March 2021

22 March 2021
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Left-wing Cognitive Dissonance and the Art of Bullshit in the Covid Era

“Whilst superficially based on an honorable tradition of advocating necessary health and safety measures for working people, the reality is that ‘don’t do anything until everything is a hundred percent risk free’ is not only an irrational, cynical, opportunistic, and unsustainable position, but a politically dangerous one in that has provided cover for an even more outrageous concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few that even existed before.”

15 March 2021
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The scarcity of neoliberalism: A Colombian perspective on Covid policies

It was early on a sunny morning in April 2020 when I entered the store at the entrance of the compound where I used to live, located in a working-class neighbourhood in Bogota, to buy arepas (maize preparations) for my breakfast. As soon as I entered the old man who runs the store, certainly a migrant from a rural area judging by his accent, asked me behind his mask, ‘so, Paolita, how do you see the situation?’ To which I replied, ‘well Abelardo, we humans created this disaster, we now need to face it’.

12 March 2021
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Mass civil disobedience needed to fight 1% NHS pay rise

Although it his now rumoured that nurses will get 2%, the pay offer proves once and for all that the government isn’t locking us down to protect the NHS – it is using support for the NHS to justify an assault on workers’ rights. In reply, NHS workers should join the public in mass civil disobedience.

3 March 2021
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The Virus, Lockdown and the Left

When he was reflecting on the seemingly interminable periods of political stasis when nothing much changes, interrupted by concentrated outbreaks of dynamic political developments, Lenin astutely observed that “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”.

2 March 2021
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Comrades, Roll up your Sleeves!

There is a nationwide stampede to get the covid jag. Critical voices are routinely blocked by fact checkers on the net. Any criticism is denounced as being from anti-vax conspiracy theorists. Those who opposing mass vaccination or show vaccine hesitancy are abused for being selfish or dangerous. The government are pushing forward with the idea of a vaccination passport, after months of denying they intended to introduce one. The pro-vaccine propaganda is reaching a crescendo.