Health

Pandemics as the Revenge of Mother Earth: Human-Caused Climate Change Impels Mass Migrations of Humans and Animals

( Tomdispatch.com ) – As the coronavirus sweeps across the planet, leaving death and mayhem in its wake, many theories are being expounded to explain its ferocity. One, widely circulated within right-wing conspiracy circles, is that it originated as a biological weapon developed at a secret Chinese military lab in the city of Wuhan that […]

Donald Trump

The World Can’t Afford Washington’s Pet Wars and Sanctions in a Time of Plague

John Feffer

(Foreign Policy in Focus) – During World War I, soldiers all along the Western front held a series of informal truces in December 1914 to commemorate Christmas. It was early in the war, and opposition had not yet hardened into implacable enmity. The military command, caught by surprise, could not impose complete battlefield discipline. An […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Crisis will also be Killing 250K / year Soon, and Needs same Planetary Swift Action as Covid-19

The Conversation

By Eric Galbraith and Ross Otto | – In the past few weeks, governments around the world have enacted dramatic measures to mitigate the threat of COVID-19. It’s too soon to know whether these measures will prove too little to limit mass mortality, or so extreme that they set off economic catastrophe. But what is […]

Epidemics

The Future May be Female, but the Pandemic is Patriarchal

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com) – Before I found myself “sheltering in place,” this article was to be about women’s actions around the world to mark March 8th, International Women’s Day. From Pakistan to Chile, women in their millions filled the streets, demanding that we be able to control our bodies and our lives. Women came out in […]

Donald Trump

How My Dad, Born just before the Spanish Flu, Predicted the Decline of America

William J. Astore

( Tomdispatch.com) – My dad was born in 1917. Somehow, he survived the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919, but an outbreak of whooping cough in 1923 claimed his baby sister, Clementina. One of my dad’s first memories was seeing his sister’s tiny white casket. Another sister was permanently marked by scarlet fever. In 1923, my […]

China

The Real Danger behind Trump’s “China Virus” Mantra

Martin Powers

Ann Arbor (Special to Informed Comment) – The “China-Virus” mantra illustrates well this administration’s habit of responding to challenges by branding people as ethnic, religious, or political types ranked good or bad, us or them. Not a few have dismissed this practice, rightly, as racist, scapegoating, or just off the point, but the administration’s groupthink […]

Donald Trump

Trump bashed Immigrants, but Nearly 1/3 of US Doctors are Foreign-Born, on Pandemic Front Lines

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It turns out we need those foreigners after all, despite what Trump thinks. On Sunday British investigative journalist Iain Overton tweeted, The names of the first three doctors to die fighting COVID-19 in the UK Amged el-HawraniAdel el-TayarHabib Zaidi — Iain Overton (@iainoverton) March 29, 2020 The significance is that […]

Donald Trump

Maybe that Imperial Presidency Idea wasn’t so Great: The Coronavirus Reveals that America Long Since Fell Apart

David Faris

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – If you were asked three months ago, when news of the novel Coronavirus we now call Covid-19 was just emerging from China, which rich country in the world was the most defenseless against a global viral pandemic, would you have said anything but the United States? The Coronavirus crisis […]

Epidemics

Coronavirus: Corporate Media ignores how Privatization of Hospitals explains Lack of Beds, Ventilators

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The escalating total Covid 19 deaths in New York City and the frantic quest to obtain life saving medical gear has rightly captured media attention. New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s impassioned plea for more federal assistance and a need-based system for allocating aid among the states was […]