5 April 2020 — Off Guardian
A few weeks ago we reported that, according to the Italian Institute of Health (ISS), only 12% of Italy’s reported Covid19 deaths actually listed Covid19 as the cause of death.
5 April 2020 — True Publica
By TruePublica Editor: The Boris Johnson government have clearly demonstrated they are not the people to run the country in a crisis. Their refusal to partake in an EU procurement programme for desperately needed life-saving medical equipment is a last-gasp expression of their tribalism in a situation which demanded so much more. It shone a light on exactly who they are and they failed us all in our time of need. The reality was that they made the wrong decisions and then lied about it. Now the cover-ups begin.
4 April 2020 — chinadaily.com.cn
Why did apparently stigmatizing names like Chinese virus or Wuhan virus keep making headlines? How have the Western media shaped the narrative of China’s response to the novel coronavirus? As the virus continues to wreck havoc, China Daily investigates how the Western version of propaganda plays out in the global battle against coronavirus.
31 March 2020 — Open Democracy
“Global yields lowest in 500 years of recorded history. $10 trillion of negative rate bonds. This is a supernova that will explode one day,” tweeted Bill Gross, the ‘bond king’, in 2016.
This day has come closer. Capitalism now faces the deepest crisis in its several centuries of existence. A global slump has begun that is already devastating the lives of hundreds of millions of working people on all continents. The consequences for workers and poor people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America will be even more extreme than for those living in Europe and North America, both with respect to lives lost to coronavirus and to the existential threats to the billions of people already living in extreme poverty. Capitalism, an economic system based on selfishness, greed and dog-eat-dog competition, will more clearly than ever reveal itself to be incompatible with civilisation.
4 April 2020– Origin: Information Clearing House
By Mike Whitney
The Bloodbath on Wall Street continues. – Continue
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3 April 2020 — Asia Times
In the Belt and Road framework, China is supplying much of the world including virus-hit Europe with medicine and healthcare items
Pepe ESCOBAR
4 April 2020 — The Canary
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has descended into further chaos amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. But its latest move to try and keep itself afloat amid ‘unprecedented times’ is actually utterly twisted.
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3 April 2020 — Internationalist 360°
The Cuban Communist Party joined the international call for cooperation in the battle against the epidemic, which has claimed the lives of more than 50,000 people around the world. The text, signed by 230 political parties from more than 100 countries, recognizes that the Covid-19 has confronted us with the most pressing and serious challenge to human health and peaceful global development.
3 April 2020 — The Most Revolutionary Act
Work Want Work: Labour and Desire at the End of Capitalism
By Mareile Pfannebecker and J.A. Smith
Zed Books (2020)
Book Review
In this book, authors Pfannebecker and Smith summarize the current anti-work movement and literature. In view of rapid displacement of blue and white collar workers by robots and computers, coupled with the offshoring of most manufacturing jobs, there are growing calls for an end to waged work altogether.
4 April 2020– Origin: WSWS
As Britain recorded its largest increase in deaths from coronavirus in a single day, 684, taking the grim toll to over 3,000, it is the elderly who are most at risk from the pandemic. While more than half of all hospital deaths in England were among those aged 80 and over, the number of those dying in care homes now exceeds 600.
3 April 2020 — Welfare Weekly
Charities urge government to ‘save our sector’.
3 April 2020– Origin: Climate & Capitalism
Essays by pioneering ecosocialist Joel Kovel argue that radical social change is the only way to prevent ecocatastrophe
Mike Shaughnessy is a member of Green Left, the ecosocialist current in the Green Party of England and Wales.
Quincy Saul, Editor
THE EMERGENCE OF ECOSOCIALISM
Collected Essays by Joel Kovel
2Leaf Press, 2019
reviewed by Mike Shaughnessy
London Green Left Blog
3 April 2020 — Off Guardian – The Corbett Report
Pssst. You.
Yeah, you.
Are you interested in talking about…things? You know, the kind of things that we’re not allowed to talk about anymore? You know, since the…uhhh…“The Event“?
3 April 2020– Origin: WSWS
The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported last month that a 55-year-old man may have contracted a novel coronavirus infection on November 17, 2019. This individual is the earliest confirmed case of COVID-19, but authorities believe he wasn’t patient-zero. The next confirmed case appeared on December 1, 2019 but had no links to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market located in Wuhan. The Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on January 9, 2020, that the outbreak had first been detected in Wuhan on December 12. Unusual cases of a pneumonia-like illness appeared at local hospitals.
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3 April 2020 — True Publica
When the Daily Mail finally admits the government it helped foist into power is nothing more than a veneer of populist slogans – you know as a government, you’ve been unveiled as a worthless profligate band of spurious frauds. The Boris Johnson government has been tested in a crisis and emphatically failed the nation in its entirety. This is what the DM came out with on Wednesday:
2 April 2020 — Novara Media
by Grace Blakeley @GraceBlakeley
Research this week from a network of accountants suggests that up to one million small businesses – 20% of the UK’s total – will run out of cash before the coronavirus crisis ends.
This prediction provides yet more evidence of what we already knew; this crisis will fundamentally transform the UK’s corporate environment. When it finally ends, there will be fewer firms left, and those that remain will be much more significant, in terms of both size and political power.
17 March 2020 — Stat News
By John P.A. Ioannidis
The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.
3 April 2020 — Counter Currents
Cuba has slammed the U.S.’ “criminal blockade” of the country after the embargo stood in the way of the delivery of Covid-19 test kits and ventilators donated by Chinese e-commerce tycoon Jack Ma.
“The criminal blockade of the imperial government violates the human rights of the Cuban people,” tweeted Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermúdez on Wednesday.
2 April 2020 — Source: Off Guardian
On 12 March, British PM Boris Johnson informed the public that families would continue to “lose loved ones before their time” as the coronavirus outbreak worsens. He added:
We’ve all got to be clear, this is the worst public health crisis for a generation.”
In a report, the Imperial College had warned of modelling that suggested over 500,000 would die from the virus in the UK. The lead author of the report, epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, has since revised the estimate downward to a maximum of 20,000 if current ‘lockdown’ measures work. Johnson seems to have based his statement on Ferguson’s original figures.
2 April 2020 — The Vulture
Came across this little gem whilst on my wanderings. It epitomises just what dumb-shits these so-called leaders really are.
Well. This is awkward. According to a report by Axios, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have addressed government officials on the topic of the coronavirus by … showing footage from a Hallmark Channel disaster TV series. A pair of Netanyahu’s cabinet ministers told Axios that the legally embattled PM “shared with his cabinet a video he claimed was evidence of Iran concealing coronavirus deaths by dropping bodies in garbage dumps,” before Netanyahu’s office realized “several hours later” that they were actually looking at a clip from the 2007 show Pandemic starring Tiffani Thiessen. (She plays a CDC doctor trying to stop a bird-flu outbreak in Los Angeles.)
