Friday, February 26, 2021

CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC AND CAPITALISM #1

 

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

Monthly Review Press press@monthlyreview.org via gmail.mcsv.net 

9:08 AM (4 hours ago)

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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




Monthly Review logoROB 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.


https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEgp4_GaVhaSkk4v0GTGID9H1GRNR_T5SWUE5Asd0bFyZ7yj7z-q95jdUbDdMJ6JIfl_bNGBykyjCc__H6neqWITK8ZgWGtRi3D-hV1RrI5P51y42tqx_E7O5vg-OlBLuKP0s3r8EAy9_hhrQ0gQlf7Dqb8-rLVAA31-sUqhPgH1To1X97fBu0a0mga_3g6YOikgt0nefSIxgyl-jzAKIDgl1brl=s0-d-e1-ftJOSEPH 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


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


 

 

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEgSTPaZKqu4Sy0SoNBO_GRQ9sXcHhxvvFfzQK8126p8Jgh-XuumA37LiIJAjv5n2A6hgqvzUYT2IPx5OGBYxjcgCCXp-wGkR5KRGMWeLgqWOoDfw6E0UjxKDWH4eO3NyIPeeDgar1dL27AzUWgxJnvytahD6ANRsi_4skrEKUDnr1Ftcnsq=s0-d-e1-ft

 

Capitalism on a Ventilator: A new book analyzes the impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. and China.   mronline.org (1-9-21).

While China contained COVID-19 and preserved its economy, the U.S. spins lies while hundreds of thousands of its people die for lack of even a semblance of a national health system.  | more…

share on Twitter Like Capitalism on a Ventilator: A new book analyzes the impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. and China on Facebook

 

 

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…

share on Twitter Like Propaganda pandemic: The craziest COVID claims of the year on Facebook

 

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  share on Twitter Like The Cocoon Sessions Episode 2: People aren’t the problem, capitalism is on Facebook

 

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-

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEgX9h4B0KztHvXft85bSpwX75D9JOhYcZnrfa0CCUlLlaiSSWLrF2FgWk6feWQJfpM06xHD4nh_38_WvOP6zAGnU1ripV9CDyC0vGDbJVeLvUOgqt4kCOviz6VN0C4OXbQdIJg5ZpwSVf6H0KVHzqnXG4DFgxrHuRsjLIQ3vhCLpxgr7lwU2n1ian0_-gl6raGMNM_Pp0E=s0-d-e1-ftThe 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.

 

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 pandemichttps://www.google.com/s2/u/0/photos/public/AIbEiAIAAABECLX08sKxg_bvpAEiC3ZjYXJkX3Bob3RvKigzYTQzM2M2ZmMxOWNiMmUyNWZiMGJjMTdiYmY0ZWEwMTkyN2NmYTJlMAFtiow_mAnZnRWIisSTxiGcFnE9pQ?sz=40

ANSWER Coalition via uark.onmicrosoft.com 

Mar 21, 2020, 11:35 AM (1 day ago)

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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

 

The Socialist Specter In Present-Day US Politics.  Popular Resistance (3-21-20).

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEgiEQ2vJCvoZhBdggEfnWjYOJX5PRp1JSCMetPeDlTnd8yH1hhU6jDVNusUGIap7jojw6yNmR6bmWuPo3lsIJqQwnK23efF1qRNzKVA-A8kehGN_4jyQmLKKVs8-actFPCHjgXOHQr4u-_KNecApZbNSWn99lnTdow53nPNoMbUK0dRM2UIK4L2F_pDShTDKII7OI38Bd9XVuP66JhhvTRX8fp-OcQJsYUgwbztdg2hJnxgYgXsg1eQL-FwEM8=s0-d-e1-ftBy 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

 

 

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