13 March 2020 — True Publica
By Megan Collins: Last week the Electoral Reform Society revealed how many votes went ignored in December’s general election: an astonishing 22.6m ballots did not count towards electing an MP. But behind the headline figures are people’s voices across the country being systematically silenced by Westminster’s winner-takes-all voting system. That system affects people’s representation in different ways across the UK.
12 March 2020 — RT
Pointing to a video of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Robert Redfield apparently admitting the US had several deaths from Covid-19 before they were able to test for it, Zhao called on the American watchdog to come clean in a tweet posted on Thursday.
12 March 2020 — Institute of Race Relations weekly digest
Another dark chapter in Europe’s history is being written on the Aegean islands of Chios and Lesvos, and at the Evros delta, the natural border between Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria. In our regular calendar on racism and resistance, we document a series of racist acts, including the burning down of centres storing essential supplies for refugees, as well as an international school for refugee children. The scale and organised nature of the violence is reminiscent of the racist mob attacks in Germany, at Rostock and Hoyerswerdain 1991 and in Spain in 2000, at El Ejido, where Moroccan workers were driven out of town. And just as those events cannot be dismissed as simple spontaneous outpourings of local xenophobia, the escalation in violence over the last few weeks against refugees and NGO workers in Greece has been aggravated by the EU’s disastrous handling of (the apparently collapsing) EU-Turkey deal amid the flight of refugees from war in Syria.
12 March 2020 — theplanningmotivedotcom
What left reformists and right populists have in common, their only commonality, is their profound failure to understand capitalist political economy. The Chancellor’s “Blue Sky” budget based on a “Strong and Resilient economy” facing a “temporary medical emergency” is an exercise in delusion. By the Autumn statement it will be history.
12 March 2020 — Tricontinental
Mohammed Issiakhem, Femme et Mur (Woman and Wall), 1970.
Dear Friends,
Greetings from the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
These are miserable times. The statistics of deprivation and death are gruesome. Far too many people struggle with hunger; roughly nine million of them dying each year from complications due to malnutrition (a child dies somewhere in the world around every ten seconds because of this).
12 March 2020 — True Publica
On the last quarter of last year, nearly 90,000 full-time jobs for NHS were advertised. Hospital beds are now half what they were 30 years ago. The government is stating it will give to the NHS ‘whatever it takes’ to cope with the impending virus and yet even the very lowest of expected numbers mean the NHS will be totally submerged in serious CoVid-19 virus cases within about 6 to 8 weeks.
11 March 2020 — Climate & Capitalism
A socialist biologist explains the tight links between new viruses, industrial food production, and the profitability of multinational corporations.
The new coronavirus is keeping the world in a state of shock. But instead of fighting the structural causes of the pandemic, the government is focusing on emergency measures.
Yaak Pabst for the German socialist magazine Marx21 spoke to evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu (Monthly Review Press, 2016) about the dangers of Covid-19, the responsibility of agribusiness and sustainable solutions to combat infectious diseases. Marx21 released the interview in advance of its scheduled March 30 publication date.
4 March 2020 — Zero Hedge
by Tyler DurdenSummary
11 March 2020 — Asia Times
Two black swans swim in a lake of a park in Shenyang. Photo: AFP
Is the planet under the spell of a pair of black swans – a Wall Street meltdown, caused by an alleged oil war between Russia and the House of Saud, plus the uncontrolled spread of Covid-19 – leading to an all-out “cross-asset pandemonium” as billed by Nomura?
11 March 2020 — Smart Meter News
Written by John O’Sullivan
The prestigious Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering based in New York, issues a stark public warning of grave cancer risks from any mass roll out of 5G telecoms technology.
10 March 2020 — Internationalist 360°
The US has become increasingly dependent on the use of unilateral economic sanctions to achieve its policy objectives against its declared targets since the start of the great recession in 2008. Presently, sanctions impact one-third of humanity in 39 countries. Economic sanctions not only cause untold death and devastation to a given country by denying it access to US-dominated markets – which restricts its ability to generate wealth, stabilize its currency against price fluctuations and provide critical services and resources for its people – but economic sanctions also serve to justify and conceal theft, through asset freezes and seizures, at a rate only previously accomplished through invasion & occupation.
8 March 2020 — Jack Rasmus
US politicians and media are reporting approximately 500 cases of the virus in the US as of March 8. The actual number is almost certainly much higher, however. Perhaps as much as 10-fold that number, according to some sources. Why?
9 March 2020 — Mint Press
For many thousands of students across New York City and the United States, school is the only place they receive regular meals, shelter, medical care, and other vital services.
11 March 2020 — Land Destroyer
(Tony Cartalucci – NEO) – Turkey’s ongoing fighting in northern Syria’s Idlib governorate was – from the beginning of recent escalations – clearly a continuation of Washington’s wider now 9 year-long proxy war against Damascus.
Whatever gains Turkey had made in terms of reducing its role in Washington’s proxy war and repairing ties with Syria’s allies Russia and Iran – were clearly less important to Ankara amid these recent weeks of renewed aggression than whatever Washington has either promised Anakara or threatened it with.11 March 2020 — True Publica
The UK government led by Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings have taken a rather Laissez–faire attitude towards the coronavirus CoVid-19. They came under attack for not taking it seriously and not being visible. It wasn’t until March 3rd that suddenly No10 Downing Street realised they needed to contain the negative stories emerging about their administration and then seemingly sprang into action.
6 March 2020 — Popular Resistance
Update 11 March 2020
[Update: I’m rereading this a week later and realising that Bruce Aylward, the Deputy Director of the WHO, interviewed in this article, had the answer in how to deal effectively with the Covid-19 respiratory disease based on his experience in China. But the question to ask, is why his evidence has all but been ignored outside China? Could it be the anti-Chinese and racist attitudes of the West that has led them to ignore his advice?
I think it’s also clear that the British government (and other Western governments) are quite prepared to sacrifice sections of their populations in an attempt to save capitalism from itself. WB]
By Julia Belluz, Vox.com.
March 4, 2020
There’s one country in the world that currently has the most knowledge of and experience with Covid-19: China.
China, and specifically Hubei province, is where the Covid-19 disease emerged; it’s where 83 percent of the 89,000 cases known to date have been recorded; and it’s where doctors and health authorities have been battling an epidemic for two months — while other countries braced themselves for outbreaks — using unprecedented public health measures, including a cordon sanitaire and lockdowns that affected millions.
10 March 2020 — Global Research
Every day world mainstream news reports more people in more countries diagnosed “positive” for the coronavirus illness, now called COVID-19. As the reported numbers grow, so does widespread nervousness, often in the form of panic shopping for masks, disinfections, toilet paper, canned goods. We are told to accept the testing results as science-based. While it is next to impossible to get a full picture of what is taking place in China, the center of the novel virus storm, there is a process, being fed by mainstream media accounts and genuine panic in populations unclear what the real dangers are, that has alarming implications for the post-pandemic future. 10 March 2020 — FAIR
Janine Jackson interviewed EPI’s Josh Bivens about coronavirus and the economy for the March 6, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: After some breathless and some racist coverage on coronavirus and the respiratory illness COVID-19, US media did get around to acknowledging that, for example, many people can’t follow the critical recommendation to stay home from work if they’re ill. As many as a quarter of US workers don’t have any paid sick days.
3 March 2020 — New Internationalist
Fiore Longo of Survival International argues for an end to big conservation projects that abuse and destroy the very peoples who know how to protect the land.
In a leaked report revealed to The Guardian in February, an investigation by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) found that armed eco-guards, partly-funded by the WWF to protect wildlife in the Republic of Congo, subjected Baka tribespeople to violent abuse and human rights violations.
10 March 2020 — Black Agenda Report
Black Women Lead Fight Against Police Violence in UK / NYC To Celebrate Release of Last Move 9 Prisoner / Teaching bell hooks / Marx’s “Capital” as a Literary Experience
