Archive | March, 2020

How long the COVID-19 crisis will last, and what its immediate economic costs will be, is anyone’s guess. But even if the pandemic’s economic impact is contained, it may have already set the stage for a debt meltdown long in the making, starting in many of the Asian emerging and developing economies on the front lines of the outbreak.

Yanis Varoufakis, DiEM25 co-founder and MeRA25 MP, on the economic and political impact of the coronavirus.

When things get dire enough, the working class fights back. In dealing with the outbreak of the coronavirus, people across the United States have organized at their workplaces, and also won major reforms in the housing sector.

This is the sixth Cuban team to join the fight against the pandemic in the world and the first to travel to Europe, reported Cuban Television.

Raza Naeem sat down with one of the most influential leftists of our world today to discuss politics, history and his new book

Raza Naeem sat down with one of the most influential leftists of our world today to discuss politics, history and his 2017 book

The frenzied, shrieking hysteria I’m witnessing right now among Trump’s base regarding China looks and moves in the exact same way the mental zombification of Russia hysteria looked and moved when it began tearing through rank-and-file Democrats in late 2016 and early 2017. The seething, screaming vitriol I get from the MAGA crowd on social media when I talk about this is identical to what I got during that period from Democrats: just as irrational, just as vituperative, and just as emotion-driven.

“The system…is failing. Let’s admit it,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on March 14 at a White House briefing.

Being an ER Nurse, a lot of people have asked me what I think about COVID-19. I almost inevitably tell them- first and foremost- that I really can’t overstate how much of a problem it is that we don’t have enough personal protective equipment (PPE).

Snuggle in with us for another Cocoon Session where we give you a really cool and easy trick to hack your anxiety, talk about the way the quarantine is changing the world good and bad, and finally Caitlin has her proof that humans are not the problem after all.

The pandemic has effectively provided a laboratory-like demonstration that people do better when states can plan ahead, apply national resources unequivocally to the public good, put science in the service of the people, and practice international solidarity. These are characteristics of socialist societies.

Bumping elbows at the United Nations.

The coronavirus pandemic is a serious public health problem and the human suffering caused by the spread of this virus will be enormous. If it massively affects countries of the Global South with very fragile public health systems that have been undermined by 40 years of neo-liberal policies, the death toll will be very high. We must not forget the critical situation of the Iranian population, victim of the blockade imposed by Washington, a blockade that includes medicines and medical equipment.

GOOD question! Look up the term in a dictionary and you’ll find a definition something along the lines of “an ideology that advocates or supports political, social and economic interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a representative democracy and capitalist economy.”

COVID-19 has challenged humanity: on what principles do you organise your society? The pandemic could have been defeated by cooperation, planning, transparency, and social solidarity. But instead, it was born into a society based on competition, secrecy, lies, and greed.

SARS-Co-2 or COVID-19 moves swiftly across the planet, leaving no region untouched. It is a powerful virus, with a long enough incubation period to hide the symptoms and therefore to gather more and more people in its deadly arms.

We are in the early stages of a medical Katrina. Despite years of warnings about avian flu and other pandemics, inventories of basic emergency equipment such as respirators aren’t sufficient to deal with the expected flood of critical cases.

On March 16, 2020, the chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Kristalina Georgieva wrote a blog post on the Fund’s website; it represents the kind of generosity necessary in the midst of a global pandemic. “The IMF stands ready to mobilize its $1 trillion lending capacity to help our membership,” she wrote.

Delays and long lines at polling places during recent presidential primary elections – such as voters in Texas experienced – represent the latest version of decades-long policies that have sought to reduce the political power of African Americans in the U.S.

It sounds like science fiction: A research program funded by the U.S. government plans to create virus-carrying insects that, released in vast numbers, could help crops fight threats such as pests, drought, or pollution.