conversation that we could have seen this coming, not necessarily a global health pandemic, but exactly where greed was gonna lead us right with my dad's favorite movie nineteen eighty seven, Classic Wall Street, which I will get into next. But let me give you this final quote from Rosa Pavanelli, the General Secretary of

Public Services International. She said this, a handful of leaders are putting the interests of the pharma lobby ahead of the frontline workers they once applauded. This is an insult to their sacrifice. If the leaders of the UK, Switzerland and EU nations want to break the cycle of lockdowns and travel blocks, then they must immediately stop blocking the trips waiver proposal so no barriers stand in the way

of expanding vaccine production and quashing new variants. And I want to say this that the initial waiver right once again was asked for, was proposed by India and South Africa in October of twenty twenty. That was before the

delta variant. That was but right, if we think about it, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, eight months into this pandemic, when we were all wondering if and when we were going to get a vaccine, they were asking that for those that were currently working the big pharma companies that were currently working rushing to get a vaccine that they would be included and wouldn't be left behind, Because I don't know, right, in a

global economy, in a world again where borders and boundaries are made up on paper and based on politics and racism and capitalism alone, that you think that just vaccinating the high wealth whiter nations was going to somehow prevent you your nation from getting another variant, from being forced into another lockdown, from having to reinstitute COVID nineteen protocols when you decided to do away with them, because in everybody's rushed back to normal, they didn't think about, you know,

what the repercussions could be, because the economy, because money,

you know. I almost wish that we had a time machine just so we could see where we would be right now if every political official had been put to the side, and instead of seeing them on the televisions, instead of following their steps, that it had been the world's doctors and the world's scientists that we had all decided to follow and listen to where COVID nineteen would be now, because we will have COVID and we will for as long as the rest of us are fucking

living because we decided to follow politicians and bullshit politics rather than science. This was also written on the news wire. Since the initial proposal in October of twenty twenty, over four million people have died from COVID nineteen worldwide. Those are four million deaths that may have been prevented if when the waiver was proposed in October of twenty twenty, that the UK, Switzerland and other EU nations didn't decide

to block it for their own economic well being. Four million fucking people and guess what, no one's going to jail, not in this fucking country, not anywhere around the world. And it's their greed that has those bodies in the fucking ground. This sickness that I feel these days. The more that you continue to pay attention, the more that I turn and listen to various news stories and reports, because I tell you that when I take vacation, I

really do tap all the way the fuck out. And it's because I have to exist and marinate in this space, because I don't have the ability to turn off. Because you know, twenty seminey years ago, when I decided to go into politics and policy was because I wanted to feel like I could be a part of change. I wanted to be a part of feeling like I had a voice in making this country better. And now I want to do anything. But which brings me to the

movie Wall Street. So for those of you unfamiliar with Wall Street, it is a nineteen eighty seven film that was directed by Oliver Stone, starring Michael Douglas as the famed villain Gordon Gecko, Martin Sheen, among others, Charlie Sheen, Martin Sheen, Daryl Hannah. I mean, it was the who's who of white celebrities in the eighties that were in this film. And there are so many quotes that I pulled out when I started to think about how every single problem that we are facing in this country and

facing around the world stems from greed and racism. It's those two things coupled together that when you look at our problem, whether it be climate change, whether it be COVID, whether it be the insurrection and the rise of fascism, not just in this country but around the globe, it all comes back to money and racism and cruelty. So in the nineteen eighty seven film, one of the most

famed lines by Gordon Gecko is greed is good. But here is the entire quote and not just the piece of it, and then I want to dig into it. Gordon Gecko, played by Michael Douglas, says this. The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for a lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, Greed works, Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms, Greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge is marked upward and is the surge

for mankind. Greed, ladies and gentlemen, is good. That is out of the mouth of Gordon Gecko. But frankly, it could have come out of the mouth of Donald Trump, right, It could have come out of the mouth of Jack Dorsey who just left Twitter, could have come out of the mouth of you know, Zuckerberg. Because at the core of this nineteen eighty seven's film, and you have to think about out in nineteen eighty seven, right, you have to think about, you know, the rise of the white yuppies.

You got to think about, you know, the rise on Wall Street and Reaganomics, and you know, essentially embodying this greed and trickle down economics and all of these things that were happening in this country that related to our economy. You had the War on drugs, which was going to

lock up black and brown families for decades. Right then you had, you know, all of the pillaging that was happening on Wall Street, but it was being characterized by the rich and famous, right, and shows of that nature. We have always in the United States had an attraction, a deep addiction to wealth, to glamour, right to celebrity.

And what he was articulating here the character played by Michael Douglas Gordon Gecko, is that the belief structure that if we were not greedy, we wouldn't evolve, right, And that, dear friends, is kind of the basis. I'm not an economist, but in understanding capitalism that you see the rebuff to capitalism, right, has always been socialism, as if there aren't all these other different types of economic structures, and as if the United States has a clear economic structure, which it does not.

It is both a theocracy and an oligarchy. It is a kleptocracy, and it is capitalistic. It is all of these different things. Right, Our politics and our democracy and our economy are all intertwined, right, and at the core of it, it all works for one class and group of people. And so when you think about why many people, and I'm not just talking about like the white domestic terrorist Party, I'm talking about people in general, when they say, oh, well,

we need capitalism. Capitalism is a driving force socialism. You would have a bunch of lazy people sitting around and only some of us would be working really hard while everyone else is reaping the benefits. And I'm saying to myself, how the fuck is that explanation any different than what

is happening right now? You have the one percent that owns more than fifty percent of the wealth in this nation, that is owned by a handful of fucking families, right, oligarchy, kleptocracy, who are benefiting off of the backbreaking labor of the bottom right of the ninety nine percent. They see them as just pawns, pawns on a chessboard, or cogs in a machine that can easily be replaced. We don't need to look at these people as actual people, right. They

are a means to an end. The more cogs that we can get working, the more productivity, the more that they churn out, and the wealthier the wealthier one percent get.

You know, now, the trick is in making those in the ninety nine percent believe that what got folks to the one percent was just hard work and gusto you believe it's so much that we take fucking life lessons and success tips for them in magazines like Fast Company, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, where we look for the uber wealthy to give tips to the rest of us on how they are so successful, which leads us all to believe this fictionalized dream that we're all

just one good idea or just one more hard effort at having and sitting on their yachts. That's the biggest fucking laugh of it all. None of those people got there because of their great ideas. They got there because of generational wealth. They got there because they already came from a place of privilege, and their ideas were readily welcomed.

Because they were white, because they were male, because they were cisgendered, because they were hanging out and going to the right boarding schools that put them at the right colleges, that put them at the right fucking country clubs, right, that put them on the right golf courses. That's set up their futures. So you tell me how a fucking kid in Newark, right was going to have the same opportunity and fucking access as the kid in Greenwich, Connecticut.

And I just give you the area that I'm living in. You tell me how if we continue to divest from our public education system, and we're giving the kid that is in Newark, New Jersey, right issued books or old laptops or no laptops, no computers at all, And you tell me, by just having grit, they're going to be successful against the fucking Greenwich, Connecticut kid who is being put in the right expensive, fucking sixty thousand dollars a year preschool to set them up for their fucking trajectory.

How does that work? And then we turn around and we take tips from those people when it should be the other way around. How is it that some of the most economically marginalized people in this country don't go out and just shoot up a bunch of banks, don't go out and just rob a bunch of shit. How they're able on a regular basis to put food and medicine and clothing on their kids and their family with what fifteen cents, with just their seven dollars and fifty

cents an hour. We love to set up these fictional tales about if you just work hard, right, if you just go to college and waste a hundred two hundred thousand dollars on an education that is no longer guaranteeing you anything other than minimum wage, or anything other than being a cog and a slave in the machine of a company that will chew you up and spit you out as soon as you are burned out, and then pay two people the cost of yours one salary because

they are young and dumb and hungry and also right drowning in debt, so they have no choice. And I don't say dumb is in uneducated, No, No, I mean dumb to how these systems are operating against you. You don't actually realize that until you're like ten years into

the game, that it's all been a fucking setup. It's all been a setup to continue to secure the wealth and the well being of the one percent while everyone else barely gets by, and then then in order right to keep you addicted right to the company to be a good company man, woman in person. Right, we dangle little things in front of you. Oh we'll give you free beer. Oh, we'll give you a foosball table. Not we'll give you the best healthcare that you could possibly have.

Not that we'll give you a living wage, Not that we'll wipe out your student loan debt. No, no, no, no, We'll give you all of this low hanging fruit. Much in the same way that black people in this country are acting, asking for fighting for right, marching for protesting for equity. Right, not that white people are killed in the street like fucking dogs, but that nobody is killed in the street like a fucking dog, and that when

they are, there is accountability and responsibility for those actions. Right. Not that we need handouts in our community. It's that we need you to invest with the same rigor that you extracted from our communities. We need you to give us back what you fucking took. But you see, that

is not the narrative that is ever offered. That's why I say on wok F all the time that story is important, and that our public education system is the biggest perpetuator of white supremacy and economic instability because if we wanted people to be better off, we would teach them how, we would give them the tools to do that. But you see, then they would start questioning those that are in power. This goes back to the other great quote from the movie Wall Street. Gordon Gecko says, this.

The most valuable commodity I know is information. The most valuable commodity I know of, he says, is information. It is the most valuable commodity because if you can control what people know, what people consume, then you can control them. If you can feed them a bunch of disinformation and lies, and then control the mechanisms for which you are feeding them those lies, and then hold them right, you have the power. And so you need to ask yourself, why

don't I know certain things? Why am I only finding out about certain things? Decades into my life? I consistently feel robbed when I learn about another black innovator, scientists, activist, abolitionist from past years and present, because it's purposeful. How do you keep people down? You continue to tell them that they ain't shit. That's how you continue to feed

them what you want them to know. This is not me creating conspiracy, It's just like, look around you, and you look at all of these little pockets, and let me tell you, COVID ain't a little pocket to look in. But it's so much easier to go with the narrative of oh, well, South Africa and the global South, they just don't care about their population. They don't care about their citizens, right, They're so underdeveloped they don't even know

which way is up. Meanwhile, the reason why on the kron was discovered is because of the acclaimed epidemiologists that are in South Africa working. It's much easier to blame the victims, to blame the oppressed for their ills, than it is to look at who the fuck has their actual knee on their neck, because of course they're not going to be blamed because guess what, they can control

the flow of fucking information. So you want to know why the BBCs and the MSNBC's and the CNNs and the CBCS and all of these fucking global international cable networks don't call out the hypocrisy and the bullshit and ask the real questions, because who the fuck is controlling

the flow of information, who's advertising on their airwaves? You are only going to get the truth and get to the source of that truth if you dig for it, and you see if the majority of people in this country and around the globe are just struggling, just trying to make ends meet, where do you think that they have the time and the energy and the desire to do the digging that is necessary. You know that most people don't, So what do you do? You spread information, misinformation,

much in the way that COVID has spread. That's how this spreads. I am so utterly disheartened this week, and it is the beginning of the week because I feel like a crazy person looking around and seeing what is so fucking obvious. How do we stop the pandemic? You make the vaccine free. And that doesn't mean that you just give out a ton, No, it means that you give people the freedom and the flexibility to be able to create their own How do you break this cycle

of fucking greed of revolt? That's how. And people will say to me, Danielle, that seems crazy, blah blah blah. I don't want that. It's already happening, except they're telling you that there are supply chain issues. They tell you go out and buy Bye Bye, because there is going to be a shortage on Turkey. There's going to be a shortage on Christmas. There's going to be a shortage on this, that and the other thing. Guess what you show up at the fucking stories. I didn't see a

shortage where I was. But they don't want to tell you where the shortage comes from. They want to tell you why there is a problem, because it would force them to have to change, and they don't want to do that. Just sing the same fucking song over and over again to people that are too busy and too desperate to be paying attention to decipher what the real fucking message is. I called the show woke as fuck because I want people to be conscious. I want you to be filled with rage. I want you to see

the truth and spread it far and wide. We are living inside of Gordon Gecko's fantasy in nineteen eighty seven, where greed is good, greed is right, greed is everywhere. Look to your left, look to your right. Everything this past couple of days has been telling you to spend, spend, spend,

bye bye bye, why for what? So that we can continue to fill the coffers of those who continue to divest from our communities that instead of providing people with the skills right to fish for themselves, to do for themselves, you want to hold them hostage and then sell them the water, sell them the fucking rod, sell them the fucking fish. Greed is going to be the death of us all because there is no way to contain this virus.

There is no way to contain climate change, there is no way to contain fascism and political and economic instability. It is going to continue spreading until people that are in power decide that they're going to relinquish that power, or what is more likely, that those with little to no power decide to take it. Those are the choices that we have When the decision will be made, only time will tell. That is it for me today, Dear friends on will gay f as always, Power to the

people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.