Pandemic

On Contact: Pandemic Two

July 18, 2021 Chris Hedges, On Contact. Resistance Report Capitalism, Chris Hedges, Inequality, Pandemic

On the show this week, in the second of a two-part interview, Chris Hedges continues his discussion with philosopher Slavoj Zizek about the social, political and psychological consequences of prolonged lockdowns and social distancing, as well as the mass illness and death caused by the pandemic. In his new book, 'Pandemic 2: Chronicles of a Time Lost,' Zizek argues the failure of global capitalism to cope with the pandemic presages, he fears, a systems collapse, a dress rehearsal for a frightening new form of authoritarianism in which the world is starkly divided between the elites and the rest of us. "...[T]he return to normality thus becomes the supreme psychotic gesture, the sign of collective madness," Zizek writes.

US Takes Advantage Of The Price Cubans Are Paying For The Blockade

July 14, 2021 Manolo de los Santos and Vijay Prashad, Peoples Dispatch. Educate! Cuba, Economic Blockade, Pandemic, US Sanctions

Cuba, like every other country on the planet, is struggling with the impact of COVID-19. This small island of 11 million people has created five vaccine candidates and sent its medical workers through the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade to heal people around the world. Meanwhile, the United States hardens a cruel and illegal blockade of the island, a medieval siege that has been in place for six decades. In April 2020, seven United Nations special rapporteurs wrote an open letter to the United States government about the blockade. “In the pandemic emergency,” they wrote, “the lack of will of the US government to suspend sanctions may lead to a higher risk of such suffering in Cuba and other countries targeted by its sanctions.” The special rapporteurs noted the “risks to the right to life, health and other critical rights of the most vulnerable sections of the Cuban population.”

Child Care Should Be Universal And Well-Paid

July 14, 2021 Michelle Chen, Truthout. Create! Child Care, Congress, Pandemic, Worker Rights

Queen Freelove of New Haven, Connecticut, remembers when the pandemic transformed the daycare she ran out of her home, abruptly turning the atmosphere from cozy to clinical: “Things got extremely traumatic for us,” she recalled. She was constantly trying to keep the environment sanitized, keeping a stockpile of masks, wipes, and other equipment, stopping parents in the hallway when they arrived to pick up their kids to take their temperature and give them a squirt of sanitizer — the protocol for “contactless” drop-offs and pick-ups. Keeping parents outside to minimize direct interaction, she said, was “hard, because we look forward to having that great relationship with the parents, and that really helps. But we could no longer have that relationship that we once had, because of the pandemic.”

Advocates Rally Against NYC’s Moving Homeless From Hotels To Shelters

July 11, 2021 Dave Carlin, CBS New York. Resist! Homeless, Housing rights, New York City (NYC), Pandemic

New York City — A march and rally against New York City’s decision to move about 8,000 homeless individuals from hotels to shelters was held Saturday. The process has been put on hold, but many say it shouldn’t have happened to begin with. Homeless advocates blasted the city for pushing those sheltered in hotels back to congregate living. “Don’t you know housing is a human right?” one speaker said. Just as the city ramped up moving some 8,000 homeless people out of the hotels, a lawsuit brought by the Legal Aid Society brought the process to a standstill, including at the Hotel at Fifth Avenue. “They woke us up early in the morning, banging on the doors at six, telling us to make sure we’re packed and ready to go, and then they’re stuffing all of us back to the same place that we just left from,” shelter resident Chantel Estrella said.

Women Everywhere In The World Are Squeezed Into A Tight Corner

July 10, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Human Rights, Pandemic, United Nations, Women's Rights

In 1995, the delegates elected Chen Muhua (1921-2011) as the president of the UN World Conference on Women. In 1938, Chen went to Yan’an to join the communist revolution, studying at Kàngda and helping to build the economic resilience of the base areas. After 1949, Chen worked in the Communist Party (rising to be an alternate Politburo member), in the Chinese state (becoming the governor of the People’s Bank of China), and in the women’s movement (leading the All-China Women’s Federation). At the Beijing Conference, Chen made a strong plea for the emancipation of women. ‘It is evident that women are crying out for an improvement in their status. The times demand it. Humanity aspires to it’.

The Tokyo Olympics Are In Peril

July 8, 2021 Dave Zirin, Edge of Sports. Resist! COVID-19, Olympics, Pandemic, Sports

Ten thousand people. That’s how many Olympic volunteers quit their posts in Tokyo, with the games just 50 days away. That is one of every eight volunteers needed to pull off the 2021 (still called the 2020) Olympics. This is just the latest warning sign that, despite the Panglossian protestations of the International Olympic Committee, this summer’s Games are in peril. Japan is currently wrestling with a coronavirus upsurge and less than 3 percent of the population is vaccinated. According to polls, as much as 80 percent of the country does not want to host the games, for fear of it exacerbating this omnipresent public health crisis, currently classified as a state of emergency. The masses of Tokyo want to postpone or cancel the games, but the government says it’s the IOC’s decision, not the host country’s, sovereignty be damned.

US States Press Reopening Amid Mounting Dangers From COVID Variants

June 19, 2021 Patrick Martin, World Socialist Website. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, Pandemic, Reopen Economy

The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 600,000 people in the United States, according to the semi-official tabulation by Johns Hopkins University. But while more people have been killed in the US by coronavirus than in any other country, American state governments are moving pell mell to drop all public health protection against the deadly virus, while the Biden administration points to a July 4 reopening of the entire country. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced Thursday that all the state’s restrictions on social distancing, indoor gatherings and mask-wearing will be lifted next Tuesday, ending 15 months of state-mandated public health requirements. All capacity limits will be removed for bars, restaurants, arenas, churches and other indoor venues, and the state’s mask mandate will end 10 days earlier than the previous goal of July 1.

How Workers Are Fighting For Better Amid Reopening

June 5, 2021 Ryan Desmond, Tribune Magazine. Resist! Britain, Pandemic, Restaurants, Worker Rights and Jobs

In my twenty-year career in the hospitality sector, I have never experienced such a demanding week as the one that started on 17 May. The re-opening of pubs and restaurants may have been eagerly anticipated by customers, but hospitality workers have been through hell and back. After months of rest and recuperation, chefs have been once again thrown into intolerable conditions. My work colleagues and I were put in a situation with new huge and unmanageable menus, and a new Kitchen Management System (KMS), which took the form of an automated tablet-to-screen order system and crashed frequently. The workloads were backbreaking, too, seeing several of us put in a 75-hour week. If this wasn’t bad enough, the sheer pressure of reopening saw two of our chefs leave after just two days.

World Health Assembly 74: One year into the pandemic

June 1, 2021 WHO Watch Team, People's Dispatch. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, Pandemic, World Health Organization

One year into the pandemic, the World Health Assembly is holding its annual meeting. The continued financial challenges loomed over delegates as they discussed the possibility of a Pandemic Treaty, local production of medicines, and WHO’s COVID-19 response

Unemployment Benefits Are Not Creating A Worker Shortage

May 16, 2021 Arthur Delaney and Dave Jamieson, Huff Post. Educate! Pandemic, Recession, Unemployment benefits, Worker Rights

As the U.S. economy bounces back from the COVID-induced downturn, some employers say they’re having a hard time finding workers. GOP lawmakers like Rep. David Rouzer (N.C.) blame the safety net. “This is what happens when you extend unemployment benefits too long and add a $1400 stimulus payment,” Rouzer said on Twitter last week, posting a photo from a Hardee’s that said it was closed for lack of staff. “Right when employers need workers to fully open back up, few can be found.” It’s a dubious argument. Republicans said this same thing last year when Congress passed a big relief bill that added $600 per week to state unemployment benefits for four months. Democrats “are going to make the next four months impossible for small businesses to hire,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said.

Corporations Pumped Up CEO Pay While Their Low-Wage Workers Suffered

May 13, 2021 Sarah Anderson, Inequality.org. Educate! CEO Pay, Pandemic, Wages, wealth inequality

During the pandemic, low-wage workers have lost income, jobs, and lives. And yet many of the nation’s top-tier corporations have been fixated on protecting their wealthy CEOs, even bending their own rules to pump up executive paychecks. A new Institute for Policy Studies report finds that 51 of the country’s 100 largest low-wage employers moved bonus goalposts or made other rule changes in 2020 to give their CEOs 29 percent average raises while their frontline employees made 2 percent less. Among these 51 rule-rigging companies, average CEO compensation was $15.3 million in 2020, while median worker pay was $28,187 on average. The average CEO- worker pay ratio: 830 to 1.

Vaccine Waiver Pledge Tests Biden-World’s Pharma Ties

May 9, 2021 David Sirota, Walker Bragman and Andrew Perez, Daily Poster. Educate! COVID-19, Pandemic, Patents, Vaccine apartheid

Several of President Joe Biden’s most powerful appointees and advisers have had business relationships with pharmaceutical giants lobbying the administration on COVID-19 and intellectual property issues, according to documents reviewed by The Daily Poster. Those ties — and Biden’s longtime alliance with pharmaceutical industry interests — could prove particularly relevant as drug companies now try to defang any new waiver of patent rules that might reduce their profits and facilitate the wider distribution of vaccines to COVID-afflicted countries. Last summer, Biden broke with his own legislative record and pledged to support relaxing those intellectual property rules to distribute a COVID-19 vaccine, saying it “is the only humane thing in the world to do.”

US First Quarter GDP: Recovery Or Just Another Rebound?

May 8, 2021 Jack Rasmus, Counterpunch. Educate! Economic crisis, Finance and the Economy, Gross Domestic Product, Pandemic

This past week the US Commerce Department released its early estimates for US GDP for the 1st Quarter 2021, January through March. If we are to believe the numbers, the US economy grew a respectable 6.4% during the period. But did it really? And does it represent a strong recovery underway? Or just a rebound, as the economy reopens in the services sector; and once the reopening concludes, will the economy flatten out again—as it did with last summer’s 2020 partial reopening that collapsed in late 2020? The first thing for readers to understand is the 6.4% is not really 6.4% for the first three months of 2021. The US is one of the few countries that reports its GDP figures in an ‘Annual Rate’ (AR) percentage. Most other advanced economies do not.

Why Delivery Workers Across The Planet Are Rising Up

April 30, 2021 Taroa Zuniga Silva, Peoples Dispatch. Resist! Delivery workers, Gig Workers, Pandemic, Worker Rights

On February 22, 2019, at 6 pm, a car crashed into Servio Hernández’s motorcycle. Hernández, a Venezuelan migrant in Chile, was hit while he was in the middle of making a delivery for PedidosYa, a branch of the German multinational company Delivery Hero. When Hernández arrived at the hospital, the first thing he did was ask the medical staff to let his supervisor know about the accident. “There is nothing we can do for him,” the supervisor told the doctor. The supervisor turned off his phone and blocked Hernández from being able to access the PedidosYa app. Servio Hernández is one of the millions of workers around the world, from Chile to South Korea, who hustle to deliver food and other products to people’s homes.

How The Federal Reserve Is Increasing Wealth Inequality

April 28, 2021 Allan Sloan and Cezary Podkul, ProPublica. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Pandemic, Stock Market, wealth inequality

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the Federal Reserve has gotten plenty of kudos for moves that have helped stabilize the economy, kept house prices from tanking and supported the stock market. But those successes have obscured another effect: the inadvertent impact the Fed’s ultra-low interest rates and bond-buying sprees are having on economic inequality. Longstanding inequality in the U.S. has been exacerbated by the Fed’s role in touching off a multi-trillion-dollar boom in stock markets — and stock ownership is heavily skewed toward the wealthiest Americans. In contrast, soaring stock prices don’t help people like Wina Tan. Tan, 59, is one of the millions of Americans nearing retirement age whose greatest source of wealth isn’t stocks or equity in a home.

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