Jonathan Freedland - The magnifying glass: how Covid revealed the truth about our world

By Dilip -

The pandemic has illuminated deprivation, inequalities and political unrest, while reminding us of the power and beauty of nature and humanity..  A fitting symbol of this global pandemic would be a magnifying glass. For while the virus ended and upended so many lives, and spawned a whole new vocabulary – social distancing, furlough, herd immunity, R number, circuit breaker, bubble, unmute – it did not remake the global landscape so much as reveal what was already there, or what was taking shape, just below the surface.

It amplified it, sometimes distorting it, sometimes illuminating it in alarming detail. Covid‑19, the disease that was first reported to the World Health Organization one year ago this month, served as a lens through which we were able to see our politics, our planet and ourselves with a new and shocking clarity. It made 2020 a year of revelation, even if what was uncovered was not nearly as new as we might imagine.

Perhaps that was most apparent at the top. Even as the virus forced billions to cover their faces, it ripped the mask from so many of our leaders. Naturally, the most lurid case was that of Donald Trump…

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/11/covid-upturned-planet-freedland

George Lakey on Capitalism, public health and the Nordic model

Tom Engelhardt : A vote for the apocalypse // Robert Roy Britt: Anti-Science Attitudes are Killing Americans

Patrick Cockburn: Trump, Erdogan, Modi, Orban, Bolsonaro – populist nationalists have met their match in the coronavirus

After the Truth Shower - Webinar on the Pandemic. April 26 2020

The pandemic will kill more Americans than died in Vietnam // Trump suggests injections of disinfectant to cure coronavirus

I Am a Mad Scientist. By Kate Marvel

JOSH DZIEZA - Save the Honeybee, Sterilize the Earth

We'll find a treatment for coronavirus – but drug companies will decide who gets it

10 Theses on the Proliferation of Egocrats (1977)

'We did it to ourselves': scientist says intrusion into nature led to pandemic

The champions of capitalism are refusing to admit their ideology has failed

America has no real public health system – coronavirus has a clear run

Michael Roberts: The top 1% own 45% of all global personal wealth; the bottom 50% own less than 1% // Global Economic Volatility and Socio Political Reactions

SUBMARINE STATE

Dismantling democracy? Virus used as excuse to quell dissent...

Sam Kriss: 'Neoliberalism' isn't a left-wing insult but a monstrous system of inequality

Noam Chomsky: Internationalism or Extinction (Universalizing Resistance)

Book review: Thomas Piketty's Capital and Ideology

Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist?

George Monbiot: ‘Try to stop me’ – the mantra of our leaders who are now ruling with impunity


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