This Victory Gives Confidence for Future Struggles: The Forty-Seventh Newsletter (2021)

25 November 2021 — Tricontinental

AIKS member at Singhu 01A farmer at the protest encampment at Delhi’s Singhu Border carries the flag of the All India Kisan Sabha, 21 November 2021. Subin Dennis / Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On 19 November 2021, a week before the first anniversary of the farmers’ revolt, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi surrendered. He accepted that the three laws on agricultural markets that had been pushed through the parliament in 2020 would be repealed. The farmers of India had won. The All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), one of the organisers of the protest movement, celebrated the triumph and declared that ‘this victory gives more confidence for future struggles’.

Continue reading

The Left’s Covid Failure

Nov 24, 2021 — Unherd

By Toby Green and Thomas Fazi

Antonio Berni, Manifestación, 1934

Amplifying the crisis is no way to rebuild trust

Throughout the various phases of the global pandemic, people’s preferences in terms of epidemiological strategies have tended to overlap closely with their political orientation. Ever since Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro expressed doubts as to the wisdom of a lockdown strategy in March 2020, liberals and those on the Left of the Western political spectrum, including most socialists, have fallen over themselves to adhere in public to the lockdown strategy of pandemic mitigation — and lately to the logic of vaccine passports. Now as countries across Europe experiment with tighter restrictions of the unvaccinated, Left-wing commentators — usually so vocal in the defence of minorities suffering from discrimination — are notable for their silence.

Continue reading

The Return of the Flu

24 November 2021 — Swiss Policy Research

Sweden: The return of the flu (WHO FluNet)

The flu has returned to some countries with high rates of natural immunity against SARS-CoV-2. In contrast, countries with high vaccination rates but low natural immunity rates are seeing record new covid waves, although at lower hospitalization and death rates than previously.

Continue reading