CORPORATE MENTALITY

BRUCE LERRO—If you received an undergraduate college degree you probably never had a class in political economy. What you probably had is at least one class in political science and another class in economics. If you are like most people, you found these classes either boring or incomprehensible. Why? The answer is because both fields are riddled with capitalist propaganda that has little basis in most people’s experience. Sure, there are some people who are convinced that political science and neoclassical economics make sense but which social class is this? Chances are it is members of the upper middle class for whom political and neoclassical economics make sense from their class position. But upper middle-class people are 10% of the Yankee population.

In this episode, Chris Hedges focuses on the harsh criticism Michael Moore’s new film Planet of the Humans has received in many quarters, including some with solid ecological qualifications in knowledge and activism. Guest is the film’s director, Jeff Gibbs.  The film is an indictment of a corporate-friendly environmentalist bureaucracy apparently incapable or unwilling of understanding the nature of corporate power. . 

CHUCK COLLINS—“This orgy of wealth shows how fundamentally flawed our economic system is,” said Frank Clemente, ATF’s executive director. “In three months about 600 billionaires increased their wealth by far more than the nation’s governors say their states need in fiscal assistance to keep delivering services to 330 million residents. Their wealth increased twice as much as the federal government paid out in one-time checks to more than 150 million Americans. If this pandemic reveals anything, it’s how unequal our society has become and how drastically it must change.”

Scientists around the world have been racing to develop a vaccine and the first clinical trials could be held in China and the US within a month. But a number of cases, where people who had tested negative for the disease and were discharged from hospital only to give a positive result a few days later, have cast doubt on the process.
If it turns out that these patients had been reinfected by the same virus, then vaccines will not prove effective.
But the monkey experiment carried out by a team from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences may help dispel that fear.

ULSON GUNNAR—If US arms manufacturers like Lockheed could get away with bribing officials to buy hundreds of what were essentially “flying coffins” to allied nations back in the 1950s and 60s, killing far more allied pilots than the enemy ever did, how hard would it be to sell something slightly less deadly, semi-functional but simply overpriced? Pretty easy apparently.