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Finance’s preference for the Metropolis
The current globalization was always legitimized by the argument that capital today, unlike in colonial times, had become blind to racial and other such distinctions across countries in deciding upon its location; it would now flow wherever opportunities for profitable investment existed.
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The COVID-19 catastrophe in Bangladesh
The virus risks plunging Bangladesh into social, economic, and political turmoil—not to mention the public health crisis.
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Pompeo and the capricious virus
Iran has delivered a devastating blow to the ego of the Trump administration, puncturing it beyond repair, by its announcement Sunday that mosques will start reopening in low-risk areas of the country from May 5.
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“Humans” are not the problem: Reflections on a “useless” documentary
With nearly everyone trapped at home for the fiftieth anniversary of the first Earth Day, Michael Moore released a film that picks apart the U.S. environmental movement as it may have looked ten years ago, and then misleadingly presents it as breaking news.
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The economic crash is already ravaging Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is facing its greatest crisis in generations. The continent thus far has been less affected by the pandemic than other parts of the world. But the impact of the global economic crisis is already enormous.
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Bolivia vs Venezuela: COVID-19 response reveals true nature of governments
Government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have put into sharp relief their true nature. This is perhaps no more evident than when we compare Bolivia and Venezuela.
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It’s crucial to distinguish between can’t and won’t—with a million lives at stake
CNN should note that accepting a 60–70% infection rate means accepting a million deaths or more, assuming a fatality rate of 0.5%—which may be a conservative estimate.
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Epidemics and capitalism
The article seeks to re-emphasise that as capitalism exploits society and nature for its own expanded reproduction, it cannot but revolutionise the productive forces, in terms of science and technology. On the other hand, however, it also creates fetters to the realisation of the potential that it creates, by making it a slave to the logic of profit.
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Coronavirus deaths likely 60% higher than official numbers reflect, FT finds
As experts try to model the true number of coronavirus deaths, and some random ‘surveillance’ studies have suggested that–at least in some badly hit areas–the number of confirmed coronavirus cases might be many multiples of the official count, the FT has published its latest attempt at trying to ‘model’ the true coronavirus death toll.
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Another life-saving brigade travels to South Africa
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.
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The Politics of the coronavirus conjuncture in Ireland
The election in Ireland in early February marked a clear acceleration of the country’s ongoing left turn over recent years. Then came the virus.
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Faced with coronavirus, the most effective health system is one focused on prevention
“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.
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Russia-China entente deepens in the shadow of the pandemic
The Russian-Chinese entente emerged as one of the most significant templates of international politics in the recent period since the hugely consequential developments in Ukraine in 2014 that led to western sanctions against Moscow, which in turn galvanised the latter’s ‘pivot to Asia’.
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“Hair” @WANPOETRY
Tova Charles & Zai Sadler performing “Hair” at Write About Now Poetry.
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No Going Back–The COVID-19 pandemic theses
We live in the age of the pandemic. We live in an age of environmental destruction and climate change. None of these are natural disasters–they all result from the way society and production is currently organised.
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Farewell to the god of plague
The Communists were determined to eradicate disease. In the 1930s, Mao joined the Chinese Communist Party’s Public Health Commission; in 1934, when he was in the Jiangxi Soviet, Mao placed public health at the top of the list for party work.
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Carnivals of the damned: the U.S. far-right fights the lockdown
The wave of far-right anti-lockdown protests show how capitalist politics can create monsters. Worse might be on the way.
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Globalisation and the pandemic
SSER-IDEAS Online Lecture Series — COVID-19 Pandemic: Policy Failures and Their Impact on the Lives of People
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America’s super-rich see their wealth rise by $282 Billion in three weeks of pandemic
America’s billionaires have accrued more wealth in the past three weeks alone than they made in total prior to 1980.
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Corporate planning in the coronavirus economy
In this blog post, I want to connect what we’re currently seeing in the retail sector during this pandemic to deep-seated narratives about the nature of economic exchange, in particular to the notion of “the market”.