Archive | April, 2020

“ALERT! Please do not ingest, inject, inhale, or otherwise use any disinfectant outside of its labeled instructions. And do not start using tanning beds or sunning without sunscreen.”

This pandemic health crisis exposes the injustices of the global economic order. It must be a turning point towards creating the systems, structures and policies that can always protect those who are marginalised and allow everyone to live with dignity.

More than a dozen health experts working for the WHO in Geneva relayed regular information to Mr Trump about COVID-19, U.S. and international officials have confirmed.

To marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Lenin we’re sharing the latest installment of Paul LeBlanc’s series Revolutionaries Reviewed, on Vladimir Lenin – a central leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917, which overthrew tsarist rule and attempted to bring about a new socialist society.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that the Great Lockdown, which has no end date, could very well lead to a loss of $9 trillion to global Gross Domestic Product over the entirety of 2020 and 2021; this number is greater than the combined economies of Japan and Germany. This scenario, the Fund’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva admits, ‘may actually be a more optimistic picture than reality produces’.

Under the guise of protecting workers and the public from the coronavirus, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced two weeks ago that it will not issue fines against companies that violate certain water, air, and hazardous-waste-reporting requirements.

Many people around the world are familiar with this ancient Chinese proverb. Today, this lovely metaphor has materialized and taken the form of a pandemic, wreaking havoc on a system where few felt safe and most had become accustomed to merely surviving.

We live in an era of plagues because of capitalist development, argues socialist author Mike Davis. But he also says coronavirus has exposed the gap between a tiny rich elite and the rest of us—and creates space to put forward socialist ideas

A Perspective from Chinese Dao thinking

As the COVID-19 health crisis deepens, it looks increasingly clear that the short-term collapse in global output is likely to exceed that of any recession in the last 150 years–that is, in the entire history of capitalism. The ILO estimates that the crisis will lead to the destruction of 195 million jobs. Hence, after discussing at length the epidemiology of the COVID-19 pandemic, media attention is now increasingly focused on how to restart the global economic engine.

Rather than respond by focusing blame for the crisis squarely where it belongs—on Trump’s incompetent, reckless and self-centered management—and working to beat back the dangerously rising anti-Asian sentiment in this country, Biden and some of his supporting super PACs are choosing to adopt rather than challenge the anti-China premise of the attacks.

Some of the same forces that brought about the single largest act of domestic terrorism in our county–killing 168 people, including dozens of children, and injuring hundreds more–are percolating below the surface today. In fact, last year was the second highest year for domestic terrorism, with attacks that killed 31 people.

India is accelerating down the track of religious strife, and the government itself is driving the vehicle.

Developing countries face collapsing international trade, falling remittances, sharp reversals of capital flows, and currency depreciation. Only bold policies—debt relief, international financing, planning, and more—will avert further catastrophe.

SDS, along with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), had been in the vanguard of the new left in the 1960s, and some of these oldsters now want to challenge a position taken by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), currently the foremost organization on the left today. They tell us “this is an all hands on deck moment,” and that supporting Joe Biden in order to defeat Donald Trump “is our high moral and political responsibility.”

The United States is currently experiencing a dystopian orgy of death and destruction.

We shouldn’t be satisfied with a return to normalcy. We need a “new normal.”

With the overwhelming evidence that the capitalist system is fundamentally antithetical to the realization of human rights, including what should be an elementary right—access to healthcare—the presidency of Donald J. Trump has been a godsend for the capitalist rulers.

A recent outbreak at Smithfield’s pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is now one of the largest COVID-19 hotspots in the U.S., with 644 confirmed cases tied to the facility. The Smithfield outbreak represents nearly half of all confirmed cases in that state.

With COVID-19 figures flattening downward, Germany is limping back to some kind of normalcy. Auto and bike shops, book dealers, barbers and most shops less than 800 m2 can now re-open (with customers 5 ft apart). Bigger shops and department stores are squabbling: “Why not us?”