Pandemic Worsens the Old Divides

Vijay Prashad hails socialist educational programs that have stuck to their core principles and defied overall trends during the pandemic.

Almost every single child on the planet (over 80 percent of them) had their education disrupted by the pandemic, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural (UNESCO) agency.

Though this finding is startling, it was certainly necessary to close schools as the infectious Covid-19 virus tore through society. What has been the impact of that decision on education?

[consortiumnews.com]

I wondered yesterday as I listened to the same repetitive tripe being tossed at us on NPR in regards to the new strain of virus [omicron] how many people might finally be waking up to the continuous facade that has taken hold over us for capitalist benefit While The Rest Of Us Die. To some degree we've all been dieing. Whether it be physically, financially, mentally, or within a combination of. Well, probably not actually.

If you've managed to avoid all of those, then on the mental aspect alone, you're as good as dead to ANY part of our society you live within. If you have any sense of critical thought, by now the repetitive speak of address to the issue that has come with each new variant for nearly 2 years, number of major outbreaks sending ANY particular region into critical mode since Jan 2020, I would argue you should be as horrified as I am to how our governments and MSCM's have been blatantly waging a major mis/disinformation campaign on us since the beginning. Then add on the trillions of dollars that have been thrown at the feet of the ruling class and their corporations. While over 800,000 Of Us Have Died. If you have no critical thought process to be emotionally effected by this recognition of the above, I have that one word for you, indoctrination. Indoctrination = Dead as a beneficial participant of society. You'll fit well within the fascist state about to take over our nation. Slave or Serf, pick your poison.

Each time this pandemic morphs into something else we receive the same address to it that continues the same failing results. While we get the same repetitive disinformation lips service. With the help of genuine informant means and conjecture developed from history and science that have been posted here from Jan 2020 and onward, in regards to the nature of capitalist and westernized governments, I believe we've all correctly exposed the horrific truth of how they view us as expendable for profit. They have no problem with it morphing into an unstoppable death sentence. I wouldn't be surprised to find they already have one in a lab somewhere.

How does China look to you now? [worldometers.info] With a population of approximately 1,447,387,632. We don't even reach the 9 figure mark in that equation.

I've spoken of the socialist nature of India's history here before. Time after time it proves to be the best part of India. But before you get to this part you first find the horrifying results of capitalism on the world society, in regards to the educational front and development as a whole for other countries. I'm curious to whether any of you would ask the same questions in my mind, or conjectures to why not.

Bright Light in Kerala

{Meanwhile, a bright light shines in Kerala, a state in southern India governed by the Left Democratic Front (LDF) where education rates are 90 percent. The LDF government has increased education funding in the state and has allowed local self-governments to decide how to spend that money. Before the pandemic, Kerala’s LDF government built high-tech classrooms; once the pandemic set in, it created the necessary infrastructure to allow for online learning.

During the pandemic, over 4.5 million students attended school not through smartphones and computers, but through “First Bell,” a telecast from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on the government-owned Versatile ICT Enabled Resource for Students (VICTERS) television channel. It is much easier for families to access a television than to access more expensive digital technology. The Kerala example shows the power of centering education around a community’s existing capabilities.

Education is not only about devices and classrooms. It is about how teaching happens and what is taught (a point worth noting during the centenary of the birth of the great educator Paulo Freire, whose legacy we discuss in our dossier no. 34, “Paulo Freire and Popular Struggle in South Africa&rdquo.}

{So many of the successes in Kerala are a consequence of a socialist culture that believes in each child and believes in the importance of elevating rather than denigrating the cultures of the working class and the peasantry.}

{Leonela Relys Diaz, one of the original youth volunteers of the literacy campaign, developed the Yo Sí Puedo curriculum in 2000. Now, the program uses pre-recorded, culturally specific videos alongside highly motivated and trained local facilitators to lift the confidence and skills of people. This program has also been used in Venezuela since 2003, where it helped teach 1.48 million adults to read and write, thereby eradicating illiteracy in two years.

During the pandemic, socialist projects — such as those of LDF government in Kerala, the Cuban educational programs and the MST literacy campaign — are flourishing, while other governments cut their educational funding. “It’s always time to learn,” says the MST literacy program, but this adage is not in use everywhere.}

IMF: International Mitumba Foundation

First, they gave us their tongues.
We said, it is okay, we can make them ours.
Then they said we must destroy ours first.
And we said it is okay because with theirs we become first.
First to buy their aircrafts and war machines.
First to buy their cars and clothes.
First Buyers of the best they make from our Best.
But when we said we could best them
By making the best from our best
Our own from our own
They said no, you must buy from us
Even though you made the best out of your best.
Now they make us buy the best they have already used
And when we said we could fight back and make our own
They reminded us they know all the secrets of our weapons.
Yes, they make us buy the best they have already used
Second hand, they call it.
In Swahili they are called Mitumba.
Mitumba weapons.
Mitumba cars.
Mitumba clothes.
And now IMF dictates mitumba universities
To produce mitumba intellectuals.
They demand we shut down all departments
That say
We have to stand on our ground,
The best ground from which to reach the stars.

But mitumba politicians kneel before IMF,
International Mitumba Foundation,
And cry out
Yes sirs
We the neo-colonial mimics milk the best bakshish.
Mitumba culture creates MaTumbo kubwa
For a few with Mitumba Minds.

Close schools and nonessential businesses! Workers must act to stop Omicron!

It has been three weeks since the World Health Organization (WHO) named Omicron a “variant of concern” and warned that the danger is “very high.” In these three weeks, governments have done nothing, allowing the new variant of COVID-19 to spread uncontrolled throughout the world’s population.

During those vital weeks, Omicron has spread silently, as infected individuals have unknowingly transmitted the extremely infectious virus to those around them. Now these imperceptible movements of the virus are manifesting themselves in unprecedented surges in case rates—the fastest seen anywhere since the beginning of the pandemic two years ago.

[wsws.org]

In other words. The money to be made during the holidays are to valuable to them to preserve society. They need the numbers for their fake market report that comes soon after the holidays each year. Where the results of inflation have actually hid the real growing poverty numbers for decades now within fudged reports.

{“The 4 countries with the highest documented Omicron burden [Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom and South Africa] have each exceeded their pandemic record for new cases, and still ascending rapidly,” wrote epidemiologist Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research Institute.

In the United States, test positivity in New York City, a hotbed of the Omicron variant, has doubled in just four days, up from 3.9 percent on December 9 to 7.8 percent on December 12, and the city has posted its highest number of cases ever.}

That's odd. NPR just reported that NYC hasn't been effected much by Omicron yet. I specifically remember the report comparing it to the beginning of 2020 when it was being devastated.

{The rapid spread has been coupled with a growing volume of data showing the enormous dangers of the new variant. Contrary to assertions by governments and media outlets that Omicron is a “friendly mutant,” there is no evidence that the disease is “mild.”}

!Sort this out people! The conflicting reports are a major deception! Also going with this is the urgency to now have a booster shot to be protected against Omicron? First they said we were safe, now we aren't.

{This outcome was entirely predictable, and it was predicted by the World Socialist Web Site. Responding to the WHO’s announcement of a new “variant of concern,” the WSWS warned two weeks ago, “The fact that the Omicron variant is far more infectious than Delta means that, even if it was somewhat less deadly—a claim that has no basis in fact yet—the larger number of cases will mean more hospitalizations and, if hospitals get overwhelmed, a massive increase in deaths.”}

Here in the Akron area just north of me the hospitals have already moved back in refrigerated 52' trailers for body storage.

{Just as the entire media and political establishment conspired in January–March 2020 to keep the public from knowing the extent of the danger posed by the first COVID-19 wave, so too, the surge of Omicron has been accompanied by a massive propaganda barrage aimed at downplaying the threat and chloroforming public opinion.

In just two weeks, all of the lies of the government and media have been exposed. Omicron is not “mild,” and it is not “manageable.” The irresponsible policies being carried out today will result in a wave of deaths in January and beyond. The “vaccine only” approach of capitalist governments has, far from bringing about an end to the pandemic, massively undermined the effectiveness of vaccines themselves.}

{This policy is not unrealistic. It has been implemented successfully in China. What is unrealistic, or more precisely, utterly irrational, is the conception that it is possible to “live with” COVID-19, based on the hope that the virus will soon become manageable and miraculously fade away. The continuation of this irrational policy, which has been dictated by corporate-financial interests, will result in the unnecessary and avoidable loss of millions of lives.}

I've been around the block with my opinions and conjecture with at least a couple of people here about what we are facing today in regards to how China handled the virus. Almost 2 years later now, I feel fairly safe out on the limb I climbed out on. The policies and rhetoric they support are working. They just aren't working for the citizens of the westernized world though. They're supporting a can of worms being kicked down the road that leaves a growing number of graves, mentally, and physically harmed people behind it.