[Image ID: A black and white image with text on taking up the left and middle sections, and on the right section is a stylized photographic portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King, a middle-aged Black man, is dressed in a suit and tie, with arms crossed, stands at a three-quarter angle facing toward the left with a neutral expression and eyes focused on a subject off screen; in this context it appears as if he’s focused on the text. The body of the text is in a plain sans serif style font, while the attribution text is in a smaller, cursive/handwritten style font.
“We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that Capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor– both black and white, both here and abroad.
Morschhaeuser, while alerting several site integrity and safety teams at Twitter, forwarded on an email from BioNTech spokesperson Jasmina Alatovic, who asked Twitter to “hide” activist tweets targeting her company’s account over a period of two days.
Morschhaeuser flagged the corporate accounts of Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca for her colleagues to monitor and shield from activists. Morschhaeuser also asked colleagues to monitor the hashtags #PeoplesVaccine and #JoinCTAP, a reference to the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 Technology Access Pool, a program promoted by developing countries to accelerate the development of vaccines through the equitable sharing of research and manufacturing capacity. She noted that the group Global Justice Now was spearheading the action with an online sign-up form.
It is not clear to what extent Twitter took any action on BioNTech’s request. In response to Morschhaeuser’s inquiry, several Twitter officials chimed in, debating what action could or could not be taken. Su Fern Teo, a member of the company’s safety team, noted that a quick scan of the activist campaign showed nothing that violated the company’s terms of service, and asked for more examples to “get a better sense of the content that may violate our policies.”
But it shows the extent to which pharmaceutical giants engaged in a global lobbying blitz to ensure corporate dominance over the medical products that became central to combatting the pandemic. Ultimately, the campaign to share Covid vaccine recipes around the world failed.
The White Huns were a race of largely nomadic peoples who were a part of the Hunnic tribes of Central Asia. They ruled over an expansive area stretching from the Central Asian lands all the way to the Western Indian Subcontinent. Although being a mostly nomadic tribe, they nonetheless adopted the lifestyles of the lands they conquered but still retained their warlike nature. Their rule begins in the 5th cent CE, but they lingered on in the region for a substantial amount of time after their kingdom fell and eventually integrated so well into the Indian culture that their practices and traditions became a full part of it.
