The entire human world is fighting to defeat a demon today. It’s coronademic – coronavirus pandemic. The fight demands a globally concerted, unified effort. Venezuela should not be left lurching in the pandemic-wilderness even if one of its original sins is resisting imperialism. But, the Bolivarian Republic is being obstructed in its fight against the pandemic. Imperialism is carrying on the “noble” job.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed its fear: the United States is going to be one of the epicenters of the pandemic.
The rich country is in a mess with fear of running out of medical equipment required …
That said, I’m still a bit pissed off at O’Connell for getting my hopes up. In the first seven chapters, his reporting and reflections on how people understand and …
These Songs Kill Fascists, my latest album, is an ode to Woody Guthrie, a call to fight fascism outside and internally. Featuring Mick Jenkins, Psalm One, Denver jazz legend Ron Miles, and platinum producer DJ Pain 1, the album tackles issues such as the murder of Heather Heyer, Denver’s history with the KKK, gentrification, rape culture, migration, abolishing ICE, the alienation of technology, and my friendship with the late Lonnie Pops Lynn. All proceeds from the single “Seeds” will be donated to Jeanette Vizguerra’s movement Sanctuary For All. Ms. Vizguerra is an undocumented mother currently in sanctuary in Denver.
As the capitalist emperor strolls down the avenue of U.S. public opinion butt-naked but for the first time since the 1930s, more and more people are starting to realize that they were not crazy. The brutal failures of the capitalist system that they saw were not a figment of their imagination or a diversion from their own personal failures. Instead, they were the awful reality of degradation, dehumanization and social insecurity embedded in the system. Many could see that reality but wouldn’t allow themselves to believe their own eyes and experiences. They couldn’t call it out like the kid in …
The Western mass media is extremely busy frightening its own citizens and the entire world with statements like:
A leaked government document has suggested up to 500,000 people could die from coronavirus if the disease is able to infect up to 80 per cent of the country.
That’s what The Independent wrote on 26 February 2020. And that horrifying number of the fatalities ‘could occur’ according to the ‘documents’ in the United Kingdom.
It all feels bizarre. As if the Western regime were preparing its citizens and the world ‘for the most awful scenario.’
As if there were no solution to this dire global …
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ.
— Hamlet
On May 1, 1962, President John Kennedy was meeting in the Oval Office with a group of Quakers who were urging him to do more for peace and disarmament. As he kept explaining the great political opposition he was facing within his own government, they kept urging him to do more. He listened very closely to their words and finally said, “You believe in redemption, don’t you.” By the next spring he had turned decisively toward the peacemaking the Quakers had urged upon him, resulting in his murder …
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the most immediate objective is to slow its spread, minimise the death toll and help people through the crisis. But, despite government promises to support citizens who are now losing their jobs and income, the underlying establishment concern will be as it always has been: to preserve the global inequitable system of wealth and power.
Private interests, including airlines, fossil fuel industries and sinister-sounding ‘businesses crucial to national security‘, have been busy lobbying governments for taxfunder-paid bailouts. Notoriously, Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic even …
The New York Times of March 20, asks rhetorically: “Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?”
The coronavirus, known as COVID-19, was declared a pandemic by WHO’s Director General, Dr. Tedros, on 30 January 2020, when outside of China there were only 150 WHO-registered infections. This declaration as a pandemic – nowhere justified – has devastating effects on the entire world population and the world’s socioeconomic fabric. The globe is literally on lock-down, until who knows, but the latest date put forward by President Trump is 12 April 2020. It can almost be taken for granted that the …
The field of psychology is a big capitalist business, whether it is helping capitalists with advertising, finding new consumers, selling self-help books to an anxious public, or helping psychiatrists or counselors make a living off of people’s misery. There are six schools of psychology: psychoanalysis, behaviorism, humanistic psychology, cognitive psychology, physiological psychology and evolutionary psychology. While all these schools are different from each other, they all have in common stripping individuals from their social and historical identity and either ignoring it, suppressing it or are unaware of it. …
As draconian lockdowns, punitive regimes and surveillance become the norm of the coronavirus world, Sweden has treaded more softly in the field. This is certainly in contrast to its Scandinavian cousins, Denmark and Norway. The rudiments of a life uninterrupted generally remain in place. Cafes, restaurants and shops, for the most part, remain open and stocked. As do gyms and cinemas. Vibrant after-ski parties persist, much to the bemused horror of those across the border.
Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, embracing the principle of voluntariness over coercion, has issued warnings to citizens to keep travel down to a minimum, avoiding anything …
In a single week air pollution cleared up, housing was found for the homeless, evictions were banned, the stock market ceased being the gauge of social well being, water shut-offs ended, jails were emptied, debt peonage was suspended, universal basic income was proposed by “free market” die-hards, people started caring about the elderly and front-line workers, personal competition gave way to mutual aid networks, kids abandoned digital serfdom to go outside to play, and Donald Trump outflanked Bernie Sanders to the left, calling for public equity in bailed-out corporations, in other words, public profit.
There is a meme circulating online with a biblical quote that contains a message from Solomon’s god accepting the consecration of the temple as a place he will receive his sacrifice. Solomon’s god claims to have sent drought, locust and epidemics to drive his people to repentance and obedience. An obvious message for believers in the midst of a pandemic?
On the other side, amongst the enlightened, there are those who would ascribe this contagion as some sort of “Gaia’s Revenge,” with the earth extracting payment from this errant species that has so decimated this planet over the course of the …
Benny Gantz, the former Israeli general turned party leader, agreed late last week to join his rival Benjamin Netanyahu in an “emergency government” to deal with the coronavirus epidemic.
Two weeks ago he had won a wafer-thin majority vote in the parliament that gave him first shot at trying to put together a coalition government.
Instead he has conceded to Netanyahu, who will remain prime minister for the next 18 months. Gantz is supposed to take over in late 2021, though Netanyahu has a formidable reputation for double-dealing.
Over the past year Gantz fought three hotly contested, though indecisive, general elections in which …
What seemed to allow this deadly night to descend was that the intellectual patterns that were supposed to be in charge of things, that should comprehend the threat and lead the fight against it, were paralyzed.
Later in the day on 9/11/2001 a third building, WTC Building 7, descended at nearly free-fall speed with such perfect symmetry as to serve as a textbook example of excellence in prepared demolition. The official reason for the collapse of the 47 story, steel-framed skyscraper was given in 2008 by Shyam Sunder …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / March 30th, 2020
The pandemic, economic collapse and the government’s response to them are going to not only determine the 2020 election but define the future for this decade and beyond. People are seeing the failure of the US healthcare nonsystem and the economy. The government was able to provide trillions for big business and Wall Street without asking the usual, “Where will we get the money?” However, the rescue bill recently passed by Congress provides a fraction of what most people need to get through this period. Once again, a …
Imagine if you will the following: Country A has a government which provides its citizens with free and adequate housing and two special daily pills free of charge. The first pill contains all daily nutritional requirements while the second pill guarantees a sense of happiness and contentment throughout the day and night. Our question then is: would such a state of affairs be both good and desirable?
On first thought, many would argue that the universal provision of housing and food is a general good. They are goods which are required for the furtherance of human happiness. Without them we would …
All this I was told, for while the operation was performing, I lay in a profound sleep, by the force of that soporiferous medicine infused into my liquor.
— Gulliver’s Travels, “A Voyage to Lilliput,” Jonathan Swift, 1726
Disclaimer: Any criticisms of the pre-existing condition uncomfortably known as the United States government herein, are absolutely accidental, merely incidental, or entirely intentional. Moresoever be it known that, as this author is aware of — not that I’m an “authority” technically speaking, but that’s another story, or the story of how I’m not an “authority,” technically speaking, and, in writing — it has come …
According to the parable, the ungrateful son takes out a life insurance policy on his parents, murders them to collect, and is caught and found guilty. At his sentencing, the judge asks if he has anything to say on his behalf. The son replies: “Have mercy upon me because I am an orphan.” That’s chutzpah.
US Attorney General Barr’s indictments on March 26 against the government of Venezuela for narco-terrorism go beyond chutzpah. For starters, William P. Barr was chief counsel for the CIA airline Southern Air Transport implicated in the 1980s for running illicit …
Once the panic, grief, and worldwide turmoil of the coronavirus pandemic has eventually subsided (as it certainly will in due course), our biggest and most important challenge will be not how or if we survived the relatively short term upheavals to our lives, but whether as individuals and societies we learn from the experience and modify our behaviour in the long term.
Without attempting to downplay the individual trauma of people losing loved ones unexpectedly, if we wish to try and minimise the occurrence of future similar events, we need to examine the underlying causes of the current pandemic.
It took Vietnam Veteran Tim Keenan 172 days to hike the legendary Appalachian Trail. Apart from wanting to test his athletic abilities, he hoped to get some relief for his post-traumatic-stress-syndrome (PTSD).
For Keenan, the unforeseen consequences of firing a rifle started with shooting a small bird with a BB gun when he was a boy. He recalls being excited about shooting a living creature, but had no idea how lousy he’d feel after doing it. Those feelings of anxiety and regret intensified later while in Vietnam combat zones and …
One of the long-standing stubborn myths about education in American culture is that education is “the great equalizer” and that education is the way to overcome poverty and inequality at the individual and societal levels.
The facts show, however, that poverty and inequality are generally increasing every year despite the fact that there are more college-educated people than ever. Indeed, many people with college degrees are unemployed or underemployed. And many are stuck in jobs that have little to do with their degrees. Never mind the massive debt load oppressing many students, college graduates, and their families. In 2020, millions of …
To expose another human being to serious illness, and to the threat of losing their life, is grotesque and quite unnecessary. This is not justice, it is a barbaric decision.
— Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, March 26, 2020
Social distancing is not a word that seems to have reached certain parts of the British legal system. Granted, it is an odd one, best refashioned as an anti-social act for the sake of preservation. Marooned in some state of legal obliviousness, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser had little time for the bail application made by counsel for Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks publisher had …
Major hoarders who have warehouses full of needed hospital PPE supplies knew what to do: why didn't our federal and state governments know?
by Mirah Riben / March 28th, 2020
President Trump claimed he used the word “hoax” about the news coverage, not the virus. But he continued to downplay and minimize it, such as saying on March 6, 2020: “I just think this is something that you can never really think is going to happen.”
Twenty-seventeen. Two years before we saw the first cases of this particular novel COVID-19 in January 2020. And yet our federal and state governments did nothing. WHY? Why did we get caught with our pants down and wind up …
For the past three years, several dozen New Yorkers have gathered each Saturday at Union Square, at 11:00 a.m. to vigil for peace in Yemen.
Now, however, due to the coronavirus, the vigil for peace is radically altered. Last week, in recognition of the city’s coming shelter in place program, participants were asked to hold individual vigils at their respective homes on the subsequent Saturday mornings. Normally, during the public vigils, one or more participants would provide updates on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, the ongoing war, and U.S. complicity. As COVID-19 threatens to engulf war-torn Yemen, it is even more …
Take careful notice – as of March 2020, the United States is operating as a more than strict Democratic Socialist system. The government is regulating aspects of American life — economic, social, and medical. The Federal Reserve is printing money and making it available to financial and commercial industries and the public. Americans are being told what to do, what to produce and where they can go.
The Covid-19 epidemic has proven the final test for the capitalist system, which had a temporary rescue by neoliberal free enterprise. After the Reagan administration changed the economic landscape so that budget deficits drove …
The United States has become the new center of the global coronavirus pandemic, with over 86,000 cases, more than China or Italy. More than a thousand Americans have already died, but this is surely only the very beginning of this deadly collision between the U.S.’s uniquely inadequatepublic healthcare system and a real pandemic.
On the other hand, China and South Korea, which both have universal public health systems that cover the …
As we hunker down wherever we are, we are collectively having radically differing experiences of isolation.
Humanity, on any given day, is experiencing reality in very different ways. As a writer writing about the world around me and about things that have happened in the past, I spend a lot of time imagining what it’s like to be someone else. There are key moments in my own life that caused this innate tendency to become more obsessive later. Chief among those moments are those times when I lost close friends to an early death, and when close friends went off to …
OK, I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news. The good news is mainly for authoritarians who missed all the fun during the War on Terror. The news is … welcome to the War on Death!
Yes, that’s right, global capitalism (a/k/a “the world”) is now at war with Death … which is great news for authoritarians! No more bothersome critical thinking. The time for questioning our leaders is over. It’s time to shut up and follow orders. We’re in a global state of emergency, folks! We’re talking lockdowns, soldiers in the streets, abrogation of our constitutional rights, …
The Democratic establishment is deriving some delusionary cheer from it. The line of candidates for the presidential nomination has thinned, many falling out and proceeding, suicidally, to endorse former Vice President Joe Biden.
The case of Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard is particularly telling. At points, she has spoken with sober detachment on the US imperium. Herself an Iraq War veteran, she preferred to eschew military intervention and regime change tools of foreign policy. The US record on that matter is lengthy, ignominious and bloody. Peter Harris, writing in The National Interest, suggested the ideas of a realist at play, at …
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 from the territory.
Several Korean religious freaks, apparently, are to blame.
On 22 February, 2020, Mail Online, reported:
More than half of all South Korea’s coronavirus cases are linked to a secretive ultra-religious cult whose leader believes he is immortal.
