A little over 500 years ago, Europeans, driven by a lust for riches and enabled by new technologies, colonized the Americas and set about making them productive in an entirely new way. The reasonably self-sustaining economies of the indigenous peoples were swept away and the organic and mineral resources of their lands were incorporated into systems of production that generated surplus wealth, by serving newly established markets in the Americas and around the world. Thus, was the New World enfolded into the then emerging system of capitalism. More

I was in the Iraqi Kurdistan region when COVID-19 hit the world hard in March of this year. Suddenly, all airports, roads between cities in Iraq, and life itself were shut down in Iraq and many countries around the world. A strict curfew was imposed while I was visiting my relatives in Duhok city. The curfew kept getting extended, mostly two weeks at a time with no end in sight. I decided to remain calm and maintain my equilibrium. After everything I have experienced in Iraq over the years, there is hardly any disaster that can take me by surprise, I thought to myself. Not even death itself will get the pleasure of taking me by surprise at this point. More

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 virus and against human enemies are real enough. War reporting and pandemic reporting likewise have much in common because, in both cases, journalists are dealing with and describing matters of life and death. Public interest is fueled by deep fears, often more intense during an epidemic because the whole population is at risk. In a war, aside from military occupation and area bombing, terror is at its height among those closest to the battlefield. More