Archive | December, 2020

In the U.S., Covid-19 unfolds with temporal and spatial unevenness. The health system barely has the necessary resources to handle normal operations, let alone a pandemic.

While, by April 9, Brazil to its east had registered more than 16,000 cases and 822 deaths and Colombia to its west, had seen its tally climb above 2000 cases and 54 deaths, Venezuela had only recorded 167 cases and 9 deaths.

The lockdown in South Africa has been extended till the end of April. However, the government’s execution of the lockdown, along with decades of under-investment in health, has left the country unprepared.

Muni Purchases Are Finally Here

In the backdrop of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, Michael D. Yates, decades-long union activist, director of Monthly Review Press and former Associate Editor of Monthly Review magazine, discusses condition of the working people and steps required.

Tupac Shakur passionately explains his views on generosity and responsibility, traits he feels some people with extreme wealth like Donald Trump lack, in this MTV News clip from 1992.

This validates everything the Tribe has been saying all along about the risk of oil spills to the people of Standing Rock. We will continue to see this through until DAPL has finally been shut down. – Jan Hasselman
Attorney, Earthjustice

The world is now in what scientists are calling a no-analogue situation. The dangers are increasing and so is the space for revolutionary human development, calling for a new Earth movement. If humanity is to survive a renewed struggle for freedom as necessity.

Dr. Jo Anne Welsch, currently working on vaccine development for low and middle income countries at a global health organization, discusses how vaccines are developed and tested, and the implications of the process for the coronavirus.

On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to legendary journalist and film-maker John Pilger about the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

CounterSpin interview with Bama Athreya on the gig economy and Covid-19

As COVID-19 grips the world, in country after country, there is socialization of healthcare and of production of some essential goods, which markedly departs from the capitalist norm

With the U.S. government now absurdly saying that Venezuela is the source of narco-trafficking, even though all evidence pointing to narco-trafficking is rooted in Colombia, the pressure on Colombia to deal with its drug problem is now lifted.

With the U.S. failing and China taking a leadership role in the international response to this crisis, could the COVID-19 crisis mark a turning point in the transition to a multipolar world in which China will be just as important as a world leader as the United States?

The principal deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs (SCA) in the U.S. State Department, Alice Wells, dropped a bombshell on the Afghan government and the country’s political elites on April 4—and caught the international donors by surprise, too—by linking all aid to Afghanistan to the formation of an inclusive government in Kabul.

Ten days after the last central bank swap line announcement, the Federal Reserve followed up with an announcement of another facility meant to help a lower tier of central banks. In this facility the Federal Reserve would make a standing offer to temporarily purchase U.S. treasury securities from central banks (and supranational monetary institutions) and sell them back to them the following day.

All told, more than 16 million American workers have filed initial claims during the past three weeks.

M. WAS MIDWAY through her 12-hour shift in late March, sorting financial documents in a cavernous Long Island warehouse, when a supervisor stopped by and handed her a flyer. Several days earlier, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo had signed an executive order shutting down most businesses, but M.’s warehouse had remained open because its purpose–mailing and shipping–was defined as essential.

The government, university bosses and national officials of the National Tertiary Education Union are combining to attack uni workers’ pay and conditions.

Days, weeks, months, an indeterminate amount of time as the world seems paralysed by the journey of SARS-CoV-2. The lack of certainty increases the anxiety. This virus, as Arundhati Roy writes, ‘seeks proliferation, not profit, and has, therefore, inadvertently, to some extent, reversed the direction of the flow [of capital].