Subjects Archives: Human Rights

More than 1,450 men and women in white lab coats from Cuba’s Henry Reeve Contingent have traveled to 22 nations in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East to battle the pandemic.

“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.

The speaker is too poor to move to a different region, so they can only move slightly farther away from an inevitable problem.

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.

With the overwhelming evidence that the capitalist system is fundamentally antithetical to the realization of human rights, including what should be an elementary right—access to healthcare—the presidency of Donald J. Trump has been a godsend for the capitalist rulers.

“Without a doubt, the first measure to contain the transmission chains of Covid-19 is quarantine, and we took it in advance on March 16,” Nicolás Maduro Moros, the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, told in the Argentinian multimedia show La Pizarra, led by Alfredo Serrano Mancilla.

Rohan Grey and Nathan Tankus join Money on the Left to discuss the flurry of debate about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) arising out of the Coronavirus crisis. We focus, in particular, on the Modern Money Network’s multi-pronged efforts to illuminate and remedy the resulting economic devastation. At the center of our conversation is Rohan’s contribution […]

Newly released data from the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) show that COVID-19 is present at higher rates in certain Boston communities, including Hyde Park, Mattapan, Dorchester, and East Boston.

Despite a deep economic recession, a profound political crisis and international sanctions that have ravaged its health sector, the South American nation of Venezuela is demonstrating that prioritising lives is possible in the battle against COVID-19.

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.

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?

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].

The land question is central to understanding political life and society in Brazil. The country has enormous landed estates, known as latifundios, which have their roots in the beginning of the Portuguese occupation of this part of South America at the start of the 16th century. The Portuguese seizure of this land and its conversion into large latifundios–together with the mono-cultivation of crops for export and the enslavement of human beings–established the roots of social inequality that persist to this day.

Workers at Amazon, Instacart and Whole Foods protested on March 30 and 31 over concerns about unsafe working conditions, inadequate safety measures and lack of enough pay.

‘I believe that they have done no wrong because there is widespread hunger [amidst the lockdown] and people are helpless.’

Cuba on March 28 sent a team of 39 doctors and nurses to Andorra, the thirteenth medical brigade the country has dispatched overseas to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is the sixth Cuban team to join the fight against the pandemic in the world and the first to travel to Europe, reported Cuban Television.

“The system…is failing. Let’s admit it,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on March 14 at a White House briefing.

This month’s Money on the Left episode departs from the show’s regular interview format to reflect on the past, present and future of the Money on the Left project as a whole. We focus, in particular, on a recent special scholarly journal issue dedicated to Money on the Left, which was published by Liminalities: A […]

As the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis comes to dominate headlines, little media attention has been given to the federal government’s decision to classify top-level meetings on domestic coronavirus response and lean heavily “behind the scenes” on U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon in planning for an allegedly imminent explosion of cases.