Health

Italy Coronavirus Deaths Pass 10,000: How Austerity and Anti-Immigrant Politics Created Europe’s Worst Crisis

( Foreign Policy in Focus) As the viral blitzkrieg rolls across one European border after another, it seems to have a particular enmity for Italy. The country’s death toll has passed China’s, and scenes from its hospitals look like something out of Dante’s imagination. Why? Italy has the fourth largest economy in the European Union, […]

Epidemics

No Mercy even in a Pandemic: Israeli Occupation Authorities Demolish Makeshift Field Hospital in Palestinian Hamlet

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Demonstrating that the technologies of settler colonialism never take a break, Israeli Occupation forces have demolished an emergency clinic set up by Palestinians in a small town inside the Palestinian West Bank, according to the Israeli peace organization, Btselem. It writes, “This morning, Thursday, 26 March 2020, at around 7:30 […]

Epidemics

Coronavirus Solidarity: A 13th Century Mystical Persian Poem about Humanity Shows why We need a Global Response

The Conversation

By Arshin Adib-Moghaddam | – Coronavirus is all about human connectivity. From a philosophical perspective, I’ve been thinking about how this virus is forcing us to confront our common fate, highlighting our connections in the process. The novel coronavirus defies geography and national borders. There is no escaping it – exactly because humanity is inevitably […]

Epidemics

People are Dying: Why are We Waiting for Medicare for All?

contributors

By F. Douglas Stephenson (The Gainesville Sun)- An old social justice chant, “Why are We Waiting,” is sung to the tune of the beautiful and inspiring Christmas carol, “O Come All Ye Faithful.” The lyrics apply to the situation today: Even with the dangerous coronavirus pandemic, big insurance and big pharma continue opposing legislation for […]

Democratic Socialism

The Novel Coronavirus has a Well-Known Left-Wing Bias

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The character played by comedian Stephen Colbert, back when he was parodying Fox “News” anchors, lamented that “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” The fact is, the novel coronavirus has a well-known left-wing bias. Given the hoaxes perpetrated on the American people by the Right wing for the past few […]

Epidemics

Coronavirus Proves It: We Need Medicare for All

OtherWords

By Ashar Foley | (Otherwords.org) – For decades, critics of single-payer health care have raised the menace of rationed care, long waits, and “death panels.” Now, in our collective national effort to “flatten the curve” — to slow the spread of coronavirus to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed — we are seeing all three of […]

Climate Crisis

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

Andrew J. Bacevich

( 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 […]