Archive | December, 2020

The rapidity with which the pandemic has consumed black communities provides an unvarnished look into the dynamics of race and class that existed long before it emerged.

The Trump Administration has spread the conspiracy theory that the new coronavirus came out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This accusation, which seeks to transfer responsibility for the pandemic to the Asian giant, has been rejected by the Chinese authorities for being without foundation.

I got away from all the chains they tried to lock me up with I wasn’t made for nine to fives or working in construction I never fit the system.

Just as we were in the 1930s and ’60s, America is suffering a moral crisis. We have to decide which side we are on: hate and exclusion, or justice, inclusion, and democracy?

The only thing Joe Biden and Donald Trump should be battling over is the top bunk of a prison cell. Instead, these two crooks are vying for the presidency of the United States. If Biden is this year’s lesser evil, he is sorely testing the meaning of “lesser”. No Democratic politician has worked longer and harder to turn the U.S. into the nightmare it is today.

As school districts reported huge problems with converting classroom learning into online instruction delivered to students’ homes, often due to lack of funding for internet-capable devices and Wi-Fi hotspots, charter school proponents spread the news of how their industry could take advantage of emergency aid.

“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.