The vaccination programs moving forward around the globe point both to the tremendous success that can be achieved through a crash effort and to the enormous global deficit in health infrastructure. Current vaccine production schedules, although impressive, will still require years to fully inoculate everyone in the world who wants to be vaccinated. Patent issues may hold back production. Overburdened or overwhelmed health systems in various nations (and including certain areas within the United States) require upgrading—capital investments in facilities themselves, infrastructure upgrades to service the facilities, and an expansion of education and training to ensure a sufficient number of health professionals. Systems of universal health coverage are needed.
But this is only a portion of the recovery and growth measures that are required worldwide to put the human species on a trajectory consistent with the unbounded potential for creativity, the most central core of human identity.
Can nations and societies provide a platform for all people to access a meaningful immortality of having contributed something of enduring value? Doing so requires an “economic health” mobilization that lances the grotesquely inflated financial bubble, draining it carefully and safely through Glass-Steagall reorganization and any necessary bankruptcy proceedings, allowing healthy banking to play its needed role. Financialization will be recognized for the dead end it is, and the physical economic outlook championed by Lyndon LaRouche can come to the fore, in directing credit towards physically productive projects.
On Monday begins in earnest the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Sunday saw welcoming remarks from Klaus Schwab, who pointed to the themes of stakeholder capitalism and “global stewardship” (a green takeover of business and a shutdown of reliable sources of power). The week’s events will push heavily for a reset of global governance along the lines of the “regime change” in favor of finance and central banks promoted in Jackson Hole in 2019, and the “Terra Carta” notion of supranational control of the world to avert the supposed emergency of climate catastrophe. Green dreams, when an attempt is made to implement them, run into harsh realities. A modern, productive, glowing world simply cannot depend on “renewable” energy sources.
Also on Monday, the preposterous article of impeachment against former President Donald Trump will be transmitted to the Senate, where the absurd trial will begin the week of February 8. The goals of the charade are to advance the cause of creating “domestic terrorism” laws in the United States, and to prevent Trump (and, by implication, any other outsider) from building an independent political movement.
Trump is facing another trial as well. The 20-member “Oversight Board” of Facebook (an institution literally called simply The Oversight Board) will hear an appeal from the former President of the United States, to decide on whether to reinstate his access to Facebook. This august and well-remunerated board, which was established a year ago and has since spent its time deliberating on such crucial topics as “how artificial intelligence can identify different nipples in different contexts” will have 90 days to render its decision.
This bizarre procedure points to the need for new legislation to regulate the ability of tech monopolies to shut down speech. The phone company cannot end a telephone call based on what you are saying, but Twitter can ban you and Amazon can throw you off of its web services.
Speaking of Amazon, the employer of 800,000 people in the United States is facing, in one of its Alabama facilities, the first vote on workplace unionizing since 2014. Although the National Labor Relations Board has approved mail-in ballots for the employees, Amazon has discovered—surprise, surprise—that mail-in balloting is not reliable! Quite an irony for the company headed by the owner of the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” Washington Post.
It is time for sovereign nations to cooperate on the common aims of mankind.