The Pharmaceutical Cartel: Drug firms poised to make billions of dollars from Covid booster jabs

Drug firms poised to make billions of dollars from Covid booster jabs | Pharmaceuticals industry | The Guardian

Chemical Cartel: Six multinational companies dominate the agricultural input market

Six multinational companies dominate the agricultural input market, and they’re in cahoots.

When a handful of corporations own the world’s seed, pesticide and biotech industries, they control the fate of food and farming. Between them, Monsanto, Dow, BASF, Bayer, Syngenta and DuPont control the global seed, pesticide and agricultural biotechnology markets. This kind of historically unprecedented power over world agriculture enables them to:

• control the agricultural research agenda;
• dictate trade agreements & agricultural policies;
• position their technologies as the “science-based” solution to increase crop yields, feed the hungry and save the planet;
• escape democratic & regulatory controls;
• subvert competitive markets;

…and in the process, intimidate, impoverish and disempower farmers, undermine food security and make historic profits - even in the midst of a global food crisis.

According to the UN, corporate concentration of the agricultural input market “has far-reaching implications for global food security, as the privatization and patenting of agricultural innovation (gene traits, transformation technologies and seed germplasm) has been supplanting traditional agricultural understandings of seed, farmers' rights, and breeders' rights.”

Read more: Chemical Cartel | Pesticide Action Network

The global oil casino benefits only its players - by Leah McGrath Goodman

The Middle East and north Africa, we are told, lie behind the recent increase in global fuel prices, which Wednesday. Yet while Brent crude this week stayed above $120 a barrel, in Tripoli petrol hovered at around 34p a gallon. And that is not a typo.

The popular reason for why those closest to the fighting, in this case, suffer less than those farther afield, is Libya’s hefty subsidies. The less popular reason is that world energy markets have been carefully designed to profit from the slightest supply hiccup, even if there is little evidence of actual shortages.

The energy-trading fraternity has never let the facts get in the way of a good supply scare. True, this historically fragile market is vulnerable to price swings as demand threatens to climb faster than production. But there is more to it than that. Indeed, what President Barack Obama did not mention last week in his energy security speech about the faults of the global energy market could fill a Saudi oilfield.

For more: FT.com / Comment / Opinion - The global oil casino benefits only its players

AP: Russia, Iran, Qatar discuss OPEC-style gas cartel

For the complete report from AP click on this link

Russia, Iran, Qatar discuss OPEC-style gas cartel

Russia, Iran and Qatar took their first serious steps toward forming an OPEC-style cartel for natural gas on Tuesday, a prospect that has unnerved energy-importing nations in Europe and the United States. The three countries together account for 60 percent of the world's gas reserves, and Russia and Iran have both been accused of using their hold on energy supplies to bully neighboring countries. The European Union, which is heavily dependent on Russian gas, criticized the proposal, saying "energy supplies have to be sold in a free market."

Note EU-Digest: The three countries do not control 60% of the gas supplies and the idea of a gas cartel makes little sense unless it includes at least the top ten suppliers of natural gas which are:

1. Russia … 656.2 billion cubic meters (19.9% of estimated world total)

2. United States … 490.8 billion cubic meters (14.9%)

3. Canada … 178.2 billion cubic meters (5.4%)

4. Iran … 101 billion cubic meters (3.1%)

5. Algeria … 84.4 billion cubic meters (2.6%)

6. United Kingdom … 84.2 billion cubic meters (2.6%)

7. Norway … 83.4 billion cubic meters (2.5%)

8. Netherlands … 77.3 billion cubic meters (2.3%)

9. Indonesia … 74 billion cubic meters (2.2%)

10. Turkmenistan … 72.3 billion cubic meters (2.2%).