Every Monday on Global Comment, we share the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need but that it’s easy to miss in our busy world. We distil the best of the web and recommend just three links every week that you absolutely must see.
No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads. Here are this week’s recommendations:
The jobs employers just can’t fill (Kate Morgan / BBC)
But if being a service worker was hard pre-pandemic, once it struck things became downright miserable for many. Retailers that stayed open faced supply-chain disruption, and spikes and drops in customer demand. Fewer employees had to work more hours, and increased overtime contributed to burnout. With schools closed and public transport reduced, some workers were negotiating a lack of childcare and a more difficult commute. Cases of worker abuse and reports of rude customers shot up, and though some companies offered one-time bonuses, few increased wages or offered hazard pay.
How Bill Gates and partners used their clout to control the global Covid response — with little oversight (Erin Banco, Ashleigh Furlong and Lennart Pfahler / Politico)
Civil society organizations active in poorer nations, including Doctors Without Borders, expressed discomfort with the notion that Western-dominated groups, staffed by elite teams of experts, would be helping guide life-and-death decisions affecting people in poorer nations. Those tensions only increased when the Gates Foundation opposed efforts to waive intellectual property rights, a move that critics saw as protecting the interests of pharmaceutical giants over people living poorer nations.
“What makes Bill Gates qualified to be giving advice and advising the U.S. government on where they should be putting the tremendous resources?” asked Kate Elder, senior vaccines policy adviser for the Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign.
There’s a whole other way to approach change (Vandana Shiva movie)
@vandanashivamovie This clip always makes me smile #vanjones #vandanashiva #protest #oilchange #heatwave ♬ By the Deep Sea – Federico Albanese
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Image: Zetong Li