Pandemic

The Totalitarian Danger – From Paris To Washington

April 27, 2020 Daniel Gluckstein, Socialist Organizer. Organize! COVID-19, France, health, Pandemic, Workers

From the very beginning, the Fifth Republic was constituted as a regime with a totalitarian mission. The President-Bonaparte concentrates all powers in his hands. The trade union organisations are constantly subjected to attempts to integrate them into the State. Since the start of the pandemic, the Bonapartist anti-democratic nature of the regime has intensified: the introduction of a supposed “health” state of emergency; the passing of ordinances [1] that confiscate Parliament’s meagre powers and attack the social guarantees won through action by the working class; a strengthening of personal power in every domain (“I have decided, I am doing, I will do”, Macron says again and again, in contradiction with what he had decided, done and said he wanted to do a few days previously). In addition to which there are the attacks on personal freedoms and workers’ rights. In the last few days, things have moved up a notch.

China’s Covid-19 Reporting Is Truthful, Birx And Trump Demonstrate-Unwittingly

April 27, 2020 John V. Walsh, Global Research. Educate! China, COVID-19, Pandemic, Trump

Since so much attention is devoted to fact checking Trump’s press conferences, I thought surely the press would have picked up on this obvious manipulation of data. I checked on the fact check of the press conference by CNN, no friend of the Trump administration, and there was no mention of this lie by omission. Next, I checked PBS, a pillar of probity and respectability and also no friend of Trump. PBS does a brief online look at each press conference with anchor Hari Sreenivasan and Zachary Green. They showed Birx’s chart and noted Trump’s comments but made no criticism of the omitted data. A check of the NYT, another arch-foe of Trump, on the following day disclosed no mention of the Birx-Trump deceit. How can this be explained?

Nationwide Car Protest Demands ‘Cancel The Rent’

April 26, 2020 Dan Koob, CBS Local. Resist! Car Protest, Pandemic, Recession, Rent Strike

Philadelphia - The Philadelphia Museum of Art was a scene of a protest on Saturday as demonstrators say they can’t afford to pay rent because of the coronavirus pandemic. They’re demanding that the payments are canceled. Protesters say they can’t work and just don’t have the money to pay rent, but landlords are naturally pushing back, saying not so fast. May 1 is less than a week away and with any calendar turn, come bills. “If we can’t work, we can’t pay and that the dignity of our people is of the utmost concern,” Lia Ferrante, with the Party of Socialism and Liberation, said. Renters and landlords alike are worried about the new month.

The Engine Room Of Feminist Work Amid A Global Pandemic

April 26, 2020 Rochelle Jones, Interpress Service. Organize! Creative Economy, Feminism, Pandemic, Recession

There have been webinars (so.many.webinars), twitter threads, illustrations, press releases and policy recommendations, and online house parties. Analysis pieces cover everything from the gendered impacts of COVID-19 to how to work remotely to the role of neoliberal capitalism. Most strikingly, feminists have mobilized on a massive scale to generate our own autonomous resources for daily acts of solidarity and survival and to respond politically, collectively, and powerfully to this moment. Many of these actions are coming from within communities and movements in some of the hardest hit and less privileged places, and especially amongst Black, LBTQI+, disability, migrant, land & labour movements. Some of the responses are localised, while others are global.

When This War Is Over, Many Of Us Will Leave Medicine

April 26, 2020 Michele Harper, Elemental. Educate! COVID-19, Healthcare, Pandemic, Physicians

I couldn’t see. My face shield was blurred by a streaky haze. I tilted my neck back and forth in an effort to peer beyond it, beneath it, through it, whatever might work. Was it condensation? I started to raise my hands to my face to wipe it away before I remembered and yanked them back down: I cannot touch my face, can’t ever touch my face — neither inside this room nor outside it. As I stood at the head of the patient’s bed in ER Room 3, her nurse, Kate, secured a mask over the patient’s face to deliver additional oxygen. I checked to ensure the oxygen was cranked up to the maximum flow rate while we waited for the respiratory therapist. Even with that increased oxygen, the patient was saturating 85% at best, and her blood pressure was dropping. Ninety minutes earlier, the patient — a woman of 68 years with significant impairment from a stroke — had been fine.

Diseased System In Shut-Lockdown

April 26, 2020 Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Austerity, Capitalism, Pandemic, Recession, Socialism

If growing misery among the masses is what made revolutions, the Lords of Capital would have been deposed from their ruling perches long ago. But human beings do not spend their lives tallying cumulative assaults on their well being and dignity, and ruling classes are expert at blaming despised Others, foreign and domestic, for the ills of society. History shows us that economic crises do not become political crises that seriously threaten the ruling order until a critical mass of people come to the realization that the system itself is rotten, unbearable and incapable of meaningful reform. They must not only hate the rulers, but also hate the rulers’ system of governance more than they despise domestic Others and “threatening” foreigners.

Capitalism Can’t Be Repaired

April 26, 2020 Richard D. Wolff, Brave New Europe. Educate! Capitalism, Pandemic, Recession, Socialism

Consider this absurdity: The U.S. government’s policy in the face of the current capitalist crash is to “return the economy to the pre-coronavirus normal.” What? In that “normal” system, private capitalists maximized profits by not producing the tests, masks, ventilators, beds, etc., needed when coronavirus hit. Profit-driven capitalism proved extremely inefficient in its response to the virus. Wealth already lost from the coronavirus far exceeds what it would have cost to prepare properly. In capitalism, a small minority—employers—makes all the key decisions (what, how, where to produce and how to use the proceeds) governing production and distribution of most goods and services. The majority—employees and their families—must live with the results of employers’ decisions but are excluded from making them.

Hard-Hit Italian City Is Trailblazing The Way Towards A Better Post-Coronavirus World

April 25, 2020 Tracy Keeling, The Canary. Create! climate crisis, Italy, New Economy, Pandemic

Italy has been particularly badly hit by the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. Although the country has recently seen declines in new cases, it remains one of the top for infections and deaths worldwide. And the northern region of Lombardy has, by far, had the largest number of confirmed infections in the country. Now, as the cases wane, Milan – the region’s capital city – is looking to rebuild. It’s not, however, planning to get back to business as usual. It’s re-imagining the city and trailblazing its way towards a better post-coronavirus world. Like most other countries, Italy has been in lockdown. As the Guardian reported, during that cessation of the daily grind, Milan experienced a reduction in motor traffic congestion of between 30% and 75%. In turn, that drop in congestion brought a big dip in pollution levels.

Multibillion-Dollar Bailout For Arms Industry Amid Rising COVID-19 Toll

April 25, 2020 Bill Van Auken, WSWS. Educate! Iran, Military Budget, Pandemic, Pentagon

“I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea,” US President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday in a startling threat that could trigger a catastrophic war throughout the Middle East and beyond. The threat to launch a war 7,000 miles from US shores in the midst of coronavirus pandemic, whose death toll in the US is rapidly approaching 50,000, comes on the heels of Trump’s Monday night tweet announcing a suspension of all immigration into the United States, a transparent attempt to scapegoat immigrants for the ravages of the pandemic and the layoffs of tens of millions of workers. There is in both of these actions an expression of desperation and a flailing about in the face of a national and global crisis for which the US ruling class has no viable solution.

World Leaders Kick Off Initiative To Fight Coronavirus Without US

April 25, 2020 Joseph Guzman, The Hill. Create! COVID-19, Multipolar World, Pandemic, World Health Organization

The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched an initiative in collaboration with world leaders to accelerate the development of tests, drugs and vaccines against the coronavirus and share them around the world, without the involvement of the United States. WHO on Friday launched the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator during a video news conference with world leaders, among those who joined the conference included France President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Leaders from Asia, the Middle East and the Americas also joined the conference, but a spokesman for the U.S. mission in Geneva told Reuters the U.S. would not be involved. “There will be no U.S. official participation,” the spokesman told Reuters.

Coronavirus Shakes The Conceit Of ‘American Exceptionalism’

April 25, 2020 Calvin Woodward, AP News. Educate! American Exceptionalism, Hospitals, Pandemic, Public Health

Washington, DC - What if the real “invisible enemy” is the enemy from within — America’s very institutions? When the coronavirus pandemic came from distant lands to the United States, it was met with cascading failures and incompetencies by a system that exists to prepare, protect, prevent and cut citizens a check in a national crisis. The molecular menace posed by the new coronavirus has shaken the conceit of “American exceptionalism” like nothing big enough to see with your own eyes. A nation with unmatched power, brazen ambition and aspirations through the arc of history to be humanity’s “shining city upon a hill” cannot come up with enough simple cotton swabs despite the wartime manufacturing and supply powers assumed by President Donald Trump.

The Pandemic And The Global Economy

April 24, 2020 Jayati Ghosh, Dissent Magazine. Educate! Capitalism, Global Recession, Globalization, Pandemic

There are still many uncertainties about the COVID-19 pandemic: about the extent of its spread, its severity in different countries, the length of the outbreak, and whether an initial decline could be followed by a recurrence. But some things are already certain: we know that the economic impact of this pandemic is already immense, dwarfing anything that we have experienced in living memory. The current shock to the global economy is certainly much bigger than that of the 2008 global financial crisis, and is likely to be more severe than the Great Depression. Even the two world wars of the twentieth century, while they disrupted supply chains and devastated physical infrastructure and populations, did not involve the restrictions on mobility and economic activity that are in place in the majority of countries today.

Lebanese Protesters Return To Streets

April 24, 2020 Press TV. Resist! Global Recession, Government, Lebanon, Pandemic

The car convoys formed across the capital, the northwestern city of Tripoli, and the southwestern city of Sidon on Tuesday. In Beirut, cars thronged around the UNESCO Palace, which was chosen by Speaker Nabih Berri to host the parliament’s first reconvention since the legislature was shut down for contagion fears. The pandemic has so far infected 677 people and killed 21 in the country. Cars were seen draped in Lebanese flag, with drivers honking their horns and protesters shouting slogans while leaning out in facemasks. The lingering protests receded to some extent in January, when the country swore in a new government. They, however, resumed Friday in Tripoli, where locals reportedly showed up in their hundreds.

Mutual Aid: ‘When The System Fails, The People Show Up’

April 23, 2020 Eleanor Goldfield, ROAR Magazine. Organize! Community, COVID-19, Mutual Aid, Pandemic

The badges are both for security and for building relationships. We want our community corner stores to know us as those who are looking out for the people. And we want the people to know who we are in case they need help or can lend a hand. We want cops and other government entities to acknowledge and respect that we are essential workers getting supplies and services to our community. It is not a fail-safe, but for scrappy DIY mutual aid teams, nothing ever is. We roll with what comes as best we can. We are unpaid and many folks are brand new to this work. And yet, we still manage to do a better job than the almighty politicians and their corporate overlords. For instance, here in DC, several offices under the purview of Mayor Bowser, along with city-partnered nonprofit organizations, have routed calls for help to mutual aid networks around the city.

Sanctioned Countries Are Now Leading The World In The Fight Against Coronavirus

April 23, 2020 Alan Macleod, Mintpress News. Educate! COVID-19, Neoliberalism, Pandemic, Sanctions

After weeks of dismissing it as a liberal “hoax” designed to unseat the president, brushing the virus off as no big deal and under control, the Trump administration is clearly floundering in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite weeks of warning where it could have taken precautionary steps, the United States currently has four times the confirmed cases and twice the deaths of any other country. At the same time, the countries it is currently placing under economic siege, totaling around a quarter of the world’s population, are faring far better and leading the global fight against the coronavirus. China, for instance, the first epicenter of the outbreak, has managed to slow its new COVID-19 cases to a trickle, reopening for business after losing 4,632 people – a number that, in the context of a stark April reality, appears impressively low.

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