OMNI
CORONAVIRUS AND CAPITALISM #1
February 26, 2021
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and
Ecology
Omnicenter.org/donate/
CONTENTS: CORONAVIRUS
PANDEMIC AND CAPITALISM #1
Dead Epidemiologists
Capitalism on a Ventilator
Propaganda Pandemic
Capitalism Is the Problem
Fight Poverty
Cuba
Disaster Capitalism
Politics of the Pandemic
Socialist Spectre
TEXTS
March 5th Book Talk:
"Dead Epidemiologists," co-hosted by Science for the People 2-27-21
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Monthly Review Press press@monthlyreview.org via gmail.mcsv.net
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9:08 AM (4 hours ago)
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to me
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New from Monthly
Review Press: Dead Epidemiologists + Book Launch
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MARCH 5TH,
3:00-4:30 EST
DEAD EPIDEMIOLOGISTS
BOOK TALK
with Science for the People & Pilsen Community Books
CLICK TO REGISTER
Take a deep dive into the
socio-political and economic origins of the Covid-19 disaster, and
the disproportionate effects of infectious diseases on BIPOC, as Rob
Wallace talks about his book Dead
Epidemiologists with Joseph Graves of Science
for the People
The COVID-19
pandemic shocked the world. It shouldn’t have. Dead Epidemiologists reveals
the hidden-in-plain-sight truth behind the pandemic: Global capital
drove the deforestation and development that exposed us to new
pathogens. From deepest Yunnan to the boardrooms of New York City,
this book offers a compelling diagnosis of the roots of COVID-19, and
a stark prognosis of what—without further intervention—may come.
Join Rob Wallace and Joseph Graves Jr. as they
help us make sense of the Covid crisis: bit.ly/deadepidemiologists
 ROB WALLACE is an evolutionary epidemiologist with the
Agroecology and Rural Economics Research Corps. He is author of Big Farms Make Big Flu and
coauthor of Clear-Cutting Disease Control: Capital-Led
Deforestation, Public Health Austerity, and Vector-Borne Infection.
He has consulted with the Food and Agriculture Organization and the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
 JOSEPH GRAVES JR. studies the genomics of adaptation, focusing on life
history evolution and antimicrobial resistance. He has authored
numerous works on biological and social conceptions of race and is a
leader in redressing the underrepresentation of racially subordinated
people in science careers. He has been a member of Science for the People since
1980.
Spanish interpretation will be available at this event
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260 pages | $17 pbk
Order
here
What people
are saying about Dead Epidemiologists:
“Read this book as if your life depended on it,
because it does.”
- Mindy Thompson Fullilove, author, Main Street: How a
City’s Heart Connects Us All
“Crafting in real time a political-economic ecology of
pandemics in the age of climate change and agribusiness.”
- Edgar Rivera Colón, coauthor, Principles and
Practice of Narrative Medicine
“Makes sense of the COVID-19 pandemic like no other
work I’ve encountered anywhere. This is radical thinking in the very
best sense. Written in perfect, pissed-off, punk-rock eloquence and
fury.”
- Ben Ehrenreich, author, Desert Notebooks:
A Road Map for the End of Time
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Propaganda pandemic: The craziest COVID claims of the year.
Mronlne.org (12-25-20).
No
matter how many Americans die, corporate media is desperate to shore up support
at home and attempt to discredit foreign countries for handling the pandemic
properly. Behind The Headlines’ Dan Cohen reviews the most absurd COVID
propaganda of the year.. | more…
The Cocoon Sessions Episode 2: People aren’t the problem, capitalism is. Popular Resistance (3-22-21).
Snuggle in with us for another Cocoon
Session where we give you a really cool and easy trick to hack your anxiety,
talk about the way the quarantine is changing the world good and bad, and
finally Caitlin has her proof that humans are not the problem after all. Source
To Fight Coronavirus, Fight Poverty. Popular Resistance (3-22-20). By Kait Ziegler, Otherwords.org. As Americans do everything
they can to stay safe and limit their exposure to COVID-19, we are seeing more
clearly the great divides in our society. While the virus doesn’t discriminate,
we are seeing that its impacts certainly do. In a pandemic, there’s a huge
difference between having health care and not having it, between getting paid
sick time off work and not, and having access to clean water and housing and
lacking it. -more-
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Cuba's
Contribution to Combatting
COVID-19 by HELEN YAFFE.. March 17, 2020 Counterpunch
COVID-19 surged in the Chinese city of
Wuhan in late December 2019 and by January 2020 it had hit Hubei
province like a tidal wave, swirling over China and rippling out
overseas. The Chinese state rolled into action to combat the spread and
care for those infected. Among the 30 medicines the Chinese National
Health Commission selected to fight the virus was a Cuban anti-viral
drug Interferon Alpha 2b. This drug has been produced in China since
2003, by the enterprise ChangHeber, a Cuban-Chinese joint venture.
Cuban Interferon Alpha 2b has proven
effective for viruses with characteristics similar to those of
COVID-19. Cuban biotech specialist, Dr Luis Herrera Martinez explained
that 'its use prevents aggravation and complications in patients,
reaching that stage that ultimately can result in death.' Cuba first
developed and used interferons to arrest a deadly outbreak of the
dengue virus in 1981, and the experience catalysed the development of
the island's now world-leading biotech industry.
 The world's first biotechnology
enterprise, Genetech, was founded in San Francisco in 1976, followed by
AMGen in Los Angeles in 1980. One year later, the Biological Front, a
professional interdisciplinary forum, was set up to develop the
industry in Cuba. While most developing countries had little access to
the new technologies (recombinant DNA, human gene therapy,
biosafety), Cuban biotechnology expanded and took on an increasingly strategic
role in both the public health sector and the national economic
development plan. It did so despite the US blockade obstructing access
to technologies, equipment, materials, finance and even knowledge
exchange. Driven by public health demand, it has been characterised by
the fast track from research and innovation to trials and application,
as the story of Cuban interferon shows.
MORE
This article draws on material in my
new book, We Are Cuba! How a revolutionary people have survived in a
post-Soviet world. Chapter 5 deals with 'The curious case of Cuba's
biotech revolutionary'. Available here.
About Helen
Yaffe
Helen
Yaffe is a lecturer in Economic and Social History at the
University of Glasgow, specialising in Cuban and Latin American
development. She is the author of Che Guevara: The Economics
of Revolution and co-author with Gavin Brown of Youth Activism and
Solidarity: the Non-Stop Picket against Apartheid. Her forthcoming
book We Are Cuba! How a
Revolutionary People have survived in a Post-Soviet World will be published in spring 2020.
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Coronavirus
Is the Perfect Disaster for ‘Disaster Capitalism’. 16 Mar 2020.
Marie
Solis, TRANSCEND Media Service.
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2020/03/coronavirus-is-the-perfect-disaster-for-disaster-capitalism/
Naomi Klein explains how governments
and the global elite will exploit a pandemic.
13 Mar 2020 – The coronavirus is officially a global pandemic that has so far
infected 10 times more people than SARS did.
Schools, university systems, museums, and theaters across the U.S. are shutting
down, and soon, entire cities may be too. Experts warn that some people who
suspect they may be sick with the virus, also known as COVID-19, are going
about their daily routines, either because their jobs do not provide paid time
off because of systemic failures in our privatized health care system.
Most of us aren’t exactly sure what to do or who to listen to.
President Donald Trump has contradicted recommendations from the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, and these mixed messages have narrowed our
window of time to mitigate harm from the highly contagious virus.
These are the perfect conditions for governments and the global
elite to implement political agendas that would otherwise be met with great
opposition if we weren’t all so disoriented. This chain of events isn’t unique
to the crisis sparked by the coronavirus; it’s the blueprint politicians and
governments have been following for decades known as the “shock doctrine,” a
term coined by activist and author Naomi Klein in a 2007 book of the same name.
History is a chronicle of “shocks”—the shocks of wars, natural
disasters, and economic crises—and their aftermath. This aftermath is
characterized by “disaster capitalism,” calculated, free-market
“solutions” to crises that exploit and exacerbate existing inequalities.
Klein says we’re already seeing disaster capitalism play out on
the national stage: In response to the coronavirus, Trump has proposed a $700 billion stimulus package
that would include cuts to payroll taxes (which would
devastate Social Security) and provide assistance to industries that will lose
business as a result of the pandemic.
“They’re not doing this because they think it’s the most
effective way to alleviate suffering during a pandemic—they have these ideas lying around that they now see an
opportunity to implement,” Klein said.
VICE spoke to Klein about how the “shock” of coronavirus is
giving way to the chain of events she outlined more than a decade ago in The
Shock Doctrine.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. https://www.transcend.org/tms/2020/03/coronavirus-is-the-perfect-disaster-for-disaster-capitalism/
Naomi Klein is the
award-winning author of the international bestseller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, translated into 28 languages. She writes an
internationally syndicated column for The Nation magazine and the Guardian newspaper.
She is a former Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics and holds an
honorary Doctor of Civil Laws from the University of King’s College, Nova
Scotia. Her book The Shock Doctrine: The
Rise of Disaster Capitalism was published
worldwide in 2007. And This Changes Everything,
No Is Not Enough, and On Fire
BreakThrough News
launches: special episode on Coronavirus pandemic
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ANSWER Coalition via uark.onmicrosoft.com
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Mar 21, 2020, 11:35 AM (1 day ago)
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to James
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Video: Coronavirus exposes
morbid symptoms of U.S. system
Special
Episode from the new video platform BreakThrough
The
inaugural episode of BreakThrough News has just been released, focusing on
the politics of the Coronavirus pandemic and the
government's criminally negligent response.
Watch
it here: on Youtube and Facebook
Stories
include:
· Gov't must act so no one is homeless, hungry or without
health care
· ICU beds and ventilators needed: why is it taking so
long?
· Amid social distancing, grassroots relief offers social
solidarity
· How did China keep Wuhan grocery stores stocked during
crisis?
· Interview with doctor: pandemic reveals cruelty of
health care system
· Cuba provides Coronavirus help despite criminal U.S.
sanctions
Watch
it here: on Youtube and Facebook
About BreakThrough
BreakThrough
is a new video platform for
the movements challenging the military-industrial complex and Wall Street
capitalism. Several long-time ANSWER activists are working with other
allies in creating BreakThrough and we want to share it with you, as an
ANSWER supporter, to get in on the ground floor.
BreakThrough
is being constructed as a media arm of the broad movement, soliciting
active participation and submissions from the grassroots to help uncover
and lift up the untold struggles of poor and working people. Check out the promo video on
the Patreon site.
Become a ground-floor supporter
of this media project today!
Mission statement
BreakThrough will feature in-depth interviews with
movement leaders, weekly news, field coverage of protests and rallies of
grassroots campaigns, and explainer videos that will be of immediate
educational value to those engaged in movements for change.
At present, five mega-corporations dominate the media
landscape — controlling 90% of what we read, watch and listen to. They
control the news cycle, to which social media and even most “alternative”
media is forced to respond.
We are breaking through that cycle — to tell the untold
stories of resistance from poor and working-class communities. Out of
these stories we will construct a different narrative of the world, as it
is and in real time.
People’s movements in every corner of the globe are
changing history and shifting consciousness. But these movements barely
receive any coverage from the corporate media. They need visibility. They
need amplification. They need a media arm to break through!
Become a Patron today!
Follow on social media platforms and Youtube @BTnewsroom
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The Socialist Specter In
Present-Day US Politics.
Popular Resistance (3-21-20).
By Victor Wallis, Counterpunch.org. The US political scene is haunted by talk of
socialism. The basis for this has been developing now for some years,
especially since the financial meltdown of 2008, which many came to see as
decisive proof that a capitalist economy does not serve the majority. But how
does this new mass perception express itself? On the one hand, there is wide
recognition of the grotesque level of inequality, as expressed in the
slogan... -more-
END CORONAVIRUS AND
CAPITALISM #1
