Health system performance in Iran: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

GBD 2019 Iran Collaborators A report published in the medical Journal Lancet (April 6 2022) shows that sanctions imposed on Iran have had a major effect on population…

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Captagon trade in Middle East topped $5bn in 2021

Thursday, April 21, 2022

Produced mainly in Syria and consumed almost exclusively in the Middle East, the drug poses an increasing health and security risk to the region, according to New Lines…

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Afghanistan’s doctors urge world to put politics and prejudice aside to save its healthcare

Monday, November 29, 2021

Geetanjali Krishna and Sally Howard Afghanistan was already struggling to respond to the needs of its population before the Taliban takeover. Now the healthcare system is on the…

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The role of pandemics and socio-political and economic change in history

Sunday, November 7, 2021

Mohsen Shahmanesh This is a transcript of a talk given in a webinar organised by the journal Critique in October 2021 entitled “Pandemics in junctures of historic change”…

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Vaccine nationalism and the Global South

Friday, August 27, 2021

Yanis Iqbal United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres tweeted on January 3: “Vaccine nationalism is not only unfair, it is self-defeating. No country will be safe … until all…

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‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’: Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe

Saturday, May 1, 2021

During a particularly polarising election campaign in the state of Uttar Pradesh in 2017, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, waded into the fray to stir things up even…

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The COVID-19 Catastrophe in India Keeps Growing

Monday, April 26, 2021

Vijay Prashad It is difficult to overstate the grip of COVID-19 on India. WhatsApp bristles with messages about this or that friend and family member with the virus,…

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10 years of the Syrian conflict: a time to act and not merely to remember

Monday, April 12, 2021

Samer Jabbour, Jennifer Leaning, Iman Nuwayhid and others The health needs in Syria after 10 years of conflict are vast, ranking third after food and protection needs.22 There…

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Israel and Medical apartheid

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Mouin Rabbani The​ Israeli defence minister, Benny Gantz, said on 25 February that Israel was suspending an initiative to provide nineteen countries with a hundred thousand surplus jabs…

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US Drug Lobby try to prevent delivery of low-cost vaccines to poorer counties

Sunday, March 7, 2021

Lee Fang President Joe Biden’s administration is being asked to punish Hungary, Colombia, Chile, and other countries for seeking to ramp up the production of Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics without…

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Socialism and Ecology: Book Review

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

John Bellamy Foster Winner of the Deutscher Memorial Prize 2020 Twenty years ago, John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature introduced a new understanding of Karl Marx’s…

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The Long Shadow of Iraq’s Cancer Epidemic and COVID-19

Sunday, January 17, 2021

Mac Skelton Iraq, labeled by TheEconomist this fall as the “most infected Arab state,” has the highest number of COVID-19 cases and the most deaths from the coronavirus…

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Covid-19 vaccine: How the Middle East and North Africa is preparing

Friday, December 11, 2020

This month, Covid-19 vaccines are set to begin rolling out to patients worldwide. Some countries in the Middle East and North Africa have already ordered doses from manufacturers…

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Funding crisis threatens Palestinian refugee agency

Monday, November 30, 2020

Sharmila Devi UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East says that a $300 million shortfall is threatening health services. The UN Relief and…

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Palestinian Workers in Israel Caught Between Indispensable and Disposable

Sunday, August 23, 2020

Lucy Garbett In Jerusalem under strict lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the abnormal quiet of the streets is disturbed by the familiar din of business-as-usual drilling and…

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War and Pandemic Journalism: the Truth Can Disappear Fast

Sunday, August 9, 2020

Patrick Cockburn The struggle against Covid-19 has often been compared to fighting a war. Much of this rhetoric is bombast, but the similarities between the struggle against the…

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Falling Behind: COVID, Climate Change, and Chaos

Saturday, August 8, 2020

Multiple Crises, Multiple Obstacles Mel Gurtov COVID-19 and the protests for racial justice have drawn attention away from the mostly bad news about the environment. Yes, the skies…

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Turkey’s Missing WPS Agenda and Implications for the COVID-19 Pandemic

Friday, July 3, 2020

Nisan Alıcı, Güley Bor, Güneş Daşlı By December 2012, when the peace process between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to end the decades-long armed…

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Indian Muslims facing ‘genocidal climate’ amid pandemic

Monday, June 22, 2020

Arundhati Roy India’s coronavirus lockdown, which began in March, has been one of largest and strictest in the world. It has left tens of millions without work prompting…

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Why Egypt’s coronavirus response failed

Thursday, June 18, 2020

Roba Gaafar As countries around the globe announce their reopening plans and easing of coronavirus lockdown measures, Egypt has witnessed recent a surge in infections, with coronavirus cases…

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Turkey’s Erdoğan: Corona days and clipped wings

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Esen Uslu Like most governments of the world, Turkey’s was caught unawares by the Corona pandemic. Even in late March it was still hoping that the tourism season…

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COVID-19, Capitalist Crises, Class Resistance

Sunday, June 14, 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic arrived at a moment of multiple crises of the capitalist system: capital accumulation, ecology, governance, and science. The uprising following the murder of George Floyd…

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Why capitalism can’t cure global pandemics

Friday, June 12, 2020

We frequently hear that COVID-19 is the worst pandemic since the influenza of 1918. It is forgotten that another pandemic known as “the third plague” (because it was “the third major bubonic…

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Coronavirus in the Middle East: A perfect storm

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Marco Carnelos The impacts of coronavirus have been tremendous everywhere, but in the Middle East, the situation seems to be assuming the features of a perfect storm. In…

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The Role of Diasporic Structures in Crisis Governance During the COVID-19 Global Pandemic

Friday, June 5, 2020

Veysi Dag As the world reels from the COVID-19 pandemic, and states attempt to, more or less successfully, navigate through the crisis, stateless diasporas—particularly the case of Kurds—have demonstrated…

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پاندمی کرونا، فاجعه زیست محیطی و سرمایه داری جهانی: یک پدیده در هم تنیده

Sunday, May 31, 2020

مهدی کیا Read Farsi translation of article in pdf format: https://www.rahekargar.net/theoritical_socialism/2020-05-31_206_mehdi-kia.pdf Translated in Farsi from:

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Rojava: statelessness in a time of pandemic

Saturday, May 23, 2020

Anya Briy The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), commonly known as Rojava, has illuminated the plight of the stateless—even though statelessness in the AANES’s case…

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Fundamentalist Pandemics: What Evangelicals Could Learn From The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam

Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Juan Cole This spring, the novel coronavirus pandemic has raised the issue of the relationship between the blindest kind of religious faith and rational skepticism — this time…

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The Coronavirus pandemic, ecological catastrophe and global capitalism: an interlocking phenomenon

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Mehdi Kia The Covid-19 pandemic has unravelled the close structural links between the climate crisis and the global capitalist mode of production.[1] See John Bellamy Foster and Brett…

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Covid-19 and popular struggles of Syria

Saturday, May 9, 2020

I speak with Yasser Munif. He is a Sociology Assistant Professor in the institute for Liberal Arts at Emerson College where he teaches courses about social movements, the…

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