Pandemic

The Art Of Exploiting A Pandemic

May 2, 2020 Mike Pappas, Left Voice. Educate! COVID-19, Pandemic, Propaganda, US military

We have all likely seen or heard the commercials. They typically start with slow music and maybe a nice sunrise. The ads then give lip service to the ‘strange and uncertain’ times in which we’re living. But never fear, your savior is here: some large corporation wants to let you know that they are “here for us.” Do not worry, even after the pandemic is over, they will still be “here for us.” This touching treacle would be incomplete without a nod to the “healthcare heroes” continuing to fight during this pandemic. It just touches your heart, doesn’t it? But the eerily similarity of many of the commercials is a bit off putting… It is almost as if there is a propaganda campaign designed to exploit our worry and vulnerability during the global pandemic.

Scheer Intelligence: Coronavirus Proves Capitalism Has Always Been A Lie

May 1, 2020 Robert Scheer, Scheer Post. Educate! Capitalism, COVID-19, Global Recession, Pandemic, Podcast

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to cause mass death and upheaval around the world, there has been an unexpected side effect: it has unmasked capitalism. In the U.S., this unmasking can be seen in both the Federal Reserve’s actions as well as Congress’ coronavirus aid legislation, the CARES Act, both of which reveal critical truths about an economic system that has been sold to working people as one thing and as quite another to banks and corporations. To shed some much needed light on the intricacies of our financial situation during the latest crisis, “Scheer Intelligence” host Robert Scheer spoke with acclaimed economist and attorney Ellen Brown. There are plenty of parallels to be drawn between the last financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, with the clear exception being that now we’re not just dealing with a broken economy but with a deadly virus.

What History Can Tell Us About Today’s Coronavirus Pandemic

May 1, 2020 Veronika Hachenbroch, Spiegel.de. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, Pandemic, Transformation

All too often, this is the fate of Cassandra. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the U.S., explained the situation graphically in 2006: If you live in the Caribbean, climate scientists will tell you that a hurricane is inevitably going to come. They cannot tell you the date, and they cannot tell you how powerful the hurricane is going to be, but it is very important that you prepare for it. It is exactly the same with a pandemic. But what did we do? Following a brief phase of anxiety after SARS and avian influenza, we forgot all about the pandemic threat! So now we don't have common pandemic policies in the European Union, the World Health Organization is underfunded, and we are lacking hospital surge capacities.

Four Scenarios For Europe’s Future After The Crisis

May 1, 2020 Philippe Pochet, Social Europe. Create! European Union (EU), Global Recession, New Economy, Pandemic

It’s now clear the Covid-19 pandemic will have major, long-term consequences. In the European Union, the very foundations of European integration are being questioned. The EU is defined by its ‘pillars’: the single market and free movement, the euro and the Stability and Growth Pact, and competition and state-aid law. These three pillars are being shaken by the pandemic and they are sure to be at the centre of debates on the future of Europe. The post-crisis EU—assuming it survives—could have very different foundations if the questioning of the three pillars continues. But in which global environment is this set to happen? There are four possible scenarios. The first (contrary to what I have written before) is a possible return to neoliberal orthodoxy—a bit like the previous crisis (2008-13), when Europe reverted even more radically to neoliberal fundamentals after a more or less green recovery in 2009.

COVID-19 Will Kill More People Worldwide Due To Water Shortages

April 30, 2020 By José Luis Granados Ceja, Truthout. Educate! COVID-19, Latin America, Pandemic, Water

Experts have been consistent in telling the public that one of the best means to stop the spread of the coronavirus is the practice of good hygiene. But how can you abide by these instructions when you do not have access to clean water? This is the challenge facing millions of low-income people throughout the world. As COVID-19 continues to spread — overwhelming even advanced capitalist countries with robust health care systems — governments, social movements and citizens in Latin America are being forced to confront the global pandemic in societies that are still largely defined by extreme inequality, one that makes typical expert recommendations nearly impossible to follow. “The global struggle against the pandemic has little chance to succeed if personal hygiene, the main measure to prevent contagion, is unavailable to the 2.2 billion persons who have no access to safe water services,” said a team of independent experts affiliated with the United Nations Human Rights Council, as quoted by the Associated Press.

The World Is On Lockdown – Where Are The Carbon Emissions Coming From?

April 29, 2020 Shannon Osaka, Grist.org. Educate! climate crisis, Global Recession, greenhouse gases, Pandemic

Pedestrians have taken over city streets, people have almost entirely stopped flying, skies are blue (even in Los Angeles!) for the first time in decades, and global CO2 emissions are on-track to drop by … about 5.5 percent. Wait, what? Even with the global economy at a near-standstill, the best analysis suggests that the world is still on track to release 95 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted in a typical year, continuing to heat up the planet and driving climate change even as we’re stuck at home. A 5.5-percent drop in carbon dioxide emissions would still be the largest yearly change on record, beating out the financial crisis of 2008 and World War II. But it’s worth wondering: Where do all of those emissions come from? And if stopping most travel and transport isn’t enough to slow down climate change, what will be?

Billionaire Bonanza 2020

April 29, 2020 Chuck Collins, Omar Ocampo and Sophia Paslaski, IPS-DC.org. Educate! Billionaires, Pandemic, Taxes, wealth inequality

Billionaires dominate our politics, culture, and economy. Their wealth, as this report shows, has concentrated mightily over the last four decades — even as the number of U.S. households with zero or negative net worth is increasing and most of us are living paycheck to paycheck. The current pandemic is exposing our central economic and social reality: Extreme wealth inequality has become America’s “pre-existing condition.” In this report, we show how billionaire wealth has grown astoundingly over the last few decades — and, for some “pandemic profiteers,” even more dramatically since the COVID-19 crisis — even as billionaire tax obligations have plummeted. If this inequality isn’t treated with both short and long-term tax reforms and oversight, America’s “pre-existing condition” of extreme inequality could overwhelm not only our economy, but our democracy itself.

A Silver Lining In The Global Pandemic

April 29, 2020 Michael T. Klare, Tom Dispatch. Educate! climate crisis, Global Recession, Oil and Gas, Pandemic

Energy analysts have long assumed that, given time, growing international concern over climate change would result in a vast restructuring of the global energy enterprise. The result: a greener, less climate-degrading system. In this future, fossil fuels would be overtaken by renewables, while oil, gas, and coal would be relegated to an increasingly marginal role in the global energy equation. In its World Energy Outlook 2019, for example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted that, by 2040, renewables would finally supersede petroleum as the planet’s number one source of energy and coal would largely disappear from the fuel mix. As a result of Covid-19, however, we may no longer have to wait another 20 years for such a cosmic transition to occur -- it’s happening right now.

Five Proposals For A Better World After The Pandemic

April 29, 2020 Climate and Capitalism. Create! Capitalism, Global Recession, New Economy, Pandemic

Covid-19 has shaken the world. It has already led to the loss or devastation of countless lives, while many people in vital professions are working day and night to attend to the sick and stop further spread. Personal and social losses, and the fight to stop these, demand our continued respect and support. At the same time, it is critical to view this pandemic in historical context in order to avoid repeating past mistakes when we plan for the future. The fact that Covid-19 has already had such a major economic impact is due, amongst other factors, to the economic development model that has been dominant globally over the last 30 years. This model demands ever-growing circulation of goods and people, despite the countless ecological problems and growing inequalities it generates.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Exposes Deep Flaws In America’s Broken Healthcare System

April 28, 2020 Margaret Flowers, RT. Educate! COVID-19, Healthcare crisis, Medicare for all, Pandemic

When it comes to the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths, the United States is off the charts compared to other countries. Although the USA comprises five percent of the global population, 32 percent of Covid-19 cases and 25 percent of deaths worldwide are there. By contrast, China, where the novel coronavirus originated, has one-tenth of the number of cases and deaths, despite having a population that is four times larger. A disaster scenario is playing out across the United States, particularly in New York City where scores of refrigerator trucks have been brought in to hold the dead, hundreds of people are dying in their homes without medical attention every day, mass graves are being used to store bodies while mortuaries are overwhelmed, and health professionals lack basic personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, and dialysis machines.

DeVos And Charter School Movement Use Pandemic To Advance Agenda

April 28, 2020 Jeff Bryant, Inequality.org. Educate! Charter Schools, Pandemic, Privatization, Public Education

COVID-19 has shuttered public schools across the nation, state governments are threatening to slash education budgets due to the economic collapse caused by the outbreak, and emergency aid provided by the federal government is far short of what is needed, according to a broad coalition of education groups. But the charter school industry may benefit from its unique status to seek public funding from multiple sources and expand these schools into many more communities traumatized by the pandemic and financial fallout. As school districts reported problems converting classroom learning into online instruction delivered to students’ homes, often due to lack of funding for internet-capable devices and Wi-Fi hotspots, charter school proponents are jumping in to take advantage of emergency aid.

Worse Pandemics Are On The Way If We Don’t Protect Nature

April 28, 2020 Jordan Davidson, Ecowatch. Educate! Biodiversity, climate crisis, COVID-19, Pandemic

A group of biodiversity experts warned that future pandemics are on the horizon if mankind does not stop its rapid destruction of nature. Writing an article published Monday by The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the authors put the responsibility for COVID-19 squarely on our shoulders. "There is a single species that is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic – us. As with the climate and biodiversity crises, recent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity – particularly our global financial and economic systems, based on a limited paradigm that prizes economic growth at any cost. We have a small window of opportunity, in overcoming the challenges of the current crisis, to avoid sowing the seeds of future ones," the authors wrote on IPBES.

Corona Capitalism In Honduras

April 27, 2020 By Karen Spring and Judy Ancel, Labor Notes. Resist! Corporatism, Honduras, Pandemic, Recession

Residents of Choloma, an industrial town in northern Honduras, blocked the main highway connecting the city of San Pedro Sula to the Port of Cortes on April 10. Choloma and nearby towns are the center of sweatshop production for U.S. brands in factories called maquilas. They are also the epicenter of COVID-19 in Honduras. The workers blocking the road that morning burned tires, put up barricades, and demanded the government give them the food they had been promised. A worker demonstrating in Choluteca in southern Honduras told the Honduran media outlet UNE-TV, “They told us they’d be here at seven this morning with food, but no one came. We’re hungry. There are 70 villages waiting for food.” Since mid-March hundreds of thousands of workers in these towns have been laid off as clothing manufacturers Hanes, Gildan, and Fruit of the Loom and auto parts maker Empire Electronics, among others, announced two- to four-month shutdowns.

The Coronavirus Chronology From Hell

April 27, 2020 Dilip Hiro, Tom Dispatch. Educate! China, COVID-19, Pandemic, United States

Historically, in hyper-crises, local and global systems can change fundamentally. Before the coronavirus pandemic hit first China and then the rest of the globe, the question of whether the American imperial era might be faltering was already on the table, amid that country's endless wars and with the world’s most capricious leader. When humanity emerges from this devastating crisis of disease, dislocation, and impoverishment, not to mention the fracturing of a global economic system created by Washington but increasingly powered by Beijing on a climate-stressed planet, the question will be: Has the Chinese dragon pushed the American eagle down to a secondary position? To assess that question objectively in this unsettled moment, it’s necessary to examine on a day-to-day basis how the two contemporary superpowers handled the Covid-19 crisis, and ask the question: Who has proved better at combating the deadliest disease of modern times, President Donald Trump or President Xi Jinping?

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