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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Your Privileges Are Not Universal: The Eighth Newsletter (2021)</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Vijay Prashad - February 25, 2021</div>
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<div id="gmail-attachment_36999" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Jose%CC%81-Balmes-Chile-Lota-el-Silencio-2007.jpg" alt="José Balmes (Chile), Lota el Silencio, 2007." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="431" height="207"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-36999" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>José Balmes (Chile), Lota el Silencio, 2007.</span></p></div>
<p><span>Dear friends,</span></p>
<p><span>Greetings from the desk of the </span><a href="https://thetricontinental.org/"><span>Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research</span></a><span>.</span></p>
<p><span>Stencilled in red on the walls of Santiago, Chile is a statement of fact: ‘your privileges are not universal’ (</span><i><span>tus privilegios no son universales</span></i><span>).
This is a factual declaration because the privileges of power and
property are not shared across the gaping class divide. Consider the
fact that before the pandemic struck last year, over 3 billion people –
or half the world’s population – had no </span><a href="https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/259817/9789241513555-eng.pdf;jsessionid=B55B934A37FD9CB4E831B94F0A08D1FB?sequence=1"><span>access</span></a><span> to health care. This data appears in a 2017 World Health Organisation (WHO) </span><a href="https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/259817/9789241513555-eng.pdf;jsessionid=B55B934A37FD9CB4E831B94F0A08D1FB?sequence=1"><span>report</span></a><span>
that tracks important matters such as access to basic household
sanitation (lacked by 2.3 billion people) and medical care for
uncontrolled hypertension (suffered by 1 billion people).</span></p>
<p><span>An Oxfam </span><a href="https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621149/bp-the-inequality-virus-250121-en.pdf"><span>report</span></a><span> from 25 January 2021 called </span><i><span>The Inequality Virus</span></i><span>
points out that ‘the pandemic could cause the biggest increase in
inequality since records began, as it precipitates a simultaneous and
substantial rise across many countries’. Before the pandemic, the World
Bank </span><a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/34496/9781464816024.pdf"><span>calculated</span></a><span>
that about 2 billion people ‘remain in poverty, that is, living below
the standards their own societies have set for a dignified life’.
Because of the pandemic-triggered jobs crisis, it is likely – the United
Nations </span><a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/estimates-impact-covid-19-global-poverty"><span>notes</span></a><span> – that half a billion more people will sink into poverty by the end of the decade; World Bank numbers </span><a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/10/07/covid-19-to-add-as-many-as-150-million-extreme-poor-by-2021"><span>concur</span></a><span>.</span></p>
<p><span>‘And with the pandemic’, write the World Bank analysts, ‘the
newly poor are more likely to live in congested urban settings and to
work in the sectors most affected by lockdowns and mobility
restrictions; many are engaged in informal services and not reached by
existing social safety nets’. These are the billions who will slide
deeper into debt and despair, with education and healthcare slipping
away from them as hunger rates rise.</span></p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_36969" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Aleksandr-Deyneka-USSR-Unemployed-in-Berlin-1932.jpg" alt="Aleksandr Deyneka (USSR), Unemployed in Berlin, 1932." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="431" height="285"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-36969" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Aleksandr Deyneka (USSR), Unemployed in Berlin, 1932.</span></p></div>
<p><span>Nothing of what is written above is an exaggeration. All of it
comes from researchers and analysts at mainstream organisations such as
the World Health Organisation and the World Bank, neither of whom are
known to inflate the ill-effects of capitalist policy. If anything,
these organisations have a tendency to minimise the perils of
privatisation and corporate-based policies, urging on further cuts to
public systems. During the tenure of Gro Harlem Brundtland at the helm
of the WHO (1998-2003), the organisation </span><a href="https://www.southcentre.int/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/RP49_PPPs-and-PDPs-in-Health-rev_EN.pdf"><span>encouraged</span></a><span>
the creation of Private-Public Partnerships (PPPs) and Product
Development Partnerships (PDPs). The WHO’s emphasis on the private
sector – alongside pressure from the International Monetary Fund to cut
public sector funding – accelerated the haemorrhaging of public health
systems in many of the poorer countries.</span></p>
<p><span>When the WHO should have led the fight to deepen public health
systems and to create regional and national pharmaceutical production
systems, the agency produced PPP platforms such as the underfunded
Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI); along with other
agencies, GAVI is now </span><a href="https://www.un.org/en/un-chronicle/protecting%20lower-income%20countries%20with%20covid-19%20vaccines%20requires%20global%20solidarity"><span>spluttering</span></a><span>
forward to provide COVID-19 vaccines to low-income countries. The
people who produced global austerity, a desert of possibilities, only
now recognise the perils of the inequality virus.</span></p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_36979" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Hugo-Gellert-USA-Comrade-Gulliver-1935.jpg" alt="Hugo Gellert (USA), Comrade Gulliver, 1935." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="364" height="431"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-36979" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Hugo Gellert (USA), Comrade Gulliver, 1935.</span></p></div>
<p><span>To be anxious about inequality is insufficient. A range of
possible, common-sense reforms are being demanded by people’s
organisations across the world, which include:</span></p>
<ol><li><b>Free Universal Healthcare.</b><span> This has been achieved in poorer countries like </span><a href="https://www.who.int/healthsystems/topics/financing/healthreport/CostaRicaNo11.pdf"><span>Costa Rica</span></a><span> and </span><a href="https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/325504/PMC6560367.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y"><span>Thailand</span></a><span> as well as in socialist states and should, therefore, be the objective of every country on the planet.</span></li><li><b>A People’s Vaccine.</b><span> Momentum toward the
availability of a people’s vaccine is growing, which should include not
only open access to all patents for the COVID-19 vaccine but also the
creation of pharmaceutical production facilities in the low-income
states and in the public sector.</span></li></ol>
<p><span>These two basic measures could be easily financed by the money
now exported to service odious debts. But such logical solutions that
would provide immediate relief to people are set aside. Despite the
strong words about the problems posed by austerity, more austerity will
be demanded, and more social disorder will be produced.</span></p>
<p><span>Rather than focus attention on the actual problems that face
the planet’s people and acknowledge the democratic demands coming from
people’s organisations and manifestations, government after government
has taken refuge in undemocratic behaviour. For example, the farmers and
agricultural workers in India continue their months-long </span><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/3-farmers-strike-india/"><span>protest</span></a><span>
against three anti-farmer laws pushed through by the extreme right
Indian government. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi knows
that its commitment to big capital – personified in the wealthy Adani
and Ambani families – prevents it from any serious negotiation with the
farmers and agricultural workers. Instead, the government has </span><a href="https://www.newsclick.in/Resistance-Face-Repression-Stories-Protesting-Farmers-Delhi-Border"><span>tried</span></a><span> to portray the farmers and agricultural workers as terrorists and as anti-national.</span></p>
<p><span>When this did not work, the government went after reporters and
media houses that amplified the farmers’ struggle. Many who have </span><a href="https://www.newsclick.in/need-bring-out-what-those-power-want-hide-mandeep-punia"><span>reported</span></a><span> on, </span><a href="https://www.newsclick.in/Investigation-Was-Activist-Nodeep-Kaur-Sexually-Assaulted-Police-Custody"><span>participated</span></a><span> in, or shown </span><a href="https://www.newsclick.in/21-Year-Old-Climate-Activist-Arrested-in-Bengaluru-for-Sharing-Greta-Thunberg%27s-%27Toolkit%27"><span>solidarity</span></a><span> with protestors have been arrested – such as in the cases of journalist </span><a href="https://www.newsclick.in/need-bring-out-what-those-power-want-hide-mandeep-punia"><span>Mandeep Punia</span></a><span>, worker rights activist </span><a href="https://www.newsclick.in/Investigation-Was-Activist-Nodeep-Kaur-Sexually-Assaulted-Police-Custody"><span>Nodeep Kaur</span></a><span> and activist </span><a href="https://www.newsclick.in/if-highlighting-farmers-protest-sedition-it-better-be-jail-disha-ravi"><span>Disha Ravi</span></a><span>, who created and shared a toolkit to support the farmers. Finally, in an act of lawfare, the government conducted a 113-hour </span><a href="https://www.newsclick.in/Raid-Selective-Leaks-are-Attempt-at-Disrupting-Journalism-of-NewsClick-PUCL"><span>raid</span></a><span> against </span><a href="https://www.newsclick.in/"><span>NewsClick</span></a><span>,
one of the key media houses to cover the protests; accusations of
money-laundering tried to sully the name of NewsClick, which has earned
the trust of millions of readers and viewers with its frontline
reporting that lifted up the sentiments and demands of the
agriculturalists.</span></p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_36989" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Jagdish-Swaminathan-India-Untitled-1974.jpg" alt="Jagdish Swaminathan (India), Untitled, 1974." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="431" height="260"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-36989" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Jagdish Swaminathan (India), Untitled, 1974.</span></p></div>
<p><span>Meanwhile, India’s Ministry of Education released an order on 15 January that </span><a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/education-ministrys-notification-on-virtual-seminars-unenforceable-say-academics/article33804918.ece"><span>required</span></a><span>
any online conference or webinar that might discuss India’s ‘internal
matters’ and those that receive foreign sponsorship to seek prior
government approval. Similarly, the French government started a </span><a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2021/02/21/islamo-gauchisme-frederique-vidal-denonce-un-proces-d-intention-a-son-egard_6070688_3224.html"><span>process</span></a><span>
to investigate academic research that promotes ‘Islamo-leftist’ ideas
and thereby, according to the Minister of Higher Education, ‘corrupts
society’. In the name of Order, freedom of speech is easily set aside
and the fragility of the formal nature of democracy is exposed. The
attack on NewsClick, alongside the investigation of academics in France,
reveals the yawning gap between democratic ideals and the practice of
statecraft.</span></p>
<p><span>Despite the $364</span><span> billion </span><i><span>prêt garanti par l’État</span></i><span> (PGE) </span><a href="https://www.economie.gouv.fr/covid19-soutien-entreprises/pret-garanti-par-letat"><span>programme</span></a><span>
to provide relief for the French population, there is a serious
long-term problem of inequality and joblessness. Rather than focus on
this, the French government has whipped around to fight an illusionary
adversary: Islamo-leftists. In the same way, faced with mass dislocation
and social suffering deepened by the pandemic, the Indian government is
prosecuting a war against farmers and media platforms that are
sensitive to the issues raised by the farmers. Both these formal
democracies retain their constitutions and their laws, their elections
and their public hearings – all part of the panoply of modern
democracies. They fail, however, to actually listen to the suffering of
the people, let alone the demands made by the people; they remain
insensitive</span><span> to the possibility of a more viable future for our societies.</span></p>
<p><span>During the period of the military dictatorship in Pakistan, the communist poet Habib Jalib sang:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><i><span>Kahin gas ka dhuan hae kahin golian ki baarish</span></i><br>
<i><span>Shab-e-ehd-e-kum nigahi tujhay kis tarah sarahein</span></i></p>
<p><span>Teargas smoke is in the air, bullets are raining around.</span><br>
<span>How can I praise you, the night of the period of myopia?</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span>Your privileges are not universal, since your privileges earn
you – the few – the vast bulk of social wealth; when the people put
forward our views, you fire teargas and bullets. You believe that your
myopia will allow your night-time to last forever. We praise the hopes
and struggles of the people, whose desire to advance history will cut
through your repression.</span></p>
<p><span>Warmly, </span></p>
<p><span>Vijay</span></p>
<p><br></p>
<p><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/8-healthcare-crisis/?output=pdf">Download as PDF</a> </p></div></div></div>
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