Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
’The only silver lining to this scandal is that the vaccine the VIPs received is apparently one made by a state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company, Sinopharm, with a terrible safety record’
The VIP vaccine scandal has shocked the public into learning that the operative policy of the Duterte (...)
The operative policy of the Duterte gang when it comes to Covid-19 vaccination is it’s every man for himself. Screw the absence of FDA authorization of a vaccine before it can be used in the country. Screw the prioritization by the IATF of frontline health workers, seniors, and the poor. (...)
Medical journal The Lancet ranks Philippines 66th among 91 countries in coronavirus suppression, noting President Rodrigo Duterte’s ’medical populism’ as a factor
After the Philippines was ranked by 66th among 91 countries in a study by an independent medical journal submitted to the UN General (...)
The demand for abolition becomes urgent in the face of a highly militarized response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines.
The COVID-19 pandemic has truly brought out the worst in the Philippine government. Instead of treating the pandemic as a public health crisis, the state is (...)
Often, our greatest problem is the failure to understand the true nature of the problems we face. And here lies the root cause of many developing countries’ inability to overcome perennial challenges of governance.
With the Philippines confronting one of the worst public health and economic (...)
This Monday, President Duterte is expected to announce adjustments in the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the absence of a unified and coherent official communication system, it has been difficult to comprehend the logic of this response. We are drowning in an alphabet soup of (...)
On Feb. 17 this year, I taped an hour-long interview with Dr. Edsel Salvaña, director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of the UP National Institutes of Health in Manila. Dr. Salvaña was among the first Filipino infectious disease experts to closely follow developments (...)
When President Duterte delivers this Monday what may well be the most awaited State of the Nation Address of his presidency, he may be disposed to go straight to what needs to be done to revive the economy from its induced coma and to meet the urgent needs of the poorest of our people. I hope (...)
After 75 days of hard lockdown, the Philippines has had the longest community quarantine in the world to date. The lockdown, or enhanced community quarantine, although initially declared to last from 15 March until 15 April, has been extended twice: first for one more month up to 15 May, and (...)
COVID-19 is more than just a health crisis. It has accelerated the shift to a digital economy/society, revealed the shaky foundation of international cooperation, escalated hegemonic rivalry between the two major powers, and shed light on the variation of the capacity and nature of states. The (...)
Intervention of Walden Bello in the Webinar on the “Program for a New Normal in Agriculture” sponsored by Greenpeace Philippines and other organizations, May 29, 2020.
Thank you for inviting me to be part of this panel.
I was originally intending to give the main points of a recent article I (...)
We publish below the fith article of a series of five.
In an unprecedented uncertainty with the country’s $331 billion economy put in frozen animation by a pandemic, what more would it mean for another lockdown in whatever form? When do policy-makers of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s (PRRD) (...)
Introduction: The Global and Regional Contexts of COVID-19 1. Brief Chronology of Events in the Philippines 2. Steps taken by the Philippine Government in Fighting the Invisible Enemy 3. Current Status of the COVID-19 Situation in the country 4. Impact of COVID-19 on Peoples’ Lives 5 Some (...)
As locked down workers in the Philippines and the world celebrated May 1 in online actions, the labor group Partido Manggagawa (PM) slammed Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello’s push for a “Balik Probinsya” scheme.
“The ‘balik probinsya’ [back the province] plan of Sec. Bello and the ‘balik trabaho’ [go (...)
Revolutionary Salute to the Workers of the World! Revolutionary Salute to all Comrades in the Revolutionary Workers Party-Mindanao, Comrades in Arms in the Revolutionary Peoples’ Army and all other Revolutionary Friends and Allies! Capitalism is in crisis putting us all, humanity and the (...)
The covid pandemic has exposed all the ills and contradictions of capitalism. The state has intervened massively in society to contain the infection and maintain the social fabric. Still the workers and the poor are disproportionately bearing the burden of the pandemic.
The lockdown has put (...)
As the extended unilateral ceasefire of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)-New People’s Army (NPA) expired at midnight of April 30 without an extension — just like the earlier non-extension by the Philippine government of its initial unilateral ceasefire from March 19 to April 15 to (...)
We publish below the fourth article of a series of five.
II. Impact of COVID-19 on People’s Lives
As the Philippines enters its 6th week of a social lockdown and shuttered economy manifestations of political fatigue and cultural toxicity have unfolded among PRRD’s administration and the (...)
As government and the private sector attempt to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic by instituting both health and social amelioration measures, the assumption reigns that when all this is over things will go back to normal and it will be “business as usual.” This means going back to the (...)
Volunteer healthcare workers and underpaid nurses are keeping the virus at bay, for now. [We are not reproducing here the many photos illustrating this reportage. Go to the original article to see them.]
Rose Ann, a rural nurse, checks the temperature of a traveler at a checkpoint. (Xyza (...)
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