Epidemics

US Nat’l Security State Tilted at War on Terror Windmills when Real Threats — Climate and Pandemic — were at Home

( Tomdispatch.com) – Americans are facing “A Spring Unlike Any Before.” So warned a front-page headline in the March 13th New York Times. That headline, however hyperbolic, was all too apt. The coming of spring has always promised relief from the discomforts of winter. Yet, far too often, it also brings its own calamities and […]

Donald Trump

Trump trying to Bolster his Far Right Agenda with the Pandemic, but will it Expose his Utter Incompetence?

John Feffer

The Politics of the Coronavirus

Authoritarianism

Viral Coups: Authoritarians like Trump and Israel’s Netanyahu see Coronavirus as Opportunity for Power Grab

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – The United States and Israel may be considered “liberal democracies,” though the US is technically a “republic;” and Israel’s brand of democracy is qualified by its selective application of human rights. Both Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump have ravaged traditional norms of government and social […]

Donald Trump

Trump, putting Profit Motive and Reelection over Public Health, Undermining Coronavirus Social Distancing Strategy

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump’s daily dog and pony show, which he holds at 6-8 pm every evening to catch audiences tuning in for the day’s news and reach families after supper, took a dire turn on Monday. The big cable news networks irresponsibly just turn their screens over to Trump, who spews a […]

Climate Crisis

Why Countries should use Coronavirus Economic Stimulus to Transition to Green New Deal

Clean Energy Wire

By Rachel Waldholz | – ( Clean Energy Wire) – Foundations are calling on the EU to use any economic stimulus enacted in response to the coronavirus to accelerate the transition to a green economy. The global climate crisis cannot be ignored even as governments focus on the health crisis, said Laurence Tubiana of the […]

Donald Trump

Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei Pulls a Trump on Coronavirus: Denies Own Responsibility, Blames a Foreign Country (US)

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump and his cronies in the GOP got high-level, frantic briefings from US intelligence in January and February that the coronavirus would produce a major pandemic and send the US economy into a tailspin. That would have been the time to order test kits (rather than having Jared Kushner futz […]

Epidemics

Thucydides’ Other War: His Chilling Account of the plague of Athens and What it can Teach us Now

The Conversation

By Chris Mackie | – The coronavirus is concentrating our minds on the fragility of human existence in the face of a deadly disease. Words like “epidemic” and “pandemic” (and “panic”!) have become part of our daily discourse. These words are Greek in origin, and they point to the fact that the Greeks of antiquity […]

Epidemics

Coronavirus and the ‘Shock Doctrine’: Does Even this Disaster have to Make Rich Richer and Poor Poorer?

Sam Pizzigati

By Sam Pizzigati and Sarah Anderson | – ( Otherwords.org) – Powerful interests used the Great Recession to hardwire more inequality into our system. This time, let’s do the opposite. By Sarah Anderson, Sam Pizzigati | March 17, 2020 We all have to come together. We need to help each other. We don’t have time […]

Donald Trump

As US Pulls Military Trainers from Iraq, will the Coronavirus Finally End America’s Forever Wars?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Will the coronavirus result in the second withdrawal of US troops from Iraq? There is an increasing question of whether the some 5,000 US military personnel there can be protected from the outbreak if they remain in that country. In any case, many of those servicemen are involved in training […]