Archive for the ‘CoronaVirus’ Category
CoronaVirus 2020 – Great Hunger (Famine) 1840’s – Irish Connections, Evils of Laissez-Faire Capitalism
Joe Harrington Compares the CoronaVirus Crisis of 2020 with the Great Hunger (Famine) of Ireland in the 1840’s. Items needed by human beings for survival suddenly were unavailable, prices rocketed, and only the mega-rich could afford them. The Great Hunger killed millions of starving Irish people, millions of others emigrated. There is a connection – Laissez-Faire Capitalism. Resistance is Necessary.
When the potato failed during the mid to late 1840s there were other foodstuffs available. These were slightly out of reach of the hundreds of thousands of starving people but any chance of securing them went when the price of them increased by up to a factor of six. Only the extremely rich could afford the prices and hundreds of thousands died. We are all appalled today when we read of this but look at what is happening today with the less important sanitiser! The connection? Laissez-faire Capitalism – described as “an economic system in which transactions between private parties are absent of any form of government intervention such as regulation, privileges, imperialism, tariffs and subsidies”. Any regulations that exist have failed utterly to stop banks, vulture funds and financiers, billionaire developers and their cronies destroying lives, livelihoods, the health service and the homeless.
It is worth pointing out this, but it is also important to build community co-operation to beat the virus. We cannot depend on the 1% or their political representatives who have their eye and their interests elsewhere. If ordinary people are to build the movements that are needed to confront the rule of the super-rich we need to overcome the divisions the capitalist political and economic system has caused within our ranks. Our state does not promote co-operation as the way forward for society. Instead it promotes a dog-eat-dog culture and an everyone for themselves attitude. Even so, the thousands of people who are involved on a volunteer in their communities shown that co-operation is the default position of the human being.
This Virus problem provides with an opportunity to promote co-operation to a new level. Vicky Phelan spoke about this on the Clare Byrne Show the other night. While keeping them under pressure to put people before profit in dealing with this threat let us also go beyond the response of the state. We need to take community-based initiatives to keep the virus away from those in most danger from it. If we co-operate and look out each other in this crisis we will better realise the strengths we have when dealing with the capitalists attacks now and down the road.
Apart from this we need to keep in mind two conflicting ideas. We need to act as if we have the virus and don’t want to pass it on and at the same time we need to act as if we haven’t the virus and don’t want to get it. Not easy to do.
Fumbling in the Greasy Till – Paul Murphy TD Campaigns Against CoronaVirus Price Gouging
We need to speak out about the profiteering taking place.
Just like September 1913 – the Worst Elements of the Irish Middle Class “fumbled in the greasy till” – and “added prayer to shivering prayer” – determined to wage war on the poor. The workers were on strike, led by the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union. The employers were led by William Martin Murphy, owner of the Irish Independent Newspaper, Spiritual Godfather of today’s Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil Parties.
Paul Murphy Declares :
I’m organising a press conference tomorrow to highlight the huge number of examples people have sent me. This is a chance to show the real impact this greed is having, and to demand price controls are implemented. The government must take action to ensure those who need masks and hand gel most get it first.
We need more people willing to speak up on this, and tell their story. Get in touch to share your story, and help end this rip off
‘September 1913 is a devastating piece of satire in which Yeats takes the well-off Catholics to task for not only their meanness and materialism but also for the shallow nature of their religious devotion. The image of the shopkeeper fumbling in the ‘greasy till’ captures the greed while the image of them adding ‘prayer to shivering prayer’ sums up their terrified devotion to the Catholic Church who were enormously influential at the time.
Yeats declares that through their greed the middle classes have made Ireland a materialistic and un-Romantic place: ‘Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone.’ By doing so they have betrayed the legacy of past heroes. The middle classes are incapable of understanding the heroes’ courage and self-sacrifice.
The repetition emphasises Yeats’ contempt for the state of contemporary Irish society. Also like many Irish political ballads it personifies Ireland as a female figure
https://prezi.com/qly2zy81pfqx/september-1913/
.
Rebecca Long Bailey Would Let Luciana Berger *and* Alistair Campbell back into the British Labour Party: RLB Supporters in Melt-Down.
British Labour Party Leadership Candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey lurches to the right – and she is supposed to be a left-winger! It is a dark day for the workers’ movement and all progressive forces in the British State.
Out of the Ashes…….
Thanks to Andrew Coates for the Information.
Jeremy Corbyn the British Labour Party Leader with Leadership Candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey in Happier Times
Chris Williamson says RLB is “Bending over backwards to facilitate right-wing saboteurs, while simultaneously doubling down against anti-racist socialists, who’ve been smeared by those selfsame saboteurs, suggests Labour isn’t a home for socialists nor a vehicle to deliver a modest socialist programme.”
COVID-19 is a class issue
This useful article argues that the Irish Government needs to call off the March 17 St Patricks’s Festival in Ireland, where hundreds of thousands of people will gather together, and spread the CoronaVirus, which will bring down many people with CoVid-19 Illness.
The failure to take any of these measures could be disastrous. Not only would it leave our entire society vulnerable to the spread of infection due to working people having no choice but to work, but it would leave the most vulnerable in our society hanging out to dry whilst depriving us of an absolutely essential resource for fighting this crisis – healthy frontline medical staff. The price of putting profit above people is simply too high.
Change the system
It is a price that would, firstly, be a product of government inaction in order to protect the interests of the capitalist establishment it represents, but the ultimate cause would be the severe neglect and abuse of our health service, already stretched thin. In South Korea, where they have 12 beds per 1000 people, they are running short on beds due to the spread of the virus. Ireland has 3 beds per 1000 people – the numbers speak for themselves.
Now is the time to start taking the necessary action of establishing a single-tier universal healthcare service: where the most vulnerable in our society are taken care of, that is properly staffed and properly funded, with enough beds and free to access. In that process we need to take the private hospitals into public ownership.
The public health crisis is impacting the entire planet, and already we are seeing significant economic impacts starting in China and rippling outwards, potentially leading to a global economic crisis. The Eurozone, of which Ireland is a part, is already projected to enter into a very deep recession. It has been reported that upwards of 30-50% of the Irish population is likely to get sick (Sunday Business Post, 8 March 2020) and 40 to 70% of the global population within a year, which would be akin to a huge global general strike. Profits would massively fall, causing panic in the markets and likely capital flight.
In this case, we must stand utterly opposed to any and all job losses, pay cuts, or attacks on conditions which the establishment will attempt to impose on us in the aftermath of the crisis. If businesses claim that these are necessary measures, we must absolutely reject that logic. They must open the books, and if they are unable to continue operating then they should be taken into democratic public ownership.
The crisis created by COVID-19 is a symptom of a fundamentally sick capitalist system. If we want to head off the worst effects of the crisis and protect ourselves into the future, the system must go.
— Read on www.letusrise.ie/featured-articles/covid-19-is-a-class-issue
Coronavirus has sparked a perfect storm of nationalism and financial speculation – Yanis Varoufakis, Former SYRIZA Finance Minister in Greece – THE GUARDIAN
Here is a fresh warning about the toxic combination of two different phenomenons – the CoVid-19 Health Crisis and a Financial Money Markets Storm, similar to the 2008 Crash.
The author is Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek Finance Minister sacked from a SYRIZA Government before it surrendered to the Austerians.
When the air is replete with inflammable materials, any given spark can cause a financial explosion, at any time.
Éric Toussaint of CADTM examines a worldwide stock market collapse.
Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the international spokesperson of the CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt) , and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France.
He is the author of Debt System (2019), Bankocracy (2015); Glance in the Rear View Mirror. Neoliberal Ideology From its Origins to the Present, Haymarket books, Chicago; “Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank, Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers”, Monthly Review Press, New York, 2010. He has published extensively in this field. He is a member of the Fourth International leadership.
Nationalism and speculation have seldom had a better opportunity to combine forces as the one riding today on the coattails of Covid-19, known as the coronavirus. When Covid-19 leapfrogged from China to Italy, even ardent Europeanists normally appreciative of open borders joined the deafening calls to end freedom of movement across Europe’s national borders – a longstanding demand of nationalists. Meanwhile, the money men speculating on government debt are performing a classic flight from Italian to German government bonds, seeking the financial safety that only the continent’s hegemon can offer during any crisis. As if in a bid to remind us of the great contradiction of our times, Covid-19 is illuminating gloriously the freedom of money to transcend a borderless financial universe while humans remain as fenced in as ever.
Coronavirus has sparked a perfect storm of nationalism and financial speculation – THE GUARDIAN
https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2020/03/09/coronavirus-has-sparked-a-perfect-storm-of-nationalism-and-financial-speculation-the-guardian/
— Read on www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2020/03/09/coronavirus-has-sparked-a-perfect-storm-of-nationalism-and-financial-speculation-the-guardian/
The Virus – Apocalypse Now?
This is a very gloomy CoronaVirus Warning – and it is credible.
The Monster Is Bursting Through Our Door
Pentecostal Christians – and probably many others – believe that at ‘the end of days’, which precedes the Second Coming of Christ, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will ride out.
The Four Horsemen are generally interpreted as being pestilence, death, famine, and war. If Pentecostals are thinking logically (as if) they should be expecting to see the Lamb of God some time soon.
In the wake of wars that have killed more than 500,000 since 2001 and an accelerating environmental crisis dramatised by the Australian firestorms, the current Covid-19 outstrips dystopian science fiction stories like Outbreak. What American Marxist author Mike Davis described as ‘The Monster at Our Door’ has, in a rather different form, burst through the door. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Do the right thing’ – Vicky Phelan joins in call for St Patrick’s Day cancellation – Covid-19 Cases in Ireland Continue to Rise
Vicky Phelan has added her voice to those calling on the Government to re-think their move not to cancel St Patrick’s Day celebrations as the number of coronavirus cases here continues to rise.
The cancer awareness advocate, and previous marshall of a St Patrick’s Day parade, believes “human lives are at risk” by not cancelling the national celebrations on March 17.
Ms Phelan, who is living with terminal cancer and who is known for lifting the lid on the cervical cancer scandal, has already cancelled many of her public appearances due to the coronavirus outbreak here.
The Kilkenny native who now lives in Limerick said: “I am supporting our doctors and epidemiologists, like Professors John Crown and Sam McConkey and others who have called on the government to to postpone the St Patrick’s Day parade now. Not in a week’s time, or two days beforehand. Do the right thing now.
— Read on www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/do-the-right-thing–vicky-phelan-joins-in-call-for-st-patricks-day-cancellation-986492.html
USA Conservative Political Action Conference attendee tested positive for coronavirus – CNNPolitics – President Donald Trump Was There!
A correspondent suggests :
Could President Trump get coronavirus from having shaken hands or made selfies or inappropriately groped someone at CPAC?
The White House said earlier Saturday in a statement that it was aware of an individual testing positive for coronavirus after attending the CPAC conference.
“At this time there is no indication that either President Trump or Vice President Pence met with or were in close proximity to the attendee. The President’s physician and United States Secret Service have been working closely with White House Staff and various agencies to ensure every precaution is taken to keep the First Family and the entire White House Complex safe and healthy,” according to the White House.
The ACU noted that it has been in contact with the state of Maryland’s health department and would follow guidance from health experts.
“The exposure occurred previous to the conference. A New Jersey hospital tested the person, and CDC confirmed the positive result,” the ACU said in a statement. “The individual is under the care of medical professionals in the state of New Jersey, and has been quarantined.”
“Our children, spouses, extended family, and friends attended CPAC. During this time, we need to remain calm, listen to our health care professionals, and support each other. We send this message in that spirit,” the group said.
— Read on edition.cnn.com/2020/03/07/politics/cpac-coronavirus-tested-positive/index.html
Coronavirus is not responsible for the fall of stock prices – International Viewpoint – online socialist magazine
When the air is replete with inflammable materials, any given spark can cause a financial explosion, at any time.
Éric Toussaint of CADTM examines a worldwide stock market collapse.
Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the international spokesperson of the CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt) , and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France.
He is the author of Debt System (2019), Bankocracy (2015); Glance in the Rear View Mirror. Neoliberal Ideology From its Origins to the Present, Haymarket books, Chicago; “Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank, Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers”, Monthly Review Press, New York, 2010. He has published extensively in this field. He is a member of the Fourth International leadership. Read the rest of this entry »
Tomás Ó Flatharta 