“You really are the men and women who do everything eh, you people!” That was the reaction of an 88-year-old patient when she received a phone call from one of our Medicine for the People (MPLP) volunteer workers or staff in mid-March.
Archive | 2020
Russia-China entente deepens in the shadow of the pandemic
The Russian-Chinese entente emerged as one of the most significant templates of international politics in the recent period since the hugely consequential developments in Ukraine in 2014 that led to western sanctions against Moscow, which in turn galvanised the latter’s ‘pivot to Asia’.
“Hair” @WANPOETRY
Tova Charles & Zai Sadler performing “Hair” at Write About Now Poetry.
Major Lazer – ‘Get Free’ feat. Amber (of Dirty Projectors)
The speaker is too poor to move to a different region, so they can only move slightly farther away from an inevitable problem.
No Going Back–The COVID-19 pandemic theses
We live in the age of the pandemic. We live in an age of environmental destruction and climate change. None of these are natural disasters–they all result from the way society and production is currently organised.
Farewell to the god of plague
The Communists were determined to eradicate disease. In the 1930s, Mao joined the Chinese Communist Party’s Public Health Commission; in 1934, when he was in the Jiangxi Soviet, Mao placed public health at the top of the list for party work.
The exodus of finance from the third world
There is an exodus of finance from the third world at present, far exceeding in scale what had occurred in 2008 after the financial crisis.
Carnivals of the damned: the U.S. far-right fights the lockdown
The wave of far-right anti-lockdown protests show how capitalist politics can create monsters. Worse might be on the way.
Globalisation and the pandemic
SSER-IDEAS Online Lecture Series — COVID-19 Pandemic: Policy Failures and Their Impact on the Lives of People
Both sides-ing bleach injection
Media in the era of an incompetent president.
America’s super-rich see their wealth rise by $282 Billion in three weeks of pandemic
America’s billionaires have accrued more wealth in the past three weeks alone than they made in total prior to 1980.
Corporate planning in the coronavirus economy
In this blog post, I want to connect what we’re currently seeing in the retail sector during this pandemic to deep-seated narratives about the nature of economic exchange, in particular to the notion of “the market”.
How to explain climate change? With comic books
If you are reading this, you probably already know a lot about climate change. But what images come to mind if I asked you to visualize climate change?
Declaring victory too soon: Lessons from Europe’s different responses to coronavirus
But do these assumptions hold up to the test? To find out, we must first take a quick look at some recent history.
COVID-19 crisis: Bolivia’s movement towards socialism says #PutLivesFirst
Given the exponentially rising death toll from COVID-19 and the devastating social and economic effects of brutal lockdowns, what could a humane and progressive response to the global pandemic look like?
Leftword Books Editor Vijay Prashad on Life and Legacy of Italian Marxist Com. Antonio Gramsci
Leftword Books Editor Vijay Prashad on Life and Legacy of Italian Marxist Com. Antonio #Gramsci. #Bennito #Mussolini’s court stated, “For twenty years we must stop this brain from functioning” during the trail of Com Gramsci.
During Coronvrius: Cuba to the rescue, but don’t tell the American people
Anti-Cuba zealots in the Trump administration have been enticing Cuban doctors working overseas to defect, paying journalists to write negative stories, slapping sanctions on Cubans in charge of the program, and strong-arming countries to expel Cuban doctors.
Why “Planet of the Humans” is crap
Mostly, Planet of the Humans is just so fucking bad. So bad that its good points are useless. It does have some good points–there seem to be a lot of rock festivals in Vermont that claim, incorrectly, to be running on solar.
How the poor die in New York
Van Dyke I is a series of 22 hulking brick apartment blocks in Brownsville, the poorest part of Brooklyn, New York. At least 10 people have died there from COVID-19, including a mother and son whose bodies were discovered only after neighbours reported the smell to city officials.
Chart of the day
A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, “Billionaire Bonanza 2020: Wealth Windfalls, Tumbling Taxes, and Pandemic Profiteers,” reveals that the wealth of U.S. billionaires is indeed staying at home.
