Cuban Solidarity, Bernie Sanders, the Leaked Labour Report & more -- The Week in News and Opinion April 12 - 19

This week's list of articles, news items, visuals and opinion pieces that I see as a must if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.

This list covers the week of  April 12 - 18.

This week's edition begins again with a very large roundup of news and left opinion about the capitalist coronavirus crisis and its impact on working people globally. There are also a number of links related to Cuba's internationalism and global solidarity with the island nation, Bernie Sanders' capitulation to Biden and the leak of a report showing that right-wing Labour Party insiders actually worked to tank the party in the 2017 election campaign. 

The Featured Article link at the start is an excellent piece by Bob Buzzanco on the attempts by some lefties to try to shame those not getting on board with backing Biden.

We have tried to arrange the coronavirus news thematically and to touch on many different areas of concern.


Featured Post:

Older and Wiser, and Vote-Shaming

Liberals are a an offensive and feckless peculiar bunch.  They love liberty and freedom.  They believe in equality and personal space.  They believe that a woman should have the right to choose whether to have a child, and that gays should have the right to get married. So perhaps the right to vote, or not to vote, should be part of their ideology too.  In any event, stop the scolding and hectoring and vote-shaming, and go out and work to get your guy elected.  Or maybe better, get involved in movement politics instead of obsessing over electoralism and waiting for a hero to save you.


Otherwise, STFU have a good day.

Capitalist Coronavirus Crisis:

- No time left. This social order must change! -- Statements from Turkey, Greece and Sweden

- Only socialism saves!

- A Socialist Cry for Civilisational Change: COVID-19 and the Failure of Neo-liberalism

- Could Covid-19 vanquish neoliberalism?

- Could COVID-19 bring down the U.S. empire?

- I Want My Death to Make You Angry

- Baffled?? Me Too,Friend!

- THE CASE FOR RENT FORGIVENESS

- The Coronavirus Strike Wave Could Shift Power to Workers—for Good

- Liberal anti-Chinese propaganda helped create the far-right campaign to blame China for Covid-19

- Truth Tracker: There's no scientific proof that COVID-19 was made in a Chinese lab

- Is the cruise industry finally out of its depth?

- Solidarity Yes -- Blockade No! We Demand the Immediate Lifting of the Criminal US Blockade of Cuba

- Cuba is Willing to Send More Medical Brigades to the World

- Cuba shares what it has

- Cuba Under Media Attack for Sending Doctors, Not Bombs, to Help Covid-19 Victims

- Cuba Is Developing a Vaccine to Activate the Immune System

- Cuban Doctors Arrive in Qatar to Fight COVID-19

- Caribbean Organizations Unite Against US Attacks, Support Caricom

- Vietnam ships 450,000 protective suits for U.S. health care workers

- Kerala is a model state in the Covid-19 fight

- Africa's COVID-19 Death Toll Hits 816, 15,249 Confirmed Cases

- COVID-19 Worsens Struggle of Migrant Workers in Gulf States

- Settler attacks rise by 78 percent amid pandemic

- Israel Shuts Palestinian Coronavirus Testing Clinic in East Jerusalem

- Open Letter to Condemn Trump Admin’s Hypocritical Indictment on Drug Charges of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, High-Ranking Officials

- Venezuela Has the Lowest Contagion Rate in Latin America

- “War Operation”: Communist Party-run Maranhão State imports Chinese ventilators in secret, via Ethiopia

- Trump Accused of 'Actively and Knowingly' Spreading Coronavirus to Central America Through Deportations

- Colombia: Red Rags on Windows to Protest Amid Quarantine

- Virus hit 'like a bomb' as toll rises in Ecuador's business capital

- Brazil: Chloroquine Studies Suspended After 11 People Die

- Brazil, Ecuador Record Highest Death Tolls From COVID-19

- There’s No Reason to Turn Airtime Over to Trump’s Deceptive Coronavirus Campaign Rallies

- Trump suspends funding to WHO pending review over handling of coronavirus

- Unions back U.S. Postal Service’s $75B pandemic appeal, oppose right-wing privatization plans

- Three New York City transit workers dying every day of coronavirus

- Hit Hard by Covid-19, Transit Workers Call for Shutdowns

- US for-profit healthcare sector cuts thousands of jobs as pandemic rages

- The U.S. Opposes the IMF to Create Liquidity to Help Countries

- Coronavirus Outbreak at Virginia Nursing Home Spirals Out of Control as 45 Die

- ‘They’re Death Pits’: Virus Claims at Least 7,000 Lives in U.S. Nursing Homes

- Chicago coronavirus outbreak infects dozens of migrant children in U.S. custody

- “BURIALS ARE CHEAPER THAN DEPORTATIONS”: VIRUS UNLEASHES TERROR IN A TROUBLED ICE DETENTION CENTER

- Congress Should Immediately Pass Legislation Protecting Workers' Safety During the Coronavirus Pandemic

- 'Heartbreaking Statistic': Thanks to Pandemic, Last Month Was First March Since 2002 Without a US School Shooting

- Next Coronavirus Relief Package Must Include Moratorium on Utility Shutoffs, 830+ Justice Groups Say

- Death penalty states urged to release stockpiled drugs for Covid-19 patients

- Great, the Anti-Vaxxer Coronavirus Protests Are Here

- Labour leaders say they’ll push to permanently improve pay, working conditions for essential workers (Canada)

- The hypocrisy of our leaders around social distancing is reckless (Canada)

- Union says 35 TTC bus operators walked off job due to lack of PPE (Toronto)

- Quebec reopens mines despite the concerns of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador

- Years of government austerity to blame for 31 deaths at seniors' residence, Quebec's largest union says

- Kelowna golf courses reopen with new protocols but health officials say it's not a great idea

- Ontario’s lack of diversity data for COVID-19 is an embarrassment

- Ontario needs to spend at least $58 million more a month to fix long-term care staffing crisis: CCPA

- Ontario to stop caregivers from working at multiple long-term care homes as COVID-19 spreads like 'wildfire'

- Ontario scaled back comprehensive, annual inspections of nursing homes to only a handful last year

- Ontario rejects call to take over operations at long-term care homes where 54 residents have died

Bolivia:

- Bolivia Indigenous Denounce Añez for Discrimination

- Evo Morales: Police Put Cochabamba Population's Health at Risk

Brazil:

- Brazil: Indigenous Peoples Go to Court Against Missionaries

- Indigenous People In Brazilian Amazon Face Covid-19 and Loggers

- BRAZIL’S JAIR BOLSONARO, THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL CORONAVIRUS DENIER, JUST FIRED THE HEALTH MINISTER WHO DISAGREED WITH HIM

- Bolsonaro Closes Brazil's Embassy and Consulates in Venezuela

Canada:

- The Business Wage Subsidy: Trickle-Down Economics on Steroids

- Federal Government Won’t Disclose Details of New Contract With Amazon to Manage Canada’s COVID-19 Supplies

- We have the oil lobby’s secret list of COVID demands – if approved, they would set environmental protection back decades

- 11 things you need to know as Trudeau announces $1.7 billion to clean up ‘festering’ orphan and inactive wells

- Dimitri Lascaris wants the Green Party to be the champion of Canada’s left

- ‘A dangerous road’: Coastal GasLink pays to kill wolves in endangered caribou habitat in B.C. interior

- Alberta Government Turns Hard to the Right

- Manitoba seeks to claw back or cancel funding for 'non-essential' service providers during COVID-19 pandemic

- 'Let her soul rise': Supporters pay tribute to Eishia Hudson, 16, shot and killed by Winnipeg police

- Over 300 health-care workers sign open letter demanding more shelter for Toronto's homeless

- Some Landlords Found a Loophole in Doug Ford’s ‘Eviction Ban’. They’re Still Threatening Renters with Eviction.

- Ontario's Front-Line Workers Call For Paid Sick Days

- Governments that borrowed interest-free from Bank of Canada now incur massive debts borrowing from private banks

Climate Emergency:

- Second wave of locusts in east Africa said to be 20 times worse

- Planned obsolescence: the outrage of our electronic waste mountain

- 2020 expected to be Earth's warmest year on record, scientists say

- Wildlife Collapse From Climate Change Is Predicted to Hit Suddenly and Sooner

Europe:

- Workers in France Take Over McDonald’s to Distribute Food

- Greece’s Communist Party: We Join Our Voice with Those of Supermarket Employees

- Communist youth in Italy launch campaign to guarantee student rights

Facebook:

- Facebook arbitrarily limits The Left Chapter with no explanation or appeal

Ideas:

- Facing Reality: The Socialist Left, the Sanders Campaign and Our Future

Israel / Palestine:

- Netanyahu's Son Says He 'Hopes' Leftists Will Die of Coronavirus Following Protest

Latin America:

- Colombia: Not Even the Pandemic Halts Killing of Social Leaders

- Guatemala: Social Organizations Denounce Massive Layoffs

- Cuba: Institutions Work Together to Protect the Elderly

Mexico:

- ‘We’ve been abandoned’: a decade later, Deepwater Horizon still haunts Mexico

United Kingdom:

- Socialists call for transparency over anti-semitism investigation that risks being 'suppressed'

- ‘It’s going to be a long night’ – How Members of Labour’s Senior Management Team Campaigned to Lose

- ‘The Leaked Labour Report Is Shameful – It’s Time for an Urgent Investigation’

- Labour’s explosive report shows how right-wing officials sabotaged the party

- Labour's leaked report: we can't let them get away with it

- Labour leaks have cost the party dearly – but its dismissal of anti-black racism means it’s about to lose a lot more

- McCluskey slams ‘rancid and very cruel’ behaviour exposed in Labour's leaked report

United States:

- Bernie go Bye Bye -- Hellworld #8

- The Cognitive Dissonance of “Democratic Socialists”— Cults Die a Slow Death

- The End of Sanders, and Maybe the Beginning of a Mass Independent Left

- Bernie’s Political Funeral 

- Not Me, Biden

- ‘THAT MAN CAN’T BREATHE’

- US judge cancels permit for Keystone XL pipeline from Canada

- These Photos Show the Staggering Food Bank Lines Across America

- With working Americans' survival at stake, the US is bailing out the richest

- 'A Complete Abomination': Mega-Rich Hedge Funds Swoop Down to Grab Covid-19 Small Business Relief Funds

- Millionaires to reap 80% of benefit from tax change in US coronavirus stimulus

Coronavirus and Racism, Worker Resistance, Sanctions & more -- The Week in News and Opinion April 5 - 12

This week's list of articles, news items, visuals and opinion pieces that I see as a must if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.

This list covers the week of  April 5 - 12.

This week's edition begins again with a very large roundup of news and left opinion about the capitalist coronavirus crisis and its impact on working people globally. There are a number of links related to such topics as racist attacks as well as the impact of systemic racism on coronavirus outcomes, the worker fightback in the United States and internationally, and the ongoing impact of cruel, criminal American imperialist sanctions against a number of countries. The Featured Article link at the start is an excellent refutation  by Glenn Greenwald of the false notion that American non-voters are somehow "privileged".

We have tried to arrange this coronavirus news thematically and to touch on many different areas of concern.

Featured Article:

Nonvoters Are Not Privileged. They Are Disproportionately Lower-Income, Nonwhite, and Dissatisfied With the Two Parties.

"NOT EVEN 24 HOURS have elapsed since Bernie Sanders announced that he was suspending his presidential run, and already a shaming campaign has been launched against those who are contemplating abstaining from voting due to dissatisfaction with the two major party candidates. The premise invoked for this tactic is that only those who are sufficiently “privileged” have the luxury of choosing not to vote — meaning that nonvoters are rich and white and thus largely immune from the harmful consequences of a Trump presidency, which largely fall on the backs of poorer and nonwhite Americans."

Capitalist Coronavirus Crisis:

- Not on the Backs of Workers! -- The Capitalist Coronavirus Crisis News on The Left Chapter

- Coronavirus didn't bring the economy down — 40 years of greed and corporate malfeasance did

- The Plan Is to Save Capital and Let the People Die

- There is no vaccine to humanize capitalism

- The COVID-19 Pandemic Is Exposing the Plague of Neoliberalism

- Capitalism provides what is superfluous, while socialism provides what is necessary

- No more unconditional corporate bailouts

- Social Distancing Is a Privilege

- It’s Time to Stop Calling Essential Workers ‘Unskilled’

- Dumped Milk, Smashed Eggs, Plowed Vegetables: Food Waste of the Pandemic

- Global Lockdowns Resulting In 'Horrifying Surge' In Domestic Violence, U.N. Warns

- Coronavirus pandemic exacerbates inequalities for women, UN warns

- Declare abortion a public health issue during pandemic, WHO urged

- Don’t Blame China For Your Government’s COVID-19 Failures

- Spitting and coughing assaults on service workers 'ramped up' amid COVID-19, union says

- YouTube moves to limit spread of false coronavirus 5G theory

- Muslims Spitting, Sneezing, Hiding in Mosques to Spread Coronavirus Are All Fake News Stories

- Smashed windows and racist graffiti: Vandals target Asian Americans amid coronavirus

- 'It happened because I'm Asian': Toronto ER nurse says she was spit on, verbally assaulted

- Pope Francis Calls for Debt Forgiveness and Ending Sanctions

- #BloqueoNoSolidaridadSi campaign seeks to end cruel American sanctions

- The United States was always the Evil Empire

- Billionaire-backed Human Rights Watch lobbies for lethal US sanctions on leftist governments as Covid crisis rages

- Why is the US blockading poor countries in a pandemic?

-  Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain: “Imperialism is the real virus that kills the people”

- U.S. wages economic war on Iran during pandemic, as mainstream media looks away

- US ready to block Iran's requests for coronavirus aid from the IMF, officials say

- Cuban Doctors Arrive in Angola to Train 1500 Health Technicians

- Cuban Medical Team Arrives in Barbados to Help Fight COVID-19

- Cuban Medical Aid in Italy Shows Positive Results

- Contribution from China to support Cuban fight against COVID-19

- LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF THE US FROM PRESIDENT MADURO

- Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration Blasts US Moves

- The U.S. Should Fight COVID, Not Venezuela

- Adolf Trump goes for Venezuela: A jump into nothingness?

- Venezuela Donates COVID-19 Tests to Caribbean Countries

- Venezuela Receives Humanitarian Aid From UN, WHO, Russia

- Trinidad & Tobago Rejects Possible US Intervention on Venezuela

- Brazil: Judge Prohibits Bolsonaro From Lifting Quarantines

- Chile’s Elite Escaping by Helicopter for Easter Amid Pandemic

- Peru: Indigenous People in Lockdown Without Electricity, Sewage

- Honduran Doctors Need More Medical Supplies to Fight COVID-19

- Paraguayans go hungry as coronavirus lockdown ravages livelihoods

- Latin America: 14 Million People Lost Their Jobs to COVID-19

- Ecuador Indigenous Ask IACHR to Investigate State Over COVID-19 Crisis

- Ecuador's Guayaquil Runs out of Coffins as COVID-19 Deaths Soar

- Ecuador’s Virus-Hit Guayaquil Begins Burials of 1,000 Bodies

"They wait until they die out here to attend to them. Then, their families pick them up after they die.":


- "They're Crooks": Coal Industry Aims to Exploit Coronavirus Crisis to Cut Payments to Miners With Black Lung (United States) 

- Stealing masks and stockpiling hydroxychloroquine — what America has become during this epidemic is deeply worrying

- US Seizes Ventilators Destined for Barbados

- Coronavirus Is Forcing the GOP to (Tacitly) Admit Its Ideology Is Delusional

- Trump was warned in January of Covid-19's devastating impact, memos reveal

- Trump’s campaign to reopen businesses risks hundreds of thousands of lives

- Trump Administration Tells Employers Not To Worry About Recording COVID-19 Cases

- Trump Considering New Aid Package Favoring Big Business: Report

- Dear Jeff Bezos, instead of firing me, protect your workers from coronavirus

- Chicago Amazon Workers Picket with Supporters—and Their Cars

- Coronavirus: Amazon workers threaten revolution!

- America's billionaires are giving to charity – but much of it is self-serving rubbish

- A tale of two New Yorks: pandemic lays bare a city's shocking inequities

- We’re in a Plague — Yet Andrew Cuomo Just Passed an Absolutely Brutal Austerity Budget

- In a Push to Re-Open Schools, Florida Governor Falsely Claims No One Under 25 Has Died from COVID-19 Nationwide

- How Did the U.S. End Up with Nurses Wearing Garbage Bags?

- Fast Foods Workers at 50 Restaurants Across California Are Going on Strike

- Grocery workers are beginning to die of coronavirus

- Dying to work: Frontline workers bear the brunt of the lethal virus

- The Irony of Being Essential, But Illegal (United States)

- 'A perfect storm': poverty and race add to Covid-19 toll in US deep south

- Black Americans raising concerns about being profiled for wearing masks amid coronavirus

- BLACK WOMEN HAVE LONG FACED RACISM IN HEALTHCARE. COVID-19 IS ONLY AMPLIFYING IT.

- In Chicago, 70% of COVID-19 Deaths Are Black

- Chicago mayor signs order ensuring immigrants, refugees have access to COVID-19 relief provided by city

- The US Seeks to Set New Military Base in Syria Amid Pandemic

- No rent was paid in April by nearly a third of American renters

- REPORT FROM INSIDE ANGOLA PRISON PAINTS A TROUBLING PICTURE AS CORONAVIRUS GRIPS LOUISIANA

UK healthcare professionals are being silenced and threatened for speaking out about their work during the coronavirus outbreak:




- We're not all in it together, your majesty

- Hundreds of UK care home deaths not added to official coronavirus toll

- Bus driver killed by coronavirus 'told his pay would be cut if he missed work' (United Kingdom)

- While 'low-skilled' migrants are saving us, the government is cracking down on them (United Kingdom)

- In India, Coronavirus Fans Religious Hatred

- COVID-19 Hasn’t Stopped Ford From Trying To Speedup Future Evictions (Ontario) 

- Ontario bans Airbnb and short-term vacation rentals during pandemic

- Ontario's long-term care workers still working at multiple facilities as B.C. clamps down

- Ontario suspends environmental oversight rules, citing COVID-19

- Ontario conducting far fewer COVID-19 tests than promised as cases keep climbing

- 16 people died at Ont. nursing home before sick residents were separated from the healthy

- Quebec premier confirms 31 dead at Dorval long-term care home

- Petition Re: Dollarama: Dollarama respect pandemic rules and give workers protective gear

- Fraser Institute Uses Coronavirus Pandemic to Push Dubious Claims About the Health Benefits of Plastic Bags

Africa:

- UN Seeks $130 Million To Prevent Hunger Catastrophe in Zimbabwe

- Libya War Escalation is Straining ‘Decimated’ Health System

Canada:

- Police and bylaw harassment is not a coronavirus cure

- Canada lost more than 1 million jobs last month as COVID-19 struck

- Ontario releases more than 1,900 inmates, many with nowhere to go

- Fight for publicly-owned medical manufacturing in Ontario

- Passengers hoping for refunds for cancelled flights will be out of luck

- CO-OP REFINERY SCAB GROUP: NO SAND N****R, PRAIRIE N****R, OR UNION POS TOUCHES MY TRUCK

- Big banks slammed for charging customers interest on interest for deferred mortgage payments

- THE CANADA EMERGENCY WAGE SUBSIDY IS A SUBSIDY TO BUSINESS, NOT WORKERS

- CLC LEADERSHIP NEEDS TO STEP UP

- Documents suggest Canada paid millions more than admitted to fight Cindy Blackstock

- Anti-poverty activist and writer Pat Capponi dead at 70

- Actress-activist Shirley Douglas, daughter of medicare's Tommy Douglas, dies

- Canada re-embraces Saudi monarchy by lifting freeze on arms exports

Cuba:

- Despite U.S. blockade, Cuba’s comprehensive health system looks after every citizen

Climate Change:

- Tolkien was right: giant trees have towering role in protecting forests

- Antarctica Was a Rainforest During the Times of Dinosaurs, New Study

- Will the next great pandemic come from the permafrost?

Ideas:

- Corbynism Lost, Sandersism is Losing: Why Working Within Capitalist Parties Fails

Latin America:

- Cuba’s Promising Approach to Cancer

- Ecuador: Ex President Correa Sentenced to 8 Years in Prison

- BRAZILIAN MILITARY CURTAILS PRESIDENT BOLSONARO’S POWER OVER COVID19 DISPUTE

United Kingdom:

- UK hunger crisis: 1.5m people go whole day without food

- Right turn for Labour

- An open letter to UK Labour leader Keir Starmer

United States:

- Another Sanders Betrayal

- NYT Writes Post-Mortems for a Sanders Campaign It Did Its Best to Kill

- Airlines Want To Cancel Rule Requiring Them To Refund Fares For Canceled Flights

- 'One of the Most Brazen Acts of Voter Suppression in Modern Times' as US Supreme Court Blocks Absentee Ballot Extension in Wisconsin

- Trump Signs Order Allowing Private Companies to Mine the Moon

- Trump to open more wildlife refuge land to hunting, fishing

The centre did not hold

An Italian supermarket worker

When the epic horror story that is the capitalist coronavirus crisis is finally over the truth will be that the centre did not hold. Things had already fallen apart, but somehow many needed a catastrophe to truly show it.

For over a generation politicians of all stripes -- including  "social democrats" like Tony Blair and Roy Romanow and Democrats and liberals like Jean Chrétien, and Bill Clinton -- have devastated civil society, the social safety net, social solidarity and the institutions that were meant to protect working people.


After the trauma of the Great Depression and the Second World War, and with the alternative of a developing and seemingly energetic Soviet Union and Socialist Bloc, the capitalists were pushed into a post-war "compromise". Workers in the advanced west would get unions, middle-class wages, cars and homes, opportunity for their kids, and some semblance of job and social security in the hope that they would eschew a more radical alternative or communism.

The social democratic parties like Labour in the UK and the NDP in Canada bought into this fully. They became an essential electoral outlet that told working people that they had some version of "representation" in parliaments and legislatures while, when in power, actually selling them out in virtually every case. "Power" became an exercise in quisling attempts to prove that they would be good little capitalist managers and they, too, would stand firm in defense of the "western" system.

When the neo-liberal era dawned and the "death" of communism seemed to be the end of history no one bought into the new paradigm more than social democrats who were certain that they could build a new capitalism that would include everyone as "stakeholders" and that would truly allow equality of opportunity.

Of course, it was all a lie.

Over the last three decades inequality has risen to near feudal levels in virtually every respect. Not only is inequality staggering in terms of wages and lifestyles, but any semblance of democracy that once existed has been shown to be a sham from the rigged primaries and elections in the United States to the near Shakespearean tragedy that was the utter capitulation of Syriza in Greece.

The "left" gleefully participated in destroying the "welfare state" from Tony Blair's "Cool Britannia" to the saxophone prison state of Bill Clinton, to the neo-con "Liberal" budget in Canada of 1995 to the squandered opportunities of NDP governments from Nova Scotia to Ontario to British Columbia now.

Among the many travesties were the devastation of public health institutions and the decimation of laws protecting working people and, for example, renters.

When the 2008 crisis came the companies and banks were bailed out, but working people were allowed to drown. Barack Obama gave Wall St. criminals a pass and the penalty for corporate malfeasance was massive corporate welfare.

While there have been flashes of backlash against this in Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn the truth is that they have not led to much. They have failed, nobly perhaps, to change the disastrous course we are on. Sanders lingers in the Democratic primary at the moment, but it does not matter at all in terms of how this unfolding nightmare will play out other than in rearguard attempts to build enough public pressure to prevent the absolute worst. A worthwhile effort to be sure, but not one coming from a place of power.

With the coronavirus we are seeing the reality of the corporate state laid bare.

The corporations and their hired staff political class have built an economy and society that is entirely based around corporate power and the fantasy that "economic growth" meant something for everyone.

After having sold the public on tax cuts, contracted out public services and endless cutbacks, the corporations and the wealthy have being doing extraordinarily well while supposedly "advanced" countries like the United States and Canada lack sufficient hospital beds or infrastructure to cope with what is now on the horizon.

When we look, as working people, in vain for allies we see governments like the NDP in British  Columbia refusing at first to stop evictions by greedy landlords in the truly terrible housing market of Vancouver while also allowing mass concentrations of workers to continue to build colonial and environmentally destructive pipelines despite the obvious and terrible health risk this poses.

It is grotesque. It is appalling. It is enraging. It is predictable.

Some fightback has and will begin. We can only work to make sure it is not too late to prevent the mass destitution of millions of North American workers all while this terrible illness spreads exponentially.

But even if we do salvage some semblance of justice and fairness for working people during this terrible time we must remember that what the coronavirus has shown us is that the society we live in is built on fictions and injustice.

And that when the time came and the cases of illness and death spiraled out of control, the right spoke of opening the economy back up anyway even if that killed hundreds of thousands while the left fiddled with half-measures and its own impotence.

In the immediate future we are very likely to see the already greatly emboldened western far right encouraged and gaining momentum in this context of immense disempowerment and displacement.

To counter this will require a mass movement and a new anti-capitalist vision. We know that this will not be forthcoming from the parties of the institutionalized "left". The rotten edifices of parties like the Democrats and the NDP are corrupted by parliamentarianism and a fundamental faith in the system. Large elements of the Labour Party worked to destroy Corbyn, for example, because when push comes to shove they would rather have the Conservatives in power than an actual socialist. We need to move far beyond the notion that fairness is just a little bit of tinkering away or that by electing this or that candidate in an old-line party we can achieve transformative change.

This is by no means an easy task and I am not suggesting that a blueprint exists for how to do it, but when "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;", such is the moment for the left to rise again out of the ashes of the old order.

It had best lest it is the rough beast of fascism that slouches instead towards Bethlehem to be born.