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Rob Wallace on who’s to blame (Listen: Background Briefing)

“…the thought was, this is the cost of doing business, and that they would externalize the cost, not just on the people of China, but on the rest of the world…China is not alone in that. The U.S. has done that, Europe has done that…the Swine flu, H1N1 that emerged in 2009 outside Mexico City, our team calls that the NAFTA flu, (from) the U.S. meat dumped onto the Mexican market….In other words we did it ourselves, in 2009, this very thing that China has also been doing for several decades.” | more…

Gerald Horne with Charisse Burden-Stelly on the longue durée of apocalypse

Interviewer Charisse Burden-Stelly begins, “….apocalypse represented, for African and indigenous folks, the end of life as they knew it—that is, a life free from enslavement, genocide, and ongoing violence wrought by the insatiable drive of the group that came to be known as “whites” for endless profit. This ending was simultaneously the beginning of a capitalist world economy rooted in racial hierarchy, imperial domination, and militarized social relations, of which neoliberalism is merely the most recent enunciation.” | more…

Michael Tigar recounts the story of Terry Nichols (Listen: For the Defense)

Federal criminal defense attorney David Oscar Markus periodically interviews famed trial lawyers about their most fascinating cases for his podcast, “For the Defense.” This week, he featured Michael Tigar, published several times by Monthly Review. Markus introduces the episode: “Michael Tigar is exactly what action is all about… I mean, in 1999 there was a vote for lawyer of the century: Clarence Darrow was #1, Thurgood Marshall was #2, and you know who was #3?” | more…

“Dead Epidemiologists:” A personalized, enlivening take on Covid-19

Author Rob Wallace made a decision: His new book Dead Epidemiologists would take a personal approach. How could it not? While he introduces his work through this intimate lens, Wallace’s perspective is global, tracking “the implications of capitalist agricultural production, distribution and consumption that is harming the web of life….” | more…

Reason for common cause: A review of “The Robbery of Nature,” from Against the Current

“Foster and Clark show that the exploitation of wage labor in the capitalist production process is essentially tied to the expropriation of the natural world, the refusal to socially acknowledge care labor as socially necessary labor, the privatization of our common cultural heritage, the treatment of non-white communities as places where the social pathologies of capitalism (unemployment, poverty, and so on) can be concentrated, and so on. From this perspective workers, environmentalists, feminists, community activists, and anti-racists have good reason to make common cause.” | more…

The disproportionate effects of infectious diseases on racial minorities (Watch: Science for the People)

On the first Friday in March, SftP member Joseph Graves Jr. interviewed Rob Wallace about his work Dead Epidemiologists. Grave’s expertise in epidemiology and the disproportionate effects of infectious diseases on racial minorities steered the conversation as Wallace offered his take on the relationship between industrial agriculture, capitalist modes of production and the Covid-19 crisis. | more…

Prabhat Patnaik

Patnaik on Neoliberalism to Neofascism (Listen: Alternative Radio)

From Modi’s India to Erdogan’s Turkey neofascist autocratic regimes have taken hold…The result: widespread immiseration and discontent. In its wake, demagogues exploit the situation. They are coming to power by scapegoating, instigating violence against minorities, coupled with loud calls for ‘getting our country back,’ and lots of flag waving… | more…