'…a major destabilizing influence'
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”
Our current global coronavirus pandemic leaves many casualties. Although nowhere near as immediate or searing as sickness and death, the potential loss of our privacy is among them. Privacy is critically important in a democratic society. It is also an assumed feature of the interaction between many nonprofit and social justice organizations and institutions …
Continue reading “Protecting Privacy in the Age of Coronavirus Pandemic”
Newsflash, The New York Times, March 31, 2020: As the coronavirus pandemic brings the world to a juddering halt and anxious citizens demand action, leaders across the globe are invoking executive powers and seizing virtually dictatorial authority with scant resistance. . . . As the new laws broaden state surveillance, allow governments to detain people …
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 …
4/3 Update: By the time the sacked captain left his ship on orders from a miffed Pentagon brass because of his leaked letter pleading with the Navy to allow his threatened 5000 crewmembers leave the ship for quarters in hotels in Guam where they could be quarantined and separated to prevent further spread of the …
Continue reading “We Have Met the Enemy and It’s a Tiny Virus”
I’m an introvert. As an introvert I prefer not to talk unless I have something to say. We introverts have a lot going on in our heads that stays there if we can’t find a way to express or give form to it, to our truth I mean. For me, working with dreams taps into …
Continue reading “Wading through: It’s all poetry, bad poetry”
(This article was written for and initially published at RT.com) The Senate and the White House have finally managed to negotiate a record $2-trillion stimulus aid package to ease the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak. But the money may well be too little too late. Once approved, the bill will go to the …
Continue reading “Facing Two Epidemics, Covid-19 and Soaring Joblessness”
I’m sitting here self-quarantined with my family in our 1738 stone farmhouse just north of Philadelphia. It’s an ancient building that I’m sure has known its share of epidemics over the centuries, including typhus and the deadly 1918 Spanish Flu. Right now I’m thinking about hospital triage. According to the New York Times, hospitals …
Continue reading “A Triage Crisis is Coming, and It’s Personal”
Alone How long can this go on? We knew this could happen But we thought it never would We told stories about things like this Just to cover our bases because we knew Or so it was written: The universe is not predictable So we tried to hold off the inevitable By second guessing …
Something pretty amazing is happening thanks to the COVID19 virus. Doctors, nurses and other health workers are being respected in ways they haven’t been until now. Last night, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell expressed the current narrative in a way I’ve never encountered before. He was speaking of nurses, but it would apply to other health workers …