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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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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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Both sides-ing bleach injection
Media in the era of an incompetent president.
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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”.
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Declaring victory too soon: Lessons from Europe’s different responses to coronavirus
But do these assumptions hold up to the test? To find out, we must first take a quick look at some recent history.
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COVID-19 crisis: Bolivia’s movement towards socialism says #PutLivesFirst
Given the exponentially rising death toll from COVID-19 and the devastating social and economic effects of brutal lockdowns, what could a humane and progressive response to the global pandemic look like?
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During Coronvrius: Cuba to the rescue, but don’t tell the American people
Anti-Cuba zealots in the Trump administration have been enticing Cuban doctors working overseas to defect, paying journalists to write negative stories, slapping sanctions on Cubans in charge of the program, and strong-arming countries to expel Cuban doctors.
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The Black Plague
The rapidity with which the pandemic has consumed black communities provides an unvarnished look into the dynamics of race and class that existed long before it emerged.
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It is not just propaganda: What the U.S. anti-China campaign is looking for
The Trump Administration has spread the conspiracy theory that the new coronavirus came out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This accusation, which seeks to transfer responsibility for the pandemic to the Asian giant, has been rejected by the Chinese authorities for being without foundation.
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“Please Don’t”: Doctors forced to speak out as Trump ponders aloud whether injecting disinfectants could treat COVID-19
“ALERT! Please do not ingest, inject, inhale, or otherwise use any disinfectant outside of its labeled instructions. And do not start using tanning beds or sunning without sunscreen.”
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Coronavirus: the need for a progressive internationalist response
This pandemic health crisis exposes the injustices of the global economic order. It must be a turning point towards creating the systems, structures and policies that can always protect those who are marginalised and allow everyone to live with dignity.
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Trump was given ‘realtime updates’ over Covid-19 as the pandemic developed
More than a dozen health experts working for the WHO in Geneva relayed regular information to Mr Trump about COVID-19, U.S. and international officials have confirmed.
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Either socialism will defeat the louse or the louse will defeat socialism
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that the Great Lockdown, which has no end date, could very well lead to a loss of $9 trillion to global Gross Domestic Product over the entirety of 2020 and 2021; this number is greater than the combined economies of Japan and Germany. This scenario, the Fund’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva admits, ‘may actually be a more optimistic picture than reality produces’.
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Trump, coronavirus, and climate change: using a pandemic to gut the EPA
Under the guise of protecting workers and the public from the coronavirus, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced two weeks ago that it will not issue fines against companies that violate certain water, air, and hazardous-waste-reporting requirements.
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Covid-19: the pandemic of the Great Acceleration
Many people around the world are familiar with this ancient Chinese proverb. Today, this lovely metaphor has materialized and taken the form of a pandemic, wreaking havoc on a system where few felt safe and most had become accustomed to merely surviving.