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India’s abysmal healthcare system
DD Kosambi uses a telling example to illustrate the crisis of Indian feudalism: at the third Battle of Panipat in 1761, the troops on oneside had not had enough to eat, while the troops on the other side just managed to assuage hunger by looting villages in the neighbourhood; neither side in short had arranged provisions for its troops.
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Vaccine imperialism
In March, COVID-19 breached the considerable defences of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. The colossal nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which has played a central role in defending the U.S.’s imperialist interests over the past three decades, proved no match for the virus, which infected more than 1,000 crew members in a matter of days.
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The world can show how Pharma monopolies aren’t the only way to fight COVID-19
The U.S. has bought up almost all of the stock of remdesivir from Gilead, making it nearly impossible for this COVID-19 drug to be available anywhere else in the world.
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Venezuela’s borderlands have been assaulted by COVID-19
Venezuela’s rate of infection remains low, despite the U.S. unilateral sanctions that have denied the country the right to import drugs and tests for the population.
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Revolution or ruin
We know how the first paragraph begins. We’ve read about the changing climate for over twenty years, infrequently at first and then daily until we couldn’t deny it any longer. The world is burning.
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The Coronavirus pandemic, ecological catastrophe and global capitalism: an interlocking phenomenon
The COVID-19 pandemic has unravelled the close structural links between the climate crisis and the global capitalist mode of production.
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Coronavirus is an SOS: Mend our broken relationship with nature, says UN and WHO
Pandemics such as coronavirus are the result of humanity’s destruction of nature, according to leaders at the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) International—and the world has been ignoring this stark reality for decades.
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Debunking Trump and Corporate Media’s WHO/China coverup conspiracy theories
The Trump administration suspended funding to WHO in April—the UN’s primary infectious disease–fighting body—accusing it of “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,” and of taking China’s allegedly deceptive claims about its handling of COVID-19 at “face value.” But corporate media had already been boosting these same talking points.
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Rubio, Cruz bill would deem Cuba’s medical missions “human trafficking operation”
In an act of pure hypocrisy and obsessive cruelty, GOP Senators Marco Rubio, Rick Scott and Ted Cruz joined together to penalize developing nations who seek to take advantage of Cuba’s hands-on humanitarian work.
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Racism, COVID-19, and the fight for economic justice
While the Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the United States were triggered by recent police murders of unarmed African Americans, they are also helping to encourage popular recognition that racism has a long history with punishing consequences for black people that extend beyond policing.
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Who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize in a time of pandemic?
A few weeks ago, I was talking to Noam Chomsky about the state of the world. At one point, Noam smiled and said that he is not aware of any German doctors in Italy, even though both countries are in the European Union; instead, Cuban and Chinese doctors went to Italy to help the Italians fight the global pandemic.
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Statement of Support for Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police
Between 1963 and 1972, there were more than 750 Black-led urban revolts in the United States in 525 cities. How did sociologists react?
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Viruses & imperialism
Despite conspiracy theories, there is no evidence whatsoever that the virus was manufactured in or escaped from a laboratory, in China or anywhere else. Such accusations ignore how easy viral transmission can be when other factors come into play.
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Top 16 euphemisms U.S. headline writers used for police beating the shit out of people
“Mayor Downplays Rough Police Treatment of NYC Protesters” (AP, 6/5/20)
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Dossier 20: Health is a political choice
In the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Article 25 offers an expanded vision of what it could mean to be a human being. Human beings, it notes, have ‘the right to a standard of living adequate for [their] health and well-being’. This includes ‘food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services’; human beings also have the ‘right to security’, which means they have the right to compensation for any lack of livelihood due to circumstances beyond their control.
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U.S. campaign against Cuba’s medical brigades targets healthcare, not ‘forced labor’
For decades, Cuba has sent tens of thousands of its medical professionals abroad to work in countries where natural disasters or poverty have left people without healthcare. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the catastrophic U.S. response to it, the absurdity of a propaganda war against Cuban medical missions has become more obvious than ever. But you can’t rely on corporate media to explain why.
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CoronaShock and the Hybrid War against Venezuela
CoronaShock is a term that refers to how a virus struck the world with such gripping force; it refers to how the social order in the bourgeois state crumbled, while the social order in the socialist parts of the world appeared more resilient.
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The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu and the Plagues of Capitalism – book review
Mike Davis’ The Monster Enters updates his earlier book on capitalism and pandemic disease to reflect on the current failure of the neoliberal state, finds Elaine Graham-Leigh
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Families, in times of pandemic and always
Families vary, in terms of their composition, structure, and functioning, but all play a key role in society and require special attention from government.
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Taiwan and WHO in the COVID-19 pandemic
The ruling establishment’s intrigue against the WHO might seem at odds with Taiwan’s failed bid to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) this past May, but there was no contradiction between Taiwan being seen fighting a David and Goliath-like battle with both the WHO and China, thereby flaring up geopolitical tensions from without. Both served the interests of the ruling class of Taiwan.