Extremists are going to thrive in the post-lockdown world – Spectator.co.uk

Throughout the lockdown Ive been nagged by a persistent thought. As I sit indoors and read the news; as I alternate between cooking and takeaways; as I venture outside into the socially-distanced streets; and as I listen to commentators catastrophise about lockdown Britain, it is there. The thought is simple: what if all this the confinement and the fear and the confusion and the ever-rising death count what if all this is the good part?

True, we are stuck indoors, but the scaffolding of our world looks much the same, even if we are not allowed to move about in it. What happens when the time comes to restart? When the shops finally reopen how many will still exist? And even then, how many will be able to survive the reduced custom that will surely result from people now wary of congregating in traditionally crowded places? What will happen as the months wear on and we have to start paying for all this? What will happen to inflation as trillions are pumped into the global economy? And what will people say and do when they no longer have jobs? When they cant pay their rent or mortgage? And when they are poorer and sicker and angrier?

In terms of the economy: well, quite a lot, it seems. According to the Bank of England, GDP could fall by 25 per cent in the second quarter of this year. For 2020 as a whole, the economy could shrink by 14 per cent. Unemployment is predicted to more than double to around 9 per cent. In short, our economy will look the same but be diminished, its edges sanded down. The Economist calls it the 90 per cent economy.

Im not an economist though; what I do is watch society particularly its most dangerous elements. As I have written previously, the pandemic has been a gift for societys most malign and extreme; propagandists of every stripe have made hay while the corona sun has shined. They have taken advantage of our fear and confusion in a health crisis imagine what they will do when the likely devastating economic crisis hits.

In the last financial crisis in 2008 the banks almost failed but the economy still moved. People went to restaurants and bars, they bought ice cream and lipstick and iPads, and social media was still in its infancy. Now we are all stuck indoors, and every nutjob with a grievance can broadcast it to the world.

Which brings us to the nub. JM Bergers social identity theory of extremism argues that extremist ideologies are rooted in a crisis-solution construct where in-groups facing what they believe are existential crises think they can only be solved through radical, supremacist and often violent means. To see how it affects us now, we need only look at two of todays most threatening extremist ideologies: Jihadism and the far right.

As the researchers Milo Comerford and Jacob Davey of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) have noted, Jihadism is based upon a supremacist vision of Islam devoted to establishing an Islamic state ruled by the strictest Sharia law. There is a religious duty to defeat unbelievers. The far-right, meanwhile, is rooted in ethnic, cultural or national supremacism, generally geared toward establishing an ethnostate. Terrorism is an accepted means by which to hasten societal collapse.

Right now, the far right is flooding social media with posts about elites like Jeff Bezos, the Rothschilds, George Soros and Bill Gates and the deep state, both of which they blame for causing the pandemic. According to Chloe Colliver of ISD, the scale of all this is humungous. Jihadist groups like the Somalian Al Shabaab, meanwhile, claimthat coronavirus is being spread by crusader forces and the disbelieving countries that support them'.

Coronavirus has turbocharged the crisis-solution nexus. When I trawl the chat boards and the Jihadi messenger groups its clear that they are preparing to exploit the economic crisis to come. Who is to blame for our predicament? They ask. The other, comes the near universal reply.

As Comerford notes, dramatic socio-economic shifts are always co-opted by extremists to lay blame at the door of specific groups - mainly minorities - resulting in conspiratorial, hateful or even violent consequences.

This is already happening. Right now, be it by their employer or the government, most people are still getting paid. No major institution has failed; the markets have rallied, and we arent yetin the grip of inflation or adepression. But its coming. When the lockdown ends the real pain will begin, and not just economically. We must be ready, or as a society we will pay a heavy price indeed.

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Extremists are going to thrive in the post-lockdown world - Spectator.co.uk

Cooper: Higher debt a foe now and an even bigger one in the future – Chattanooga Times Free Press

In the halcyon days before the COVID-19 virus, the United States government was nearly $25 million in debt and was projected to spend $1.1 trillion more this year than it collected in taxes.

Ah, the good ol' days.

Now, in the last two months, Congress has approved about $2.4 trillion in four relief bills to alleviate the collapse of the economy from stay-at-home orders due to the virus. For perspective's sake, $2.4 trillion exceeds the individual economies of Italy, Brazil and Canada. And $240 trillion in $1 bills would stack 140 bills high on the 68.3 miles that comprise Washington, D.C.

But, wait. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats want to spend more than the combined total of the first four bills on a fifth bill, a $3 trillion package that would add more more money to projects in the previous bills and tack on additional pet projects.

This from the party that only a few months ago in an irony itself chided President Donald Trump for the increased debt incurred in his first three years in office.

Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell seemed to indicate that spending more was the preferred remedy with a record number of people out of work.

"Additional support could be costly," he said in an interview with the Peterson Institute's Adam Posen, "but worth it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery.

"It's not the time to prioritize" concerns about fiscal spending, Powell said.

The problem with the Fed chairman's statement is that "additional support" meaning additional debt is what we would suggest is long-term economic damage.

Even without a fifth virus bill, the U.S. would be looking at a $3.5-$3.7 trillion increase in the debt in 2020, which, as a percentage of gross domestic product (the sum of all goods and services produced in the U.S.), would push it to levels not seen since World War II.

Pro-additional stimulus advocates argue that the debt be darned that putting even more money in the hands of Americans and certain businesses now is what's more important.

The Great Recession offered a few lessons there. During that time, only a dozen years ago, even with a financial stimulus, the U.S. lost around $10 trillion from savings drawdowns and the falling values of homes and investments. And it hit people in lower socio-economic groups harder because they couldn't or didn't save as much and had to deplete their reserves.

Despite the end of the recession in 2009, people stayed out of the workforce, the labor market lagged and the economy grew slowly. Not until Trump was elected and put an emphasis on jobs did people return to the workforce in droves. Indeed, prior to the virus, the U.S. could cite record numbers in the workforce. If former Vice President Joe Biden is elected president in November, the country would likely to return to what former President Barack Obama said would be the "new normal" of slow growth.

Without a strong recovery, many small businesses won't make it, and those who do especially those with government-support packages structured as loans will have to restrict spending and hiring to concentrate on repayment. This also is likely to redound on the real estate market, which again would see little growth.

Continued financial packages also could change attitudes. Instead of seeing loans and bailouts as a last resort, Americans would see the federal trough as the first place to turn after the virus is fully under control. Such attitudes, with no thoughts toward the long-term financial future of one's children or grandchildren, would likely lessen the incentive to save or even dampen the desire to work.

For others, perhaps for those who have kept their jobs during the virus but who have become cautious about what they do have, it would cause them to reduce spending in fear of a prolonged recession or the next virus.

The uncertainty about the staying power of the virus and the length of time until a vaccine is perfected are the great variables. If we knew all businesses could reopen on June 1 and stay reopened, the limited-duration financial packages with low rates of borrowing make some sense. But the country's economy and its future sustainability cannot stomach four (or five) recovery packages every few months until the last American feels safe enough to return to work. Such is the key to financial ruin.

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Cooper: Higher debt a foe now and an even bigger one in the future - Chattanooga Times Free Press

Death by perks – The News International

Pakistan faces a horrendous economic crisis, where the state must take on vast foreign and domestic debts, not to invest in socio-economic development projects, but to pay exorbitant salaries, pensions, and perks. If anything, we need to lower the public payroll and reform public-sector salaries and pensions. We have witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, which despite being the equal of US and Nato in military terms, failed to achieve the pace of economic progress needed to cater for the welfare and aspirations of the masses. To avoid a similar fate, now is the time to rectify our bloated public sector and revive the moribund private economy.

It is an established fact that our expenditure on the bureaucracy far exceeds our means and has become a burden on this nation. There is no rationale for the wide gap in pay between our managers, doctors, engineers, and our high-ranking bureaucrats. For a country like Pakistan foreign loans should only be procured for investment in vital infrastructure, health, and R&D with not a penny for a salary raise. Sanity must prevail before it is too late, and we become so bankrupt that our vital nuclear deterrence may be compromised. It is the economy that sustains national security and not vice versa.

Malik Tariq Ali

Lahore

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Death by perks - The News International

The COVID Crisis Tsunami for the Poor – Mainstream

13.05.2020/SGV

Viruses

Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 which causes Covid-19 is just one of the more recent viruses in our environment, and it is here to stay [One in 3 recover, time to learn to live with virus, says govt; Deccan Herald; 09.05.2020, p.1]. It will add one more virus to the billions of viruses to which human bodies are already host.

The problem faced by humanity is not so much about Covid-19 per se, or about virus-caused disease or death, but more about their aggravating already damaged societal and economic situations nationally and internationally. The pre-lockdown situations of economic and physical violence, hunger and deprivation are due to development agendas based upon economic policy of perpetual economic growth. This economic development policy has been adopted and accepted globally, regardless of the political system, and dictates that perpetual economic (GDP) growth must be ensured at any human, environmental or ecological cost.

Media focus

National and international mainstream media is almost exclusively focused on Covid-19. They discuss and debate governments attempts to balance the dangers and risks of Covid spread on societies, against the unprecedented social and economic crises caused by social-distancing lockdowns to prevent Covid spread.

Media is also reporting the lockdown-initiated harsh reality of the misery, suffering and condemnable multiple injustices heaped upon humungous numbers of daily-wage workers, especially migrants and others in the unorganized sector because of job-loss, not being paid by employers, no food and no shelter, and no means to return to their home states. This is apart from the urban and rural poor who are equally impacted. The ground reality can no longer be concealed behind political hype.

India is in an unprecedented economic crisis concerning the manufacturing, farming, services, health, banking, finance and almost every other sector. Governments are planning and implementing measures to restore the economy, but these are directed at reverting to the pre-lockdown model, already characterized by crippling socio-economic inequality, violence, conflicts and tensions in society, miserably poor public health due to malnutrition, and rapidly deteriorating environments.

Governments are unmindful or uncomprehending that reverting to the pre-lockdown development model will drive societies towards becoming profoundly unhealthy, and perhaps towards implosion and collapse.

Pre-Covid invisibility to post-Covid destitution

Of Indias labour force in the agricultural and industrial sectors, over 80% are in the unorganized sector. They do hard, unremitting and often demeaning physical work with their hands. Labour laws, meant to prevent exploitation of labour, do not apply to them. They are exploited in every which way by their employers.

Rural people, whose work or occupation is based upon agricultural seasons, practices and requirements, migrate seasonally to towns and cities for work when they are not required in agriculture. Over decades, millions have migrated to urban areas distant from their homes, and found petty employment, living in slums often cheek-by-jowl with multi-storeyed apartments. They are the invisible poor and infra-poor construction workers, domestic workers, waste pickers, and the homeless, who have established themselves in urban life, subject to the tender mercies of the police and/or the mafia. Only a minuscule fortunate among them have secured white collar jobs in offices or blue collar jobs in MSME.

These out-of-state migrants are often targeted by migrants from within the same state because of scarce jobs or civic resources, and political parties have even come to power on the basis of belonging, creating the other. Thus, social tension is a part of every migrants daily life, compounding the miseries of slum existence and exploitative employers.

The 80% unorganized workers are the backbone of urban society, which is unhealthy by any standards. Due to the 4-hours-notice national lockdown, almost all these invisible poor have lost their jobs, salary dues to them have not been paid, and their employers have vanished. They are stranded in places far from their home, without work, money, food and shelter. Their already burey-din have turned to destitution. But as the lockdown has also affected the middle class and industrial and commercial interests, the pain and suffering of the invisible backbone of urban society has suddenly become visible to them!

About 20% of the work force have the tenuous protection of labour laws, which govern work hours, remuneration, safety and other facilities at workplace, and right of collective bargaining with employers. However, in almost all labour disputes, governments are firmly if covertly on the side of the employer, who even gets police protection. This 20% is also mostly migrant like the 80% unorganized.

Nakedness exposed

Covid is beginning to be more of a political issue than a public health issue. The political class faces the dilemma of balancing further damage to the staggering pre-lockdown economy by continuing lockdown, against handling the political fallout of Covid re-emergence by lifting lockdown to revive the economy. Focus is on the economy.

On the other hand, if people are considered relevant, some realities become apparent. The hundreds of millions of people who are walking home to escape from the daily hell of urban living and working conditions, dont give a damn for the economy, because they now have understood at least seven naked truths:

(1) The economy always took from them much more than it ever gave them. (2) The economy needs them much more than they need the economy. (3) They have been given far worse than a raw deal by the lockdown. (4) The lockdown was imposed to protect the upper economic sections of society who imported the Coronavirus. (5) Social-distancing, washing hands with soap and water, or using hand-sanitizer is farcical, a cruel joke for them. (6) Suffering and death due to hunger or exhaustion is more real than due to Covid, and (7) They have nothing to lose by going back home because, cruelly spurned by their employers, they have nothing anyway.

When lockdown was imposed, migrant workers lost no time to understand these seven truths, and their exodus exploded into national and international media. It took governments by surprise because of lack of foresight and thinking-through their executive decisions. Figuratively, their political jaws sagged open in amazement. As the negative political impact of the money-food-shelter humanitarian crisis images sunk in, the scramble in the central and state ministries of home, health, finance and food & public distribution began.

The already-hurt agriculture sector was badly wounded by the lockdown, but that did not attract governments attention like the urban situation did. A neatly-named (non-public) fund was hurriedly instituted, and governments turned to tracking Covid and scrambling to provide hospital beds and PPE for doctors, nurses and health workers. But the millions on foot across the country did not attract much of governments attention, although its scale was of epic proportions.

Volunteers from civil society groups and concerned individuals in their hundreds across the country stepped in, taking personal risk to supply essential food, etc. to workers who were trekking back hundreds of kilometres to their homes. They spent money from their own pockets, and appealed to friends and groups to help with cash and kind, working continuously for days on end, stretching the limits of their endurance. Yet, obviously nowhere nearly all trekking people could be catered to governments inertia prevailed for days.

Despite partial paralysis of decision-making, and against all odds, doctors, nurses and especially the public health workers nobly rose to the occasion at considerable personal risk and sacrifice. Much political communal finger-pointing and blame-gaming happened, as usual trying to fix who did wrong rather than what went wrong. Some political optics of banging utensils, lighting candles and showering petals happened. Indecision in policy and executive directions at top levels of central and state governments with the possible exception of Kerala resulted in condemnable but characteristic police excesses on escaping migrant workers. Notwithstanding, most district administrations handled both Covid and migrant workers situations with quiet aplomb. It might even be said that the administrations managed in spite of politicians.

Today, the unmitigated, continuing suffering of many millions of urban and rural poor remains standing at the door of the political class, which remains focused on reviving the economy rather than on peoples problems. The preferential focus of the political class stands as nakedly exposed as the suffering of the vast majority.

Economic revival, no social revival

A survey of a small sample of migrant workers indicated that 95% of respondents wanted to return home, 75% wanted to return even if they were offered work, and 63% were owed wages from before the lockdown. [You cant go back, migrant workers told in Tamil Nadu; <https://thewire.in/labour/you-cant-...>; The Wire; May 9, 2020].

Hitherto indecisive on the so-called migrant workers issue, governments have refused to allow migrant workers to return home (as in Tamil Nadu), and are amending already pro-employer labour laws to make them blatantly anti-worker (e.g., 12-hour workday, employers not bound to provide basic working conditions such as ventilation, toilets, protective equipment, etc).

Further, governments are relaxing environmental laws/rules and offering incentives to improve ease of doing business, to minimize the tough situation faced by local industrialists, and offering all possible facilities and concessions to entice industries abandoning China (as in Rajasthan). Influenced by business lobbies, Karnataka announced that it would not facilitate the travel of migrant workers back home as their labour was needed to re-start the economy, although it reversed this due to public pressure.

Thus, to revive the economy, workers have been denied the fundamental right to travel at will anywhere within the country, have lost even the little protection that labour laws provided (12-hour days, etc.), and are obliged to work for employers who spurned them. Shall we call them indentured labour or coin a more politically acceptable term?

Economic revival through labour enslavement can only lead to more injustice and worsen society already suffering due to inequity and disharmony.

Health is a political issue

The measures to re-start the economy are only making an already unhealthy society even more unhealthy, making the fading Acche-din dream even more distant. It does not need proof that holistically viewed, poor health is intimately linked with poverty, with associated hunger, malnutrition, destitution, deprivation, lack of opportunity, etc.

Successive governments have used three yardsticks to measure poverty: [Siddharta Gupta; Medicare in India at the edge of disaster; Emerging Interfaces of Social Science and Public Policy in India; Ed: K.K.Chakravarty, S.Chattopadhyay & N.P.Chaubey; Indian Academy of Social Sciences, 2017; pp.244-251]

(1) On the basis of price of food grain which supply 2,000 to 2,200 calories/person/ day, 37% of our population are poor.

(2) The Arjun Sengupta committee holds that 77% of our population cannot afford Rs.20 per person per day.

(3) The international standard of poverty of $1 per person per day ($1=Rs.55 when this was proposed) makes over 50% of our population poor.

All three yardsticks for poverty do not consider the carbohydrate-protein-fibre-mineral-micronutrient balance essential for nutrition, fuel for cooking, water for necessary intake and hygiene, cost of shelter, clothing, education, health or amusement. Further, about 50% of Indian children under 5-years age are malnourished, under-weight and anaemic. These future adults of India are from the impoverished majority of our population, and benefit nothing but nothing from our economy growing to $5-trillion.

It is clear that poverty is assessed using de-humanized parameters which are convenient for economists to play their statistical games, which are accepted by politicians and bureaucrats. All this, while surplus food grains in FCI warehouses are consumed by rodents and pests, and cost public money merely to maintain inventory, and government is reluctant to release food grains to starving/under-nourished populations.

This mindset of injustice compounded by callousness, understands the price of commodities but not the value of food or of health. It is the mindset of Indias political class which marches to the drumbeat of the corporate band, and its ideology of monetary-profit-and-economic-growth above all else.

Insofar as poverty and socio-economic inequality are concerned, over the decades since 1950, the political class is guilty of more or less but continual dereliction of sworn duty to the Constitution of India, and of neglect of its letter and spirit, to the detriment of We the People.

Healthy societyHealth is about how we live, and the quality of life within the society in which we live. Its not about the absence of disease in an individual, but about life within the family and, along with family, in the wider community. Viewed holistically, health is a multi-dimensional entity concerning every individual within a healthy society. This is beyond the narrow scope of governments health ministries.

The health sector worldwide is corporatized, with the possible exception of Cuba. It uses yardsticks of numbers of hospital beds or doctors per thousand population. Japan stands first with over 13 hospital beds against India having only 0.58. Hospitals are focussed on curing or managing disease and treating injury. They are expensive, demand cash up-front before admission, and closely linked with pharmaceutical, bio-engineering and medical insurance businesses. They are out of reach for people of the lower economic sections and in any case have little to do with health, except when viewed through the narrow perspective of absence of disease. They make little contribution to building a healthy society.

The Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution of India, require the State to assure people justice, liberty and equality, and promote fraternity among them. This is precisely about creating a healthy society, which values social qualities such as fairness, freedom, security and tolerance, and ranks them above economic concerns, while providing every individual dignified labour with economic and social security.

Plans for a self-reliant India starting with a Rs.20-trillion Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan package, and standing upon the five pillars of economy, infrastructure, system, demography and demand, may provide economic impetus, but need to be guided by Constitutional values of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. However, the 4-L principles of land, labour, liquidity and law, would be of little avail, # If government facilitates land acquisition for industry and displaces people who lose livelihood and migrate to cities for work, # If weak labour laws are diluted to be further to be anti-labour, # If money is given to industry rather than to people who will spend it and raise market demand, and # If environmental and other laws/rules are tweaked to help industrialists who are facing tough situations.

Looking forward

The Corona pandemic has resulted in social distancing lockdown, causing very serious economic and health consequences on vast numbers of the poor. As the work-force suffers, so does the national economy. Governments are struggling to cope with the consequences, but it is now clear that the attempts are directed at restoring the earlier economic order, which is characterized by inequality, inequity and iniquity.

This is not to point at any particular government, but at the present development model of perpetual economic growth year-on-year. Quoting Prem Chandavarkar, Our development model assumes an economy that must grow whether or not we thrive, whereas we need an economy that makes us thrive whether or not it grows. [Prem Chandavarkar; The Covid Pandemic: Seven Lessons to be Learned for a Future; May 3, 2020; <https://medium.com/@premckar/the-co...>].

The present model exacerbates economic inequality, heightens social tensions and conflicts, and destroys the environment upon which all life depends. It does not need proof that the result is increasingly unhealthy human societies within which life-style diseases are by far the biggest killers of humans. Public health is a casualty of the development model. Yet, talking-heads only debate Covid-19 infection, death and vaccines, governments struggle to re-establish the same failed development model, migrant workers fall by the wayside from hunger and exhaustion, or are forced by governments to get back to work or else, and privileged people wash their hands with soap and water, and wait impatiently for lockdown to be lifted and to visit their favourite malls.

As India pursues its aim to raise GDP to $5-trillion by 2024, it can only make society more unhealthy than it already is. When philosopher J.Krishnamurti said, It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society, he spoke of the society of decades ago. Society has only sickened more since then.

We need a development model to create a healthy society which ... is much more than a community in which the causes of disease are minimised. It is one where, at the very least, human creativity is free to flourish, individuals have the liberty to be who they wish to be ... and the spirit of all life and not merely human life, prospers. [The Lancet; https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)00106-9/fulltext%5D.

The Corona crisis demands an alternate development model for a healthy society. Although this is already enshrined in the core principles of the Constitution of India, our leaders have little awareness or comprehension of it amidst their myopic and thoughtless quest for power or pelf. It is the duty of We the People to bring our leaders back to understanding our Constitution. Only then will the tsunami which has struck Indias poor abate, and We the People build a healthy society.

**Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere, VSM, focuses on development and strategic issues, using cross-discipline study and systems thinking. Contact: ; LL:(0821)2975187

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The COVID Crisis Tsunami for the Poor - Mainstream

Coronavirus: How Young People Around the World Are Using Art to Promote Social Movements – The National Interest

Health and government officials around the globe are slowly and ever-so-tentatively moving to relax lockdowns due to coronavirus.

In Canada, where the possibility of health-care collapse seems to have been averted (for the time being), some are beginning to ask questions other than when will the pandemic end? Instead, theyre turning towards how will we move forward?

Young people have some answers that warrant our attention. Over the past five years, through my collaborative ethnographic research with 250 young people in drama classrooms in Canada, India, Taiwan, Greece and England, I have gained remarkable insight into these young peoples experiences and assessments of the world.

I found crisis after crisis being shouldered by young people. Through their theatre-making, they documented their concerns and hope, and they rallied around common purposes. They did this despite disagreement and difference.

Beyond simply creating art for arts sake, or for school credits, many of the young people I encountered are building social movements and creative projects around a different vision for our planet. And they are calling us in. This is an unprecedented moment for intergenerational justice and we need to seize it.

Students from Prerna School in Lucknow, India, rally for the rights of girls. (Kathleen Gallagher), Author provided

Crises are connected

I have had an up-close look at how seemingly disparate crises around the globe are deeply connected through divisive systems that dont acknowledge or respect youth concerns. I have also learned how young people are disproportionately affected by the misguided politics of a fractured world.

In England, young people were burdened by the divisive rhetoric of the Brexit campaign and its ensuing aftermath.

In India, young women were using their education to build solidarity in the face of dehumanizing gender oppression.

In Greece, young people were shouldering the weight of a decade-long economic crisis compounded by a horrifying refugee crisis.

In Taiwan, young people on the cusp of adulthood were trying to square the social pressures of traditional culture with their own ambitions in a far-from-hopeful economic landscape.

Second-year theatre students at the National University of Tainan, Taiwan, warm up with drama activities, November 2016. (Kathleen Gallagher), Author provided

In Toronto, youth tried to understand why the rhetoric of multiculturalism seemed both true and false, and why racism persists and, in so doing, they spoke from perspectives grounded in their intersectional (white, racialized, sexual- and gender-diverse) identities.

They embraced the reality that everything in popular culture may enter a drama classroom. But they responded to current news stories like the 2016 presidential debates in the United States by saying that they had different and more pressing concerns, like mental health support and transphobia.

Hope through creative work

Todays young people are a generation that has come of age during a host of global crises. Inequality, environmental destruction, systemic oppression of many kinds weigh heavily.

I found a youth cohort who, despite many not yet having the right to vote, have well-honed political capacities, are birthing countless global hashtag movements and inspiring generations of young and old.

These marginalized youth are aware that their communities have been living with and responding to catastrophic impacts of crises of injustice and inequalities long before now.

Practising hope

How do these youth live with their awareness of global injustices and what these imply for the years ahead? We learned some disturbing things: as young people age and move further away from their primary relationships (parents, teachers, schoolmates), they feel less optimistic about their personal futures.

But in terms of hope, we learned something very recognizable to many of us now: many young people practise hope, even when they feel hopeless. They do this both in social movements they participate in and in creative work they undertake with others.

This is something we can all learn from. In Canada, we are maintaining social distancing as a shared effort. Acting together by keeping apart is how we are flattening the curve, as all the experts continue to tell us.

We know that in communities around the world, government leadership matters enormously. But citizens, social trust and collective will matter at least as much.

Young people from the Canley Youth Theatre, based in Coventry, England, rehearse their play Museum of Living Stories, based on their personal memories, June 2016. (Kathleen Gallagher), Author provided

Polarization

In this pandemic, institutions, like universities, businesses and individual citizens have stepped up remarkably in the interests of the common good and our shared fate.

However, Jennifer Welsh, Canada Research Chair in Global Governance and Security at McGill University, argues that the defining feature of the last decade is polarization, existing across many different liberal democracies and globally.

Along with this, the value of fairness has been deeply corroded because of growing inequality and persistent historic inequalities we have failed to address, like Indigenous sovereignty and land rights in Canada.

In the context of the rise of populist politicians and xenophobic policies globally, and also the rise of the most important progressive social movements in decades, my research has taught me that in this driven-apart, socio-economic landscape, the social value of art has never been more important.

People are making sense of the inexplicable or the feared through art, using online platforms for public learning. Art has become a point of contact, an urgent communication and a hope.

But some are still without shelter, without food, without community and without proper health care. The differences are stark.

A Grade 12 drama class in Toronto performs their play about youth mental health and trans solidarity for their school community, December 2016. (Kathleen Gallagher), Author provided

Moving forward

Arundhati Roy has imagined this pandemic as a kind of portal we are walking through: we can walk through it lightly ready to imagine another world. We can choose to be ready to fight for it.

Its time to put global youth at the centre of our responses to crises. Otherwise, young people will inherit a planet devastated by our uncoordinated efforts to act, worsening a crisis of intergenerational equity.

We should of course develop a vaccine and, in Canada, stop underfunding our public health-care system. But we must also flatten the steep curves we have tolerated for too long. For a start, we could act on wealth disparity and social inequality.

But our response to the pandemic could also illuminate new responses to fundamental problems: disrespect for the diversity of life in all its forms and lack of consideration for future generations.

Youth expression through theatre and in social movements are valuable ways to learn how youth are experiencing, processing and communicating their understandings of the profound challenges our world faces. How powerfully our post-pandemic planning could shift if we changed who is at decision-making tables and listened to youth.

Kathleen Gallagher, Distinguished Professor, Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

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Coronavirus: How Young People Around the World Are Using Art to Promote Social Movements - The National Interest

COVID-19: Could Africa’s Awakening be the Silver Lining? – Nairametrics

COVID-19 is a rude awakening for the world. It has catapulted us into a health and an economic crisis that is affecting not only the poor but also the rich. The inconvenient pandemic has laid bare for the world to see the underlying problems of the global economic paradigm. It highlights the unsustainability of the current systems and the need for change from the US with the biggest economy, to the smallest most fragile economies in Africa.

Sadly, this is not news. It was not a secret that the current economic system was not working for the majority of the planet; the dominant paradigm was simply unquestionable. However, now faced with a shared crisis on a global scale, the impact as with every other challenge will be felt more by the majority poor. And while the pandemic has been problematic for all, it comes with the very real and frightening potential for a systemic meltdown in Africa. Indeed, as that Anon WhatsApp, thats been doing the rounds says: we may be in the same storm, but we are not in the same boat.

The good news is that questions are now a fair game about the system that has left a sizable share of the global population on their knees even in good times. A system that has also been choking our planet. And respected opinion-makers around the world including Africans have indeed been calling for change.So now here we are. In response to the pandemic, many countries and international institutions have moved rapidly to adopt counter-cyclical measures to provide stimulus to the economy. The US approved two programs worth over 2.6 trillion dollars combined. International institutions are announcing programs for immediate relief and plans for additional financing that will help countries return back to scale.

READ MORE: Nigerias External Reserves plunge to $40.3 billion as devaluation concerns brew

While the wealthy countries are mobilising hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus packages, most of the worlds poor nations essentially do not have the fiscal space to do much besides hope and ask for relief. The result is that many are now calling for a moratorium on debt repayments, but this is temporary relief. The debt will still have to be paid and for many African countries, more and more, the debts are owed to the private sector. While some are calling for increased aid, others are calling for China to pay reparations to African countries. Many intellectuals of African descent have signed a public letter calling for change with a focus on the need for African governments to invest in the people, end corruption and aim for second independence.

Though these are all good ideas and will likely help, they are not enough. In essence, everyone is drawing from their usual arsenal of arguments and instruments to suggest the means to recover from this pandemic. It is a view of the epidemic as an interruption rather than as a surprise, even though gruesome, game changer. Even though we do not recognise this as the answer to the prayer we have been making on the need for transformation to deal with chronic poverty, the growing inequality, unsustainability and climate disaster, this pandemic might yet lead us towards positive economic transformation if there were such a thing. It could be the opportunity to confront our demons and perhaps shift trajectory; something we had come to believe is impossible because of our unbridled capitalist holy grail.

READ ALSO: COVID-19: Take-off of Africa Free Trade Zone AFCFTA Postponed

Our conviction is therefore that none of these well-meaning interventions is the long term solutions. Even if all the debts were magically cancelled, without changes in the underlying conditions (both global and national) our countries would likely just get into debt again soon. For example, Nigerias external debt stood at about $36 billion at the end of 2004. Negotiations with the Paris Club in 2005 yielded debt relief and with payments by the government, Nigerias external debt declined to about $3.5 billion in 2006. Today, Nigerias external debt has reached over $27.6 billion and debt service has become the biggest item in the budget, requiring over 50% of foreign earnings.

We are not arguing against aid or reparations; this is a time in which the developing world needs all the support and redress possible. However, we must view these as temporary and residual measures. They should happen, but they are not going to bring about the transformation humanity needs.It is time to break out of this illusion of a box. The problem is not only African; it is a global challenge. No amount of tinkering at the edges without a fundamental shift will solve the underlying problems. After all, Africa was being hailed as rising! Yet just one virus and we are facing a potential economic collapse in Africa and many parts of the world? And the long lines in many US cities for free meals at food banks is an indication that precarity is not limited to the developing world. We cannot and must not continue to produce a few billionaires in return for millions living on the edge. The current economic system is and has been failing humanity.

The question has often been asked what Africa may have to offer the world from her creativity, cultures and wisdom, partly because Africa has seemed less far gone, so to speak, in terms of being entrenched in global capitalism and hyperbole. Yet it has also been difficult to take Africa seriously when constantly on the backfoot patronised and infantilised in part because our leaders circle the globe with begging bowls and promises on one hand, while on the other hand, our elites are siphoning our commonwealth into private accounts overseas. But the times have become urgent, and the needs globally mutual.

READ MORE: Nigeria considers request for debt relief as debt stock climbs

For once, our underdevelopment and exclusion spell not only precarity but also opportunity. Our prevalence of and comfort with alternative and informal ways may not be simply dismissed as backwardness and fragility, but rather read as the seeds for resilience, new models, and better growth paths. Perhaps we finally have albeit in strange costume the level playing field in the realm of ideas about how to better organize our future economies.And yes, Africa is willing and able to lead in finding ideas. In fact, we are proposing a project to do just that. We are launching a project on reimagining economies around the world, starting in Africa. The project boldly calls for a real reset and invites a much more radical, imaginative exploration of new economic foundations, principles, shapes, structures and systems. The goal is to design and propose to the world new socio-economic systems that are more inclusive, sustainable, and just.

There will be no investment in what has been, no holy cows. A venture of imagination to redefine and expand the economic menu is what is called for. We will explore multiple answers and approaches, pushing to think beyond the current paradigms, to imagine a new world with novel ethos. It will require new imaginaries, new processes of engagement, new institutional configurations and methods, new eco-logics, and boundless horizons. Will the world welcome and support this potential silver lining?

For us, it comes to this: It is time to break free from our limited appetites for new thinking and imaginations. The fact is the time is never right. But there is no better time than now. We are all finally humbled to the point of vulnerability. Nobody knows any better than the other. It is therefore crucial that we seize this opportunity to seek new thinking and new ideas. The world needs everyone to contribute their ideas and innovations. We might as well get started in Africa!

Article written by Olugbenga Adesida, co-founder of The Africa Innovation Summit and co-founder of Bonako, a tech company based in Cabo Verde. and Geci Karuri-Sebina, co-founder of the Southern Africa Node of the Millennium Project and a visiting research fellow at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa

Continued here:

COVID-19: Could Africa's Awakening be the Silver Lining? - Nairametrics

From Virus to Worse – The Citizen

Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 which causes Covid-19 is just one of the more recent viruses in our environment, and it is here to stay [One in 3 recover, time to learn to live with virus, says govt; Deccan Herald; 09.05.2020, p.1]. It will add one more virus to the billions of viruses to which human bodies are already host.

The problem faced by humanity is not so much about Covid-19 per se, or about virus-caused disease or death, but more about their aggravating already damaged societal and economic situations nationally and internationally. The pre-lockdown situations of economic and physical violence, hunger and deprivation are due to development agendas based upon economic policy of perpetual economic growth. This economic development policy has been adopted and accepted globally, regardless of the political system, and dictates that perpetual economic (GDP) growth must be ensured at any human, environmental or ecological cost.

National and international media is almost entirely focused on the Covid-19 situation. They discuss and debate governments attempts to balance the dangers and risks of Covid spread on societies, against the unprecedented social and economic crises caused by social-distancing lockdowns to prevent Covid spread.

Media is also reporting the lockdown-initiated harsh reality of the misery, suffering and condemnable multiple injustices heaped upon humungous numbers of daily-wage workers, especially migrants and others in the unorganized sector because of job-loss, not being paid by employers, no food and no shelter, and no means to return to their home states. This is apart from the urban and rural poor who are equally impacted. The ground reality can no longer be concealed behind political hype.

India is in an unprecedented economic crisis concerning the manufacturing, farming, services, health, banking, finance and almost every other sector. Governments are planning and implementing measures to restore the economy, but these are directed at reverting to the pre-lockdown model, already characterized by crippling socio-economic inequality, violence, conflicts and tensions in society, miserably poor public health due to malnutrition, and rapidly deteriorating environments.

Governments are unmindful or uncomprehending that reverting to the pre-lockdown development model will drive societies towards becoming profoundly unhealthy, and perhaps towards implosion and collapse.

Of Indias labour force in the agricultural and industrial sectors, over 80% are in the unorganized sector. They do hard, unremitting and often demeaning physical work with their hands. Labour laws, meant to prevent exploitation of labour, do not apply to them. They are exploited in every which way by their employers.

Rural people, whose work or occupation is based upon agricultural seasons, practices and requirements, migrate seasonally to towns and cities for work when they are not required in agriculture. Over decades, millions have migrated to urban areas distant from their homes, and found petty employment, living in slums often cheek-by-jowl with multi-storeyed apartments. They are the invisible poor and infra-poor construction workers, domestic workers, waste pickers, and the homeless, who have established themselves in urban life, subject to the tender mercies of the police and/or the mafia. Only a minuscule fortunate among them have secured white collar jobs in offices or blue collar jobs in MSME.

These out-of-state migrants are often targeted by migrants from within the same state because of scarce jobs or civic resources, and political parties have even come to power on the basis of belonging, creating the other. Thus, social tension is a part of every migrants daily life, compounding the miseries of slum existence and exploitative employers.

The 80% unorganized workers are the backbone of urban society, which is unhealthy by any standards. Due to the 4-hours-notice national lockdown, almost all these invisible poor have lost their jobs, salary dues to them have not been paid, and their employers have vanished. They are stranded in places far from their home, without work, money, food and shelter. Their already burey-din have turned to destitution. But as the lockdown has also affected the middle class and industrial and commercial interests, the pain and suffering of the invisible backbone of urban society has suddenly become visible to them!

About 20% of the work force have the tenuous protection of labour laws, which govern work hours, remuneration, safety and other facilities at workplace, and right of collective bargaining with employers. However, in almost all labour disputes, governments are firmly if covertly on the side of the employer, who even gets police protection. This 20% is also mostly migrant like the 80% unorganized.

Covid is beginning to be more of a political issue than a public health issue. The political class faces the dilemma of balancing further damage to the staggering pre-lockdown economy by continuing lockdown, against handling the political fallout of Covid re-emergence by lifting lockdown to revive the economy. Focus is on the economy.

On the other hand, if people are considered relevant, some realities become apparent. The hundreds of millions of people who are walking home to escape from the daily hell of urban living and working conditions, dont give a damn for the economy, because they now have understood at least seven naked truths:

(1) The economy always took from them much more than it ever gave them.

(2) The economy needs them much more than they need the economy.

(3) They have been given far worse than a raw deal by the lockdown.

(4) The lockdown was imposed to protect the upper economic sections of society who imported the Coronavirus.

(5) Social-distancing, washing hands with soap and water, or using hand-sanitizer is farcical, a cruel joke for them.

(6) Suffering and death due to hunger or exhaustion is more real than due to Covid, and

(7) They have nothing to lose by going back home because, cruelly spurned by their employers, they have nothing anyway.

When lockdown was imposed, migrant workers lost no time to understand these seven truths, and their exodus exploded into national and international media. It took governments by surprise because of lack of foresight and thinking-through their executive decisions. Figuratively, their political jaws sagged open in amazement. As the negative political impact of the money-food-shelter humanitarian crisis images sunk in, the scramble in the central and state ministries of home, health, finance and food & public distribution began.

The already-hurt agriculture sector was badly wounded by the lockdown, but that did not attract governments attention like the urban situation did. A neatly-named (non-public) fund was hurriedly instituted, and governments turned to tracking Covid and scrambling to provide hospital beds and PPE for doctors, nurses and health workers.

Despite partial paralysis of decision-making, and against all odds, doctors, nurses and especially the public health workers nobly rose to the occasion at considerable personal risk and sacrifice. Much political communal finger-pointing and blame-gaming happened, as usual trying to fix who did wrong rather than what went wrong. Some political optics of banging utensils, lighting candles and showering petals happened. Indecision in policy and executive directions at top levels of central and state governments with the possible exception of Kerala resulted in condemnable but characteristic police excesses on escaping migrant workers. Notwithstanding, most district administrations handled both Covid and migrant workers situations with quiet aplomb. It might even be said that the administrations managed in spite of politicians.

Today, the unmitigated, continuing suffering of many millions of urban and rural poor remains standing at the door of the political class, which remains focused on reviving the economy rather than on peoples problems. The preferential focus of the political class stands as nakedly exposed as the suffering of the vast majority.

A survey of a small sample of migrant workers indicated that 95% of respondents wanted to return home, 75% wanted to return even if they were offered work, and 63% were owed wages from before the lockdown. Hitherto indecisive on the so-called migrant workers issue, governments have refused to allow migrant workers to return home (as in Tamil Nadu), and are amending already pro-employer labour laws to make them blatantly anti-worker (e.g., 12-hour workday, employers not bound to provide basic working conditions such as ventilation, toilets, protective equipment, etc).

Further, governments are relaxing environmental laws/rules and offering incentives to improve ease of doing business, to minimize the tough situation faced by local industrialists, and offering all possible facilities and concessions to entice industries abandoning China (as in Rajasthan). Influenced by business lobbies, Karnataka announced that it would not facilitate the travel of migrant workers back home as their labour was needed to re-start the economy, although it reversed this due to public pressure.

Thus, to revive the economy, workers have been denied the fundamental right to travel at will anywhere within the country, have lost even the little protection that labour laws provided (12-hour days, etc.), and are obliged to work for employers who spurned them. Shall we call them indentured labour or coin a more politically acceptable term?

Economic revival through labour enslavement can only lead to more injustice and worsen society already suffering due to inequity and disharmony.

The measures to re-start the economy are only making an already unhealthy society even more unhealthy, making the fading Acche-din dream even more distant. It does not need proof that holistically viewed, poor health is intimately linked with poverty, with associated hunger, malnutrition, destitution, deprivation, lack of opportunity, etc.

Successive governments have used three yardsticks to measure poverty:

(1) On the basis of price of food grain which supply 2,000 to 2,200 calories/person/ day, 37% of our population are poor.

(2) The Arjun Sengupta committee holds that 77% of our population cannot afford Rs.20 per person per day.

(3) The international standard of poverty of $1 per person per day ($1=Rs.55 when this was proposed) makes over 50% of our population poor.

All three yardsticks for poverty do not consider the carbohydrate-protein-fibre-mineral-micronutrient balance essential for nutrition, fuel for cooking, water for necessary intake and hygiene, cost of shelter, clothing, education, health or amusement. Further, about 50% of Indian children under 5-years age are malnourished, under-weight and anaemic. These future adults of India are from the impoverished majority of our population, and benefit nothing but nothing from our economy growing to $5-trillion.

It is clear that poverty is assessed using de-humanized parameters which are convenient for economists to play their statistical games, accepted by politicians and bureaucrats. All this, while surplus food grains in FCI warehouses are consumed by rodents and pests, and cost public money merely to maintain inventory, and government is reluctant to release food grains to starving/under-nourished populations.

This mindset of injustice compounded by callousness, understands the price of commodities but not the value of food or of health. It is the mindset of Indias political class which marches to the drumbeat of the corporate band, and its ideology of monetary-profit-and-economic-growth above all else.

Insofar as poverty and socio-economic inequality are concerned, over the decades since 1950, the political class is guilty of more or less but continual dereliction of sworn duty to the Constitution of India, and of neglect of its letter and spirit, to the detriment of We the People.

Health is about how we live, and the quality of life within the society in which we live. Its not about the absence of disease in an individual, but about life within the family and, along with family, in the wider community. Viewed holistically, health is a multi-dimensional entity concerning every individual within a healthy society. This is beyond the narrow scope of governments health ministries.

The health sector worldwide is corporatized, with the possible exception of Cuba. It uses yardsticks of numbers of hospital beds or doctors per thousand population. Japan stands first with over 13 hospital beds againstIndia having only 0.58. Hospitals are focussed on curing or managing disease and treating injury. They are expensive, demand cash up-front before admission, and closely linked with pharmaceutical, bio-engineering and medical insurance businesses. They are out of reach for people of the lower economic sections and in any case have little to do with health, except when viewed through the narrow perspective of absence of disease. They make little contribution to building a healthy society.

The Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution of India, require the State to assure people justice, liberty and equality, and promote fraternity among them. This is precisely about creating a healthy society, which values social qualities such as fairness, freedom, security and tolerance, and ranks them above economic concerns, while providing every individual dignified labour with economic and social security.

Plans for a self-reliant India supported by a Rs.20-trillion Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan package may provide economic impetus, but cannot create a healthy society without adherence to Constitutional imperatives.

Looking forward

The Corona pandemic has resulted in social distancing lockdown, causing very serious economic and health consequences on vast numbers of the poor. As the work-force suffers, so does the national economy. Governments are struggling to cope with the consequences, but indications are that attempts are directed at restoring the earlier economic order, which is characterized by inequality, inequity and iniquity.

This is not to point at any particular government, but at the present development model of perpetual economic growth year-on-year. Quoting Prem Chandavarkar, Our development model assumes an economy that must grow whether or not we thrive, whereas we need an economy that makes us thrive whether or not it grows. [Prem Chandavarkar; The Covid Pandemic: Seven Lessons to be Learned for a Future; May 3, 2020; ].

The present model exacerbates economic inequality, heightens social tensions and conflicts, and destroys the environment upon which all life depends. It does not need proof that the result is increasingly unhealthy human societies within which life-style diseases are by far the biggest killers of humans. Public health is a casualty of the development model, yet talking-heads only debate Covid-19 infection, death and vaccine, while governments struggle to re-establish the same development model.

As India pursues its aim to raise GDP to $5-trillion by 2024, it can only make society more unhealthy than it already is. When philosopher J.Krishnamurti said, It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society, he spoke of the society of decades ago. Society has only sickened more since then.

We need a development model to create a healthy society which ... is much more than a community in which the causes of disease are minimised. It is one where, at the very least, human creativity is free to flourish, individuals have the liberty to be who they wish to be ... and the spirit of all life and not merely human life, prospers. [The Lancet; https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)00106-9/fulltext%5D.

The Corona crisis demands an alternate development model for a healthy society. Although this is already enshrined in the core principles of the Constitution of India, our leaders have little awareness or comprehension of it amidst their myopic quest for power or pelf.

It is the duty of We the People to bring our leaders back to understand our Constitution.

Major General S.G.Vombatkere, VSM (Retd) focuses on development and strategy issues,using cross-discipline study and systems thinking.

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From Virus to Worse - The Citizen

The greatest recession – manilastandard.net

"The toll on our economy after 50 days of lockdown has been tremendous and harrowing."The economy slumped in the first quarter of 2020. Production of goods and services, what we call Gross Domestic Product or GDP during January-March this year, declined by 0.2 percent, in real terms, or minus the effect of inflation.This is the first and steepest drop in production since 1998, ending 84 quarters or 21 years of frenetic growth, the longest economic expansion in the countrys history.The economic collapse is likely to extend into the second and third quarters of 2020. Thus, we have the grim prospect of having the Greatest Recession ever.The only way to stop that economic Armageddon is to revive the economy, dead for the last 50 days. Revival means lifting the so-called Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) or even the GCQ on Luzon and key cities in the Visayas and Mindanao. These areas account for more than 75 percent of economic production.The lockdown has meant economic loss of P2 trillion so far and unprecedented hunger, malnutrition, poverty, joblessness (easily 25 million have no jobs, a third which will not be restored), restiveness, and outrage. It has made the government bankrupt by this time. Government deficit as a percentage of GDP will hit 8 percent the highest in our countrys history.This year, Filipinos were going to join the upper middle class, with per capita income nearing $4,000. Instead, easily half of Filipinos will cross the poverty line downward. The rich become poor, and the poor become poorer. We will have the most number of poor in Southeast Asia.The 1998 recession was triggered by the combined effects of the El Nio and Asian Financial Crisis.This quarters end to unprecedented robust growth was triggered by the novel coronavirus (SARS-Cov-2) which causes the disease called COVID-19 - coronavirus infectious disease 2019.Reporting on the unusually bad economic news yesterday (May 7), Acting Economic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua cited what he called three significant socio-economic risks and shocks during the first quarter of 2020, all totally unexpected: the Taal volcano eruption in January; a significant decline in tourism and trade starting in February due to the COVID-19 pandemic; and the need to implement the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in Luzon and other parts of the country starting March.Assuming positive growth averaged 5.5 percent in January, February and the first two weeks of March, economic production must have declined by 5.7 percent in the last two weeks of March to bring net negative growthto 0.2 percent for the whole first three months of 2020 (5.5 minus 5.7).Since March 2020 inflation was 2.5 percent in the first quarter, the nominal drop in economic production in the second half of March alone was probably 8.2 percent (5.7 plus 2.5). That would be the worst decline since the drop of 7.4 percent during the political crisis of 1984 triggered by the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr.. In 1984, credit stopped, production stopped, the economy slumped. The Philippines 2020 economic crisis is easily ten times the 1984 crisis. This years crisis is not just local, not just regional but global. The United States will have huge negative growth rate (-4.8 percent first quarter 2020), as will entire Europe (-3.8), China (-6.8), Japan (-7.1) and possibly every country on earth.The toll on our economy after 50 days of lockdown has been tremendous and harrowing. Two-thirds of businesses shut down, according to NEDA data. Nearly half of non-government and the self-employed were suddenly unemployed.All for what? Just to save at most 500 Filipino lives through ECQ. In the long term, because todays hunger, malnutrition, poverty and joblessness, more lives will be lost due to diseases occasioned by such mass misery.The ECQ was like looking for a couple of cockroaches. The whole building was evacuated and burned to the ground. And still, it did not find the cockroaches.Admits Secretary Chua: Containing the spread of the virus and saving hundreds of thousands of lives through the imposition of the ECQ has come at great cost to the Philippine economy. Our economic growth is showing weaker performance compared to the past two decades. Even so, our priorities are clear: to protect lives and health of our people.Chua has two solutions: ramp up agricultural production and go digital. We grow food. That is agriculture. We process the food. That is manufacturing. We deliver the processed food to consumers. That is logistics and services. Food is half of the consumer basket.The NEDA chiefs other solution is go digital. Everybody will have an ID, a bar code or a QR code. That is easier said than done. Why? The government itself is not digitalized. Why? Well, it has something to do with graft. Graft from human contact. Obviously, you cannot collect money from a computer, a bar code or a QR code. But a human being can be very susceptible to suggestion by a bureaucrat.Relief could be coming though. Even government itself seems tired of having the ECQ, mainly because it is rapidly running out cash to dole out to some 25 million families rendered poor by the coronavirus.The only way to generate money is to borrow (about P1.45 billion has been raised, but that will be good for only a month) and to collect and or raise taxes. But how can you collect taxes from a dead business? You cannot tax something you dont earn or have. It is like squeezing blood from turnips.Lets lift ECQ. It has not been worth it.[emailprotected]

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The greatest recession - manilastandard.net

Lebanon: Managing Covid-19 in the Time of Revolution –

The Covid-19 pandemic came on the heels of a deep economic, social, and political crises in Lebanon, amounting to an existential threat to the integrity of the country. Despite Lebanons record of public mismanagement, the country seems to have so far responded effectively to the pandemic. The government and the people themselves acted quickly and succeeded in slowing the pace of progression of the novel coronavirus. As of 6 May 2020, there were 750 confirmed cases and 25 deaths. Lebanon is doing fairly well compared to its neighbours when measured by the time it takes for Covid-19 death cases to double, which is now happening every 10 days with a fairly low plateau (figure 1).

Figure 1. Total confirmed COVID-19 deaths, rate of progression, 1 May 2020. Source: European CDC and Our World in Data.

But several challenges await Lebanon. There are lingering questions about the countrys ability to test and treat a future outbreak in refugee communities. The country has also failed to adopt measures to mitigate the economic impact of the crisis, which means that confinement measures are increasingly unsustainable as many people feel obliged to return to work to provide for their families. At a cost of only about 0.3% GDP (safety net and expanded health care budget combined), the governments response has been extremely subdued - ten times less than Jordan or Tunisia. The question then becomes: how sustainable are Lebanons efforts to contain and mitigate the virus? Can it prepare itself for a possible second wave? Can it devise a socio-economic plan to mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic on an already marginalized population?

The first case of the novel coronavirus was diagnosed on 20 February 2020. A few days later under mounting popular pressure, the government decided to close borders with the countries where the epidemic was becoming worrisome (especially Iran, where the first Lebanese case originated, as well as Italy, South Korea, and China). Since then, the government initiated several measures to try to contain the progression of the virus (closure of schools, day-care centres, universities, bars, restaurants, pubs, shops, malls, and finally ports of entry). Further containment strategies, like curfews and an alternating traffic system, were put in place in an attempt to slow down the progression of the virus.

The strategy seems to have worked, so far. The daily number of new Covid-19 confirmed cases has dropped and Lebanon seems to have flattened its curve. Since 13 March, the case-fatality rate has been stable at 3% (the World Health Organization estimates the global average at 3.4%). In terms of health performance (figure 2), Lebanon is interestingly behaving like Greece, it is performing better than Egypt and Algeria but worse than the Gulf countries or neighbouring Israel.

Figure 2. Total confirmed cases of COVID-19 vs. deaths due to COVID-19 per million, 18 April 2020. Source: European CDC and Our World in Data.

Some have raised concerns about the accuracy of official numbers for several reasons. The number of confirmed infections (the denominator used to assess various indicators) is probably underestimated given that recent serological studies have found that the rate of infections may be 50 to 85 times higher than official figures. Indeed, less than 1% of the population have been tested for the virus. At the beginning of the outbreak, Lebanon was conducting 50 tests per day, and has recently reached 1,500 tests per day but remains below the 2500 target set by the Ministry of Public Healths (MOPH). As of 7 May, Lebanon has carried out around 40,000 tests. The number of tests per one thousand population (4-6.67 depending if the population is 6 million or 10 million) is still far below its neighbouring countries, especially but not only the rich Gulf countries (for example, Israel 47.77, Qatar 39.21, and Saudi Arabia 11.19 - all as of May 5, 2020). Lebanon, however, still fares better than Tunisia (2.13 as of May 4, 2020), a similar middle-income country, which is likewise struggling financially (figure 3).

Figure 3. Total COVID-19 tests per 1,000 people, 6 May 2020. Source: Our World in Data.

Besides the underestimation of the number of confirmed cases due to lack of massive testing, some have cast doubts on the official numbers for a different, more political, reason. The Shiite party, Hezbollah, is managing the crisis in parallel to the Lebanese state with its parallel healthcare infrastructure, which includes one hospital and thousands of medical personnel. Moreover, Rasul al-Azam hospital, which is owned and run by Hezbollah, is not listed among the governments emergency plan. Sayed Hashem Safieddine, who heads Hezbollah executive council, has recently reported that the party has monitored 1,200 people who had returned from Iran, including pilgrims and 220 students who had been studying at Qom, a centre of Shiite learning, without saying if any tested positive and/or if these numbers are regularly reported to the MOPH.

Without reliable numbers about the trend in overall mortality in Lebanon, especially during this pandemic, and without accurate demographic information (last official census was in 1932, and current estimations are impressionistic at best, ranging from 4 million to 10 million for the overall population including refugees), the assessment of the crisis can only be partial. However, even if we assume that official numbers are inaccurate or underestimated, Lebanon seems to have been spared the worst of the pandemic. Possible causes that may explain the relatively low numbers of confirmed cases may include one or more of the following causes that have been advanced: a lack of dense urban centres, lack of public transportation, the relatively young demographic profile (7% of the population is above 65 year old vs. 19.82% in France or 21.69% in Italy), cultural behaviours (the elderly tend to live with their families and not in nursing homes where most deaths occurred in Europe), climate, and even genetic predisposition.

There are three settings with overcrowded conditions that need to be closely monitored. The first is the crowded settlements of refugees. Lebanon hosts the largest number of Syrian refugees per capita, with an official estimate of 1.5 million refugees. It also hosts an additional 18,500 refugees from various countries, as well as more than 200,000 Palestinian refugees under the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Since the beginning of the outbreak, the UN agency and its partners have mobilized in raising awareness about Covid-19 and distributing soap and other hygienic and sanitation materials to refugees. UN agencies are also helping the government expand existing capacities for hospitalization, testing, and intensive care.

While there are only a few confirmed cases among refugees to date, the situation is unpredictable. It is also important to note how prevalent stigmatization and discrimination against refugees are in Lebanon as these may pose obstacles to contain the spread of the virus. Since January 2020 and before the government declared a nationwide curfew on 26 March, some 21 municipalities had taken discriminatory measures against Syrians in their efforts to fight the spread of the virus imposing curfews and restrictions on their movements. Human Rights Watch has criticized these measures for contravening Lebanons international human rights obligations and Lebanese domestic law.

The second crowded setting of concern is prisons. On March 17, riots erupted in Lebanons two largest prisons in Roumieh and Zahle with prisoners demanding their release over fears that the epidemic would rapidly spread among them. Lebanon has notoriously overcrowded prisons; 10,000 inmates distributed among 25 prisons and 261 detention facilities. Unlike other countries, such as Iran or Turkey, which have released thousands of prisoners in an attempt to halt the epidemic, Lebanon instead adopted preventive measures, such as suspending all activities and reducing family visits. In an additional attempt to reduce anxiety and fear among prisoners, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has provided mobile SIM cards for inmates to maintain contact with their families.

The third vulnerability is the crowds that will eventually form when more protesters will go back to the street. Since 17 October 2019, widespread protests have raged across Lebanon, demanding an end to the economic and political mismanagement of the country. These protests were in reaction to the rapidly deteriorating economic and financial conditions unleashed by a financial crisis of historic proportion, with significant impact on the standard of living. Lockdown measures have slowed down the protest movement but in recent days protesters have gone back to the street demanding an end to systemic corruption, which they believe to be the source of Lebanons economic and political bankruptcy.

Since the outbreak started, the MOPH has published an emergency framework and kept the public informed about cases, mortality, and preparftness. It presented its strategy of flattening the curve given the limited numbers of ICU beds and ventilators identifying four lines of hospitals (public and private) that will be activated as the need arises. The first concerns 12 hospitals, including the main governmental hospital, which is currently treating patients, Rafic Hariri University Hospital; the second will involve another 12 public hospitals, which will be dedicated to Covid-19; the third involves yet another 17 public hospitals; and the fourth line will involve the remaining 29 public hospitals, in addition to all private tertiary hospitals.

However, public hospitals have limited capacity (222 ventilators and 419 ICU beds) in contrast to private hospitals (1242 ventilators and 2391 ICU beds). Given that the government is running large arrears with private health providers, it is not clear if private hospitals will accept to treat patients with Covid-19 for free. Given also that not all private or public hospitals have independent wards that could treat Covid-19 patients, the total number of beds available is probably less than what is projected.

The MOPH has prepared contingency plans for two scenarios, the optimistic scenario (if 1% of the population gets infected) and the pessimistic scenario (if 10% of the population gets infected) without giving reasons or explanations for these modelling assumptions. Based on these numbers, the MOPH has identified urgent needs, such as equipping 11 public hospitals with additional ICU beds, ventilators, personnel, and protective equipment. According to the MOPH, the maximum health capacity of the country would be reached with 5,000 infected patients, of which 20% would need hospital care (1000 patients), 5% would require intensive care (250 patients), while 2-3% would need mechanical ventilation (150 patients).

The number of 5,000 infected patients could be reached during what many experts fear will be a second wave, perhaps more devastating than the first Prime Minister Hassan Diab has warned about a possible second wave by July if social distancing measures are not maintained. By flattening its curve, Lebanon has successfully managed, for now, to spare hospitals a surge in critically-ill patients but it remains to be seen if this success can be maintained when the lockdown measures will be loosened.

The Covid-19 crisis comes on the heels of a series of blows that have shaken Lebanon in recent months.

The economic crisis, the result of a sudden stop of capital inflows in late 2019 to an over-indebted economy, was already devastating. The drastic lockdown measures only made the shock worse. While the economic crisis had initially mainly hit the formal sector, which is very dependent on banking relations and imports, the Covid-19 crisis extended the shock to the informal sector, which employs much of the poor, due to the collapse in catering, retail, tourism, and transport.

Businesses are going bankrupt, and unemployment is rising rapidly. Rising inflation (running now at a conservative estimate of 40% a year) and deep currency devaluation on the parallel market have sharply reduced real wages. In a matter of months, poverty has expanded dramatically with the World Bank estimating that it will reach 50% of the population by the end of 2020. With little fiscal space, the government has struggled to meet the cost of upgrading the health system and to smooth the effect of the shock on the poorer population.

The period that the country has entered is extremely volatile. The interplay between street movement and Covid-19 can, in the current fluid situation of economic, social, and political turmoil, lead to potentially chaotic dynamics.

The second wave of Covid-19 may come in Lebanon not from purely epidemiological dynamics, but from the interaction of economic collapse, revolution, and epidemic risks, which could lead to a hyper-perfect storm where each process feeds into the others, generating a generalized explosion. In recent days, protesters have been back to the street asking for the stabilization of the Lebanese pound, which is in free fall. The distributional tensions are extreme, as losses as large as twice GDP have to be distributed among the population, pitting the poor and middle class against the rich, and creating sectarian tensions. In this climate of popular insurrection, the political elites may be tempted to use the cover of the epidemic to engage in overt repression as has manifested itself with the army and security forces disbanding protesters tents. At the same time, street action is likely to only intensify in the coming weeks, leading to a faster spread of the virus, especially among the poorest in dense urban centres where hunger is a bigger worry and threat than the virus.

More optimistically, there is also a possible salvation pathway of cooperation and solidarity in the face of national adversity. This may be too much to expect in the current circumstances, where many protesters believe that the current government is hopeless because of its dependence on the existing political class. But that pathway could use the relative success in managing the Covid-19 crisis to rebuild trust between the citizens, the state, and the elites. In the same vein, the risk of the pandemic spreading across society may be more threatening than the risk of social and economic division, pushing the Lebanese across class and sect to work together in finding a solution to the historic economic challenges that both divide them, but that can also only be addressed successfully through national cooperation. Perhaps then, paradoxically, it may be the second wave that will initiate the serious soul-searching that Lebanon requires to allow it to navigate these troubled waters and invent the new social contract it urgently needs.

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Why Now is the Time to Think Global – Resilience

Perhaps characteristically for the global media, as COVID-19 cases soar in the US and Europe, little attention is being paid to Africa, South East Asia, Central America and other disadvantaged parts of the world. However, the grim reality is that this disease, carried by the wealthiest as they jetted across the globe, will undoubtedly be felt most strongly by the worlds poorest: those who have never seen the inside of an aeroplane.

As we turn our attention to our closest neighbours and seek to support those within our own communities, let us not forget our responsibility to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members of the human race. Even as we are forced to live locally, it is critical that we think globally.

A Looming Crisis

COVID-19 has been labelled by some as a great equalizer, as a virus that affects people of all races, nationalities and socio-economic backgrounds. In reality, this couldnt be further from the truth: we have already seen how the virus has hit poorer communities in the US harder than the wealthy ones, and this disparity will be even more acute on a global scale

So far, there are relatively few reported cases of COVID-19 in developing countries. The countries with the highest numbers reported cases are among the worlds richest: the USA tops the list, followed by Spain, Italy, the UK, Germany, and France.

These figures are misleading, however, as the testing rates in many countries are a fraction of those in Europe and North America, and not all governments can be trusted to report accurate figures. Nevertheless, it seems that the pandemic hasnt taken hold in many African, Latin American or South East Asian countries yet.

The threat of COVID-19 looms large over Sub-Saharan Africa in particular. Experts are warning that it is only a matter of time before COVID-19 takes hold across the continent. News that Borno State in Nigeria went from reporting its first case to over 50 cases including three deaths in less than a week seems to be an ominous warning of things to come. When the pandemic does properly begin in Africa and other disadvantaged regions, it will be devastating.

The health systems in many developing countries are simply not prepared to deal with a pandemic that crippled Italys health system, reportedly the second-best in the world, and is severely straining those in the US, the UK, and other wealthy nations. To say they are ill-equipped is an understatement.

The Central African Republic has just three ventilators for a population of 4.6 million people, while Somalia has not a single working ventilator for their 15 million people. Uganda has only 55 intensive-care beds, less than one per one million people.

Social distancing is literally impossible in many places. For example, in the slums of Kibera on the outskirt of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, around 250,000 people live on 2.5 square kilometres of land, meaning no chance of keeping a six-foot distance from others. Additionally, many communities across the developing world lack running water, meaning that even if they receive soap through international aid, hand washing is virtually impossible.

We know that pre-existing health conditions and poor physical health make people more vulnerable to COVID-19. We have already seen that the virus is disproportionately killing black populations in the US, due to economic and health disparities. Less data is available for developing countries, as is often the case, but following the same logic we can assume that the populations in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia, subject to even greater global economic and health disparities, will feel the worst impacts of COVID-19.

When vaccines and treatments emerge for COVID-19, there is no guarantee that they will be readily available in many countries. We may very well see a repeat of the 2009 H1N1 (Swine Flu) epidemic, when manufacturing agreements, domestic export policies and a simple lack of funds meant that developing countries struggled to get hold of the vaccine, with far more devastating consequences.

Even when these treatments do reach the developing world, there is a very real risk that fake versions rapidly be circulated in places like Ghana, which has a large pre-existing problem with fake and sub-standard medication. Ghana is not alone: according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in 10 medical products in low- and middle-income countries are substandard or falsified. This will likely have deadly results in the fight against COVID-19.

Additionally, as limited health resources are straining to address the looming COVID-19 crisis, there is very little space left to address other health needs. These gaps are being exacerbated by social distancing and strict lockdowns. Surgeries are already being cancelled and health problems are going untreated. Immunisation campaigns for measles, polio, cholera and other vaccine-preventable diseases have been postponed across the globe.

Resources are also being diverted from sexual and reproductive health. Additionally, authorities are less able to respond to gender-based violence, with the UNFPA warning that women and girls are now uniquely vulnerable with increased risks of maternal deaths, unsafe abortions, and spousal violence. Womens organizations in West Africa, for example, fear that we will see an increase in teenage pregnancy, a pattern already seen during the Ebola epidemic. On an already-overpopulated planet, this is a huge concern for both the Earth and the people competing to use its limited resources.

Frightening Implications

The impact of COVID-19 on the worlds poorest countries is not limited to impact on individuals health or health systems in general. The pandemic is set to be accompanied by starvation and violence, among other devastating impacts.

Food security is becoming a major concern in many countries. The UN World Food Programme is warning that COVID-19 could cause the number of acutely hungry people to nearly double from 135 million to 265 million worldwide. Severe food crises were already present in places such as Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Venezuela, South Sudan, and Afghanistan before COVID-19 hit.

Now, with food production being limited, transportation hampered, and populations under lockdown and therefore unable to earn a living, this global crisis will worsen. The WFP notes that predicted food shortages will be felt not only in low-income but also middle-income countries.

Starvation will be an indirect impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of many. However, the novel coronavirus is far from the only reason behind this hunger: global food insecurity is part of a complex picture of natural disasters, conflict, population growth, and poverty. Many of these factors, in turn, are due to broken economies, dysfunctional governments, crippling debt and inequity on a global scale.

The reality of one part of the world struggling to feed themselves while the other struggles with too much food is far from new, and this is a product of a global system that has been built over centuries of exploitation. It reaches back to colonial powers pillaging the resources, lands and the people of other places, and continues today in many forms. For example, we have an international fashion industry that produces staggering cheap clothes for the West by exploiting the workers and natural environments of developing countries.

Consider how the US and European nations are now struggling with food surpluses because social distancing policies have led to a drop in food consumption. Large farms in the US are destroying eggs and vegetables and dumping milk, while Europeans are being urged to consume more steak, cheese, and fries to counteract falling demand and protect local farmers. The image of some countries destroying literal mountains of food even as others head toward starvation is a stark illustration of current levels of global inequality.

A brief review of the fallout as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps across the globe reveals how deep and wide-ranging the impacts of this virus are. It is also becoming startlingly obvious that the pain is being felt most sharply by the worlds poorest and most disadvantaged countries.

Even as El Salvador has been promoted as an example of the positive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic with a reported dramatic drop in homicides, other forms of violence have emerged or intensified. Social distancing is being enforced with baseball bats and truncheons in the Central American country, as well as in India and parts of Africa. Brutal enforcement of lockdowns in Africa in particular has raised red flags for many, with fears this could be used to usher in new eras of political repression and further restrict human rights.

There has also been a spike in gender-based violence across the world during the pandemic. This type of violence, under-reported in every country in the world, is particularly difficult to track in developing countries. However, there is stark evidence that domestic violence and sexual abuse has increased as citizens are forced into lockdowns: figures in South Africa, Kenya, Russia, the UK, the US, and elsewhere have shown a rise in incidents or crisis calls since the implementation of restrictions. This amplification of an existing problem is an unsurprising effect of victims being locked in with their aggressors.

The natural environment is suffering too. In South Africa, a steep drop off in game tourism, including hunting and wildlife viewing, has left animal populations vulnerable to poaching. In East Africa, COVID-19 has hampered efforts to respond to the regions worst desert locust outbreak in decades, which will also contribute to food insecurity.

The Greatest Threat

Even as the worlds most vulnerable communities need help more than ever, assistance is being scaled down or cut off completely. As the world hurtles toward global recession and even its biggest economies, from China to the US, teeter on the edge of recession or even collapse, this has devastating implications for the poorest and most disadvantaged people globally.

Developing countries and the non-government organisations that provide essential services to their populations are now facing more need than ever with shrinking resources. Many international foundations that fund the programs that provide healthcare, food, and other essential services in developing countries are turning their focus closer to home. A number of Western-based foundations have announced that they will only fund programs in their own countries, making funding opportunities for organizations working in developing countries scarcer than ever. Some of these organizations also rely on international volunteers to help to deliver their programs, and this help has disappeared as it becomes impossible for volunteers to travel.

There are also worrying signs for international aid issued by governments, another major source of funds needed to provide basic services in the developing world. Along with the Trump Administrations plans to freeze funding to the World Health Organization, USAID, the US Government aid agency, has restricted the use of their international aid funding. USAIDs new guidelines require aid recipients to seek prior approval before buying personal protective equipment (PPE) or ventilators. It has been speculated that this move is in response to the current shortage US of these items and a desire by the Trump Administration to safeguard their own supply, literally putting their oxygen mask on first before helping others.

This policy from the largest international donor for health could seriously impede the global response to COVID-19. If this is indeed the motivation behind this move, it is another example of a rich country looking after their own interests before those of other countries. Some would argue that this is the role of any government, but does this work in a global pandemic where if one country is affected, we are all affected? More importantly, is this just?

This is, of course, understandable. With the situation is dire in so many places, it is natural that governments will turn their attention to dealing with the problems within their own borders. On an individual level, it is also understandable that many people are choosing to deal with the issues that are closest to home: helping the older people in their street, or donating to a local food bank.

The scale of the crisis is so large that we frankly cant conceptualise or quantify it; therefore, we cut it down into bite-sized chunks and try to address those. That is, to the extent that people can deal with issues at all: psychologists are warning that the pandemic is triggering high levels of grief and anxiety for some people. Some, therefore, are necessarily turning their gaze even further inwards and focusing on self-care.

On a political level, Western leaders are concerned with how not only this crisis will impact their countries and their people, but also their own political standing. President Trump is the prime example of a leader positioning themselves during the pandemic to secure votes for the next election, but he is not alone. It is the nature of politics that politicians will leverage even devastating situations for political gain, and this will take precedence over moral imperatives.

All of these factors are coming together to create a perfect storm in which the privileged turn their focus inward to the needs of their own country, while the need and the crisis only continues to grow in developing countries.

However, there are two very compelling reasons why we cannot, either as individuals or as countries, turn our gaze exclusively inward at this time, and instead need to think globally:

1) COVID-19 is not a local or a national issue: it is a truly international one. If any country wants to protect their own citizens and their economy, they need take a global approach to controlling and eventually eliminating this virus.

2) Even though every country in the world will be economically and socially impacted by this crisis, the effects will be exponentially worse in countries that dont have the resources to deal with the situation effectively.As members of the human race we cannot ignore those who are most vulnerable to, and will be worst effected by this global crisis.

The New Normal

Some commentators are calling for us to not return to normal, because normal was broken. This is undoubtedly true: the present system is one of deeply-entrenched inequality, where one portion of the world can exploit people and the environment for short-term profit, driven by greed and the myth of exponential grow from limited resources. The COVID-19 pandemic, as devastating as it will be, is indeed an opportunity to hit the reset button on the global system and design something that will serve all of us better.

However, let us not allow the new normal to be one where we focus only on our local communities. We need to think global. The reasons why our previous normal was so broken stark inequality, ecological disaster, broken political systems are the very reasons why the most vulnerable people in the world are going to be worst hit in the months and years to come, and the least equipped to deal with these problems.

In some ways, thinking local is absolutely what we should do: we should look to local food production, to limit international shipping as well as international travel. At this time of a crisis of unimaginable scale, it could be tempting to look local. It may seem easier build things from the ground up, looking to solve the problems closest to home, one by one.

However, we cannot pretend we live in a bubble. We cannot act as if the issues faced by the worlds poorest communities are nothing to do with us. The truth is they live on the flipside of the privilege we enjoy. Their disadvantage is born out of the colonialism, slavery and resource exploitation that allowed the West to become wealthy in the first place, compounded more recently by decades of debt, profit and neo-colonialism. The West, therefore, has a responsibility to solve the problems it created in many parts of the world. The crushing impacts of COVID-19 will be just one more consequence of that legacy.

If the moral argument is not compelling enough, perhaps self-interest will be. As the world seeks to eradicate COVID-19 and protect their populations, not to mention their economies, they should consider one thing: this truly global pandemic will not disappear until it is gone from every corner of the globe. If the US and Europe want to eliminate the novel coronavirus in their countries, they need to eliminate it everywhere.

As we seek to build a new normal, we must make sure to include the worlds most vulnerable communities in this picture. On an individual level, we can financially support organizations and programs not only in our local communities, but also further afield. Volunteers who can no longer fly across the world to contribute their skills can help by volunteering online. We can all hold our governments accountable, making sure they support developing nations through aid funding and more equitable and sustainable international policies.

On a political level and in the long term, we need strategies to build a more sustainable, equitable world as the world recovers from this unprecedented crisis. We need to shift the way we think about debt, about resources, and about people. We can no longer treat human and natural resources as infinite supplies ready to be converted into profit. We must protect everyone, but especially the worlds most vulnerable communities from disaster by taking action on climate change.

In the short term, however, as the poorest members of the human race face illness, starvation and death, the international community needs to take a coordinated approach to:

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis and it requires a global response. The worlds wealthiest and most privileged, on both a political and individual level, have a responsibility to act to protect the most vulnerable members of a human race that is facing a common threat. This responsibility is borne out of moral decency, out of collective guilt for actions in the recent and distant past, and out of a shared interest that means that if one of us falls ill, we all fall.

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Why Now is the Time to Think Global - Resilience

Helping women and girls survive Covid-19 and its aftermath – Eco-Business

With Covid-19 imposing new challenges on women and exacerbating the numerous other difficulties they already face in their daily lives, a gender-sensitive response is crucial to this global health emergency.

So what do we know about the impact of COVID-19 on women and what would a gender-sensitive response look like?

Historically, women played three key roles in households, communities, and societies - mothers, nurses, and teachers. This continues today as gender stereotypes prevail in our societies and they influence career choices made by women and men.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that women make up almost 70 per cent of healthcare workers around the world. Moreover, women continue to make up the majority of health facility service staff (cleaning and housekeeping, laundry and food services).

Providing support through targeted social assistance schemes for women during this pandemic and ensuring womens access to finance is pivotal for a speedy recovery and long-term economic and social improvements.

These healthcare workers and service staff are on the front lines of the fight against Covid-19 and, as such, are at a greater risk of being infected.

In some countries, there have been reports of female nurses experiencing difficulties finding smaller-sized personal protective equipment and getting access to feminine hygiene products.

We also know that many women around the world bear much of the responsibility for child and elderly care, and on average perform three times more unpaid care work than men.

With offices being shut down, many women around the world are losing their jobs and income, as many of their professions prevent them from working remotely. As it generally takes longer for women to recover their income, they are at a greater risk.

On top of that, juggling domestic responsibilities and child and elderly care is a challenge in itself, but with schools shutting down, the pandemic exacerbates these challenges.

With many women expected to take the responsibility for taking care of family members infected by Covid-19, these social and economic burdens will only be intensified.

There are other numerous challenges that arise during a global health emergency. Much of the research shows an increase in domestic violence associated with isolation and lockdowns.

With the pandemic presenting more challenges, victims of gender-based violence may be unable to receive the life-saving care and treatment, report such cases, or even escape, as hospitals, police stations, and other institutions are overburdened with handling cases related to the virus or not operating.

In its 2018 report, UNICEF highlighted that women and children are at greater risk of exploitation and sexual abuse during public health outbreaks, as was seen during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

With more governments implementing lockdowns, we must pay attention to the sex-disaggregated data when developing a gender-sensitive response.

The decision makers need to be mindful of gender issues and ensure that they are taken into account as we seek solutions in response to, and recovery from, the Covid-19 pandemic. Its clear that pandemics worsen existing inequalities experienced by women and girls.

As such, there is a need for immediate solutions and policies that will prevent the worsening of gender inequalities and widening of the gender gap.

For starters, ongoing problems and issues experienced by women healthcare workers need to be addressed. At a minimum, women caregivers and frontline responders should be provided proper personal protective equipment (PPE), including feminine hygiene products for those working longer shifts.

Additionally, during this pandemic, it is crucial that women and girls have access to adequate maternal and pediatric care, reproductive health services and essential information.

Moreover, as more women continue to lose their jobs and steady sources of income as a result of the pandemic, it is critical that necessary targeted support is provided to ensure food security to prevent these vulnerable individuals from succumbing to negative coping mechanisms.

And last but not least, the issue of increasing incidents of gender-based violence which have been reported by many countries is vital to be addressed.

Some countries have recently introduced policies and special measures to address this phenomenon including by introducing alternative reporting mechanisms, remote services delivered via mobile phone or messaging apps, and supporting shelters for gender-based violence survivors.

It is crucial to continue developing and adapting such measures to ensure that the most vulnerable receive necessary support.

As policies and recovery plans are developed, it is imperative that long-term targeted economic and gender empowerment strategies are embedded to mitigate the impact of this pandemic and future outbreaks.

To do so, data related to the outbreak must be disaggregated by sex, age, and other criteria, to accurately reflect the different challenges in different demographics arising from the pandemic.

Policy makers need to be mindful of ways to support further economic development and post-pandemic recuperation.

Lastly, as more small businesses collapse and demand for informal work arrangements decreases, women will continue losing financial independence, affecting their empowerment in the short term, with potential longer-term impacts on childrens schooling (particularly for girls).

This, could result in adverse effects on female labor force participation for the next generation.

Providing support through targeted social assistance schemes for women during this pandemic and ensuring womens access to finance is pivotal for a speedy recovery and long-term economic and social improvements.

In the efforts to restore the economy, the inspiration should be to use this opportunity and develop a socio-economic system that is capable of delivering gender parity.

Malika Shagazatovais Social Development Specialist (Gender and Development), Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department at ADB. This article is republished from the ADB Blog.

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Helping women and girls survive Covid-19 and its aftermath - Eco-Business

Coronavirus crisis gives us a unique opportunity to evaluate the path between Socialism and Capitalism The Third Way – OpIndia

What is The Third Way? However, I call it The Original- Way and the article uses both phrases interchangeably. Shri Dattopant Thengdi, a giant among the economists, intellectuals and thinkers of his time propounded the concept of The Third Way in contradistinction to the two then existing ways Capitalism and Communism and hence the nomenclature.

As predicted by Thengdi Ji in 1970s Communism expired in 1990s and its central point USSR disintegrated although China is ruled by a Communist Party but is no more a communist country. China today is a totalitarian dictatorship having the worst of both Capitalism and Communism. Thengdi further opined that the demise of Capitalism is only delayed and it has to happen eventually. The failure of the two systems led to the search for an alternative wholistic way where an individual is not an atomistic isolated cog for reckless and relentless maximisation of profits at any cost overlooking the human element who is the first brick in a building block called family which in turn form societies which in turn form great nation-states. Thus behavioural aspects of human beings cannot be ignored as was being done in the two systems but adopting different strategies.

Capitalism focuses on extreme individual values and rights as opposed to forced collectivism. Greed and domination are the underlying premises of the system based on relentless & reckless exploitation of both human and material resources adversely impacting the planet and the social behaviour. This gives rise to another principle, as I see it, inherent in the Third Way is The need and not the greed should be the underlying basis of our policies and behaviour at all levels. The lack of this principle is leading to the collapse of existing systems. For example, the concept of L-1 status in awarding contracts to the lowest bidderis based on distrust and greed to somehow capture the contract whatever may be the impact on quality or timely execution. Another example of trust and need infused together is Govt. Of India allowing self-attestation of documents for govt. purposes. Thus trust on its own people is also inherent in The Third Way but that does not mean caution and vigilance has to be thrown to the wind.

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The present Coronavirus pandemic has highlighted certain global responses to the crisis viz-a-viz Indias response where in other countries the system totally depended on the govt to mitigate the miseries of the people whereas in India apart from timely and praiseworthy efforts of the Government of the day the entire society collectively including RSS Swayamsevaks and other associated organisations like Sewa Bharati rose to meet the challenge. Even internationally Hindu Sewa Sangh and Sikh communities are in the forefront in many countries. Hence The Third Way focuses on the role of society and its behavioural aspects. Thus the society has to take the leading role in the crisis and even in normal times including in national restructuring and rebuilding with GOVT. being the facilitator. The Third Way focuses on the interconnectedness of individual to the family, family to the society and society to the nation highlighting the psychological and material backward and forward linkages.

The third way considers society as an integral part of nature as reflected in our ancient wisdom and culture and still reflected in some indigenous tribes although conversions have brought a hiatus between the indigenous tribes and nature.

A prime requirement of a successful nation is a healthy nation both physically and spiritually and for that to happen one requires behavioural changes in the basic conduct and values of human beings and their families. In this regard, ancient Indian wisdom of Ayurved, Yog, Pranayam, exercises and meditation comes in and are slowly leading to the behavioural changes universally. International Yoga Day is a prime illustration.

There are no instant quick-fix solutions and patience and self-confidence in Self become an important virtue to achieve the Objectives of the Original/Third Way. This path has to be led by men of virtue without expectation of any award or reward through the collective and cooperative effort of the society.

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One of the important inherent and intrinsic foundations of the third way is the realisation of the sense of duty and responsibility in every citizen towards your nation first, family, society and nature.

Self Reliance is one of the core principles of the Third Way from basic village level to the national level keeping the highest standards of excellence and quality in goods and services. Keeping India in mind it espouses and focuses on employment generation, skill-based self-employment and SMSEs industries which do not adversely impact the environment and seeks to promote the same. In order to promote self-reliance, society has to promote indigenously manufactured goods restricting imports to the bare essentials. The feeling of self-reliance has to be reflected in our day to behaviour and conduct and needs to be promoted.

Education is an important tool to bring about behavioural changes. The existing Western-centric education system focussing only on material needs has failed the nation and the need of the hour is to have an education system utilising modern science and environment-friendly technologies infusing with the traditional system and ancient knowledge and wisdom to bring about the espoused behavioural changes in the society. A modified Gurukul system and research-based institutions linked to the industry has to be promoted.

The socio-economic policies have to address the basics. The focus has to be on low energy input non-polluting industries both at rural and urban level achieving its goals through collective effort and the cooperative movement. Incentives to areas where we lack a particular industry must be given and at the same time not fall in the trap of disruptive forces as in the case of Copper industry where we became a importing country from being an exporting one. One must remember if farmers and village economy suffers the nation suffers the most. In times of Pandemic rural economy is proving the backbone of the country. Capacity creation with a view to substituting imports promotes self-reliance.

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The healing of nature during the lockdown has reinforced the holistic approach of the third way which restoring the damage done to the planet. Water and forest conservation, plastic-free world, cleanliness, traditional practices like Organic farming, cow protection, conservation and promotion etc are subsets of The Third Way.

An out of the box suggestion based on the environmental impact of lockdown is to have our economic policies, manufacturing and production, supply and distribution networks, stocks and so on so designed and adjusted so as to have a yearly lockdown of one month on a regular basis. This would not only heal the planet but its inhabitants also.

The discipline of every citizen both in public and private life is a sine qua non of every successful country or aspiring to be one. Cleanliness and following the laws of the land and rules and regulations framed therein is an important feature. A leading example is the regions in the country that followed COVID-19 pandemic guidelines and maintained public discipline in their behaviour have been more successful in containing the spread of Coronavirus.

The concept of a Third Way can only succeed if there is self-confidence in the society in its past, present and future. That confidence not only comes from the present but equally from the past. Hence our Eurocentric colonial history written by British trained leftist historians has to be trashed and the same has to be restored and written again.

Why the third way? The existing systems of the world have led to increasing inequities, dissatisfied and discontented population and societies, overpopulation, destruction of nature both immediate and unseen has both created and accelerated the problems. The belief that my religion is the best and is the only path to salvation to the exclusion of other belief systems and modes of worship is a major cause of terrorism in the world apart from other conflicts arising from trying to have exclusive control over scarce resources and to have global domination. The excessive weaponisation by some countries has led to the fear in others leading to a never-ending arms race. The more polluting developed countries are shifting the blame on less polluting countries forcing them to agree to unachievable goals. But one must remember the whole planet is intrinsically connected and the action of chosen few can destroy the entire world. Therefore, the concept of Vasudhaiv Kutumbukam is not in a vacuum. The holistic approach of the Third Way of inclusiveness, interconnectedness and mutual trust can effectively address such issues.

The steps were taken by govt of India such as Mudra loans to encourage self-employment, SMSEs, skill development, promoting organic farming, land pooling in farming etc through cooperative and collective effort, DBT, digitisation of trading processes to eliminate middlemen etc are the steps reflecting the espoused approach.

The Third or The Original way approach expects that our govt brings in new education policy, restoring history, controlling the population, focussing on the family as a building block and unit of overall development of society and the nation, enforcing public discipline, promoting self-reliance and infusing traditional wisdom with modern science and research. A wholistic policy is required where economic factors are not sole parameters of development but integrating self and the society and shifting focus from individual to the society with the ingrained realisation of fundamental duties in our Constitution. On the other hand society and its components have to develop a deep sense of duties and responsibilities to the nation, inclusiveness, non-discrimination, equity, equality, justice and overall sense of collective happiness and that requires psychological and behavioural change at every level where rights dont take precedence over ones own duties. And Bharat has to chart its own path.

And to those who heard Sarsanghchalak of RSS, Shri Mohan Bhagwats online Udbodhan on Baudhik warg on 26th April 2020, the present article will have some, although not complete, resonance. Bhagwat appropriately explained the concept of The third way and its application in the context of the present crisis without naming it.

Another pertinent fact of history is that two great travellers one Megasthanese in the 3rd BCE and Huen Tsang in the7th CE having a time gap of one thousand years between them have both written that one common quality of Bhartiya people is that they are simple, honest and trustworthy to the core and the Third Way has deep faith in Indian people and its inherent qualities to steer the nation towards being a Vishwaguru.

The Third Way or the Original way concept is not a difficult goal and is achievable in a decade or so with patience, small sacrifices from everyone and a self-confident nation and that is, is in our DNA as proven by thousands of years of history.

The present Coronavirus pandemic and the resultant crisis has given us a unique opportunity to review and reassess the existing system which is difficult to do in normal times and develop anew unique socio-economic India specific new system having universal values based on The Third and the Original Way.

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Coronavirus crisis gives us a unique opportunity to evaluate the path between Socialism and Capitalism The Third Way - OpIndia

The Unseen Link Between Clean Cooking and the COVID-19 Pandemic – Inter Press Service

Featured, Food & Agriculture, Global, Headlines, Health, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

AMSTERDAM, May 4 2020 (IPS) - The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities and revealed to what extent current economic models are not sustainable. It has also shown that most countries are not equipped to cope with a health crisis.

The World Food Program is warning that the lives and livelihoods of 265 million people in low and middle-income countries will be under severe threat unless swift action is taken to tackle the pandemic.

This is especially true for the 840 million people in the world who still do not have access to electricity. And the further 3 billion who rely on inefficient stoves and polluting fuels like kerosene, biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal for cooking or heating.

The results of the study suggest that Long-term exposure to air pollution increases vulnerability to experiencing the most severe Covid-19 outcomes. Similar conclusions on the link between high mortality in northern Italy and the level of air pollution in this region have been drawn by the Aarhus University. The evidence builds upon previous research during the 2003 SARS outbreak.

This raises the question of the impact that a respiratory illness like COVID-19 could have on people who are already exposed to indoor pollution. Particularly the poorest and most vulnerable who do not have access to clean cooking options and already bear the burden of energy poverty.

Four million premature deaths

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that each year around four million people die prematurely from illnesses attributable to household air pollution. Women and children in many communities are disproportionately affected because of their traditional home-based activities, including cooking. As the WHO states, Close to half of pneumonia deaths among children under five are caused by particulate matter (soot) inhaled from household air pollution.

But at present, this issue is not getting the political attention it deserves. As a consequence, access to clean cooking solutions largely remains lacking, which vastly increases the risk for vulnerable groups during the current pandemic.

How to save millions of potential victims

The COVID-19 pandemic is intimately linked to the other challenges our world is facing. From outdoor and indoor pollution to climate change, from the over-exploitation of natural resources to the loss of biodiversity, these crises are all interlinked.

They are the product of a global socio-economic system that considers nature and ecosystems as its farms and factories. The response to the virus outbreak should not be limited to containing its spread in the short-term, but must entail a long-term vision of sustainability and inclusion.

There is an immediate need to ensure food security and support our health systems, especially in less developed countries and areas where lack of or unreliable electricity access prevents basic health service provision.

But going forward, governments have to respond to the pressing issues shaping our future. While an immediate health and financial response is crucial to prevent further spread of the virus and economic collapse, other long-term changes are urgently needed. One of these is the switch from traditional fuels to clean cooking solutions. This will protect millions of women, men and future generations by giving them a better chance of survival from COVID-19 and any new respiratory viruses.

A forward-looking strategy

Fortunately, the solutions already exist. But they have received too little attention and financial support. A Hivos/World Future Council report published last year shows that the costs of cooking with solar electricity using efficient slow cookers and pressure cookers have decreased in the last few years. So these clean alternatives are now competitive with the costs of traditional cooking fuels.

In the light of the annual toll to human health, the environment, and local economies, clean cooking solutions should be part of a global forward-looking strategy. Including these solutions in the wider plan for the recovery is ambitious, yet necessary. It is high time for governments, policy and decision-makers to embrace this new opportunity. They need to step up action and ensure an inclusive, resilient, sustainable and just future. After years of inaction on this front, now is the time to cooperate in a global response.

The big picture

Clean cooking solutions are part of the larger push towards decentralized renewable energy (DRE). COVID-19 will not only impact existing DRE projects that provide energy services to millions of people. It will also affect the future of the sector, jeopardizing our efforts to ensure a just energy transition for all. The DRE sector cannot be allowed to fail. That is why Hivos joined the Alliance for Rural Electrifications call to action for redirecting and adapting funding windows to the decentralized renewable energy sector.

We need to jointly strive for an inclusive energy sector. We must ensure that the most vulnerable people and the prime victims of this crisis are included in designing energy policies and programs.

This opinion piece was originally published here

Eco Matser is Hivos global Climate Change / Energy and Development Coordinator

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The Unseen Link Between Clean Cooking and the COVID-19 Pandemic - Inter Press Service

Over 500 Doctors Advise Ortega: Its Still Possible to Carry Out Mitigation Actions – Havana Times

Emergency entrance at the Aleman Nicaraguense Hospital in Managua, where some patients with Covid-19 in Nicaragua are treated. Photo: Carlos Herrera

Health professionals demand government actions against Covid-19 to contain the pandemic in Nicaragua

By Keyling T. Romero (Confidencial)

HAVANA TIMES In a forceful declaration, 543 Nicaraguan doctors demand that the Ortega Government implement mitigation measures to reduce the impact of Covid-19 in the country, which, if not, would result in deaths and in the collapse of the health system.

Despite the negligent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in our country and that economic stability has prevailed over the health and common good of the Nicaraguan people, we believe that at the time that the curve of serious cases starts to rise, it is still possible to carry out actions, say the doctors.

In the document, the doctors point out six key actions that the State should follow to slow down the growth of the curve:

Carry out the massive performance of tests both publicly and privately. Because, universal sampling is essential to mitigate the epidemic and reduce the impact on mortality and health services of the state and nation.

Be transparent on relevant data on the evolution of the epidemic in accordance with international epidemiological standards, using clear technical language.

Publicly establish its contingency plan for this public health emergency and immediately implement the measures of social distancing and restriction of mass meetings, as well as isolation and quarantine that are necessary.

Guarantee adequate protection measures for all health personnel of public care services.

Guarantee sufficient existence of diagnostic means, medications and life support equipment (such as ventilators) to all patients with Covid-19 that warrant it.

Guarantee policies to reduce or cushion the damage at the socio-economic level (freezing of water, electricity, VAT and bank debts, implement aid funds, etc.) that would alleviate the crisis of health workers and citizens in general, as well as guaranteeing the observance of human rights to the most vulnerable population, like the rest of the Central American and other countries.

Government tries to hide the Covid-19 situation

They also denounce the handling of the health crisis in Nicaragua, noting that the authorities of our country have promoted disinformation, exposed health personnel to contagions by sending them to do house to house visits, and they have not taken the necessary sampling to understand the behavior of the pandemic in the country.

Misleading information has been generated about people affected by the infection. This type of communication has created disinformation in the population, hindering the responsible management of the health crisis, becoming instead a facilitating factor in the spread of infection. The sampling of cases is centralized, with arbitrary and whimsical criteria for its realization, which seeks to conceal the state of the pandemic, they denounced.

The doctors also recalled the donation of 26,000 rapid tests delivered by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration to Nicaragua, the million dollars donated by the Government of China (Taiwan) to buy medical supplies and equipment, and the concern of the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) in the face of the pandemic situation in Nicaragua.

We believe that as Nicaraguan citizens we have the right to receive quality comprehensive health, without discrimination, and it is an inherent obligation of the state to guarantee it. Health, in addition to being a Constitutional right, is a human right and it is an inalienable responsibility of the Nicaraguan state to guarantee this right, they state in the letter.

However, they praised the work of health personnel who are providing care to the population even though they do not have the necessary protection.

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Over 500 Doctors Advise Ortega: Its Still Possible to Carry Out Mitigation Actions - Havana Times

The International Order After COVID-19 – The Asean Post

Running parallel to the global battle against the coronavirus pandemic is a tug of war between two competing narratives about how the world ought to be governed. Although addressing the pandemic is more urgent, which narrative prevails will have equally far-reaching consequences.

The first narrative is straightforward: a global health crisis has further demonstrated the need for multilateralism and exposed the fallacy of go-it-alone nationalism or isolationism. The second narrative offers the counterview: globalisation and open borders create vulnerabilities to viruses and other threats, and the current struggle for control of supply lines and life-saving equipment requires that each country first take care of its own. Those in the first camp regard the pandemic as proof that countries must come together to defeat common threats; those in the second see it as proof that countries are safer standing apart.

At first blush, COVID-19 seems likely to corroborate the argument for a more coordinated international approach. Given that the coronavirus does not stop at national borders, it stands to reason that the response should not be constrained by them either.

This makes perfect sense from a public-health perspective. If COVID-19 persists anywhere, it will remain an incipient threat everywhere, regardless of efforts to wall it off. The more widely that testing kits and, when discovered, treatments and vaccines, are distributed, the faster the pandemic will be vanquished. The more that scientific knowledge is shared, the faster those drugs will be developed. And, in the meantime, the more that governments coordinate on matters such as travel restrictions and social distancing, the smoother the exit from this crisis.

The pandemic also would seem to call for greater collective efforts to resolve deadly conflicts, and not only as a means of helping vulnerable local populations. Owing to the additional socioeconomic stress introduced by the pandemic, ongoing intra- or inter-state conflicts could lead to a further loss of governmental authority or even state collapse in countries already near the breaking point. Beyond the obvious human costs, this would create new and growing pockets where COVID-19 could spread unchecked; larger migration flows over less regulated borders; and greater opportunities for violent non-state actors to exploit the chaos, take root, and expand.

Finally, there is a clear economic rationale for pursuing international cooperation. By helping the hardest-hit countries, all countries can soften the blow they will experience from the looming global meltdown.

Yet the pandemic also strengthens the pull of the rival view. Crises tend to intensify and accelerate pre-existing trends and severe crises all the more so. The COVID-19 pandemic has coincided with a period of mounting populist and nativist resistance to globalism and the post-war international order, fuelled by inequities both within and between countries.

The global economic system that emerged following the end of the Cold War has benefited the few at the expense of the many, its detractors say, not without reason. Similarly, the United Nations (UN) has come to seem like a relic, favouring victors of a long-ago war, reflecting obsolete power relations, and denying a sufficient voice to countries of the global south, many of which had yet to achieve independence by the time the UN was founded in 1945. In parallel, and especially since the 2008 global financial crisis, socio-economic discontent has given rise to various forms of populism, nativism, and authoritarianism in countries ranging from Russia, Turkey, and Hungary to Brazil, Israel, and the United States (US).

These dynamics could well be strengthened by the COVID-19 crisis. One vision of the future looks like this: In the coming months and years, dire domestic needs will make international solidarity seem like an unaffordable luxury. As national economies contract, resources will shrink, and governments will struggle to provide for their own populations. Political leaders will find it exceedingly difficult to justify allocating funds to foreign development assistance, international health and relief organisations, refugees, or diplomatic initiatives. Mounting discontent at home will translate into even greater anger and disillusionment toward the international system.

Moreover, any remaining US claim to global leadership will have been battered, owing to the Trump administrations mishandling of the pandemic, the sense that it was unable to care for its own, let alone others, and the perception that it withdrew into itself when the chips were down. China, buoyed by its camera-friendly demonstrations of generosity at the height of the crisis, might step up to fill the leadership vacuum. But it also could find itself weighed down by its own botched handling of the outbreak, and by the domestic political implications of a profound economic contraction.

Regardless of who (if anybody) emerges on top, it is hard to believe that the socioeconomic despair caused by the pandemic will not prepare the ground for an even stronger nativist and xenophobic surge. In many countries, the scapegoating of foreigners and minorities has already begun.

Might a superior, stronger international order emerge at some point? Perhaps. Even before achieving victory in World War II, the Allied powers began to devise a post-war order designed to prevent the reoccurrence of another global conflagration. That order had profound weaknesses. Although it created the illusion of global governance, it could never be more effective than whatever the rival powers at its core would allow. For all its successes, one can also list monumental failures.

And yet, the system that arose from the 1940s was clearly preferable to what preceded it. In 2020, one can only begin to imagine what it would take to create a new, more sustainable order that addresses growing concerns about equality and in which more countries can find a voice. In the meantime, we may have to navigate a new world in which a free-for-all abruptly replaces existing arrangements. Even if the chaos proves temporary, it would be a sad, disruptive, and dangerous coda to the post-war era.

COVID-19 has laid bare the costs of confronting a global crisis with a flawed international system. The only worse outcome would be to confront the next crisis with no system at all.

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The International Order After COVID-19 - The Asean Post

Medical workers’ principle of mutual aid is a call to action for designers, too – CityMetric

This article appears on CityMetric courtesy of Blueprint magazine.

This year, we entered what I was seeing as a decade of action. Along with much of the rest of the world, architecture and design as a discipline would come together to address some of the most pressing concerns of our time. We would take collective action in response to the climate emergency armed with science, data, and other tools to tackle and advance resiliency, adaptation, and sustainable practices in the built environment. We would catalyze a shift in dispositions rooted in consumption and growth by prioritizing the circular economy, the Green New Deal, affordability, and equity.

What we did not know is that as early as January we were watching the formation of the Covid-19 pandemic, a crisis that would claim hundreds of thousands of lives (a growing figure) and lay bare a number of critical gaps in our global systems. Breakdowns in these systems have required urgent responses at every level of government and leadership. International travel, exchanges, and supply chains that underlay the global economy and related socio-economic structures went from hard truths to open questions. And much of the globally coordinated action that might have been dedicated to problems with a 10-year timeline was channeled into the current crisis that appears to have immediately compressed response times to weeks or days wherever it has landed.

The near collapse and various kinds of safety netting thrown under the global economy has not only revealed its vulnerability and our personal dependencies, but also our interconnectedness. As we see the virus continue to spread across the United States, I do not have a perfect analogy to describe the series of actions connecting so many different people with so many different needs, but I can speak to its power fairly clearly having witnessed an interconnected and expanded form of mutual aid.

In the emergency medical services profession (as well as in activist circles) the mutual aid agreement is a common understanding that in moments of crisis the jurisdictional boundaries between practitioners, each with distinct expertise and knowledge, dissolve. The medical profession as whole unites around a common problem to work quickly to address urgent conditions and effectively manage contingency. Everyone comes together with their resources materials, skill, time, and effort to help in whatever way they can.

The Covid-19 crisis has placed enormous pressure, to a degree that much of the world has never seen, on the health care industry and its workers. Despite preparedness and selfless response efforts in hospitals and other health care centers, the crisis not only overwhelmed the system but also created a direct threat to the lives of both providers and the sick. Under the current conditions, the call for mutual aid is extended well beyond the health care industry. The industry cannot handle this crisis on its own. The crisis requires spatial and social practices to work in tandem with health care measures. Our situation demands the mobilization of resources and quick action from a broad range of perhaps unlikely disciplines to meet urgent needs by any means possible.

What we have learned from design practice and applied research is that with the most pressing issues, we often work best in collaboration with other disciplines that inform our work, and with new tools and new perspectives, be they from science, engineering, or the arts. Whether we could anticipate the many Covid-related needs that emerged quickly and urgently, I have recently found that as architects and designers we are primed for working together across boundaries toward a mutual benefit and, that this brings me a bit of optimism in these difficult times. Our willingness to act has opened many of our eyes and minds to what we as designers and global citizens have to offer.

To share a few examples, though there are many more there are designers at work on problems that are material and require pragmatic action, and simultaneously, those who are analyzing and calling out inequity as the virus affects those who face discrimination and have less access to care than others.

Operation PPE was sparked by a call from medical professionals at Weill Medical to faculty at Cornell University's College of Engineering, who then connected with Professor Jenny Sabin, director of the Matter Design Computation program at Cornell, who rebooted the recently vacated fabrication labs at AAP to produce 3D-printed personal protection equipment. Many of our alumni and students joined in producing PPE from an open source design file and designers utilized and modified as needed.

J. Meejin Yoon is dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University. (Andy Ryan)

At the Harvard Wyss Institute and the Graduate School of Design, students, researchers, and faculty responded to an urgent need for personal isolation hoods that would keep patients and doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital safer as they fight the virus in infection wards and operating rooms. By coordinating ideas and action via a Slack channel, collaborators across the design and health disciplines initiated a completely horizontal creative process so that the strongest designs could be modified and added to in real time and advance to clinical testing and production in a matter of not months, but weeks.

Kimberly Dowdell, Chicago-based architect and president of the National Organization of Minority Architects recently responded to figures citing the tragically disproportionate number of Covid-19 deaths among black and Latino people in New York City and Chicago. Dowdell highlights how all of our communities, particularly those still affected by discriminatory policies in our cities, now suffer greater challenges and losses in the face of this crisis.

There are other data and design ideas emerging that may impact the future of how a crisis of such magnitude might be handled.

In the past several weeks, designers and architects have assumed the agency and responsibility we share to engage new problems and offer meaningful service to a cause that asks us to reach far beyond disciplinary lines. We acted quickly and were able to do so by seeing past ourselves and our claims to authorship, by working across professional boundaries, and providing crucial help where needed. Many of us already have an eye on the long term and are asking important questions that I wonder if despite the holding pattern between worry and hope most of us share we can better understand in terms of what it will take to come together around a mutually beneficial plan for recovery, and for the future. A future where we enact our interconnectedness not as a shared vulnerability, but a strength extending the practice of mutual aid beyond the medical profession to coordinate action and contributions to shared problems in a shared world where design and planning have critical agency.

J. Meejin Yoon is the Gale and Ira Druckier Dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University.

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Medical workers' principle of mutual aid is a call to action for designers, too - CityMetric

COVID-19 Great Depression: Global Ecosocialism Is the Way Out – NEWS JUNKIE POST

Suffering in numbers

The abstract science of mathematics is a language like music. But while music is in the realm of pure emotion, the language of mathematics only speaks to the mind not the heart. Numbers and equations do not lie. They are not, by essence, subjective. This being said, when the numbers are those of the dead, they can have the chilling emotional effect of a meat cleaver cutting through bones. While we have tried to stay away from the mainstream media litany of the death tolls, on April 25, 2020 we had passed 200,000 deaths globally. In the United States alone, by the end of April, the COVID-19 pandemic will have killed more people than the reported 58,220 US soldiers who died during the Vietnam war.

Neoliberal and populist war presidents?

Ironically, two political leaders who are supposed to be on opposite sides of the political spectrum have framed their COVID-19 crisis narrative as a war. One is French President Macron, a neoliberal globalist champion, and the other one is nationalist-populist US President Trump. Both, however, have a lot in common: they are proponents of global corporatism, are Commanders in Chief of their respective military but did not serve in the military. Trump was a reputed Vietnam war draft dodger, while Macron was born too late to have done the mandatory French military service. In either case, their war on COVID-19 is not going well. As matter of fact Trump and Macron are winning their war on COVID-19 like the US won in Vietnam or NATO won in Afghanistan. And incidentally, if the COVID-19 is a world war, both of these presidents and other world leaders should consider ordering a military draft.

The COVID-19 killing spree is not yet over, even in its first installment. It is hard to forecast, but in a month or two, once countries such as India, Indonesia, Pakistan and the entire African continent are computed in the tragic body count, we could globally reached 350,000 deaths. The worldwide government incompetence will continue and the litany of deaths will keep ticking away. Meanwhile human suffering is not a great concern for capitalisms ruling class, the economy and the financial markets are now their main focus.

Capitalisms callous imperatives

Never mind their countless failures and shortcomings through the crisis, what mostly concerns our callous and cynical political and business leaders is COVID-19s impact on the global economy. While the lockdown of half of humanity could have been beneficial for an extra couple of weeks from a healthcare stand point, the enforcers of the imperative of global capitalism do not care. As far as salvaging what can still be saved from the current economic collapse, the political technocrats who serve the billionaire class are perfectly willing to sacrifice thousands of human lives. People are dying. Poor people are starving even in the so-called developed world and relying on food banks in places like Queens, New York; New Orleans; or Seine St. Denis, in Paris poor northern suburbs. But what truly matters for the worshippers of capitalism is the well being of their free-market God, a profane deity brought to its knees by the COVID-19 pandemic. Humanity is facing a time of reckoning. Despite what the global ruling class hopes for, the global economy has collapsed, and things will never return to normal.

The COVID-19 Great Depression

In just two months, the global economy was brought to a standstill. Airplanes are not flying; factories are not manufacturing, with the exception of face masks; oil has become worthless; three billion people are not consuming, at the exception of food products. The imposed hiatus for most global consumption and circulation of people and goods has blown a giant hole in the complex capitalist edifice. The main question now is will it recover. While the notion of a Great COVID-19 Depression has become accepted, governments worldwide are trying to give their citizens the idea that ultimately it will be okay again. As during the crash of 2008, worldwide national or supra-national banking institutions have followed the lead of the US Federal Reserve. Worldwide, the equivalent of about $7 trillion have been printed, and they are in the process of being injected in the financial markets. Without this, Wall Street and the other markets would already be worth as little as a barrel of US crude oil.

The oil war has come home to roost in the US

On April 21, the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) benchmark for US crude dropped below zero. As matter of fact, it was trading at -$4.29 a barrel. Needless to say, despite the federal money injection, the impact on the US economy energy sector will be catastrophic. This situation was completely predictable. It was years in the making, with one geopolitical blunder after another. After all, for decades the US and its Saudi allies have used oil price as a weapon. The oil war has come home to roost.

During the Clinton administration an oil price drop was used against Saddam Husseins Iraq; Bush Jr.s administration used it against Iran; and the Obama administration used it against Russia as a retaliation over Ukraine. The Trump administration has applied the same policies with regime change goals in Iran and Venezuela. Like his predecessors, the de-facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohamed bin-Salman, has been fully on board for decades. The mechanics are simple: you try to achieve your regime change goals by bankrupting another countrys economy, especially if it mainly relies on oil extraction, as does Venezuela. But Maduro is still in place and the Iranians are holding on against all odds.

The Trump administration, despite its claim of being an America-First isolationist, has dutifully followed the post World War II US empires geopolitical strategy of asserting a worldwide dominance, even bigger than the Monroe doctrine, by engineering failed states. It is likely, however, that with 26 million unemployed, millions relying on food banks to eat, and an economy that has imploded, the US empire will have to scale back its ambitions. For global neoliberalisms prodigal son, Emmanuel Macron, the economic and social landscapes are equally grim.

Anger in France: la racaille & Gilets Jaunes new sans-culottes?

Despite the tough lockdown for more than six weeks in France, clashes have occurred between youths in poor French suburbs and the police. It started Saturday April 18 in Villeneuve La Garrenne with what appears to have been excessive police force against a motorcyclist. From there, it snowballed to the poor suburbs in other parts of Paris and elsewhere in France, specifically in Strasbourg, Roubaix and a Lyon suburb. In Strasbourg a police station was set on fire. The French far-right has done its best to capitalize on the incident, which involved mainly young French citizens of North African or African origin. The far-right populist leader of the Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen, called for a severe crackdown on the culprits of the social unrest. She made the racist claimed that la racaille (the human scum) had to be neutralized. Le Pen also attacked the Macron administration for doing something right, which was the release of 8,000 prisoners from prisons to avoid COVID-19 mass infections. This was to be expected from racist tough-on-crime Le Pen, but Eric Ciotti, a congressman from Les Republicains, a party that is supposed to be less Fascist than Le Pens, went a step further and called for Lintervention de larmee et un couvre feu (a deployment of the military and a curfew).

Most people understand that, without the work of the six million French citizens of North African or African origin, Frances confinement would be a lot more challenging. Just like in New York, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles or New Orleans, the mothers and fathers of the angry youths in France are largely the ones who have kept the country going during the lockdown, day in and day out, often risking their lives, anonymously. They are the clerks in supermarkets, the truck drivers and other delivery persons, the janitors, the garbage collectors, the bus drivers and low-paid support staff in hospitals and nursing homes. Generation after generation, since the early 1960s, the largely North African immigrants have done the hard work that the Caucasian French no longer care to do. Former president Chirac called this social inequality a fracture sociale in the 1990s. So it was identified but never fixed, and the COVID-19 crisis has just made it more blatant. France will ease its lockdown after May 11. After this, if the social inequalities are not addressed by actions instead of only words, the angry youths of the poor suburbs could be joined by the Gilets Jaunes, whose movement just went underground.

Ecosocialism equation: climate crisis + COVID19 = systemic change

So far the central banks remedy quantitative easing, a euphemism for printing money, has been largely futile. The 3 trillion dollars and 1.5 trillion Euros injected are financial band-aids on our global economical Titanic. If this doomed ship represents our pre-COVID-19 mode of development, it should be cheerfully sacrificed along with the giant cargo ships and planes, which are the nervous system of a globalization that is chocking on itself. The unfolding COVID-19 crisis has fully exposed the failures of governance and socio-economic systems worldwide.

Beyond their short-term post-COVID-19 strategies, few policy makers or business leaders have any valid answers. The ruling class model of globalization, based on corporate imperialisms core principle of profit over people, is in ruins. In the middle of an unstoppable worldwide paradigm shift, so-called leaders and thinkers are in paradigm paralysis. They are trapped in a pre-COVID-19 reality bubble, unable to think outside the box.

As citizens of the world, we may look ahead possibly to a better future for the many. One critical systemic problem unlikely to survive COVID-19 is the extreme social inequality driven by hyper-capitalist wealth concentration. In a nutshell, the existential problem of capitalism that could cause its end is as follows: exactly 2,019 billionaires worldwide have more wealth than 60 percent of the world population. This is not only immoral but also unsustainable. Let us travel back in time to 1788 for a moment. In France absolute King Louis XVI, who presumably combined the power of Macron and the wealth of Frances richest man Bernard Arnault, thought he was firmly in power. But within a year he was swept away by the French Revolution. The motto of the revolution and subsequent French Republic was Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. These three notions still have power and value. If climate justice is added to them, this could be the foundation of an ecosocialist society.

While the Great Depression of 1929 unquestionably triggered the rise of Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany, humanity cannot afford for that history to repeat itself. The COVID-19 Great Depression upon us might be capitalisms end game and the birth of a new global ecosocialist era based on social equality, real democracy with sound governance, zero economic growth, zero global military spending, and respectful harmony with what is left of the natural world.

Editors notes: Gilbert Mercier is the author of The Orwellian Empire. Photograph one by Larry Goodwin; two from the archive of Urban Museum; three and five from the archive of The National Guard; four by David Shankbone; seven by Lanpernas; eight by Francisco Anzola; nine by Denisbin; ten and twelve by Gilbert Mercier; and eleven from the archive of Leigh Blackall.

Live interview on Gilbert Mercier with Bob Schlehuber and Jamarl Thomas of Radio Sputniks Political Misfits.

Live interview on Gilbert Mercier with Sean Blackmon and Jackie Luqman of Radio Sputniks By Any Means Necessary.

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Live interview on Gilbert Mercier with Inayet Wadee of Salaamedia.

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COVID-19 Great Depression: Global Ecosocialism Is the Way Out - NEWS JUNKIE POST

What Will Life Be Like After the Pandemic? – INSEAD Knowledge

Having exposed societys dysfunction, the COVID-19 crisis invites us to rethink our future.

Albert Camus novel The Plague starts with rats dying, followed by a tsunami of human deaths. The towns leaders are reluctant to acknowledge the epidemic at first but are soon forced to take the situation seriously. With martial law imposed, no one is allowed to enter or leave the city. Being unable to communicate with or see loved ones weighs heavily on everyone for some, more than the threat of death itself. Law and order quickly break down. As the plague continues to ravage the town, funerals turn into rush jobs, with no ceremony or emotion. The first serum, a kind of vaccine, turns out to be a failure. Eventually, a better version allows the quarantine to be lifted.

Doesnt this story sound familiar? A very similar scenario is playing itself out right now. Camus was trying to describe how human beings respond to and live with a completely absurd death sentence death being part of the cycle of life. Perhaps was he also trying to show how little it takes for a society to fall apart?

In 1947 (the publication date of Camus novel), we got a strong reminder of the unpredictability of life, as well as concern for how humanity was evolving. But attention wasnt paid. The 2011 movie Contagion, directed by Steven Soderberg, provided a more modern warning about the precariousness of the human condition. Many of its scenes hit very close to home. The movie tracks the arrival of a fictional virus that ends up killing millions of people worldwide. The outbreak sends officials from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organisation scrambling to figure out the origins of the virus, how it spreads and how to find a cure. And just like our current crisis, it takes much teetering before anyone realises the gravity of the situation. The film includes the economic struggles of ordinary people.

Will we learn from COVID-19?

The interesting question now is what the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic is going to look like. When the crisis subsides, will we go back to normal? Will we even want to? Or does COVID-19 provide us with an important learning experience?

Hopefully, a cure to coronavirus will be found. But whatever happens, we should keep in mind that the threat of infectious disease is not going away. Pandemics are not the mere imaginary product of a few artistic types. Frankly speaking, we are at a dramatic inflection point.

Our response to this pandemic will have an enormous effect on the future of humankind. More than anything, the coronavirus has highlighted existing political, economic and social dysfunctionalities. It has also shown the crisis of leadership. It is an invitation to make radical changes to the economy, our social behaviour and the role of government in our lives.

I would like to suggest two scenarios for our future: a rather pessimistic one and a more optimistic one. We could see parts of these scenarios overlap.

A pessimistic scenario

In crisis situations, most people tend to regress to a state of greater dependency. It usually results in a cry for the kind of leadership that can soothe collective fears and anxieties. It may explain a paradoxical phenomenon: Even highly incompetent leaders may rise in popularity at such times. Indeed, is the leadership of the most powerful countries in the world up to the present challenge? Can they be trusted? Unfortunately, too many of our leaders have proven to be quite ineffective. And with populations in a state of psychological regression, they may get away with it.

When the going gets tough, societies tend to withdraw instead of reaching out. Our sense of helplessness increases the appeal of national identity politics, with a move back to the nation-state. We can expect identity politics to become even stronger. In fact, this scenario is already happening, if we consider the way various countries are trying to acquire badly needed items to conquer the pandemic.

Sadly, this pessimistic scenario plays neatly into an agenda of totalitarian control a fact that isnt lost on autocratic leaders. For them, the pandemic is a convenient excuse to channel peoples growing sense of helplessness into autocracy. Populations may become more willing to hand over control to governments. As a rule, when we are frightened, we are more willing to cut down on civil liberties. Even when leaders pretend to be democratic, under the right conditions, the inner autocrat may emerge. There is also the potential for a search for scapegoats. After all, nothing unites a population better than an outside threat. Thus, apart from regressive processes, paranoid reactions can also come to the fore.

The infrastructure, technology and legislative framework for types of martial law have long existed. We must consider how these exceptional measures could easily become permanent. I am referring to such things as the abdication of personal liberty (even extrajudicial, indefinite detentions), censorship of the press and the internet (supposedly to combat disinformation), the denial of freedom of assembly, the tracking of everyones movements at any time and restrictions on travel. It may even include giving the state greater control over our bodies (as reflected in compulsory vaccination and other medical treatments).

Furthermore, this pessimistic scenario may involve reducing peoples sense of community through various social changes: pre-eminence of e-commerce (no more shopping in brick-and-mortar shops), the fading out of office space, a focus on online learning and play, as well as the remote viewing of sports and entertainment. The idea of Gemeinschaft a society based on close social ties may become a relic of the past.

Many of these developments were already underway, but the arrival of COVID-19 has greatly accelerated their acceptance and could render them permanent. We need to ask ourselves: How much of our lives and civil liberties do we want to sacrifice at the altar of a sense of greater security? Do we want to live in a world where human beings can rarely congregate? If social distancing becomes the norm, can we put up with the likely increase in isolation-induced depression, paranoid reactions, drug abuse and suicides?

An optimistic scenario

Crises do not necessarily only bring the forces of regression and paranoia to the fore; they can also create greater solidarity. As we have seen many times over, when people unite, miracles can happen.

We are now on the cusp of many critical decisions. The pandemic should encourage us to reflect on the power of our collective will.

Despite the enormous number of jobs lost, could the pandemic be an opportunity to direct our energies to other kinds of activities? What parts of the economy would we like to restore, and what parts could we do without? Given the increasing concern about our planet and the disastrous effects of global warming, do we really need all this commuting, all this air travel?

From an evolutionary point of view, health comes from community. Human life doesnt thrive in isolation. Being part of a community is important for our mental health. As it is, we are already living in much more distant ways than has ever been the case. Should we continue on this path? The pandemic could give us an opportunity to restore lost connections and create more interrelated, cooperative societies. The coordinated efforts of scientists all over the globe to find a cure for the coronavirus suggest such cooperation is possible.

The present pandemic could spur us to tackle issues that we have always been quite aware of but have preferred to ignore. It could be our chance to do something about the rise of dysfunctional leaders; to decrease socio-economic inequities; to really fight addictions; and to take measures to avert ecological collapse. First, we need to accept the reality of living in an interconnected world. We must develop a more glocal outlook, one in which we think globally and act locally.

Above all, the coronavirus crisis opens the door for us to create more compassionate societies the kinds of societies that acknowledge how we are all connected and that our planet should be managed for the generations to come. Chief Seattle once said, Humankind has not woven the web of life.We are but one thread within it.Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.All things are bound together.All things connect.

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vriesis the Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development & Organisational Change at INSEAD and the Raoul de Vitry d'Avaucourt Chaired Professor of Leadership Development, Emeritus. He isthe Programme Director ofThe Challenge of Leadership, one of INSEADs top Executive Education programmes.

Professor Kets de Vries'smost recent books are:Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership: Leadership Pathology of Everyday Life;You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger: Executive Coaching Challenges;Telling Fairy Tales in the Boardroom: How to Make Sure Your Organisation Lives Happily Ever After; andRiding the Leadership Rollercoaster: An Observers Guide.

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What Will Life Be Like After the Pandemic? - INSEAD Knowledge

How the West lost – The Sunday Guardian

The price of this mega-crisis is bound to be paid in massive long-term unemployment and poverty all over the world.

Numerologists like to spot symbolic meanings in the dates of momentous events. The September 11 attacks took place on 911: the emergency police phone number in the United States, the Pentagon (seen by some occultists as a projection of the Luciferian pentacle) was struck on the same day, which was the 60th anniversary of its inauguration and the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded outside China in 2020, which amounts to 40: the number that gave its name to quarantine. Many such historical coincidences may be found and attributed to the mysterious forces that move the world, whether we call them the gods, chance, fate and some other human or superhuman agency.Since the year 1981 at least, when Dean Koontz published his novel, The Eyes of Darkness about a pandemic originating in Wuhan, China, many predictions about a devastating virus from Asia have come out in films (e.g. 2011s Contagion), articles and books. US Colonel Tom Bearden on his website Cheniere.org had spelt out emergency plans for martial law, mass confinement, triage and other extreme responses to a biological agent or weapon. Bill Gates, a few years ago, warned about a danger which he held to be equal to the nuclear threat and recommended preventive measures. Yet, public preparedness was clearly insufficient and most states were caught napping and found wanting.

The current, unprecedented and nearly global lockdown, a bitter illustration of globalizations generally unexpected effects is generating an endless stream of analyses, theories, assessments and speculation shaped by the belief systems of their authors. Those who embraced the eco-apocalyptic call of Greta Thunberg and were distraught by the predictable failure of the Paris accord on global warming mitigation rejoice in the unexpected fulfilment of their wishes to bring CO2 emission and other polluting activities to a brutal decline; those who were worried about Chinas meteoric rise towards a hegemonic status felt schadenfreude when the red dragon was seen falling into the deadly embrace of the new corona epidemic. They now, however, watch with dismay the increasingly lamentable plight of the western world and bristle at the prospect of a newly functional China resuming her rapid climb to the top of the power pyramid. The western pundits, who made a living by warning the public against Putinist Russias evil intentions, now watch with consternation the support provided by Moscow to certain EU and other countries seemingly left to their fate by everyone else.

Naturally, the current all-encompassing crisis has not disarmed the propaganda snipers in various camps and they continue to take pot-shots at their enemies of choice amidst the pandemonium. After accusing Beijing of revealing the weakness of its institutions through its vulnerability to yet another Asian virus, western cold warriors now suspect China of carrying out a dark plot to undermine and bring down western supremacy by using Covid-19 as a black swan to overwhelm the governance systems of the self-styled free world, just as they charge Russia with countless subversive machinations against the self-same good guys. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and neither Chinese nor the Russian sources have shied away from pointing accusatory fingers at the United States which are also well known for their expertise in biological weapon development and testing. Indeed at the outset of the corona contagion suspicions against the American government came to many minds on the backdrop of the multifaceted and very public campaign to force China to bend to US pressure on trade and geostrategic matters the appearance of the virus in Wuhan was too serendipitous, so to speak, not to be suspect, except for those who would give the US a pass in principle but the claim that a democracy would never resort to black ops of this kind has so often been disproven by facts in the case of the American state that it cannot be taken at face value.The yawning gap in American society sets apart the Left Wing Liberals calling for a de facto nationalization of the economy in the guise of providing universal free healthcare and saving all jobs and the Conservatives bent on preserving the capitalist oligopolies and individual economic freedom. This split, amplified by the presidential campaign in which Covid is now the major weapon used on both sides is what makes it so hard for the US to adopt a coherent and effective policy to tackle both the Covid threat and the ongoing economic meltdown, which is likely to leave at least 40 million Americans jobless, a much truncated GDP and a skyrocketing national debt.

We are in a situation unprecedented in the last hundred years at least, perhaps in all history. Governments all over the world have imposed a shutdown of social, political and economic life and a drastic curtailment of individual rights and civil liberties in the name of protecting people from a contagion which has so far killed over two hundred thousand (most of them older than 70 and suffered from other major ailments), out of a global population of eight billion people, in which every months larger tolls are exacted by various other evils, including hunger, heat attacks, cancer, diabetes, accidents and the common flu.

There are various factors behind this draconian operation which could well last for several months or even extend into next year: first the famous principle of abundant caution institutionalized in the European Union perhaps over-reliant on computer modelling projections of worst case scenarios and often inaccurate virological tests; then the increasing American obsession with national security and the associated propensity to impose lockdowns in reaction to any alert or suspicion, and finally the growing official fear of civil unrest, which inspires more and more sophisticated tactics to force people to stay home and not assemble.

Without discounting the gravity of the Covid-19 pandemic, if we review the state of the world economy in recent years (see my article in the Sunday Guardian of March 1, 2020) we cannot but conclude that a gigantic economic crisis was on the horizon, building up since the first shoe fell in 2008. A few years ago, some Russian economists had predicted the end of the US dollar-centric monetary and financial system between 2020 and 2025. I had echoed that projection in another article published in this newspaper on May 14, 2017 and we appear now to have been on the money. The process of reorganization is expected to take at least three or four chaotic years and it is to be hoped that a new global system will come into place through some international agreement, a new Bretton Woods, absent another major war such as those that usually erupt in times of great dislocation.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a trigger and accelerator of the socio-economic and political crisis, not its main cause. The crash of stock markets and the industrial and financial meltdown were predictable for this year and announced by the seizure of most major economies since 2018 in spite of the incessant quantitative easing carried out by the governments and international financial institutions such as the European Central Bank. In the last months, the situation on Wall Street became ominous as the Fed had to keep injecting huge amounts of fiat currency overnight into the RePo market to prevent major banks from going bust. In a situation of economic panic, a health emergency is also a tool of last resort to discipline the population and raise a public menace above the less existential threat of financial collapse. It is at least probable that leading governments and international agencies organised, with the support of corporate mass media, the systematic freeze of social activity in order to minimize civic disruptions and challenges to authorities.

Conspiratorial theories, more or less credible or fanciful, are being promoted to identify the prime movers and operational levers of this operation, but they only try to interpret in various partisan ways the fundamental process for controlling the crash of irrationally overvalued stock markets fed by fast rising Himalayan pyramids of bad debt and irrigated by shoreless oceans of derivative instruments whose value is often impossible to establish and can be reduced by a hiccup of the inter-banking transactional cycle to mere junk.

The effect of the economy caving in was seen in the gradual collapse of consumption in most parts of the world and in the decision of Great Britain to exit the European Union, seen by many in London as a doomed quasi-confederacy although which of the two, the United Kingdom and the EU will fare worse is far from clear.

The price of this mega-crisis is bound to be paid in massive long-term unemployment and poverty all over the world, concentration of capital and wealth in even fewer hands, state or oligopolistic control of many strategic corporations resulting in a hybrid composite of monopolistic capitalism and socialism. Below that general tableau there will be many different regional and national pictures as states will try diverse ways to deal with the disaster domestically, often insulating themselves from the financial Corona virus and circling the wagons in a patriotic reaction to the unhinged supra-national experiment. Regional associations such as the EU, UNASUR and the African Union are under extreme fissiparous strain and will have to change in many ways if they manage to survive.

In a sentence, 2020 has brought us to the point where we can have a 20/20 vision and hindsight of all that is wrong with the global liberal gospel and its corollaries including all-out privatization and decimation of public services, unlimited amounts of virtual money chasing inflated virtual values, wars for regime change in weaker, resource-rich states and mass migrations that contribute to the slow motion collapse of hitherto prosperous and orderly nations.

Continued here:

How the West lost - The Sunday Guardian

The Pandemic and the Global Economy – Dissent

Developing countries face collapsing international trade, falling remittances, sharp reversals of capital flows, and currency depreciation. Only bold policiesdebt relief, international financing, planning, and morewill avert further catastrophe.

There are still many uncertainties about the COVID-19 pandemic: about the extent of its spread, its severity in different countries, the length of the outbreak, and whether an initial decline could be followed by a recurrence. But some things are already certain: we know that the economic impact of this pandemic is already immense, dwarfing anything that we have experienced in living memory. The current shock to the global economy is certainly much bigger than that of the 2008 global financial crisis, and is likely to be more severe than the Great Depression. Even the two world wars of the twentieth century, while they disrupted supply chains and devastated physical infrastructure and populations, did not involve the restrictions on mobility and economic activity that are in place in the majority of countries today. This is therefore an unprecedented global challenge and requires unprecedented responses.

This very severe economic impact largely stems not from the pandemic itself, but from measures that have been adopted across the world to contain it, which have ranged from relatively mild restrictions on mobility and public gatherings to complete lockdowns (and clampdowns) that have brought to a halt most economic activity. This has meant a simultaneous attack on demand and supply. During lockdowns, people (especially those without formal work contracts) are deprived of incomes and joblessness increases drastically, causing huge declines in consumption demand that will continue into the period after the lockdown is lifted. At the same time, production and distribution are halted for all but essential commodities and servicesand even for these sectors, supply is badly affected because of implementation issues and inadequate attention to the input-output linkages that enable production and distribution. Previous regional and global crises have not entailed this near-cessation of all economic activity. The deadly combination of collapses in both demand and supply is why this time is truly different and has to be dealt with differently.

World trade in both goods and services is already collapsing. The WTO expects trade to fall anywhere between 13 and 32 percent over 2020. But even these dismal projections could well be underestimates, because they implicitly rely on relatively rapid containment of the virus and the lifting of lockdown measures by late summer. Exports of goodsother than those deemed essentialhave effectively ceased; travel has declined to a tiny fraction of what it was, and tourism has also stopped for the time being; various other cross-border services that cannot be delivered electronically are contracting sharply. Trade prices have collapsed and will continue to decline. In the month leading up to March 20, 2020, primary commodity prices fell by 37 percent, with energy and industrial metals prices falling by 55 percent.

Within countries, economic activity is contracting at hitherto unimaginable rates, bringing about not only a dramatic immediate collapse but the seeds of future contraction as negative multiplier effects start playing out. In the United States alone, around 22 million people lost their jobs in four weeks, with GDP estimated to contract by 10 to 14 percent from April to June. Elsewhere the pattern is no different, probably worse, as most countries are facing multiple forces of economic decline. The IMF predicted on April 14 that global output will fall by 3 percent in 2020, and as much as 4.5 percent in per capita termsand this is based on the most optimistic projections.

These collapses in economic activity necessarily affect global finance, which is also in disarray. The classic point about financial markets being imperfect not only because of asymmetric but also incomplete information is being borne out in practice: these markets are all about time, and now we must painfully accept that no one can know the future, even a few months ahead. Financial bets and contracts made just a few months ago now appear completely implausible to sustain. Most debts are clearly unpayable; insurance claims will be so extreme as to wipe out most insurers; stock markets are collapsing as investors realize that none of the assumptions on which earlier investments were made are valid anymore. These negative forces together amount to humongous losses that could threaten the very viability of the global capitalist order (an order that was already struggling to show any dynamism over the past decade).

In an already very unequal world, this crisis already has and will continue to sharply increase global inequality. A large part of this is because of the very different policy responses in most developing countries (other than China, the origin of the pandemic, which has managed to contain its spread and revive economic activity relatively quickly) as compared to advanced economies. The sheer enormity of the crisis has apparently registered with policymakers in the developed world, who have (probably temporarily) abandoned all talk of fiscal austerity and suddenly appear to have no problem simply monetizing their government deficits. It is likely that the global financial system would have collapsed in the panic that arose in the third week of March without massive intervention by the major central banks of the developed worldnot just the U.S. Federal Reserve but the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, and others.

The exorbitant privilege of the United States as the holder of the worlds reserve currency obviously gives it greater freedom to prop up its own economy. But other developed countries are also putting forward fairly large fiscal packages, from 5 percent of GDP in Germany to 20 percent in Japan, in addition to various other expansionary and stabilizing measures through their central banks.

By contrast, most developing countries have much less leeway to engage in such policies, and even those larger developing economies that could do so appear to be constrained by the fear of financial markets punishing them further. This is terrible: their economic challenges are already much greater than those in the developed world. Developing countriesmany of which have yet to experience the full force of the spread of the virushave been hit by a perfect storm of collapsing global trade, falling remittances, sharp reversals of capital flows, and currency depreciation. In just the month of March, capital flight from emerging market assets was an estimated $83 billion, and since January nearly $100 billion has flown outcompared to $26 billion after the 2008 financial crisis. Portfolio investment is down by at least 70 percent from January to March 2020, and spreads on emerging market bonds have risen sharply. Currencies of developing countries have mostly depreciated sharply, other than in China. The foreign exchange crunch is generating serious problems in servicing external debt, which is harder to do because of shrinking foreign exchange inflows and rising domestic costs for servicing them. By early April, eighty-five countries had approached the IMF for emergency assistance because of severe problems in meeting foreign currency payment obligations, and that number is likely to rise.

These external pressures, which are already together much greater than anything experienced during the Great Depression, have come to bear on economies that are already struggling with the terrible domestic economic consequences of their virus containment strategies. The burden of these processes has fallen massively upon informal workers and self-employed people, who are being deprived of their livelihoods and falling into poverty at very rapid rates. Seventy percent of workers in developing countries are informal and are unlikely to be paid at all during lockdowns in which they are forced to be inactive. Workers with formal contracts have also started losing their jobs. The International Labour Organization estimated in early April that more than four out of every five workers in the world are facing the adverse impacts of the pandemic and associated policy responses, and most of them reside in the developing world. Women workers are more likely to be disproportionately adversely affected: more likely to lose jobs and experience major pay cuts, more likely to be rationed out of labor markets when jobs do become available, more likely to suffer during lockdowns because of enhanced possibilities of domestic abuse, and more likely to suffer from inadequate nutrition in a time of household food shortages.

In many countries, livelihood losses are associated with dramatic increases in the extent of absolute poverty and growing hunger, even among those previously not classified as poor. Indeed, the re-emergence of hunger on a global scale is likely to be an unfortunate legacy of the pandemic and the containment measures that resulted. To add to all of this depressing news, most states in developing countries will not be able to indulge in the necessary levels of deficit financing (by borrowing from central banks) to enable the required increases in public expenditure, because of foreign exchange constraints and greater surveillance of financial markets over their deficits.

This, unfortunately, is just the beginning. What of the aftermath, when the pandemic is brought under control? It bears reiterating that after a seismic shock of this magnitude, economies across the world will not simply be able to carry on as before, picking up where they had left off before this crisis. Over the coming year, many things are likely to change, including global reorganization of trade and capital flows. International trade will remain subdued for a while. Most commodity prices will also remain low, because global demand will take some time to pick up. This will affect commodity exporters revenues, but it need not provide much advantage for commodity importers because of the overall deflationary pressures stemming from depressed demand.

On the other hand, the breaking of supply chains could well lead to specific shortages, including of some essential items, generating cost-push inflation especially in developing countries. Cross-border capital flows will be volatile and unstable, and most developing countries will struggle to attract sufficient secure capital on terms that would make it beneficial to add to domestic savings and meet trade financing costs. The steep currency depreciations that have already occurred are unlikely to get completely reversed and could even accelerate further, depending upon what strategies are pursued in both developed and developing countries. These falling currency values, higher margins on interest paid, and rising yields on bonds will all continue to make debt servicing a massive problem. Indeed, most developing country debt will be simply unpayable.

In addition to problems in domestic banks and non-bank lenders because of likely large-scale defaults, there will be massive problems in insurance markets, with the failure of some insurance companies and rising premiums that could be a disincentive for most medium and small enterprises to be insured at all. Travel and tourism revenues will also be significantly curtailed over the medium term, as the earlier confidence underlying such travel will have eroded. Similarly, many migrants will have lost employment. Demand for foreign labor is likely to decline in many host countries, so remittances will also decline. All of this will continue to put pressure on government finances especially (but not only) in the developing world.

This litany of horrors is well within the realm of the possible. The saving grace is that these outcomes are not inevitable: they depend crucially on policy responses. The terrible consequences described above are predicated on international institutions and national governments not taking the measures that could ameliorate the situation. There are both national and global policies that could help, but they must be implemented quickly, before the crisis generates even more humanitarian catastrophe. It is essential to ensure that the policy responses do not (as they currently do) increase national and global inequalities. This means that recovery strategies must be reoriented away from handouts to large corporations without adequate regulation of their activities, and toward enabling the survival, employment, and continued consumption demand of poor and middle income groups, and the survival and expansion of tiny, small, and medium enterprises.

There are some obvious steps that the international community needs to take immediately. These steps rely on the existing global financial architecturenot because this architecture is just, fair, or efficient (it is not), but because, given the need for a speedy and substantial response, there is simply no possibility of constructing meaningful alternative institutions and arrangements quickly enough. The existing institutionsespecially the International Monetary Fundhave to deliver, which requires that they shed their pro-capital bias and their promotion of fiscal austerity.

The IMF is the only multilateral institution that has the capacity to create global liquidity, and this is the moment when it must do so at scale. An immediate issue of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), which are supplementary reserve assets (determined by a weighted basket of five major currencies), would create additional international liquidity at no extra cost. Since a fresh issue of SDRs must be distributed according to each countrys quota in the IMF, it cannot be discretionary and cannot be subject to other kinds of conditionality or political pressure. At least 1 to 2 trillion SDRs must be created and distributed. This will have a huge impact in ensuring that global international economic transactions simply do not seize up even after the lockdowns are lifted, and that developing countries are able to engage in international trade. Advanced economies with international reserve currencies are much less likely to need to use them, but they can be a lifeline for emerging markets and developing economies, providing additional resources to fight both the pandemic and the economic disaster. They are much better than depending on the IMF to provide loans, which often require conditionalities. (Insofar as additional emergency loans from the IMF are required, they must also be provided without conditionality, as purely compensatory financing for this unprecedented shock.) The issuance of more SDRs is also preferable to allowing the U.S. Federal Reserve to play the role of sole stabilizer of the system. The Feds swap lines are currently providing central banks of a few chosen countries with dollar liquidity as it becomes scarce in this crisis. But this is not a norm-based multilateral allocation; these swaps reflect the strategic national interests of the United States, and therefore reinforce global power imbalances.

One reason why there has been only limited issue of SDRs so far (the last increase was after the 2008 crisis, but to the tune of only around 276 billion SDRs) is the fear that such an increase in global liquidity would stoke inflation. But the world economy has just experienced more than a decade of the largest increases in liquidity ever due to quantitative easing by the U.S. Fed without inflation, because global demand remained low. The current situation is only different because it is more acute. If additional liquidity is used to invest in activities that would ease the supply shortages likely to come up because of lockdowns, then it could also ease any cost-push inflation that might emerge.

The second important international measure is dealing with external debt problems. There should immediately be a moratorium or standstill on all debt repayments (both principal and interest) for at least the next six months as countries cope with both the spread of the disease and the lockdown effects. This moratorium should also ensure that interest payments do not accrue over this period. It is obvious that very few developing countries will be in any position to service their loans when foreign exchange inflows have effectively stopped. But in any case, if everything else is on hold in the global economy today, why should debt payments be any different?

A moratorium is a temporary move to tide these countries over during the period when the pandemic and the closures are at their peaks. But eventually substantial debt restructuring is likely to be necessary, and very substantial debt relief must be provided especially to low-income and middle-income countries. International coordination would be much better for all concerned than the disorderly debt defaults that would otherwise be almost inevitable.

Within nation-states, the institution of capital controls would enable developing countries to deal at least partly with these global headwinds by stemming the volatility of cross-border financial flows. Such capital controls must be explicitly allowed and encouraged, in order to curtail the surge in outflows, to reduce illiquidity driven by sell-offs in emerging markets, and to arrest declines in currency and asset prices. Ideally, there should be some cooperation among countries to prevent any one country from being singled out by financial markets.

The aftermath of this crisis is also going to require a revival of planningsomething that had almost been forgotten in too many countries in the neoliberal era. The collapse of production and distribution channels during lockdowns means that defining and maintaining the supply of essential commodities is of critical importance. Such supply chains will have to be thought through in terms of the input-output relationships involved, which in turn requires coordination between different levels and departments in governments as well as across provincesand possibly at the regional level as well.

The pandemic is likely to bring about a change in attitudes to public health in almost all countries. Decades of neoliberal policy hegemony have led to drastic declines in per capita public health spending in rich and poor countries alike. It is now more than obvious that this was not just an unequal and unjust strategy but a stupid one: it has taken an infectious disease to drive home the point that the health of the elite ultimately depends on the health of the poorest members of society. Those who advocated reduced public health spending and privatization of health services did so at their own peril. This is true at a global scale as well. The current pathetically nationalist squabbles over access to protective equipment and drugs betray a complete lack of awareness of the nature of the beast. This disease will not be brought under control unless it is brought under control everywhere. International cooperation is not just desirable but essential.

While pushing for these major strategies for national governments and international organizations, we need to be conscious of some concerns. One is the fear that governments across the world will use the opportunity presented by the pandemic to push for the centralization of power, with significantly increased monitoring and surveillance of citizens, and increased censorship and control over information flows to reduce their own accountability. This has already started in many countries, and fear of infection is causing many people across the world to accept invasions of privacy and forms of state control over individual lives that months ago would have been seen as unacceptable. It will be harder to sustain or revive democracy in such conditions. Much greater public vigilance is required both at present and after the crisis has ended.

There is also a fear that the increased inequalities thrown up by this crisis will reinforce existing forms of social discrimination. In principle, a virus does not respect class or other socio-economic distinctions. But there are well-known negative feedback loops between the squalor associated with income poverty and infectious diseases. In our unequal societies, poor and socially disadvantaged groups are more likely to be exposed to COVID-19 and more likely to die from it, because peoples ability to take preventive measures, their susceptibility to disease, and their access to treatment all vary greatly according to income, assets, occupation, and location. Perhaps even worse, COVID-19 containment policies within countries show extreme class bias. Social distancing (better described as physical distancing) implicitly assumes that both residences and workplaces are not so crowded and congested that the prescribed norms can be easily maintained, and that other essentials like access to soap and water are not limited. The fear of infection during the pandemic has brought out some more unpleasant forms of social discrimination and prejudice in many countries, from antipathy to migrants to differentiation on the basis of race, caste, religion, and class. At a time when the universality of the human condition is highlighted by a virus, responses in too many countries have been focused on particularistic divisions, which bode ill for future progress.

Despite these depressing possibilities, it is also true that the pandemic, and even the massive economic crisis it has brought in its wake, could also bring about some changes in attitudes that point to a more hopeful future. Three aspects of this deserve comment.

The first is the recognition of the essential nature and social significance of care work and the greater respect and dignity accorded to paid and unpaid care workers. This could result in societies increasing the number of paid care workers, providing required training for them because of greater appreciation of the skills involved in such labor, and offering these workers better remuneration, more legal and social protection, and greater dignity.

Second, the wider realization among the public of the real possibility that unthinkable events can occur and unimaginably dreadful processes can be unleashed by our ways of life may also bring home the reality of climate change and the disasters it will bring in its wake. This could make more people conscious of the need to change how we live, produce, and consume, before it is too late. Some of the less rational aspects of global supply chains, especially in the multinational food industry (which has encouraged produce from one part of the world to be shipped to another part of the world for processing, before coming back to places near its origin to be consumed), will be questioned and could decline in significance. Other changes in lifestyle and consumption and distribution patterns could follow.

Finally, on a more philosophical level, existential threats like pandemics encourage more recognition of the things that really matter in human existence: good health, the ability to communicate and interact with other people, and participation in creative processes that bring joy and satisfaction. These realizations could encourage the first steps toward civilizational shifts that lead to the reorganization of our societies. There is an opportunity to move away from dominant assumptions about individualistic utility maximization and the profit motive to more caring and cooperative social frameworks.

Jayati Ghosh is a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India.

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The Pandemic and the Global Economy - Dissent