Wall Street Admits Curing Diseases Is Bad For Business

APR 24, 2018

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/wall-street-admits-curing-diseases-is-bad-for-business/

Goldman Sachs has outdone itself this time. That’s saying a lot for an investment firm that both helped cause and then exploited a global economic meltdown, increasing its own wealth and power while helping to boot millions of Americans out of their homes.

But now Goldman Sachs is openly saying in financial reports that curing people of terrible diseases is not good for business.

I wish this were a joke. It sounds like a joke. In fact, I’ll show you later that it used to be one of my favorite jokes. But first, the facts.

In a recent report, a Goldman analyst asked clients: “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Salveen Richter wrote: “The potential to deliver ‘one-shot cures’ is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy. … However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies. … While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.”

Yes, a Goldman analyst has said outright that curing people will hurt their cash flow. And he said that in a note designed to steer clients away from investing in cures. Can “human progress” have a bottom? Because if so, this is the bottom of so-called human progress—down where the mud eels mate with the cephalopods. (Or at least that’s how I picture the bottom.)

This analyst note is one of the best outright examples I’ve ever seen of how brutal our market economy is. In the past, this truth would not have been spoken. It would’ve lived deep within a banker’s soul and nowhere else. It would’ve been viewed as too repulsive for the wealthy elite to say, “We don’t want to cure diseases because that will be bad for our wallet. We want people to suffer for as long as possible. Every suffering human enriches us a little bit more.”

We’re circling the drain in the toilet bowl, and as you know, the contents speed up as they near the end, the event horizon. We are beginning to see more and more how disgusting a profit-above-all-else economy really is. When Donald Trump bombed Syria, the stocks of weapons contractors shot up. That spike in stocks is a spike in the gravity of capitalism, pulling people toward death and destruction. Profit has power. And its power is exerted on the society as a whole.

Furthermore, there is no debate about this on your mainstream outlets. There is no discussion as to whether war profiteering is what we really want out of our society. None. You tell me: How many perfectly coiffed CNN or Fox News hosts stated: “Weapons contractors benefited from our bombing. Isn’t that revolting? Doesn’t that just make you gag in your soup? Doesn’t that mean we’ve created an upside-down system that rewards barbaric bullshit?”

You will not hear that discussion. You’re more likely to hear them discuss the best blind pingpong player to ever star in a short film about self-harm. Hard news topics do not see the light of day on our suffocated corporate airwaves.

And believe it or not, the Goldman note gets even worse. The analyst says, “In the case of infectious diseases such as hepatitis C, curing existing patients also decreases the number of carriers able to transmit the virus to new patients. …”

Decreases the number of carriers? Goldman Sachs … is in a financial partnership … with fucking infectious diseases.

Let that sink in. Sit with that and decide whether you want to keep your seat on spaceship earth. I’ll wait.

When I first read about this—after I stopped choking on my tongue—I realized it made more sense than I first thought. I’ve always felt Lloyd Blankfein had a striking resemblance to Hepatitis C. But it turns out he just works with Hepatitis C. They’re just really close friends and business partners. (But I heard Ebola is the godfather to his kids.)

Our aggressive strain of unfettered capitalism has blasted beyond satire in many ways. In one of my favorite Chris Rock specials, “Bigger & Blacker,” which I first saw when I was a teenager, he had a joke that blew my mind. He said something like, “They ain’t never gonna cure AIDS. They ain’t nevergonna cure AIDS. There’s too much money in it. The money’s not in the cure. The money’s in the comeback! The money’s in the comeback.”

And I found that bit hilarious. I loved it. Because I thought it was a joke. Now, I see—it ain’t no joke. He’s goddamn right. They aren’t even trying to cure infectious diseases that make them piles of cash. Instead, the moneyed interests are complaining to their clients that they need to avoid curing these diseases. Because not only do they lose money on the patient who no longer needs meds, they also lose money because that patient won’t pass the disease onto others.

I swear these drug companies are roughly two weeks away from just going, “Hey, what if we send Bruce—that guy in the copy room—out to stab people in the back of the neck with infected needles? Is that over the line? Because that would increase our cash flow. And not only do we make money from the newly infected person, but they’re likely to pass it on to other people. How great is that?”

A profit-driven world creates a disgusting reality with a contorted value system. A world where oil companies view oil spills that destroy whole coastal communities as the price of doing business. In fact, they even declared it’s good for the local economy. A world where millions of animals abused for their entire lives is just the price of doing brunch. A world where massive hurricane destruction is a business opportunity rather than a tragedy. “Honey, check the weather report. Are there any 155-mile-per-hour business opportunities ripping through any Caribbean islands?”

And now corporations no longer fret over government interference—because they own the government. For them to worry about that would be like you worrying that your carpet might stop you from going out to a movie this evening. I think we’ve established what the carpet does. It lays there. Corporations now spew forth their true goals and motivations without much concern for the backlash. They can do things like use attack dogs on protesters at Standing Rock and not worry about the consequences. Who cares? The worst that could happen to them is they pay a fine—a “sorry we bit you with vicious man-eating dogs” fine.

We have a value systems disorder. A large percentage of our society now views this Goldman Sachs-style thinking as acceptable. It should be viewed as equally grotesque as beating someone over the head and then selling them bandages. Now imagine that’s your company’s business model. And you get investors to help you achieve it. Next to a glowing PowerPoint presentation you say, “You guys help me pay for the baseball bat. I’ll beat people over the head with that bat. My bat-swinging skills are well documented. I then sell the bloodied victims our top-shelf bandages. And with little effort on your part, you get a cut of the profits. It’s a rock-solid investment.”

That’s how we need to view what Goldman Sachs is saying in this analyst note.

The only way a system ends up at this point—with our values this far upside down—is with endless advertising in a profit-driven society. This is a system built on the exploitation of others for gain. There was no time when that was not true. And that’s why we need a revolution of the mind.

Law Enforcement Has Quietly Backed Anti-Protest Bills in at Least 8 States Since Trump’s Election

And that may be the tip of the iceberg.

SIMON DAVIS-COHEN AND SARAH LAZARE

http://inthesetimes.com/features/police_anti-protest_laws_trump.html

APRIL 16 | WEB EXCLUSIVE

MINNEAPOLIS POLICE UNION PRESIDENT LT. BOB KROLL told In These Timesthat he lobbied Minnesota lawmakers to advance a statewide law clamping down on protests—legislation that civil liberties advocates say targets Black Lives Matter.

The pending bill, HF 390/SF 676, would significantly increase fees and jail time for protesters who block highways, a common civil disobedience tactic, including at protests against police killings. According to the ACLU of Minnesota, the proposed legislation “chills dissent” and constitutes an “attempt to silence Black Lives Matter movement.”

“I knew they were trying to pass it last year, and I encouraged them to do it again,” Kroll told In These Times. 

Kroll has faced numerous accusations of racism for, among other comments, likening protests against police killings to “the local version of Benghazi” in 2015 and calling Black Lives Matter a “terrorist organization” in 2016.

His acknowledgement of the lobbying by his union, Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, raises concerns that law enforcement is pressuring legislators to clamp down on protests—and specifically, on protests against police violence. “Cops are going to keep pursuing ways to keep themselves above the fray and unaccountable for the things they do,” says Tony Williams, a member of the MPD150, a police abolitionist project that recently released a “150-year performance review of the Minneapolis Police Department. “It's a naked case of self-interest more than anything else.”

Minneapolis police aren’t alone: According to research conducted for In These Times in partnership with Ear to the Ground, law enforcement in at least eight states—Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Washington and Wyoming—lobbied on behalf of anti-protest bills in 2017 and 2018. The bills ran the gamut from punishing face coverings at protests to increasing penalties for “economic disruption” and highway blockage to criminalizing civil protests that interfere with “critical infrastructure” like oil pipelines.

Emboldened by the Trump administration, at least 31 states have considered 62 pieces of anti-protest legislation since November 2016, with at least seven enacted and 31 still pending. The full scope of police support for these bills is not yet known. As in the case of Kroll, police support often takes place in private meetings, far from the public eye.

That police are playing any role in this wave of anti-protest legislation is raising alarm among organizers and civil liberties advocates. Traci Yoder, director of research and education for the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive bar association, is the author of a recent report on the forces behind the wave of anti-protest bills, which include conservative groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council, corporations like as Energy Transfer Partners (the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline) and state Departments of Homeland Security.

“We are deeply concerned about the role of law enforcement agencies and leaders supporting the current wave of anti-protest legislation,” Yoder tells In These Times. “We see this as a direct response to the success and visibility of recent movements of color such as Black Lives Matter and #NoDAPL. The collusion we are seeing between law enforcement, lawmakers and corporate interests is undemocratic and designed to deter social movements for racial and environmental justice.”

BEYOND MINNESOTA

Following uprisings in Ferguson, Standing Rock, Baltimore and elsewhere, the policing of protests became a hot topic at law enforcement conferences and within law enforcement publications. But law enforcement like Lt. Bob Kroll are not merely discussing how to apply the law to protests, but actively lobbying for new laws curbing public action.

According to research by In These Times and Ear to the Ground, police associations, police unions, district attorneys or officers in leadership positions lobbied in favor of “protest suppression” laws in 2017 and 2018 in at least eight states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Washington and Wyoming.

One bill was signed, two passed but were vetoed, and a 2018 Iowa bill to protect “critical infrastructure” has passed, but still awaits its governor’s signature. Four are still pending, and the rest died or were voted down.

In other states, top sponsors of protest suppression legislation had close ties to law enforcement. In Tennessee, for example, the main sponsor of a bill that was signed into law in 2017 was a member of Blue Lives Matter Tennessee.

These state-level efforts appear to be compounding the repressive national political climate, where the Trump administration has aggressively prosecuted more than 200 Inauguration Day protesters, and the president has openly endorsed police brutality.

Support for state-level anti-protest laws extends far beyond police departments, as showcased in Minnesota, where an action item to require “prosecution of protestors who impede emergency traffic” was approved by the Republican Party Convention in 2016.

And the cozy relationship between Minnesota state lawmakers extends far beyond anti-protest legislation. Representative Zerwas and Minnesota State Senator Tony Cornish, who have advanced the anti-protest legislation, have also advanced law enforcement’s agenda on a number of other issues, including body worn cameras, school police and new protections for police dogs.

As highway-blocking protests continue, some in Minneapolis remain skeptical that police are—or will ever be—on the public’s side.

“Police officers and police unions try to portray themselves as nonpartisan enforcers of laws,” says Williams. “But if you look at the history of police departments in Minneapolis and across the country, there's a documented history of that not being true. Police have an agenda.”

ACCUSATIONS OF RACISM

Speaking over the phone with In These Times, Kroll elaborated on his role in lobbying for the Minnesota bill. “We have ongoing meetings with politicians, and one of them, Nick Zerwas, we encouraged him to bring it again,” Kroll explained.

State Rep. Zerwas—who did not respond to a request for comment—is author of and principle force behind the bill, which would make the obstruction of an interstate or a major roadway to an airport punishable by up to $3,000 and a year in jail. Zerwas first introduced the bill in January 2017, then tried to work the language into an omnibus spending bill, but was thwarted by Gov. Mark Dayton. In March 2018, Zerwas revived the original bill. Like those of all Minnesota state representatives, Zerwas’ communications are exempt from the state’s sunshine law.

Ben Feist, legislative director of the ACLU of Minnesota, was surprised to learn of Kroll’s comments. “This is the first I’ve heard” of police support for either iteration of the bill, he says.

“In all of the hearings that have occurred last session and this session, law enforcement and their usually very vocal lobby have been silent. Lawmakers have not said that law enforcement has asked for this.”

But not everyone was surprised. Williams tells In These Times, “There is a long history of police advocacy groups, specifically police unions, using their cultural capital as police to convince legislators to pass policy on their behalf.” Williams points out that in 2012, for example, the Minneapolis Police Federation successfully pressed lawmakers to pass a law that reduces the power of a statewide panel tasked with investigating police misconduct.

When he spoke with In These Times for this story, Kroll again denigrated protests against police killings of Black Minnesotans, including 24-year-old Jamar Clark and 32-year-old Philando Castile.

“They impede normal people's travel plans, holidays, you name it,” Kroll said of the protests, which have been used across the country by Black Lives Matter organizers responding to police killings. “They keep working people away from their destination, from childcare. These are a group of people funded by a radical left-wing organization that disrupts the lives of normal people.”

Asked to clarify who he believes is funding these groups, Kroll replied: “George Soros … He's a big funder of things like that. The groups that we're talking about take part in blocking freeways and airports, disrupt vehicle traffic in and out of the Super Bowl.”

In response to Kroll’s latest remarks, Williams said, “A vast majority of people who have protested police brutality in Minneapolis or around the country are not funded or even supported by resources in that work at all. Certainly not to the level of a group like the police union is.”

“What groups are fundamentally demanding is a way to keep our communities safe from police officers,” Williams continued. “It’s not a radical thing to want our community to be safe. But the police union and Bob Kroll have shown themselves to be radical far-right individuals with ties to white supremacy.”

In a 2016 interview, Kroll admitted he is a member of City Heat, a motorcycle club that has been denounced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for its tolerance for white supremacy (the ADL often collaborates with police departments). When asked about this affiliation, he abruptly ended his interview with In These Times. 

SIMON DAVIS-COHEN is editor of the Ear to the Ground newsletter, an exclusive “civic intelligence” service that mines local newspapers and state legislatures from across the country.

SARAH LAZARE Sarah Lazare is web editor at In These Times. She comes from a background in independent journalism for publications including The Intercept, The Nation and Tom Dispatch. A former staff writer for AlterNet and Common Dreams, Sarah co-edited the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War.

India's Far-Right PM Modi Meets Protests in London

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08pK65p_3Wg

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, one of the strongest progressives in Congress

Do sexbots have rights?

Slavoj Žižek

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/424709-sexbots-sex-dolls-rights/

The current wave of politically-correct moralism reared its head in recent debates about the need to regulate relations between humans and sexbots (sexual robots).

First, for context, allow me to quote from a news report:

“last year a sex robot named Samantha was ‘molested’ and seriously damaged at a tech industry festival; the incident spurred debate on the need to raise the issue of ethics in relation to machines... while the developers of sexbots have claimed that their projects will do anything to indulge their customers’ desires, it seems that they might start rejecting some persistent men... people ignore the fact that they may seriously damage the machine, just because it cannot say ‘no’ to their ‘advances’... future humanoid sex robots might be sophisticated enough to ‘enjoy a certain degree of consciousness’ to consent to sexual intercourse, albeit, to their mind, conscious feelings were not necessary components of being able to give or withhold consent... in legal terms, introduction of the notion of consent into human-robot sexual relationships is vital in a way similar to sexual relations between humans and it will help prevent the creation of a ‘class of legally incorporated sex-slaves.’”

Although these ideas are just a specific application of a proposal for the EU to impose the basic “rights” for AI (artificial intelligence), the domain of sexbots brings out in a clear way the implicit presuppositions that determine such thinking. We are basically dealing with laziness in thinking: by adopting such “ethical” attitudes, we comfortably avoid the complex web of underlying problems.

Indeed, the initial suspicion is that the proponents of such demands do not really care about the AI machines (they are well aware that they cannot really experience pain and humiliation) but about aggressive humans: what they want is not to alleviate the suffering of the machines but to squash the problematic aggressive desires, fantasies and pleasures of us, humans.

Moral Maze

This becomes clear the moment we include the topics of video games and virtual reality: if, instead of sexbots – actual plastic bodies whose (re)actions are regulated by AI, we imagine escapades in virtual reality (or, even more plastic, augmented reality) in which we can sexually torture and brutally exploit people – although, in this case, it is clear that no actual entity is suffering, the proponents of the rights of AI machines would nonetheless in all probability insist on imposing some limitations on what we, humans, can do in virtual space.

The argument that those who fantasize about such things are prone to do them in real life is very problematic: the relationship between imagining and doing it in real life is much more complex in both relations. We often do horrible things while imagining that we are doing something noble, and vice versa. Not to mention how we often secretly daydream about doing things we would in no way be able to perform in real life. We enter thereby the old debate: if someone has brutal tendencies, is it better to allow him to play with them in virtual space or with machines, with the hope that, in this way, he will be satisfied enough and not do them in real life?

Finding Answers

Another question: if a sexbot rejects our rough advances, does this not simply mean that it was programmed in this way? So why not re-program it in a different way? Or, to go to the end, why not program it in such a way that it welcomes our brutal mistreatment? (The catch is, of course, will we, the sadistic perpetrators, still enjoy it in this case? Because a sadist wants his victims to be terrified and ashamed.)

And one more: what if an evil programmer makes the sexbots themselves sadists who enjoy brutally mistreating us, its partners? If we confer rights to AI sexbots and prohibit their brutal mistreatment, this means that we treat them as minimally autonomous and responsible entities – so should we also treat them as minimally “guilty” if they mistreat us, or should we just blame their programmer?

Nevertheless, the basic mistake of advocates for AI rights is that they presuppose our, human, standards (and rights) as being the highest form. What if, with the explosive development of AI, new entities will emerge with what we could conditionally call a “psychology” (series of attitudes or mindsets) which will be incompatible with ours, but in some sense definitely “higher” than ours (measured by our standards, they can appear either more “evil” or more “good” than ours)? What right do WE (humans) have to measure them with our ethical standards? 

So let’s conclude this detour with a provocative thought: maybe, a true sign of the ethical and subjective autonomy of a sexbot would have been not that it rejects our advances but that, even if it was programmed to reject our brutal treatment, it secretly starts to enjoy it? In this way, the sexbot would become a true subject of desire, divided and inconsistent as we humans are.

New Atheism, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObnBHMzIQ_A&t=38s

Arid West Invading Fertile Eastern U.S.