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Hunger rises dramatically in America
Given the dramatic rise in unemployment, cuts in hours, and sharp decline in gig economy work, it isn’t surprising that hunger is becoming more common, particularly among families with children. Nearly half the U.S. couldn’t withstand a $400 emergency, and most households that have taken hits are seeing bigger income losses than that.
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Ohio Government invites employers to secretly report “work refusal” due to coronavirus
AS OHIO BEGINS to ease restrictions and reopen its economy, the state is inviting employers to report employees who don’t show up for work out of concerns about the coronavirus for possible unemployment fraud. This means that workers who stay home because of concerns about unsafe conditions at work may be investigated and potentially stripped of unemployment benefits.
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Venezuela: Two U.S. citizens captured in botched coup attempt
Two former green berets were arrested in a second failed assault on Venezuelan shores on Monday.
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It takes a revolution to make a solution
I admit upfront that this is a hard newsletter to read. It is about debt. There is a bloodless quality to the way that we talk about the debt of the poorer nations. There is nothing poetic here. The numbers are alienating, their outcome shocking.
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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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Dossier 28: CoronaShock: A virus and the World
In December 2019, doctors in Wuhan (China) began to see patients with a kind of viral pneumonia. By the end of the month, an investigation began and China’s health authorities sent out a public warning and notified the World Health Organisation (WHO).
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Experts warn of new nuclear arms race after Trump signals U.S. withdrawal from START Treaty
While much of the corporate press has blamed Russia and China for the sudden failure of multiple longstanding nuclear treaties, experts put the blame on squarely on the Trump administration.
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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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ILO: Nearly half of all world’s workers may lose their jobs due to COVID-19 pandemic
In the absence of strong support measures by governments across the world, the estimated loss of mostly informal jobs would result in rising poverty, starvation and inequality, an ILO report says.
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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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Major Lazer – ‘Get Free’ feat. Amber (of Dirty Projectors)
The speaker is too poor to move to a different region, so they can only move slightly farther away from an inevitable problem.
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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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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”.