'…a major destabilizing influence'
Covid-19 Global Solidarity Coalition (CGSC) held two online conference launchings May23-4. Nearly two hundred people participated from several countries. They discussed the coalition’s manifesto written last month by around 50 people from a score of countries. Conference participants enthusiastically expressed agreement with the manifesto, signed by ca. 3000 people. They shared ideas for growth, connecting …
Continue reading “Coalition for Universal Peace and Sustainable Life is Launched”
Attacks on Social Security are coming thick and fast. It’s time for Americans of all ages who aren’t independently wealthy and don’t need to worry about a serious, career halting disability or surviving in old age to rally and fight back. The latest attack is the Trump Administration’s so-called “Eagle” plan, appropriately named for the …
Continue reading “As Republicans Face November Disaster, Efforts to Undermine Social Security Mount”
(This story is being published jointly by ThisCantBeHappening.net and Tarbell.org) The auto industry is gearing up to bring back at least half its workers and to begin producing cars again. Across the country, states and localities are attempting to restart businesses that have been shuttered for as much as two months because of the Coronavirus …
Continue reading “Time for a Little Truth About the Economy and the COVID-19 Pandemic”
(This story by Dave Lindorff was published initially in FAIR.org) The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ eagerly awaited Friday morning Official Unemployment Rate report for April—what editors generally call the BLS’s “headline” rate of unemployment —was definitely headline-worthy. This was especially evident in the next day’s New York Times (5/9/20), which ran a bar chart of historic unemployment …
Continue reading “US Jobless Rate Broke Depression-Era Record — but Most Media Missed It”
Body bags piling up in a Detroit hospital (click here to view video) By Dave Lindorff As a white male from a middle class family in which both parents had gone to college, a dad who was a tenured professor with a PhD in electrical engineering and degrees from MIT …
Continue reading “Becoming a Marginalized Person in a Pandemic is Eye-Opening”
Contributed to ThisCantBeHappening! by Rip Rense It’s lurking. It’s salivating. It’s breathless, waiting in the pandemic quiet. And at first opportunity, it will step out, roaring, spitting fire, devouring free will yet again as it commands you, you, you, and you to consume, consume, consume. All in the name of “returning to normal.” Well, I …
Two hugely important people were taken down by COVID-19 this past week. Both have left a legacy, the importance of which cannot be ignored. John Prine The first struck down last week is one of the greatest modern songwriters of my lifetime, John Prine. One of my favorite musicians, Prine was a humble, funny …
Continue reading “Honoring Two Men Just Brought Down by the Coronavirus Pandemic”
I’m feeling a little weird these days. No, don’t worry! I’m not coming down with suspicious flu-like symptoms. So far fortunately, I’m managing to stay healthy despite my 71 years and a lung condition that makes me particularly at risk of any respiratory illness that comes along — much the worse if it’s a …
Continue reading “It’s Spring and I’ve Turned 71 in a Pandemic-Induced Recession”
On Thursday, April 2, the bottom fell out of the US economy, as the US Department of Labor reported that an unprecedented 6.6 million more workers in the US had been laid off and had filed claims for unemployment compensation payments with their state Unemployment Offices last week. That stunning news followed the already …
Continue reading “Neither Pandemic Nor Economic Collapse is Going to Be a Short-Lived Crisis”
By Ron Ridenour Copenhagen — “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of” COVID-19. For Marx and Engels writing the Communist Manifesto, in 1848, that spectre was communism, their political system of choice. This flaring ghost they described frightened the capitalist class, which endeavored to exorcise its breath. The contemporary specter (thesis-see note) is a new …