Corona
After the three-month lockdown from March to May 2020, Italian national and regional government has done little to prepare adequately for the second wave. This has led to a deepening of the health and social crisis: According to experts, the virus is almost impossible to control, the intensive care units in hospitals are overloaded and healthcare workers are reaching their limits.
"With this level of new infections, the number of tests carried out no longer makes sense. It made sense to do 400,000 tests a day to break the chain of infection. But now the virus has got...
read more "An announced catastrophe"
read more "An announced catastrophe"
The health and social crisis is worsening in Italy. The government is threatening a new lockdown, but supporting measures for workers remain insufficient. Meanwhile, social protests are spreading all over the country and caused a public debate going far beyond national borders.
At the beginning of July of this year the Italian interior minister, Luciana Lamorgese, in an interview on Italian state TV, expressed fears that the country was headed towards crisis: “I think there’s a real risk of a new 'hot autumn' because in September we will start to see ...
read more "Social protests in times of pandemic"
read more "Social protests in times of pandemic"
Changing lanes – first moves towards car-free citiesOur cities are suffering from the effects of a steady increase in road traffic. Traffic jams, huge swathes of land being taken up by roads and parking spaces for cars, and polluted air are all clear signs that we must strengthen the network of environmentally-friendly mobility solutions (walking, cycling and public transport) in our urban centres and use cars less. During the coronavirus crisis lockdown, when there was a big drop in car use, we had the chance to see just how attractive our towns and cities could ...
read more "Who do our cities belong to?"
read more "Who do our cities belong to?"
New Rules Proposed under the Guise of “E-Commerce”8 July 2020, Washington, DC ― A new paper new paper written by Deborah James of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and published by Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung examines how “big tech” corporations work to use “trade” rules to rig the rules of the global digital economy to collect more data, exercise more control over people’s lives and over their workers, and amass ever more profit. It looks at what the potential impacts of these rules would ...
read more "New Paper Exposes Big Tech’s Plans for New WTO Rules over Data Access and Control"
read more "New Paper Exposes Big Tech’s Plans for New WTO Rules over Data Access and Control"
A disastrous new constitution for the global economy written by and for Big Tech
The largest corporations in the history of the world – Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft – are seeking to use ‘trade’ rules to rig the rules of the global (digital) economy to enable them to collect more data, exercise more control over our lives and their workers, and amass ever more profit. More than 80 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are currently negotiating a new agreement on digital trade based on these proposals. This paper seeks to explain how these...
read more "Digital Trade Rules"
read more "Digital Trade Rules"
Why public transport must reinvent itselfIntroduction
During the coronavirus crisis, cities around the world seized the opportunity to close roads to cars and to expand pedestrian zones and cycle lanes. But what future will these initiatives have when normality is restored? Is there even the risk of a rebound in private car use if travelling on public transport continues to be discouraged? At the same time, the crisis is also a chance for public transport to reinvent itself and play a new role in the post-COVID-19 world.
Transport during the...
read more "Reset: The post-coronavirus transport conundrum"
read more "Reset: The post-coronavirus transport conundrum"
Interviews with Carmen San José, Martin Schirdewan and Harald WeinbergFor years, the neoliberal policies followed by the European Union and EU Member States have imposed privatisations and cost-cutting measures on health care systems, causing a significant deterioration in the essential services such systems provide. In southern Europe in particular, the deterioration has been especially pronounced in recent years, with massive cuts in spending on social policies imposed on large segment of society by the ruling classes.
The coronavirus crisis is not only exacerbating ...
read more "Austerity and Health"
read more "Austerity and Health"
EU Relentlessly targeted members’ health spending over past decadeAbstract
A decade of austerity imposed by the European Union institutions and EU Member State governments has caused significant deterioration in healthcare services across the EU. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the EU’s healthcare and public sectors to be ill-equipped to respond to the outbreak in accordance with international best practice. The Stability and Growth Pact and the associated European Semester process have been the central tools used to enforce austerity across the EU since the 2008 ...
read more "Austerity kills"
read more "Austerity kills"
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the EU’s healthcare and public sectors to be ill-equipped to respond to the outbreak in accordance with international best practice. A decade of austerity imposed by the European Union institutions and EU Member State governments has caused significant deterioration in healthcare services across the EU. The Stability and Growth Pact has been the central tool used to enforce austerity across the EU since the 2008 financial crisis. Member States’ spending on healthcare provision has been targeted for reduction ...
read more "The EU’s role in attacking healthcare"
read more "The EU’s role in attacking healthcare"
An Interview with Éric Piolle***Version française ci-dessous***
The mayor of Grenoble has assembled a broad coalition of Greens, the Left and citizen groups to do a different sort of politics in the city of 158.000, located in Southeast France at the foot of the Alps. On the cusp of his second term, Éric Piolle sat down with Ethan Earle to discuss Covid, Macron and the “humanist arc” he seeks to build.
Ethan Earle (EE): What can you tell us about ...
read more "“We must make the commons a fulcrum for our society, allowing everyone to have security and give meaning to their life.”"
read more "“We must make the commons a fulcrum for our society, allowing everyone to have security and give meaning to their life.”"