Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Leave it to the market

Fear, bigotry and misinformation

This "community surveillance" makes sense in this situation provided it is dismantled afterwards. But that should go along with mass testing (which should have been carried out from the very beginning) Copy and past the following headline to google search:  Germany’s virus response shines unforgiving light on Britain Community surveillance, community protection

Uncovering filth: It takes a health crisis to 'discover' that some people exist and that they are 'essential'. "It is an open secret that the vast majority of people who harvest America’s food are undocumented immigrants, mainly from Mexico, many of them decades-long residents of the United States." Farmworkers, mostly undocumented, become 'essential'

US:  The coronavirus class war has already started Italy: The corona crisis and the battle with the bosses

How UK's coronovirus test strategy unravelled

What whould have happened if it was some Muslims/Muslim refugees who smuggled the coronavirus into Europe? List of incidents related to coronavirus

One of the things that Corona has exposed The grim crisis in Europe's care homes

"It seem clear that, for whatever reason, Western political systems have proven incapable of responding rationally, in time, to the Coronavirus threat. As Richard Horton writes of the government, overwhelming scientific evidence of an advancing threat did  not  generate the required action: 'For unknown reasons they waited. And watched.’

The arguments make sense, but I think it is a silly headline Syria's revenge? What is Syria since 2011, the regimes, the warring factions, the internally displaced, the millions of refugees, the a hundred thousand plus in jails ...? "   In a normal world, great powers would marshal the resources necessary to meet the challenge, leading a global effort of expertise, technology, money, and materiel to save lives everywhere, including in Syria."  When was that "normal time"? Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Myanmar, Ruwanda...? It's some people, some NGOS, local organisations mobilising their resources to help and save lives. Local and global powers have been waging proxy-wars and fuelling conflicts directly and indirectly, with geopolitical calculations of who is an ally and who is not, who serves their interests and who might jeopardise them. "Syria's revenge on the world" will be a second wave of coronavirus

"Our Lives Are Worth More Than Your Profits"

'As if we were the disease'

On the effects of Coronoavirus and lockdowns, etc. "Now we are being reminded that contemporary capitalism is fuelled, not by financial appropriation, but by labour." —Alex Callinicos, March 2020 The exploited are the creators of wealth.

This is from the Torygraph!!   This is a liberal view Coronavirus exposes society's fragility 

The economy must come first?

"The United States, the organizers realized, did not have the means to quickly manufacture more essential medical equipment, supplies or medicines, including antiviral medications, needles, syringes, N95 respirators and ventilators, the agency concluded." But the U.S. and other countries found the money and resources to wage wars, increase inequality, fund the IMF, build hundreds of miliatry bases around the world and in the meantime decrease investments in infrastructure and public services. In the U.S. a ruling class and its representaives in government even left tens of millions of American without health insurance. American capitalism has had other priorities. The article blames more Trump and co., but ignores that the problem is structural .  The pandemic is but the catalyst/the trigger/the accelerator for current financial troubles, not the cause. As was warned in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, etc., the Obama Administration’s bailouts were to make rich people

What's to be done? Flattening the Coronavirus Curve is not enough

Coronavirus will require us to completely reshape the economy Will it?

We Need Social Solidarity, Not Just Social Distancing

Mike Davis on Coronavirus