Subjects Archives: Health

The death toll in the U.S. due to COVID-19 has crossed 1 million. The richest country in the world has stumbled in controlling the pandemic and the poorest have suffered the most.

The same people who criminalize sex work, criminalize other “serious offences” against sexual norms such as medical treatment for trans people and access to abortion.

If anything proves that famine and food insecurity are man-made rather than due to vagaries of nature and the weather, it is the current food crisis that is putting millions globally close to starvation.

The world faces a food crisis due to war, sanctions, and inflation. China has shown how to strengthen food sovereignty, while fighting poverty, with state-funded agricultural cooperatives, government crackdown on waste, and investment in technology.

Less than two months after New York’s minimum-staffing requirements for nursing homes went into effect, a trade group has demanded that state courts block them.

The baby formula crisis that is threatening the lives of infants across the U.S. deepened this week as the out-of-stock rate for baby formula on store shelves surged to 70 percent for the week ending May 22. The shortage rate during the previous week was 45 percent, according to the retail tracking firm Datasembly.

“There is really no true solution to the problem of global food security without bringing back the agriculture production of Ukraine and the food and fertilizer production of Russia and Belarus into world markets despite the war.” These blunt words by UN Secretary-General António Guterres accurately describe the present global food crisis.

The Oklahoma state legislature has passed perhaps the most extreme anti-abortion law in the United States. This law, known as HB 4327, takes the right-wing offensive against reproductive rights to an outrageous new height by banning all abortions in the state starting from the moment of fertilization.

In Cuba, abortion and all healthcare is free, and enshrined in a constitution democratically voted on by the people. In the US, nine unelected, life-long judges control society based on a 1787 constitution written by slaveowners.

One million people in the United States have died of COVID-19. Coronavirus was written on their death certificates as the cause.

The leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that could destroy Roe v. Wade (Politico, 5/2/22) reportedly has the support of three justices appointed by Donald Trump. That’s important for a number of reasons.

For over two years now, the world has been facing a pandemic the like of which has not been seen for a century, and which has already taken 15 million lives according to the WHO, without being anywhere near an end.

“When you have touched a woman you have struck a rock,” says a South African proverb. It continues, you have dislodged a boulder, you will be crushed. The U.S. Supreme Court justices who penned the recently leaked draft majority opinion abolishing voluntary legal pregnancy termination, should take heed.

Land is and means different things to different people. Indigenous, pastoralist, and rural farming communities are especially dependent on land, which is widely recognised by conservation organisations. Such communities are often uniquely vulnerable to the effects of ecosystem destruction while simultaneously having strong social norms and cultural values that support ecosystem preservation.

On May 2, 2022, a memo written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to Politico.com. Alito made clear that the court with a 6 to 3 conservative majority intends to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which made abortion legal in the United States.

These are deeply upsetting times. The COVID-19 global pandemic had the potential to bring people together, to strengthen global institutions such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), and to galvanise new faith in public action.

Last week’s shocking leak exposing the Supreme Court’s draft plan to overturn Roe v. Wade has brought tens of thousands of people into the streets in struggle.

The Supreme Court’s draft abortion opinion is poised to revive some of the worst traditions of white patriarchy.

Coronaviruses have been with us for as long as conspiracies, so it’s natural to link them. But the history of epidemics provide better explanations than any conspiracy theory and useful advice to those who learn from it. 

The Supreme Court’s draft ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization not only abolishes the basic democratic right to abortion, but it is an attempt to radically transform the country’s legal superstructure by stripping the population of the democratic protections established in the American Revolution and Civil War.