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Polio

War And Pandemic Journalism

August 8, 2020 Patrick Cockburn, Tom Dispatch. , , ,
The struggle against Covid-19 has often been compared to fighting a war. Much of this rhetoric is bombast, but the similarities between the struggle against the virus and against human enemies are real enough. War reporting and pandemic reporting likewise have much in common because, in both cases, journalists are dealing with and describing matters of life and death. Public interest is fueled by deep fears, often more intense during an epidemic because the whole population is at risk. In a war, aside from military occupation and area bombing, terror is at its height among those closest to the battlefield.

COVID-19 Stimulus Bill Funds State Dept/USAID Operations That Helped Trigger Polio Outbreak

April 24, 2020 Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone. , , ,
While the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill was authored in the spirit of beating back a pandemic, buried deep within its text is a stipend for the US State Department operations dedicated to carrying out foreign interventions that have contributed to the outbreak of preventable diseases like polio in Syria and Pakistan. Passed unanimously by Congress this March, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act provides $250 million for the State Department to implement “economic, security, and stabilization” activities through an “Economic Support Fund” (ESF). Earmarked for activities through September 2020, the bill authorizes the State Department to fund “international organizations.” While the bill does not specify which organizations qualify for funding, many recent State Department “security and stabilization” operations have relied heavily on foreign proxies which did exactly the opposite of improving public health systems.

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