Coronavirus and Factory Farming

Eleni Mitsou is a member of Xekinima (ISA in Greece). The Destruction of Nature and Intensive Farming Leads to Pandemics The pandemic of COVID-19, caused by the new coronavirus (SARS-Cov-2), didn’t take everyone by surprise. For more than a decade, dozens of scientists around the world have been warning of the outbreak of pandemics, due […]

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Governments Seize On COVID-19 to Extend State Powers

Stephen Boyd is a member of ISA’s International Executive. The Economist (3/28/2020) has described it as “the most dramatic extension of state powers since the second world war.” Across the globe governments have implemented draconian legislation akin to that of police states under the pretext of protecting society from the COVID-19 virus. For many the global lockdown […]

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Oil Prices Collapse

Tony Wilsdon is a member of Socialist Alternative in the US. The Spectre of Deflation The collapse in oil prices in the second quarter of 2020 will be a further accelerator of the deepening world economic depression. The New York Times writes: “Just a few months ago, the American oil industry was triumphant in its […]

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The Backlash Against Capitalism

Before COVID-19 had become the all-consuming news story it is today, the elites of world capitalism, under the name of the World Economic Forum, were meeting in January in Davos, Switzerland. According to the WEF pronouncements, the key issues facing capitalism, in the year ahead, would be that: 1) The global economy is under pressure, […]

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Capitalism: Eco-destruction and Plagues

Locusts and Fires   Raging fires in Australia and a plague of locusts in east Africa dominated global news at the start of 2020. These rapidly receded in consciousness as the COVID-19 pandemic erupted onto the world, already made dangerously vulnerable by capitalism. The climate devastation was mounting around the world. The world’s economy was […]

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Latin America: Plunged into COVID-19 Crisis

Alan Rivas is a member of Socialist Alternative in the US. From Lackluster to Calamitous “With bodies abandoned on sidewalks, slumped in wheelchairs, packed into cardboard coffins and stacked by the hundreds in morgues, it is clear that Ecuador has been devastated by the coronavirus.” New York Times 4/24/2020 The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic […]

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