coronavirus
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Ghosts of Capitalism vs. Walls of Solidarity
In these difficult times for humanity, confronted with the danger of constant predatory action by the greed and boundless ambition of the hegemonic powers in the name of the free market, free enterprise, wild neo-liberalism, the destruction of nature ravaged to extremes never before seen by decadent capitalism, only solidarity and responsibility illuminate our habitat. Continue reading
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Matt Hancock faces the dressing down of his life over ‘insulting’ comments on coronavirus
Health secretary Matt Hancock appeared on ITV‘s Good Morning Britain on 23 March. During the interview, he faced the dressing down of his life over his ‘insulting’ comments on the government’s strategy for handling the new coronavirus (Covid-19). Continue reading
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When Logistics Run Out of Time
The vast majority of people first experienced the growing coronavirus crisis for themselves in a supermarket. Almost every store now has at least half a dozen bare aisles, if not more, and social media has been awash with pleas for so-called ‘panic buying’ to stop, which the government is now echoing. Continue reading
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Lancet chief skewers Johnson government for its disastrous Covid-19 failure
An editorial piece in The Lancet – the world’s most prestigious, and best known general medical journal warned two months ago of the oncoming conflict between an ill-prepared, under-funded national health service and an indiscriminate invisible killer in the form of the 2019 coronavirus. More recently The Lancet warned again of the problems that health… Continue reading
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8 Day Journey From Hong Kong To Chile, COVID-19 On My Tail
Imagine that you are in Hong Kong, in a city where “you are actually not supposed to be”, in the first place. You are ready to go home, to South America. But just two days before your departure, via Seoul and Amsterdam, your first Sky Team carrier, Korean Air, unceremoniously decides to cancel all flights… Continue reading
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China Wins Big With Covid-19. What Were We Thinking?
China suffered through the H1N1 coronavirus epidemic in 2008 largely because the CDC took 6 months to identify it and, as a result, 300,000 died prematurely. SARS (774 deaths) was the clincher. They created a hair-trigger alarm system, mandated post-mortem pneumonia DNA testing nationwide, and promoted the CDC head, Dr. George F. Gao[1], to Demigod. Continue reading
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Italy and UK rely on help from Cuba, China, Venezuela to fight coronavirus – as US steps up brutal sanctions
Italy requested doctors from China, Cuba, and Venezuela to contain the coronavirus, while Cuba rescued a ship of British citizens. Meanwhile, US sanctions worsen the toll of the Covid-19 crisis in Iran and Venezuela. Continue reading
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Business as Usual: Coronavirus, Iran and US Sanctions
Never discount the importance of venality in international relations. While pandemics should provide the glue for a unified front in response – we keep being told of fighting this horrendous “invisible enemy” – it’s business as usual in other respects. The United States, with a disparate, confused medical system that risks being overwhelmed, remains committed… Continue reading
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Expert: US sanctions on Iran, Venezuela during pandemic could be genocidal
Iran has been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, and new US sanctions are making it worse. Alfred de Zayas, a former UN Special Rapporteur, says that intensified US sanctions against Iran and Venezuela during the crisis are “insane”, and possibly genocidal. Continue reading
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A few ambitious points on fighting the crisis
We are facing two crises at once, health and economic, that are related in very important ways. The covid-19 epidemic has done major damage around the world, but it’s highlighting some serious structural problems with the US social model that better-run countries are not so afflicted by. We are plagued by a deep economic polarization… Continue reading
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Late-Stage Imperial Omni-Crisis: Death by Virus and Internal Contradictions
The epidemic reveals the stark truth, that the US dismantled and privatized its public health system, to fatten the pockets of the oligarchy and render working people more helpless and dependent. Continue reading
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Quarantine (X): The Day After the Pandemic
In our homes, as most Venezuelans are, and as it should be, occupied with the care of our sons, daughters and relatives, the occasion is propitious to think about the world in which we live, instead of becoming absorbed in fear. Continue reading
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The Coronavirus Is Not the Plague: The Plague Is US
The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus’ great 1947 novel, The Plague, is a warning to us today, but a warning in disguise. When he died sixty years ago at the young age of forty-six, he had already written The Stranger, The Fall, and The Plague, and had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Continue reading
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Archie and Jughead At Work
1. All of this stuff–this self-isolation, this quarantine, this social distancing, this confinement; all the lock-downs, ups; all the virtual meetings, the telecommuting, the face-timing- all of this eau gazeuse dispensed from the candy-cane headquarters of advanced capitalism with Archie behind the soda fountain and Jughead in the shipping room, are being manipulated as distractions, as… Continue reading
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Covid-19: propaganda and manipulation by Thierry Meyssan
Returning to the Covid-19 epidemic and the way governments are reacting to it, Thierry Meyssan stresses that the authoritarian decisions of Italy and France have no medical justification. They contradict the observations of the best infectiologists and the instructions of the World Health Organization. Continue reading
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Brexit, Covid-19 and the Debt Deluge – The perfect storm about to engulf us all
Remembering this impending event and recalling it from memory to your friends is as easy as A, B, C, D. Broadly speaking it is about four interlinked events that have already happened but their combined effects will engulf the country within a year. Austerity, Brexit, CoVid and Debt will lead to a ruinous recession or… Continue reading
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The Capitalist Pandemic, Coronavirus and the Economic Crisis
The coronavirus pandemic is a serious public health problem and the human suffering caused by the spread of this virus will be enormous. If it massively affects countries of the Global South with very fragile public health systems that have been undermined by 40 years of neo-liberal policies, the death toll will be very high.… Continue reading
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The Great Unravelling: Part 2, Coronavirus: A Very British Cull
The nation is at war. Peacetime production has slumped, foreign travel collapsed, casualties rise. In every part of the country, people anxiously worry about how to avoid the enemy. This time, however, it is germs, not Germans, that we fear. Even the Germans are under attack. Medically, economically and politically, the coronavirus pandemic has caught… Continue reading
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Anti-Capitalist Politics in the Time of COVID-19
As Marxist geographer David Harvey argues, forty years of neoliberalism has left the public totally exposed and ill prepared to face a public health crisis on the scale of coronavirus. Continue reading
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‘For Unknown Reasons They Waited. And Watched’ – Lancet Editor Exposes Devastating Government Failure On Coronavirus
Over the last 20 years, we have documented some shocking examples of journalistic irresponsibility, but the tweet from ITV’s political editor Robert Peston on March 14 was something special. With China, South Korea, Italy, Spain and other countries in shutdown, lockdown and general medical meltdown, with the UK reeling from rising cases and deaths –… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 