Category: Public health

Turning a Profit from Death

On Modi's Pandemic Response in Neoliberal India

What is happening in India right now is mass murder. And it is organized by a man who has practice in such matters. Narendra Modi has brutally wielded the might of the Indian state to shape a polity safe for capital.

As American Life Returns to Normal, Mass Shootings Resume

Most Americans, 60%, now favor stricter gun control laws, up by almost ten percent from a few years ago. Yet the U.S. government has proven unable to do anything about this problem. Why is that?

The Only Treatment is Freedom: Mumia Abu-Jamal and COVID

The inextricable link between incarceration and standards of democracy in a country led the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky to observe that, “The degree of civilization in society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

Climate Change Comes to Republican Texas Producing a Disaster

Twenty years ago, Republicans took over Texas’ governorship, house, and senate and then deregulated and neglected the state’s energy systems, leading to this catastrophe.

Trump Acquitted, Biden Builds Business Support for Relief

While Trump remains a major figure and his mass base a serious problem, today his party is weaker than ever. While Republican disarray benefits Democrats, Biden’s party still faces COVID, economic depression, climate change, and racism.

Biden Moves Ahead as Republicans Line Up Behind Trump

President Joseph Biden, in office for less than a month, continued to move ahead with his plan to solve the American health and economic crises and to reassert U.S. global dominance. As he pushes ahead with his relief program, Republicans have lined up behind Trump.

Biden Will have a Short Honeymoon

The current celebratory mood of the Democrats and the honeymoon with the president is not likely to last long, given both who Biden is and the health and economic challenges that he faces.

Latin America in the Time of COVID

Gonzalez examines the development of Latin American political economy and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thanksgiving Approaches: Trump, the Virus, the Crisis

With the virus rampant, once again schools and businesses are closing, and more workers being laid off. We now have 20 million jobless, with ten million receiving federal unemployment benefits that will end with the New Year, as will protection for 30 million who face eviction. Not a happy Thanksgiving.

Capitalism Made Women of Color More Vulnerable to the COVID Recession

From the start of the pandemic, job losses for women have been so much greater than for men that some feminist policy makers have called this a “shecession,” in contrast with 2008. And “she” is most certainly a woman of color.

The Hunger of Vibrant Matter: Materialism and Food in the Pandemic

The fundamental contradiction between production for exchange (profit) versus production for use (need) is the source not only of intermittent food deprivation, but of chronic and acute, life-threatening hunger for hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

Mexico’s AMLO Is No Leftist, as His Handling of Covid Demonstrates

Not only is AMLO’s government not socialist, it is not democratic, it is not competent, and it is not socially responsible. AMLO is a populist with a leftist image and rightist policies.

Lysenko Comes to the CDC: Exploring the Relationship Between Science and Politics

The specter of Lysenko is haunting the CDC and the entire Trump administration, revealing that the perversion of science is as likely in a capitalist democracy as it is in a Stalinist state, and always with dire consequences.

Covid-19 and Resistance in Brazil: Life-Making, Memory, and Challenges in Seeding an Alternative Future

Capitalism is a death-making system. The pandemic reveals a chain of solidarity among essential life-making workers all across the world.

The Seeds of Revolution Have Sprouted: What is Now to be Done?

Turning points in history are very rare. We are now living in the midst of one, with the two months of virtually continuous protests against police abuse, the criminal injustice system, and for a human society that have swept the U.S. as well other parts of the world since the police murder of George Floyd on May 25.

Domestic Politics: Home Improvement Can’t Repair America’s Pandemic Crisis

The digital documentation of DIY domesticity has become a nearly-compulsory social act, a demonstration of how well we are “hanging in there” or “making the best of it”—both exceedingly popular hashtags right now.

Trump Speak and its Discontents

Trump understands that to be an effective boss requires not only authority but respect for authority, and to instill such respect it is necessary to speak to working people in an obsequious and patronizing way to make it easier for them to accept the reality of what is required by the law of profit.

Coronavirus and the World Economy

The coronavirus pandemic has both detonated a global economic crisis and exacerbated a preexisting crisis, economic and political, of the capitalist world economy.

Pandemic, Depression, and Authoritarianism

We Must Fight for the Future

The United States confronts an uncertain future in the face of an unprecedented situation.

U.S. Imperialism and Africa’s “Perfect Storm”

Public Health Crisis, War, and Financial Crash

Public health crisis, financial crash, and the new scramble for Africa.

A Global View of Coronavirus, Medical Policy, and Research

In 2019, a new virus of the coronavirus family emerged in Wuhan, China, and the disease that was caused by this virus was named COVID-19 to indicate both the virus associated with it and the year it began. “Patient Zero,” . . .

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