Global Ceasefire: Running List of Countries Committed

By World BEYOND War, April 2020

1) Sign the petition for a global ceasefire.

2) Contact your nation’s government and get a clear commitment to engaging in the ceasefire (not just urging others to do so).

3) Use the Comments section on this page to report on what you learn!

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres proposed this global ceasefire:

Our world faces a common enemy: COVID-19.

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Could this virus and economic crisis be a revolutionary moment?: Marx on COVID-19

By Ron Ridenour

Copenhagen“A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre ofCovid-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 corona virus, code named COVID-19. The spectre of communism lurks for a rebirth as the capitalist read more

Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Feminism in the Time of Coronavirus

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Let me state the obvious: Right now, we could hardly be in a more unsettled moment on a more unsettled planet. And I feel it personally. This old man has deserted New York, the city where I was born almost 76 years ago, the streets where I grew up, the place I returned to in 1976 and have lived in ever since. I’ve left what’s now being called the “epicenter read more

Talk Nation Radio: Charlotte Dennett on Pipeline Wars

Charlotte Dennett is a former Middle East reporter, investigative journalist, and attorney. She is the co-author of Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil. And she is the author of the new book we will be discussing: The Crash of Flight 3804: A Lost Spy, A Daughter’s Quest, and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil.

About the book:

https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-crash-of-flight-3804/

Total run time: 29:00
Host: David read more

Money for pandemics, not for war!: We Have Met the Enemy and It’s a Tiny Virus

By Dave Lindorff

Over the course of just a couple of days last week, the backbone of the US Navy’s Pacific fleet was just been shut down for the next month. The enemy that managed to cause this sudden surprise unilateral disarmament of the mighty US Navy’s Pacific Fleet was not Russian or Chinese cyber hackers or a sneak attack by some foreign enemy. Rather, it was just a tiny virus, COVID-19, that infected one crew member on each of two $13-billion Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carriers.

The read more

Tomgram: William Astore, Living Through Coronavirus Hard Times

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

I often imagine somehow summoning my mother and father (who died in 1977 and 1983) back to this planet of ours. I’m curious to know what they would make of the almost unimaginable world we now live in — not that they didn’t live through their own threatening, topsy-turvy global moments. Both were only in their twenties when the Great Depression hit. Unfortunately, read more

Vigil for Peace in Yemen – a New Norm

March 27, 2020

For the past three years, several dozen New Yorkers have gathered each Saturday at Union Square, at 11:00 a.m. to vigil for peace in Yemen.

Now, however, due to the coronavirus, the vigil for peace is radically altered. Last week, in recognition of the city’s coming shelter in place program, participants were asked to hold individual vigils at their respective homes on the subsequent Saturday mornings. Normally, during the public vigils, one or more participants would provide updates read more

Is Coronavirus a bioweapon?

The Washington Post’s article opposing such a conclusion admits the following: The lab in Wuhan “was researching coronaviruses transmitted by bats.” And “[a]n annual State Department report released last year said China had engaged ‘in biological activities with potential dual-use applications.’” And that at least one expert worried about potential outbreaks from that lab. And that other experts had discussed the possibility of Coronavirus being a bioweapon but found no proof.

Francis read more