By Daniel Ta
COVID-19
By Anticapitalistas
March 13, 2020 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from International Viewpoint — The Coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic is showing up the inadequacy of capitalist governments in dealing with such a crisis, and pointing to the responsibility of their policies regarding a public health service. It also raises broader ecological questions. These all merit broad discussion on the radical anticapitalist left, This statement from Anticapitalistas in the Spanish state indicates the guidelines to an initial response.
By Karl Nerenberg
March 12, 2020 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Rabble — Health-care experts and public health officials are expressing a high degree of concern over the potential impact of the COVID-19 virus on poor and vulnerable populations.
From the onset of this disease, the rich have made sure to take care of themselves, as the New York Times reported last week. Those for whom money is not an object are using private jets rather than commercial flights, vacationing in remote and isolated tropical paradises, stocking up on costly designer masks, and signing up for concierge medical services (or, as the Times calls them, "VIP emergency rooms").
The picture for poor and marginalised communities is the opposite.
Yaak Pabst interviews Rob Wallace
March 12, 2020 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Marx21 — The 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. A talk with Rob Wallace (Evolutionary Biologist) about the dangers of Covid-19, the responsibility of agribusiness and sustainable solutions to combat infectious diseases
By Phil Hearse
March 9, 2020 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Resistance — Pentecostal Christians – and probably many others – believe that at the ‘end of days’, which precedes the second coming of Christ, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will ride out. The four horsemen are generally interpreted as being pestilence, death, famine and war. If Pentecostals are thinking logically (as if) they should be expecting to see the Lamb of God some time soon. In the wake of wars that have killed more than 500,000 since 2001 and an accelerating environmental crisis dramatised by the Australian firestorms, the current Covid-19 outstrips dystopian science fiction stories like Outbreak. What American Marxist author Mike Davis described as The Monster at our Door has, in a rather different form, burst through the door. At the time of writing (6 March) more than 100,000 people globally are now thought to have the virus, and 3,400 or more have died. There seems little hope now of significant containment, especially as many states lack the health infrastructure or social organisation to impose Chinese-style restrictions. In Britain the full horror of the virus is yet to be unleashed. But it is coming.
