• India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stripped the disputed region of Kashmir of its autonomous powers. Article 370 of India’s Constitution gave long-term Kashmir residents special rights, including the right to own property.
(“India Revokes Kashmir’s Special Status,” New York Times, Aug. 15, 2019; “Locked Up and Shut Down: How India silenced opposition to crackdown in Kashmir,” Washington Post, Aug. 12, 2019; “Kashmir: Why India and Pakistan Fight Over It,” BBC, Aug. 8, 2019)
• According to the American Prospect, prices for insulin, developed in the 1920s, remained affordable for decades, until the cost skyrocketed in the 1980s and ‘90s with the introduction of a new generation of the drug. Aggressive marketing by Eli Lilly led doctors and providers to prescribe the costliest medications. Health activists are now calling for uninterrupted access to insulin for all patients, which would require government intervention rather than relying on rebates offered by Big Pharma drug companies.
(”The Insulin Racket,” American Prospect, June 24, 2019; #insulin4all Action on U.S. Insulin Pricing – The Insulin Price Crisis, T1International)
• Today unions are pushing Congress to enact the “Protecting the Right to Organize Act”, or PRO Act, to boost worker rights in the face of well funded anti-union tactics like “captive meetings,” and firing striking workers. Jane McAlevey, a former union organizer and author, says the labor movement should back a presidential candidate in 2020 who will “defend the right of workers to be on strike and use the full resources of the federal government to aid workers in re-claiming some of what’s deserved by the working class.
(“Labor’s Endorsement Dilemma,” In These Times, July 15, 2019)
